Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is August 17, 2021 and we have a very important episode to bring to you. Today on Mormon Stories Podcast we are going to be covering the LDS Church's response to the COVID crisis and specifically in this episode to the COVID vaccine. We've covered Covid a little bit on Mormon Stories in the past, particularly during the first spike that happened last year. But there is a new spike and some new news and we are going to be covering it today. So I want to begin by kind of talking about my and our intentions from the very outset. Our goal is to responsibly review the evidence, the science behind Covid and the COVID vaccine. We also want to cover the state of the COVID vaccine situation in Utah and in surrounding states. We are not interested in demeaning or speaking down to anyone who has a various position. If we're going to bring up anyone's counter position to something like the vaccine, we want to steel man their arguments and do the best faith interpretations of what they feel are very legitimate concerns about the vaccine or the COVID vaccine. Specifically, we want to help as many Mormons, post Mormons, Utahns, Idahoans, Arizonans, Californians and anyone else avoid death or unnecessary death or serious injury. And we are not here to be political. My goal is that no political party or candidate or politician ever gets mentioned in this entire episode. I was going to mention that to the panelists before we start. Let's just never bring politics up at all if that's okay. We're not here to demean any side or position and we're actually not even here to fear monger because fear mongering doesn't work. I want to give a little bit of background on why I decided to cover the episode this week and I'll do that just by discussing the news. So I noticed in the Salt Lake Tribune an article just a few days ago that basically says Utah's intensive care units are past capacity as COVID patients surge in numbers. It basically said that the intensive care units are 102% full. This was as of four or five days ago, that the medical units are 98% full and that caregivers are stretched thin. To me, that is boots on the ground. That is what's going on right now here in Utah, which is where I live and where many of us live and where the majority of Mormons live to go on the Salt Lake Tribune reported. This is Scott Pierce, August 13, 2021, quote, I haven't seen morale this low in a hospital in, well, I don't think I've ever seen it this low period, said Dr. Eddie Denejem, an infectious disease physician at Intermountain Healthcare in Murray. Our caregivers are really strained. We're in a pretty dire straight right now, basically. And the medical surgical floors are at 98% capacity, are close behind the ICUs. He's saying, so we're full, completely full. This is not a place that we want to be. And that's the hospital saying that. And that means the hospitals have to figure something out when a trauma patient or someone who suffered a heart attack or a stroke comes in and needs an ICU bed. So ICU beds are full and people needing care soon are going to have to be turned away or life flighted somewhere. But even the more kind of important or startling News, it says 90% of the COVID 19 patients currently hospitalized were not vaccinated, quote, and they could have been vaccinated. And if they were vaccinated, the vast majority of these hospitalizations would have been avoided. He goes on to say the majority of vaccinated patients admitted with COVID quote, are people that we, that we'd expect didn't generate a significant immune response to the vaccine anyway. He said that he's, quote, just kind of numb to it all at this point. We've been in this fight now for over 18 months and we all kind of thought that we've got this effective vaccine that's safe. And I think I had it in my mind that everybody's going to get it, that can get it, and we won't be in this situation. So a little more reporting before we bring on our experts again. In the Salt Lake Tribune, it reported in the past four weeks, unvaccinated Utahns were 7.6 times more likely to die of COVID 19 than vaccinated people, according to an analysis from the Utah Department of Health. The unvaccinated were also 6.7 times more likely to be hospitalized and 4.9 or 5 times more likely to test positive from the coronavirus. So massive increase in likelihood of death, ICU admission, hospitalization and contracting coronavirus for the unvaccinated goes on to say based on data from the past six plus months, unvaccinated Utahns are 10.8 times more likely to die of COVID 19, 6.1 times more likely to be hospitalized and 5.8 times more likely to test positive, according to the Utah Department of Health. And then Just, just because we don't want, you know, many people don't trust statistics these days. We. Which is totally something that I think I can wrap my brain around. Or they even don't respect authorities. And so we don't want to just rely on math and statistics and authorities. But also anecdotal evidence can sometimes be useful. And I'll just tell you anecdotally. My mother called me in tears just a couple days ago and she told me that her dear friend who lives in Draper, who was her neighbor for multiple decades, you know, probably in her 70s or 80s. Same for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She died of COVID She did not get. Just in the past couple days, she did not get vaccinated and it was her children that persuaded her not to get vaccinated. And she just died. My mom was heartbroken about that. I just noticed a post from my dear friend, Woody Woodward. This is a dear friend of mine, someone that I know very well. This is a picture of him in the hospital. Here's what he writes on Facebook just a day ago. You can go to his Facebook page and see it. He wrote, Covid kicked my butt. Took 21 days to recover. I was not vaccinated. I ended up in the ER twice. Got pneumonia on the top of my asthma. If you want to know what it feels like, here's the only journal entry I made. And he talks about being in pain, his bones throbbing. He feels like his vertebrae has a woodpecker going down. It. He went, was, hasn't been able to sleep for more than four hours straight. He goes on and on and on about talking about how awful it was for him. Another listener, Roger Tater, writes, I have two families that are close to friends that are currently suffering of COVID 19 that were not vaccinated. One couple is healing and just out of the icu. The other couple is home and very sick right now. Whitney writes, my aunt actually died of COVID 19 after vaccines were made available to the public. She was against the vaccine. Another one wrote, my sister in law, Amy Pearson is willing to share her story about getting Covid. After delaying it, she ended up in the ICU and still has issues, plus a hefty medical bill. She was five days away from getting the second dose. And on and on and on. Again, the point is not to fear Monger. We are going to be addressing, I know a lot of people are saying, well what about what people are calling vaccine injury? We are going to be addressing vaccine injury in this episode. But before we kind of conclude this portion, I'm just going to add the news that the LDS Church First Presidency has made a formal statement about the vaccine that goes farther than they've been willing to go before. They wrote Dear brothers and sisters, we find ourselves fighting a war against the ravages of COVID 19 and its variants. This is Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring fighting a war against the ravages of COVID 19 and its variants and unrelenting pandemic. We want to do all we can to limit the spread of these viruses. We know that protection from the diseases they can cause can only be achieved by immunizing a very high percentage of the population. To limit exposure to these vaccines, we urge the use of face masks in public meetings whenever social distancing is not possible. To provide personal protection from such severe infections, we urge individuals to be vaccinated. That's the most important part. The LDS Church First Presidency is urging all Mormons and everyone everywhere to be vaccinated available vaccines. They're saying, you know, the LDS Church First Presidency is saying available vaccines have proven to be both safe and effective. And then they say, and I have cold symptoms myself. We can win this war if everyone will follow the wise and thoughtful recommendations of medical experts and government leaders. Please know of our sincere love and great concern for all of God's children. Again, that's the LDS Church First Presidency. There is a photo of Mormon Prophet and President Russell Nelson getting vaccinated. So he is not only saying these words, he himself is showing the example. And you know, I even though I'm definitely not a traditional or orthodox believing Mormon by any stretch, I was grateful to see at least some early response. This response was happy to some and concerning to others. But basically it's a Facebook person saying our prophet asked us to do these things. And that is good enough for me because I know he speaks for God. Obviously there are people who have concerns about anyone following anyone with blind obedience. But in the case of the public health, there are many who are lauding President Nelson for weighing in on this matter and for any if the result is that more Utahns, more Idahoans, Arizonans, more believing Mormons are willing to get vaccinated, they're seeing that as a good thing. So today I am bringing on three, possibly four guests. Excuse me as I cough. And my four guests are Dr. Jeffrey Gardner, Dr. Stephen Caldwell, and Dr. Dwayne Wiesman. Is that right, Wiesman? I keep I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time Pronouncing. That's right, Dwayne Wiesman, I'll just tell you why I brought these three gentlemen on. So Jeff Gardner is a friend of mine. I know that he studied math at Harvard and also I think, went to byu. Jeff went on to give his medical degree. He's an E. E.R. he's an E.R. doc in Nevada. But Jeff just has had a particular passion for following the science and the evidence and the data and just the, the experiences of medical professionals around him within and without Mormonism, within and without Utah and Nevada and other surrounding areas. So, Jeff Gardner, thank you so much for being willing to kind of help lead this discussion today. It's great to have you back on Mormon Stories podcast.

Utah COVID Surge and Hospital Capacity

LDS First Presidency Statement on COVID Vaccine

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:11:53] Nice to be here. Thanks, John.

Introducing the Panelists

John Dehlin [00:11:54] Anything else you want to say about my introduction?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:11:57] No of you captures it. I'll correct it a little bit.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] I've also brought, I think, Steven, is this the first time you've been on Mormon Stories?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:12:06] Steven?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [00:12:06] Yep, first time.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] All right, Steven. Steven is a dear friend of mine. He's also the brother for the, for the Mormon Stories geeks out there. Steven Caldwell is the, is the brother of Shannon Caldwell Montez who did the amazing series on B.H. roberts and the secret Mormon meetings of 1922. He's one who introduced me to his amazing sister Shannon. But I brought Stephen on because he is an ER doc here in Utah, so he can speak to boots on the ground here in Utah. Steven, anything you want to say about your background before we jump in?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [00:12:42] No, I'm from Utah. I did my training outside of Utah, Utah for the most part. So I've lived around the country a little bit and, and have been in Utah for the last 16, 17 years. So yeah, we've had a, you know, a close up view as to how Utah has handled this and how we're doing currently. So.

John Dehlin [00:13:05] All right, Steven, it's great to have you on.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [00:13:06] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:13:07] And then the final panelists that we'll have immediately. And then I'm going to bring on a prerecorded video. Maybe later. Duane Wiesman, Dwayne, you're a double doctor, both an MD and a PhD. You're joining us from, I believe, Boston, Massachusetts. I'm not even going to try and do justice to your background and expertise. So, Dwayne, do you mind introducing yourself and letting people know your background and expertise and why you were willing and able to join us?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:13:38] Sure. I'm Duane Wiesman. I'm physician scientist. I see patients with immune deficiencies and other problems with their immune system. And most of my time is spent in the lab studying immunology, in particular antibody responses to infections and vaccines. And I'm on here because I care about Mormonism. I grew, I was born and raised in Utah, and I care about vaccines and I care about science. And I want to be here to help out where I can.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] And so you're an immunologist. You have actually participated. If I remember right, you sent me a bit of a, well, some of the research articles you've been involved with. So tell us what types of research you have. Actually, I think, I think you mentioned you are an associate professor at Harvard, is that right?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:14:29] That's correct. I'm an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. I'm a immunologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and associate member of the Ragon Institute of mgh, MIT and Harvard.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] And tell us what research you've been involved with that might be relevant to this discussion so that people know the extent to which you kind of might have some exposure to and or familiarity with the body of research that's out there.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:14:57] Yeah, so I've worked with folks at Moderna as well as Johnson and Johnson, folks affiliated with Johnson Johnson I carrying out studies. My laboratory carries out studies on the immune response to COVID 19 as well as to the immune response to vaccination, both in terms of durability of antibody responses and breadth across the different variants and how effective they might be. And as I mentioned, I'm a physician who specializes in immune deficiency. And a lot of my patients discuss aspects of concerns they have about vaccines and side effects. I'm an allergist as well. So I see folks that have side effects of vaccines and various other kinds of things. And in addition to that, I moonlight as a hospitalist at a local community hospital around here and I've cared for folks with COVID 19 myself.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] Excellent. Thank you so much, Dwayne. It's so great to have you. Before we jump in, I am just going to address one comment that has really, really frustrated me. Someone on YouTube movie hipster writes, john, stay out of politics. When I announced that I was going to be discussing COVID 19 and the vaccine, I just had so many people write me and say, john, please don't make Mormon stories political. Please stay out of politics, stay in your lane, so to speak. And I just want to address that, just head on. Number one, if you joined us from the very beginning, we are committed. We will never be mentioning the name of any political party during this episode. That's my commitment. We are not mentioning any public office holder or leader. We are not here to represent any political party. We, we are not, you know, we are seeing this as a public health issue, not as a political issue. And I just am really frustrated with people that want to frame this as a political issue. And I just want to say from my commitment to my listenership and my commitment on this episode, politics will not be entering into this discussion. Does anybody have a quick, pithy, just sort of statement they want to make about that, that framing that this is a political issue? Anybody? And Jeff, then I'm just going to hand it over to you maybe Jeff, I'll just hand it over to you and, and we can kind of go from there. But basically Jeff's going to talk about, he's going to kind of frame the issue. We've got a couple major concerns that people have, have voiced. And then we're gonna have Steven talk about boots on the ground in Utah and we're gonna have Dwayne fill in some information about what he knows about the evidence in the literature. And we're going to be directly hitting several questions or concerns. We're going to be talking about vaccine injury, claims about vaccine injury and people saying that many people are being injured by the vaccine and, or the injuries are being underreported. We're going to be talking about whether or not the vaccine has been rushed or not tested enough. We're going to be talking about MRNA and whether this vaccine will quote, change their DNA, whether the vaccinated are contracting Covid, whether this is just normal cold and flu season stuff. These are kind of the main concerns we're going to be addressing. Whether they're, this is heavily influenced by financial motives and, and, and again, just this political issue just keeps coming up. So Jeff, I'm going to turn the time over to you if you want to address that political thing right up front. But let's just give you some time to kind of lay, lay the land for us a little bit.

Panelists Share Their COVID Perspectives

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:18:45] Okay, thanks John. I'll start by saying this is. I feel like I'm completely politically detached from this. Of course everyone probably thinks that, but it'll probably be more about what you guys see and we'll do our best. I'm just going to try to share my experience with this and try to leave politics out of as much as possible. I'm really passionate about sharing accurate information on this just to correct a little bit. My undergraduate major was in economics and I only say that because when this came Out February was really when we, February of 2020 was when we started hearing about this virus in China. My initial response was kind of, oh, it's not going to be a big deal here. We'll see, we'll kind of keep an eye on it. But I've been through this before. I'd been through SARS 1, I'd been through, you know, H1N1, a couple other things that, that have come through in my job as an ER physician. And I've always thought people aren't very good at risk analysis. I mean the most dangerous thing you do every day is get in your car and drive. And. And yet people are more concerned about being shot in a public park or, you know, these other things that are such minor risks in comparison. And so I felt like this is another thing that the media wants to sell headlines about their fear mongering. They seem much more interested in things other than accurate information. So February, March, even into March, I still feel felt that way. We were seeing those videos from Italy and those were scary. But my, my thought was, well, that's the Italian system. These are docs that are not trained like we are here. I was kind of resisting at every point. And then it got to New York where we do have well trained docs and it was killing us. So that made me a little more nervous. I still resisted any kind of attempt from the government to shut down anything. I just felt like if we make symptomatic people stay home, why don't we just do that? Let's not overblow this. We're operating out of fear or politics more than we are out of accurate information. I started a Facebook group at that time where first of all I wanted to know how to do my job well. So the idea was we were just going to go through a research, have other smart people in there to bounce things off of and see what they thought. The rule number one is keep politics out of it. Because I just wanted to get the accurate information, anyone was invited. So we had a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds talking and, and it was, it was helpful. It's hard to keep politics out of a pandemic, I gotta be honest, because there are sometimes policy implications to some of the evidence that was coming out. But we were trying to keep that kind of bias out of it. I remember talking in, you know, as things progressed, we got into the summer, we were starting to get full and starting to have some problems. And my thoughts had always been government action, government shutdowns, those kinds of. And public health rules should keep in mind whether our hospitals are at capacity, because then your choice to take a risk suddenly affects other people. Meaning if the ICU is full and you have a heart attack, you are going to have problems getting adequate care. So that person's decision to take a risk and get Covid now affects your treatment options when you have a heart attack. And that's where we start to realize we live in a. In a community of people. So I felt like in those situations, government intervention can start to become appropriate. And anyway, July, we started to. We had some of these interventions. Things slowed down a little bit. I still wasn't seeing, like, what we had seen in New York, but we were having some difficulties transferring patients. You know, having full icu, full hospital beds, treating patients in hallways. You know, things that just aren't ideal. By the way, I work in. Just by way of background, I work in a Las Vegas trauma center. I work in a Las Vegas suburban er, and then I work in a rural center up in Northern Nevada. So I kind of get a view of a few different, you know, a few different situations with respect to this. With respect to this virus. Okay, so progressing onto November, December, things got really, really ugly. I remember thinking back in summer, if we get a vaccine for this, you know, probably just health care workers and old people need to get it, you know that I had concerns about it being experimental, untested. I just, you know, the people that were high risk needed to get this. By the time of December, there was a funny meme that came out. I don't know if you saw it, but it totally spoke to me. It was, you know, I was so desperate to get this vaccine. People were saying, I'm not so sure I want this vaccine. By the time December rolled around and it came out, I was, I'll take it in my eye. I just wanted. I just want to be vaccinated. I didn't care. It was scary on a personal level. It was scary on a patient treatment level. I didn't want to make other people sick at the er, and I didn't want to. I saw people like me that were going to the ICU and dying. And I'm a healthy runner. I run regularly. I mountain bike. I'm of a healthy body weight. I try to eat healthy. But no one is the exception here. You know, kids under 12, maybe they're the one. They're the ones that can say, I haven't seen a kid under 12 get really sick with this. That's not to say they don't exist. But I've seen every other category of people get really, really sick. And that personal experience, I think, speaks in a way that numbers don't. And I've seen that, as people have commented on Covid, I've seen doctors who are pathologists and have never seen a patient, and they feel very free talking about things that they just don't really understand, either on a clinical level or a research level. They just haven't looked at it in the same way. And I think that level of experience really speaks to you, and it's hard to believe numbers, honestly, without having either someone close to you or yourself being directly affected. The doctors in the er, the doctors in the icu, the nurses in the ICU and ER have a different perspective, and you'll see a different response. I don't know any of my physician colleagues, and I come from a fairly. I know we didn't want to talk politics, but just because it's real in there. I come from a fairly Republican ER group. Without exception, everyone has been vaccinated. And I think, like, we've managed to keep politics out of this because of the experience we've seen. And I don't know how to communicate that to you without walking you through the ER during these surges. It's really a nightmarish place. This has been the hardest, most challenging year of my professional life. And I lived through SARS 1. I was a resident in SARS 1. I worked through H1N1. We've had some pandemics, but nothing even close to the level of what we've seen in real life. Real life. Not media, communicated life. Real life.

John Dehlin [00:25:17] So that's my background, Jeff, what I hear you saying is that you. You. You began this Covid sort of awareness with the healthy dose of skepticism, even downplaying it. And what the predominant influence on your positions is, just boots on the ground, seeing people die, seeing how full and severe this is for hospitals, for patient care, and just knowing how serious of a health risk this is to yourself and to people around you. Is that what I just heard you say?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:25:51] Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:25:52] Yeah. And I think we're all human. We all think we're very rational, and we try to be, but there's nothing that speaks to you like personal experience. So I empathize with people who haven't felt this hit them. I was there. I know what you're feeling. I mean, as well as I can, but I just. I wish I could communicate to you what we've been through this last year. This vaccine felt Like a literal miracle. I got it the day I could. It felt way better than Christmas. I got it December 17th, 18th, and it just felt way better than Christmas. I felt this huge weight. And so it's been a little shocking to me to not see a similar response. I've had to kind of stretch my empathy muscles and go, okay, if I hadn't been in the er, if I hadn't seen all this, how would I feel about this? And that's healthy for all of us, I think. But. But, yeah, it's. It's a little frustrating, too.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:26:44] We.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:26:44] We are seeing people now fully preventable disease, and that is really hard to still be fully in. I mean, it's our responsibility. I'm not excusing people, but it's hard.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:26:57] It's.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:26:58] It just burns people out. I'm seeing that in the nurses around us. They're leaving the job. They're leaving their jobs that we help people, to heal people, and to have people question both our motives and our expertise, that's a hard thing to face every day and just so much needless suffering. Anyway, so my experience, I just want to emphasize. It's okay. I was skeptical from the beginning of this. I was an economics major. I knew there were real consequences to shutting down businesses and health consequences to that, and some of that was being ignored up front. But I've really changed my mind on a lot of this. Not everything. There's a few things I'm still holding to. But it's okay to change your mind. In a pandemic, we are learning information every week about how to treat patients, how to diagnose them, what kind of impacts this is having on the society. You should be changing your mind. If you haven't changed your mind on anything, you're not paying very close attention. So I think it's okay to just to. To be flexible on this. We need to be

John Dehlin [00:28:00] excellent. Okay, Jeff, tell us. Tell us. I mean, one of the things that we put together are a list of questions. Tell us what you want to say in framing. Maybe what we should do, Jeff, is have you come complete whatever framing you want. Have Steven give his anecdotal experience in Utah, and then. And then we can either jump to the questions or also let Dwayne give a little bit of framing. But what else do you want to say before we jump to the actual. Have the other guests on and then. And then jump to the questions.

Vaccine Safety and Injury Concerns

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:28:33] Okay, I see vaccine injury at the top of that list. And I would agree that's. That's everyone's biggest concern about COVID vaccine. It's appropriate we should worry about this. And so I think it's a totally valid objection. What. I think it's being misframed in a lot of the discussions. And I'd just kind of like you to step back and look how this virus works. Works on a couple of. I don't want to review too much, but this is non controversial basic biology, how viruses work. You've heard about the spike protein. This virus goes into the bloodstream, it attaches to cells using the spike protein and ejects MRNA into the. Sorry. Injects its genetic material into the cell. It then co ops the. It co ops the cellular machinery to produce new virus releasing into the bloodstream. And that kind of goes. And then those viruses repeat this pattern. So it's an exponential growth of virus and spike protein. Right. The virus or the vaccine, I'm sorry, is a little sliver of MRNA that we inject in that MRNA is taken up by the cell and then the cell then produces just this little sliver of protein that's on the virus, the spike protein. Right. So the virus includes this spike protein, but it also includes a whole bunch of other stuff that causes allergic reactions, immunogenic responses, causes a lot of other problems. It also has the instructions to reproduce. So what I want to emphasize here is when you get the vaccine, you're getting, yes, you're getting a slight increase in this spike protein that breaks down over time, you know, but when you're getting the virus, you're getting that spike protein plus a whole lot of other bad stuff, including instructions for that, for that cell to or for that virus to then reproduce in an exponential fashion. So anything that this spike protein is going to be caused will be caused by the virus and in spades. So just from a physiologic perspective, it's really virtually impossible for the vaccine to cause a problem that the wild virus won't. And in much greater magnitude. That's just from a physiology perspective. So if we step back though and look at what this virus is doing, I see a lot of people that are saying, well, I'm just going to sit back, wait and see, let's see what these long term effects are. Right. That's a really common objection I'm seeing. Now if this were Ebola and it's isolated in Africa and there is a way to avoid it, that's a valid question. Like I can sit back and see how this vaccine does. And it can also avoid Ebola. Right. When you make a Choice to wait and see on the vaccine. You are making an active choice to get the virus. The virus is everywhere. You're not going to avoid it unless you're going to stay in a hole away from people. So you're making a choice. There's no choice C. You're choosing either the vaccine or you're choosing to be infected. So that's the, really, that's the comparison we need to make. So no, we don't know the long term effects of the vaccine. You're absolutely right. We know nothing about the long term effects of COVID Well, what we do know, it's bad. People who have gotten chickenpox, wildly, you know, they face shingles 20 years later. We don't know what the virus, what Covid could do 20 years from now. If you get wild COVID infection, we have no idea. We do know people are getting permanent, permanent myocarditis kind of symptoms. We know people are getting permanent lung injury. We know a lot that's going on permanently from wild COVID infection. We are not seeing that with the vaccine. We might in 20 years. It's true. But we're watching really closely right now and we're not seeing anything even close to the level of what we saw, what we're seeing with the virus. So I feel really passionate about that. Make the right comparison. You're comparing vaccine versus virus. You're making the choice of one of those two things. If we just look at the death rate, which is really pretty simple to observe, we think the death rate of the COVID virus, you know, by, by really generous, by really generous estimates. Let's put that at 0.3%, maybe 0.1% even if you wanted to put it there.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] And that means people that are dying who contract the virus.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:32:37] Yeah. Who contract the virus in any way. So this includes all those people that got the virus and maybe had a little sniffle. Right. That includes the full denominator of people. This includes you.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:32:47] Right.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:32:48] If you're, you're walking around society, you pick up Covid, you have a 0.1% chance of dying. That's being really generous. Okay, so we've administered, we've vaccinated approximately 200 million people in the US and check my math on this, if we go one 1% or 0.1% of 200 million is 200,000. Have we seen 200,000 deaths from the vaccine? No way. I don't care what you think about VAERS or the reporting system or whatever. Nothing puts it at that high.

Understanding the VAERS Reporting System

John Dehlin [00:33:21] So you're Jeff, this is, this is probably one of the number one responses that we've been receiving and we already have gotten some comments from listeners on YouTube. Jeff, I'm going to ask you to tilt your computer screen just a tiny bit so there's a little bit less room between your head and the top of the screen. Tell us, what is this? So there are people saying that there's this database with reported injuries from the vaccine. And everybody is saying, John, you know, it's wrong for you to bring on people talking about close loved ones who have died from not getting the vaccination without also talking about all the reported and unreported injuries from the vaccine that's in this database. Dwayne, is this something that you, Jeff, or Duane, is this something that either one of you guys can kind of explain to our listeners and help tease apart?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:34:15] I just did a post on bears, so it's kind of fresh on my mind. I might hit that. Dwayne can probably call it the vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Okay, a couple of ways. First of all, I applaud this effort because it really is an extra step towards transparency. Let me, let me just discuss what VAERS is and, and what that, what those reported, what those reports mean. First of all, anyone can submit anything to vaers. If, if you had a grandma who died three months after the vaccine and you felt the vaccine was responsible, that counts as a reported death. On vaers. It, I mean, it can be, it can be any kind of distance of time between the vaccine and the injury. It can be any kind of symptom that comes up, whether it's physiologically plausible or not. So while it's an important kind of first step in looking for vaccine injuries, and we've used this in the past for other vaccines and we have identified problems, it's not at all complete. That information is really problematic. It's very hard even for a doctor to establish causation. When you see something happen to a patient, you look for causes and you make hypotheses about that. But even if it happens the day of, two weeks later, whatever, there are all kinds of other factors that confound things. So it's really hard to establish that. So to depend on non professionals making that causation is obviously a little problematic, but it's still valid to listen to the data point. And so I think for the rotavirus vaccine that came out, this is 20 years ago, we were seeing an abnormal level of interciception. Now, interciception is not a, is Not a symptom a lot of people are familiar with. So if you see a spike in a susception among people who have had the vaccine, that speaks to a couple of things that says, okay, these are probably medical professionals making this diagnosis. And this is a different level of concern than, than if you pass out, for instance, after getting a shot, which happens all the time, even if you get saline in shot, you know, so we're paying attention and sometimes that'll raise flags. And then the study is done later comparing people who received the vaccine and people who didn't ideally receive placebo. So you're. So you're really getting a good comparison. But even if we saw an increased incidence in something among people who saw the vaccine versus a population who didn't, that's going to draw some, draw some attention. So the first thing to notice is that we, is that anyone can report these. They can do it fraudulently if they want. I don't know if they want to. That seems unusual, but. But if they wanted to. But also you're relying on whoever to make that link of causation, which is really a difficult link to make. Now there's going to be over reporting and under reporting. Some people put that underreporting at 1 in 100. That number is really out of nowhere. There's no justification for that number.

John Dehlin [00:37:20] I think that's what I hear a lot. Is that. Yeah, is it vaers, that the VAERS reporting is dramatically underreported?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:37:30] It probably, in fairness, it probably is underreported. We have no idea what that number is. There was a Harvard study done that was that talked about drug. It's totally not. It's not even in the same world. And those numbers have been extrapolated over to this, which is totally not appropriate. But we don't know what that number is. So if we see a spike in a certain adverse event, we can look at both the original studies, those studies have been really, really scrutinized as far as adverse effects. And then we can look at the continuing data that's being fed. Maybe Dwayne, you can take it from there and see what kind of. Is there anything you'd add to that?

John Dehlin [00:38:02] What would you. How would you answer the question from our listening audience and viewing audience about concerns around vaccine injury as reported through the VAERS database?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:38:14] I mean, I guess it's more specifically. I feel like that's what I'm doing there is saying, well, you know, we don't know what level of instance there is. Anyone can enter Those in we just don't have any control group to compare it to with VAERS alone. There are ongoing observations, people heard about the dbt, the DBT adverse events that were occurring back in January. So we took a population who had been vaccinated and compared to a population who had not and found that the incidence of DVT is no higher in the vaccinated group than the unvaccinated group. And so those are the kind of follow up studies that really need to be done. VAERS is not the end point. It's a very, very early start.

John Dehlin [00:38:56] And so Dwayne. Yeah, if you had to do a second take following up on Jeff's to simply explain to our listeners their concerns about, I mean really what it comes down to is risk of getting Covid and the severity of COVID risk of getting the vaccine and how that might hurt you versus you know, versus just not getting the vaccine and seeing what happens. How do you compare the risks of getting the vaccine with the risks of not getting the vaccine? How would you. And again, trying to explain to our listening and viewing audience that really don't probably understand science or medicine super well.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:39:38] Yeah, so I agree with what Jeff said. So I think it's helpful for folks to realize that something that really drives the medical community is this philosophy, this idea of do no harm. So you know, anytime there's an intervention that medical professional is going to recommend or some kind of a board that is responsible for approving some sort of a medical therapy or intervention is a major responsibility and a major consideration to make sure that the risk benefit ratio is favorable for the benefit. And so this adverse event reporting system is a way to express our collective anxiety about doing something that might harm somebody. And so what this is, is casting as big a net as we possibly can. So as what Jeff was saying, it's let's make it so anybody, it's open to the public where anybody can enter anything they want. If there's any in any possibility that this intervention could have caused some adverse event, please put it down here. Not only that, but let's make it available for anyone who wants to see it. So this is available to anyone, you can see it, you can read it, you can see what people are putting in. And as you can imagine, as Jeff was saying, you know, all of these things that are going in happen without the vaccine. But if there's any idea that it might be associated, even though if it didn't really cause, if the vaccine didn't cause it, we can't determine that at this point. So we want to capture that, cast the biggest net possible and say what is the worst case scenario? And as you mentioned, you know, maybe it's impossible to capture everything, but we're doing the best we can. So we capture all of this. We know that there's over reporting, underreporting, but we're doing the best we can. We capture this and we make it. It's available. I say we, I'm just talking about the scientific community at large, but you know, like the nih, the cdc, they make it available to, to everybody. And so I think it helps to just put that into perspective. This is guilty before proven innocent process. Okay, so this is just in case. Let's find out what it is just to make sure, because we really do not want to cause harm. Okay, so then we can evaluate what is the worst case possible scenario, what's being reported in the field, you know, what are people seeing. And you know, we are very anxious to figure out whether or not the vaccine is causing harm. And if there's that possibility, then that information is collected and there are, you know, instances where, you know, there's some inflammatory thing that comes up or there's some, you know, and this happens with all vaccines. There is the flu vaccine. There is some very low incidence of adverse events. And you know, many people get the flu vaccine. We still do it because the benefit outweighs the risk. I mean, yeah, the benefit outweighs the possible harm. And so at this early stage of this COVID pandemic, that's the process that we're in. But collectively, if you take all of the possible adverse events and we look at it in the worst case scenario, the benefits of the vaccine in terms of its efficacy far outweighs the worst case scenario risks far outweighs. This virus, which is called SARS COV2. It causes the D disease COVID19. It kills people at an alarmingly high rate and people are dying from it. And this death is preventable. So an analogy is if someone is drowning and you have a life vest and you're holding it on the side of the boat and the person is drowning a few feet out there where you can throw the life vest to them, you want to make sure that the life vest isn't going to harm them while they're drowning. So you have a decision to make. And so, you know, it is also a responsibility if there is a potential of safe and effective vaccine, not to at least make that available for at least emergency use in the setting of an Ongoing pandemic which is shutting down economies, shutting down countries and killing people. And you know, this adverse event reporting system is following other studies that were done to achieve the emergency use authorization in the first place. These are studies that are published in well respected medical journals where the Pfizer vaccine, Moderna J and J others where they reported their results where they gave the vaccine or they gave a placebo shot in the arm of somebody that was not the vaccine, but they gave a shot. So they didn't know if they were getting the vaccine or not. Then they followed these people over time, thousands of people, and they monitored adverse events and they found that adverse events were similar in those people that were getting just a dummy shot versus the shot of the COVID 19 vaccine. And they showed with the MRNA vaccines that was surprisingly highly effective. They were hoping for at least 50% and it was above 90% effective for both of these MRNA vaccines, JJ a little less, but still very effective. And so the emergency use followed on that. And then this, this adverse event reporting system follows on when the, the use is, you know, in the setting of a pandemic, holding the life vest, releasing it so that people's lives can be saved. Because that's the indication the, this adverse reporting, you know, system is to follow on, to make sure as it goes into hundreds of millions of people, let's capture everything we can possibly capture so we can have a full understanding. And we've been doing that, they've been doing that, we've been observing that. And it's the data, when objectively analyzed, reinforce the initial indications that this is a safe and effective vaccine. And this is the timing when the first presidency message came out. It's after, you know, a lot of the extra, you know, data from following after emergency use authorization, you know, gathering that data to really confirm this is safe and effective.

John Dehlin [00:47:16] Okay, so what I heard you, what I've heard you guys say so far and now I want to bring Stephen in because sometimes, as far as I'm concerned, you look at professionals, you look at science, you look at research, you look at evidence, and then if you have any reason to doubt that, you look at what's going on physically in the physical world around you to kind of validate and verify what the research is saying. But what I'm hearing you guys say about the VARS database is it's self report, it's not vetted. But even if you take the worst case scenario of comparing all we know about vaccine injury compared with what we know about the real incredible evidence about injury and harm and death from the COVID virus. Jeff and Duane, what I'm hearing you both say is overwhelmingly the evidence shows that the risks of not getting the vaccine swamp and dramatically outweigh our best understanding of what we know about the harm and the risks of vaccine injury. Can you guys just give me a quick validation whether I have that right? And Jeff, I muted you just because I was hearing an echo, so unmute yourself before you talk. Okay.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:48:30] I think. Is that better?

John Dehlin [00:48:32] Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:48:32] Okay. Of course I'm not going to answer that with one word. Sorry. I'm just noticing a couple of the comments on this, and I. I'm not purposely ignoring those. It's very hard to talk and watch those at the same time. So I. But in response to that point right there, I feel like it's re. Yes, you're. The one word answer is yes. But people are going to talk about, yes, my relative did fine with COVID or my other relative got the vaccine and then three days later was deathly ill. You know, they're all going to have these very powerful personal experiences that are screaming in their ears. I want to emphasize the reason why we have databases. The reason for science in general is because your personal experience is limited, meaning you can you see the world a certain way. And if. If we were fine with just operating by everyone's personal experience, we would not need science. I can't emphasize that enough. The whole purpose of science is to. Is to take a larger data set from a lot of different people and try to make rules from how the. About how the world behaves and in particular, how Covid. The COVID vaccine behaves, how the COVID virus behaves. So your personal experience, although it's screaming in your ears, it's kind of your duty to shut that out and say, okay, I know I've had this. This thing happen in my life. Let's see what's happening on a larger scale. Because it might not coincide. And the fact that it doesn't coincide is really important. That's why we have to take data and look at it responsibly.

John Dehlin [00:50:01] Yeah, that. That makes. That makes total sense. But what I'm hearing you say is, Jeff and Dwayne, your understanding of the evidence of comparing the risks of not getting the vaccine and getting Covid versus the risks of getting the vaccine. I just want your professional opinions. Both of you are saying that your understanding of the data, of the limits of the believability of the VARS data compared with the overwhelming evidence that we have of What Covid is doing. Both of you would say that your understanding of the evidence is that it's overwhelmingly a safer decision to go with the vaccine than to avoid the vaccine, even with the VARS reports. Jeff, what's your understanding?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [00:50:50] It's not even close. It's not even in the same ballpark.

John Dehlin [00:50:53] Not even close. Dwayne, just a final confirmation on that.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:50:57] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:50:59] And I just want. Dwayne, I loved your analogy. If we were to, let's say it's the Titanic and there's tens of thousands of people that are swimming in the ocean about to die, if we were to throw a life. A life preserver at each of those people. Yeah. One out of a thousand people may get injured by, you know, the. The life preserver hits them in the head or it misses them and they drown anyway. Like, any intervention is going to have some impact in some way. The question is, do we not throw the life preservers? Because in this metaphorical example, 1 out of 10,000 or 1 out of 100,000 people might be injured moderately or even severely. Does that mean we stop throwing the life preserver for the other 99,999? And what I'm hearing you guys say is way better odds of still getting the vaccine than the small, minor chance of injury from the vaccine. Right. Dwayne, was that the metaphor you were giving us?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [00:51:57] Yeah, and, you know, maybe the metaphor isn't perfect, but just, you know, I want to try to add to the metaphor in case there's an additional thing other than the life preserver analogy. It's if you throw enough life preservers out, the water eventually drains and everyone is able to stand on dry ground. And it's. So it's not just throwing the life preserver to save that one individual. There's a feature here. This is we are human. We're humans. And so we were a species of animal here on this planet. And there's another biological entity that shows up every once in a while that is parasitic. So it basically needs humans or other animals as sort of food. So, you know, it uses our materials, it provides instructions. It's a foreign entity that enters our bodies with instructions to make its own self. And by doing that, it could cause, you know, either nothing or it could kill us. And so this fundamentally is a biological battle between one species and another parasite that invades that species. And as a species, we have done remarkable things when we work together. You know, groups that work together are able to go to the moon and go to Mars and put something on Mars and have helicopters fly around. And, you know, no individual can do that. That requires a group of individuals in the setting of a pandemic where there's a virus that can kill people. And, you know, I'm seeing in the comments, you know, people saying that, well, you know, maybe I know I'm healthy and I recovered. I'm fine. I know people that are healthy and recovered. That's great. And. But there are other susceptible individuals that have a much higher chance of dying than perhaps, you know, you, you might realize. So folks that are older, above the age of 65, have a, have a frighteningly high, you know, chance of dying to this, this virus they can catch. And the more people that are vaccinated, the less chance that these people, that other people, your friends, family, your parents, grandparents, the, the probability landscape changes for them in a favorable way, the more that are vaccinated. And so I have friends and family in Utah, and I care about them. And it's just with, if you do the math, they're more likely to live if more people are vaccinated. And so I'm very interested in the barriers to the concerns. What is driving the vaccine hesitancy? What are the barriers that people have to not get vaccinated? I want to understand that. And I've been able to have conversations with my own patients about this. They've brought up concerns that they've learned on the Internet and things that. And we've had fruitful conversations. They've showed me information that they're looking at, and we look at it together, and we try to be as objective as possible. And as a scientist, I'm obligated to keep an open mind. And the process of science is to be open to my ideas being falsified by evidence. And, you know, we want to maximize objectivity. And I think, you know, the scientific institutions are relatively good at doing that. So, anyway, I'm rambling, but.

Physicians Describe the Pandemic Experience

John Dehlin [00:55:56] Okay. No, this is great, Dwayne. I really appreciate it. All right. What I want to. Thank you, Dwayne. Thank you, Jeff. What I want to do is now bring Stephen in, because you're right, Jeff, we can't. You know, science, science is, is not perfect. It has made mistakes. It will always make mistakes, because. But it's, it's a process. Science is a method of discerning truth. And all we know about science is not that it's perfect, it's that it's way better than anecdotal relying on anecdotes or guesses or, or, you know, superstition and so I love what you guys are saying. Science needs to trump anecdotal evidence. But we also, it's a good practice to pay attention to what's going on all around you. And so, Stephen, I want to bring you in really quick. You are an ER doc in I think Davis county in the either Layton or Ogden area. And I just want you to tell us what are you seeing in Utah as someone who has their boots on the ground and is having lots of personal experience here.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [00:57:01] Thanks, John. Well, where do you start? It's been, like Jeff said a little bit ago, it's been an extremely challenging year to practice medicine. When we first heard about this 18 months ago, almost now, we didn't know how big it would be because we did hear we'd had experience with other potential pandemics and you didn't know if this was really going to reach our shores and if it was going to be as big of a deal here. But this felt a little different to me as I read reports coming out of China and then Italy. We kind of felt. Somebody else phrased it as the hum of menace, like you felt something was coming. And I felt like this was going to be the challenge of our professional career, that how we dealt with this pandemic in our communities was going to define much of our career. So we started having meetings as a hospital and as a hospital system and as a group of physicians really early, before we had seen any cases. Just as we were watching things unfold in other areas, we started having meetings about how we were going to handle this, what we were going to do when we were overwhelmed, what our triage process was going to be, when our resources were limited, how we were going to determine the utilization of those resources. But as you guys know, it was kind of a slow moving wave and, and we were just kind of waiting, waiting and waiting and worrying and trying to plan our best and get ready for this. Last April, I had the opportunity to go to New York with the group that IHC sent to help out some of the overwhelmed hospitals in New York. And for me, it was very eye opening. That was the first time I took care of COVID patients. That's the first time I was exposed to the force of the pandemic. And it was eye opening. It was eerie to, first of all, travel there. Airports were empty, the streets of New York were empty. You just didn't see anybody outside anywhere. And you realized that this was a real deal. We pulled up in front of, they assigned us to different hospitals throughout The New York Presbyterian hospital system. I worked primarily in a hospital in Bronxville called Lawrence hospital, New York Presbyterian, Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, New York. My first exposure was, was seeing the refrigerated semi trailers parked out front that they were using as temporary morgues. And I know that there was a lot of people that questioned that, that thought, well, is this being blown out of proportion? But when you actually see it, when you see how it's affecting everybody's life in New York, you realize that something big was coming to affect us as well. And I learned a lot in New York, you know, and as both Jeff and Duane mentioned, the science has been evolving like nobody knew what was coming, Nobody was fully aware of how this would affect us. And we have been trying to learn as quickly as we can through our personal experience, as well as the collective experience of all of our colleagues around the country, around the world. And so New York was very valuable for us because we could go out, we could experience these COVID patients, experience what it meant to take care of patients with this illness, and then bring some of that knowledge home to Utah and prepare our staffs and to prepare our hospitals and our hospital system for what was to come. And at that time of my career, I'd been practicing for 16 years, and the first COVID patient that I saw in New York was something that I had never seen before. It was a disease process that I had never seen before. It was an elderly gentleman that had waited as long as he could at home because he had heard about how overwhelmed the hospitals were. So he waited about five days at home before he came in. And he had oxygen levels in the 40s, which typically are not compatible with life and with consciousness, but was just desperate, just the utter desperation that this gentleman had to get some relief from this illness that he had been dealing with over the last five days at home was palpable. And we tried all the non invasive measures, we put them on oxygen, we did all these things for him. And the best we could get, his oxygen levels were up into the 60s. With BiPAP and with 100% high flow oxygen, we could get his oxygen levels up into the 60s. And it became apparent early that we were going to have to intubate the patient and put him on a ventilator. And we brought that option up to him. And at the time, the data for intubation of COVID patients, especially elderly COVID patients, the mortality rate was really high, but it was the only option. And he was so desperate for relief that he was like do anything, do anything. Please put me on a ventilator, give me some relief. And so that was really eye opening. His oxygen levels dropped as he was being intubated, down to 16%. And that's something that I had never, ever experienced. In 16 years of practicing emergency medicine, I'd never seen this type of disease process. And so I knew that this was something that was going to severely impact the way that we practice medicine and that we needed to be aware of new treatment options, that we needed to be able to learn as quickly as we could how to treat and manage this illness. So we spent about three weeks in New York and learned a lot from, from the people of New York. I think that the thing that gave me the most hope in coming home from that experience was just to see how the community in New York rallied behind healthcare providers, rallied behind frontline workers, rallied behind the paramedics and the ambulance staff that were exposed, that were risking exposure day in and day out. It was really humbling to see the outpouring of support and just to see the community come together. That gave me great hope that this is something that we could get through. Because honestly, who does community better than Mormons? That was my experience. I thought that this is something that we were going to be able to come together and to tackle and to get through together. So I was very hopeful. I felt like we were learning new things all the time, that if we come together as a community and follow some of these evidence based practices, that we would be able to weather the storm and to get through it. You know, it's coming home. It still didn't really hit us here in Utah until later in the summer and last fall when we started really seeing cases rise and we started seeing the emergency department fill up and the ICU fill up and getting to the point at times where we were kind of feeling like we were running out of resources at ihc. My personal experience, I work for IHC and I thought that they did a fantastic job of sacrificing profit in order to have the resources available. For those patients that were coming in acutely ill, they were putting off elective surgeries. And for anybody that knows anything about healthcare, that's where most of the money is made, is in these surgical cases, not in taking care of sick respiratory patients. But they were putting off all those surgeries and doing whatever they could to have the resources available so the system could still function. So once the vaccine, once we started hearing that there was an effective vaccine, I can't tell you how excited we were, because people were really burned out. I experienced that in New York. People were burned out. And then as we went through the fall here in Utah, we felt the same. We just felt like we were at our limits and people were desperate for a solution, for relief from just the waves of sick patients. So we were really hopeful that that would make a big difference. And to echo what these guys have said, I've taken care of hundreds of COVID patients and intubated dozens of COVID patients and unfortunately seen many COVID patients die over the last year and a half. I don't think that I've seen any significant vaccine related injury. We have one colleague that had serum sickness that she became ill for about a week after her first dose of the vaccine. And I've taken care of several people that have come in with symptoms that they were concerned about after being vaccinated, but not a single one has required hospitalization. I haven't seen any anaphylaxis, I haven't seen any long term injury or illness from people that have been vaccinated. So my anecdotal experience, for what it's worth, has been, has been very hopeful that the vaccine can be the, you know, the game changer for us. It has been kind of disappointing to see the response to the vaccine. You know, like I mentioned, I was, after my experience in New York, I was hopeful that, that we would have that same kind of community togetherness in Utah and that we would rally behind effective treatments, both masking social distancing and then, you know, the vaccine. I was. I'm a father of six kids and I'm as desperate as anybody for things to get back to normal and for my kids to have normal experiences at school and with athletics and for us to be able to travel and to do some of the things that we love doing. So desperate to get an effective treatment. But I. It's been somewhat heartbreaking to see the reluctance and the vaccine hesitancy to know that there's an effective treatment. I got the vaccine as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, my whole family ended up getting Covid the week that I was eligible to get the vaccine. And that delayed me for a few weeks. But once we recovered from that, we've all gotten vaccinated, haven't had any significant effects. And you know, to see this current kind of spike in cases now over the last couple of months, the delta variant has come through. And at the beginning of summer I felt like we were kind of maybe seeing, you know, things calming down, that the vibe was at the end of the tunnel, more people were getting vaccinated. And then it seemed like the vaccination rate slowed down. The delta variant has come through. And over the last month or six weeks, we've seen a huge spike to the point where our emergency department's full. We're seeing record numbers of patients in the emergency department. The hospital is full, not just the icu, but medical wards as well, and step down units. So, so it's a real challenge to have a full waiting room, a full emergency department, have critically ill patients, not just COVID patients, but trauma patients, heart attacks and strokes, and not have an ICU bed to send them to because COVID patients are occupying those ICU beds. And those COVID patients, unfortunately, oftentimes once they're intubated in the icu, they're there for a long time and it's not a quick disease process. And so when you have a third of your ICU full of COVID patients that are there for weeks, that trickle down effect to the medical unit, to the er, to the waiting rooms is real. And it can affect everything that we see and do in emergency medicine. So it's been a discouraging process over the last few months to see the disinformation with the COVID vaccine and the hesitancy for people to get the vaccine. In my career, I haven't seen anything more effective or more hopeful. And I think you can make the case in medicine in general that there is no greater success that we've experienced as a medical profession than vaccines. Not just this one, but vaccines in general. And this is certainly to be included in those, in those successes.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:11:21] So

John Dehlin [01:11:24] I love it. Okay, so I'm going to ask you, Steven, and then each Jeff and Duane, to just reiterate, just super short, a few word answers to just a couple quick questions. So Steven, again, you know, how full are ICU units in Utah? Based on your feet on the ground experience, just give a quick answer there. How full are the units?

ICU Capacity and Unvaccinated Patients

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:11:47] They're totally full. We don't have any icu. One point really quick, John, is that one of the challenges that we have is actually staffing these hospital beds, ICU beds, medical floor beds. We've mentioned that this has been a true challenge for everybody in healthcare. And we've actually seen a lot of our ancillary staff, a lot of nurses realize that they don't want to be exposed to this anymore, that the workload, the frustrations, that the difficulty of talking to patients and trying to convince them that this is something for Their benefit, I think, has weighed heavily on a lot of hospital staff. We've seen a lot of nurses and ancillary staff leave the hospital system. This is not just Utah, this is. This is nationwide. So I think that's part of the problem, is that we feel understaffed and our beds are completely full. We don't have any space in our icu. And our intensivists have to sometimes be very creative and put patients in other areas of the hospital to try to manage them.

John Dehlin [01:13:01] Okay, so, Steven, what I'm hearing you say is ICU beds and rooms are full, correct?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:13:08] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:13:09] Jeffrey, how about unmute yourself when you talk? How about in Nevada? What are you seeing, Jeff, in Nevada? ICU beds, emergency. You know, how full are hospitals there in Nevada?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:13:21] Yeah, it's the same situation. I'm in Vegas. So, you know, our main centers are Clark county down in Vegas, and there's also a center up in kind of the central area of care up at Reno and Washoe County. So I can't speak to Reno. They were full. I can't speak to their situation. But, yeah, we're full.

John Dehlin [01:13:36] All right, Dwayne, this is, this is just kind of a rapid firing round. I just want to lay down a few basic things. Dwayne, go ahead and unmute yourself. How full are things in the Northeast? How full are ICU beds, ER rooms, etc.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:13:49] I only have experience with the community hospital I work in. I haven't been in the Brigham icu, so I can't speak to that. It's not as bad in Boston. The vaccine rates, though, are much higher here.

John Dehlin [01:14:00] Okay, so when the vaccine rates are higher in, let's just say parts of the Northeast than in parts of the west, like Nevada and Utah. What you're saying, Dwayne, is the situation in the ICUs is less severe. That's what I'm hearing you say.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:14:15] Yeah, hospitals are full for many other reasons, but the ICU beds. And with COVID I'm not hearing that it's over full right now.

John Dehlin [01:14:24] Okay, so, Dwayne, I'll ask you to represent other parts of the US or just your understanding of the science overall when I ask these rapid fire questions. So next question, starting with Stephen, for the ICU beds that are filling up, the overwhelming majority of patients. Tell us what your understanding is about them related to the vaccine and what they're in the ICU for.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:14:48] Stephen, just the most recent data, only 25 to 30% of the ICU patients are COVID patients. But 99 plus percent of those COVID patients are unvaccinated.

John Dehlin [01:15:02] That's what you're seeing in.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:15:04] Yes. Only about a third of them are COVID patients. But almost all those that are sick enough to be in the ICU are unvaccinated patients.

John Dehlin [01:15:13] Okay. All right, Jeffrey, same question.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:15:16] Repeat that question again. You're saying how many so of.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] So to what extent are COVID patients filling up the ICU rooms? And of those COVID patients that you're seeing, what percentage of them in Nevada or where you are are vaccinated versus unvaccinated? I just want to make that really clear.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:15:36] Okay? Just. I can speak anecdotally. I haven't seen the overall numbers outside of the studies everyone's seen, but not Nevada specific. I have admitted zero patients. Zero vaccinated COVID patients to the icu. None. I have admitted maybe one. I can think of one out of all the COVID patients to the hospital of one of them was vaccinated. And it was kind of a soft admission. They weren't really sick, but they were old.

John Dehlin [01:15:59] And then the ones that are admitted with COVID overwhelmingly regarding them, they're all unvaccinated?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:16:05] Yeah. Everyone else is unvaccinated?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:16:06] Almost all of them, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:07] Okay, Dwayne, your experience kind of where you are or just kind of with your understanding of the data? Same questions.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:16:13] Yeah. Nationally, that is absolutely the case everywhere. So people that are getting severely ill with COVID are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people. You know, vaccinated people can get Covid, but it's. It's a minor fraction of that. And those that are getting severe, it's 99% that are unvaccinated.

John Dehlin [01:16:36] Okay, Stephen, back to you. This is great. Stephen, back to you for how. How much have you treated and or seen people go to the ICU for vaccine injury? Just summarize that one concern.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:16:50] Not a single case.

John Dehlin [01:16:52] A vaccine injury.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:16:53] Not a single case. I have not had to admit anybody to the hospital for a vaccine injury. I have not seen a single case.

John Dehlin [01:17:00] Jeff, what's your experience?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:17:01] Yeah, no, it doesn't mean they're not out there, but I haven't seen any.

John Dehlin [01:17:04] Okay, you're not seeing any. Dwayne, same question. And your understanding of vaccine injury. Nationwide prevalence.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:17:12] So there are cases where we cannot rule out a potential vaccine injury given the proximity to vaccine. So I think guilt until proven innocent. We. There's a very small number of cases. I know of one that I was personally involved in as a consultant from immunology, and the person is fine, you know, but it was a, it was a potential vaccine related hospitalization.

John Dehlin [01:17:41] But, but overall prevalence compared with COVID unvaccinated deaths or illness?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:17:51] Oh yeah, unvaccinated COVID deaths happen all the time. The, the vaccine related injury. I know of one that was hospitalized, the person recovered well and is doing fine. And that's, I think generally nationally as well, it's rare to have a severe event from the vaccine.

John Dehlin [01:18:13] Okay. I mean, I don't know how else to. You know, I talked to a UVU professor who really tries to understand vaccine hesitancy and vaccine resistance and he basically says there's three groups of people, there's a bunch of people that have already gotten the vaccine, there's some people that are on the fence, and then there's a bunch of people that no matter what you say or do, it's unlikely they're going to be convinced. I just want to make it clear in this program we're, we're not, we're speaking to people that are open minded, that are willing to consider the evidence. And so far I don't know how else other than bringing on experts, talking about our best understanding of the science and then, and then having three different people talk about what they're seeing, boots on the ground. I don't know how else to kind of make this point. What I want to do now is go to kind of some of the most common concerns and I'm going to ask each of you to try and resist as you're doing so well, avoid the tendency to get really wonky or to talk too much in details. Just, we'll go around the horn, let you respond. So there have been tons of comments. I'm trying to keep as many diverse comments available. If somebody's just blatantly spreading misinformation in the comments, I'm blocking them because I don't believe in spreading misinformation. But I'm trying to keep all sides of commenters who are trying to comment in good faith and specifically ask questions in good faith about some of the valid concerns. So it's time to address some of the other valid concerns. And I just want, you know, brief but really punchy answers to the extent that they possible. So we've addressed the VARS reporting system. Those of you who missed that, go back and listen to that. We've addressed vaccine injury short and long term. Now we're going to address several other good faith concerns. One is that the vaccine was rushed, that it wasn't tested enough, that it didn't have formal FDA approval DWAYNE I'm going to ask you to start and address in a pithy, brief way, what would you say to people who say that the vaccine just hasn't been tested enough?

Vaccine Development Speed and mRNA Technology

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:20:21] Okay, so I think regarding this, I think this is a valid comment and thing to talk about. So this was done as rapidly, as reasonably safe as possible in the face of a pandemic threat with all the harms that we were just discussing. So I think it's what has been done is to match the, to speed up the approval process in a, you know, in a way to match the severity of the threat. So I think that is the justification

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:21:02] for

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:21:04] trying to do it quickly. It this was not cutting corners with the, what I described before is sort of the general anxiety that the medical profession feels about making sure that we do no harm. You know, so to minimize the risk, but at the same time to maximize the potential benefit of life saving interventions. And so the another thing to consider is after emergency use authorization, continued work is ongoing and so far it looks to be that this is a safe and effective intervention.

John Dehlin [01:21:49] Okay, so your understanding, Dwayne, is that yes, they had to rush because it was an urgent global pandemic, but that it was still conducted in a safe and a safe and effective way. What about Dwayne? I mean, we've already talked about it. There's kind of the trials and then there's the actual data from people who have now received the vaccine. Correct. I mean, that's important too. You do the trials, but then you look at the data of the actual administration of the vaccine. Correct?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:22:20] Correct. So the emergency use authorization was not given before a thorough analysis of the clinical trials. These were randomized, you know, placebo controlled, controlled blinded studies. So the people consented to be a part of a study. They were told, you can either get a placebo or an MRNA vaccine, we're not going to tell you which one. They gave you a shot. The physicians also didn't know, upon unblinding, they found the effects. They were able to look at the adverse events and in each arm they looked at the efficacy of people who are getting Covid. And it was based on that that they provided the emergency use. So they didn't, you know, they didn't cut corners there. The other reason why this was so rapid is because of advances in technology. So prior approvals of vaccines had taken years before this. Advances in technology helped to move this along more quickly as well. So it was a combination of, let's, you know, try to get this done quickly on the regulatory side as safely possible, together with the advances in technology, the MRNA technology, which has some advantages in terms of, you know, being quicker and together, that kind of made it so. This was a rapid thing.

John Dehlin [01:23:43] And for those who value. Some people just don't value science or don't value evidence or don't value authority. And, you know, I understand that people have reasons. I just want to kind of, for those who do respect science or evidence or authority. Dwayne, I just want to reiterate, I think in our conversation prior, you were even recently on a call with this, with the Attorney General of the United States. You're working again with both Harvard University and, you know, local hospitals there. So, I mean, you're kind of in touch with, with some of the thought leaders or the actual scientists and researchers and public health officials nationwide. Is that correct, Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:24:26] Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. I know the guy who started Moderna. I was on a call. I went to residency with Vivek Murthy. I was at a alumni dinner with our alumni. It wasn't a dinner, it was alumni zoom call. And just sort of a meet and greet, kind of hear his thoughts on the matter. And, you know, I was impressed by his thoughtful approach. And someone asked him about misinformation. His response to that was that, you know, to, to, to sort of validate concerns and to hear people out and to, you know, just to kind of take a data driven approach to try and figure out how to, you know, work on this together. So I thought he was a thoughtful guy.

John Dehlin [01:25:11] Thank you, Dwayne. Jeff, anything you want to add just about the vaccine being rushed or not receiving formal FDA approval that would add substantively to what Dwayne said?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:25:24] Just the note that not making a decision and waiting for that, waiting for all the evidence to come in is the equivalent of choosing to be infected. So we just don't have the luxury of waiting around for. For fda.

John Dehlin [01:25:36] Yeah. Or infecting other people. Right?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:25:38] Yeah, that too. Right.

John Dehlin [01:25:40] Stephen, anything you want to add to that question?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:25:42] Well, like Dwayne mentioned, I think it's important to remember that this is a technology that's been in development for decades. It's not that they started from scratch, you know, 18 months ago, but that there had been progress with MRNA vaccines going on for quite some time, and fortunately they were able to accelerate things. But it's not a brand new technology. And I think that the risk benefit ratio kind of certainly accelerated things. But in consideration of the pandemic, I think that things were done very appropriately.

John Dehlin [01:26:22] Okay, brilliant. All right, next question from our listening audience. Something about mRNA. There's, you know, there's kind of this rumor that there's someone who is involved in the, you know, development of the technology of mRNA, and, and that they're. This, this person. I don't even know if I want to mention the name, but that this person has said, don't trust the. Don't trust the technology. Don't trust the virus. And then there's other theories that maybe the MRNA will change their DNA. Jeff, do you want to. I guess. Dwayne, do you want to start with that? And then we'll go to Jeff. Sure.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:27:01] So, you know, this is a great question, you know, and I just want to point out that, you know, some of these questions that are coming up now are just as valid as when they came up very early on when people were working on this. And so, and so this has been looked at. Is it possible?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:27:21] It.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:27:21] Extremely unlikely. But, you know, I think it's important to realize that viruses have RNA coronaviruses, including SARS. CoV2, which causes CoVid19 has RNA as well. So if you're getting the virus, you're also getting the RNA from the virus, and you're getting a lot more of the RNA from a virus compared to the amount of RNA that they're injecting into your deltoids. And if, if you're concerned that, you know, having RNA kind of injected into your body, the virus injects its RNA into many more cell types than just muscle cells. You know, it goes into your endothelial cells, into your lung, into epithelial cells. And it could, you know, so if that's the concern, we should be, you know, riddled with not only SARS, CoV RNA, but all the other viruses we've ever had, and all their genetic material, DNA, RNA will be a part of us. And, you know, in a sense, you know, sometimes that does happen. You know, over evolutionary history, you could kind of see that pieces of DNA swap every once in a while between species. That's why we have a placenta. It was a retrovirus that added its, you know, ability to sort of fuse cells to.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:28:40] Together.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:28:40] And that's in that think, you know, mammalian, you know, biology.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:28:44] Thanks.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:28:45] That event in the past, that, that kind of event is extremely rare. That kind of process which integrates nucleic acid into a genome is, is specialized. RNA is not really known to do that. And, you know, we're, we're, we're kind of bathed in all kinds of genetic material from all kinds of viruses and things all the time, and that, you know, and we're okay. So to put a tiny bit of RNA in comparison to what the virus gives us in the deltoid is not that much of a concern. If you think about this, if you think about the scientific rationale of, you know, what you would worry about. But on top of that, it's, you know, the fact that, you know, this has been shown to be relatively safe and, you know, with these concerns, which I would call minor in my view, the way that I look at it, compared to the enormous benefits of this vaccine, it sort of favors getting the vaccine.

John Dehlin [01:29:49] Okay, so what I hear, what I think I heard you say, is that if you're concerned about your DNA or your RNA being changed, the coronavirus, the. The COVID virus is going to do that a lot more substantively than a vaccine. That's going to happen even more so. So that's not good. Just basic sound logic to avoid the vaccine out of concern for your RNA being changed. Is that what I heard you say, Duane?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:30:15] Yeah, absolutely. The virus has a lot more RNA and it's injected at the many more cells.

John Dehlin [01:30:20] Okay. Jeffrey, anything you want to add to what Dwayne said about that?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:30:24] No, I think that was great. The tiny little thing would say the virus's purpose is to reproduce. It would like nothing more than to integrate into your DNA if it could. The vaccine's purpose is not that. So, yeah, just like he's saying, the risk from COVID infection, and indeed the whole reason they're even worried about this possibility is they saw a few COVID patients that that was. That were still expressed, that were still expressing viral antigen that were not actively, actively, actively infected. So they were concerned that maybe I had integrated into the DNA, but that's the whole reason it's from infected people, not from vaccinated people. So people who are sharing that as a concern, it's okay, and we're looking into it, but it's just not real at this point.

John Dehlin [01:31:07] Something about science is you just have to go with the best information you have, and science updates itself continually. Steven, anything you want to add to this part of the conversation?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:31:16] No, I agree with. Yeah, what's been mentioned.

Natural Immunity Versus Vaccination

John Dehlin [01:31:18] Okay, next question. A lot of people, this is one of the most common comments that are being made. And by the way, if listeners who are COVID vaccine hesitant or COVID vaccine averse want to ask questions to three medical doctors and one immunologist, now is your chance. So I will be asking them credible, sincere, heartfelt questions that you post right now, I'll integrate them. One of the most common comments made by listeners is, well, I know people that got the, got the vaccine and they're still getting Covid. You guys have already addressed this, but I want you to address it again directly and succinctly and powerfully. Jeff, I'll have you go first on this one.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:32:06] I'm actually going to pass this off to Dwayne because this is his field.

John Dehlin [01:32:10] Okay, Dwayne, my loved one got the vaccine and they got Covid anyway. What would you say to them practically?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:32:19] So we expect that because the vaccine is not 100% effective, only, you know, very few vaccines are 100% effective. So when the data came out that it's 95% effective against this was tested against the original variants, the delta variant, it's slightly less effective, still effective, slightly less. And we're learning, you know, we're continuing to learn about that now. So, yes, people with vaccines will get the, will get Covid if they hadn't gotten the vaccine. We know that the probability of them getting more severe is very high and we know that people that do not have the vaccine are the folks that are filling the ICU beds now.

John Dehlin [01:33:06] So what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, yes, five out of 100 people that get the vaccine possibly will get Covid on average. But that's not using good logic because what you're forgetting is there's at least 95 other people out of the hundred that won't get the, you know, Covid because they got the vaccine.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:33:28] Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:33:30] Consider the denominator, basically the number below.

John Dehlin [01:33:33] Just math. It's just math. But just because some get it, still get Covid after the vaccine, that's not a good reason to not get it. I also want to just address something very significant. This is a really huge concern that we should all have. As I understand it, if we don't reach a certain level of population immunity or herd immunity, what we risk is that the virus keeps swimming around in the population and developing new variants that can then become super deadly or lethal and reinfect all the people that have the. Have already received the vaccine. And so that's the big risk we're facing now. If we, if we keep allowing the virus to keep swimming in the population, it is going to, eventually we risk it invalidating the vaccines that everyone has received. Anybody want to speak to that? Is that correct or not correct?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:34:31] That's absolutely correct. So there are many reasons to get the vaccine. I see people in the comments saying, you know, I, I'm in the demographic that I'm not going to get sick either way. So why get the vaccine? There are multiple reasons to get the vaccine. If the virus goes through people, it has a chance to mutate and it continues to do so. There are, there are new variants. There's a lambda variant, South America that looks to be very transmissible. The delta variant is much more transmissible compared to the parent strains that it came from. And so it will continue to do so. If every, if more, if everyone were vaccinated or if we, you know, exceeded our capacity or met our capacity to vaccinate people by having everyone vaccinated, the chance of having a variant is much less likely. And so having folks that are unvaccinated does increase the risk of future variants that might defeat the current vaccines. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:35:34] Excellent. Jeff or Steven, anything you want to add to that? Oh, Jeff, Jeff, you're muted. Unmute yourself. Sorry, I mute you guys. Sometimes it's okay.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:35:46] Just to add on to what Dwayne was saying about the fact that it's not 100% effective against Delta. Still, people who are getting these breakthrough infections are still less likely to pass it on to others. So that in addition to the fact that we're just incubating more variants by not getting vaccinated, I think the two of those should answer that question. I wanted to add one more thing because Duane talked about this yesterday when I was, we were having a phone conversation. He mentioned the idea of people who had gotten Covid naturally, first of all, comparing their level of immunity versus people who have been vaccinated. And then also, is there any point to someone who's had Covid naturally, is there any point to them getting vaccinated? Because Duane had some good data on this.

John Dehlin [01:36:32] Yeah. So that has been a question. I already got Covid. I've got the antibodies. So I don't, I don't, do I even need to get the vaccine once I've had Covid?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:36:42] So yeah, there's some great immunologic data that shows what antibody levels do as well as clinical data in terms of who's getting Covid. And just recently study from Kentucky, it's posted on Forbes, they covered it. I think it's on the CDC webpage now. It's basically a two fold risk reduction of getting Covid if you got the vaccine after you recovered from natural infection versus if you just recover from natural infection. So the reinfection rate is higher if you don't get vaccinated after Recovering from COVID And we see, we have studies in our, in our groups. We have a group of people that got Covid recovered, got the vaccine, and they have the best antibody responses. So, yeah, that's kind of the situation. I mean, you don't want to get Covid to do that.

John Dehlin [01:37:37] So what I'm hearing you say is if you get Covid and don't get the vaccine, you're actually more at risk. But if you get Covid and then get the vaccine, you're actually in the best situation. Is that what I heard you say?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:37:50] Well, if you get Covid and recover, you have some immunity to getting reinfected. So you're more protected than someone that is. Has never had Covid or has not been vaccinated, but you're not as protected as getting the vaccine.

John Dehlin [01:38:06] Okay, got it. I, somebody, I made a misstatement and they're calling me on it. Heather says. So I was listening until they said only five vaccinated people have 100 will get Covid. That's not even the data. So I must have made some misstatement somewhere. Do you guys want to clarify that so I don't undermine the credibility of the panel? Did I make a statement where I said no?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:38:28] 95. I think that's correct. I think a 95% effectiveness at contracting Covid, that was to the original strain. The original, like Moderna study. If you get two doses of Moderna, I think it was 95% effective. And if I am wrong on that, I'm open to be corrected as well. But I think that does mean that, you know, let's see if you, let's see, how does that work? Yeah, I think, I think that is in general correct what you said, John, but I'm happy to be corrected.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:39:04] I mean, I think that's changed with the delta variant. I think that was maybe her point that, you know, we're sitting, we're down to maybe 70% effective against Covid. COVID infections, Delta. Delta variant infections.

John Dehlin [01:39:16] Heather's saying 95% effective against hospitalization or death, not infection.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:39:21] I think it was 99.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:39:23] Yeah, that's not true, Heather.

John Dehlin [01:39:25] So you guys are saying it's 99% effective against hospitalization or death?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:39:29] That's my understanding. Okay, yeah, but if I'm wrong, I'm happy to read.

John Dehlin [01:39:33] Okay, but yeah, Heather, if you've got. Heather, if you've got better data than these guys, just share it with us because we want.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:39:39] Yeah, I'm happy to look. But in any case, your, your point is correct. Against the new variants that are predominant now, they're much less effective than 95%. We're still in the 70s and correct me on those numbers, but it's still around 70% effective against infection at all. And we're still very, very like, I still think high 90s against hospitalization or death, even with the new variants.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:40:02] Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:40:02] So your point is taken.

John Dehlin [01:40:03] And David makes the point that a 95% effectiveness is a really high effectiveness

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:40:08] rate for a vaccine miraculously effective.

John Dehlin [01:40:10] We all take. We all got vaccinations as kids with much lower effectiveness rates. Is that true?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:40:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:40:20] Most of us get the flu vaccine every year. That's much less effective than that, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:40:25] Okay, so what I'm hearing you say is, yes, the vaccinated will still get Covid, but at much lower rates. And once you've been vaccinated, you have a much less risk of hospitalization and or death. So don't get the. Don't avoid the vaccine just because some people who get the vaccine still contract Covid. Okay, this is another one of the major comments that people are making. I almost mentioned a name that now that I promised I wouldn't mention. So there, there have been people in the news that have basically been touting various treatments for Covid that are different from the vaccine. And I don't even know if I want to mention the names, but maybe we probably should. What do you. What is your guys's understanding about the perception of other treatments besides the vaccine? And if there's any science or evidence that those, quote, alleged treatments are valid. I was going to say Dwayne maybe could take this first, but. Dwayne. It looks like Dwayne stepped off camera for a second.

Alternative COVID Treatments Examined

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:41:34] I actually think this is kind of Steven and I's wheelhouse.

John Dehlin [01:41:37] Okay, so, Jeff, why don't you go first? You guys, you're trained to treat.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:41:42] Yeah, this is our. This is our specialty.

John Dehlin [01:41:43] Okay, so, Jeff, what's your take on other treatments?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:41:46] So hydroxychloroquine was an interesting one. Hydroxychloroquine. We started to look at this in March. March of 2020, by the way, but the theory is that in a test tube, it works really well against a variety of viruses, Influenza included. There are some other viruses. I can't remember the name just offhand, but influenza was the big one. So there was some real hope it was going to work. For influenza. It failed every randomized controlled trial it was used in, which is odd. Even things that don't work, you do enough RCTs and they'll show an association just by random variation. It failed every time it's been tested against influenza. Now, it's worth trying, right? On sars, we didn't have anything else. It's cheap, it's generic, it's widely available, it's fairly safe. It has a couple of downsides, but sure, it's worth trying. Now, we had some political people that heard about this and thought, yeah, this works great. And the rest of us are going, whoa, whoa, wait. We've seen 100 drugs like this. We've also seen this drug with similar hopes in other illnesses, and it's failed. So let's just wait and see. So we need the randomized trials, right? There's this observational data that said, yeah, people that did that, took hydroxychloroquine, did better. Of course, you know, we need the randomized trial. That's why we do this. That's why we do science. You have to compare it against no treatment, or you don't know what the treatment did at all. So hydroxychloroquine, I think, has been very thoroughly debunked at this point. We have lots of RCTs that show it does nothing except maybe add a little harm. It adds some QT prolongation. I see some comments on arrhythmias that there's some real harm that comes from hydroxychloroquine. Thankfully, that's out of the news, so we're not talking about the most.

John Dehlin [01:43:27] So, Jeff, you are motivated to get people better because you are literally a doctor on the front lines. You're saying you would never, ever prescribe. Say the name again.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:43:38] Hydroxychloroquine.

John Dehlin [01:43:39] You would never prescribe that to a COVID patient.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:43:42] We, our doctors, we love generic drugs. They're cheap. Our patients can get them filled. We would love nothing more than to see that work. But we've seen this, We've gone through this. We've gone through this rigmarole 14 times with different drugs and including this one. So we were just waiting and seeing. Didn't work.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] All right, Steven, what about in Utah?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:44:02] I have another one, but go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] What about in Utah?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:44:05] So, you know, there's, like Jeff is saying there's a lot of things that have been tried, things that created hope initially that we thought it's worth looking into some of these things. The only effective treatment that we have been able to find is monoclonal antibody treatment. So antibodies against SARS CoV2 that have been infused into infected individuals and there's kind of a narrow therapeutic window for that, that you have to get those within the first seven days of being treated, that there's a bunch of

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:44:42] of,

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:44:43] you know, factors that would disqualify somebody from getting that. So there is some hope there. But that's not a quick and easy treatment that requires coming into the hospital to get IV infusions of monoclonal antibodies. But outside of hospital ICU level treatment, high flow oxygen, there's very little therapeutic interventions that are going to be effective.

John Dehlin [01:45:11] I actually had one, one listener ask me about just vitamin C. There are people that think maybe just vitamins or supplements. Have you guys heard anything about kind of homeopathic remedies? And are there any. And Duane, we didn't give you a chance to step in to talk about hydro, hydroxychloroquine, monoclonal antibodies, vitamin C, homeopathic remedies. We can ask Jeff and Steven to keep going on this. But Dwayne, is there anything you're dying to jump in to say about this from just a treatment standpoint?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:45:46] Jeff and Steven said it all about hydroxychordine. I agree fully on that. It would have been great if it worked because it's something we want things to be able to treat people with. Someone mentions ivermectin as well. Ivermectin is another one of these things in the category similar to what hydroxychloroquine was like. It's, you know, there's an interesting story that someone put a non peer reviewed preprint on a, on a preprint server. And so this is something that people do to kind of get some feedback while their study is being reviewed. And as a part of science, you know, stuff gets reviewed, there are feedback that come in. And someone pointed out some things in that study that showed that ivermectin might be helpful. Folks on the Internet pointed out some, some things that don't add up. And based on those concerns that were looked into by the preprint server itself that was, that was taken off the preprint server. And so the study, I believe the investigators were from Egypt. They, you know, I think there's a, there's a paper in Nature, a highly respected scientific journal called Nature that talked about the ivermectin that, you know, there's

John Dehlin [01:47:07] really

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:47:09] at this point no reliable evidence that that works. I don't think there's any conspiracy or anything to try and hide any potential drug that might work. I think that might be the perception if it did work, we would be open arms. But you know, as I mentioned before, as physicians, we want to do no harm. So if we're going to give something to somebody with known side effects like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which we know have side effects, we want to make sure it has some benefit. And at this point, there's no evidence of that.

John Dehlin [01:47:38] So Jeff and Steven, you guys didn't weigh in on ivermectin. That's another one that people are putting forward. STEVE and then JEFF yeah, I agree

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:47:45] that that the data that I've seen for ivermectin, like Duane mentioned, there was some preliminary data that made people hopeful, but that has not borne out as it's been looked at more intensively. There's zero data that shows that ivermectin, that the benefit outweighs the potential harm.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:48:06] JEFF Ivermectin, I'm going to call myself a little more open to ivermectin. We, we started looking this now with, with a lot of skepticism that the we started looking this like last May or June. There was a lot of stuff from sub Saharan Africa and then, and then extended to other people. And we've seen a lot of observational studies and I can't emphasize enough that if you do not have a randomized control trial, you have nothing. We have observational studies for all kinds of things that have failed. There was the RCT that came out. Came out. RCT is short for randomized control trial that came out, I'm going to say, a couple of months ago. And there have been some questions about data reliability that Duane mentioned. That's the only one that has been a randomized control trial. And that makes me extra skeptical just because we've had a long time to do these and the fact that no one's published one makes me really wonder if there's going to ever be a positive one. But until there's a positive one, it's irresponsible to use it widely. I don't think there's a huge downside to it. It's fairly safe. Let me just hit the other one. So you talked about vitamin C and D, and I think this is kind of our wheelhouse and I've done lots of research on this. So vitamin D works and I think it's good. We have decent evidence good enough in that it works in a preventive basis. So, and I think during flu season everyone should be taking vitamin D, like 2000ius of vitamin D. That's we don't know the ideal dose, but there's very little downside to that. And it can work equally well with COVID As far as in a preventive way. It's not 100% effective or even close. It's not even close to the effectiveness of the vaccine. But to add something on that has very little downside. Vitamin D is not. Not a bad idea. These super doses that are being advocated have absolutely failed trials. There's no data supporting that these are the super doses that they. That you give once. Once someone's sick. There's very. There's really no data or physiologic mechanism for it to work once you're sick with COVID The other thing is the super doses of vitamin C. There's this group of critical care doctors with great credentials, great education, great training, whatever, that are forwarding this treatment regimen, including ivermectin, vitamin D, vitamin C and melatonin. I think people need to understand the context here. There's actually a quote from one of them that said, they don't believe we can. They don't believe in RCTs, which I think is unconscionable for anyone interested in science to say. You still have to be interested. But again, they have no control group. The individual remedies that they're advocating have failed. Controlled. Controlled. Controlled studies. They're talking about super doses of vitamin C, which, again, there's not a real downside. It's a little bit hard to administer. But I want you to remember that there is no controlled trial. And these guys also, that one of the. One of the investigators, they also advocated this as a treatment for sepsis a couple years ago, got all of us ER doctors really excited about this because we don't have. Sepsis is a. Is a deadly disease. It's really hard to treat. And vitamin C is cheap, effective, easy. We all got really excited about it. And then the RCTs came out and they all failed. So this person in particular, who is a group of, you know, there's a few of these critical care doctors, they're advocating therapies they know have failed RCTs, which just makes me wonder, why are we trusting you now? They're deliberately being dishonest about this. And that kind of gets me that. That bothers me on different levels than just we're trying to find a treatment in a pandemic. There are some deliberate dishonest aspects to that.

John Dehlin [01:51:42] Okay, so what I'm hearing so far from everyone is hydroxychloroquine ivermectin, monoclon, vitamin C or D. None of those have passed the muster of randomized clinical trials. Monoclonal antibodies have shown some efficaciousness, if you get at the right time in the right way. But none of those come even close to the effectiveness of just getting the vaccine. Is that kind of the consensus of the panel?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:52:11] Right.

John Dehlin [01:52:12] Anything else you guys want to say about any other homeopathic remedies that are prevalent or common that you're hearing about?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:52:18] Well, I think one, like Jeff mentioned already, was vitamin D. It makes sense to take vitamin D in addition to doing the other preventative measures that we should be doing mask wearing in, you know, in big population centers, washing our hands. So vitamin D makes sense in that, in that regard, but not as a

John Dehlin [01:52:36] treatment for COVID 19, vitamin C or D in place of getting the vaccine.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:52:42] No.

John Dehlin [01:52:43] Okay. A couple other concerns people have voiced. Some want to say this is just normal cold and flu season, that what we're seeing is just what happens every year. Really quick, Stephen, what's your, what's your response to that? That this is just normally what always happens?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:53:01] No, for several reasons. I mentioned earlier about my first patient in New York, and it was clear that that was not like any flu, cold respiratory virus that I'd ever seen, and that's kind of repeated itself many times since then as I've taken care of more and more COVID patients, that this is clearly a separate illness. People are getting way sicker than with any cold or flu virus that we've ever been exposed to. And when you consider that flu season, for example, people compare this to the flu. The flu can be very deadly and we need to take the flu seriously. But the flu season is generally just during the winter months and we'll get a two or two and a half, maybe a three month period of a flu season where it'll run rampant in our community. But we're in August and our ICU is full right now and our ERs are full and our hospital beds are full with COVID patients. We'd never see that with influenza and we never see that with any other respiratory viruses. It's clearly different physiologically. It's much different as a population health concern as well.

John Dehlin [01:54:14] Okay, Jeff, anything you want to add?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:54:17] Just because of the comment from Bridger Bateman, he mentioned the Math plus protocol. That's what I was just talking about with those Florida critical care doctors. Every individual aspect of it's failed.

John Dehlin [01:54:27] So just repeat, summarize that for people. Have no idea what you're talking about.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:54:31] Well, so there's just a comment I just happened to see pop up says I'm not sure if I missed it yet, but I'm wondering about the Math plus protocol and its success or failure. That is melatonin. That stands for, I think melatonin. I can't remember the exact acronym, but the individual components of that Melatonin, vitamin C, vitamin D, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. I believe I might have been missing one of those. But every one of those has failed individually. They know this. I would love to see this in an rct and if it works, great, I will be the first to adopt it. But I'm given their history, I'm skeptical of this working. They've for a few other reasons too. He also talks about ade, but I think we can get back. We can get back to that.

John Dehlin [01:55:11] So I just want to make the point of what's kind of obvious. We have three people here on the show that spend their professional careers every day of their lives treating COVID patients. You guys have taken the Hippocratic oath. You have every desire and every motivation to have your patients get better. And, and what you're all saying is there is no known superior approach to the, to, to Covid than getting the vaccine. Nothing that even comes close that you are aware of. And if you are aware of something, you all would be prescribing it immediately. Is that. Do you all agree on that? Okay, anything else on this is normal cold and flu season sort of argument? Anyone else want to say anything about that? Dwayne, anything you want to say about this is just normal what happens in ICUs around this time of year sort of thing.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:56:06] Yeah, it's just, it's, it's not, it's. It's more severe, more people are dying. You know, it's closed countries and so it's different.

John Dehlin [01:56:18] And Jeff, you, you work in any. Our full time. Your professional opinion?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:56:23] We do flu season every year and we've done bad flu seasons. H1N1 We've done stars. One, we've done bad stuff. This is far and beyond anything we've ever seen.

John Dehlin [01:56:34] Order of magnitude worse.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:56:36] Yeah, not even close.

John Dehlin [01:56:37] Not even close. Okay. Next. The next sort of, the next sort of category of concerns is financial motivations. And I want to take them each sort of separately. So one is just at the doctor level. It's sort of this logic that doctors make more money if people are sick. So doctors are lining their pockets by making the COVID thing, a bigger deal and wanting lots more patients to get more rich, you know, so Covid is like a monetary bonanza to doctors. And then we're going to get to hospitals and to the government and to pharmaceutical companies. So, Stephen, are you motivated by all the extra money you're making with COVID patients? You personally.

Financial Incentives and Conflicts of Interest

Dr. Steven Caldwell [01:57:25] You know, last year was. I got paid much less last year than in previous years. I think Covid has been negative for us from a financial perspective. And there is no financial incentives to diagnosing people with COVID I know that people were saying that early that doctors or hospitals got paid more if you included that on the death certificate. I've never been paid for signing a death certificate. You take care of a patient and that's paperwork that you have to do at the end. But there's been zero financial benefit to me personally, to any of my colleagues working on the front lines in dealing with COVID patients. And it's thrown such a wrench into our system that it's been financially negative for everybody that I know and work with.

John Dehlin [01:58:20] Okay, so not lining the pockets for you, Steven. Somebody just stated. Oh my hell, John, that is such a straw man. Listen, Cole, we are doing our best to steel man and address legitimate concerns. I am not. I mean, hopefully all we've already addressed, Cole, is showing that we're trying to steal man and not straw man people's arguments. But I am going to list other arguments I hear just as an attempt to be comprehensive so that we don't leave any stone unturned. So, Cole, please don't be mean spirited or disrespectful. I am not trying to straw man anything. I'm trying to address all of the repeated concerns that I'm hearing. I'm not trying to straw man. So back to you, Jeff. Are you making lots of extra money off of COVID yourself personally? No.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [01:59:13] No. Nationally, I think the average ER physician salary has been cut by 20%. Lots of people have lost their jobs.

John Dehlin [01:59:20] Okay, Dwayne, how about you? Are you making lots of extra money

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [01:59:23] off of COVID No, I'm not. I think, you know, one thing that might be helpful to just a thought I had is that it's a fair point to ask about incentives of people doing science. And so I think I would just consider, for those of those folks that are interested in this kind of question, yes, you should look into that and let the light shine where it is. And I would ask that you also apply that, the same kind of skepticism to the other kinds of information that you might be hearing, because as I apply those same kinds of skeptical or skepticism that, you know, that underlying this question, I can see problems in some of the misinformation that I read.

John Dehlin [02:00:07] So if there are individuals or media outlets, well, for media outlets and individuals that are taking one position or another, ask the question of yourself whether they may have financial incentives to speak out publicly for or against any certain side of the issue. Is that what you're saying, Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:00:26] Yeah. And even a bigger issue than that is it does it benefit their pre committed reputation that they're pre committed decisions or pre committed sort of value system that they have is, you know, do, are they giving room for being wrong? And I think that that is a fundamental aspect of, of how scientists want to operate is we want to maximize objectivity.

John Dehlin [02:00:52] Okay, thank you, Dwayne. The next kind of category, also the next sort of cousin of this question is hospitals. Hospitals want to make a ton of money. And so they're overblowing this Covid thing. They're diagnosing people with COVID who just have regular colds and fluscular and they're actually admitting people to ICUs who really aren't that sick and even intubating people who really don't have Covid or really aren't that sick because it's just a way to keep the money lining their pockets with lots of money. So Jeff and Stephen, you guys are in the er, you would be the ones that would be admitting people. I know that for those who have taken the Hippocratic oath, this is an offensive and an insulting allegation, but I hear it all the time. Hospitals just make one want to make a lot of money. And so you're trumping up. And you guys would be the ones doing it because you would be on the front lines admitting the people. So Jeffrey, is your hospital pressuring you to trump up Covid diagnoses and admissions to ICU so that they can line their pockets? And then, and then I think, you know, I've already talked about one pulmonary doctor who talked to me about true financial incentives in hospitals and about elective procedures. But Jeff, why don't you just directly address this allegation? And then, Stephen, from a totally different hospital, I want you to do the

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:02:21] same thing Again, like Dwayne said, these are, these are the right questions to ask.

John Dehlin [02:02:26] But.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:02:27] And I see things from my ER world, so that's, I make the decision along with an admitting physician where the patient goes and whether or not they need to come into the Hospital, I alone make the decision on innovating a patient, the hospital. No one else is involved in that. So I can equivoc, unequivocally say no. There's no pressure to intubate someone in case, in fact, the pressure is against that. We try to do everything. But as far as admitting to the ICU that hospital administration is not involved in that decision at all, it's me and the ICU doctor. We have a discussion back and forth. And I've never felt pressure either way. As far as assigning Covid diagnoses for financial profit. I've never, I just put what I see. I've never. I don't get any kickback for putting Covid diagnosis. I don't know what happens down the line, but who knows? I just put down diagnoses that I see and I feel are responsible and can back that up, obviously, with good evidence. I'm not going to assign a COVID infection to a car accident. I mean, that's silly. So that's. I can just say what I do. I, I can't see how that would ever come into play.

John Dehlin [02:03:33] Okay. And, and, you know, we still get, you know, there's just this idea of trust. Oak Lancy says, I'm concerned that medical doctors are no longer independent enough to give any unpopular opinions. They fear losing their jobs. So again, Steven, same thing. Are you diagnosing people with COVID intubating people, admitting people to the ICU out of some type of financial pressure or fear of losing your job?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:04:01] Steven, Absolutely not.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:04:04] And that's one of the most frustrating rumors to try to debunk. One of the hardest parts of our job is actually to get people admitted to the hospital, that there's huge financial incentives for the hospital to treat patients as outpatients, especially these medical patients that don't bring in, you know, procedures and interventions and stuff. And there have been a lot of COVID patients. I think one of the things that we've kind of, one of the changes in treatment that we've seen over the last few months is we're sending patients home with oxygen. Now that we used to admit to the hospital that sometimes if they meet other criteria, we're able to place them on oxygen and send them home and have them use oxygen at home instead of staying in the hospital on oxygen. All the pressures have been to try to get people treated at home and to keep them at home and to monitor them at home. We send them home with pulse oximeters so they can monitor their oxygen at home and Then they can call nurses and call the hospital back if their oxygen levels diminish. So we've tried to put in place as many things as possible to allow people to stay home, to be treated safely at home, rather than keep them in the hospital. So we being on the front lines, we see the opposite. We see a real push to send people home versus keep them in the hospital.

John Dehlin [02:05:29] Yeah, and I, you know, I again interviewed last night a Dr. Robert Mildenhall, who works. He's a pulmonary care physician in Nashville. And I asked him this specific question. I'll probably play the interview later. What he said is, if hospitals want to make money, tell me if this is right. They do elective procedures because those are the most profitable procedures during COVID elective procedures get diminished and. Or shut down. And so hospitals are actually making far less money during COVID than they were when Covid wasn't around. So, quick, yes or no, Stephen and Jeff, is that your understanding as well, based on your understanding of your hospital?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:06:14] That's my understanding, but I couldn't tell you that what the hospital financials are, but. Yeah, but typically, I think elective procedures are what brings in the vast majority of revenue for hospital systems.

John Dehlin [02:06:27] Okay, Jeffrey, you're saying yes, same.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:06:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:06:29] Dwayne, what do you want to say to this idea of hospitals trumping this up to make more money?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:06:36] I don't see evidence of that.

John Dehlin [02:06:39] Okay. All right. Well, that's pretty powerful. Okay, so the next category, which is a huge one, is around what people call big pharma pharmaceutical companies. And I think the logic goes something like this, that these, these moderna, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, they stand to make a boatload of money. Because if, if vaccines are promoted all throughout the world, if they're made mandatory, then. Then pharma pharmaceutical companies are just raking in the dough. And when we look at kind of what happened with, with opiates, we know that with the pharmaceutical companies can sometimes do a lot of damage with a kind of a profit or monetary incentive. So, Dwayne, how would you, you know, how would. First of all, are you bought off or in any way incentivized by pharmaceutical companies to give the answer you're about to give? And then what would. Since you said, you know, people, major people, major players in the pharmaceutical industry, what would be your honest and best response to conspiracy theories around pharmaceutical companies being unduly profit motivized around the vaccine?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:08:03] So it's a great question. So, first of all, I don't have any interest in any of the Companies. I don't have any interest in Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson Johnson, any of the vaccine companies. I'm interested in vaccine science. I'm driven to do this based on my own curiosity and my own desire to do science. So regarding the question about financial incentives, it is important to have checks, balances, controls and to watch carefully to sort of make sure that studies and data and recommendations are conflict free. So my, so my first answer is I don't really, I'm not really an expert in this area, so I'm not really sure. But I can just say what I've observed in interacting with some of these companies, there is an incentive to have a good product. And my sense is that any financial gain or value that they might, you know, get from this is, is, you know, is, is due to a good product that can be proven objectively and they have to go to the FDA to get approval. And the FDA is not affiliated with any of these companies. They don't have any interest in any given company. Their interest is in the safety and health of, of everyone. So, so in my view, the systems in place are set up to help control for that. You know, humans are humans and we have to, we have to be skeptical and we have to watch and, and then in the end build a system that we can trust. And I think that the systems in place have those checks and balances.

John Dehlin [02:09:52] I mean, you know, people are, some people are going to say, well, the FDA doesn't have perfectly altruistic motives or a perfect track record. And again, we all know the pharmaceutical companies can, can sometimes act in problematic ways. But I think in every other domain you go to the doctor, you get a prescription, and in so many instances you get the, you get the medication and oftentimes you get better. Like that's the system that's been operating for a long time. And you're saying, Dwayne, that your perception of the pharmaceutical companies as it relates to the COVID vaccine is it's operating under that same standard where pharmaceutical companies are in general trying their best to provide healthy and safe treatments, that the FDA is doing its best to do its job. And what we're seeing here is the commercial industry, with pharmaceutical industry and the FDA and the government all working together to do their level best to provide a safe and healthy treatment to the population. Is that your assessment, Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:10:55] That is correct. And I'll just add just briefly on the end of that. I've been in calls with people that are representing different entities of these pharmaceutical entities. And I'VE been really impressed of how open they are with their data, with their insights, and their encouragement of finding a solution for a problem. So I'm not seeing, at least at my level, I'm not seeing, you know, this sort of concern play out. I'm seeing a collaborative effort to get many products on the out there to people and an incentive to make a good product that's safe and effective because in the end, that's best for everyone.

John Dehlin [02:11:41] Jeff, your response to concerns about pharmaceutical companies. Unmute yourself. Sorry? Unmute yourself. Jeff,

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:11:52] again, I think it's a valid question and something you, you should look into. Just like Dwayne said, there's way, there are ways to look up your doctor and see what kind of payments they've received from pharma. It's a quick Google search. In the er, we never see pharmaceutical reps. They don't really. They don't talk to us at all because we put people generally on generic medications and for short terms. So I can personally say I have zero influence. They influence my thinking. Not at all because I have zero interaction with them. However, like Dwayne said, I feel like this is not really the time to criticize Pfizer and Moderna because they have literally saved our world from a devastating pandemic this time. This is them doing their job right. They have their problems. I'm no fan, I promise you, but this is one where I feel really thankful that we have pharmaceutical companies that were able to get this out.

John Dehlin [02:12:49] Yeah. Yeah. Stephen, I want to hear your point of view, and then I want to hear your points of view of what would have happened if no vaccine had ever been developed. Just each of you kind of going around. But Stephen, your perspective on pharmaceutical companies

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:13:03] and so similar to these guys, I've never received a payment from a pharmaceutical company, never in any of my years. And they don't come. We don't have lunches with pharmaceutical companies. They don't take us on trips. They ignore us in the ER because we put patients on the cheapest medications that we can because oftentimes there's huge financial needs for patients that come into the er and so that's always a consideration. So I have zero interest, financial interest in any of these pharmaceutical companies. And in many instances, I have problems with the way that big pharma functions in our society and especially in the U.S. however, I've also worked outside of the U.S. and most of the innovation and the new medications come through this system that we have established here. So for all its flaws, like Jeff said, I think that, that this is an example of these pharmaceutical companies doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing and providing a huge benefit to mankind. I think that the death totals, and not even just death, but the morbidity, the long term morbidity from all these COVID patients would be so much higher without effective vaccination. So. So in this instance, I think that they're doing exactly what we would hope they would do.

John Dehlin [02:14:30] So there's been hundreds of thousands of deaths with the vaccine. If you were even to venture a guess of deaths in the US without the vaccine. Anybody want to venture a guess?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:14:42] The numbers tell us three to four million would have been.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:14:45] Three to four million.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:14:45] Oh, no, no, sorry. Three to 400. Let's see, 350 million.

John Dehlin [02:14:49] I don't know, possibly millions.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:14:52] Possibly millions.

John Dehlin [02:14:55] Dwayne, do you agree with that without pharmaceutical intervention and the vaccine, millions of deaths in the United States?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:15:04] Certainly. So I would need to consult some of my epidemiology friends to really consider all the potential things to consider making this type of calculation. But my rough guesstimation is that it has prevented millions of infections and possibly hundreds of thousands of deaths by this point at least. And who knows in the future?

John Dehlin [02:15:29] Yeah, I think that's a really valid way to look at it. It is. Just flip that question. What if we hadn't had the pharmaceutical companies do what they did? There are a lot of people that express concerns about pharmaceutical companies having limited liability for the vaccines that they produce. I don't expect any of you guys to be experts on legal liability and pharmaceutical companies. So I don't even expect any of you to answer that question. Unless one of you wants to take a quick stab at it.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:16:01] I don't have much to add.

Vaccine Choice, Politics, and Hesitancy

John Dehlin [02:16:03] Okay. All right, we got a couple more questions. There is just this sort of general resistance of I don't like government telling me what to do. I don't want political party X or political party Y to be getting into my business. People call it the jab. There's just this general anti government, anti authority distrust of government, distrust of authority or of being told what to do. Anybody? Anybody want to take just a very quick stab at that? It's more of an emotional response and a philosophical response than one that really values evidence or data. Do you guys want to speak to that at all? Anybody? If it was a loved one saying that to you? Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:16:47] Yeah, I can just mention this one thing. I think it's helpful to separate the questions here. One is whether or not there is whether or not the vaccine is safe and effective, or whether or not masks work and what are the benefits and risks of those. And so I think addressing that as a separate issue, as a scientific one, what are, what are the data, what is the evidence, what are the benefits and risks? And to not let the other very important value issue get in the way of understanding the actual state of nature, like the truth of the matter of, you know, the state of nature about the vaccine, about the risks and benefits. If you, if you know, it's important to also have values. Scientists have values. Everyone has certain values and we, we may differ and disagree on certain things. And that's, that's great. That's part of being human. And so I think this argument, John, that you're mentioning now is a value argument in terms of what to do, because information about the state of nature doesn't really tell us directly what to do. Do you know, we can then decide, once we, once we understand the risks and benefits, we can decide what to do about that. Whether that is to, let's try to just incentivize everyone to get it, to convince everyone to get it or to put a mandate in or this or that, and then what are the risks of that? But what sometimes I'm worried about is these valid value positions. I think is important to not let them get in the way of understanding what the true state of nature is. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [02:18:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, it does. So, Jeff and Steven, if somebody comes into you and says, it's my body, no one's going to tell me to get the jab. Freedom, it's invasive. It's my right to choose. Stephen, what do you tell them in a loving way?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:18:47] Well, I agree, I agree. And I'm glad that it's our right to choose. I'm glad that we don't have government mandates to force us to do things, to take things into our own body. But I mean, the government's involved in all aspects of life. There's speed limits, there's laws regarding seat belts. And I think that there's a role for the government to play to say, hey, population health wise, this is going to keep more of our patients, more of our population safe. So for them to encourage the vaccine, I think is, is appropriate. I'm glad that we're not having people that are coming door to door and vaccinating us. What I would encourage people to do though, is to look for reasonable, legitimate evidence. I'm just a single voice, not normally on the Internet. I'm a Single voice in the hospital. But every professional medical organization out there, whether you look at the American College of Pediatrics, American College of Family Physicians, American College of Emergency Medicine, the American Medical association, the consensus is unanimous that the vaccine is helpful. But this needs to be a personal decision. I think people need to educate themselves with reliable information, not just listen to a single person and a single voice. But the scientific consensus is really clear that this is an effective treatment and it's the only way we're going to get back to normal, the only way we're going to keep some of our vulnerable population safe. And, you know, I've got a daughter with special needs. And so this kind of hits home to me that we need to do what we can as a community. And I would hope that we as a community would just say, instead of, who's forcing me to do what? What's my personal freedom? What can I do to be a better citizen? How can I be a better neighbor? How can I be a better American? And this is one of those ways that we can all give back by getting us through this as quickly as we can. But definitely do your research, find the scientific consensus, and I think that it's pretty clear.

John Dehlin [02:20:54] Thanks. Thanks, Steven. Jeffrey, your response to somebody that says, it's my body, my choice?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:21:01] No, I was actually only going to add what Steven just got at the end there. I think, yes, it's a personal decision. No one's making you do it. You have an opportunity. I think the evidence is clear from a personal basis, but I also think it's worth considering. We all belong to society. We all interact with each other, and we've chosen that setup for a reason. We benefit from being around each other. And I feel like it's worth turning it around a little bit and say, hey, this is something. I might be uncomfortable for a day. I might get a little fever. I might be kind of achy. But I'm doing my part to be in the society and keep a healthy atmosphere for people who can't help themselves, people who can't be vaccinated people, and people who are really vulnerable and don't have the immune system I have. It's a chance to kind of step outside yourself and do something for someone else.

John Dehlin [02:21:49] So, again, just to summarize, what I hear you guys saying is that even if you don't personally want it, you're. You know, there's some people, like, if I'm supposed to go, then it's my time to go. What I'm hearing you all say is if you don't want to get the vaccine for yourself, consider getting it for aging people that will die prematurely. Consider getting it for people who have illnesses or disabilities that are more likely to die because you spread it to them. Get it for mothers who are carrying children. Get it for your neighbors, for your children, for your grandchildren, for friends and for society at large so that the, so that the virus doesn't keep mutating and incubating and again developing even more serious mutations that can come back and continue to shut the economy down, shut countries down, and basically retard the progress of the human race. Consider doing it for those reasons if you don't want to do it for yourself. Is that an okay summary of what you guys are saying?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:22:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:22:57] Okay, we started with this question, but my friend Russell Webster brought it up again. Some people say this is just the agenda of one political party in the United States or another to sort of do politics and to try and win one political, you know, one set of political successes versus another. I know that we're beating a dead horse at this point point. And then I've got a final couple wrap up questions. Anyone want to take a quick, common sense, punchy stab at the question that this is all a political conspiracy to advance one party or another, one political agenda or another.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:23:38] Stephen, the virus is apolitical. Virus doesn't care what people's political opinions are. And honestly, in the emergency department, when somebody is struggling, trying to die, I don't care what their political positions are. My sole job is to just try to keep people healthy. And for those that come into the emergency department to treat them the best that I can. Nobody cares about politics when people are on their deathbed.

John Dehlin [02:24:07] Okay, beautiful. Jeff, what would your response be?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:24:11] I have nothing to say to that. I'm sorry, it's not politics.

John Dehlin [02:24:15] Yeah. Okay. Dwayne, anything you want to say about claims that this is all political agenda?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:24:22] The only thing I the thought I have about that is that I think the process of science benefits from diversity of thought and viewpoints. And you know, if the goal in the end is to maximize objectivity and find the true state of nature as close as possible, a diversity of thoughts and critiques and criticism and corrections are valuable. So whether that, you know, value systems, whether that's other kinds of political backgrounds, that's driving people's thoughts to point things out, that might give them a different viewpoint of how to see an issue with science. I think that benefits the process because the truth doesn't change in the end and ways to look at it and try to falsify it and see if it stands up to scrutiny is I think what we value.

John Dehlin [02:25:08] I love it. Okay, we have a really good question from a vaccine hesitant listener. Cole writes the average lifespan of an FDA approved medication is five years before being removed from circulation due to being unsafe. I don't know if that's true. That's what Cole's saying. As someone who's vaccine hesitant, how can I be certain this isn't one of those times where we learn about the harms of fears down the road? It seems that As a healthy 20 year old who already had COVID 19, it is riskier for me to get the vaccine based solely on what we don't know at this point. Am I wrong? I think that is a valid question or concern. What about what we don't know? Let's. So thank you Cole for expressing that. Let's start logically because there's what we don't know about the vaccine, but there's also what we don't know about getting Covid in terms of the 5 to 10 to 20 year risk. Do I have that right? Jeff, let's start with you.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:26:07] Yes, I think that's the proper framing, I guess the tricky situation, and I wish people would really go back to that framing every time they look at this. What he's asking though, I think is he's already been infected with COVID already has some level of immunity. Is it worth getting the vaccine when we don't know enough about the vaccine? I guess I would have a couple of responses specific to his question that the only all of the risks of the vaccine come from that spike protein that's being produced by your cells. You've already essentially had a vaccine in the sense that you've had the virus reproducing exponentially in your body with those spike proteins included. So if I were in your shoes, I understand the hesitance. I get it. You're already sort of immune. Why? Why do something on top of that? But I think the data that says that your long term immunity is even boosted by getting a vaccine on top of that should be compelling even in a low risk person like yourself. It should tell you that I don't want a full blown COVID infection because that causes all kinds of problems. I've already kind of survived the vaccine without huge problems or any problems. Potentially. The vaccine I know can boost that future immunity. So in that specific case, I still think it's worth getting the vaccine. The risks are minimal. I'm not sure. How to speak to that FDA risk of 5. I've never seen that statistic. It wouldn't shock me if it were true. But again, we're dealing with, it's not drug versus no drug, it's vaccine versus wild infection. That's really your comparison. You can't just take a break from this. So in your case, I would still go get the vaccine. Seeing what I've seen and reading the studies and the data that I've seen, I would definitely do it. If you're my son, I'd say absolutely, go do it.

John Dehlin [02:27:59] So Stephen, a 20 year old who's already had Covid getting the vaccine, what are your recommendations?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:28:05] Yeah, my daughter's 20 and she's had Covid and I have encouraged her to get the vaccine. And I think that he brings up an important point that there are lots of long term things that we don't know about. We don't know the long term effects of having Covid or having repeat infections from COVID which we're at risk of if we don't get the vaccine and we don't know the long term effects of the vaccine. What we do know though is that the history of vaccines in medicine over the last hundred years, there's no question that vaccines are the most effective advancement in medicine in the history of the human race. That more so than antibiotics, more so than surgeries, more so than aspirin and ibuprofen and all these other medications. The development of vaccines have been the most effective advancement in medicine in history. And the side effects of these vaccines are very low. We don't see people walking around with terrible side effects from the vaccines that they got as children. And the longer, the more years that we have of data in these childhood vaccinations, the safer they are. Of course we can argue individual cases that there may be rare instances of harm, but by and large, the benefit of vaccine and the safety profile of vaccines is very compelling.

Vaccines for Children and Special Populations

John Dehlin [02:29:39] Okay, that's a great topic. Youth and children. Jeff, I know you have some thoughts about this. There are lots of people asking is it less of a priority for, let's just say 20 somethings, which is separate from teens. And I know that the vaccine isn't even available for 12 year olds, for people under 12, but if somebody's saying, if someone's doing a risk analysis and they're way younger versus middle aged or older, what, what is the thought on, on you know, teens and 20 somethings versus just sort of weighing the risk and saying I don't need it it's not worth it. Dwayne, do you want to start with that?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:30:20] Yeah, It's a great question and as far as I understand, it's a question that's still being weighed, it's still being looked at. I don't, you know, there are pros and cons to doing it for kids. I think, you know, studies are ongoing right now and I think it's just an evolving area. We need to figure out what the evidence is and what the arguments are.

John Dehlin [02:30:46] So your professional opinion about a teenager comes in and says, should I get the virus, should I get the vaccine? What would be your.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:30:54] Oh, for a teenager, a 13 and above, it's recommended and I have a 13 year old and she got the vaccine.

John Dehlin [02:31:00] Okay. Okay. Jeff, I know you have some thoughts about this.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:31:07] It's a great zone. It's a great question. My thoughts have kind of evolved in this. I was initially saying no, kids should not be getting the vaccine. They're just not the risk factor.

John Dehlin [02:31:16] When you said kids, you mean young teens.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:31:18] Yeah, let me clarify. Yeah, initially I thought kind of under 18 and really even people in their 20s. As I saw more people in their 20s get sick, really sick, and we're seeing that more and more with the delta variant. It's, it's affecting people in their 20s more than the others have. That's changed my thinking. I think 12 to 12 to 19. I now fully support vaccination on. No, we're not seeing them get sick to the same extent, but they are spreading it at very high rates. And as opposed to the kids under 12 for some reason they are just not huge vectors of disease as far as I know. As far as we're seeing, they're just not huge vectors. So the benefits are getting really low. I still haven't seen a sick kid under 12 over a year and a half. Personally, that's anecdotal. I have read, I've read reports, I'm not a pediatrician. If you had a peds ER person on here, they, they may be able to change that. So take that anecdotal stuff for what it's worth. But under 12, I still think it makes sense to, to wait and we'll see what the data shows. It's not going to be approved for kids under 12 unless there's a really compelling benefit. But, but teenagers, I think you have that vector benefit. They really are spreading it at high rates even if they aren't getting sick themselves. So there's a very big benefit there. But the other thing to, to consider Just physiologically this is theoretical. It would be really hard to study this. But remember the people getting sick from COVID they're getting sick because they're reacting to that spike protein and the uncontrolled, uncontrolled reproduction of the virus. I would propose that people that aren't going to get sick from COVID are not going to have the same level of reaction to the vaccine either. So people who are low risk Covid are also really low risk vaccine because it's essentially the same thing. The virus is the vaccine plus a whole lot of other junk. That's what it really is. If you choose not to vaccinate, you're really choosing to vaccinate. You're choosing all the harms of the vaccine plus a whole lot of other things to that come with it.

John Dehlin [02:33:25] Excellent. Steven, you've already talked about what you would recommend to your own 20 year old. Jeff, I think your point about teens getting it just to not become super spreaders is, is a really valid point. Stephen, anything you want to add about teens or 20 somethings that beyond.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:33:44] Well, we are seeing, and I can't give you the specific numbers, but on an email from IHC that I got just two days ago that they are seeing an increase in pediatric hospitalizations due to Covid and we don't know what the winter is going to hold when we have RSV and influenza and all the other viruses and if we're not wearing masks and then you add Covid into the mix, potentially things could get really ugly for kids and teens as well. So I'm an advocate. I think that like Jeff said, I think that the potential side effects of the vaccine in young kids is going to be low because they not. We're not seeing a ton of them that have gotten super sick, but we are seeing an increased number of hospitalizations in pediatric patients over the last couple of weeks.

John Dehlin [02:34:38] Excellent. Okay, couple other. One really important question that we haven't really responded to yet and I think it's really important. There are people that shouldn't get the vaccine. Is that true? And if so, who should not get the vaccine or am I wrong?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:35:02] This is Dwayne, I think, yeah, I

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:35:04] think if you have had an anaphylactic, you know, event or a severe allergic reaction, that would be something you would talk to your, your physician about your risk and to assess that out.

John Dehlin [02:35:19] Okay, so talk to your physician. But are there just categories of people that it's like. Yeah, it could be very dangerous for you. I hear the term immune, immune immunization Compromised immunity. Compromised. Like, are there categories of people that generally under the supervision of a physician, need to at least ask questions and have pause before they just jump in and take it?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:35:47] You know, I got that question a lot. I see immunodeficient folks and I recommend for them to get the vaccine and they're getting it. Some folks that are immunodeficient may not respond as well because they're immunodeficient. Their immune system doesn't work as well. So sometimes they don't respond as well as others who are not immunodeficient. But, you know, with the vaccine, with this kind of a safety profile, to me, it makes sense to recommend the vaccine to folks even if they're immunodeficient. In fact, they're recommending boosters for those folks because a booster can help induce a stronger response to help protect against the virus in these folks.

John Dehlin [02:36:36] All right, Jeff, anything to add about who should not get the vaccine?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:36:41] I mean, I think Dwayne is the expert on this. This is his field. But this isn't like other. This isn't other vaccines, some of which will contain some live virus. That's not at all the case. So immunocompromised patients are still safe to get this. They just might not mount the same immune respons response. And he's the expert.

John Dehlin [02:37:02] Okay, Steven, anything more?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:37:04] No, same.

John Dehlin [02:37:06] Okay. A couple, just super quick ones and then we should wrap this up. Several people asked if the virus was engineered. My quick answer is it doesn't matter. We have it now and we got to deal with it. Anyone else want to add anything beyond that?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:37:22] Yeah, I think there's some conflicting information and. Yeah, and that's not for any of us to decide, who knows? But we're dealing with it now. So wherever it came from, I think that the best, the better question is how do we respond to it now? What's the best thing that we can do as individuals and as a community to get through this now?

Delta Variant, Masks, Boosters, and Effectiveness

John Dehlin [02:37:43] Okay, a quick answer about the effectiveness of the vaccine on the delta variant. So did the delta. I know you've already addressed this, but just to address it punchy and quick, is the vaccine effective against the delta variant?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:37:58] Jeff, remember what we cared about at the beginning of this the most was hospitalizations and deaths. So 100% it's effective against that. It's less effective against infections. Still very effective. Really off the charts effective compared to lots of medical treatments lots of you have already taken. But 70% is a great, great Number, medically speaking, but, yeah, that's kind of. It's still doing exactly what we wanted it to do.

John Dehlin [02:38:22] Stephen?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:38:23] Agree. I think that the data strongly supports. May not be quite as effective, but. But it's still going to decrease the severity of illness, hospitalization, ICU stays, and death.

John Dehlin [02:38:36] Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:38:37] Yeah, data support that.

John Dehlin [02:38:39] Okay. If somebody is. Is saying, okay, you convinced me, I'll get the vaccine, but I want to get the best one. And are there some vaccines that are better than others? Should they be making a call about which one they get? Jeff, I saw your eyes go big there, because that's a tough question. You're muted again. Jeff, Just get something.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:39:01] But Dwayne can probably speak to that specifically. Or Steven, I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:39:04] Okay.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:39:04] Dwayne, I would say any vaccine that's currently available is better than no vaccine. So if. If you have an opportunity to get the vaccine, I would get it. You know, the MRNA vaccines tend to make higher antibody levels, which. And they, you know, in clinical trials, slightly higher. But, you know, so if you have the choice, those are your options.

John Dehlin [02:39:30] Which ones are mRNA?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:39:32] That's Pfizer and Moderna.

John Dehlin [02:39:34] Okay. Okay. Steven, anything you want to add?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:39:38] Yeah, I agree. I think whatever you have access to, I think that the data supports the Pfizer and Moderna, that their efficacy is a little higher.

John Dehlin [02:39:48] Johnson and Johnson.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:39:49] And the vaccine's free. You know, anybody can get it. You can go to Walgreens now. They've made it so easy. So, yeah, I would get whatever you can.

John Dehlin [02:40:00] Okay. Jeff, anything to add to that? Okay, you can stay. You can stay unmuted. Jeff, we're about to finish. Someone asked, do vaccinated people still need to wear masks? What's the CDC guidelines for that? Anybody know? Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:40:21] I actually don't know. I'd have to look those up to see. I know that, you know, some local areas are making some suggestions and sometimes, you know, requirements in certain areas of the workplace, you know, masks do help prevent transmission, and we know that even the vaccine is effective. It's not 100% effective. Some people can still get the virus and actually spread it with the vaccine. So masks will help reduce the risk even if you're vaccinated. How to deal with that in terms of what you do is kind of up to, you know, policymakers.

John Dehlin [02:40:56] Steven, Anything. Steven and Jeff, anything to add there?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:40:59] Masks work. You know, I've been vaccinated. I've also had Covid, and I wear a mask at work all day, every day. So if you're in doubt. If you have questions or concerns, if you're in a big public area, then, yeah, there's no harm in wearing masks and there's potential benefit.

John Dehlin [02:41:18] Okay, what about a booster? Oh, Jeff, did you want to say something about masks?

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:41:22] I just want. Yes, I think any of us would be hesitant to make general recommendations to people because different situations vary so much. I think we're moving towards masks in shared public indoor spaces given variant, even vaccinated people. As much as I hate that idea, I think we're moving towards that. But the more broad point is I feel really uncomfortable telling someone else's in their community whether or not they should wear masks. I. People, I just. I think I've been swimming in this all of my life for the last 18 months, like 24 7. And I feel uncomfortable taking a strong position on that. Please just listen to the experts. Your public health officials, they have access to information you don't have. They have access to information I don't have regarding your local situation. So I would just, again, encourage you, listen to your public health officials and just follow directives. If everyone would do that, we would be done with this.

John Dehlin [02:42:22] Okay, really quickly, people are asking about the booster. Is a booster coming? Is it useful? Is it necessary? What are the. What does the science, the evidence say about a booster? Dwayne?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:42:33] Yeah, several months ago, Pfizer came up with this because of their data tracking antibody levels, seeing that they dip after several months.

John Dehlin [02:42:43] So.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:42:43] And we know the effectiveness might wane over time. You know, the vaccines are still, you know, safe and effective, but, you know, the point at which we may want to get a booster, Ongoing discussion. It may happen, it may be. It may be needed to keep the immune system strong against the virus, but

John Dehlin [02:43:03] we don't quite know yet.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:43:05] As far as I understand, we don't quite know yet. It is recommended for the immunodeficient now. And yeah, if the antibody levels kind of sagging down, that we see, if that's an indicator that the effectiveness will also sag, then a booster might be in the future, in a few months.

John Dehlin [02:43:21] So if you're immunodeficient, a booster's recommended. Otherwise, data is inconclusive. Correct.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:43:28] As far as I know, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:29] Okay. Jeff and Steven, anything to add to that? Okay. All right, I'm gonna make one. This is gonna kind of. This is kind of a weird thing to do, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw one more question at you guys and I'll just. There's been several comments here's one good thing you got the pro vaccine guys on, otherwise your show would be purged. Too bad the truth is censored. There's a lot of other people who wrote that this is an extremely biased panel. And you know the argument. And I even had some people close to me make this argument. It's if you really want to be credible, bring on people who are against the vaccine, bring on doctors that, that say the vaccine is dangerous, or bring on people who claim to have been harmed by the vaccine, the vaccine injured. And that's the only way to have a truly unbiased panel. I have my own reasons for why I didn't take that approach. I don't think I assembled a biased panel. I think I assembled a panel of people who have real world experience, whose honesty and integrity and credibility I trust, who are familiar with the science, who are familiar with the evidence, and who have boots on the ground treating this, this stuff every day. So for me, I'm going with the science and the evidence and with as much credibility as I can. That's how I assembled this panel. If each of you want to just respond to the claim that for this to have really been a good panel, it should be unbiased, which means it brings on people who talk about alternative treatments, who talk about vaccine injury or who claim to have been injured by the vaccine. And only that would have been a good panel. I want each of you to have a stab at why maybe you wouldn't even have been willing to appear on the panel if that had been my approach. So, Jeff Gardner, I'm going to ask you to first respond then, then Stephen, then Dwayne. Well, what would your response to that be, Jeff? Just for people that want to undermine just this panel overall and unmute yourself, Jeff. Sorry, unmute yourself. And then. I know it's weird to defend your own credibility, to be asked to defend your own credibility, but just give your best logic, reasoned response to that. Those sets of arguments I just lifted, levied at you.

Closing Thoughts from the Medical Panelists

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:45:51] I think Dwayne and Steven are both nicer than I am, so I'm glad that they're going to tone my words down here. I have come at this from a skeptical point of view. From the beginning. I didn't. I was. I figured this was going to be another flu. I said that. I've said that publicly. I thought this was just going to be another flu. I didn't want to do economic shutdowns. I came very reluctantly at every point, kicking and screaming. I am at the point where I think the science is undeniable. I think if you were going to bring someone on here at this point who really was against who, who felt the vaccine didn't work or felt that it wasn't effective or felt like Covid was overblown or any of a variety of positions I've seen at this point. They literally are not looking at the evidence. Honestly, there's just. It's just overwhelming. There's not two valid sides to this. Ken Ham had it. They had that debate over evolution a couple years ago where it was silly because it gave credibility to a side that just doesn't have credibility, and it gives air to arguments that just aren't valid anymore. You might as well have someone come on and say, we just need to sprinkle pixie dust. It's a valid position because someone holds it. Or is it a valid position because they have some scientific background behind it? Now, I'm. I'm telling you, there are people that are talking and they're speaking dishonestly, both about their experience and their motivations, and that bothers me a lot. And at this point, if you're talking, if you're saying those kinds of things, I know. I know some of this stuff personally. I know where they're coming from, and they are not being honest with you. And I'm not. Yeah, I'm not willing to entertain those kind of arguments.

John Dehlin [02:47:30] There's a lot of people bringing up Ivermectin again. I just want you guys to go back and listen. We've already addressed all the alleged treatments, and there's nothing known that's. That's faced the scrutiny of a randomized clinical trial that is found to be credible or effective in terms of a treatment, including, you know. Well, just including everything, because Jeffrey and Steven and Dwayne would be prescribing it if it existed. So that's the answer to anyone who's trying to come up with, what about this? What about that? What about some other treatment? There is no known treatment other than the vaccine that has survived a randomized clinical trial that can be prescribed by doctors in the know. And that's for just all the people that are throwing that up. Again, we've already addressed that, Steven, and

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:48:17] we've been looking at that for a year and a half. I just really. Ivermectin is not a new thing. And none of these others. There are people that really are excited about having a voice in the discussion, and so they'll. They'll take advantage that the public has not been swimming in this for 18 months. So they, they think this is a new idea. If you haven't been paying attention for 18 months, it might seem like a new idea. It's not. And it really frustrates me that there's these dishonest voices out there. I'm not criticizing the questioner at all. I think they're being taken advantage of by people with agendas.

John Dehlin [02:48:47] Yeah. Rosie makes the point. Are there a question, are there credible anti vaccine doctors? That's Rosie's question. Steven, what's your answer to the claim that we should have had, quote, an unbiased panel bringing on people that testify about vaccine injury or medical doctors that are opposed to the vaccine? What's your response to that?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:49:10] So my response is I work in a couple of emergency departments here on the Wasatch front. I also work in Alaska. I've worked around the country and out of the country as well. And I don't know a single medical doctor that is actively taking care of patients that is anti vaccine. Not a single one, Not a single one in my hospital, in any of the three hospitals that I'm working at now, every physician that I work with has been vaccinated. We have family members that are vaccine hesitant. Some of my colleagues have family members that are vaccine hesitant. But not a single physician that I work with is vaccine hesitant. And they've all been vaccinated. Everyone that I know about, and then again, I'm just a single voice and Jeff and Duane are single voices. And this panel is composed of what we're composed of. But if you really want to get the scientific consensus, you have to look at the sources. And random Facebook groups are not credible sources. But if you look at the cdc, the who, and like I mentioned earlier, any professional medical organization is going to be pro vaccine, is going to recommend the vaccine for the vast majority of people. And I think that's where, that's where the truth lies, is the real scientific consensus. You're going to find outliers anywhere in any subject in any discussion, but the scientific consensus is overwhelming that the vaccine is safe and effective and that we

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:50:42] should all be getting it.

John Dehlin [02:50:44] Yeah, I love it. And of course, again, MJ writes, I personally know medical professionals that are against the vaccine. That's fine. I think the question for people, for people that we're trying to reach, the question is, you know, what is the preponderance, the overwhelming consensus in the scientific and medical community, what is that? It's not. What does some person that someone knows on the Internet believe it's what is the, what is the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, of the medical community, of medical health professionals, of the public health professionals, of, of science valuing people worldwide? What is the overwhelming consensus? That's what I care about and that's what's gonna, gonna govern me. Dwayne, anything you want to answer to the allegations of an unbiased. Of an unbiased. Of a biased panel. Allegations of a biased panel.

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:51:47] I don't know how to respond to that. I guess, you know, to be unbiased is the goal. So we all have our biases and so I, you know, anyone's criticism is. I'm happy to listen to and to receive that feedback. I think an important thing to realize is, in my view, we're all on the same team. There's a virus, there's plenty of evidence to understand what this virus can do and the harm that it has on our loved ones. And I think we are trying to find solutions to this. And, you know, the vaccine as a preventative measure is one solution. And I, and I get it. It's hard to see at a personal level, you know, the impact of the vaccine. If you get a vaccine, it's not like, you know, a kind of a therapy that you immediately feel better about it or something. It's a therapy you get that prevents something that you may never see. Or if you do get Covid after you get vaccinated, you never see how sick you could have gotten. That we suspect that would happen because of the data of, you know, all the evidence around that point to that as an outcome. So I get it. It's hard to see and it does require to step back and to be thoughtful about it and to consider the evidence. So for those that are thinking that this is biased or that there are other kinds of viewpoints, if there are valid viewpoints out there, I want to learn them. I am a student. I consider myself a learner. I want to be open to change my mind if there is evidence out there to suggest that that should happen. So far, the overwhelming. The evidence out there is overwhelmingly in favor of, of a vaccine and the health benefits of that, plus mask wearing and stuff like that. So that's why I stand where I am. And I think that those that are skeptical of that, I hope that folks will be open as well to look at the evidence across the board and to learn together.

John Dehlin [02:54:10] I love it. Well, I'll share one of my favorite comments of the whole time. It's from Adam Hewish Streaming. He says this has, this is the best thing I've seen with COVID Thank, thank you. Several other people wrote that as well, that in their opinion this has been the best conversation about COVID that they've seen on the Internet or on media, full stop. And I just want to say I am just so incredibly grateful for your hearts, for your brains, for your courage, Jeff, Steven and Dwayne and for your willingness to speak up publicly. I know, I knew from the beginning we weren't going to please everybody. I knew from the beginning there were plenty of people whose minds were made up, who we weren't going to move the needle though. This whole episode was targeted at people who are still open minded, who are still, who value evidence, who value what's going on around us and who are open to, you know, the evidence, the data and the evidence, both scientific evidence and the evidence of what's going on in hospitals in Utah, in Idaho, in Nevada, in Massachusetts and around the globe. If people don't value that, maybe there's not so much more we can do. What I want to do now is, aside from thank you guys, is just give each of you one final chance to either give closing comments or make whatever statement you want to close as a wrap up. So Dwayne, thank you for joining us. Dwayne, is there any final comment you want to make to those who are listening?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [02:55:49] You know, one thought I had just to wrap this up. My thoughts, you know, thinking about reasons to get a vaccine. There's enough evidence out there that convinced that there's benefit, there are lives to be saved. And so, you know, rarely is there a time in history where any activity that we can do as a group can actually save lives and increase their dwell time on this planet. You know, in intensive care settings and in settings where we want to give people an extra day or two, it's so valuable to have time on this planet. There's a lot of stuff to do and it's, it's hard to, to translate these numbers that we're hearing. You know, hundreds of thousands of deaths, people dead. People's brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandparents that are no longer around behind because they died of COVID 19. It's hard to kind of feel that if you don't, if you haven't experienced it yourself, there is a prevention for that. The vaccine can prevent people from dying. And so you getting a vaccine helps with that endeavor because it reduces the probability of variants to emerge to escape the vaccine. It reduces as the community transmission and overall risk of anyone getting the vaccine. If a community gets A vaccine at a high level. So as a community, it's an act of service. And if you're at 20 years old and aren't going to get sick because you're in that group, it's an act of service. It's a Matthew 25 first two commandments by one act.

John Dehlin [02:57:47] I love it. I'm sharing visually all the overwhelmingly positive comments coming in from our. We've had a large viewing audience over a three hour presentation. We've sustained between six and seven hundred simultaneous viewers at any given point and that's a great, great show up. So I'm so glad you guys. We've reached a lot of people and of course when this gets posted on YouTube and on Facebook asynchronously and on the podcast, we're going to reach tens of thousands of people. But overwhelmingly the people who have been joining us are super grateful. So I love that heartfelt summary. Dwayne, I'm so grateful you were willing to join us. I'm going to share visually all the other thank yous that are emerging. Stephen, let's have you go next. Your wrap up thoughts and feelings.

Final Reflections and Closing Remarks

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:58:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:58:35] Summary statement.

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:58:36] I really agree with what Dwayne said and echo what Jeff has said throughout this time as well. I appreciate you guys and the work that you're doing and I just would encourage people that this is something that can change lives, it can better our communities, it can get us back to normal sooner rather than later. And that's what we all want. I'm a dad. I'm somebody that likes to go to live shows and to go out and this is the one thing that's going to get us back. I think that we're all sick of this. I'm tired of the pandemic and whatever we can do to get us back to normal. And the thing that is most effective is going to be get the majority of the population vaccinated. That's the one way that we're going to get through, through this.

John Dehlin [02:59:30] I love it. And Steven, I love you and your family and I'm so grateful you're willing, I'm so grateful to have you on Mormon Stories podcast. Steven, it's great. I mean, it's either good or bad that this is the thing that brings you on, but I'll take it. How's that?

Dr. Steven Caldwell [02:59:44] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [02:59:45] All right, Love to you, you and Mindy and the whole family. All right, Jeff, you were the one that stepped up and said you would kind of coordinate and lead this. So I wanted to give you the final word.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [02:59:59] And I don't do that being the most qualified at all. I think there are a lot of very smart people who could have been on here and probably made points in a better way. But this feels more like a passion than about anything I've done in medicine. We all go into medicine with the idea of helping people. We want to relieve suffering, we want to care and connect with other people and we give a lot of therapies in medicine and we act off imperfect evidence a lot because we have to. We go for 10% survival benefits. We go for, you know, if we get one of the numbers we look at a lot is number needed to treat. And if you need to treat 10 people to save a life with the therapy, we think that's awesome. You know, there's a lot of benefits that we use pretty routinely in medicine that are a lot less effective than what this I can't really call anything other than a miracle. I never thought there was a chance we would have a vaccine in the first year of the pandemic. I didn't think that was even on the, in the cards in any way. And to see one that is effective like this and can prevent so much suffering and so much hardship and so much death, it's a no brainer to me. So it's been challenging the last six months, not watching everyone, just crowding the pharmacies to get this. I think if they saw the data in an unbiased way they would. But unfortunately there's a lot of voices out there that are either willfully or ignorantly misrepresenting things. So it feels like a passion to get this out and get people on board with something that can really help them and others. I love how Dwayne and Steven both framed this. You know, we're humans, we just want to, we just want to help people. And this is your chance to take Matthew 25:40, which whatever your view on Mormonism that is, it's hard to argue with that one as far as a personal ethic. This is your chance to do something for yourself and really for your community and with minimal cost or burden to yourself, go get vaccinated.

John Dehlin [03:02:05] And I particularly love it when kind of my more sec. Maybe, maybe my slightly more secular leading leaning friends, or even not super religious friends are speak who are science loving and science valuing friends who are speaking of the vaccine in terms of it being a miracle, being miraculous. That really says something to me. You guys are kind of using almost religious language to speak about something very scientific.

Dr. Jeff Gardner [03:02:35] I have like goosebumps I don't get that in medicine very much.

John Dehlin [03:02:37] I'm jaded. Well, the comments are overwhelming. And Dwayne, there's a Daniel who shares your last name. Dwayne. Is that somebody you know?

Dr. Dwayne Wiesman [03:02:48] That might be my older brother. Hi, Danny.

John Dehlin [03:02:52] All right, shout out to Danny. All right, everyone. This has been so great. This panel exceeded my expectations. Thanks to everyone who shared their comments. There's a lot more we can discuss. There's a whole angle that we could discuss about President Nelson. Did he. Did he do the right thing? Was it too little, too late? LDS Church's response Members response People losing their faith over this. I left all that out on purpose because what I care about right now is that Covid spreads the least possible amount and that the most people stay well. And for what I think what that means based on this panel and my understanding of the evidence is, which is just that as many people get vaccinated as possible. I hope that we've made a compelling case. I hope we've made a respectful case. I hope that people feel like we weren't disrespectful or straw manning opponents to the vaccine. I hope people understand why we made the editorial choices we did in assembling this panel. And then, most importantly, if you feel like this panel could be helpful to not everyone, but to people who value evidence, who are just hesitant or unconvinced, but need some. Some support from doctors on the ground, doctors in ICUs, doctors who are watching people die, and doctors who care about science and value evidence and who are just good humans trying to make the world a better place. Please share this episode with whoever you think it might be useful for. And if you don't think this is going to be convincing, find your own way to share convincing, relevant information. And I'll just say don't do it by being demeaning or disrespectful or insulting because you or. Or even combative. Because what that creates is called the backfire effect, which actually makes people hold on to their beliefs and views even more strongly. Do it with love. Do it compassionate, do it with compassion. What I do want to make a final call for, I want to potentially do an episode of vaccine hesitant or vaccine resistant people who then got Covid or whose loved ones got Covid and they're willing to sort of share their testimony about how much they regret not getting the vaccine and how awful it was to get Covid and how getting Covid and or seeing their loved ones get Covid and or die has changed their views on the vaccine. If any of you or anyone you know is willing to tell that story, I want to bring you on because I'm told that might be the most effective way to change the hearts and minds that are willing to be changed. If you fit in that category,

Dr. Jeff Gardner [03:05:40] please

John Dehlin [03:05:40] email me@mormonstoriesmail.com and I want to string together a Mormon Stories podcast episode for those stories because hopefully that will move the needle. I also want to say it's obvious that I have a cold. My dear friend Gerardo, I scheduled a COVID test last night at like 10 or 11. It's not until two days. My dear friend Gerardo got on a COVID testing site and literally scheduled a COVID test for me for like 1:30 this afternoon. And it's a rapid COVID test. So I will be Covid tested and that will inform some of my decisions later on in the day, which I'm not going to talk about here on the podcast. Why are you smiling, Jeffrey and Steven? So, without any further ado, thanks everyone for joining us today. Thank you, Dwayne. Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you, Stephen. Thanks for all the commenters. Thanks, Gerardo. Thanks, Kara. Thanks to everyone who helped me prepare for this. Thanks to the Open Stories foundation that made this episode possible. Thanks to donors. I do want to make a final pitch. We lost donors just by announcing that we were going to do this episode. I had several donors say, john, I'm canceling my donations. You went and got political. You're going to talk about the vaccine. I'm canceling my donations to Mormon Stories podcast. That's people's choice. And I just want to know if you I just want you to know if you value Mormon Stories podcast, if you value this episode and if you don't want to see Mormon Stories go away because we tried to give an evidence based info, you know, panel discussion about a public health issue. If you don't want to see Mormon Stories podcast and because we chose to do what we thought was right, even if you disagree with our conclusions, if you value Mormon Stories podcast and don't want to see it discontinue, please go to MormonStories.org click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor because we would love to replace the people that canceled their donations because we covered this topic with people who are grateful that we had this panel and were willing to cover this topic. So please become a donor@mormonstories.org if you're willing. Jeff, Steven, Dwayne, you're awesome. Thanks so much. Email us with your feedback. @mormonstoriesgmail.com Share this with everyone. Please continue the comments and the conversations. And please just be responsible. Don't spread misinformation. Don't spread anecdotes. Don't spread unscientific conclusions. Just follow the evidence and follow logic. And let's get. I'm gonna say it. Let's get vaccinated, everybody. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, Steven.

Support Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. Steven Caldwell [03:08:28] Stay safe, everyone.

John Dehlin [03:08:29] Take care. Thanks, listeners. We'll see you guys all again soon. I'm so sick. On another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.