Podcast appearances and mentions of rick bright

Before getting into this new podcast, have you checked out the recent newsletter editions and podcasts of Ground Truths?—the first diagnostic immunome—a Covid nasal vaccine update—medical storytelling and uncertainty—why did doctors with A.I. get outperformed by A.I. alone?The audio is available on iTunes and Spotify. The full video is embedded here, at the top, and also can be found on YouTube.Transcript with links to Audio and External Links Eric Topol (00:07):Well, hello. It's Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I am just thrilled today to welcome Carl Zimmer, who is one of the great science journalists of our times. He's written 14 books. He writes for the New York Times and many other venues of great science, journalism, and he has a new book, which I absolutely love called Air-Borne. And you can see I have all these rabbit pages tagged and there's lots to talk about here because this book is the book of air. I mean, we're talking about everything that you ever wanted to know about air and where we need to go, how we missed the boat, and Covid and everything else. So welcome, Carl.Carl Zimmer (00:51):Thanks so much. Great to be here.A Book Inspired by the PandemicEric Topol (00:54):Well, the book starts off with the Skagit Valley Chorale that you and your wife Grace attended a few years later, I guess, in Washington, which is really interesting. And I guess my first question is, it had the look that this whole book was inspired by the pandemic, is that right?Carl Zimmer (01:18):Certainly, the seed was planted in the pandemic. I was working as a journalist at the New York Times with a bunch of other reporters at the Times. There were lots of other science writers also just trying to make sense of this totally new disease. And we were talking with scientists who were also trying to make sense of the disease. And so, there was a lot of uncertainty, ambiguity, and things started to come into focus. And I was really puzzled by how hard it was for consensus to emerge about how Covid spread. And I did some reporting along with other people on this conflict about was this something that was spreading on surfaces or was it the word people were using was airborne? And the World Health Organization said, no, it's not airborne, it's not airborne until they said it was airborne. And that just seemed like not quantum physics, you know what I'm saying? In the sense that it seemed like that would be the kind of thing that would get sorted out pretty quickly. And I think that actually more spoke to my own unfamiliarity with the depth of this field. And so, I would talk to experts like say, Donald Milton at the University of Maryland. I'd be like, so help me understand this. How did this happen? And he would say, well, you need to get to know some people like William Wells. And I said, who?Eric Topol (02:50):Yeah, yeah, that's what I thought.Carl Zimmer (02:53):Yeah, there were just a whole bunch of people from a century ago or more that have been forgotten. They've been lost in history, and yet they were real visionaries, but they were also incredibly embattled. And the question of how we messed up understanding why Covid was airborne turned out to have an answer that took me back thousands of years and really plunged me into this whole science that's known as aerobiology.Eric Topol (03:26):Yeah, no, it's striking. And we're going to get, of course, into the Covid story and how it got completely botched as to how it was being transmitted. But of course, as you go through history, you see a lot of the same themes of confusion and naysayers and just extraordinary denialism. But as you said, this goes back thousands of years and perhaps the miasma, the moral stain in the air that was start, this is of course long before there was thing called germ theory. Is that really where the air thing got going?A Long History of Looking Into Bad AirCarl Zimmer (04:12):Well, certainly some of the earliest evidence we have that people were looking at the air and thinking about the air and thinking there's something about the air that matters to us. Aristotle thought, well, there's clearly something important about the air. Life just seems to be revolve around breathing and he didn't know why. And Hippocrates felt that there could be this stain on the air, this corruption of the air, and this could explain why a lot of people in a particular area, young and old, might suddenly all get sick at the same time. And so, he put forward this miasma theory, and there were also people who were looking at farm fields and asking, well, why are all my crops dead suddenly? What happened? And there were explanations that God sends something down to punish us because we've been bad, or even that the air itself had a kind of miasma that affected plants as well as animals. So these ideas were certainly there, well over 2,000 years ago.Eric Topol (05:22):Now, as we go fast forward, we're going to get to, of course into the critical work of William and Mildred Wells, who I'd never heard of before until I read your book, I have to say, talk about seven, eight decades filed into oblivion. But before we get to them, because their work was seminal, you really get into the contributions of Louis Pasteur. Maybe you could give us a skinny on what his contributions were because I was unaware of his work and the glaciers, Mer de Glace and figuring out what was going on in the air. So what did he really do to help this field?Carl Zimmer (06:05):Yeah, and this is another example of how we can kind of twist and deform history. Louis Pasteur is a household name. People know who Louis Pasteur is. People know about pasteurization of milk. Pasteur is associated with vaccines. Pasteur did other things as well. And he was also perhaps the first aerobiologist because he got interested in the fact that say, in a factory where beet juice was being fermented to make alcohol, sometimes it would spoil. And he was able to determine that there were some, what we know now are bacteria that were getting into the beet juice. And so, it was interrupting the usual fermentation from the yeast. That in itself was a huge discovery. But he was saying, well, wait, so why are there these, what we call bacteria in the spoiled juice? And he thought, well, maybe they just float in the air.Carl Zimmer (07:08):And this was really a controversial idea in say, 1860, because even then, there were many people who were persuaded that when you found microorganisms in something, they were the result of spontaneous generation. In other words, the beet juice spontaneously produced this life. This was standard view of how life worked and Pasteur was like, I'm not sure I buy this. And this basically led to him into an incredible series of studies around Paris. He would have a flask, and he'd have a long neck on it, and the flask was full of sterile broth, and he would just take it places and he would just hold it there for a while, and eventually bacteria would fall down that long neck and they would settle in the broth, and they would multiply in there. It would turn cloudy so he could prove that there was life in the air.Carl Zimmer (08:13):And they went to different places. He went to farm fields, he went to mountains. And the most amazing trip he took, it was actually to the top of a glacier, which was very difficult, especially for someone like Pasteur, who you get the impression he just hated leaving the lab. This was not a rugged outdoorsman at all. But there he is, climbing around on the ice with this flask raising it over his head, and he caught bacteria there as well. And that actually was pivotal to destroying spontaneous generation as a theory. So aerobiology among many, many other things, destroyed this idea that life could spontaneously burst into existence.Eric Topol (08:53):Yeah, no. He says ‘these gentlemen, are the germs of microscopic beings' shown in the existence of microorganisms in the air. So yeah, amazing contribution. And of course, I wasn't familiar with his work in the air like this, and it was extensive. Another notable figure in the world of germ theory that you bring up in the book with another surprise for me was the great Robert Koch of the Koch postulates. So is it true he never did the third postulate about he never fulfilled his own three postulates?Carl Zimmer (09:26):Not quite. Yeah, so he had these ideas about what it would take to actually show that some particular pathogen, a germ, actually caused a disease, and that involved isolating it from patients, culturing it outside of them. And then actually experimentally infecting an animal and showing the symptoms again. And he did that with things like anthrax and tuberculosis. He nailed that. But then when it came to cholera, there was this huge outbreak in Egypt, and people were still battling over what caused cholera. Was it miasma? Was it corruption in the air, or was it as Koch and others believe some type of bacteria? And he found a particular kind of bacteria in the stool of people who were dying or dead of cholera, and he could culture it, and he consistently found it. And when he injected animals with it, it just didn't quite work.Eric Topol (10:31):Okay. Yeah, so at least for cholera, the Koch's third postulate of injecting in animals, reproducing the disease, maybe not was fulfilled. Okay, that's good.Eric Topol (10:42):Now, there's a lot of other players here. I mean, with Fred Meier and Charles Lindbergh getting samples in the air from the planes and Carl Flügge. And before we get to the Wells, I just want to mention these naysayers like Charles Chapin, Alex Langmuir, the fact that they said, well, people that were sensitive to pollen, it was just neurosis. It wasn't the pollen. I mean, just amazing stuff. But anyway, the principles of what I got from the book was the Wells, the husband and wife, very interesting characters who eventually even split up, I guess. But can you tell us about their contributions? Because they're really notable when we look back.William and Mildred Wells Carl Zimmer (11:26):Yeah, they really are. And although by the time they had died around 1960, they were pretty much forgotten already. And yet in the 1930s, the two of them, first at Harvard and then at University of Pennsylvania did some incredible work to actually challenge this idea that airborne infection was not anything real, or at least nothing really to worry about. Because once the miasmas have been cleared away, people who embrace the germ theory of disease said, look, we've got cholera in water. We've got yellow fever in mosquitoes. We've got syphilis in sex. We have all these ways that germs can get from one person to the next. We don't need to worry about the air anymore. Relax. And William Wells thought, I don't know if that's true. And we actually invented a new device for actually sampling the air, a very clever kind of centrifuge. And he started to discover, actually, there's a lot of stuff floating around in the air.Carl Zimmer (12:37):And then with a medical student of his, Richard Riley started to develop a physical model. How does this happen? Well, you and I are talking, as we are talking we are expelling tiny droplets, and those droplets can potentially contain pathogens. We can sneeze out big droplets or cough them too. Really big droplets might fall to the floor, but lots of other droplets will float. They might be pushed along by our breath like in a cloud, or they just may be so light, they just resist gravity. And so, this was the basic idea that he put forward. And then he made real headlines by saying, well, maybe there's something that we can do to these germs while they're still in the air to protect our own health. In the same way you'd protect water so that you don't get cholera. And he stumbled on ultraviolet light. So basically, you could totally knock out influenza and a bunch of other pathogens just by hitting these droplets in the air with light. And so, the Wells, they were very difficult to work with. They got thrown out of Harvard. Fortunately, they got hired at Penn, and they lasted there just long enough that they could run an experiment in some schools around Philadelphia. And they put up ultraviolet lamps in the classrooms. And those kids did not get hit by huge measles outbreak that swept through Philadelphia not long afterwards.Eric Topol (14:05):Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I had never heard of them. And here they were prescient. They did the experiments. They had this infection machine where they could put the animal in and blow in the air, and it was basically like the Koch's third postulate here of inducing the illness. He wrote a book, William and he's a pretty confident fellow quoted, ‘the book is not for here and now. It is from now on.' So he wasn't a really kind of a soft character. He was pretty strong, I guess. Do you think his kind of personality and all the difficulties that he and his wife had contributed to why their legacy was forgotten by most?Carl Zimmer (14:52):Yes. They were incredibly difficult to work with, and there's no biography of the Wellses. So I had to go into archives and find letters and unpublished documents and memos, and people will just say like, oh my goodness, these people are so unbearable. They just were fighting all the time. They were fighting with each other. They were peculiar, particularly William was terrible with language and just people couldn't deal with them. So because they were in these constant fights, they had very few friends. And when you have a big consensus against you and you don't have very many friends to not even to help you keep a job, it's not going to turn out well, unfortunately. They did themselves no favors, but it is still really remarkable and sad just how much they figured out, which was then dismissed and forgotten.Eric Topol (15:53):Yeah, I mean, I'm just amazed by it because it's telling about your legacy in science. You want to have friends, you want to be, I think, received well by your colleagues in your community. And when you're not, you could get buried, your work could get buried. And it kind of was until, for me, at least, your book Air-Borne. Now we go from that time, which is 60, 70 years ago, to fast forward H1N1 with Linsey Marr from Virginia Tech, who in 2009 was already looking back at the Wells work and saying, wait a minute there's something here that this doesn't compute, kind of thing. Can you give us the summary about Linsey? Of course, we're going to go to 2018 again all before the pandemic with Lydia, but let's first talk about Linsey.Linsey MarrSee my previous Ground Truths podcast with Prof Marr hereCarl Zimmer (16:52):Sure. So Linsey Marr belongs to this new generation of scientists in the 21st century who start to individually rediscover the Welles. And then in Lindsey Marr's case, she was studying air pollution. She's an atmospheric scientist and she's at Virginia Tech. And she and her husband are trying to juggle their jobs and raising a little kid, and their son is constantly coming home from daycare because he's constantly getting sick, or there's a bunch of kids who are sick there and so on. And that got Linsey Marr actually really curious like what's going on because they were being careful about washing objects and so on, and doing their best to keep the kids healthy. And she started looking into ideas about transmission of diseases. And she got very interested in the flu because in 2009, there was a new pandemic, in other words that you had this new strain of influenza surging throughout the world. And so, she said, well, let me look at what people are saying. And as soon as she started looking at it, she just said, well, people are saying things that as a physicist I know make no sense. They're saying that droplets bigger than five microns just plummet to the ground.Carl Zimmer (18:21):And in a way that was part of a sort of a general rejection of airborne transmission. And she said, look, I teach this every year. I just go to the blackboard and derive a formula to show that particles much bigger than this can stay airborne. So there's something really wrong here. And she started spending more and more time studying airborne disease, and she kept seeing the Welles as being cited. And she was like, who are these? Didn't know who they were. And she had to dig back because finding his book is not easy, I will tell you that. You can't buy it on Amazon. It's like it was a total flop.Eric Topol (18:59):Wow.Carl Zimmer (19:00):And eventually she started reading his papers and getting deeper in it, and she was like, huh. He was pretty smart. And he didn't say any of the things that people today are claiming he said. There's a big disconnect here. And that led her into join a very small group of people who really were taking the idea of airborne infection seriously, in the early 2000s.Lydia BourouibaEric Topol (19:24):Yeah, I mean, it's pretty incredible because had we listened to her early on in the pandemic and many others that we're going to get into, this wouldn't have gone years of neglect of airborne transmission of Covid. Now, in 2018, there was, I guess, a really important TEDMED talk by Lydia. I don't know how you pronounce her last name, Bourouiba or something. Oh, yeah. And she basically presented graphically. Of course, all this stuff is more strained for people to believe because of the invisibility story, but she, I guess, gave demos that were highly convincing to her audience if only more people were in her audience. Right?Carl Zimmer (20:09):That's right. That's right. Yeah. So Lydia was, again, not an infectious disease expert at first. She was actually trained as a physicist. She studied turbulence like what you get in spinning galaxies or spinning water in a bathtub as it goes down the drain. But she was very taken aback by the SARS outbreak in 2003, which did hit Canada where she was a student.Carl Zimmer (20:40):And it really got her getting interested in infectious diseases, emerging diseases, and asking herself, what tools can I bring from physics to this? And she's looked into a lot of different things, and she came to MIT and MIT is where Harold Edgerton built those magnificent stroboscope cameras. And we've all seen these stroboscope images of the droplets of milk frozen in space, or a bullet going through a card or things like that that he made in the 1930s and 1940s and so on. Well, one of the really famous images that was used by those cameras was a sneeze actually, around 1940. That was the first time many Americans would see these droplets frozen in space. Of course, they forgot them.Carl Zimmer (21:34):So she comes there and there's a whole center set up for this kind of high-speed visualization, and she starts playing with these cameras, and she starts doing experiments with things like breathing and sneezes and so on. But now she's using digital video, and she discovers that she goes and looks at William Wells and stuff. She's like, that's pretty good, but it's pretty simple. It's pretty crude. I mean, of course it is. It was in the 1930s. So she brings a whole new sophistication of physics to studying these things, which she finds that, especially with a sneeze, it sort of creates a new kind of physics. So you actually have a cloud that just shoots forward, and it even carries the bigger droplets with it. And it doesn't just go three feet and drop. In her studies looking at her video, it could go 10 feet, 20 feet, it could just keep going.Eric Topol (22:24):27 feet, I think I saw. Yeah, right.Carl Zimmer (22:26):Yeah. It just keeps on going. And so, in 2018, she gets up and at one of these TEDMED talks and gives this very impressive talk with lots of pictures. And I would say the world didn't really listen.Eric Topol (22:48):Geez and amazing. Now, the case that you, I think centered on to show how stupid we were, not everyone, not this group of 36, we're going to talk about not everyone, but the rest of the world, like the WHO and the CDC and others was this choir, the Skagit Valley Chorale in Washington state. Now, this was in March 2020 early on in the pandemic, there were 61 people exposed to one symptomatic person, and 52 were hit with Covid. 52 out of 61, only 8 didn't get Covid. 87% attack rate eventually was written up by an MMWR report that we'll link to. This is extraordinary because it defied the idea of that it could only be liquid droplets. So why couldn't this early event, which was so extraordinary, opened up people's mind that there's not this six-foot rule and it's all these liquid droplets and the rest of the whole story that was wrong.Carl Zimmer (24:10):I think there's a whole world of psychological research to be done on why people accept or don't accept scientific research and I'm not just talking about the public. This is a question about how science itself works, because there were lots of scientists who looked at the claims that Linsey Marr and others made about the Skagit Valley Chorale outbreak and said, I don't know, I'm not convinced. You didn't culture viable virus from the air. How do you really know? Really, people have said that in print. So it does raise the question of a deep question, I think about how does science judge what the right standard of proof is to interpret things like how diseases spread and also how to set public health policy. But you're certainly right that and March 10th, there was this outbreak, and by the end of March, it had started to make news and because the public health workers were figuring out all the people who were sick and so on, and people like Linsey Marr were like, this kind of looks like airborne to me, but they wanted to do a closer study of it. But still at that same time, places like the World Health Organization (WHO) were really insisting Covid is not airborne.“This is so mind-boggling to me. It just made it obvious that they [WHO] were full of s**t.”—Jose-Luis JimenezGetting It Wrong, Terribly WrongEric Topol (25:56):It's amazing. I mean, one of the quotes that there was, another one grabbed me in the book, in that group of the people that did air research understanding this whole field, the leaders, there's a fellow Jose-Luis Jimenez from University of Colorado Boulder, he said, ‘this is so mind-boggling to me. It just made it obvious that they were full of s**t.' Now, that's basically what he's saying about these people that are holding onto this liquid droplet crap and that there's no airborne. But we know, for example, when you can't see cigarette smoke, you can't see the perfume odor, but you can smell it that there's stuff in the air, it's airborne, and it's not necessarily three or six feet away. There's something here that doesn't compute in people's minds. And by the way, even by March and April, there were videos like the one that Lydia showed in 2018 that we're circling around to show, hey, this stuff is all over the place. It's not just the mouth going to the other person. So then this group of 36 got together, which included the people we were talking about, other people who I know, like Joe Allen and many really great contributors, and they lobbied the CDC and the WHO to get with it, but it seemed like it took two years.Carl Zimmer (27:32):It was a slow process, yes. Yes. Because well, I mean, the reason that they got together and sort of formed this band is because early on, even at the end of January, beginning of February 2020, people like Joe Allen, people like Linsey Marr, people like Lidia Morawska in Australia, they were trying to raise the alarm. And so, they would say like, oh, I will write up my concerns and I will get it published somewhere. And journals would reject them and reject them and reject them. They'd say, well, we know this isn't true. Or they'd say like, oh, they're already looking into it. Don't worry about it. This is not a reason for concern. All of them independently kept getting rejected. And then at the same time, the World Health Organization was going out of their way to insist that Covid is not airborne. And so, Lidia Morawska just said like, we have to do something. And she, from her home in Australia, marshaled first this group of 36 people, and they tried to get the World Health Organization to listen to them, and they really felt very rebuffed it didn't really work out. So then they went public with a very strong open letter. And the New York Times and other publications covered that and that really started to get things moving. But still, these guidelines and so on were incredibly slow to be updated, let alone what people might actually do to sort of safeguard us from an airborne disease.Eric Topol (29:15):Well, yeah, I mean, we went from March 2020 when it was Captain Obvious with the choir to the end of 2021 with Omicron before this got recognized, which is amazing to me when you look back, right? That here you've got millions of people dying and getting infected, getting Long Covid, all this stuff, and we have this denial of what is the real way of transmission. Now, this was not just a science conflict, this is that we had people saying, you don't need to wear a mask. People like Jerome Adams, the Surgeon General, people like Tony Fauci before there was an adjustment later, oh, you don't need masks. You just stay more than six feet away. And meanwhile, the other parts of the world, as you pointed out in Japan with the three Cs, they're already into, hey, this is airborne and don't go into rooms indoors with a lot of people and clusters and whatnot. How could we be this far off where the leading public health, and this includes the CDC, are giving such bad guidance that basically was promoting Covid spread.Carl Zimmer (30:30):I think there are a number of different reasons, and I've tried to figure that out, and I've talked to people like Anthony Fauci to try to better understand what was going on. And there was a lot of ambiguity at the time and a lot of mixed signals. I think that also in the United States in particular, we were dealing with a really bad history of preparing for pandemics in the sense that the United States actually had said, we might need a lot of masks for a pandemic, which implicitly means that we acknowledge that the next pandemic might to some extent be airborne. At least our healthcare folks are going to need masks, good masks, and they stockpiled them, and then they started using them, and then they didn't really replace them very well, and supplies ran out, or they got old. So you had someone like Rick Bright who was a public health official in the administration in January 2020, trying to tell everybody, hey, we need masks.The Mess with MasksCarl Zimmer (31:56):And people are like, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. Look, if we have a problem with masks, he said this, and he recounted this later. Look, if the health workers run out of masks, we just tell the public just to not use masks and then we'll have enough for the health workers. And Bright was like, that makes no sense. That makes no sense. And lo and behold, there was a shortage among American health workers, and China was having its own health surge, so they were going to be helping us out, and it was chaos. And so, a lot of those messages about telling the public don't wear a mask was don't wear a mask, the healthcare workers need them, and we need to make sure they have enough. And if you think about that, there's a problem there.Carl Zimmer (32:51):Yeah, fine. Why don't the healthcare workers have their own independent supply of masks? And then we can sort of address the question, do masks work in the general community? Which is a legitimate scientific question. I know there are people who are say, oh, masks don't work. There's plenty of studies that show that they can reduce risk. But unfortunately, you actually had people like Fauci himself who were saying like, oh, you might see people wearing masks in other countries. I wouldn't do it. And then just a few weeks later when it was really clear just how bad things were getting, he turns around and says, people should wear masks. But Jerome Adams, who you mentioned, Surgeon General, he gets on TV and he's trying to wrap a cloth around his face and saying, look, you can make your own mask. And it was not ideal, shall we say?Eric Topol (33:55):Oh, no. It just led to mass confusion and the anti-science people were having just a field day for them to say that these are nincompoops. And it just really, when you look back, it's sad. Now, I didn't realize the history of the N95 speaking of healthcare workers and fitted masks, and that was back with the fashion from the bra. I mean, can you tell us about that? That's pretty interesting.Carl Zimmer (34:24):Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating story. So there was a woman who was working for 3M. She was consulting with them on just making new products, and she really liked the technology they used for making these sort of gift ribbons and sort of blown-fiber. And she's like, wow, you should think about other stuff. How about a bra? And so, they actually went forward with this sort of sprayed polyester fiber bra, which was getting much nicer than the kind of medieval stuff that women had to put up with before then. And then she's at the same time spending a lot of time in hospitals because a lot of her family was sick with various ailments, and she was looking at these doctors and nurses who were wearing masks, which just weren't fitting them very well. And she thought, wait a minute, you could take a bra cup and just basically fit it on people's faces.Carl Zimmer (35:29):She goes to 3M and is like, hey, what about this? And they're like, hmm, interesting. And at first it didn't seem actually like it worked well against viruses and other pathogens, but it was good on dust. So it started showing up in hardware stores in the 70s, and then there were further experiments that basically figured showed you could essentially kind of amazingly give the material a little static charge. And that was good enough that then if you put it on, it traps droplets that contain viruses and doesn't let them through. So N95s are a really good way to keep viruses from coming into your mouth or going out.Eric Topol (36:14):Yeah. Well, I mean it's striking too, because in the beginning, as you said, when there finally was some consensus that masks could help, there wasn't differentiation between cotton masks, surgical masks, KN95s. And so, all this added to the mix of ambiguity and confusion. So we get to the point finally that we understand the transmission. It took way too long. And that kind of tells the Covid story. And towards the end of the book, you're back at the Skagit Valley Chorale. It's a full circle, just amazing story. Now, it also brings up all lessons that we've learned and where we're headed with this whole knowledge of the aerobiome, which is fascinating. I didn't know that we breathe 2000 to 3000 gallons a day of air, each of us.Every Breath We TakeEric Topol (37:11):Wow, I didn't know. Well, of course, air is a vector for disease. And of course, going back to the Wells, the famous Wells that have been, you've brought them back to light about how we're aerial oysters. So these things in the air, which we're going to get to the California fires, for example, they travel a long ways. Right? We're not talking about six feet here. We're talking about, can you tell us a bit about that?Carl Zimmer (37:42):Well, yeah. So we are releasing living things into the air with every breath, but we're not the only ones. So I'm looking at you and I see beyond you the ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Every time those waves crash down on the surf, it's spewing up vast numbers of tiny droplets, kind of like the ocean's own lungs, spraying up droplets, some of which have bacteria and viruses and other living things. And those go up in the air. The wind catches them, and they blow around. Some of them go very, very high, many, many miles. Some of them go into the clouds and they do blow all over the place. And so, science is really starting to come into its own of studying the planetary wide pattern of the flow of life, not just for oceans, but from the ground, things come out of the ground all of the time. The soil is rich with microbes, and those are rising up. Of course, there's plants, we are familiar with plants having pollen, but plants themselves are also slathered in fungi and other organisms. They shed those into the air as well. And so, you just have this tremendous swirl of life that how high it can go, nobody's quite sure. They can certainly go up maybe 12 miles, some expeditions, rocket emissions have claimed to find them 40 miles in the air.Carl Zimmer (39:31):It's not clear, but we're talking 10, 20, 30 miles up is where all this life gets. So people call this the aerobiome, and we're living in it. It's like we're in an ocean and we're breathing in that ocean. And so, you are breathing in some of those organisms literally with every breath.Eric Topol (39:50):Yeah, no, it's extraordinary. I mean, it really widens, the book takes us so much more broad than the narrow world of Covid and how that got all off track and gives us the big picture. One of the things that happened more recently post Covid was finally in the US there was the commitment to make buildings safer. That is adopting the principles of ventilation filtration. And I wonder if you could comment at that. And also, do you use your CO2 monitor that you mentioned early in the book? Because a lot of people haven't gotten onto the CO2 monitor.Carl Zimmer (40:33):So yes, I do have a CO2 monitor. It's in the other room. And I take it with me partly to protect my own health, but also partly out of curiosity because carbon dioxide (CO2) in the room is actually a pretty good way of figuring out how much ventilation there is in the room and what your potential risk is of getting sick if someone is breathing out Covid or some other airborne disease. They're not that expensive and they're not that big. And taking them on planes is particularly illuminating. It's just incredible just how high the carbon dioxide rate goes up when you're sitting on the plane, they've closed the doors, you haven't taken off yet, shoots way up. Once again, the air and the filter system starts up, it starts going down, which is good, but then you land and back up again. But in terms of when we're not flying, we're spending a lot of our time indoors. Yeah, so you used the word commitment to describe quality standards.Eric Topol (41:38):What's missing is the money and the action, right?Carl Zimmer (41:42):I think, yeah. I think commitment is putting it a little strongly.Eric Topol (41:45):Yeah. Sorry.Carl Zimmer (41:45):Biden administration is setting targets. They're encouraging that that people meet certain targets. And those people you mentioned like Joe Allen at Harvard have actually been putting together standards like saying, okay, let's say that when you build a new school or a new building, let's say that you make sure that you don't get carbon dioxide readings above this rate. Let's try to get 14 liters per second per person of ventilated fresh air. And they're actually going further. They've actually said, now we think this should be law. We think these should be government mandates. We have government mandates for clean water. We have government mandates for clean food. We don't just say, it'd be nice if your bottled water didn't have cholera on it in it. We'll make a little prize. Who's got the least cholera in their water? We don't do that. We don't expect that. We expect more. We expect when you get the water or if you get anything, you expect it to be clean and you expect people to be following the law. So what Joseph Allen, Lidia Morawska, Linsey Marr and others are saying is like, okay, let's have a law.Eric Topol (43:13):Yeah. No, and I think that distinction, I've interviewed Joe Allen and Linsey Marr on Ground Truths, and they've made these points. And we need the commitment, I should say, we need the law because otherwise it's a good idea that doesn't get actualized. And we know how much keeping ventilation would make schools safer.Carl Zimmer (43:35):Just to jump in for a second, just to circle back to William and Mildred Wells, none of what I just said is new. William and Mildred Wells were saying over and over again in speeches they gave, in letters they wrote to friends they were like, we've had this incredible revolution in the early 1900s of getting clean water and clean food. Why don't we have clean air yet? We deserve clean air. Everyone deserves clean air. And so, really all that people like Linsey Marr and Joseph Allen and others are doing is trying to finally deliver on that call almost a century later.Eric Topol (44:17):Yeah, totally. That's amazing how it's taken all this time and how much disease and morbidity even death could have been prevented. Before I ask about planning for the future, I do want to get your comments about the dirty air with the particulate matter less than 2.5 particles and what we're seeing now with wildfires, of course in Los Angeles, but obviously they're just part of what we're seeing in many parts of the world and what that does, what carries so the dirty air, but also what we're now seeing with the crisis of climate change.Carl Zimmer (45:01):So if you inhale smoke from a wildfire, it's not going to start growing inside of you, but those particles are going to cause a lot of damage. They're going to cause a lot of inflammation. They can cause not just lung damage, but they can potentially cause a bunch of other medical issues. And unfortunately, climate change plus the increasing urbanization of these kinds of environments, like in Southern California where fires, it's a fire ecology already. That is going to be a recipe for more smoke in the air. We will be, unfortunately, seeing more fire. Here in the Northeast, we were dealing with really awful smoke coming all the way from Canada. So this is not a problem that respects borders. And even if there were no wildfires, we still have a huge global, terrible problem with particulate matter coming from cars and coal fire power plants and so on. Several million people, their lives are cut short every year, just day in, day out. And you can see pictures in places like Delhi and India and so on. But there are lots of avoidable deaths in the United States as well, because we're starting to realize that even what we thought were nice low levels of air pollution probably are still killing more people than we realized.Eric Topol (46:53):Yeah, I mean, just this week in Nature is a feature on how this dirty air pollution, the urbanization that's leading to brain damage, Alzheimer's, but also as you pointed out, it increases everything, all-cause mortality, cardiovascular, various cancers. I mean, it's just bad news.Carl Zimmer (47:15):And one way in which the aerobiome intersects with what we're talking about is that those little particles floating around, things can live on them and certain species can ride along on these little particles of pollution and then we inhale them. And there's some studies that seem to suggest that maybe pathogens are really benefiting from riding around on these. And also, the wildfire smoke is not just lofting, just bits of dead plant matter into the air. It's lofting vast numbers of bacteria and fungal spores into the air as well. And then those blow very, very far away. It's possible that long distance winds can deliver fungal spores and other microorganisms that can actually cause certain diseases, this Kawasaki disease or Valley fever and so on. Yeah, so everything we're doing is influencing the aerobiome. We're changing the world in so many ways. We're also changing the aerobiome.Eric Topol (48:30):Yeah. And to your point, there were several reports during the pandemic that air pollution potentiated SARS-CoV-2 infections because of that point that you're making that is as a carrier.Carl Zimmer (48:46):Well, I've seen some of those studies and it wasn't clear to me. I'm not sure that SARS-CoV-2 can really survive like long distances outdoors. But it may be that, it kind of weakens people and also sets up their lungs for a serious disease. I'm not as familiar with that research as I'd like to be.Eric Topol (49:11):Yeah, no, it could just be that because they have more inflammation of their lungs that they're just more sensitive to when they get the infection. But there seems like you said, to be some interactions between pathogens and polluted air. I don't know that we want to get into germ warfare because that's whole another topic, but you cover that well, it's very scary stuff.Carl Zimmer (49:37):It's the dark side of aerobiology.Eric Topol (49:39):Oh my gosh, yes. And then the last thing I wanted just to get into is, if we took this all seriously and learned, which we don't seem to do that well in some respects, wouldn't we change the way, for example, the way our cities, the way we increase our world of plants and vegetation, rather than just basically take it all down. What can we do in the future to make our ecosystem with air a healthier one?Carl Zimmer (50:17):I think that's a really important question. And it sounds odd, but that's only because it's unfamiliar. And even after all this time and after the rediscovery of a lot of scientists who had been long forgotten, there's still a lot we don't know. So there is suggestive research that when we breathe in air that's blowing over vegetation, forest and so on. That's actually in some ways good for our health. We do have a relationship with the air, and we've had it ever since our ancestors came out the water and started breathing with their lungs. And so, our immune systems may be tuned to not breathing in sterile air, but we don't understand the relationship. And so, I can't say like, oh, well, here's the prescription. We need to be doing this. We don't know.Eric Topol (51:21):Yeah. No, it's fascinating.Carl Zimmer (51:23):We should find out. And there are a few studies going on, but not many I would have to say. And the thing goes for how do we protect indoor spaces and so on? Well, we kind of have an idea of how airborne Covid is. Influenza, we're not that sure and there are lots of other diseases that we just don't know. And you certainly, if a disease is not traveling through the air at all, you don't want to take these measures. But we need to understand they're spread more and it's still very difficult to study these things.Eric Topol (52:00):Yeah, such a great point. Now before we wrap up, is there anything that you want to highlight that I haven't touched on in this amazing book?Carl Zimmer (52:14):I hope that when people read it, they sort of see that science is a messy process and there aren't that many clear villains and good guys in the sense that there can be people who are totally, almost insanely wrong in hindsight about some things and are brilliant visionaries in other ways. And one figure that I learned about was Max von Pettenkofer, who really did the research behind those carbon dioxide meters. He figured out in the mid-1800s that you could figure out the ventilation in a room by looking at the carbon dioxide. We call it the Pettenkofer number, how much CO2 is in the room. Visionary guy also totally refused to believe in the germ theory of disease. He shot it tooth in the nail even. He tried to convince people that cholera was airborne, and he did it. He took a vial. He was an old man. He took a vial full of cholera. The bacteria that caused cholera drank it down to prove his point. He didn't feel well afterwards, but he survived. And he said, that's proof. So this history of science is not the simple story that we imagine it to be.Eric Topol (53:32):Yeah. Well, congratulations. This was a tour de force. You had to put in a lot of work to pull this all together, and you're enlightening us about air like never before. So thanks so much for joining, Carl.Carl Zimmer (53:46):It was a real pleasure. Thanks for having me.**********************************************Thanks for listening, watching or reading Ground Truths. Your subscription is greatly appreciated.If you found this podcast interesting please share it!That makes the work involved in putting these together especially worthwhile.All content on Ground Truths—newsletters, analyses, and podcasts—is free, open-access.Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. And such support is becoming more vital In light of current changes of funding by US biomedical research at NIH and other governmental agencies. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

The avian flu outbreak is a fire drill that is showing how poorly the U.S. is prepared for the next pandemic. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury's editors recap last week's BioCentury Show conversation with Rick Bright, including the former BARDA director's insights on the opportunities for biotechs to help fill voids in surveillance, point-of-care diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics and the need for the government to provide leadership and funding to empower industry. They also discuss new SEC rules that will make reverse mergers less attractive; the Supreme Court's mifepristone ruling and a trio of neuro-focused stories -- one on FDA's guidance on presymptomatic Alzheimer's, another on an advisory committee's discussion about Eli Lilly's anti-amyloid therapy donanemab and a third focused on what neuroscience biotech companies need to consider when pitching VCs and pharmas. This week's podcast is sponsored by Nxera Pharma.0:01 - Sponsor Message: Nxera Pharma01:40 - Pandemic Prep Problems11:11 - Reverse Mergers15:43 - Alzheimer's25:31 - SCOTUS

Send us a Text Message.Just a few short years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc across the globe, leaving economies in tatters, claiming millions of lives, and fundamentally altering the world as we knew it. Yet, scarcely after the dust settled from that crisis, virologists are now raising urgent concerns.The specter of the bird flu looms large as it breaches the species barrier, with an alarming number of cows falling victim, and a recent human transmission case being confirmed.With a nearly 50% mortality rate according to @Yale Medicine, the bird flu is making global headlines.In the face of these developments, the question begs: how concerned should we be?Tune in to the latest episode of @CareTalk, featuring discussions with @David E. Williams and @John Driscoll, alongside guest @Rick Bright, Former Head of the @Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, as they delve into the escalating fears surrounding a potential new pandemic and the tangible threats posed by the bird flu.TOPICS(2:14) The last pandemic and sounding the alarm on Covid (5:41) What is the bird flu?(10:12) Why should Americans care about the bird flu?(13:16) Who's most at risk for contracting the bird flu?(15:48) How viruses and the bird flu evolve(17:55) Can we prevent the next pandemic?(20:44) The dangers of a slow response to bird flu(23:13) Screening and testing for the bird flu(25:06) How worried should we be about the bird flu?

With mice being the latest species to carry the disease, pandemic expert Rick Bright calls for stronger counter measures. “It's like PTSD from February 2020” he says. The authorities in the USA are responding too slow to the spread of H5N1 bird flu through its dairy farms – even mice are carrying the virus now, and not enough is known of how it is evolving and whether humans are threatened. He talks Roland through the complex political and public health issues. Child sacrifices in the Mayan empire a thousand years ago have been confirmed with DNA evidence from bones recovered in the 1960s from an underground pit. Some victims were twins, possibly indicating a brutal ritualistic re-enactment of an ancient myth involving divine twins. Geneticist Rodrigo Barquera describes the analysis. Mature orchids perform a unique form of offspring-care, feeding tiny seedlings with nutrients via networks of thread-like fungal hyphae in the soil, according to experiments conducted at Sheffield University. Mycologist Katie Field has been delving into this underground sustenance network. Geoscientists at the edge of the Arctic ocean are looking for ancient clues to the stability of the Atlantic circulation that brings critical warmth to Europe and the northern hemisphere. Could past changes help unravel the influence of global warming? Roland talks to Renata Lucchi in the control room of Research Vessel JOIDES Resolution. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Image: Mouse sitting on grain. Credit: SAEED KHAN/Getty Images)

An update on the current bird flu outbreak: it's still infecting wild birds, mammals and now several farmworkers in the United States. The virus does not appear to be transmitted between humans, but can we prevent further spread? And what are public health officials doing to contain it? Immunologist and virologist Rick Bright has been studying the bird flu for decades and tells Dr. Sanjay Gupta why he thinks more action is needed and who he thinks should be leading the charge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu, is spreading among dairy cows. It's been found in over 85 herds across 12 states and at least three farm workers have been sickened. While public health officials say the risk to humans remains low, concerns are growing. William Brangham discussed the threat with Rick Bright, former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

We read the report, and yes, 100% of all 148 pages of the CDC's report on myocarditis was redacted. Here are a few updates: the Wuhan lab has pioneered a new strain of covid that has a 100% kill streak in humanized mice. Why? Well, because they can. Another update, Matt Gaetz is highly concerned that the Department of Defense is covering up vaccine deaths and injuries. We are not going to give up on covid, because “when the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.” What does God's Word say? Proverbs 29:2When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan.Jeremiah 23:1-4  “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing, declares the Lord.Proverbs 29:12  If a ruler listens to falsehood, all his officials will be wicked.Proverbs 16:12  It is an abomination to kings to do evil, for the throne is established by righteousness.Episode 1,466 Links:Trudeau's Canada Threatens LIFE SENTENCES for “Hate”Send Your Neighbor To Prison For “WrongSpeak,” Get $2,000 From Taxpayers in State of Washington?This was the state of Canada in January 2022.  5 cops on top of one man because he wasn't wearing a mask. What a disgusting time this was.“The federal government has been violating the 1st Amendment on social media platforms, but it's almost impossible to sue government actors who censor Americans. I co=sponsored @repdanbishop's bill to give citizens power to hold government accountable in a court of law.”In a video from 2019, Dr. Anthony Fauci advocates for strategies to compel widespread acceptance of mRNA vaccines.  Notably, towards the end of the video, Rick Bright references an outbreak of a virus originating in China.My deep concern is that there is a coverup of vaccine injuries in the Department of Defense, and that they are playing games with the data so that we can't actually assess whether it's the vaccine or the ailment that is causing these acute conditions. Wouldn't it be a tragic thing to discover that we hurt people with the vaccine more so than the virus did?Trump Makes Shocking Statement on COVID Vaccines; He's getting roasted in the comments for writing this on Truth Social.Sample of the comments for those not on Truth Social"Securing the Upper Hand" // Conscience Project: Episode #24Patriots https://4Patriots.com/Todd Stay connected when the power goes out and get free shipping on orders over $97.   Alan's Soaps https://alanssoaps.com/TODD Use coupon code ‘TODD' to save an additional 10% off the bundle price. Bioptimizers https://bioptimizers.com/todd Use promo code TODD for 10% of your order and get up to 2 travel size bottles of Magnesium Breakthrough free.     Bonefrog  https://bonefrogcoffee.com/todd Use code TODD at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase and 15% on subscriptions.   Bulwark Capital  Bulwark Capital Management (bulwarkcapitalmgmt.com) Call 866-779-RISK or visit online to get their FREE Common Cents Investing Guide.     GreenHaven Interactive Digital Marketing https://greenhaveninteractive.com Your Worldclass Website Will Get Found on Google! Liver Health https://GetLiverHelp.com/Todd Try Liver Health Formula today and claim your FREE bottle of Nano Powered Omega 3 and bonus gift.  

No, that is not a trick question. This is a . . . company? entity? intel-op? . . . Whatever it really is, Pfizer has been allowed to do great harm to people, apparently allowed to run PREVIOUS harmful, deadly experiments on people--including kids!--without disclosing it all before the mRNA experiments. But, how did Pfizer go from a . . . thing . . . once investigated and fined by the government, exposed and criticized by CNN to a . . . thing . . . we are to believe is simply interested in helping us all be healthy? It's an important question because the mRNA is almost certainly killing enormous numbers of people and The Party wants all vaccines to be mRNA. Rest assured, whatever Pfizer actually is, God sees . . . Luke 8:16-18A Lamp on a Stand16 “No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. 17 For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. 18 Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they think they have will be taken from them.”[AUDIO] - Retired NBA All-Star John Stockton Says He Knows of 150 Pro Athletes Who've ‘Dropped Dead' Since COVID Vax Rollout, Claims ‘It May Be in The Thousands by Now'The best data analyst I have ever met continues to document what I consider to be a massive kill-off. I think I may have mentioned on occasion that The Party will never let go of the Covid Flu. Well, I was right . . . [AUDIO] - Dr Hilary Jones discusses the latest variant of Covid. He explains that the World Health Organisation believe it is more transmissible and has cold-like symptoms. Dr Hilary adds that the new variant should still show up on a Covid test.Want to know the depths of this psychosis? The Mockingbirds brought the CEO of Pfizer on TV as a regular guest to share his opinion on the mRNA injections--based, no doubt, in selfless compassion--and they pretended all of this never happened. Here's how much evil has been done through Pfizer. [AUDIO] - Dr. McCullough Our FDA, NIH, CDC Officials now work in the private sectorFormer FDA Chairman Scott Gottlieb is now on the board of Pfizer.Former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn joined Moderna.Dr. Rick Bright suppressed HCQ then joined the Rockefeller foundation.This happened in Greece: The Strange Death of a Female Navy CadetThese men served America. I wonder of they regret it. All too many servicemen are cautioning against their own kids entering the military [AUDIO] - United States Military staff discussing the vaccine injuries they've all suffered as a result of the Biden administration forcing vaccine mandates across the United States Military.This from way back in 2022[AUDIO] - Senator Alex Antic was a 2022 legend as he dared question the so called experts.Mocked the modeling.Highlighted the utter incompetence of a woke bureaucratic system.Demanded politicians work for the people not the agenda.And said: ‘It's time to drain the billabong'This is from this past week![AUDIO] - ABC Eye Witness News: Students in Paterson, New Jersey, are now required to wear masks as they return to class from their winter break. Officials cited low vaccination rates as a main concern but did not wear masks during a Tuesday briefing addressing the change.LOL, Tedros . . . LOL[AUDIO] - #COVID19 will no doubt still be a major topic of discussion, but I believe and hope that with the right efforts this will be the year the COVID19 public health emergency officially ends. Happy New Year.

Email us your questions: OsterholmUpdate@umn.edu We advised biden on the pandemic. Much work remains to face the next crisis (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, David Michaels, Rick Bright and Michael T. Osterholm, New York Times): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/opinion/covid-pandemic-failures.html Lisas's beautiful place: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/lisas-beautiful-place Donate to support this podcast: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/donate Browse the podcast and CIDRAP merchandise store: cidrap.umn.edu/shop

In tonight's episode of Liberty Station our host Bryce Eddy has a deep and sobering conversation with Peter Breggin. The discuss the Globalist Master Plan which includes CEPI, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, the WHO and a key player, Rick Bright. You can visit wearetheprey.com to get your copy of Peter's book. You can also visit breggin.com to see the resources and information Peter used in writing his book and his continued research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In tonight's episode of Liberty Station our host Bryce Eddy has a deep and sobering conversation with Peter Breggin. The discuss the Globalist Master Plan which includes CEPI, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, the WHO and a key player, Rick Bright.You can visit wearetheprey.com to get your copy of Peter's book.You can also visit breggin.com to see the resources and information Peter used in writing his book and his continued research.

Omicron continues to spread across the globe, now being found in 89 countries. Rick Bright of the Rockefeller Foundation joins to discuss the latest and what he is watching as the virus continues to spread. Plus, Nasdaq futures are tumbling—we figure out the factors behind the implied sell-off. And crude oil prices have been sinking. We speak with Energy Aspects' Amrita Sen about the moves.

Ali Velshi is joined by Philip Bump, National Correspondent at The Washington Post, Rep. David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island, Dr. Rick Bright, Senior Vice President of Pandemic Prevention and Response at The Rockefeller Foundation, Nse Ufot, CEO at New Georgia Project, Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania Attorney General, Hugo Lowell, Congressional Reporter at The Guardian, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, Founding Director at Boston University Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, Dorothy Roberts, Professor of Law, Sociology of Civil Rights and Africana studies at University of Pennsylvania, and, Errin Haines, Editor-at-Large at the 19th.

Ali Velshi is joined by Mary Ziegler, Author of ‘Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present', Alencia Johnson, Founder & Head of Impact at 1063 West Broad, Dr. Rick Bright, Senior Vice President of Pandemic Prevention and Response at The Rockefeller Foundation, Nancy Northup, President & CEO at Center for Reproductive Rights, Melissa Murray, Professor at NYU Law, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, and Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, Founding Director at Boston University Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research.

Ali Velshi is joined by Rep. Troy Carter, Democrat of Louisiana, CK Hoffler, CEO of The CK Hoffler Firm, Bobby Ghosh, Bloomberg Opinion Columnist, Dr. Rick Bright, Senior Vice President of Pandemic Prevention and Response at The Rockefeller Foundation, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver,  Democrat of Missouri, Brittney Cooper, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, and Ben Jealous, Former President and CEO of the NAACP.

It turns out that guys like Rick Bright and Tony Fauci have been looking for "something disruptive" to facilitate universal vaccination for a long time. In 2019, they spoke publicly on CSPAN about how their efforts to bring about such a scenario were "a decade in the making." It's almost as though COVID was a premeditated and manufactured crisis intended to facilitate a gReAt ReSeT and bring about a NEW new world order... Meanwhile... Pfizer scientists are privately admitting that natural immunity is superior to vaccination, vaccinated people are still dying from blot clots, and some people are absolutely convinced that the clot shot magnetizes your body. This is EPISODE 772 of So to Speak w/ Jared Howe!

Ali Velshi is joined by Texas State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, Congressman Hank Johnson, Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, New York Times reporter Katie Benner, Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker, Dr. Rick Bright, Dr. Celine Gounder, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman.

Ali Velshi is joined by Rep. Debbie Dingell, Rep. Barbara Lee, Texas State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, virologist Dr. Rick Bright, political columnist Rami Khouri, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, activist Rev. Dr. William Barber, NBC News senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny, webseries host Roland Martin, and Roger McNamee, an early investor in Google and Facebook. 

Guests: Bloomberg Government reporter Jack Fitzpatrick, Moody's Chief Economist, Mark Zandi, Bloomberg health reporter Cynthia Koons, Rick Bright, senior vice president of pandemic prevention and response at the Rockefeller Foundation, Caleb Melby, Bloomberg Investigations reporter, and Bloomberg Politics contributors Rick Davis and Jeanne Sheehan Zaino. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Guests: Bloomberg Government reporter Jack Fitzpatrick, Moody's Chief Economist, Mark Zandi, Bloomberg health reporter Cynthia Koons, Rick Bright, senior vice president of pandemic prevention and response at the Rockefeller Foundation, Caleb Melby, Bloomberg Investigations reporter, and Bloomberg Politics contributors Rick Davis and Jeanne Sheehan Zaino. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

In October 2020, Dr. Rick Bright resigned in protest as director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) because of the Trump administration's political interference in the COVID-19 response and their efforts to spread dangerous misinformation. Since then, Dr. Bright has joined The Rockefeller Foundation as senior vice president of pandemic prevention and response. Dr. Bright joined APHL CEO Scott Becker for a discussion as part of APHL's Member Assembly – this episode is a recording of that conversation.

Rick Bright, The Rockefeller Foundation Pandemic Prevention and Response Senior Vice President, says he's seen a complete 180 degree turnaround between the Biden and Trump administrations in their response to coronavirus. Michael Holland, Holland & Company Chairman, says we are in the early stages of a major recovery. Anna Han, Wells Fargo Securities Equity Strategist, says she is focused on earnings expectations. Blerina Uruci, Barclays Senior U.S. Economist, sifts through inflation concerns explaining sometimes the narrative is more dramatic than actual changes in the underlying data. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

A top Georgia election official methodically shot down a list of election conspiracy theories Pres. Trump aired in a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In the one-hour call Trump is heard pressuring Raffensperger, who is also a Republican, to “find” votes to overturn the election in Georgia and touted baseless election fraud claims multiple times. Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy joins AC360 to react to the President’s efforts to overturn the election he lost. Plus, over the past week one American died every 33 seconds from Covid-19. December was the deadliest month of the pandemic as the CDC says about 15.4 million vaccine doses have been distributed in the U.S. but only 4.5 million people have received their first doses, falling short of the 20 million Operation Warp Speed had hoped to have vaccinated by the end of 2020. Rick Bright is a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Advisory Board and is also an immunologist and vaccine researcher. He tells Anderson Cooper there hasn’t been a federal coordinated vaccination plan and program. Airdate: January 4, 2021 Guests: Sen. Chris Murphy Rick BrightTo learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Oscar-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney and coronavirus whistleblower Rick Bright join Christiane Amanpour to discuss their film, “Totally Under Control,” which investigates how political opportunism cost thousands of lives. Then, former Charlie Hebdo writer and journalist Caroline Fourest explains why she thinks the killing of a school teacher by a terrorist was an attack on a "symbol" of France. Walter Isaacson speaks to business technology reporter Kara Swisher about tech giants and how Facebook is now trying to step up, and stamp out the spread of conspiracy theories.To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy

Follow-up: humanist weddings can now have 15 attendees @7:44 Facebook bans QAnon @10:13 2020: there was the part where Pence said @12:15 The New England Journal of Medicine doesn't endorse Biden, but very much un-dorses the president. @18:48 GOP told to remove fake ballot boxes @22:57 Trump & Cronies: One of Trump's COVID treatments—which he called “miracles coming down from God”—was developed with a cell line derived from abortion tissue @32:25 Trump says he's now “immune” to COVID-19, which is probably false @37:23 Louie Gohmert: “The problem with socialism isn't just economic, It's atheism. The government has to be the God.” @39:08 HHS whistleblower Rick Bright has resigned. @41:29 Barrett Sen. Tammy Duckworth to point out to her colleagues that Barrett is someone who “appears to believe that my daughters shouldn't even exist.” @45:34 Coronavirus: Get your flu vaccine @49:46 White House reverses itself (surprise!) and is not blocking the FDA's safety guidelines @52:20 Alex Azar is holding meetings with scientists pushing for an aggressive reopening of the economy in order to get us to herd immunity @58:48 Contact tracing efforts are being thwarted because people have learned to not pick up the phone, wary of spam calls @1:00:28 the probable release of a few “so-so vaccines,” @1:01:58 World News: Algerian activist Yacine Mebarki has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for “inciting atheism,” @1:09:03 Mubarak Bala, president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, finally got to meet with his lawyer after being detained since May Sawan Masih, a man arrested for alleged blasphemy in Pakistan and sentenced to death, is acquitted. Final stories: Even Pat Robertson can be right once in a while @1:14:08

This is a vaccine 411 as the race for a Covid 19 and Coronavirus vaccine continues. Here are the latest developments. First, the numbers, 133 vaccines are in development. According to the World Health Organization, 10 have reached clinical trials in China, the U.K. and the U.S.. The remainder, 123 vaccines are in preclinical trials throughout the world. On this episode of Vaccine four one one encouraging news from Cambridge, Massachusetts based Moderna. In April, the U.S. government agency BARDA joined forces with biotechnology company Moderna, pledging 483 million dollars to accelerate the development of the vaccine. Remember Dr. Rick Bright? He headed BARDA when the agreement was reached and was then removed from his post and filed a whistleblower complaint that the federal government's response to the virus put politics over science.[00:00:50] Moderna would use the money to scale up production, hiring an additional 150 team members and moving from two ships a day, five days a week to three ships a day, seven days a week. The goal provide millions of doses a month in 2020 and tens of millions of doses a month in 2021. The Phase one trials began March 16th, with 45 volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 55. Madonna hoped to move to phase two in Q2 and phase three by the fall by May 18. The New York Times reported the potential vaccine was safe for humans and appeared to stimulate an immune response against the infection. And the latest on the Moderna vaccine. At the end of May, they began to recruit for phase two, enrolling 600 candidates. The potential vaccine should go into phase three trials in July, two months ahead of schedule. Phase three involves about 30000 people between 18 and 55. Corona Virus Taskforce member Dr. Fauci said the U.S. should have 100 million doses of this potential Cauvin 19 vaccine by the end of the year. Let's hope it works. For the latest updates, subscribe for Free to Vaccine for one one on your podcast app or ask your smart speaker to play the vaccine 411 podcast.[00:01:57] Sound that brands. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Obama takes another dig at Trump's corona response, while Trump fires back at the '60 Minutes' interview with whistleblower scientist Rick Bright. The House passes another $3T stimulus bill, while the Senate continues to hold on for a pause. Trump's kids question Biden and how long the Democrats will drag their feet with reopening the economy so Biden has a better chance in November. And watch your tennis balls, while playing during coronavirus. Privacy Policy and California Privacy Notice. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

The Hake Report, Fri. 5/15/20: Black mother (“mom”) vs. NYPD and MTA cops enforcing this dumb mask thing. Forced vaccinations coming? Hope not! Liberals have been pushing for it though! So-called “whistleblower” Rick Bright grandstands against non-mask-wearing Trump and AP-types love it.  Great calls: Earl calls Jesse fearless, and defends talking over the host. Frank from GA with a tip about an Ahmaud Arbery protest. Bobby from Nashville, TN, debates Joel on cops vs. free woman! Then quick calls from Craig from IL, Chris from AZ, and Mark from San Diego. Thanks!  PODCAST: Apple | Podcast Addict | Castbox | Stitcher | Spotify | PodBean | Google | RSS Feed  BLOG: https://www.thehakereport.com/blog/2020/5/15/unmasked-black-mom-vs-nypd-whos-wrong-fri-51520  VIDEO: https://youtu.be/V88cirLpmfw  Call in! 888-775-3773, live Sunday through Friday 9 AM (Los Angeles) https://thehakereport.com

The words of Dr. Rick Bright and businessman Mike Bowen at Thursday's House hearing come into full focus. Omar Moore talks about the connective tissue between those words and US corporations, Republicans and Donald Trump. The need to vote this November 3 in the US is more urgent than ever before: https://iwillvote.com May 15, 2020. The Politicrat YouTube page: https://bit.ly/3bfWk6V The Politicrat Facebook page: http://bit.ly/3bU1O7c The Politicrat blog: http://politicrat.politics.blog Tweet to Omar: http://twitter.com/thepopcornreel

Every Thursday, Howie Klein of Down with Tyranny and the Blue America PAC joins me to talk politics. Today, we continue our discussion started last week about the 2020 primary season (still going on) and the many great progressive candidates who still need your votes! Democrats had a great victory last week, with Kara Eastman winning her primary in Nebraska, but lost a seat in the special election to replace Katie Hill in CA-25. We'll begin as usual, with something funny, and the latest news which includes Rick Bright testifying before Congress today about the botched pandemic response by the Trump administration.

KPFA brings you a broadcast of the testimony of Dr. Richard Bright to the U.S. House Health Subcommittee of the Energy & Commerce Committee. Bright testified that the Trump administration slowed acquisition of samples of the virus and hampered scientific study, and that he was removed from his position leading the development of a coronavirus vaccine because of his insistence that the government was investing time into technologies that lacked scientific merit. Coverage hosted by Brian Edwards-Tiekert, Mitch Jeserich and Cat Brooks. The post Federal Biomedical Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright Testifies Before U.S. House Subcommittee on Health appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. The House Rules Committee debates a new $3 trillion coronavirus relief package and proxy voting Ousted vaccine expert Rick Bright testifies before Congress The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – May 14, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. The House Rules Committee debates a new $3 trillion coronavirus relief package and proxy voting Ousted vaccine expert Rick Bright testifies before Congress The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – May 14, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

Dr. Rick Bright testifies on Capitol Hill. Many states lift their stay-at-home orders as Americans plan to go out. Joe Biden claims he knew nothing about investigating Flynn. Former Trump Deputy National Security Advisor, KT McFarland joins us on Revolution: Trump, Washington and “We the People” and the Michael Flynn fallout. A Michigan barber gets his license revoked. Dallas salon owner Shelly Luther joins us on her journey to get justice.

Career government scientist-turned-whistleblower Rick Bright testified before Congress Thursday that without a stronger federal response to the coronavirus, 2020 could be the "darkest winter in modern history."Schools might not open everywhere in the fall, but some experts say keeping kids home is a health risk, too.Apple and Google want to develop technology to track the spread of COVID-19 while protecting individuals' privacy, while some states like North Dakota are developing their own apps.Plus, tips on social distancing from someone who's been doing it for 50 years: Billy Barr's movie recommendations spreadsheet.Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast's recap of today's hearing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and NPR One.Send your remembrance of a loved one to embedded@npr.org. Find and support your local public radio stationSign up for 'The New Normal' newsletterThis episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.

The experts want COVID-19 dead but with each day it becomes clearer that the perfect is not just getting in the way of the good, it's destroying lives. And the experts themselves - such as Queensland Chief Health officer Jeannette Young - may not be as pure as they make out to be. And don't get us started on the latest Trump whistleblower in the US. Oops. Too late.

Whistleblower and ousted vaccine Dr. Rick Bright testifies before Congress, condemning the Trump Admin's pandemic response so far and warning of “unprecedented illness and fatalities” should “we fail to develop a national coordinated response based in science.” There may be actual consequences for Senators involved in the pandemic insider trading scandal. A key anti-surveillance bill fails by one vote in the Senate. Trump doesn't get why Dr. Fauci is warning against sending children back to school, ignoring the mysterious Covid-related disease that has affected kids in 15 states so far. Trump's Covid-19 testing plan falls totally short. AOC calls for billionaires to pay taxes and Trumpers forgot to turn their brains on. Alex Morse LIVE on his campaign to represent MA-01 and how establishment Dem incumbent Richard Neal is harming the lives of his constituents, as well as Americans nationwide.Guest: Alex MorseCo-host: Michael Shure See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

FACT CHECK TRUMP/RICK BRIGHT TESTIMONY /INSIDER TRADING BY THE HEAD OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE ...... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/john3058/message

Ousted federal vaccine expert Dr. Rick Bright criticizes the Trump administration's handling of the pandemic during his congressional testimony. Medical researchers are rethinking the effect of the coronavirus on children. Sacramento is preparing to allow restaurants to set up tables on streets and in parking lots to give more room to diners. The pandemic is forever changing the way we fly, forcing the airline industry to adapt. Cats with the coronavirus may not show symptoms, infecting other cats. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mark Zaid, a Washington DC National Security attorney for over 25 years and the attorney who represented the whistleblower for President Trump's call with the president of Ukraine, joins the show to discuss the firing of Dr. Rick Bright. Dr. Bright was the director of the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and claims he was fired after expressing doubts over using hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus.

-- On the Show:-- Dr. Rick Bright, immunologist and virologist, joins David to discuss the status of the growing H5N1 bird flu spread, and the potential for a forthcoming pandemic-- President Joe Biden challenges Donald Trump to debate him, and Donald Trump appears to accept the challenge in a Truth Social post-- Arizona officials have reportedly been unable to physically get access to Rudy Giuliani in order to serve him criminal indictment papers-- Donald Trump defends Kristi Noem's dog-killing in an interview with Clay and Buck gone horribly wrong-- Todd Blanche, Donald Trump's lawyer, asks witness Michael Cohen whether he called him a "crying little sh!t," to which Cohen answered that it sounds like something he would say-- Failed former President Donald Trump is reported to have slept through Michael Cohen's testimony with his mouth hanging wide open-- Donald Trump's daily courthouse reading out loud routine fails badly-- Republican Congressman Cory Mills humiliates himself trying to run suck-up interference for Donald Trump at his criminal trial-- Vivek Ramaswamy's painful cringe defense of Donald Trump while on the PBD Podcast-- Voicemail caller defends and reassures David despite the recent furious RFK brain worm-related Membership cancellation-- On the Bonus Show: DOJ requests judge order Steve Bannon to start prison sentence, Alabama moves to ban lab-grown meat, Kristi Noem outlawed on six Native American reservations, much more...