00:02you know the more you dig into the stuff the more upsetting it gets so I gave this talk only
00:09once
00:09before about two weeks ago and I approached the black community I'd like to just talk straight
00:17and openly I was well aware as a physician that african-americans and other black and brown
00:26minority persons had a natural antipathy towards vaccines and I wanted to give them the science
00:34behind it so I ended up digging deeply into that issue so let me share some things that I knew
00:40some
00:41of these things but I did not know most of these things prior to this year many of you in
00:46the room
00:46I'm sure have heard of the Tuskegee experiments we all know that okay but there's a lot more than
00:51that I was curious as to why the antipathy was so strong so let me give you some examples of
00:57where
00:57vaccines have gone wrong for black and brown people so with the rubella vaccine race and ethnicity were
01:07shown to affect the antibody responses like at a higher level than compared to Europeans with the
01:13measles virus I think many people in this room they also had that same experience with pertussis was also
01:22the same with the in wheat they also had the same problem with the measles haemophilus influenza also
01:29had the same difference in their response and the hepatitis vaccine also had the similar different
01:35response amongst races specifically white boys were 64% less likely to have autism diagnosis relative to
01:42non-white boys when they gave the hepatitis vaccine to babies now literally as a physician I did not
01:51know this right here we have examples well documented in the scientific literature of six different
01:57vaccines that were affecting people differently based on their races now why is this important
02:04because when you read the language that the government is putting out about how to prioritize the vaccine the
02:10experimental biological agent they are making an overt and covert attempt to push this heavily on blacks and
02:20browns I'm going to give you some specific language because it is just shocking just bear with me one
02:33moment
02:35all right
02:40okay
02:42the CDC is telling the public at large that getting an experimental vaccine is a good thing but it's
02:51additionally telling black people to get it getting the vaccine is racial justice and it's an advantage
02:57now this is from the center for health security dot org interim framework for COVID-19 vaccine allocation and
03:07distribution in the US this is the government's words is that getting the vaccine early is social
03:14justice racial justice racial justice and I just have to say as a scientist I found it bizarre that we're
03:20talking about racial justice either something works scientifically or it doesn't there might be racial differences in terms of dosages
03:28we've seen that now in the prior six but how is it racial justice to sign up first for an
03:34experimental biological agent that we don't know
03:49you know
03:50you know in the same in this I believe is the same document yes in the exact same document they
03:55say
03:56the ultimate safety of an approved vaccine is not knowable until it has been administered to millions of people it
04:03is possible that certain adverse effects may occur more frequently in the
04:07certain population subgroups which may not be apparent until millions are vaccinated
04:13pharmacovigilance tracking trace systems will provide critical information that will inform adjustments to the to the allocation that literally is
04:22in the same document as let's give it to black folks first
04:25I you know you can't even make this stuff up
04:29yeah so they also said that so I was our words the most disenfranchised members of society are to be
04:38vaccinated first their words quote racial and ethnic minorities tribal incarcerated rural disabilities underinsured people work in school settings and
04:46nurses and we must prioritize blacks and latinos to reflect fairness and justice
04:51now I just find this so incredibly offensive we know exactly who falls from covid 19
05:00it's nursing home patients it's people with 2.6 per comorbidities per person is average
05:08people over 75 who are living in nursing homes this is who should get the vaccine first if you believe
05:12the vaccine is safe and effective that's it and I feel very offended on this because you know the people
05:19who they're going to target first honestly are my friends which are all the black nurses that I work with
05:23in the ERs because I've spent my whole career in the inner city and so they're all being told you
05:28got to line up you got to take this and I'm thinking to myself well you're about 45 years old
05:3150 years old you know you're in good health you're working every day why should you be prioritized there's no
05:35actual increased risk to the healthcare worker there is no actual increased risk to the healthcare worker there is no
05:38actual increased risk to the healthcare worker
05:38the risk we know who it is it's the 80 year old woman who's living in a nursing home or
05:43man who's living in a nursing home who's got bad heart bad lungs you know diabetes especially obesity is a
05:48big deal those people are high risk
05:50okay it's not your 45 year old nurse it's not your 35 year old cop okay and any other discussion
05:57I find very disingenuous now in case you didn't you know believe that you went further into these documents and
06:04you find the language that like they talk about targeting the black
06:07black community by understanding their their quote unquote vaccine hesitancy based on these prior issues with prior vaccines in Tuskegee
06:15but they have like actual policies they say this is from hhs.gov strategy for distributing COVID-19 vaccine they
06:26say we have to focus on targeting key populations and communities to ensure maximum vaccine acceptance and they talk about
06:33and they quote the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation about how to manipulate the media and
06:37and silence opposition to it and silence opposition to it and then they put very you know famous handsome you
06:43know celebrities saying they're going to take the vaccine Obama being one of them and it's very clear it's just
06:50very very clear what's going on so I say to you as a scientist do you want to be first
06:57if you want to be first to volunteer yourself for track and trace system enrolling yourself into a medical trial
07:05the better I don't think they want to do a very
07:05trial I don't think I explain that clearly let me back up in one second you if you take the
07:10vaccine you're being enrolled in a pharmacovigilance tracking system it means you have enrolled yourself in a medical trial which
07:18is fine if you are to be a good-hearted individual very altruistic and you want to enroll yourself into
07:23a medical trial fantastic I
07:25can tell you as a physician very very few people do that okay but if you want to do
07:30that that's fine. But most people are not aware that that's what they're doing.
07:34This pharmacovigilance tracking system tracks you for two years. It's set up by
07:38the Department of Defense. It was handed off to Oracle and Google to put the data
07:42together. How is it that people want to sign up for this system on an
07:47experimental, and how is giving it to black people fair racial justice? I don't
07:50know. Maybe someone smarter than me can figure that out.
07:56I also, it also put into, once I started reading these documents about, about what
08:01I thought was just pure racism in these documents, it kind of made it clearer to
08:05me why we were hearing so much about racial issues with COVID-19. In my
08:12experience as an ER doctor, I didn't see any real racial issues at all. We saw white
08:16people, Latino people, black people, every, you know, people got it. Basically, if you
08:20were old and frail, and you got it, you know, you were sick. But I never really
08:23saw racial difference, and that's not true. There are other things, obviously,
08:26that have racial differences. So I remember thinking, this is weird, you
08:29know, AOC would get forward and say, oh, you know, it's really bad against black
08:31people, this is terrible, and it's discrimination and all that. Here's what I
08:35want to say to that. It's true that in, there are many areas where black people
08:41were disproportionately affected by COVID-19. So an example I like to use was in
08:45New Orleans, Louisiana, where blacks made up 31% of the population, but they made up
08:4970% of the people admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. So on the left,
08:53they were saying this was because of racism. But when you look at the data,
08:58there does not yet appear, and I think never will appear, to be an independent
09:03race, to be an independent risk factor, right? We know what makes people really
09:07sick. It's diabetes and obesity primarily, and then, you know, other serious
09:10medical problems. Now, also living in a very crowded area, working in a very
09:15crowded area, the reason I don't think this is ever going to be shown to be a
09:19race problem, race problem, is things that you just know by common sense. One is, it's
09:24been all over the world, all races, okay? We can just start with that. Second is, in
09:29areas of the world where people are, have those high individual risk factors like
09:35diabetes or obesity and other illnesses, and the group risk factors such as living
09:40and working in tight quarters, it's not black people that get it at a worse rate,
09:44it's those people in those situations. So in Louisiana, it was black people, but in
09:49the UK, it was Middle Eastern and East Asian. Now, there's the people living in
09:54those crowded, dense areas that have diabetes. Those are the people, it didn't
09:58matter what the race was, it just mattered if you, if you had those individual or
10:01group risk factors. And of course, the irony of saying that this is really a
10:05racial problem is looking at the continent of Africa. For those of you who don't know
10:09it, the one continent that's been spared is Africa, except South Africa, but the
10:14rest of Africa is, you know, the death rates, you know, in Africa are extraordinarily
10:19low. For those of you who don't know this or haven't followed me yet on Twitter
10:23at America's Frontline Doctors, there's a lot of videos. One of my favorite is a talk
10:27we gave on Sub-Saharan Africa because people just don't know this. So in America, the
10:31death rates are in the like 800 range per million. In India, the death rates are
10:36around, if I might be slightly off on the numbers, around 70 per million, right? So
10:41it's 10% because they have a very liberal hydroxychloroquine policy. In Africa,
10:45Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest places in the world, no social distancing, no masks,
10:51no ICUs, they have a death rate of 1% of the Western nations. 1%, 1%, right? Now I believe
11:01it's due to widely available hydroxychloroquine. I don't think you can explain it for any other
11:05reason. But even if there's another reason, you certainly can't say that this affects black
11:09people worse.
