838. The Nuanced Vaccine Conversation Every Parent Deserves with Dr. Joel Warsh

29:10And so I just really did love that and loved learning about integrative medicine and really started practicing in that way and have been now for over a decade. But what you realize really quickly when you get into the integrative space is that everyone has questions about vaccines and the people that come to the office have more questions about vaccines. And as I even got onto social media in the last few years, that's what I get questions about all the time. And of course, over the last decade or so, certain last five years, it was a very censored topic and you couldn't talk about it. You couldn't mention the word vaccine.

29:42And that got really frustrating for me. And of course I could talk about things in my office, but I didn't really feel comfortable and almost nobody did talking about it online. And so it wasn't something that we could do. And then the pandemic happened and there was so much censorship and I don't know, I got really frustrated, I think like everybody else. And I just decided, well, I think I do need to do this. People have so many questions and really what's out there is really one-sided. It's really, you know, vaccines are the best thing ever and don't question them or the other, you know books are like the worst thing ever and ever take one for most parents who are in the middle or most people who are in the middle they have questions about vaccines they have concerns but they're not necessarily against vaccines in any way they just have questions and I wanted to write something that was balanced and I knew that if I was going to talk about it because it was so censored I had to be really really educated on it and I have been learning more about it over the last decade but really had to learn a lot for the book and so I never really thought I'd be talking about vaccines or be here, but, but we are here.

30:42And, uh, you know, that's, I guess the journey to talk about vaccines. Yeah. And we were saying just before we hopped on that I'm really glad that this is a top of, of conversation now, you know, I know it is a very heated topic. I understand that and still get censored sometimes, but as a mom, I just feel really grateful that, um, there are people like you and people do feel more and more comfortable to just ask the questions. And like you said, it's not necessarily, and very rarely I find that people are completely against vaccines. It's that we have questions and we're just, you know, using our own brains and wondering not only like why we get each one of them, but what are the side effects and what are the risks and what are the benefits and just all these things that I think are very natural to ask.

31:35I'm someone who I was born in 87. Um, can you talk to me about just the increase in vaccinations first and foremost, because I feel like the number that children are expected to get, um, before the age of 18 just feels incredibly high to me. Is there from your perspective, a reason why there's so many, um, and why that changed? I don't know what year it was, but, why that changed? Yeah. So it's a great question. Before I even get in that, I think it'd be good to say that, you know, I'm not against vaccines in any way. I, in the book, in my practice, when I'm talking, I have the same philosophy in general.

32:17It's that I just don't feel people should be forced to do anything they don't want to. I feel like it's our job, my job as a physician to inform people, to educate, to discuss, and to help people to make the best decision for them. And that's how it's done in the office. That's how it's in the book. I never tell people what to do and I don't feel like I should be telling people what to do. And, and, you know, obviously this topic can be so charged, but I just feel like that's kind of my general position on vaccines. And that's usually how I discuss them because I just don't feel like it should be something that we're required to do.

32:49And certainly we saw that during the pandemic as well with the forcing and all that, which kind of backfired in the end of the day. So that's always been my position. But yeah, I think that with vaccines, there certainly are a lot more now than there were when we were growing up. And most people, when they were growing up, you know, if it was 30, 40 years ago, they maybe had five to 10 in that range. And it was maybe three or four vaccines. And you might have had a couple of doses of each one. And unless you really, in healthcare, you might not have really thought about vaccines for about 20 years until the pandemic.

33:21And I think that really reignited the discussion and the debate and the concern around vaccines because a lot of people weren't really thinking about it. And then all of a sudden they were forced with a decision about a vaccine. And either they had one and had a reaction or had a friend that had a reaction or, you know, there are all sorts of different stories around the COVID vaccine. Or you had kids in the last few years and you look at the schedule, you go to the doctor's office and you're like, wait, how many, how many vaccines? Like how many do we have to do? And you start realizing that they're giving three, four, five, six vaccines in a visit.

33:51and there might be 30 to 40, even more, depending on if you're doing flu shots. So I don't think it's an unreasonable thing for a parent to say, well, look, how many vaccines? Do I need to be concerned? Is that too many? And that's what I get asked about a lot. You know, really, there is a concern from some parents about it being too many. And on the flip side, of course, I mean, more vaccines means we're protecting against more diseases. So it's obviously not all bad. All right. That's good. And a lot of these diseases that we're protecting against, we don't really see or don't see as much of anymore.

34:21So that's good. But the natural question, of course, is, is it too many or what could be the side effects or what's the cumulative effect? And I believe that in the world of vaccines and the big questions that we have, understanding the cumulative effects and the long term effects of vaccines is really the big questions, really the things that we don't have a good understanding of. from all my research and just, I would say, from common sense. Like, we have a pretty good understanding of the diseases. We know how many people get them every year. We know how serious they can be. We know the complications of these diseases in general.

34:58We know how decreased those have become over the years. We know some short-term side effects. But I don't think we have a very good understanding of the long-term effects. And I think that's a very reasonable question for parents to have and something that we should be really striving to get more information on. Cause I think it's a really important piece of the puzzle that we're missing. Yeah, I agree. Um, now when, I think, what would you say are besides the number of vaccines, what would you say are the most, um, like prominent concerns of parents who come to you in your office or who write you, What are their top concerns about the vaccines besides the number of them?

35:44The biggest concern in general, I think, is around chronic disease and the ingredients in vaccines. So I'd say, first, we have a chronic disease epidemic here. About 50 % of kids have a chronic disease. About three quarters of adults have a chronic disease, meaning allergies, autoimmune conditions, autism, ADHD, neurodevelopmental concerns, cancer. So we're seeing all of these things skyrocket at once. And any parent, any individual would ask the question, why? Like, why is this happening? What's going on? And there are many reasons, of course, for what's going on. There's a lot of changes that have happened.

36:24But there's continued over the last few decades and certainly a lot more in the recent news about concerns around vaccines and whether those could be related in some way. And we hear so much, oh, yeah, it's been debunked and it's settled. And then when you go look at the research, you realize that it hasn't really been studied all that much, certainly not in the best possible way. We don't have prospective trials in general. We don't have vaccinated versus unvaccinated studies following kids forward. So we don't have the best kind of data on a lot of these conditions. And mostly what we do have is pre-licensure.

36:59So before the vaccine hits the market, done by the company. and they're studying these vaccines for a few months, maybe a year or two if you're lucky, and never in combination, like the whole schedule. I mean, there's a lot of new vaccines even, so we don't have the cumulative effects. And then a reasonable parent who has a concern is wondering, okay, well, what effect could vaccines have on my child? I heard my friend got a vaccine and had this reaction after. I heard this other person thinks their kid got autism right after they had a vaccine. And these are out there. These are concerns that people have, and there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of similar stories.

37:32And I don't think it's unreasonable as a parent to wonder, given most of these diseases are super rare. And even if you get most of the diseases, you don't get very sick in general. Do I need to do all these? What are my risks? Am I putting my child at more risk by giving them a vaccine than not? These are all the questions that I think are running through parents' minds as they're trying to make decisions about vaccines. And it's really complicated when you don't hear a lot of debate, you don't hear a lot of discussion, you hear a lot of like safe and effective, just do it, and not a lot of understanding about these concerns and actual discussions about them.

38:09And I think that's really tough on parents when they do want to hear some deeper discussions and really feel acknowledged that their fears are not all just crazy, but maybe there is some long-term complications that are possible and what is that actual risk? Yeah, absolutely. Lately, I've been craving more simplicity, not just in my life, but in my nutrition too. It's really easy to feel disconnected when your cabinet is full of random powders and supplements and you're constantly questioning the labels, but that's why I really love cachava. It helps me simplify and feel more nourished without overthinking it.

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41:37only. Otherwise, 1.00 % APY applies. No min balance required. Chime card on-time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. Yeah, it's become, I think, since COVID pretty politicized and there's no room for nuance in this conversation. I think more and more it's happening, but I've felt that for a long time. You mentioned the ingredients. And so, you know, what from your perspective is concerning about the current ingredients? I know we're kind of in a time where, and please correct me if I'm wrong, they are looking at the ingredients like thimerosal, I believe, and removing those.

42:16What is concerning to you? What can we be hopeful about considering what the current administration is doing or what you're seeing the health department doing? I'm just curious from your perspective. Yeah. And you made a really important point there about COVID. And I think it's important to acknowledge that just given what happened during the pandemic and the messaging and the safe and effective kind of propaganda that was said over and over again, and then seeing the things that you were told not end up being true. I think it really opened up a lot of people's eyes to saying, wait, you're lying to me about this.

42:52You're saying this. Well, then what else are you lying to me about? What else do we need to look into? And that's what I think has happened now where you have opened up this Pandora's box of questions around vaccines in general. And there are just so many people that are saying, well, if you did that and you said this, then I don't trust you anymore. And we just seem trust plummet overall. And that leads you to question everything and the whole schedule, the ingredients in there. And that's where we are today. And I think that's a very unfortunate place to be. But there is this questioning of ingredients for sure.

43:27And I would say that the biggest concerns are probably around the adjuvants, the metals that are in there. So originally the big concern 20 years ago or so was mercury in vaccines or thimerosal. That was mostly taken out at that point when that concern was brought up, but it was still in some multi-dose flu vaccines, which are not given very commonly as about 4 % of the flu vaccines, but it still was in circulation. So recently they decided that they're not going to do that anymore. So that's the only one that they're looking at to take out? That was the only one that was left in. So they're taking it out of that because there are other flu shots available without it.

44:03So they're not using it anymore, at least from what they announced. But this is pretty recent. So I think the other big concern is aluminum. Any metal gives people pause and concern. And mainstream medicine says, oh, no, it's just a very, very small amount. It's nothing to be concerned about. You eat more every day. And it's true to some degree, for sure. I mean, we certainly are exposed to aluminum. It's natural. It's part of the environment. It's something that we do ingest on a daily basis in almost everything. But I think that does minimize the discussion a little bit because injecting something is not the same as ingesting it in your body's natural immune system is built to handle what you ingest, but not necessarily exactly the same in terms of injecting something past your natural barrier defense system.

44:52Obviously your body can handle some stuff, but it's not the exact same thing. And certainly it's not the same thing in the setting of there's a bunch of other ingredients in there and how those interact and affect your body. So yeah, most likely most people can handle it. It's a very small amount. But again, the question is when you're doing more vaccines, more vaccines with aluminum, are there some kids that their genetics predisposes them to having an issue with aluminum or whatever other ingredient? Are there some kids that maybe have a detoxification problem so they can't get rid of it. Maybe as we're adding more and more aluminum, it's not all getting out of the body in a timely enough fashion that it builds up to a high enough amount in some kids.

45:28And so those are the kinds of questions we should be asking. Not to say that we can never use aluminum or that it's dangerous, but to ask the question about danger and about concerns. That way we can make vaccines as safe as possible. Because if it does turn out that that is an issue, maybe there's another ingredient you could use in there instead that could still help the vaccine to work, but maybe be a little bit safer. So we should be able to ask those questions and we shouldn't be afraid to continue to study these things instead of just saying, oh, it's just safe. It's just a small amount because the reality is some people walk by a peanut, have a whiff and they have a full anaphylactic reaction.

46:03That's just a minuscule little particle. Most people can have it and it's fine, but not everybody. So maybe that's true of a vaccine too, or some ingredients in vaccines. And there's all sorts of ingredients and vaccines, there's a long list of them. And as you're adding more and more, even if it's one in a million of a serious reaction, which I don't think is true, but let's just say that's the number, because that's what you hear often, then, well, if you're getting more and more vaccines, that one in a million times one in a million times one in a million, it starts to add up, you have a compounding risk.

46:31And all of a sudden, it really quickly becomes one in 100 ,000 or one in 10 ,000. And when a lot of these diseases you don't even really see anymore, then intelligent, caring people say, well, okay, we have to weigh the risks versus the benefits. And it's not to say that we want you to get whooping cough or measles and die, but we have to ask, okay, so what is your risk of actually getting polio? Well, now what is your risk of having reaction from the vaccine? All right, well, let's weigh those things. And if the risk of getting polio is one in a hundred million, but the risk of a reaction is one in a hundred thousand, well, that might not be good odds.

47:06And we've done that calculation before, like the polio vaccine that we used to have, the oral one, was giving more people polio than polio. We haven't had polio in 40 years, but people were getting it from the oral polio vaccine. So they stopped using it because the risks just didn't outweigh the benefits. And that is the way that we should be framing this. Again, it's not good or bad. It's just there's a lot of chronic illness out there. There's a lot of concerns that people have. There's a lot of stories of a kid going in, getting a vaccine, having a serious reaction, at least that their parents feel like it was caused by a vaccine that could be right or they could be wrong.

47:40We should be listening to that and we should be looking into that and trying to make them as safe as possible. And that's just not what you ever hear out of medicine. You just hear, oh, they're safe. Just go do it. And that's not working for parents anymore. And now we're seeing the highest rates of unvaccinated kids and hesitancy we've ever seen because people don't trust medicine anymore. Yeah. Okay. So many questions there. I, for a parent coming to you, is there, this is a pretty niche question, but are there different, um, I assume like different pharmaceutical companies are making different versions of the same vaccine.

48:22Are ones, you know, safer than the other based on the amount of heavy metals in them? Or like, can we get that granular about this and like request a certain type of a particular vaccine? Or like, how far do we go in the research of this to be able to, if people do want to vaccinate or have to vaccinate at this point in terms of like sending their kids to school, like how deep can we go to make sure this is as safe as possible? And connected to that question is how do we know if our kids don't have great detox pathways? You know, do we test for that? What does that look like? What can we look out for?

48:59Yeah, so two great questions. So for the first part, for the most part with vaccines, there's not many options. So in general, there's maybe one or two different versions of most vaccines. So generally, you're not going to have an option. Most offices just carry one. Maybe some have two. So you can certainly ask. I mean, if there's a specific reason why you want a certain one, then you can ask your office. You can find it somewhere else if they don't have it. nobody's usually going to have any issue with that specifically. But doing a deep dive on the differences between them doesn't really exist all that much.

49:34I mean, the only thing that you might have is a comparison between the two. And generally, it's going to say, oh, they're about the same. They're equally safe. They're equally effective. That's why they're both on the market. So you don't generally have a deep dive in terms of safety between the two. And again, those are the right kinds of questions. I mean, I asked that in the book, too. I was like, well, okay, we just assume that it's a mix and match, right? It's like, oh, you can do this one and this one and that one. whatever you feel like doesn't really matter as long as you get in the different ones and and i would think that it would be reasonable if we could start studying different combinations maybe there's a lower risk of side effects for certain things maybe if you did one instead of three on a day that would decrease your risk of side effects like we just don't see a lot of those questions ever being asked in the literature so we don't know the answer and i mean in my office usually we use the ones with lower aluminum i mean that's the ones that i have because that's usually what people would want so we just don't order the other ones but whether that's safer or better i don't i don't know i mean right it's not like it's a huge difference you're still getting some aluminum in general and and nothing's proven that the aluminum is the problem in the first place so it's really just kind of a personal choice which is really the truth with a lot of this is if you want to do the regular schedule that's fine um you can and that's what's what's been recommended and and i and i never tell people not to do that because i think that's super arrogant.

50:48Like, oh yeah, Dr. Joel knows better than the CDC, right? And the CDC has studied vaccines, you know, for a long time. And a lot of smart people have come up with a schedule they feel like is best for your child. And I think if you want to follow that, that's totally reasonable. But if you want to do anything outside of that, you have to become educated as much as you can. And then you have to make a decision that feels right for you. And it's not necessarily going to based on specific data because no one's really ever studied slow schedules. So you kind of have to make a decision of what you feel is going to be best for you or your kid or how you weigh the risks versus the benefits for yourself.

51:29And ultimately, that's up to you because everything has a risk. Every vaccine you take has a risk. And every time you don't get a vaccine, well, you risk not having that protection. And maybe that would protect your child or somebody else, depending on the vaccine. So that makes it tough on parents because they don't have a crystal ball and their kid's healthy and they're like, well, I don't want to inject my kid and give them a problem, but I also don't want to not inject them and then they get measles and get really sick. So it puts you in a tough place sometimes because if you're just not sure what to do, you don't know the future.

51:58So you're not quite sure what the correct answer is. And ultimately, but you have to make that decision. You got to make a choice and you have to do it based on the information that we have. And we don't have all this long-term data, which I think we really need to make the exact fully educated decisions. But with informed consent, you just have to know the risks and the benefits as best as we know them and make a decision based on that. And to me, the big goal needs to be in the next few years to get that data and to push for that data and to get those studies. So that way we do have better information in the long run so we can improve things and we can make them safer and not have an arrogance to assume that we have the best vaccine, safest schedule we're ever going to have in the history of humanity.

52:38And maybe there are things we could do different in 10 years or change up the vaccines. Maybe some of them we don't need anymore or whatever. I mean, there's so many things that we could do to make it safer and better. And that should be our goal. And my goal is not to get people to get more vaccines or not to get vaccines. I don't think that makes sense. I don't care if kids get a thousand vaccines or zero, if that's what's best for them. But I think we need to figure out what that is. And smart people can completely disagree with what I say. And that's OK. And I'm always open to changing my mind.

53:08And again, I'm not here to say that you shouldn't get a vaccine. I'm just telling you what I've seen and what I've researched. And I'm always open to change depending on new information. But at least based on what I have seen, and I'm very confident that it's correct. We just don't have this good information on long-term safety. It's just never been done. And a lot of what is said about safety is it's not unsafe because we don't know that it's unsafe. So it's basically like we haven't studied it, therefore it's safe. And nothing says that it's unsafe, so therefore it's safe. And it's like, yeah, but you haven't studied it to make sure that it's safe in that way, but you're so conclusively saying it is safe, but you've never actually looked.

53:51So, you know, that's not safety. On that point around safety, I mean, they have the, the, where people can submit whether they've been injured from vaccination, VAERS, right? Correct. And, and so are they even considering that where, when they say it's safe, are they even considering the hundreds of thousands of people who have submitted those cases and also considering that people probably don't submit. So there's probably even more. So I guess, why does that exist just for quiet compensation? Or Or does that exist? Why? Why does that exist if we're not actually acknowledging that really in the grand scheme of things?

54:29Yeah. So VAERS, the vaccine reporting, it's an important part of vaccine safety monitoring because it's a first signal. It's something that people can submit what they feel like happened to them. So either the person, the doctor, the company. So it can catch things in theory, but it's just not a very good system. So it has caught things like myocarditis and other things. So it's possible that it can be useful. But again, it's self-report. So even if you had a vaccine today and you had a heart attack this afternoon, you could be like, oh, the vaccine did it. But it maybe has nothing to do with the vaccine, but you can still report it.

55:02So it's not the best kind of data. And I mean, the biggest, of course, downfall or shortcoming of that system is you have to think that something happened because of vaccine to even report in the first place. So the system is basically useless for long-term risks because if you get hepatitis B vaccine today and you get cancer in 10 years, why would you think that your cancer is related to a vaccine? You're not going to report that. So anything that's long-term risk isn't getting reported in the system. So autoimmune conditions, cancer, autism, ADHD, anything like that, you're not reporting any of that because it didn't happen right after a vaccine.

55:39So you're not thinking that it could be related. And that's not really what that system is for. that's what prospective studies are for. And we've never done those. You have to follow kids forward for a long time. And that's why in general, pharmaceutical companies, when they're making a new drug, follow those products for a long time before they hit the market, because they're worried that there's going to be some sort of long-term complication five or 10 years down the road. And to the best of their ability, in general, they're trying to see if that's true. So they follow people forward because they don't want to get sued.

56:10But with vaccines, you can't sue them really so they don't have liability and therefore they have no reason to do the long-term research they have no reason to look at things from that lens they have no reason to go back and try to make their product safer right now so that is just something that unless you understand that and you realize it you're like wait what like yeah I didn't know that shocking that's a shocking truth that kind of like yeah made me ill when I first heard it I I was like, oh, wow, they have no incentive to really care about that long-term effect at all. Right. So for those that don't know, in the early 80s, there was a lot of concern around vaccines.

56:56There were a lot of lawsuits pending and starting to come up, especially around the original DTP vaccine, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, around seizures and encephalitis and inflammation in the brain. And because of all these vaccine lawsuits, a lot of the companies decided to stop making vaccines because they were too worried about liability. And most of the companies were either going out of business or were going to stop making vaccines. So the government stepped in and decided that because they wanted vaccines and felt they needed them for public health, they would protect the companies. And the way they did that was by limiting their liability.

57:34So basically you can't sue them if you have a reaction or you think you had something that was caused by a vaccine. And you really would sue the government. So they set up a vaccine compensation program that you would sue the government if you had a reaction. And then that's how it would work. And in general, I mean, you could theoretically sue them, but it's really basically impossible. So you sue the government and that's how it works. And the problem with that is in America, in a capitalist type of society, the main check and balance for companies in general is just being sued. And so if they make a bad product or eventually it's found out to have problems, then you can sue them.

58:11And they either take that product off the market or they make it better because they don't want to keep getting sued. But with vaccines, that's not true. And it hasn't been true since the mid 80s. So. So you have this incentive from the company. It's not a nefarious one, but just the reality of economics that if they get a vaccine on the market, then it gets on the schedule, millions of kids get it, millions of the company, millions of the company, you get a vaccine, you get a vaccine, you get a vaccine, you get a vaccine, because there's no reason to do that. And that's where we sit today. Again, it's not an affair.

58:57It's just money. And when you're not really seeing these studies come out of the CDC or other locations, then who's studying it? Who's trying to make them better? There is nobody. And that's a big problem. We need that. But a company's never going to do that. Like, why would a pharma company be like, hey, let's spend billions of dollars, do a vaccinated versus unvaccinated trial, follow kids forward for 10 years, find a problem so that we can remove our product. Like, they're not going to do that. right so we have to do that and and and i don't think most people just realize that and because pharma is so big and so powerful and has so much money anything that comes out in sort of a negative light against vaccines that person uh gets deplatformed you get debunked they ruin your career they they say whatever it's crazy they look at your study and they they find all the holes in it and so there's this push and continued push to not look into vaccines and not talk about them.

59:47And that's happened over the last few decades. And we saw it very clearly now in like a bright spotlight with this new Henry Ford study that just came out where the author, the lead author looked at vaccines, very credible individual, very pro-vaccine individual, and didn't publish a study because he was just afraid to lose his job. And that's ultimately come out from secret, you know, camera footage from that recent documentary. And it's like, yeah, that's what's been happening. Like, you know, it's not that vaccines are bad. It's just that nobody has really been able to look at the potential issues to kind of push back.

1:00:24And so we're sitting here with more and more vaccines and not a lot of push to make them better. Right. Really quickly, part B of that question, can people look out for anything when looking at whether a child is not able to detoxify very well? Is it, you know, a certain test they can get? Is it certain symptoms, anything that you're seeing in your practice? Yeah, that's a great question. And thanks for bringing back to it. So it's the right question, right? It's really the right question. Like, how do we know which kids are the ones that are going to have a reaction and what can we do about it?

1:00:59And again, it's not something that's really ever been studied. And to me, that is the very logical thing that we should be studying to give parents confidence. Like who are the kids that having a reaction and why? Could we run any tests? What could we do? How do we know? How do we minimize it? Who are the kids that shouldn't get it? But that's never really been done, not to my knowledge. So I mean, to me, I always go with common sense type stuff. Well, first of all, kids that are more sensitive, so kids that have had lots of other issues, had a reaction to vaccine, have family history. I mean, they're just more sensitive, so I'd be more careful with those kids and maybe consider going slower with those kids.

1:01:33That's something you can talk to your doctor about. So there are genetic tests you can do for detoxification, but nothing is very specific to vaccines or very clearly related. So, I mean, obviously MTHFR is one of the things that people talk about, but there's so many pathways to detoxification that one test is just really not very useful for being like, oh, you took this test, you have this modification, therefore you shouldn't get vaccines. Like that's never been studied. I hope people do that. I mean, I really do. I hope that one day we can take a swab and be like, all right, you're the kid that's much more susceptible to vaccines, like go really slow.

1:02:06Don't start them early. Don't do them, whatever it is. I mean, that's what we should be doing. Like we don't want to give kids a bad reaction, right? So we do want to protect the kids that would be more sensitive. So yeah, there isn't a really good answer to that. I mean, it would also be good to know like, oh, here are the five supplements you could take to decrease your risk to have a reaction. But again, nothing like that's ever been studied. I always just, if parents ask me if they want to do it again, that's not been studied, but like, how do you support your natural detoxification? You poop, pee and sweat.

1:02:32So if they're older, you know, make sure they're getting outside, make sure they're moving, make sure you're drinking a lot of fluid. So you're not dehydrated when you go in, definitely don't go in when you're sick. Make sure you're going to the bathrooms with poops and pees. So magnesium could be helpful, vitamin C. These are the things that I just generally think are good for your general immune system and detoxification. So naturally they probably would be helpful for vaccine support as well, but, but never been studied. Right. So you don't actually know. But it would be great. Like, hey, if you took vitamin C, it decreased your risk of having a vaccine reaction by 5%.

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1:06:50Yeah, I know. Earlier, earlier you mentioned HEPB as an example, and it just makes me think about my, my son's first day of life and the decisions I had to make. And I'm choosing not to fully disclose how I'm approaching vaccines, though. Generally, I will say I'm taking an alternative approach and doing an alternative schedule, but I did refuse happy in the hospital on his first day of life. Um, and kind of, you know, pushed away anything else that was like, you know, an option to say no to. Um, you know, that one, that one to me is like one of the big ones that we're scratching our heads. Like why would a newborn need hep B if the mother is not positive for hep B or anything else like that?

1:07:41Um, are there, do you have any same thing to say about that? And then are there any other vaccines that from your perspective we could probably look at and be like, yeah, the risk, the risk of getting it is so, so low. I'm wondering if, you know, it's even necessary. And I know as a doctor, you can't say definitively, but something that you, you know, are any of those that you think about in that way? Yeah. So let's do the, we'll do HEPI first and then we'll do that second. But yeah, definitely have a lot to say about HEPI. I, of all the vaccines, of all the the recommendations, that's the one that I would say in general is fall to the least.

1:08:23The reason why hepatitis B was recommended at birth. So originally it was recommended just to high risk populations and it's passed on through blood and through needles and through sex. So generally that's how you would get it, but you can get it from, from contact with someone who has hepatitis B, so if they bleed on you. So that's possible. And absolutely, if you have a vaginal birth and you have hepatitis B, your baby's at very high risk. So that's where it started from. But even when they were recommending just for the high-risk population, there were still lots of cases of hep B. There are lots of cases of hep B out there.

1:09:03If a kid gets hepatitis B, it's very severe, very likely to be chronic, and very likely to have a severe complication. Not a lot of kids were getting it, but certainly some. And when they saw that there were still lots of hepatitis B out there, they decided, well, let's just give it to every kid from day one, and that will basically catch everybody because there are certainly some people that don't know they have hepatitis B. Maybe someone comes in contact with your kid who has hepatitis B, and there were still people getting it. And that did, by recommending to everybody early in life, it did decrease hepatitis B.

1:09:37I mean, we have a much lower rate of hepatitis B now than we did back then. So in that sense, it did work in terms of lowering the rate of hepatitis B. But the question is at the individual level, if you don't have hepatitis B, is it worth the risk of the vaccine for your baby when you don't have hepatitis B? Now, the counter argument from mainstream medicine will be, well, the test could be wrong. So you might not know they have hepatitis B. maybe you did the test and then you you got hepatitis b after that test um and so you you don't know it so those are real risks and i think those are things that need to be informed of a parent like hey you know you have a small risk if you had sexual contact with somebody else if you're not 100 sure of your partner so that's there but it's infinitely low risk and there are very few babies that get hepatitis b but it's there so i think it just needs to be informed um to the parent and some people might choose they want zero risk and so they'll give their kid the vaccine.

1:10:34But ultimately, if you don't have it, you're not giving it to your kid. And especially if you're not going to see a lot of people in the first few weeks, then the risk of that baby is low. Now, again, could somebody like walk into your house with hepatitis B and bleed on your baby and give it to them? Sure, that's possible. But I mean, again, those risks are super small. So I don't think we give enough thought in modern medicine to the risks from vaccines and how that might be negatively affecting you. And so just to willy-nilly give every baby a hepatitis B vaccine to me doesn't make a lot of sense.

1:11:06I think we should be focusing on high-risk children and it should be something that's offered, but, you know, since it's been done forever, but just not a requirement. A lot of countries don't give it to newborns unless they're at high risk. So I think that's totally reasonable and fine if you're giving it to kids later. And it is a school requirement, right? It is a school requirement in some states. So again, that's a weird one. I don't know. I don't know why they choose that one for school as opposed to some other things and you're pretty unlikely to get that in school um and and you know there there are other i mean in california they're like something like pneumococcus or hepatitis a you're more likely to get at school than hep b so it doesn't make a lot of sense but i don't know that the rules always make a lot of sense yeah from that that sense but i just think it's a weird one because the reality of it is you're really unlikely to get it when you're a kid uh you yes you could theoretically protect everybody but the question is at what cost.

1:11:57And that's what I think we just don't understand. And again, I think that's the hard part with these discussions is if the hepatitis B causes zero side effects, the vaccine, then, you know, probably should just give it to everybody. But that's not the reality of how things work. Everything has a risk. And if you're giving something to newborn baby, you really have to be quite sure that it's completely safe. And you look at the safety data for hep B and you look at the package insert and it's five days of safety studying on 147 kids. and you're like, that can't be true. That can't be what the safety study is based upon for licensure for this product.

1:12:29And yet even after Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, it actually is. And then you just sit there and you're like, okay, you're giving this to the baby based on that. That's not definitive enough proof. That's a big problem for me. It's so hard because we've done hepatitis B vaccines for so long, but you have to sit here and say, that can't be good enough for the future. We cannot just approve something for a newborn baby based on that safety data. We need something better. and we need to be able to reevaluate that. And maybe that means we don't give hepatitis B to every newborn. You can do it at two months or maybe move it back to like five or 10 years old, except for people that want it.

1:13:04I don't know what the right answer is. That's what needs to be discussed. But just pushing every parent to do it is pushing people away because a lot of parents say the exact same thing as you. Like, I don't have hepatitis B. My kid's not sexually active. Their chance of getting hepatitis B is one in 10 million, one in a hundred million. Like I get there's a risk, but like I don't, I think the risk from the vaccine is higher for my newborn baby. I don't want to do it. And you're setting the stage for this animosity between parents and medicine from day one, where they're having to make a choice of doing something against the recommendation.

1:13:33And that ultimately sets up this position of distrust, which is where we are. Because I think most people don't actually agree that they should be giving hepatitis B to their newborn baby and that they're being almost forced to do it. And that is a bad place to be, as opposed to saying, well, here is your risk. here's what we think. It's still recommended, but we don't require it. And here's why we recommend it, but here's what human may or may not need it. And I think that's a better place to be from a public health perspective in terms of trust. Completely. And yeah, I think that trust is gone.

1:14:07So that's kind of my long-winded answer to have been. I know there's a second part, but I'll let you jump in. Yeah. Just the second part, like would it, you know, you mentioned earlier, you know, polio is not around anymore, right? In the last 40 years, you said? Not in America so much. Yeah. There's still polio in the world, but we haven't had a case of wild polio in a long time. So why are we still getting it? Is it because it keeps it at bay? Like, what is the reasoning? It's just always been there. So they figure might as well just keep it going. Well, I think the theory is it's still in the world and they don't want to come back.

1:14:44So by keeping people vaccinated, then there's nowhere for the disease to go and it can't spread in the country. So I guess that's the reasoning, which is fair. I mean, it's not completely unreasonable. You know, you don't want polio to come back probably. But that also doesn't mean that we necessarily need to give three shots to newborn babies. Like maybe that means that since it's so rare, we can give it to older kids and just give them one. And then obviously, if it starts to come back, that might change. Maybe you got to bring it back to younger kids. But there's just a lot of things that haven't really been changed in a long time.

1:15:16And maybe we're just at a different place now where, again, it's not like I want a kid to have polio, but maybe a two-month-old doesn't need a polio shot. Like maybe that's one we can move back to later and reprioritize when we're adding in RSV vaccines and COVID vaccines and flu vaccines and all these other things that we didn't have. Like maybe the polio shot's not the one that a two-month-old needs to get. So that's kind of, I think, where we have to weigh things. And to your second part question, like, again, I can't ever tell someone what to do or not to do. You know, the CDC schedule is what it is.

1:15:44But when parents are trying to formulate a slow schedule, it's really, to me, about weighing risk versus benefits and trying to think about, OK, what can my kid actually get and what might kill them? And I think that's usually the way people think about things. And they generally weigh hepatitis B lower because the risk is pretty low. they generally wait rotavirus lower because you certainly can get rotavirus, but generally it's a diarrhea illness. And even in a really bad scenario, we have IV fluids here. So really low risk of very severe disease. Diphtheria, you know, we haven't really seen a lot of diphtheria in a while, but whooping cough.

1:16:15So there's diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis. Your baby is not really going to get tetanus. They're basically not going to get diphtheria. So it's really just for the whooping cough, which is one of the more important ones, I would say, if you're going to get a vaccine, because whooping cough certainly is around. Why is it combo? That's just how it's made. I mean, it's just been that way for a very long time. Yeah. But whooping cough is around. And if a newborn baby gets it, it's generally very severe and 50 % go to the hospital and some babies die. So it can be. I mean, most people just have a bad cough, but ideally you don't want your baby to get whooping cough.

1:16:45So of the vaccines that are available, that's certainly one that can help with some protection. um homophilus is extremely rare but but can be very severe so that's something people consider but just not very common pneumococcus is reasonably common and could be severe so that's something that people consider and certainly measles um i would say is is probably the one that that the most people want to do but also most people have concerns about the mmr can we talk about that one yeah for sure so i'll just finish and then chickenpox is usually something that people less likely to do. So that's usually how people weigh it.

1:17:21But of course, everyone's going to weigh it a little differently. Less likely to do chickenpox because? Just generally chickenpox is not so severe. So severe. So they're okay with getting it. I mean, it's not around as much anymore, but most people had chickenpox and they are not super concerned with it. So from a public health standpoint, a lot of people can get it and you can get really sick. It's just not that common. So I would say if you're in the weight of, you know, know, you're saying which one people prioritize less. I think people put it lower, uh, than, than measles and whooping cough and, um, homophilus and pneumococcus.

1:17:52Okay. Yeah. MMR is definitely one of the ones I've, uh, been looking at and hearing about, I think the most probably. Um, and so from your perspective, is this something that people in terms of what it protects against people should be concerned about, you know, in terms of like weighing, weighing the risk? And why are people concerned to get the vaccine? Yeah, well, I think of the diseases that we can protect against, measles is generally the one that physicians are the most concerned about. I would say from the individual perspective, from a family perspective, measles is not something you need to be terrified of.

1:18:38I think that's something that's new and something that has happened because of the media. Before we ever had vaccines in early 1900s, millions and millions of people got measles every year. Very few people died. So maybe three to 400 people died. So as a deadly disease go, it's actually pretty low on the totem pole in terms of death. I mean, if you think about it in comparison, like the flu, tens of thousands of people die every year. So compared to that, it's not really that deadly. And generally, most people that get measles have a mild cold or mild symptoms don't even have symptoms. And so if you were to get measles, you're very unlikely to get super sick, but you certainly could.

1:19:20The problem with measles is that it's so contagious that it's passed to a lot of people. So if everyone's unvaccinated, you're in a room, like basically everyone's going to get it. and if thousands and hundreds of thousands of millions of people get it, some people get really sick and it has a reasonable risk of hospitalization. So, you know, really the big concern is pneumonia for measles. That's the major complication that is quite frequent. And so certainly a fair portion of kids that get measles go to the hospital. You can certainly get pneumonia. You can get very sick. You can die. It's not very common to die, but it's possible.

1:19:52So I think as diseases go, it's not something that you necessarily need to be terrified of, but it certainly is something that is a reasonable thing to respect and to understand because it does get passed around and it can make people sick. And if a lot of people get it, then some get really sick. And so, and the vaccine works very well. So in terms of the vaccines that we have, it's about as effective as it can be. It's 97 plus percent effective. So generally, if you get the measles vaccine, you're not going to get measles. So, and what about the mumps and rubella? Same thing. So mumps and rubella, so it's very effective against rubella, but rubella is not generally a big concern.

1:20:30It's really only a concern for pregnant women. Otherwise it's just a mild cold. So, so usually for, for us in general, it's not a big deal, but for pregnant moms, it could be if you get rubella during your pregnancy. So that's really what that's for. Mumps, it's not as effective. So the vaccine wanes over time, but it's still reasonably effective. I think like like 70 to 90 % in that range. And most mumps is not very severe, but it certainly could be. So I think most of the people are getting the vaccine for the measles portion of it. And, you know, I probably don't want mumps, but not as concerning as maybe some of the other diseases.

1:21:03Right. So it's mostly for measles, I think, that people are doing that. And why now are parents concerned? I mean, I think there's the topic of autism and feeling like there's some connection there. But I guess from your perspective, is there any concern around this vaccine, ingredients, the fact there are three in there, what maybe concerns you? The concerns really started from the research in the late 90s, early 2000s, that like Andrew Wakefield and other studies that linked potentially the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine to autism. And ever since then, that's been a concern. The biggest concern I would say around MMR is that you are getting it around one years old to one and a half years old.

1:21:46That's the normal timeframe. frame. And that's usually when you start seeing symptoms of autism. So the question, the big question is really, is the vaccine causing autism or just getting it around the time when you might see things and people are blaming it on MMR when it really has nothing to do with it. The mainstream research that's been done thus far hasn't shown there to be a specific connection between MMR and vaccines. So we certainly don't have any definitive. I mean, there are many parents that have said that. So I don't think that should be out of the realm of concern. I'm not sure that that specific vaccine is any more of a cause than other vaccines.

1:22:16I don't know. Because again, it's not really been studied. I mean, we've never studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids. The only studies when it comes to autism are MMR or thimerosal versus kids that didn't get those, but in the setting of getting their other vaccines. So it's still really a complicated question that we need more research on. And I would say in the setting of vaccines in general, I think the answer is we just don't know. And I think we need to get that research done. I'm not sure that MMR is specifically a cause or contributor to autism, but I think that all vaccines should be studied and it may be part of that.

1:22:50But I'm not sure that MMR contributes more than the other ones. I don't know. It's impossible to know because we've never studied it. So it's just completely a guess. But I also think that we should listen to parents. And if there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of parents with the same story, that's important information that I think we should be listening to and not dismissing. And oftentimes these parents are called anti-vaxxers or crazy. And it's like, it doesn't even make any sense. These are people that literally went to get a vaccine and they believe that the vaccine caused a problem in their child.

1:23:20And it's insane to me that we would just dismiss that. They could be wrong, right? You could be wrong. You might've get, again, you might've get a vaccine this morning and have a heart attack this afternoon and could have nothing to do with it. You might've had a heart attack anyways that afternoon. But if all sorts of people are getting heart attacks the afternoon, if you're getting a vaccine, you should certainly look into it and make sure that it's not related. And when you have all these parents saying the same thing, instead of dismissing them, I think that's the data that we actually are missing to really figure out like, okay, this kid had a bad reaction to this vaccine.

1:23:50Why? What was it? It doesn't mean that every kid's gonna have a reaction to MMR, but maybe there's some kids with some genetics or some susceptibility that if you were to look in all those kids and run genetic tests and do whatever it was that it turns out to be like, maybe you'd find something like, oh, this kid has blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, genetic mutation. they have a bad reaction to MMRs or they have a bad reaction to have bees. Whatever it is, you could actually figure that out. And we have that technology now to probably figure out if it's related. So the first step is to even acknowledge that a problem could happen and then to start studying it.

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1:27:15I, okay. I want to, I know a lot of parents are kind of thinking about this. So you mentioned a few times the, like an alternative schedule or a slow schedule. And so I guess I want to talk about what that could look like and what's possible. Obviously I know there's a lot of different scenarios, whether you, um, start late, um, and like space them out, or you only do one shot per visit. Um, generally speaking, I guess, what are you recommending when parents come to you with this request that they do a slower schedule, just a, maybe a delayed schedule? Because I think a lot of parents are worried, you know, I, I have, we have school requirements.

1:27:59That's still a thing. A lot of states don't allow religious exemption now, and we can talk about exemptions in a moment, but what are you thinking about when you do a delayed or revised schedule for a patient? Yeah. In my practice, we have a little bit of everything. So I have patients that do the regular schedule. I have patients that do a slow schedule. Some people don't vaccinate. I would say majority do some sort of slow schedule at least. And they all look a little bit different because ultimately a slow schedule is parents' choice. There's no studied slow schedule. There's no like, oh, this is the way to do it.

1:28:40I mean, maybe the most popular one is the vaccine-friendly plan. But even that, you know, still a lot of people don't just follow that to the T. So I think it kind of comes up to each parent to think through what their comfort level is and how they want to move forward in terms of doing that because ultimately the doctor the only thing that's approved is the cdc schedule in america so that's the only thing that you can recommend anything outside of that just becomes a personal choice and so it just becomes a discussion and and it starts with the stuff we kind of talked about with weighing the risks versus the benefits i think is you know that's usually how i discuss it and that's usually how parents make their choices if i'm going to do just say one okay which one am i going to choose today what's most commonly done what is most likely for my child to get and what might kill them so that that's usually how people away things, but how they do it varies so much.

1:29:27And I'll talk about maybe the most common ones, but in terms of a slow schedule, that could mean starting later, like you mentioned. So for some people, they would say, well, you know, I don't want to do anything at birth. I don't really want to do anything at two months. I'm not really comfortable starting any vaccines till six months, or I'm not really comfortable starting any vaccines till they're two years old. And that's not really specifically based on anything, but that's just more their comfort level. And so that's where things could be different because you might just say, well, I don't feel comfortable till two.

1:29:53So I don't want to start till two. So that's one way to do a slow schedule. The other way would be to space out the individual vaccines more than would be on the CDC schedule. So if you're doing say three vaccines at two months old, you might just do one and then you might just be coming in more. So maybe instead of doing the regular schedule, which would be two months, four months, and six months, you might come in every month and just do one at a time. And you're still doing all the vaccines or most of them, but you're just not doing as many on one day. So you might do one at two months, one at three months, one at four months.

1:30:22And for school, you don't have to do the regular schedule. You just have to get them done by the time you go to school. So even if you follow a different schedule and you're like, well, you know, I don't want to start till my kid's six months old and I'm going to do one at a time. You can still get them all done by the time they're three or four when they go to school. And they don't care that you did them on an alternate schedule. They just care that they're done. So that's kind of the different ways to do it. I would say most commonly in my office, if people are doing a slow schedule, they do one at a time.

1:30:51They do one every month to two months, and they just kind of work their way through and do the ones that are required by school. A lot of people that do a slow schedule, either they just don't want too many vaccines on one day and they're a little more hesitant, or they don't really want to do the vaccines, but they need to do them for school. So they just kind of work their way through it and do it that way. And oftentimes the first one people do is whooping cough just because whooping cough is, I would say, the most concerning for a newborn in general, which is the most common. Then some do haemophilus, others do pneumococcus, and they might just go back and forth with those.

1:31:23They don't tend to do hepatitis B or rotavirus. Maybe they do hepatitis B later. And that's usually what they do for the first year. They just kind of go back between whooping cough, haemophilus, and pneumococcus. Maybe they'll do polio. Some people do a combo vaccine because there are vaccines that are like DTaP, haemophilus, polio. So you can do those together in one poke. Some people choose that. So it's pretty variable because it depends how many are doing it one day. How frequently are you comfortable coming in? Are you comfortable doing combination shots? I have a few in there and everyone has a little bit different comfort level there.

1:31:55Yeah. Yeah. And I love that, you know, you have a range of preferences in your practice. I'm curious just on that note, I, when I first had my son actually beforehand, I was looking for a pediatrician knowing that I wanted to just have like a delayed and alternative approach to vaccinations. No one would take me in their practice. Zero, zero in my neighborhood close by I'm in Brooklyn, New York. And so I had to find a concierge pediatrician that will come to my house and who has a practice where he, you know, can allow for, he has vaccinated patients all the way to people who don't vax. So what is that?

1:32:38Why aren't most doctors who have an office, et cetera, or maybe in certain States, not allowing people who want to do an alternative schedule, uh, into their practice? The reality of medicine right now is that there are just a lot of doctors digging in their heels and they don't want to take patients that don't want to do the regular vaccine schedule. So I would say - Because what do you think? Because they just don't feel like it's a good fit for them. They feel like if you don't believe in vaccines and you don't believe in science and you're not a good fit for them and you're going to be a problem patient.

1:33:14And so that's one aspect. The other aspect is they feel like if you're unvaccinated, you're a higher risk to their other patients. So therefore they don't want someone who's unvaccinated in their waiting room. So those are the big things that doctors quote. I don't agree with that personally. I think you should just be taking care of everybody. uh i think you know when you're medicine if you work in the hospital you're like oh someone just murdered somebody you still have to take care of them like that's just kind of how medicine's always been built so i think it's a little bit odd to not be taking care of kids just because of their vaccine status but really the only reason you you can't not see somebody so the only reason you can not discriminate is for like a protected class so your health choices vaccination status is not a protected class so technically you can choose to do that um and that's totally fine and legal.

1:34:00And ultimately you can decide who you serve. So for the most part, in most states, that's totally fine to do it. I just don't agree with it, but that's just how it is. I mean, ultimately, if you want to do an alternate schedule or you want to do anything different and your doctor is not even willing to talk to you about it, it's not a good doctor for you. So I think these are things you want to ask and recognize early because you really don't want to go to that office anyways. If you're going to have those preferences and want to have discussions and you need to go somewhere where they're willing to have discussions with you, it's not going to work anyways.

1:34:30So I think that's key is to ask those questions so you're not pushed up. But yeah, it's hard. I mean, I think if you're willing to do an alternate schedule, there's a good chunk of doctors that will do it. Not all, but a lot. If you don't want to do any vaccines, it's harder. There are not a ton of doctors that will take patients that are fully unvaccinated, but there certainly are some if you look for it. So that's why that's happening. I think it's unfortunate. I think it's pushing people away again from modern medicine. And I also think it's, creating a bigger divide when we need to come together.

1:35:00And I think that a lot of doctors are not understanding the concerns that parents have and they're dismissing them. And I think if you had more unvaccinated patients, you would understand the concerns a little bit more. And maybe you'd be a little bit, they would be a little bit more compassionate to those issues, because I certainly can say for sure, from my experience, like there's just a lot of things and a lot of questions that I learned over the years. And for sure, we learned basically nothing thing about vaccines in training. I mean, we learn what they are and some of the basic ingredients and the horrible diseases and how much better it is.

1:35:31And here's your magical schedule and go do it. Hurrah for vaccines. And that's it. And you don't really learn any of the other stuff. And mostly what you're saying is just repeating what you hear. And unless you actually go read it yourself, you don't really know. And the patients are the ones I think are really going to push that change because if doctors listen and read, they will see what patients are saying and they might start to understand a little more. They might not agree totally, but I find it really hard to believe that if doctors look at the autism research, they would say that it's totally settled and the science has been debunked.

1:36:04Like I just think that most people have heard that over and over again and they don't actually go look at it themselves. And when you go look at it, you're like, well, yeah, that's not really debunked. Like we need more research. And it doesn't mean that it causes autism or has anything to do with it, but you would think that you would look at that and say, well, that is definitely not the best kind of research that I thought that we had. Maybe it's not so crazy to do a little bit more research. And doctors are not bad people. It's not like there are people that want to harm you, right? These are people that want to help you.

1:36:30And so I think that ultimately we need to find that teamwork back. And we're on the same team. Like we're kids and parents and doctors, we're all here to help kids. And maybe not everyone agrees on how to get to that place, but we, we're just seeing more and more of a divide and more of a hatred of medicine and medicine is just not trusted. And that's not good. Like we, we shouldn't have all these doctors that are like, people are yelling at it and you see social media conversations are getting death threats. And it's like, this, this just doesn't make any sense. Like we shouldn't be here. We should be working together.

1:37:04Absolutely. Um, if I'm a parent, because I feel like this, this comes up for sure. And, or it's a hypothetical situation that parents who choose an alternate schedule, uh, imagine having with whether it's family members or friends say a parent chooses, um, an alternate schedule, say they don't want to vaccinate until, uh, two years old. Um, and they share this with a friend who their children are friends. Uh, and the friend is like, no, I can't have my kid hang around your kid if they're unvaccinated. Can we talk about why that's valid? I know every mom and dad's preference is valid. I agree with that.

1:37:49But in terms of the science behind certain vaccines, which ones are protecting you? And so therefore, if you have the vaccines, you're good, even if you're around vaccinated children, which ones are just kind of furthering the, um, the extinction of these diseases, if you will, what can they say or just hold as a truth for themselves? Because it feels like, it just feels like there's not a lot of logic in that or, you know, science behind that. It's more just like a preference. What would you say about that? Yeah, the hard part with vaccines is that almost all of us are so uneducated on the actual science of, sorry, of vaccines.

1:38:41And that conversation is so complicated and so nuanced. And it's not simple. It's not simple as like unvaccinated kid is going to harm you or you need to have vaccines. But it's not totally untrue either to say that there isn't some herd immunity and some concern for protection. So it's a really nuanced, difficult conversation and something that's probably not the easiest thing to convince your friend of that. I mean, you can certainly have conversations if you want to. And the more people that have conversations around vaccines, the more that we're going to be able to come together. And, you know, ultimately, the reason why I wrote the book in the first place was, again, not to convince anybody to do anything, but to be able to open up these conversations so that way it can be more mainstream and we can have an understanding of where people come from and why somebody might want to be unvaccinated so a doctor can understand that or where doctors are coming from or someone who wants you to be vaccinated is coming from.

1:39:35I think that's really important first step is understanding. So the more that we can talk about this, the more that it can help those conversations so people might have a little bit more empathy and understanding because ultimately a lot of vaccines don't protect anybody else. They just protect you. and and that is something that I don't think most people understand like you definitely get personal protection but they don't have any effect on herd immunity they don't protect anybody else and is that you said most vaccines are like that many of them are like that many vaccines you you can still be a carrier you can still pass it on even if you're vaccinated you just don't get the symptoms so like whooping cough for example you can still pass it on even if you had a whooping cough vaccine polio the polio vaccine doesn't protect anybody else it just protects you so So that's just how a lot of them work.

1:40:21Now, some of the vaccines do protect other people and things like measles, for example, it does decrease your risk of getting it and passing it on. So some of the vaccines are like that. And ultimately, if you are vaccinated, then generally you should be protected. So there's oftentimes not a ton of logic saying I can't be around somebody who is unvaccinated. If you have a specific concern, like I don't want my kid around you because I'm worried about measles and you're not vaccinated against measles like that, it's not completely unreasonable. requests, I don't necessarily agree with it. If they have the vaccine, they should be protected.

1:40:55They should be protected. So vaccines don't work 100%. It's possible you could get it. Some people can't get vaccines. Some people are too young to get vaccines. So there is a real herd immunity effect, and there certainly is a real argument to be made that you might be more concerned about certain diseases, and therefore you're not wanting to be around individuals like that. But there are a million diseases out there. There are lots of things we're not vaccinated for. There are a lot of things that adults are not vaccinated for. You're walking around, you probably haven't vaccinated against a lot of these things.

1:41:25And you're walking around today without those vaccines because they weren't even created when you were a kid. Right. So I think it's a little bit of a touchy subject, but ultimately doesn't always make a ton of sense when somebody says, and that's more based out of fear than really understanding the situation. So it's nuanced. I mean, there is something to be said about a social contract and protecting other people. And we do that with lots of other things. But at the same time, there's also something to be said for the fact that everybody has to do what they feel like is best in patient autonomy and decision making for your family and understanding if your kid maybe is more sensitive or you're worried about something.

1:42:01Because ultimately, you have a duty to protect others, but also protect your kid. And if you feel like your kid is at risk and there are too many vaccines and that's going to be an issue for them, then where's the line? And everyone's going to draw a different line as to what they're okay with. then you might say, well, everyone needs to get this vaccine. And you're like, okay, but then what about 10 vaccines or 30 vaccines or 50 vaccines? Like how many vaccines should people be forced to get? And maybe your child is the one that had a bad reaction to a vaccine last month. And so you're like, well, I don't want them to get them MMR vaccine because they just had a horrible reaction to a vaccine.

1:42:37And so should that parent be forced to give their kid the MMR vaccine? And then should you not spend time with that kid? because that kid's the sensitive kid that, you know, maybe shouldn't get the MMR vaccine in that scenario. Like it's so complicated. Like you could say, well, everybody who needs a kidney, well, there's a bunch of people out there that need a kidney. So you should have to give up your kidney because you can save somebody's life. Like that's true, right? So it's obviously not the same thing as doing a vaccine, but everyone has a different line of what they're willing to do for other people.

1:43:08And so it's very nuanced. And I don't think so clear cut, especially as we're having more and more vaccines and more and more chronic disease and more and more issues with the vaccines, then just to kind of force people to do something isn't to me the best way forward. It's education, it's discussion, it's informed consent, and then letting people make the decision that is right for them. And if you feel like you don't want to be around someone who's unvaccinated, that's your choice. And I think we should respect it. But I also think that people who have those concerns should understand what the research actually shows about vaccines.

1:43:43Because I think that if most people really understood that, they would think differently. And we saw that play out in COVID because some people were afraid to be around people that were unvaccinated. And then we realized that it didn't really matter. Like you still could be around somebody. You still could be vaccinated. You could still pass it on. And then over time, people were like, oh, okay, well then everyone starts hanging out again. but the reality is that's true of a lot of the other vaccines too where they don't protect transmission they don't stop it so you have a fear that's not really based in the science or the understanding of the research where there is no reason you can't necessarily be around someone who's unvaccinated because you could still pass on even who are vaccinated so that doesn't change what does change potentially for a good vaccine for a lot of these is well it decreases your risk if you get it so if you get the vaccine you have a lower risk to get this disease and it hopefully will keep you out of the hospital.

1:44:30That's what the vaccine does, but it doesn't stop you from passing it on. Um, and I think that if people knew that, then they would maybe have a little bit more empathy for those that choose not, not to vaccinate. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe not. I think, I think you're right. And also I think there since let's just say COVID, you know, because the media has played such a role in just shaping our understanding of truth and reality, you know, specific for certain people, depending on what media we're consuming. I think some people, even if they knew that they still would feel a type of way. And, um, that's why, but that's fine.

1:45:13Right. And that's, that is, this is my whole thing. I want like you, I'm sure you believe this too. Parents should have the right to have their preferences as a parent for any decision they make regarding their child who's under 18. Like that is totally okay. I think my issue is when we're made to do this without proper research and the like. And when, you know, I'm, I feel like I'm just speaking from my own experience. I'm in a state, I'm in a place, I'm in a city where this isn't commonplace. This isn't a conversation that I feel comfortable having with everyone. I have to find my little tiny groups of people who are okay with this discussion, who have kind of similar questions and preferences because it is so taboo.

1:46:04It is so, and I think what people are doing now, which is unfortunate, is just blanket labeling like, oh, so you want to do an alternative schedule. So you must be a supporter of this or you must believe in this. And it's just wild. I'm like, whoa, that went zero to a hundred. I just, I'm asking a question. Right, right. That's exactly how it is. And it's, you know, a million times better than it even was a year ago or half a year ago. And that, I mean, just circles back to why I wrote the book in the first place. Like that is the point. Like it's not to get you to, it's so we can have these conversations because these kinds of conversations on all kinds of different platforms are going to change that narrative and it's going to educate people of a little bit of a different perspective.

1:46:48And you don't have to agree. And I agree with what you said that like, you know, and this is what I think, like I could, you could read my whole book and you're like, well, you're still crazy. You know, you're a kook, anti-vaxxer or whatever. And that's fine. And you can say, I don't want my kids hanging out with anybody unvaccinated. And that's totally fine. But I think if you could at least do that from an educated place of understanding what the research shows, and doesn't it come from me, You can read Paul Offit's book or whatever. But I think you need to have more than one perspective on this topic and understand where people are coming from.

1:47:15And also an understanding of some empathy that you might feel like everyone should be forced to do something. But there may come a day in the future where you are forced to do something that you don't want to do or you can't do or you're sensitive to. And when that day comes, you're going to understand the people that don't want to do this, how they feel. And ultimately, once you start the slope of forcing people to take a medical product against their will and against their choice, then that slope really quickly changes into, okay, well, it's only a couple of vaccines. Okay, well, now it's 30 vaccines.

1:47:49Okay, it's 100 vaccines. Okay, well, connect your brain to this thing. Do this other thing. Take off a finger. There are so many things that we can say, and it's the greater good, and therefore we say that you have to do it. and and I understand that vaccines have become somewhat of a religion but ultimately we have to bring that back to here's what the information says here are the pros and the cons choose to do it or don't and there's no real need at this point to do anything other than that if we had some massive outbreak that was killing everybody that may be different but ultimately if something was killing everybody then you wouldn't have to force anybody to do anything they would happily line up to take a vaccine so I generally you shouldn't need to force a product you should need to give them a present, a gift card.

1:48:27You should be able to give the information that says, all right, here's why you want to take this thing. Okay, I want to take this thing because I believe it's going to work. And I understand that here are my risks, but I'm choosing to do it. And there's no reason to do anything else because like, just think of cancer medication, right? Like chemotherapy, like we know there are risks, right? You go to the doctor and they say, all right, well, you have such and such cancer. Here's your chemotherapy. It might destroy your immune system. You might get sick and die. You might lose your hair. These things might happen, but we think that there's a 25 % chance that you might live.

1:48:59So this is why we're recommending it. And some people would say, no, I don't want to do chemotherapy. I don't care. Like I'm okay with my prognosis. Other people will be willing to try it, even though they know there are serious risks to that medication, but they're told the risks and they decide which one they want. And that needs to be the same way that we do. I think that the way that we do things for vaccines is you give the information and let people choose. And most people choose to vaccinate. Like most places don't force vaccines and almost everybody still does it. So I think there'd be a different discussion if like half people choose not to vaccinate, but it's like 1%.

1:49:33So it's not that high a percent that I think we need to move to the point where we need to force or even think about forcing anything. I think we need to move back to education. And I think if we stopped the ability to force things, that would bring the temperature down. in the vaccine conversation. Cause I feel like the biggest concern right now for a lot of people is look what happened during COVID. We were forced to do this. What happens next time? What happens when you force me to do the next thing? That to me is the concern. And I think if that wasn't as much of a concern and we could just focus back on safety and making vaccines better, then, then most people would be much more comfortable with the conversation and more comfortable on vaccines because they know we're trying to make them better.

1:50:12Mm-hmm. Last question. Are you hopeful with the current administration and specifically what they're doing in the health department related to vaccines? I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, I'm certainly hopeful that we're going to have changes. I mean, they are changing things. So I think that's very good. I would say when it comes to the new administration, we have a health epidemic. We have a chronic disease epidemic. The direction we're going was terrible. So we need to change and we're getting it. So I think that's good. I think we need a big shakeup when it comes to vaccines and a big shakeup when it comes to the information coming out of there.

1:50:52It still needs to be science-based. It's not always as science-based as it needs to be right now. And I still, I don't feel like there's a lot of communication and a lot of working with different organizations, different groups. Like ultimately we need to all work together And we need some leadership that makes changes, but also makes changes within the system, I think, to some degree and working with experts, too. So I think that not everything that's been done is amazing, but overall, it's moving in a better direction, I hope. And I think in the long run, it's probably a good thing. And especially in the vaccine world.

1:51:25I mean, no one was talking about this before. We're all talking about it now. So I think that's good and ultimately needs to be done for real change to happen. And is Secretary Kennedy going to be able to unilaterally make big changes? Probably not, because anything that he says that a lot of people aren't going to listen to, but still it's being heard and still it's out there and still it's forcing the conversation. So I think ultimately that's very good. And I do hope that this will lead to more research and will lead instead of definitive statements of things about vaccines to more of a, we'll hear some of the things that we think might be contributing to autism.

1:52:02therefore let's go get the research that we need to prove or disprove that theory and I hope that there's a push to launch some prospective studies that we can follow kids forward so we can have better data in 10 years and I hope that's more of what's done over the next couple of years than just trying to formulate based on the information that we have which we don't actually have and so I think it needs to be more of a discussion but yeah I think you know overall I think it's I'm happy that we're talking about it and I'm happy we're like, we're able to talk about this. We couldn't a few years ago, even a year ago.

1:52:34So I think that's good. I know I'm grateful as hard as it is in moments. I think overall, I'm super grateful to be, you know, one living at this time. And then also a mom at this time. I, I, I really feel like the fact that we are talking about this, the fact that, you know, there are physicians out there like you who, you know, leave room for nuance and bio-individuality in children and parents' preferences, I think is like really, really important. I'm really grateful to have you here. And thanks for your time and expertise. Where can people find you and find the book? Yeah. Thank you for having me on.

1:53:11And again, thanks for talking about this. I know it's a tough subject, but I hope that people at least learned a little bit and are not too angry. And if they're still there, I guess, hopefully, they're not too angry. You can find me at Dr. Joel Gator on Instagram or X. The book is Between a Shot and a Hard Place. You can get on Amazon or anywhere books are sold or theshotbook.com or my sub stack also called Between a Shot and a Hard Place where we had lots of conversations about vaccines and Children's Health. And that's been super cool because it's been doing amazingly well on sub stack. And I think that's just because people are open to talk about this stuff more, which has been cool to see so many people are following along and it's been great.

1:53:52Awesome. Thank you so, so much. You're the best. Thank you all for listening.

1:53:59Thank you so much, Joel Warsh. We appreciate you. He's Dr. Joel Gator on Instagram. His new book is Between a Shot and a Hard Place. Thank you for listening and just listening with an open mind. I feel like this is a conversation that hopefully, you know, put some of your worries at ease and also opened kind of your mind to, yeah, the alternative approaches to vaccinating your children as well as maybe quelling some of your fears because I definitely, definitely needed that as well. So again, share this with a friend. Maybe it's a good conversation starter. We appreciate you listening. You can follow us on Instagram at Almost 30 Podcast on TikTok as well.

1:54:44We're on YouTube. We're on video. Okay. We do our hair and makeup every single time. So watch it. Subscribe on YouTube. And I'm on Instagram at Lindsay Simsek. I'm Krista at It's Krista. Love you guys. Bye. Bye.

1:55:11Thank you.

1:55:40Bye.