Today we find that freedom is a common-sense way to live with an endemic
We look at that through the lens of Florida's Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and that is next
Hey, welcome back to the Barry Ferrell show it's great to have you with us. I hope you're doing great
Today, we're gonna look at a couple of strains of freedom and the thought around freedom with sound kovat prevention and treatment policy
I've watched governor DeSantis's
Approach and he's basically shown the world how to manage a pandemic effectively in Florida
I believe a governor should do what DeSantis did take the novel virus
Seriously mitigate wherever you can on all levels and honor freedom principles along the way
Honoring freedom principles is not anti-vax and it's not anti science
In fact by promoting freedom, you're able to honestly evaluate all sides of the equation and make better decisions based on truth
DeSantis recently appointed. Dr. Joseph Ladapo to the post of Surgeon General of Florida and he reports directly to the governor
He was snagged from a UCLA medical professor
He's no slacker
He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Wake Forest and an MD from Harvard Medical School and a PhD in health policy
From Harvard Kennedy School. His specialty is cardiovascular health. He's a certified
American Board of Internal Medicine doctor and now he's the head doctor of Florida as well as a tenured professor at the Florida College of Medicine
So why is he a big deal? Well, he wants to usher in a new era of battling kovat and any pandemic
He believes that it could set a model for other states to follow. The notion is that you can have sound medical science that stays patient
Focused and then it also honors all of the health including the health that is based on freedom
In other words, some of your very health is because you are free to express yourself, etc
He's published several articles an example of his thought can be found in an April 2021 op-ed that was published in the Wall Street Journal
The title of that is an American
epidemic of kovat mania
His primary point is that the overreaction to the virus reduced the impact and the importance of every other problem
He thinks that politicizing the pandemic cost a lot of lives
If the now proven preventive measures were allowed to be openly debated rather than shut down
They would have been shown to be effective early on and then they could be promoted and as a result many thousands who perished would
Have survived he doesn't think prolonging lockdowns would have helped and unless it's a surgical mask
He doesn't think that helps either but that's based on data
He says after all the CDC itself has proven that masks don't help that much in a number of their own studies
Since the illness is mostly a threat to the older population
He agreed with the Great Barrington Declaration
The mortality rate for people under 60 is very small and his point is that since kovat never really posed a serious threat to the young
That social and economic institutions should not have shut down
He says that compassion and realism need not be enemies
You can think you can be open about your conclusions and you can allow
For honest debate and do a better job of taking care of people in the end
So back to his op-ed kovat mania crowded out reasoned and wise
Policymaking and it crowded out liberty on the way
He says that kovat mania led many policymakers to treat Liberty as if it was a nuisance rather than a core American principle and
Health is linked to freedom and kovat mania has wrecked honest science and its influence on policy
While scientists passion for discovery has fueled research on the novel coronavirus
kovat mania has interpreted scientific advancements through an increasingly narrow frame if
It wasn't kovat related in the past year and a half. It took a back seat
There's only been one question. How can scientific findings be deployed to reduce kovat 19 spread it hasn't mattered
How impractical these measures might be?
Discoveries that might have helped save lives such as better outpatient therapies were ignored because they didn't fit the desired policy outcome a
Prime example is mask research. He points to California with a high rate of mask compliance did not reduce kovat cases
He also reveals that there have been a number of disturbing politically motivated statements made by scientists
For example before the vaccine trial data was even out
But to try to convince people to wear masks the director of the CDC declared that a face mask and this is a quote is
More guaranteed to protect against kovat than a kovat vaccine
Now we know how stupid that statement is
Kovat mania also creates unnecessary conflicts over vaccine mandates children are less likely to die of kovat
that they are drowning, car crashes, gun violence,
poisoning, or child suicide.
Children are not at risk of COVID.
They have never been so horribly frightened.
Masking children and foisting mandates upon them is foolish,
it's unnecessary, and it does not make any sense.
Dr. Ladapo had the courage to say,
look, all life is a risk,
but the risk for a child to get a vaccine is so low,
it does not outweigh the potential risk
that they could have an adverse reaction.
Without any politics,
if people could just be 100% honest,
he believes all the scientists
would be in 100% agreement of this statement,
because the logic is so strong.
Children are statistically at zero risk of COVID
when compared to anything else.
Vaccines have a higher than zero risk of an adverse reaction.
So you got a higher than zero risk and a zero risk.
Therefore, children should go for the zero risk
and not get a vaccine versus the higher than zero risk
and have a potential adverse reaction.
So he scolds his fellow scientists saying,
they're acting more like salesmen, not scientists.
All scientists know that you can't outrun variants,
because by definition,
a variant you don't know about until it comes upon us.
He also points to the crazy notion
that you can achieve zero risk at anything,
nonetheless with COVID and its variants.
He says the zero COVID strategy
of many in the establishment,
it's just not a rational strategy.
You can't really get a reasonable policy
from an unreasonable risk tolerance goal.
It's by definition, impossible to have zero influenza.
He's not against vaccines.
He just looks at them rationally in balance.
And he wishes that the professionals
who have similar analytical conclusions to his
would not be censored.
He concludes his argument with a refreshing belief.
Though the pandemic's been devastating for many Americans,
the policies grounded in COVID mania
have compounded the harm
and delayed a return to normal life.
The challenges ahead require rational decision-making
that considers costs and benefits
and keeps sight of the countless things in life that matter.
He says that's good for your health.
So that's the new Surgeon General of Florida.
He was born in Nigeria.
His family legally migrated to the United States
when he was five years old.
He studied, worked hard,
and he believes that freedom principles are a good balance,
that they help eliminate fear.
In fact, as he's been appointed
and making his rounds through the state
and being on all kinds of media,
he has been repeatedly stating
that there's a better optimistic view of public health.
He says that fear should not drive our decisions.
Fear actually hinders logical thought and analysis.
COVID's real, but it doesn't need to rule our lives.
So now, just for comparison,
let's look at China for just a minute.
China is the last large country
that has an actual zero COVID formal policy.
That means a single case can lead an entire city
of 8 million people to lockdown, be tested,
and cause all foreigners to be kept out.
And at this point, all foreigners that come in,
they are allowed in, but they must spend at least 14 days
in strict hotel quarantine.
In other words, you get a key to get in,
but they don't let you out of your hotel room for 14 days.
These draconian measures are predicted
to persist for most of 2022.
The Communist Party has several important events
that it doesn't wanna be disrupted by outbreaks,
including the Winter Olympics.
Plus, there's the early party, Congress, in November
when Xi gets ceremonially confirmed
as the country's leader again for another five years.
Now, if you look at, for example, in Xi'an,
it's a large city, I actually have been to Xi'an,
they have tightened already stringent lockdowns.
They have reported another 150
out of a population of 8.2 million
symptomatic COVID cases on Monday, December 28th.
What drives their COVID mania?
Well, the Chinese Communist Party
has delivered a COVID elimination message
as if that's possible.
They have too much invested
in condensing the massive population
that the virus cannot be tolerated.
The virus is too scary to allow even one person with it,
even if he doesn't have symptoms.
At the same time, no foreign vaccines have been approved.
So in China, you're left with the homegrown ones
that are less effective against Delta
and against the variant
that's causing all the trouble, Omicron.
But without an unprecedented amount of humility,
they can't back down.
They can't look to the science and change course.
They can't change the message
and convey that the vast majority live.
They can't adjust to a focused protection orientation
and figure out a way to live with it.
And the latest outbreaks are wreaking havoc
on holiday travel around the world, just Sunday.
Just December 27th, more than 2,400 flights were canceled or postponed, and that's because airline
crews were tested positive. And a whole bunch of U.S. airline crews are at home, totally healthy,
still on unpaid leave due to their unwillingness to take the vaccine. The majority of those
unvaccinated have superior natural immunity. They're healthy, they're willing to go back to
work, but never mind that logic. American and Chinese airlines were hit the hardest.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's top medical advisor, has warned that cases will continue to rise in
coming days. But now we have an alternative voice. Florida's top medical advisor, Dr. Ladapo.
Florida is arguably one of the most important states in the United States. It's the third
largest population behind California and Texas. And he doesn't follow in lockstep with Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci has displayed an almost continual voice for the centralized federal government's COVID
response. He's all over the map. From the beginning, there's so many things. I'm not
going to belabor you with the dozens of examples. I've just got one from just a couple months ago.
So he warned us sternly that we should not have family get-togethers over Thanksgiving and
Christmas. Don't get together over Christmas and Thanksgiving. It's bad. And then he reversed
himself a week later after he got national pushback for being too micro-controlling.
He had no scientific explanation. How is that for scientific? And upon his reversal, he said,
you can get together, but you still need to wear a mask at your grandma's house,
and you got to keep it on between bites of turkey and prime rib.
That was ridiculed. Then that big push was just dropped. The national spokesman on health should
just tell the truth. He shouldn't exaggerate the danger. He shouldn't skew the message to try to
force a certain type of behavior. Oh, so let's go back to Florida's Dr. Joseph Ladapo. The mainstream
media don't really like him. I wonder why. Well, he's against vaccine and vaccine mandates, but
it's not correct to say he's anti-vax. That's just not true. If you watch his interviews on YouTube,
you're going to find this pleasant, calm, poised, articulate man. He's a handsome guy. He happens to
have the skin pigmentation that most from Nigeria are born with. So it's really hard to call him a
racist. The media just don't like what he has to say. For example, the data, this is one of his
quotes, the data do not support any clinical benefit for children in schools with mask mandates.
So, you know, that clip went viral and it just happens to be true and backed by all kinds of
data. Dr. Ladapo has been consistent throughout the whole COVID virus. He's never gone back on
what he said before. He's been writing on the subject, giving interviews way before his recent
appointment. Dr. Fauci, on the other hand, has reversed himself at least a dozen times over the
past 21 months. And Fauci has reversed himself on a whole bunch of details of pandemic policy
without showing any data to support those reversals. Do you recall just back in August
of 2020, Dr. Fauci said, and this is a quote, the default position with K to 12 schools should be
to reopen them. In November and December that same year, he praised reopening schools in New York
City, though the city was in the middle of a COVID spike, famously saying, quote unquote,
closed bars, open schools. But Biden got elected. And in January, shortly after President Biden was
sworn in, Dr. Fauci met with teachers unions that month, and he unscientifically pushed for
reopening to be delayed until Biden's recovery bill had passed. Similarly, in August of 2020,
Dr. Fauci opposed mandating vaccines, the very position that gets Dr. Ladapo labeled an anti-vaxxer.
But Dr. Fauci said, I don't think you'll ever see mandating a vaccine, particularly for the general
public. If someone refuses the vaccine in the general public, then there's just nothing you
can do about that. You can't force someone to take a vaccine, end of his quote. But by September 2021,
Dr. Fauci was calling for more mandates. In fact, he's famously saying many, many more mandates.
That went viral too. Be openly, I mean, here's the problem with Dr. Fauci, by openly politicizing
national healthcare policy to fit the Democrats' political desires, he has really damaged health
officials' public trust. Perhaps Dr. Ladapo's measured consistency will help restore that.
For example, Dr. Fauci said that even post-vaccination, he wouldn't go to restaurants
or events. That's crazy. That wasn't true by the way he did, but it was a message of fear
and constraint and control that Dr. Fauci wanted to convey in an attempt to frighten people into
a certain behavior. During the same time, and now after he's taken on the new post in Florida,
Dr. Ladapo has been stressing the importance of living a healthy life. It's proven.
to be a very strong, potent, anti-viral.
I mean, it proves, it builds your immune system.
So Dr. Ladapo isn't in denial.
He says COVID is real.
But in context, he says COVID is a health risk people have to manage,
but so is cancer, strokes, heart disease, accidents, injuries, etc.
Continuing his quote,
that should have been the goal throughout the pandemic,
to live a fulfilling healthy life while managing risk.
End of his quote.
He's got good science to support his claim
that living well helps fight off all kinds of disease.
I mean, there's countless studies and unbelievable,
heartwarming stories proving this statement.
But I just watched this little, very fun documentary,
and I've got to share one real quick.
So one of the historically best river runners in the world,
Scott Lindgren, developed a brain tumor.
And they took most of it out, but they couldn't get all of it out.
So it started to grow back again,
and they said that they're going to have to be doing some radiation right away.
Instead, he went back at the age of 34,
and tackled the last hard unexplored river in the world,
the Tsangpo. Upon his return,
they found that the tumor didn't grow at all.
His attitude and living well helped him stay healthy.
Back to Dr. Ladapa.
He believes vaccines can be a useful tool to fight COVID,
especially for the high-risk groups.
He also believes in other tools,
like preventatively building up your immune system.
He also believes in treatments that are now proven to help reduce COVID severity.
This includes both the nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals.
And this is where the rub is against the establishment.
He accurately reflects how vaccines can reduce the severity of COVID,
but clearly conveys that it's not going to prevent you from getting COVID.
Most vaccines prevent you from actually getting the disease altogether.
He also accurately conveys how early treatment with the monoclonal
or other proven drugs have dramatically reduced the severity of the disease.
This is before Pfizer's recent FDA-approved treatment,
which to some has been described as a more expensive ivermectin.
Some of the drugs and treatment protocol Dr.
Ladapa was referring to have been around for a long time
and the side effects are known to be minimal.
His comfort with describing all forms of treatment is a threat to the medical establishment.
The medical establishment, to them,
this conversation would minimize the importance of the vaccine
and it could cause some of the unvaccinated to remain unvaccinated.
Dr. Ladapa openly says that that decision is between the patient
and their doctor and that the vaccine is important,
but it's not the only tool in the box.
His analysis, by the way, is supported by reality.
The vaccine does not prevent COVID. For example, just last week,
the USS Milwaukee, which is a Navy combat ship,
it remains in port versus being on its way to South America to accomplish its mission.
And that's because some of the sailors tested positive for COVID.
The crew is 100% immunized. I mean, while we're talking about battleships,
Dr. Ladapa thinks the establishment has just totally missed the boat on the big picture.
He believes the medical establishment should promulgate a healthy lifestyle
that not only defeats COVID, but other ailments.
The following statement by Dr. Ladapa makes so much sense,
but for some reason it drives the establishment medical leadership bonkers.
Here's his full quote. Doctors should encourage people to become as healthy as possible.
What could possibly be wrong with that?
It's good for prevention of heart disease, diabetes, etc.
The big picture is not COVID. The big picture is health. End of his quote.
And for that, he's been persecuted all over.
Dr. Ladapa has been interviewed from coast to coast,
and he argues that doctors haven't made enough effort to support legit treatment.
Another quote. The other component that other states should adopt is both preventative and treatment.
Makes me sad as a scientist and a doctor that more effort's not made to connect patients with treatments.
That's cost many lives during the pandemic.
So that's what he's saying. He's got a heart for people to be taken care of.
Now, why is it that we haven't allowed for the treatments to be promulgated?
Well, you tell me. Early on, Florida promoted the monoclonal.
Very few other states did. It reduced hospitalizations by 70%.
How come the others didn't do that? Dr. Fauci seems to allocate all of his time to avoid a virus.
Dr. Ladapa says that we must be considerate of the fact that health means more than avoiding a virus.
It's been a terrible, his quote, it's been a terrible time with social isolation, loneliness.
What we've done to children has been criminal,
disconnecting them from their peers and disrupting their education, even though they've always been at low risk.
There are multiple components of health. That's his quote.
What we're really talking about here today is an example of just extreme policies that we've seen during this pandemic and policies that have been implemented without thinking about whether they make sense or thinking about their risk.
and benefits and what the implications of those policies are, Dr. Ladapo said.
He's not anti-vax, but he does say that too much focus has been on the vaccine.
It's been treated almost like a religion, he said.
We support measures to good health, he says.
That's vaccination, but also losing weight, exercising more, eating more fruits and vegetables,
everything, he says.
Dr. Ladapo also believes that real science has to speak to natural immunity.
I mean, how could this even be a controversy?
It shouldn't be.
It's never been a controversy before.
Natural immunity is a thing, but with COVID, natural immunity is a threat to the medical
establishment.
Their opposition to openly discuss the dozens of studies from around the world that now
show natural immunity to be largely superior to the vaccine or even a combination of boosters
provides some evidence that the centralized medical establishment is not open to the
rigor of debate to drive to truth.
Just as recently as last week, the South African researchers all but proved that natural immunity
is contributing to lower hospitalization from the latest variant Omicron.
Infections have skyrocketed, but hospitalizations have not.
In fact, there were 4.4 times as many infections in the recent Omicron wave than there were
in the Delta wave in that same area, same time period, same period of the wave, but
only 25% of the deaths and only 34% of the hospitalizations.
So a whole bunch more people got it, but many fewer people had severe consequences.
So their experts from the Gates Foundation studied the data and they concluded, this
is their quote, that immunity is primarily due to natural infection with or without the
vaccination.
Another study by the South African Medical Research Council came to the same conclusion
at the same time.
They said that people who get infected now face roughly 80% lower odds of needing any
hospital care when compared to individuals who got the COVID-19 from the Delta variant.
That's likely due, and this is a quote, to the high levels of population immunity due
to natural infection.
Yet, if you've not had the virus and you're not vaccinated, you got to be honest on both
sides.
The data show that those are the highest risk, especially if you're older and especially
if you've got a preexisting condition.
So here we are 21 months later, and those like Dr. Ladapo, who were pleading in March
and April of 2020 for balance, are proven to be correct.
He was one of the thousands of experts from around the world who signed that Great Barrington
Declaration.
Pretty simple.
They called for focusing the COVID prevention efforts on the most vulnerable, particularly
the elderly, while relaxing the restrictions on the young and the healthy, who really have
very little risk of developing a severe COVID problem.
They approached it holistically.
How do you get through this terrible pandemic with the least amount of harm, with the harms
considered include all of public health, not just COVID?
The advocates of focused protection promulgated a balanced approach, no lockdowns, but definitely
focus your protection aggressively where it can do the most good.
And that included places around the world that didn't even get the vaccine, so much
should have been shared with them for their older population.
The government here and in Europe seemed to think that the easier lift of focusing protection
on the vulnerable is impossible.
They could have engaged honestly in a discussion about it.
That would have made them look a lot more scientific.
They would have had a lot less pushback, but they knew if they did, they would have discovered
that all public health is fundamentally about focused protection.
Now, Florida followed this focused protection approach.
Florida officials promoted vaccines regularly.
They promoted treatments regularly.
They showed they could successfully balance protecting the elderly and avoid crushing
restrictions against most others.
In hindsight, the governor believes that his brief lockdown was his only real mistake.
He said it wasn't necessary and it didn't help overall the health of the Floridians.
So now what?
Omicron cases are skyrocketing all across the US, but it's not showing itself to be
very severe.
Most people have either been vaccinated or have the superior natural immunity.
Cases are falling fast in South Africa.
Should the blue states really be in full panic mode?
Perhaps the best approach is to listen to Dr. Ladapo.
I believe if you want a healthy society, you have to start with freedom principles.
The US and most of the rest of the world shoved those freedom principles aside.
It's wrong, but it's also unhealthy.
A few years ago, Florida narrowly, barely elected Governor DeSantis.
And one of my good close friends who lives there voted for the other guy.
I was dismayed.
Couldn't believe it.
Actually kind of hurt.
But recently he told me he likes Governor DeSantis and that he was grateful that the
socialist that he voted for did not win.
It would have been lockdown city.
His beautiful daughter would be living in constant fear instead of enjoying school like
she is without a mask.
When you start with the platform of freedom, government respects the individual and in
matters of health, their relationship with their doctor.
You know, some people have a real allergy to the PEG or the polysorbate 80 that's in
the vaccine.
You can't force them to take the vaccine and to be doomed with a known adverse reaction.
Government can responsibly handle a pandemic, but they should not do it California style.
They should do it Florida style.
They should govern that way.
Take the disease seriously, mitigate wherever you can, respect the physician to work directly
with the patient, give kids the environment they need to thrive and honor the right to
live well without unnecessary constraint.
To your freedom.
God bless you.
Hi, I'm David Farah.
Thank you for listening to my dad's podcast, The Barry Farah Show, Culture Shift.
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