Episode 24: Exposing Biden's COVID 'Experts with Phil Kerpen

separating COVID facts from fiction. This is out allowed. With you want the COVID, we'll come back to allow with Giano calls well, I'm really excited for today's show. My guess is Phil Kirpen, the president of the Committee to Unleashed Prosperity, which promotes limited government, free market economics, and the commitment to the principles of the Declaration of Independence in the Constitution. Phil is also a syndicated columnist, policy analyst,

and the chairman of the Internet Freedom Coalition. Phil has written extensively on COVID nineteen and that's what he and I are going to discuss today, COVID facts and COVID nonsense. Let's go phiil Urp and welcome to outline with Giano Caldo. Where pleased to have you today. We know that you're an expert in the COVID space and you've been following this very closely. How are you doing, I'm doing all right.

How are you? I'm doing well currently uh in Panama doing some research, but glad to be on with you. So I want to I want to really begin by digging into how much the government's response to COVID, especially in blue states, has been uh politicized. So many pundits politicians keep telling us to follow the science when it comes to COVID and listen to the so called experts. But sometimes I wonder if some of these people know

any more than the average person. And as an example of that, I want to place some tape from one of Joe Biden's key experts, and one of his advisor's name is Andy Slavitt, and he's a senior advisor on COVID response. He was on MSNBC with hosts Stephanie Rule, and this is what she had to say. States like Florida and California. California basically in lockdown and their numbers

aren't that different from Florida. Look, there's so much of this virus that we think we understand that we think we can predict that just beyond a little bit beyond our explanation. What we do know is that the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads. But we have got to get better visibility into variants. We don't know what role

they play, UM, large events, etcetera. But you know, this is as we all have learned by this time, this is a virus that continues to surprise us. Um it's very hard to predict and you know all around the country. We've got to continue to do a better job. And I think I think we are, but we're not done yet. That was interesting, in bizarre all at the same time. Why because this is supposed to be an expert, someone who is advising the President of the United States too.

By way of the last election, criticized the Trump administration and said that they didn't know what they were gonna do. They didn't know what they were doing. Rather, and they were going to if Biden one uh, provide a strategy and a plan that would change the trajectory of the virus immediately, and he basically said he doesn't know what's going on in the host. I'll add was wrong on

the number. She said that Florida in California were partly the same, and recent numbers show that in Florida there's one point eight four million cases. In California that's three point five one million cases, So it's not the same

by any measure. What do you have to say to something like that, Well, I think that you know, he couldn't answer that question because there is no answer that's consistent with the things that the you know, lockdown artists and the Biden administration, the Democrats in general have been saying, uh, you know, it's a big problem for them that a state California that's been in some form of lockdown pretty much continuously for nine months has worse COVID measures than

the state of Florida, where all restrictions ended I think five months ago now. And you know, you can't, uh, you know, you can't explain that away the way he did by saying, oh, there's still a lot we don't understand, but what we do know are these various restrictions work.

And they say, well, no, no, the whole point of the question is we don't know they work, because the place that isn't doing any of those things is doing better than the place that's doing all of them, uh, you know, the most strenuously of any of the states. And I think the real lesson, contrary to what you know the so called experts continue to want to tell us, is uh that the masks and the distance saying, and the closes, school closures and the business closures actually have

about no effect. You still get the virus. You just get all of the educational and economic and social harms of those interventions on top of still having the harms of the virus. And you know, early on it looked like, you know, they must be doing everything right. In California, they've got lower numbers. But I think it was just sort of luck that they hadn't had their turn yet. And of course, you know, when they had their turn,

they had a very very bad wave. And you know, the lesson I think is you can't stop a highly infectious respiratory virus through uh, you know, government dictates and policies. You might be able to by developing vaccines and treatments, and we did, but that very quickly, but you're not gonna do it through lockdown orders. That just doesn't work.

But they're never going to admit that, because if they admit that, what did they put everyone through all of this pain and suffering for on top of you know, the virus harms that happened. Anyway, well, I can tell you the lockdowns work for a particular purpose, and that higher suicide rates and poverty, that's what we get with lockdowns. And interestingly enough, I lived in Los Angeles from seventeen up into May last year, when I decided to move

two months into the lockdown to Miami, Florida. So we see what these lockdowns are doing. They're making poor people we even more poorn is depressing the hell out of a whole lot of people. And it's interesting that you pointed out something about Slavitte. You recently pointed out on Twitter that he's a partisan with an NBA who actually

worked as an investment banker. He only entered the world of healthcare on the business side and has no real medical expertise, and yet Biden and the media have declared him uh COVID expert. I just don't understand why Joe Biden would have been ported appointed him as his point man. Do you have any idea why you would have? Well, he uh, he was an executive vice president at United Health grew and um. He went into the Obama administration,

he was an acting administrator for Medicare and Medicaid. He he was never the full administrator because uh, he had to get an ethics waiver so that he could oversee his previous employer, and he sent them a bunch of bailout money. And the Senate, uh, you know, they didn't confirm him, which was good, but they also didn't bother to have the vote to vote against him and actually knock him out of that office, which is what I was trying to get them to do at the time.

But he is a his background is as a health insurance executive and then as an Obama administration bureaucrat. And you know, he certainly has no medical expertise to the other thing that's kind of amazing about him is um uh you know, up until when he went into the Biden administration, he was constantly hawking the sponsor of his podcast, which was a mask that claimed it could zap the virus and disintegrate the virus, which is sort of quackery.

I mean, it's a it's a fantastical claim. Uh, you know, just sort of taking advantage of people are scared of the virus to sell them a product. Uh. And and that wasn't a problem for the Biden administration either. Essentially, I think he's where he is in the Piden administration because he had a big Twitter following, and you know, there's okay, let's get this guy. He's a he's you know, he's respected on the left on this stuff. But it's a it's a very odd choice. It's not clear what

he brings the table really. Uh. But I'm not sure what he's actually doing other than doing these interviews in the daily briefing. So I don't know that that that his I don't know that he I don't know that it matters too much that he doesn't seem to you you, you know, have any particular relevant expertise. Wow, this is it's not just a guy like him. I mean, it's it's you know, you hear the same kind of stuff from people like Fauci, you know, from our new CDC director.

You know, they don't you know, the fact that the data doesn't match the policies they've been prescribing. Doesn't cause them to reconsider the policies they just they just gloss over it and keep saying the same things anyway. Yeah, and then we talk about other experts. In one in which you mentioned are on Twitter is Martin Colderoff, who was a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who's

advocated against lockdowns. He wanted to balance approach um and if if I'm quoting you noted that he has advocated a balanced approach of COVID to allowing those minimal risk of death to of their lives are better protecting those at higher risks. But he has been shown by some of those elites who usually love Harvard because he um is advocating for people to live their lives. Can you

go more into that please. Yeah. Martin Coldorf is one of the top infectious disease epidemiologists in the world, and he partnered with two other top infectious disease epidemiologists, one from Stanford named j Boicharia and one from Oxford, UH named Sunetra Gupta, and they put out something called the Great Barrington Declaration where they basically said, look, the principles of public health and epidemiology are that you need to look at all of public health, not just one issue

or one aspect or one disease, and the lockdowns cause enormous public health harms. What we need to do instead is focused, to the extent we can on focus protection for the truly vulnerable people who are advanced age or medically vulnerable. Used vaccines to protect them, now that we have it. Before we have the vaccines, try to you know, shelter those people. But otherwise, younger people should be able

to go about there. You know, younger people who are not medically vulnerable should be allowed to go about their lives normally. And you know, I've talked to Dr Coldorf and he basically said, you know, this is what all infectious disease epidemiologists believe when they're not kind of uh, you know, being pressured into going along with this new

public narrative. This has been the normal conventional wisdom in the field forever up until last year, and yet now somehow it's become sort of a minority viewpoint to be dismissed. And you know, from the perspective of somebody who's you know, not a doctor, not a scientist. What's been following these issues closely from sort of the economic standpoint. You know, it's remarkable because whenever we say, you know, it doesn't

look like these lockdowns are working. Here's the data. People say, well, you're not an epidemiologist, you're not credit, you're not qualified to make that assessment. You say, well no, but I'm listening to people like Martin Coldorf from our verd and Ja Bodicharia from Stanford and Senetric Uptor from Oxford. And they say, oh, well they don't count. Now that's not science.

It's anti science. If you listen to people like uh, those top epidemiologists who are anti lockdown, it only counts as science if you listen to the ones who want lockdown, the more political epidemia. Yeah, and then that's the thing is this. People are listening to those with the education in the background, who have studied the science, or are they looking at the folks who have the more uh, democratic leaning or liberal leaning political ideologies that align with

the politicians who are advocating for these lockdowns. That's what's so disturbing about this process because you have folks who clearly have demonstrated I'm talking about Governor Ron De Santis is clearly demonstrating you can send your kids to school, you can open up the entire state. You can go to restaurants, clubs and bars are open open in the state of Florida. There's a lot of different venues. People are actually living their lives, and folks are running away

from Cali. For you in New York because it's a three state Now, I want to pick up from there in a moment, but first let's have a quick break. We saw the dever. GAVINUSA recently has come up with a stimulus package, uh to kind of prop up businesses, give six checks in terms of stimulus. Why do you think he's doing that now and he's still trying to keep some of these lockdown measures in place. Well, he doesn't want to admit that. He doesn't want tomit he

was wrong. I mean, I think this is the fundamental problem with getting out of these lockdowns and places that still have lots of restrictions. As you know, they they don't want to come out and say, hey, we did all that for nothing. You sacrificed. You were locked up in your house, your kids didn't go to school for a years. That was my bad, that was a mistake. We got the virus anyway, that didn't accomplish anything. We're

going to reverse all of that. Now, you don't want to do that because uh, you know, nobody likes admitting they're wrong and obviously the political consequence, so that would be tough. So they want to sort of, uh figure a way out where they can claim credit, claim they were the hero, they were the reason that it wasn't

much worse. And and that's why I think, uh, the media and the liberals and the advocates of these policies, they the most their number one most hated person in America as Governor on De Santis and Governor Christy nom is probably number two. Because when you have states they don't go along with what everyone else is doing. And Sweden and sort of the European version of this didn't go along with this stuff. When you have places that didn't do it, and it say, oh wait a second,

their virus numbers aren't any worse. And Vanian Florida is very right in the middle of the pack, very average on all the virus numbers. They wait there. Their virus numbers aren't any worse than anywhere else. But they didn't impose all of this additional hardship. They didn't destroy millions of businesses, they didn't lock kids out of school. You know,

why did we do those things here? That's a problem and that's why when when that question gets asked directly of a Biden administration official, all they can do is sputter. They can't answer it. There is no good answer. But you know, if you're if you're Gavin Newsom, you don't want to meet you were wrong, but you don't want to get recalled. Uh, so what do you do? We're just send money out. We're gonna send checks out and

maybe that'll that'll he thinks that will help him survive. Uh. You know, it's an interesting thing because California actually is in a big budget surplus right now, which is a little bit surprising because you might think, you know, they've been destroying so many businesses, they're probably gonna destroy their own state finances and then they'll have to you know. But but actually they're in a big surplus because the stock market has been going up so much. They've got

tons of income tax revenue from the stock market. Uh. And also, you know, real estate prices are up for whatever reason, they're kind of up everywhere. And so you know, California's got like a billion dollar surplus right now, but Democrats and billion dollars anyway, in this next Biden stimulus, forty one billion goes to California to bail out of budget that they don't even need a bail out there

in surplus. So you know, if you've got that kind of money coming that you've is coming and you're worried about a recollection, you know you you got the money that you've got the money coming from Washington, send out checks to people by their favor. I think that's what he's trying to do with You know, you you talked talked quite a bit about free market policies. You spend a lot of your career studying it, how to stimulate economic growth. And I'm really interested in terms of what

you think about the current COVID package. And let me be very clip front. I've supported the two thousand dollar stimulus for American families. It was their money, it was their tax dollars. I think it should have went to them. I think it should have really went to them. Mitch McConnell, I think he dropped the ball, and um new Gingridge

is also advocated for this as well. When it came to the Georgia Senate, racist Donald Trump recently saying, Hey, if it wasn't for Mitch McConnell dropping the ball and not sending out the two thousand dollars stimulus to people, then Georgia might have looked different. What do you think the federal government should do in terms of COVID relief packages? Should we be spending another two trillion? Is Biden the Democrats want to do? Uh? Should we be given to

me this check to Americans? What is the best way to help those whose jobs and businesses were damaged, destroyed at no part of their own while being fiscally responsible? Uh? Is? What is it? What do you think we should do here? Well, first of all, we've got a really weird economy right now, because it's not a six percent unemployment economy nationally. It's three percent unemployment economy in places like you know, South

Dakota and Nebraska and Iowa that never locked down. And you know, the virus came and went, but it didn't

disrupt their economy because they didn't do the lockdowns. Uh. And then you've got you know, nine percent unemployment in the real lockdown and disaster areas California, New York, Nevada, Hawaii, and then you've got kind of the other states that are sort of in the middle, and Florida unfortunately is more in the round, the six percent in the middle, because their tourism has been hit so hard that even though they didn't lock down, they've also been hit hard economically.

Um and so I think to me, the key thing to do for the economy is to get to sort of the all clear where the lockdown states are no longer locked down, where everyone sort of we can have this great relief rally. We can people can feel comfortable going outside, get rid of the mass, get back into normal social circumstances, and you know, the the economic boom

from that, uh. In my jugument, it's going to be pretty dramatic and h long long awaited in the places that have been the most locked down, especially and from a federal policy standpoint, the number one thing they can do to that you can do to make that happen is to get the vaccines out, because you know, the for the people who've been waiting for the vaccine, which is a lot of people who've been hold up in

their houses. It's also a lot of politicians are going to keep restrictions on until there's a high level of vaccination for good or for ill. I mean, I think we shouldn't need vaccines to end all of this, but for good or for ill, you know, that's I think what's gonna be the ultimate harbinger for the end of all of this. And so, if if I were in charge of federal policy, my priorities one, two, and three would all be getting vaccines authorized and manufactured and out

as quickly as possible. I think it's ridiculous that the FDA waits like three or four weeks from when one of these things is filed before they even meet and decide on it. And that's what they're doing right now. On the Johnson and Johnson Uh, it was submitted weeks ago. They're finally going to meet next week, and we'll hope that that passes muster and that supply starts getting out. They've been sitting on astra Zeneca for months. Other countries

are using it. We basically told astra Zenica don't apply in the US. We don't want you to use your UK and Brazil trial data. We need to wait until you have a U S trial. I think that's ridiculous. If I were the Biden administration, I would direct the FDA to invite an EU A and author and an emergency use authorization from aster Zeneca based on their existing trial data. And if we got Johnson Johnson and Astra Zeneca authorized, there would basically not be vaccine scarcity we

would have. We'd be basically, you know, within a month, we'd be at anyone who wants it can get it. And I think the the whole, uh, the main sort of line of advocacy that we should all be saying and and try to get liberals to agree on, is you know, you can't have any more restrictions once anybody who wants the vaccine can get it, and you know, it's a choice. If somebody doesn't want it, they don't have to get it. But you know, once everybody who wants it can get it, you know, really it's each

individual's decided for themselves. You don't need any more society wide restrictions. You really can't justify them. And I think you know that that should be the key, more so than trying to do more federal spending, are doing a new round of checks or especially the spending in this bill, I mean bailing out staying local governments with you know, the three fifty billion dollars when most of them already in surplus. That's just raiding the treasury because they can

essentially uh. The K twelve education spending in the Biden stimulus is completely ridiculous when you consider that the fifty four billion dollars for K twelve that was in the bill the past in December hasn't been spent yet. Not one penny of it has been spent yet. So we got fifty four billion that hasn't gone out yet. They're

asking for another hundred billion for K twelve. The Congressional Budget Office says the most that they could see of the new hundred eight billion being spent this year is six billion. So the rest of it is all being spent in future years. Most of it is spent over the next eight years. It's you know, the idea that the schools are not going to open unless that gets approved.

When none of the money gets spent for years anyway, I think just shows you that they're now you know, they know schools can be open and should be open, but now it's just a matter of let's keep them closed as leverage to raid the U. S. Treasury. And I don't think we should reward that by giving them what they want. So most of what's in this bill I'm against. Um. You know, the direct checks are probably

the least problematic. You know. The other thing is bill that I think is a big problem is the they bring back the federal unemployment bonus. Uh, not the six hundred dollars a week it was last year, but at four nder dollars week. But if you had four hundred dollars federal unemployment bonus to you know, four or five dollars state benefit depending on the state. You know, it's three to five hundred some states, it's only three some

states more. But I mean you're talking with the four undred dollar bonus on top of you know, let's say you're in a state where it's you know five or let's say it's a four hndred dollar state benefit and you're doubling it with the federal bonus. Well, you know, eight hundred dollars a week, you're talking about forty dollars

to not work. Now, how do you how does they how does a company that's trying to get back off the ground and staff themselves, how do they get people to come back to work when they're making that kind of money to not work? So I think the unemployment bonuses are a big mistake. I uh, you know, as I said, if they're gonna spend money, if they can't be talked out of it, then just sending equal checks to everyone is probably the least objectionable way to do it.

But in my mind, we don't need to spend more money. We need to really focus on getting these vaccines authorized and out the door, because that's the one thing that no matter what you're no matter where you been on lockdown, no lockdown anything. I think once the vaccines are available to anyone, it's got all that. Now, picking up on

something you were were saying about the schools. Currently, about of public schools are open, about one third are all distance learning, and the rest are some combination of the two. I've seen across the country, especially in places like my hometown of Chicago, where the teachers Union refused to enter into schools without um some funding for vaccines, vaccinations, et cetera. What role do you think teachers uniors are are playing

and preventing schools from reopening across the country. They've given Democrats a lot of money over the years. They've given Democrats a lot of money this past election cycle, including Joe Biden, and it seems as though he's prioritizing the teacher's union over the actual children who could really fall behind. And some have really fallen behind, especially those students who may be black or Hispanic. What what do you think is the teacher What role is the teachers union really

really playing here, because it doesn't seem to be the science. Yeah. I think the school closures are ultimately going to be the most destructive part of this whole uh, you know, all the events to the last year. I think they're gonna be much worse than the virus itself. When you consider that the difference in life expectancy between a high school graduate in the high school dropouts about five years um and you look at the age of the people who are dying of COVID, a lot of them are

losing less than five years of life. And then you consider millions and millions of kids have been locked out of school for various periods of time, some of them still locked out of school. Um, it's it's massive. The harms, the educational harms, and them by extension, the economic and public health harms are just absolutely enormous, both long term

and short term. With the increase for seeing uh in suicide and drug overdose in the pediatric age group, which is you know, I see another one of these tragic stories, it seems every other day. So it's been really, really bad. And I put a lot of blame on the teachers unions because they've really corrupted the science. It's been fairly clear from very early on that children are at exceedingly

low risk with this virus. It is less dangerous for children than influenza, and it replaced influenza this here, we didn't have it in addition to flu. We had it instead of flu. And so you know, in a sense, this was actually the mildest respiratory illness season for children ever in that you know, the usual virus that kills you know, around five hundred kids a year in this country was gone, and we had a virus that instead

only killed you know, a hundred fifty. And I say, oh, obviously, you know, every death's a bad thing, but you know, it was a. It was a mild respiratory season for children, not a severe one, and yet they were locked out of school. And you could say, well, you know what if teachers were at risk, Well, you know, there's always risk in the world, but teaching is not a high risk profession because when children do get this virus, they tend to be significantly less infectious with it than adults,

and they rarely infect adults. They sometimes do. It's not impossible, but it's rare. And of course you you layer on top of that that other than the handful of teachers that are very old or medically compromised, there at very low risk themselves based on what we know about the virus and the number of teachers that had a you know,

legitimate health concern. Uh, it should have been small, and it should have been small enough to accommodate without shutting down schools, and we should have been able to do that. But the the unions, I think, saw an opportunity to gain money and power and leverage and everything like that,

political influence, and they're now making ever escalating demands. And so you know, originally they said, you know, you know, they said, well, we don't want to go back uh, you know, until the case rates are lower, and then case rates are lower, they said, no, we want to

wait for a vaccine. Now they're saying, even with the vaccine, we don't want to go back unless there are you know, brand new ventilation systems and new buildings and smaller class sizes and sort of the demands just sort of would

go on and on and on and on. The new one that I just saw a few days ago, as we were saying, actually the buildings were not safe enough to work in even before COVID, and so you know, we need these various facilities upgrades or else it's not safe enough for safe enough for us to go there. And this bottom administration, a lot of people were optimistic. I thought I was never optimistic because I'm a cynic, but a lot of people were optimistic they were gonna

have reasonable science based guidelines from CBC. It was gonna lead to the rest of the school's opening up. Instead, the CDC director basically shaped it, shelved her own scientific conclusions, including things she's written in the past, and you know, went with a version of the guidelines that was essentially dictated by the teachers unions and the unions were out ragging that they basically wrote these guidelines and uh, you know, he'd written into these guidelines as this idea of a

six foot distance between students, which there's no scientific basis for. But if you do that, it basically makes full time school impossible unless you build a whole bunch of school buildings and hire a whole bunch more teachers. And so that's kind of where we are. But it's a it's a you know, it's a it's a two America's situation because uh, in most places in America, schools are open

and have been since August. But then in the big cities, um, you know, they're they're mostly closed, and many of them have been closed continuously now for about a year. And you know, those are the places where it seems hard to budge to get any movement on getting kids back in school. And uh, you know, we're gonna potentially have It's gonna be very hard for all these kids to catch up. It's gonna be a huge challenge to not

lose these kids, especially the ones. You know, there are a lot of kids who never even logged onto these online platforms, and so you know, they're you know, schools might not even be able to locate them when they finally do. That's really interesting. Let's continue from there in a moment after a quick break. I know a lot of good teachers, had some in my life, but the demands I continue to hear is almost like, hey, why don't you just keep paying us so we can just

stay at home. I mean, you know, I feel bad for a lot of the teachers, And I don't really blame the individual teachers so much as I do the union leadership, because a lot of these like crazy hybrid schemes and stuff like that are actually much harder for the teacher than just teaching a class. And then they got to like worry about the ones who are on the zoom at the same time they're talking to the ones of the room, and they've got to prepare of

packets every day and all this kind of stuff. I mean, the teachers who are actually like really working it hard and doing a good job trying to keep everyone engaged, they're probably working a lot more than they've ever worked before. But of course, you know, if you don't have one of those, if you have a teacher who's sort of, you know, phoning it in from the beach in Puerto Rico or whatever. Uh, you know, it's almost like not

having school at all. And so I think that you know, the just the experiences that different that families are having

with this remote stuff is just wildly variable. It's sort of luck in the draw and um, you know, but the but the bigger problem is, you know, you can't have a functioning you know, you I shouldn't say bigger because the educational losses are probably the biggest, as I mentioned, but sort of the other related problem is, how can you have a functioning society if you know, somebody's got to be watching the kids all the time because you know,

they're not allowed to go to school. People design their lives around their kids are in school that part of the day. Now you've got to either find a daycare or hire nanny or you know, you're there are a lot of moms have left the workforce because they're watching the kids. Just it's been enormously disruptive and uh, it's gone on far far longer than I think, you know, anyone expected. And I and I don't disagree with you on the teacher point. I think it's important for them

to go back to school. Safely, but the unions are making things very complicated and the students are supposed to be the real gifts. Here there are the real prizes where we got young minds who need to continue to get educated so they can be the leaders of tomorrow. And if they don't have teachers doing that, then how can they be the leaders of tomorrow. So that's that's my point. My last question for you, has given a

data you've studied, how effective have these vaccines been? Because we just saw recently some reporting of a former news anchor I believe she was, who took the vaccine and then the next day she died. How much and I'm not saying that it was a correlation, is just what happened.

How much should the public trust these vaccines, especially in the African American community where we've seen things like the Tuskegee experiment, and people really don't trust vaccines, and they don't trust any kind of medicine generally, just about for older African Americans in a lot of cases, they don't trust any medicine that they would get from the government.

So in other words, of vaccine, I look at the d c H COVID data a lot because I live here, and um, you know, the the COVID deaths are overwhelmingly black. I mean it's I think DC population is like forty five percent black, but the COVID deaths are like sevent And then you look at the vaccination data and it's like all white people getting the vaccine, which to me

indicates that you know, and I know they're trying. They're trying to get the vaccine out in the black community for sure, because that's where most of the burden of the disease has been. But to me, the fact that the res are with their I mean, they don't want the vaccine, they're they're passing on or they're very hesitant to take it. And you know, maybe it is that history that's informing that. This is my view. I think.

You know, we've got we've got pretty good data from the clinical trials, and we've got some additional real world data as it's rolled out. Uh, you know, it's not a full approval. It's not what you would have with a normal vaccine that would go through years of development and years of study. That's why it's called an emergency use authorization because we we don't know the long term or even really the medium term. Uh, you know, that's

we're gonna have to wait and see for all of that. Uh, but I think we have enough data that if you're in a risk category, uh, you're much better off getting the vaccine than you are risking getting the virus. And by a risk category, I mean I think anyone above the age of seventy, you definitely want to get it, because above the age of seventy, if you get the virus, it's a better than five percent chance you're gonna die. That's one in twenty. You know, there's no way the

vaccine is going to be more dangerous than that. So if you're above age seventy, I think it's a no brainer you want to get it. And then you know, if you're down to age fifty, you probably still want to get it because they're they're they're still considerable risk with the virus. And then you know, I think below age fifty, it's really I think, you know, the virus itself is very low risk for you below age fifty, unless you're in one of the medical risk categories, uh,

you know, diabetes, severe obesity, something like that. Uh, it's more about I think the choice of you know, do you want to say that you had it in case ticketmaster's requiring it for a concert or sporting event, or is it just easier to have had it than not had it and that kind of thing. So I think that, you know, if you're in a high risk group, you want it in my opinion, because the even with the unknowns about the medium and long term, it's going to

be better for you than risking getting the virus. Uh. If you're not in a risk category, I think it's it's you know, it's just a choice whether you whether you're more worried about kind of the um you know, maybe unknown long term effects from the virus versus of the vaccine, and they sort of the you know, kind of the lifestyle or social benefits of being able to say that you have it in case. You know, there are things that require proof of vaccination and that kind

of thing. So that would be my my thinking. I mean, I'm only forty one, but you know, if they offer it to me, I'll probably get it UM because you know, from what I've seen in the data, uh, the risks are very very low, and I think it will be much easier to say I already got the vaccine. If somebody is bothering you about you know, a mask or a distance or whatever to say no, no no, I got it to me. The convenience of being able to say

that is worth the very low risk. But I mean people do need to make their own decisions for this, and this is why, as I was saying before the the the exit from all of this nonsense and restrictions cannot be tied to a certain percentage of people have to take the vaccine. That's the wrong way to do it and the wrong way to think about it. The way to do it is to say, you know, can

everyone who wants to get it? And once everyone who wants it can get it, then you can relax everything because people have kind of made their choice whether they want to risk the virus or go with the vaccine. But but we I don't think we should try to force or coerce people. I think you should let people make the choice. I just want to thank you so much for coming on and educating us on this field. We really appreciate the work you do. Can you tell

people where they can follow you? Yeah, I'll give a couple of things. American Commitment dot org is the main organization that I run, if people want to look on that and not see the issues that we're working on. The other thing is I do a daily newsletter with Steve Moore and John Fund that's free. It's kind of got all of our thoughts and the updates on stuff related to the virus and the economy and energy policy and other stuff like that. Uh and new to a subscriber.

He likes it. So if people want to get that, it's free. As I said, Committee to Unleash Prosperity dot Com is the website for for the newsletter. And then the last thing I'm mention is my Twitter. I'm kind of an addict. I'm on there a lot, and I put a lot of charts and data and stuff like that out that way. And that's my last name. Kurpin. K rpm Well, thank you so much for coming on here,

Phil Kirpin. We appreciate your insight and certainly if Nude is following your newsletter, we will be sure to check it out. So thank you again for joining out loud with Gianno Caldwell. All right, thanks for having me. I have a good one. Thanks to Phil Kirpin for a great interview. If you're enjoying the show, please leave us a review and rate us with five stars on Apple Podcast. If you have any questions for me, please email me at out loud at English sixty dot com and I'll

try to answer them in our future episodes. You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and parlor at Giano Caldwell. And if you're interested in learning more about my story, please pick up a copy of my bestselling book title Taken for Granted, How Conservatism Can Win Back to Americans in livingers Um Failed Special. Thanks to our producer John Cassio, researcher Aaron Kleinman, and executive producers Debbie Myers and Eager new Gangridge, part of the Gingriish three sixty network,