Regarding Jonathan's statement that "anything that you put in your body will have some occasional side effects" (@~6:20):
It must be understood that these side effects may apply to the vaccine but they are generally caused by the actual infection, by the virus. For example, myocarditis as a side effect was made a big deal by the anti-vaxxers but what they either didn't understand, know or chose to not say was that mycarditis was a severe risk due to actually having Covid-19:
I suggest that people watch Vincent Racaniello's podcasts about everything virology (at microbe.tv/twiv) to get accurate information. In those podcasts they also discuss immunological issues and interview real experts in the field, Vincent himself studied the polio virus for 40 years, teaches virology at Columbia University and wrote the textbook on virology.
I've never understood why people who are otherwise well-disposed towards others are so concerned about whether or not they are working to get their basic necessities. Care for people's health, make cheap childcare available, free school lunches; these all seem like obvious prerequisites for a society that cares about its people, its children, its future, and its potential. Yet I've literally heard people say 'if you don't work, you shouldn't get healthcare' and 'I pay for my kid's food, why should I have to pay for someone else's?'
There is a selfishness and pride so ingrained in our culture. It's a total mystery why we aren't bound closer together, why the empathy that usually exists between fellow citizens is so lacking here.
This is making my fucking blood boil, and I apologize for my swearing as I have tried to minimize it, but, seriously, RFKjr is the most dangerous Cabinet member ever, who may possibly compete with Trump to have more American blood on his hands. I challenge their sanity and lack of reliance on proven science. They’re acting like graverobbers in the 17th century who studied dead pauper bodies, and called it science, that’s how grotesque it is.
Someone really needs to point out how absolutely Creepy RFK's X video stunt was.
In my humble opinion it was completely suggestive of some sort of mental instability being displayed in the threesome's gross and bizarre publicity stunt of a video.
First of all it is absolutely bizarre to put out a policy statement regarding CDC or other health policy guidance by saying "I couldn't be more pleased to announce ... etc etc"
Look, he was not saying that he was pleased that diligent epidemiology around Covid concerns has found it possible to loosen the guidance on vaccinations or such.
It is absolutely clear that RFK's motivations are unhinged, bizarre, and based in some sort of fantastical mis-understanding of science ... and reality for that matter. That video on X was nothing short of stunningly BIZARRE.
Right? Oh, I’m not a doctor so don’t listen to me, but let me make major healthcare changes/choices that affect how real doctors do treat their patients and also how it gets paid for.
Ironically RFK's schtick is more like "I am not a doctor, but you Should listen to me".
It seems like being borderline-personality is the main qualifying characteristic to occupy an official post in this administration ... rather a scary circumstance if you ask me. 8-\
First, CDC has been funding chronic disease projects to promote healthy eating since the Obama administration at least. Those baskets of apples in the convenience stores? CDC program. Bike lanes? CDC programs. So ignorant and infuriating.
On COVID vaccinations, pregnant women are at higher risk so the guidance is bonkers. How many days left in this administration?
Kudos to Bill for having freed himself from the GOP mindset that those seeking government help are just lazy people who don’t want to work. But please don’t assume that today’s situation is different than the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It has ALWAYS been a phony argument. No one in their right mind would ever choose to live on paltry government subsidies that are nowhere close to what one could have with a full-time job with regular hours and regular pay.
This is such a bonkers way of thinking - you don’t vaccinate healthy kids?? What, you’d wait till they were unhealthy? The whole point of vaccination is to KEEP them healthy. WTF.
I truly do not understand why people are unwilling to ‘put into their bodies’ a massively tested vaccine with a very low risk rate, but can be totally willing to allow into their bodies a pathogen with very high risk rate.
Maybe we have universal healthcare. Problem solved. Access to basic, quality healthcare should not be dependant on the employer we have. Other countries understand this is the ethical and efficient way to grant access.
The problem is that even if you have universal healthcare, if you have healthcare policies that make no sense, dismantling of research programs that could produce the kind of care that could be given, then you can have all the healthcare funding but none of the resources out there to administer. Add to that a percentage of the population that doesn’t trust organisations like the CDC and you’d end up with one sick nation. It’s such a terrifying scenario. Problem tragically not solved.
The ex-Republicans of the Bulwark recoil at the concept of universal healthcare, but I have yet to hear a single convincing case against it, nor do conservatives ever seem to have any alternatives other than telling a certain number of people they can get fucked. No healthcare system is perfect, but some distribute their flaws more evenly than others.
Why is there a surgical travel industry? Because it is often cheaper for Americans to travel to a second-world country, do some sightseeing, get a routine procedure, hang around until recovered, and return to the US than to get the same procedure in the highly bureaucratized US healthcare system. We can see what the real market price for procedures is when providers can bypass governments and insurance companies.
There are opportunities to improve the US healthcare system via more market involvement. Around fifteen years ago, AEI and Cato published proposals to that effect as conservative alternatives to Obamacare. But Republicans never followed through, and it has become apparent they are politically incapable of doing so.
So, while we conservatives can easily imagine a better healthcare system with more market involvement, there does not seem to be a way to get there politically. Therefore, I am becoming less opposed to universal government healthcare than I used to be. I don't see how it could be much worse than our current broken system.
If healthcare is universal, it's almost by definition run by the government. I assume that if you're a bulwark reader and listening to podcasts like this you've seen what an utter shitshow the Trump administration has been on things like USAID or with migrants to the U.S.
Imagine, for a second, we did get a full universal healthcare system, say back when Obama was president. Almost everyone would go to some kind of alternative NHS for all of their medical needs. Their records would be on file. And then the lawless Trump administraiton would be looking through it all to round up their enemies. Anytime someone without immigration papers went to a clinic? They'd be on file, DHS would come knocking. Anyone who went in for any kind of transgender health care? They'd probably be rounded up and sent to god knows where. And that's before you have Elon pillaging it of all funding or RFK or some other crank destroying it through sheer incompetence.
Keeping it away from the government is safer, because our government has demonstrated it can't really be trusted with things that are important to us but not to it.
In Canada, our Healthcare is under the “Provincial Governments”, though run with some subsidy from Federal Taxes (the central government transfers money for a portion of Healthcare to each Province). And so, given our interesting Regional Variations, it is “run” by some *six* different Polutical Parties! And yet, somehow, every Province, during the early Pandemic, put an actual Public Health Physician, the Province’s own Medical Officer of Health, on camera, and all the Provinces’ Premiers said: ‘Listen to her/him, not to me.” —Canada got 91% of adults vaccinated against Covid, and not only had a lower Covid death-rate than every State, had lower “All-Cause Mortality” rates. (Yep, anti-vaxxers, the vaccines really didn’t kill anybody). I’ve been surprised that our Covid Death Rate, of like 40% of the per-million-population rate in USA, is not more talked about.
That is some crazy circular logic. “Government” was trustworthy enough to work just fine until 2025. Donald Trump and DOGE destroyed the government. They have actually proven how necessary government services are. If you think government shouldn’t be trusted, I have some bad news for you about private, for-profit businesses.
Oh yes, we have such a long history of treating people who are say, racial or religious minorities well. Or people who have views that the government thinks are objectionable. I seem to even remember a time when we took a bunch of citizens and threw them into concentration camps because they were Japanese, Italian, or German by nationality back during some big war once.
And yeah, businesses have problems too. But with businesses, your risks are decentralized. There is no natural monopoly on healthcare and it's very easy to get second opinions when you don't like what your current doctor is doing. When the government puts its finger on the scales, not so much.
Maybe you do. People who can’t afford exorbitant healthcare costs can’t.
Weirdly enough the people who seem happy with their healthcare here are seniors on Medicare.
I’m not sure what your first point is about…that like every other country on earth, we have a past that often included some dark and shameful aspects? Do you think racism, slavery, misogyny, etc. wouldn’t have existed without government? Not sure what point you’re trying to land.
The point I am making is that it is all well and good if the government provides a good or a service. But when they start displacing other providers at scale I have a problem. Because yes, like all governments, ours has and probably will continue to abuse most of the power it has. That makes relying on it for any good or service dangerous and best avoided whenever possible.
Universal healthcare, almost by definition, displaces private healthcare. Maybe not entirely; the closest analogue I'm familiar with is the NHS over in the UK, which still allows a very small private sector medical field. And I also have in-laws who have died preventable deaths because specialist care that they needed was gatekept by GPs, and you can't easily change your GP under the NHS, so if you have one that's bad or even just overwhelmed by a case load....... sucks to be you. At the very least they're nice about sending compensation checks after the lawsuits, but it's cold comfort.
I'll take the rent-seeking behavior of private practice over that. Redundancy is a very good risk management strategy. Especially if you say, also happen to be in a minority that gets hostility form all ends of the political spectrum.
Thank you for the digest of information, Bill and Jonathan. I could hear everything just fine. I wonder, for those of you with complaints, if it’s a platform issue and not a broadcasting one.
If the nutter were serious about a healthier 'murica and healthier kids, he would have fought the USDA tooth and nail from removing programs that provide access to local produce in the school systems.
Bill -- I find you hard to understand. First, you talk too fast and mumble, and second you seem to have a poor audio connection. I could hear and understand Jonathan Cohn just fine.
This has always been an issue for me too, and I wish I had an audio engineering background. Could just be he's really boisterous when they do the sound check! But srsly, I'd be thinking about room echo (a little boominess) and a mic with too limited frequency range. As far as volume varying, shouldn't there be some compression in the audio chain to help with that? FWIW, similar issue with Sam, for me-- he often comes through much softer than whoever else is on with him.
Regarding Jonathan's statement that "anything that you put in your body will have some occasional side effects" (@~6:20):
It must be understood that these side effects may apply to the vaccine but they are generally caused by the actual infection, by the virus. For example, myocarditis as a side effect was made a big deal by the anti-vaxxers but what they either didn't understand, know or chose to not say was that mycarditis was a severe risk due to actually having Covid-19:
https://newsroom.heart.org/news/myocarditis-risk-significantly-higher-after-covid-19-infection-vs-after-a-covid-19-vaccine
I suggest that people watch Vincent Racaniello's podcasts about everything virology (at microbe.tv/twiv) to get accurate information. In those podcasts they also discuss immunological issues and interview real experts in the field, Vincent himself studied the polio virus for 40 years, teaches virology at Columbia University and wrote the textbook on virology.
I've never understood why people who are otherwise well-disposed towards others are so concerned about whether or not they are working to get their basic necessities. Care for people's health, make cheap childcare available, free school lunches; these all seem like obvious prerequisites for a society that cares about its people, its children, its future, and its potential. Yet I've literally heard people say 'if you don't work, you shouldn't get healthcare' and 'I pay for my kid's food, why should I have to pay for someone else's?'
There is a selfishness and pride so ingrained in our culture. It's a total mystery why we aren't bound closer together, why the empathy that usually exists between fellow citizens is so lacking here.
Total mystery.
This is making my fucking blood boil, and I apologize for my swearing as I have tried to minimize it, but, seriously, RFKjr is the most dangerous Cabinet member ever, who may possibly compete with Trump to have more American blood on his hands. I challenge their sanity and lack of reliance on proven science. They’re acting like graverobbers in the 17th century who studied dead pauper bodies, and called it science, that’s how grotesque it is.
Grotesque.
Sharpen the fucking guillotine.
Point of order:
Someone really needs to point out how absolutely Creepy RFK's X video stunt was.
In my humble opinion it was completely suggestive of some sort of mental instability being displayed in the threesome's gross and bizarre publicity stunt of a video.
First of all it is absolutely bizarre to put out a policy statement regarding CDC or other health policy guidance by saying "I couldn't be more pleased to announce ... etc etc"
Look, he was not saying that he was pleased that diligent epidemiology around Covid concerns has found it possible to loosen the guidance on vaccinations or such.
It is absolutely clear that RFK's motivations are unhinged, bizarre, and based in some sort of fantastical mis-understanding of science ... and reality for that matter. That video on X was nothing short of stunningly BIZARRE.
Right? Oh, I’m not a doctor so don’t listen to me, but let me make major healthcare changes/choices that affect how real doctors do treat their patients and also how it gets paid for.
Holy shit…
Ironically RFK's schtick is more like "I am not a doctor, but you Should listen to me".
It seems like being borderline-personality is the main qualifying characteristic to occupy an official post in this administration ... rather a scary circumstance if you ask me. 8-\
First, CDC has been funding chronic disease projects to promote healthy eating since the Obama administration at least. Those baskets of apples in the convenience stores? CDC program. Bike lanes? CDC programs. So ignorant and infuriating.
On COVID vaccinations, pregnant women are at higher risk so the guidance is bonkers. How many days left in this administration?
Please adjust or do what you have to do to make it where Bill's audible is better!
When Bill's volume drops nearly to a mumble, I can only think of Holly's parody of him!
Kudos to Bill for having freed himself from the GOP mindset that those seeking government help are just lazy people who don’t want to work. But please don’t assume that today’s situation is different than the 60s, 70s, and 80s. It has ALWAYS been a phony argument. No one in their right mind would ever choose to live on paltry government subsidies that are nowhere close to what one could have with a full-time job with regular hours and regular pay.
This is such a bonkers way of thinking - you don’t vaccinate healthy kids?? What, you’d wait till they were unhealthy? The whole point of vaccination is to KEEP them healthy. WTF.
I think "healthy" in this context means they don't have any conditions that make them particularly susceptible to illness - e.g., diabetes or asthma.
I truly do not understand why people are unwilling to ‘put into their bodies’ a massively tested vaccine with a very low risk rate, but can be totally willing to allow into their bodies a pathogen with very high risk rate.
Maybe we have universal healthcare. Problem solved. Access to basic, quality healthcare should not be dependant on the employer we have. Other countries understand this is the ethical and efficient way to grant access.
The problem is that even if you have universal healthcare, if you have healthcare policies that make no sense, dismantling of research programs that could produce the kind of care that could be given, then you can have all the healthcare funding but none of the resources out there to administer. Add to that a percentage of the population that doesn’t trust organisations like the CDC and you’d end up with one sick nation. It’s such a terrifying scenario. Problem tragically not solved.
The ex-Republicans of the Bulwark recoil at the concept of universal healthcare, but I have yet to hear a single convincing case against it, nor do conservatives ever seem to have any alternatives other than telling a certain number of people they can get fucked. No healthcare system is perfect, but some distribute their flaws more evenly than others.
Why is there a surgical travel industry? Because it is often cheaper for Americans to travel to a second-world country, do some sightseeing, get a routine procedure, hang around until recovered, and return to the US than to get the same procedure in the highly bureaucratized US healthcare system. We can see what the real market price for procedures is when providers can bypass governments and insurance companies.
There are opportunities to improve the US healthcare system via more market involvement. Around fifteen years ago, AEI and Cato published proposals to that effect as conservative alternatives to Obamacare. But Republicans never followed through, and it has become apparent they are politically incapable of doing so.
So, while we conservatives can easily imagine a better healthcare system with more market involvement, there does not seem to be a way to get there politically. Therefore, I am becoming less opposed to universal government healthcare than I used to be. I don't see how it could be much worse than our current broken system.
If healthcare is universal, it's almost by definition run by the government. I assume that if you're a bulwark reader and listening to podcasts like this you've seen what an utter shitshow the Trump administration has been on things like USAID or with migrants to the U.S.
Imagine, for a second, we did get a full universal healthcare system, say back when Obama was president. Almost everyone would go to some kind of alternative NHS for all of their medical needs. Their records would be on file. And then the lawless Trump administraiton would be looking through it all to round up their enemies. Anytime someone without immigration papers went to a clinic? They'd be on file, DHS would come knocking. Anyone who went in for any kind of transgender health care? They'd probably be rounded up and sent to god knows where. And that's before you have Elon pillaging it of all funding or RFK or some other crank destroying it through sheer incompetence.
Keeping it away from the government is safer, because our government has demonstrated it can't really be trusted with things that are important to us but not to it.
In Canada, our Healthcare is under the “Provincial Governments”, though run with some subsidy from Federal Taxes (the central government transfers money for a portion of Healthcare to each Province). And so, given our interesting Regional Variations, it is “run” by some *six* different Polutical Parties! And yet, somehow, every Province, during the early Pandemic, put an actual Public Health Physician, the Province’s own Medical Officer of Health, on camera, and all the Provinces’ Premiers said: ‘Listen to her/him, not to me.” —Canada got 91% of adults vaccinated against Covid, and not only had a lower Covid death-rate than every State, had lower “All-Cause Mortality” rates. (Yep, anti-vaxxers, the vaccines really didn’t kill anybody). I’ve been surprised that our Covid Death Rate, of like 40% of the per-million-population rate in USA, is not more talked about.
That is some crazy circular logic. “Government” was trustworthy enough to work just fine until 2025. Donald Trump and DOGE destroyed the government. They have actually proven how necessary government services are. If you think government shouldn’t be trusted, I have some bad news for you about private, for-profit businesses.
Oh yes, we have such a long history of treating people who are say, racial or religious minorities well. Or people who have views that the government thinks are objectionable. I seem to even remember a time when we took a bunch of citizens and threw them into concentration camps because they were Japanese, Italian, or German by nationality back during some big war once.
And yeah, businesses have problems too. But with businesses, your risks are decentralized. There is no natural monopoly on healthcare and it's very easy to get second opinions when you don't like what your current doctor is doing. When the government puts its finger on the scales, not so much.
Maybe you do. People who can’t afford exorbitant healthcare costs can’t.
Weirdly enough the people who seem happy with their healthcare here are seniors on Medicare.
I’m not sure what your first point is about…that like every other country on earth, we have a past that often included some dark and shameful aspects? Do you think racism, slavery, misogyny, etc. wouldn’t have existed without government? Not sure what point you’re trying to land.
The point I am making is that it is all well and good if the government provides a good or a service. But when they start displacing other providers at scale I have a problem. Because yes, like all governments, ours has and probably will continue to abuse most of the power it has. That makes relying on it for any good or service dangerous and best avoided whenever possible.
Universal healthcare, almost by definition, displaces private healthcare. Maybe not entirely; the closest analogue I'm familiar with is the NHS over in the UK, which still allows a very small private sector medical field. And I also have in-laws who have died preventable deaths because specialist care that they needed was gatekept by GPs, and you can't easily change your GP under the NHS, so if you have one that's bad or even just overwhelmed by a case load....... sucks to be you. At the very least they're nice about sending compensation checks after the lawsuits, but it's cold comfort.
I'll take the rent-seeking behavior of private practice over that. Redundancy is a very good risk management strategy. Especially if you say, also happen to be in a minority that gets hostility form all ends of the political spectrum.
Thank you for the digest of information, Bill and Jonathan. I could hear everything just fine. I wonder, for those of you with complaints, if it’s a platform issue and not a broadcasting one.
Loved what I could actually hear. Bill Kristol's audio was so muddy even the captions didn't help. Please fix!
Thanks for calling a lie a lie. We need a lot more of that kind of reporting.
If the nutter were serious about a healthier 'murica and healthier kids, he would have fought the USDA tooth and nail from removing programs that provide access to local produce in the school systems.
Great summary Review! Bill, please be aware that the volume of your voice and your enunciation needs to be improved. 👍
Bill -- I find you hard to understand. First, you talk too fast and mumble, and second you seem to have a poor audio connection. I could hear and understand Jonathan Cohn just fine.
This has always been an issue for me too, and I wish I had an audio engineering background. Could just be he's really boisterous when they do the sound check! But srsly, I'd be thinking about room echo (a little boominess) and a mic with too limited frequency range. As far as volume varying, shouldn't there be some compression in the audio chain to help with that? FWIW, similar issue with Sam, for me-- he often comes through much softer than whoever else is on with him.
I hope someone with The Bulwark reads this and takes action.