In this pop-up episode of She Thinks, IWF’s Julie Gunlock talks to radiologist, professor, author, and Fox News anchor Dr. Nicole Saphier about her new book Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19. Dr. Saphier’s book covers some of the most controversial topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic shutdown that followed, from face masks, hydroxychloroquine, and the inconsistent messaging on gatherings and protests to China’s role and the origins of the virus. Tune in below:
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
Hey everyone, it’s Beverly Hallberg. Welcome to a special pop-up episode of She Thinks, your favorite podcast from the Independent Women’s Forum where we talk with women and sometimes men about the policy issues that impact you and the people you care about most. Enjoy.
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, director of the Center for Progress and Innovation at the Independent Women’s Forum. Today I’m joined by Dr. Nicole Saphier. Dr. Saphier is a nationally known medical contributor, bestselling author, and a regular guest anchor for Fox News Channel. Dr. Saphier is a full-time practicing board certified radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. And she is the author of a brand new truly fabulous book that’s out now called Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19. Dr. Saphier, I’m so glad to have you on today.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
I am so happy to be on with you.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, let’s, of course, first talk about your book I mentioned in the intro there that it really is an exceptional book. I hope that as people are listening to this they are opening another window, and Googling it, or going on Amazon. It is really a fantastic book and a must-read for people who want the truth about what happened, and has happened, and still happening over the past 15 months. I will tell you I actually put this book on my bookshelf. Right now it’s right next to me, but I put it on my bookshelf in sort of my reference section where I keep a lot of books that I use for data and really reliable information, so I really want to thank you.
And I think I represent a lot of people out there who don’t have a medical degree. I’m not a trained scientist. And so for people like me it is overwhelming, it is confusing, what you’ve written is very understandable. It is complex. I found myself sometimes reading a passage twice because it’s not an easy subject, but you really made it understandable, but also it is a page-turner. So thank you so much for writing this book.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, thank you. I appreciate it. One thing that I noticed throughout the course of the last year and a half everyone has been touched by this pandemic, so. One thing that I noticed was that there was a lot of information that when it was being delivered either people were not understanding what was coming out, or the information itself was being distorted, and that was causing panic and anxiety. I said, “What we have to do we have to break this down so people actually can understand it, and they’re not relying upon the media, or Google for information. They can just educate themselves and come up with their own opinions.”
Julie Gunlock:
Well, what’s so effective, also, about this book is the way that it’s organized. I really like that you are sort of touching on some of the most controversial topics, the most newsworthy topics that came up during the pandemic, and are still coming up, obviously. You touched on face masks, the phrase following the science, the inconsistent messaging on gathering, and protests and rallies, China’s role and the origins of the virus. These are all really important topics, but you talk about several and they’re all laid out in different chapters, and you go through sort of this was the issue, why it was controversial, what were the different messages, where were the sort of different camps? And then you lay out some really good science in each of these areas, which I just thought that was a great way to sort of organize the book. And it’s kind of how I try to figure things out in general when I’m doing my own research. And so it’s so nice to have it in one book.
So, honestly, I wish this podcast was more like four hours because I want to go over so many topics with you, but I want to just whittle it down to a few, and thought we could first talk about face masks. This is an issue that probably has caused the most controversy and the most sort of tribal, people sort of were set in their ways and had decided, and most like passion and emotion around face masks, but the reason I want to talk about it, too, is it’s still going on. You have people who are fully vaccinated and won’t take their face mask off, but you’ve also, we’ve now got a situation where schools many of them that haven’t including my own that have not opened yet they say they’re going to open in the fall and we’re talking about they’re still demanding fully masking of these children. So I kind of wanted to get a little bit into the mask sort of debate, and get your thoughts on and sort of the history of the controversy of masks.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, this is an extremely important topic, and one that I’m currently being very vocal on. Yes, I’m a physician. I work with cancer patients who are obviously immunocompromised. I myself take a medication for an auto-immune disease, which suppresses my immune system. I also am a mother of three. So I come at my face mask opinions from many different angles. And while I talk about in the book a year ago when we really had no defense mechanisms against this novel coronavirus we had no treatments. We had no vaccines. We didn’t even know some of the details regarding how it transmits.
Wearing face masks was one of our only modes of protection. Now, the people, the critics say, “Well, face masks they don’t prevent viral transmission.” It’s like, well, you’re right. They’re not 100%, but when we had hospital systems overflowing and the ICUs were having to send patients elsewhere for other parts of the hospital retrofitted to take care of them, hey, we want to do whatever we can. It was an all hands on deck effort. So wear a face mask. It’s going to decrease transmission. It’s not going to eliminate it. And so that’s why we did it then.
Then it became political in nature because you had President Trump who was not necessarily wearing face masks out in public. I kept trying to relay this to people. And I even said this directly to him via the TV saying, “Listen, the reason President Trump isn’t wearing a face mask right now is because he was tested this morning. And every person around him is tested which show that they are negative, but for optics it would be great to throw on a face mask.” And he did do that, but, again, why do we need our president to put on a political stunt? I mean, that’s more virtue signaling. I knew why he wasn’t wearing a mask. It wasn’t necessarily he was anti-mask. He wasn’t wearing a mask because it wasn’t necessary in that setting. Unfortunately, the knee-jerk anti-Trumpism turned it into anyone who supports Trump is anti-mask, and anybody who doesn’t support Trump wears masks all the time, but those are two extremes.
Julie Gunlock:
But it was funny then when Biden comes in many Americans had been vaccinated at that point. He had been vaccinated. As you say, everyone around him is tested and he’s walking out to the helicopter with a mask on, and this went on for months. And that frustrated me too because I also thought that there needed to be more confidence in the vaccine given to people, shown to people that, okay, I’ve been vaccinated. Everybody around me has so now I can take my mask off. And that in some way served as an incentive to people that you don’t like the mask. Well, if you get vaccinated, you don’t have to wear one. So it is funny. It was frustrating. I agree with you on both sides the messaging.
And I think the messaging from the public health community was also frustrating. I chuckled so much in your book when you talked about that. I think it was a Canadian public health official who suggested people wear a mask while having sex. I was laughing so hard when I read that part. I had heard about that and forgotten it and then saw it in your book. And so I think messaging all around from all quarters was really messed up on this, but I’m wondering if you can kind of shift, pivot over to I’d love to know your opinion on masking of children. And as we approach the fall school year, the next school year, how do you feel about continuing to make kids wear masks for up to eight hours a day?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, and that brings us to where we are now. You’re absolutely right. When President Biden took over all of a sudden it was a show of force we wear a mask now. It’s like, well, but we don’t actually have to wear a mask now. We’ve made it through that horrible second wave of the winter. And now we have vaccines and we’ve reached a level of community immunity where vaccine, where transmission it’s exceedingly low. It’s not even considered local outbreaks anymore. It’s more endemic. So I’ve been trying to say to people, the emergency is over, the pandemic is not over, but the emergency is. Any adult who wants to get vaccinated has been vaccinated. And, thankfully, a large portion has, and you add that with the existing immunity, and now all of a sudden that’s why cases are so low. And the problem is you still have public health officials kind of trying to ignore the fact that we have acquired immunity from natural infection and they continue to want more people to get vaccinated, and that’s fine. I understand that, but that’s not really what herd immunity is.
Herd immunity is not about 100% of a population getting a vaccine. It’s about enough of a community being immune, whether from natural immunity, or vaccine induced to provide protection for those who are not, like our children. And so if you actually look at the transmission data in children right now since the vaccines have been out the transmission amongst children of the virus has decreased almost 90%. So, yes, when they say, well, now the transmission is most in kids it doesn’t mean that there’s more transmission in kids. It just means it’s because the adults are vaccinated. So they really twist words to instill this level of fear. And you have educators and parents who are living in this state of a perceived danger of the risks of COVID-19 in children that it’s a level of risk that has been acceptable before thinking of flu, RSV, strep throat, other illnesses, which can cause sickness in kids.
And there are rare cases of severity, even death, but those levels are quite similar to COVID-19 in kids. And even now if you really look at the numbers even with the flu shot there are more flu associated hospitalizations with kids than COVID-19. And so we have to move away from that perceived level of danger. In the beginning maybe risk versus benefits when we were trying to lessen transmission we had such high transmission we should wear masks to help do that, but transmission is so low now, and kids are not vulnerable to this virus. We have to reevaluate that risk and benefit. And there are inherent risks for prolonged mask wear in children such as dermatologic issues, acne, sinus infections, dental issues, emotional, mental, everything. I don’t think that risk benefit at this point has shifted, and we really need to get those masks off the kids.
Julie Gunlock:
Dr. Saphier, I can’t tell you enough. I’m so thrilled to hear you talking about this because I do think it really is frustrating for me because I live in a community where our superintendent, I mean, I don’t want to turn this into to talk about school closures too much, but he refuses to open the schools. When the CDC went from the desks six feet apart to three feet apart he refused to do that. Now everybody’s to the point of just begging him to open the schools, which again are not yet open that I don’t think they’re going to even focus on the masks. And if he does require masking of children for eight hours nobody will say anything because they’re just desperate to get the schools open. And so it’s so frustrating to me to know what you’ve said here, to know this data and not to be able to convince someone, which tells me this is not about the science it’s about politics. It’s about stoking that fear. It’s about keeping people worried about this.
I think part of the masking has become this tool to keep people afraid. Fear is such a powerful weapon. And so if you’re going to demand more money for schools for more and more PPE, or whatever the schools are now demanding in order to open making parents feel like their kids are at risk, and that they need to wear this mask, and they need to. You mentioned this transmissions among teenagers or young children is down 90%, but then they twist it and make it sound like, but teenagers are the ones getting sick now, but it’s only because the adult … That whole thing is, again, used to make parents afraid and it’s really effective. I hope people hear your message on the masking of kids because I think it really is sort of the next heated debate that parents are going to face.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Unfortunately, the moment you say something about kids taking off their mask they’ll say, “Well, children have died of COVID-19.” And every death is devastating, but we have more people dying in car accidents every day than COVID-19 right now, but yet people are still getting in their car no problem.
Julie Gunlock:
In their cars. Well, the other things is I’m on record being very pro-vaccine. I’ve written for the Wall Street Journal on the need for vaccines. The measles vaccine, for instance, is not 100% effective. In a rare case that you’re one of the very few people who gets vaccinated and still gets measles so that does happen because these vaccines are wonderful and miracles, but they’re not 100% effective. We don’t mask after getting a measles vaccine. We just don’t do that. Any of the vaccines my kids get, I’m not masking after getting these vaccines. So we do have to accept some level of risk, which seems to be lost on it.
And, again, when you’re talking about the effects on kids you just listed all of those problems that are associated with masking they don’t make it into the consideration of a lot of these school administrators, so it is. And that’s not true of all schools. I think I have a particularly bad case here. I know some school administrators, some superintendents really are considering these things and taking appropriate steps, but I want to shift a little bit, I think this is a good segue into another conversation having to do with kids, and a decision that a lot of parents are facing is whether to get the vaccine for younger kids.
I have three kids too. I have all boys. I have a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old, and an 11-year-old so pretty much in that 12 and up age range that is now being discussed about. And I can, I could get two of my children vaccinated. And, again, I’ve said, “I’m very pro-vaccine,” but I’m very hesitant. I actually belong in the vaccine hesitant category. I don’t want to get them vaccinated. And part of that is because of what you just talked about, about how these kids they’re not getting terribly sick, and if they get the disease and they’re not spreading the disease to other people, so I don’t understand this urgency to get kids vaccinated. Maybe you can make me understand this, and give me your opinion on vaccinating young kids.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, geez, anybody who follows me on Twitter is pretty in tune with how I feel about this topic because I’m also a mother to three boys and I hear this stuff all the time. I have an older son who’s 21. And then I have two younger guys, eight and six. And I can tell you my 21-year-old is fully vaccinated. That was his own choice. We had a conversation about it. He works with autistic children, young children. They’ve been doing a lot of virtual stuff. And he said he wanted to do anything and everything to make the parents feel better about getting back to in-person. And he wanted to make sure that he was doing anything he can to decrease transmission risk to these children who are at a higher risk of severe COVID. As we know that there are some groups in children that can be more severe, obesity, those with developmental abnormalities, and mental health illnesses, so I think he made the right choice. I mean, that was a very good choice for him.
Now, but I think when it comes to adolescents and kids it’s very important to have a safe and efficacious vaccine, but it needs to be done on an individual basis. I don’t really support the universal vaccine campaigns in these younger people for many reasons. And I have a couple of opinion pieces on foxnews.com specifically talking about this. Actually, I have one that’s pro-vaccine in the Washington Post talking about why it’s important to have a vaccine for kids, but the counter to that, not everyone necessarily needs to get it just like not everyone gets the shingles vaccine. We only give that to those who are at risk for it. And that’s probably what it should be with COVID when it comes to kids.
Right now you’re seeing all these reports of increased heart inflammation in adolescents. It’s quite ironic in the sense that you saw a lot of universities these Big Ten universities were halting fall sports because there were reports of heart inflammation from COVID-19. So they halted them, but those same Big Ten universities are now requiring their students to get this vaccine. And we have more reports of heart inflammation following the vaccine than we did with COVID. I mean, it’s really hard to follow the logic here because there’s no logic. And the thing is when they’re doing these clinical trials in the adolescents, in the younger kids, they’re really only having enough kids in it to make sure that the vaccine produces an immune response and that they have a good dose. And so it’s not powered enough, meaning not enough people are enrolled to see some of those more rare side effects.
So it’s really not surprising when we have about seven million adolescents now who have gotten the vaccine that we have several hundred cases of cardiac inflammation afterwards, symptomatic because they saw the doctor, so you’re going to start seeing those rare things come out the more you give it to them. Unfortunately, as I have said, I don’t think that this virus is an emergency anymore. The viral transmission is down, and it’s low-risk to children. Why are we still doing this under the emergency use authorization? They should be seeking full FDA approval when it comes to children. And my biggest concern regarding the younger kids, yes, we’ve had some children hospitalized and die from COVID-19, but one of our bigger concerns is that multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children that occurs in kids following an infection with SARS-CoV-2. That’s an auto-immune response, or a post viral syndrome that happens about four weeks after their infection. And it can affect their heart, kidneys, eyes, skin, all these other things, and it can be quite debilitating.
The problem is that happens as a result of the inflammation from the immune response to the virus. Well, the vaccine is supposed to emulate the virus and the immune response so how are we confident that the vaccine itself isn’t going to cause MIS-C? There are some studies that show that the immune response from the vaccine is even stronger than the natural response, so are we going to see more cases of MIS-C from the vaccine than the virus? Will it be more severe? Unfortunately, we won’t see that if they’re only doing a small amount of kids in the clinical trial and it goes through under the EUA. They have to do the full FDA approval in my opinion. They need to look at risk benefits.
Julie Gunlock:
I totally agree. And, unfortunately, this information is really not getting to parents. I mean, I’m a fairly well-read person on this issue and I follow sort of vaccine safety issues. And I didn’t really have a full picture of this. It worries me that parents are, and for parents who have already gotten their children vaccinated that they have now this to worry about. Let me ask you about that heart inflammation they are seeing, which I know the CDC called I don’t know if it was an emergency meeting, but they definitely met and discussed the issue. Is there more information on that? And, also, is the inflammation temporary, or is this something that people are worrying about a sustained inflammation, or something that the children are having sustained problems with this?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
So the good news. First of all, myocarditis, or pericarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle itself, or inflammation of the sac that surrounds the heart. Now you can get that after any viral infection. I mean, it’s I’m not going to say common, it’s rare, but it happens, but the good news is the far majority of cases it’s completely self-limited, meaning after a few days, a few weeks it goes away, especially with the use of nonsteroidals like Motrin, or something along those lines, but in the rare cases, yes, it can be chronic. It can be severe. It can have long-term implications. We would like to avoid it if possible, but the good news is if a child gets it statistically speaking, they’re likely going to be just fine and have no long-term effects from it, but the same is true with COVID-19, so.
Julie Gunlock:
Exactly.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Why are we taking one low-risk with another? And I’ve heard some people are arguing saying, “Well, we don’t know what the long-term effects are of COVID-19. It could cause long-term damage.” I’m like, last time I checked, we don’t have long-term data on the vaccines either, but somehow we’re okay with that.
Julie Gunlock:
Exactly. Sometimes people will also say, “Well, it protects by giving your child a vaccine they can’t infect anyone else,” but we know that children are not passing it. They’re not good vectors for this disease. They’re not passing it onto people. And so that also needs to be considered in the decision. Well, I really don’t think my child is a huge risk factor to other people. I might be, so I will get it. I’m an older person. I will get it. I feel like, also, parents are a little bit intimidated into making these decisions perhaps a little too quickly. I’m very worried. My middle child is a very good ballplayer, and I worry about these being mandated for him to be able to play. It’s something that I think a lot of parents are worried about.
Unfortunately, when they even ask questions sometimes they’re made to feel like they’re some anti-vaxxer. And I think that these are healthy questions that people need to ask, and it’s unfortunate that in many sectors, and among some people asking questions isn’t allowed, and this is why your book is so important. I want to repeat the name of your book because I know people are going to go on Amazon as I’m saying this. It’s called Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19. Truly, truly necessary. I think parents, especially, should read this book.
I want to pivot a little bit over to just a little bit away from kids. I thought one of the most fascinating chapters in your book, it was the chapter called “Fork in the Road,” where you took a look, you’d looked at how Sweden handled the pandemic. And I just want to read a little passage from your book. You write, “Instead of oppressive closures, like elsewhere in the world, recommendations were made to the public to lessen gatherings, work from home, and protect the elderly. While restaurants were not closed, people were dining out less frequently. Schools were kept in session while social gatherings and indoor activities decreased. This is essentially a matter of trust. The government trusting the population to behave with it with some measure of personal responsibility, and a sense of community responsibility also.”
You also quoted an AP article in that same chapter where the AP article describes Sweden’s approach as quote, “the people trust the experts and scientists to develop reasonable policies and the government trusts the people to follow those guidelines.” Sadly, that is not happening here in the United States, Dr. Saphier. I wonder how we fix that. I think that there has been some problematic, to use a popular term, problematic behavior on some part of the public health officials and government officials, and it’s made it harder, frankly, for the medical community to treat people to prevent disease. There’s a real trust deficit now with public health. How do we fix this?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, honestly, we’re like a lose-lose situation because if you look at some countries in Asia they locked down in the sense that they actually were bolting doors closed for people who had a known positive case in their house. There were armed guard across all the neighborhoods to make sure people weren’t actually leaving. And, yes, they got their cases down. They had less deaths per population, but that’s not really the society we live in. On the flip side, though, we still closed businesses, took kids out of school, and we had very high death. We didn’t lock everybody in their homes to get those cases down, people were still gathering in the comforts of their homes, but we shuttered in perpetual a lot of businesses. And a lot of children have suffered because of their being out of school.
What should have happened was they needed to make clear, all right, we are either going to trust these countries, and come up with some true decisions that are going to help us get through this, or we’re going to accept some level of devastation by maintaining certain freedoms. And right now I’ve heard Dr. Fauci, and some other people say, or Dr. Birx for certain said, “The first wave was inevitable. We couldn’t have done much about that, but the second wave is because people acted selfishly.” That is not good wording first of all. Maybe if we had better collective leadership and we didn’t have the doctors, Fauci, and others who continuously changed the information that was coming out maybe people would have had more trust.
The reason we had such a bad second wave is because of how everything went down in the preceding eight months. And there was a lot of lack of trust from the information coming out. I think that there needed to be more transparency, and less political insertion in the earlier aspects, and then maybe the second wave wouldn’t have been so hard, but I mean, one of the most blatant examples of what happened was with hydroxychloroquine. You can almost not even talk about that medication anymore because you sound like a charlatan peddling something, but it is the most boring, old, cheap drug that’s been used for decades. And it has known antiviral effects, and you had people showing that it worked against the original SARS. And so, yeah, of course, people all across the world are going to start hanging on the new one. We didn’t have any treatment.
The fact that President Trump mentioned it, it turned into this massive conspiracy and anyone who even talked about it, it was as though they were pro-Trump and a conspiracy theorist to the point where you had big tech censoring people, you had some of the most world-renowned medical journals having to retract papers because they used faulty data to try and disprove hydroxychloroquine. It was the most disgusting thing, and it caused so much discord.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s terrifying that this sort of broken brain, never Trumpism, caused, I mean, when you say medical journals actually having to offer retractions because they got so spun up with this. It is terrifying to think of that kind of bias affecting science. It boggles my mind.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, and that, in my opinion, so when I hear people say, “Well, if Americans weren’t so selfish it wouldn’t be so bad.” Like, nope, nope, I don’t think that’s true. I think it has to do with the fact that Americans were distrusting of the information that were coming out of our public health professionals because they did a terrible job. They missed the boat and we keep seeing over and over again how bad information was given. And the biggest thing they could have done is just say you know what? We were wrong. We were wrong about face masks in the beginning. We were wrong about the mode of transmission. We were wrong about that, but they don’t say that.
Julie Gunlock:
I mean, there’s never an apology. There’s never an apology. There’s never admitting wrongdoing. There’s never any sort of walking back what was said. Never. It’s always just this sort of smug attitude. And this is what I think when I mentioned the Sweden thing what I found so fascinating about you writing about it is that, look, I’m not living in Sweden. I’m not Swedish. I don’t know everything about what occurred over there, but it does sound like, and again, and you make this point, too. You can’t exactly compare Sweden. . . they’re apples and oranges with United States, but you compared it to, I think, which state? Did you do South Dakota?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
I believe it was Wisconsin, maybe, one of them, but, yes, I tried to take a Norwegian population.
Julie Gunlock:
A state that didn’t have as much lockdowns and you compared them, but the bottom line is that the smugness and certainty, the lack of contrition after the public health community has been proven wrong it really does grate at people. And so when I talk about this trust deficit public health earned it. They earned that trust. They treat people badly and like you said they sort of can’t ever come back out and say, sorry, we were wrong about this. And people aren’t stupid. They remember that kind of stuff.
I think it’s really worrisome if this happens again. I don’t think anybody denies that this may happen again. It’s very likely. So it worries me for the next time about recommendations, suggestions coming out of the public health community when we’ve had, I mean, for goodness sake the face of public health is Fauci who’s obviously proven himself not to be trustworthy now. So I do worry about the next round. You must also worry about that. Is the medical community is there anything being done sort of from a PR perspective to sort of tackle this issue?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Well, I can tell you it’s concerning that at this point I think the latest poll showed over 50% of Americans don’t trust information coming out of the CDC. And you know what? Me neither, especially right now, and I can’t believe I’m saying that because I’ve always been someone who has not blindly, but really trusted in the CDC, the FDA, but I will tell you in the end of March, I’m sure everyone remembers. You had CDC Director, Walensky, the end of March she went on Zoom, or whatever she got. She looked at the camera and she gets choked up. She’s like, “I am so worried about the impending doom that’s going to come.”
And I’m like, what are you talking about? We were most content. Two days later in the Wall Street Journal an article I wrote came out that said, “Dr. Fauci, Tear Off These Masks.” It was definitely a different mindset, but I was like, how can you say this right now? All you have to do is look at the data. Yes, there is going to be a small bump after spring break. That’s what happens, but the fact that we were vaccinating millions of Americans every single day at that point, I’m like, no way. By Memorial Day weekend it’s time for mask-ipation, not impending doom, like why are you doing this?
Julie Gunlock:
Yes.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
The fear mongering is terrible.
Julie Gunlock:
And I do think, I mean, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracist as well, but I do think that it really was sort of wrapped up in school openings and the pressure to get schools opened. The teacher’s unions and many other groups were saying, “No, keep them closed, or keep kids masked, or keep it to hybrid.” I think there has been a real reluctance in some sectors of the government to open up. And so other sectors of the government are sort of willing to go along, like, okay, let’s keep up the fear. Let’s keep stoking the fear. Let’s keep people nervous because then they’ll more easily acquiesce to these policies that are really inconvenient, or in some cases taking their businesses away, or taking their jobs away. I think people are more willing to sort of acquiesce to those policies when they’re actually afraid.
To me that’s sort of, and again, I know that might sound a little bit conspiratorial, but I really think that there was this thinking on some government officials among them to keep people nervous, and, again, they’ll behave if you will. I know we’ve gone on a little long and I don’t want to keep you too much longer, but I do want to just ask you a quick question. We don’t have enough time to go into this deeply, but I’d like to talk about China. I know you’re like, that’s the most complicated issue that you’re starting here at the end, but I guess my only question is Biden has now called for an investigation including into Fauci. Do you think we’ll ever know? Just a basic question. Do you think we’ll ever really know where this came from?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
COVID came from China. We’ll start there.
Julie Gunlock:
Wait, wait.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
How timely was it that there’s an entire chapter in my book that’s exploring the origins of the virus. I’m glad everyone’s catching up now. No, honestly, I think if there was evidence that it came from the lab they’re probably destroyed at this point. We know it came from a certain area in China. The fact that the mecca for coronavirus research with the most genetically similar viruses to the circulating SARS-CoV-2 were eight miles away from that wet market, uh, okay, mm-hmm, that’s a lot of coincidences there, but I do think that it should be heavily investigated. I think what’s happening right now with what President Biden has instituted is more of virtue signaling. I think what Mike Pompeo, and the Trump administration was doing in their investigation probably would have resulted in a little bit more accuracy, but I think at this point much of the evidence is gone.
Julie Gunlock:
That is unfortunate. I don’t want to end this on a totally negative note here, but I do want to reiterate that your book is an absolute must-read. I think that the American public deserves to know the truth. I don’t think there are a lot of officials out there willing to dig into the issues as deeply as you did. And I am really grateful to you for doing that. I mentioned to you before we went on that I am going to buy this book several times and send it to people who I think really need this information. And I really hope that our listeners will listen to this, or will get this book as well, and send it off to people that need it as well. I’m going to say the name again, it’s called Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19. Doctor, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.
Julie Gunlock:
I know I just said at the ending there, but doctor, if you could just say your Twitter handle, and where else people can read your writing?
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
My Twitter handle is NBSaphier, my name S-A-P-H-I-E-R MD. I’m on Instagram, Twitter, and I have a website, nicolesaphiermd.com. You can kind of find most of my stuff there, or just Google me.
Julie Gunlock:
And you’re also on Fox News Channel quite a bit, too, so watch her there as well. Thanks again, doctor.
Dr. Nicole Saphier:
Thank you.
Julie Gunlock:
We hope you take away something new from today’s conversation. And if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, or liked the podcast in general we’d love it if you could take a moment to leave us a rating, or review on iTunes. This helps ensure our message reaches as many Americans as possible. Share this episode and let your friends know they can find more She Thinks episodes on iTunes, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Spotify, and their favorite podcast app. This is Julie Gunlock signing off on another special pop-up episode of She Thinks.