My Redfield Interview Transcript
By popular (and unpopular) demand :)
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The debut episode of my podcast, “The Dana Parish Podcast: 3rd Opinion,” went viral. I was not expecting that! It was an interview with former CDC Director, Dr. Robert Redfield, and made national AND international headlines, from Newsweek, RADAR, and Public Radio, to Chinese, German, and Albanian outlets. UNC even responded to Redfield’s shocking admission that Covid may have originated in Chapel Hill.
To view the full interview on YouTube, click here.
Spotify, here.
Apple, here.
I’ve received many requests for the full transcript and finally have a few min to share. Love to hear your thoughts, thank you SO MUCH for your support, and please…
SUBSCRIBE to the new podcast at above links & STAY TUNED for more...
Dana Parish (00:02):
Good morning, Dr. Redfield.
Dr. Redfield (00:04):
Morning.
Dana Parish (00:05):
I can't believe that we are talking on November 6th, the world woke up to the news that Donald Trump won the second presidency. You were the CDC director under his first. How do you feel this morning?
Dr. Redfield (00:19):
Well, you know, I'm excited. I was in his camp--you know--particularly in the area with Bobby Kennedy and trying to make America healthy again. Also, obviously, I think it's great and to be Republican, and I'm glad that we took the Senate because as we're going to talk about biosafety. I'm a big advocate to looking more critically at gain of function research and regulations around it, which I don't think we would've accomplished in a Democratic Senate, but I think a Republican Senate will get that done now.
Dana Parish (00:52):
What will your role be with this administration? I heard you just say that you're going to be working with RFK. What does that mean?
Dr. Redfield (01:00):
I think right now it's just giving my best advice to make America healthy again. You know, I think these individuals are highly capable and obviously if they want advice or input for RFK—I think it was important to kind of set the record straight myself being one of the strongest advocates for vaccines around--you know--the greatest gift from science to modern medicine that I could help. Correct. You know, I think that the terrible disinformation that people have about Kennedy being anti-vaccine, he's not anti-vaccine. What he is, and appropriately so is wants transparency about vaccines, transparency about their safety and their efficacy. Like me, he doesn't want to see vaccines mandated against people's independent will. So, I thought it was important to--you know--stand shoulder to shoulder with Kennedy and let people know that whoever's been calling them anti-vax and all the headlines, and all the newspapers and all the TV shows, anti-vax, controversial anti-vaccine individuals.
(02:13):
It's just a false narrative, which is really unfortunate. He is got a lot to offer and a lot of original thinking in terms of how to go after some of the chronic diseases in our nation. It's remarkable that within 30 years we've gone from one of the healthiest nations in the world to one of the sickest nations in the world, with over 50% of people in America. And even if you look at 18-year-olds, over 40% of 18-year-olds are obese. And that obesity is associated then with a series of other chronic diseases that make our nation extremely unhealthy. When I was CDC director, we lost 1.2 million people from Covid, and people wondered why we lost so many people from Covid when other countries like Taiwan lost so few. And the answer is because we're not healthy. And Covid exploited the underlying health conditions of obesity, diabetes, hypertension to cause increased mortality.
Dana Parish (03:12):
Why did the word anti-vax become the biggest insult that you could possibly call somebody? How did that even evolve? It feels so virulent, and it feels so extreme to me. Why can't we question vaccines?
Dr. Redfield (03:29):
Yeah. I don't know. Obviously, it's by a group of individuals that have taken the position that you can't—if you question a vaccine, if you ask the question, is a vaccine safe? And you ask the question, does this vaccine work? They immediately classify you as anti-vax. I think it shows a lack of intellectual and scientific honesty about vaccine whether or not it was something that was created more by influencers.
Dana Parish (04:03):
Yeah.
Dr. Redfield (04:03):
I'm not sure where it comes from. I do believe that the decisions that were made to make Covid vaccines--for example--mandatory in certain circumstances were only going to accelerate vaccine hesitancy. And this anti-vaccine narrative--you know--I never was an advocate of it. I felt we should never mandate these vaccines. So anyhow, I was just saying, I think the mandating the vaccine was a big mistake.
Dana Parish (04:32):
Was the vaccine capable? I think we just need to set the record straight. Was it ever capable of blocking transmission and did it ever block transmission or acquisition of the virus?
Dr. Redfield (04:44):
Yeah. The vaccines were never approved for interrupting transmission. The vaccines were approved for decreasing the risk of serious illness hospitalization, and death. So, if you look at some of the trials that were done—there can be a suggestion for a short term. There may be some preventive capacity, but I would argue that these vaccines don't prevent transmission. They prevent serious illness and death. And as such you can see the flaw in the public health recommendations and now the most recent one to vaccinate children down to the age of 6 months, it doesn't make any sense to be vaccinating individual populations where serious illness is just not in the cards. So, I'm not an advocate of vaccination of those individuals under 50 for Covid. It's not that different than what we do for RSV, where we recommend it for people over 65. And I do think the messaging could have been better at, from the very beginning allowing people to know that this vaccine did not prevent infection, mandating it for hospital workers and firefighters and policemen in the military. It was all a big mistake. If this vaccine, in fact did block transmission, we could have a bigger argument, a big public debate about whether one would consider mandating it in certain circumstances. But it doesn't block transmission. It only blocks serious illness and death.
Dana Parish (06:24):
Does it still?
Dr. Redfield (06:26):
It still blocks serious illness and death.
Dana Parish (06:30):
Okay. Because what I'm seeing still is that--you know--there are older vulnerable people. My dad being one of them, who was vaccinated at least 4 times, and about a month and a half later, he wound up in the hospital. And he's healthy. I mean, he's like considered a healthy guy. No pre-existing [conditions].
Dr. Redfield (06:54):
So, you raised a really important point. Because when I used the word vaccinated, it should really say that you're adequately and appropriately vaccinated. So, the immune protection for serious illness and death from the current Covid vaccines probably last about 4 to 6 months. So, it's not a long-term annual—it's not an annual vaccine that works. So, the idea, if you're adequately vaccinated, and we saw this originally when I was the senior public health advisor for the state of Maryland and Governor Hogan. We got everybody vaccinated in our long-term care facilities back in January, 2021. We really did a great job December, January, 2021. And because we had saw an increased hospitalization and death in our nursing homes, and then come around April, May, I started to see increased hospitalization from the nursing home again. So, I said--well--wait a minute.
(08:09):
We better check the immunity in the nursing home residents to see if they still have immunity based on the vaccine. And we did a study in about 750 people, and we showed that almost two thirds of them no longer had any immunity, any antibody. So that's when I suggested to Governor Hogan, we needed to revaccinate everybody. And of course, the Public Health Service and NIH, FDA, they all argued against it. There's no reason this is something you just need to do. The original series, as you remember, they used to say you were completely immunized when you got the two-shot series. I argued, you're not completely immunized. You have short term immunity and it needs to be boosted. We did end up boosting everybody in the nursing homes, and we shut down the hospitalization and the death and it reversed and then sort of maintained vaccination about every 6 months.
(08:43):
It took the public health service a long time to come around to that because I don't think there was open, honest debate about this. The other thing that's not been open and honest about the vaccines is to look at the reality that these vaccines are not all good. There are some people, and I have a clinic now. I'm in clinic 2 days a week, and it's all long Covid but a number of the people that I'm seeing don't really have long Covid. It looks like long Covid, but what they have is clinical illness because of the mRNA vaccines themselves.
Dana Parish (09:18):
What are the scope of those injuries? Because I think there's a misconception that it's only myocarditis, and I don't think that's correct.
Dr. Redfield (09:26):
No, not at all. No. It's pretty significant. They can develop really the whole spectrum of what we'll see with long Covid. You know so, you can have significant cognitive dysfunction where you lose your ability for word recall. I have one patient who actually lost her ability to speak. Because she can only remember 3 to 5 words at a time.
Dana Parish (09:52):
Wow. And how old is she?
Dr. Redfield (09:54):
She was in her mid-fifties. She was a very prominent, highly effective woman manager who ended up losing her ability to work. I have a number of individuals, obviously very well gainfully employed that developed what I call a suffocation syndrome, which they feel like they're suffocating, but their hearts are normal and their lungs are normal. But what's happening is they're not returning the blood from their deep venous system, particularly in their pelvis and abdomen. They're not returning their blood efficiently back to their heart. Because there's defects in the venous valves. And there's also defects in the venous valves—the integrity of the vein walls so that when the arteries lay over them, they kind of block them. And then they form collaterals. I have a number of people that have significant autonomic dysfunction.
(10:56):
One lady in particular, a prominent professor and one of the major universities here in Baltimore, Mountain biking all through Colorado, did great and now all of a sudden, she can't sit up. She had to live on a stretcher for about 4 months. She lived on a stretcher because she couldn't maintain her blood pressure and pulse if she was in any other position other than laying down. She's normal now. She's back driving and teaching after about 3 years. But for probably a good 18 months, she was really pretty sick.
Dana Parish (11:32):
How did you get her functioning again?
Dr. Redfield (11:35):
You know, really, it's just time. These are really pretty much long Covid from infection and long Covid from vaccine usually cause reversible situations. They may reverse in 6 months. They may reverse in 4 years, but they're usually reversible.
Dana Parish (11:56):
What is the mechanism--
Dr. Redfield (11:59):
Probably because they're driven by residual spike protein. And the problem with the mRNA vaccines are that when we give you an mRNA vaccine, we turn your body into a factory to make spike protein. And I don't know how much you make and how long you make it. This is why I'm not an advocate anymore of the mRNA vaccines. I think there's a better alternative with the protein vaccine, which is made by Novavax. It's a killed protein. I know exactly how much spike protein you're getting, and I don't turn your body into a factory. Whereas when I give the mRNA vaccines, the mRNA gets into your body and actually co-ops your body to be a factory to make mRNA. And I don't really have a way to control how long you make it or how much you make. And so, I really think those vaccines should be reviewed more critically particularly for broader side effects and recognize that there is an alternative vaccine available now that doesn't have those risk.
Dana Parish (13:02):
Should the vaccines stay on the market? Should the mRNA vaccines for Covid stay on the market? That's a question I hear raised all the time.
Dr. Redfield (13:11):
Yeah. I think they should definitely be critically reviewed by the FDA for potential safety concerns. You've heard the safety concern that I just gave you that we can't control the amount of spike protein, and we definitely are seeing patients that develop life-changing complications from the vaccine. No doubt about it.
Dana Parish (13:30):
And it's not a small amount from what I see.
Dr. Redfield (13:32):
No, it's real. I don't know what the exact number is, but it's real. Secondly, there's also, as you’ve read, there's concerns that the mRNA vaccines actually have contaminating nucleic acid in them. So, they're not just the mRNA vaccine nucleic acid mRNA, but they've also found--you know--some nucleic acid sequences from SV40, which is a tumor virus. So, I think it's something that should be critically re-reviewed by the FDA. They haven't done it.
Dana Parish (14:09):
How concerned are you about SV40?
Dr. Redfield (14:12):
I'm not personally. I'm not personally, but it's there. And it should be rigorously re-reviewed--you know--rather than just sort of dismiss it --hey--we see this, but we don't think it means anything. I think there has to be a little more rigorous safety review of the mRNA vaccine in 2024, 2025. I was on warp speed. I helped develop these vaccines. I'm proud of it. We saved a lot of lives. But these vaccines really should have been prioritized only for the highly vulnerable individuals for bad outcome. And now that we have alternatives that killed protein vaccines, we ought to reevaluate. And that we have the test of time seeing some significant side effects in patients that are quite debilitating. We ought to reevaluate the safety of these vaccines.
Dana Parish (15:12):
One of the questions that has come up a lot in the last 6 months is whether the spike protein from the vaccine can integrate into the genome of human cells. What do you think?
Dr. Redfield (15:20):
I think it's a good question. I don't think it integrates into our chromosomes. But I do think there's a possibility the message stays around a longer than it should. Right. So how do people continue to make spike protein--you know--3 months, 4 months, 5 months, 6 months later? One possibility is that the mRNA has been stabilized to the point that it can stay in the body much longer. And there were obviously, that's one possibility as opposed to the natural Covid, RNA. The other possibility is that it integrates, I think if it integrates more of the view that it may integrate into mitochondrial DNA and therefore have cytoplasmic replication potential to continue to produce spike protein. But I don't think one should be dismissive like some of my colleagues have been and say, oh, no, no, no, that can't happen. No, no, no. That can't happen. I do think there's some, actually, there's some evidence and some papers that suggest it. It may be more persistent through integration, but I don't think it's chromosomal integration. I think it may be cytoplasmic integration in mitochondria.
Dana Parish (16:39):
Why do you think the public is not being leveled with about the side effects and injuries associated with the vaccines?
Dr. Redfield (16:49):
You know, I don't know the answer to that. This is--well--again, I'm a big advocate of Bobby Kennedy and his real message is transparency. Transparency on vaccine efficacy. Transparency on vaccine safety. I think there were a lot of people high up in the food chain on this vaccine--you know--at NIH, at FDA and at obviously Pfizer and Moderna, that took the position that any negative criticism of the vaccine would promote vaccine hesitancy. So, therefore, we're going to block any negative criticism to the point that they did on Facebook and Twitter, and a lot of social media, that's the exact formula for causing vaccine hesitancy. Once the public believes that you're not telling the truth, then they're going to be more conspiracy theories, more, we're not getting the whole story. So, I think, I feel the total opposite of what was done.
(17:55):
You know, I think there should be full transparency. I think the FDA, when I heard that they may be not releasing the safety profile of the Moderna, Pfizer vaccine for another year, I think that's a big mistake. I think those safety profiles ought to be open to the public as we speak. And but I don't understand the motivation other than there's a sense in some people that they know better. They know better. They know what's best for you. So, they will decide what's best for you. I remember Tony Fauci and I used to argue about natural immunity, and he had told the president that--you know--we would have be fine because of when we got the herd immunity of 30%--the pandemic would really decrease. And I said, as a virologist, I said, I think for coronaviruses, there's no such thing as herd immunity.
(18:54):
It's not going to be operational. And the reason I said that is I already had patients that were getting repetitively infected within--you know--2, 3 months. So, natural infection wasn't causing any significant immunity. I didn't think herd immunity be operational. Then Tony later said, no, it wasn't 30%, it was 50%. And then later he said, no, it's 70%. And I remember a reporter said, Dr. Fauci, could you tell us what new data you have? Because recently you told us 50%, and now you're telling us 70%. What new data did you review that changed your mind? And it's all a matter of public record. And Tony said there was no new data. When I told you 50% because I didn't think you were ready to hear 70%. In other words, people were making up the answers for what they thought the public, would move the public to do what they wanted. And I think that's a mistake.
Dana Parish (20:00):
I agree. I think it was the biggest mistake—one of the biggest mistakes that was made in public health. And I personally don't really know how to recover from that.
Dr. Redfield (20:09):
We're going to have to rebuild public trust. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be a long journey to, it's very easy. It takes a lot of work to gain public trust. It's very easy to lose public trust. And there's no doubt that the CDC, the FDA, the NIH and science in general has lost a lot of public trust.
Dana Parish (20:31):
Absolutely. One of the earliest memories that I have of Covid, I live in New York City, and I was living in Manhattan at that time, and there was a deep sense of panic and doom that was going on even in February, 2020. And I was watching China and Iran, and I was just looking at everything I could, and scientists and clinicians were sending me stuff. And I just knew inherently, this is airborne and I have to get out of the city. Why was the decision made across public health, and this is globally, to not acknowledge the airborne nature of Covid early on and say, we need N95s, we need elastomerics. Hand washing isn't going to be the answer. What happened?
Dr. Redfield (21:25):
Yeah. I don't know the answer. I know that we always felt that this could be transmitted by aerosol and droplets. We were never big on washing your groceries.
Dana Parish (21:42):
Yeah. Why were we told to do that, do you think?
Dr. Redfield (21:45):
I would never. I don't know. Just people that didn't know what they were doing making comments, and it just was non thoughtful. Clearly--you know--the most important thing from my point of view was timely diagnosis and then infected people should be isolated, wear--you know--KN95 and stay home. Alright, until they turned to be antigen negative. That there was obviously a limitation on the availability of testing initially, which made it hard to operationalize that type of public health approach. There also was--you know--an error. I mean, George Gao, head of CDC China had pretty much affirmed to me that there was no human-to-human transmission, no asymptomatic transmission. Both of those affirmations were incorrect. This is why we wanted to go in to help him in the first week of January to help ascertain answers to those questions.
(22:50):
But I did look at 14 patients that we had in the US in late January and early February. And from those 14 patients, we did have about 800 high risk contacts, both in intrahospital contacts from the ICUs as well as spouses and families. And of all those 800 contacts, only two people were shown to have Covid. So, we concluded that this was not very infectious incorrectly, because the manner in which we decided whether you had Covid or not, since China had told us there was no asymptomatic infection and human to human transmission was difficult. Well, the way we did it was we interviewed those individuals and those individuals that didn't have any symptoms. We just dismissed. And those individuals that had significant symptoms, and they were two, and they were both spouses, we decided to go ahead and test for Covid.
Dana Parish (23:48):
Is asymptomatic transmission one of the more diabolical factors in covid and the spread of covid?
Dr. Redfield (23:56):
Well, it's definitely the rule, not the exception. Okay. So, when we got to the Diamond Princess Ambassador Birx, and I realized that the rule was asymptomatic transmission. Because we went on that ship. The Japanese were very cooperative, and they had CDC come in and help. And we found over 50% roughly of the people on the ship were infected, even though most of them didn't have any symptoms. But originally, when we did our original work on the 14 cases, we concluded that this was not highly transmissible among contacts. Had we tested everybody? I think we would've come to a markedly different conclusion.
Dana Parish (24:35):
I see. I wanted to go back to the early days and early treatment. Why was there no Operation Warp Speed for developing antivirals?
Dr. Redfield (24:47):
There should have been. I advocated for it. Ambassador Birx advocated for it. Other voices that were aggressive basically said the answer to this was vaccines. And we had a very good program with warp speed and the vaccines. But you're exactly right, there should have been a parallel program in antiviral drug development. And today--you know--I'm a big advocate, and now the Trump got reelected. I'll be--you know--my voice will definitely be in the mix. We need an operation warp speed for antiviral drug development, not just for Covid, which is still one of the major causes of death in America. You know, we're probably somewhere between the third, fourth, or fifth leading cause of death in America right now. But we also need it to be able to be prepared for bird flu. When, and I don't think it's if, when it develops efficient capacity to transmit human to human. We need an operation warp speed. We need to have multiple platforms--you know--5, 10, 15, 20 antiviral platforms being developed. Because vaccines will never, never, never stop the negative consequences from a new viral pathogen. The only way for us to really do that in a meaningful way is antiviral drug development.
Dana Parish (26:07):
So, how important do you feel early treatment is now in the Covid Pandemic, and how much do you think it would prevent potentially long Covid?
Dr. Redfield (26:57):
Well, so far, we have no evidence that treatment prevents long Covid. There's a study in the VA that those vets that were vaccinated had less long Covid than the vets that were not vaccinated. But it doesn't prevent it. There's still plenty of long Covid in vaccinated individuals. There is no evidence that treatment modifies at all the penetration of long Covid. It is interesting if you get Covid and you don't get treated. You have about a 3% chance of a relapse. Okay. If you get Covid and you get put on Paxlovid, you have over a 20% chance of relapse.
Dana Parish (27:48):
You're talking about a rebound.
Dr. Redfield (27:51):
Yes. A rebound.
Dana Parish (27:51):
Well, that was going to be my question about--you know--anecdotally, I talked to lots of clinicians. They're telling me that treating with longer courses of Paxlovid and also adding in metformin and other supplements and things are really conferring much better outcomes. And it seems like we need multiple drugs, multiple treatments to even consider it that this is--you know--going to be possible. What do you think about that? I'm talking about beyond the 5 days of Paxlovid, which is obviously an undertreatment.
Dr. Redfield (27:46):
The current treatment with Paxlovid for 5 days, and largely it's limited to 5 days, largely, I think Pfizer did it because of the use of Ritonavir and the side effects that Ritonavir has. Okay. And so, they tried to get away with a 5-day regimen. Like I said, that regimen is associated with rebound in about 1 out of 5 people. Okay. That said, it is associated with protected against serious hospitalization and death. So, I'm a big advocate for early treatment, either with Paxlovid or for Merck in individuals that are vulnerable for bad outcome. So those individuals say over the age of 60, they get Covid. I think they should be treated. Not right away but within 48 hours, those patients that I treat within the first day have a high propensity for rebound. Those patients that we treat, they say at 48 hours, 72 hours, they have a low propensity of rebound. And it's probably--
Dana Parish (28:53):
Can you clarify what rebound is? Is it persistence of virus and is it causing the virus to become more persistent?
Dr. Redfield (28:59):
What it is the lack of clearance of the virus so that the virus undergoes a second replication cycle that causes illness. In other words, they never cleared the virus. Right. But the rebound is driven by the fact the virus wasn't cleared, and now it replicates again and causes symptomatology again, several ways to get around that I found one is to initiate therapy at 48 or 72 hours rather than day zero. The second one, as you mentioned, is to treat longer just to go treat for 10 days rather than to treat for 5 days. I'm the chief medical officer for a publicly traded company by the name of TRAWS Pharma. And we're seriously developing antivirals for both Covid and bird flu. And the product that we're looking at for Covid, which I'm very excited about finished phase one trials in Australia is about to start phase 2.
(30:10):
We actually use we use a 10-day regimen. And part of the reason we do that is to distinguish ourselves from Paxlovid particularly in the area of rebound that we don't anticipate. Now, we haven't treated. We've only done healthy volunteers, so we'll just have to see how the trials go when we get into non-healthy volunteers. But it's a very, I think that is one of the problems with the current regimens is they haven't been designed for optimal durability. That is--you know--probably the reality is this is not a 5-day treatment course. It probably is more like a 10-day treatment course if you really want to minimize rebound.
Dana Parish (31:04):
But are you concerned about the long-term ramifications of persistence? You know, we're finding virus still in the body and organs--you know--a year later, 2 years later.
Dr. Redfield (31:14):
Yeah. I'm not as concerned, although this virus does hang around a lot longer than people give it credit for. Okay. I do think in long Covid, it's not the virus that's causing me the problem. I think it's the spike protein.
Dana Parish (31:34):
So, you think the spike is the main driver.
Dr. Redfield (31:36):
Yeah, and I think, yeah. And for people, I think the mRNA that codes for spike protein stays transcriptionally active. So, that it can produce new spike protein. And that's why the mRNA vaccines, they also can do that. And they may have a propensity for it because that mRNA has been stabilized so that it won't—it will stick around longer.
Dana Parish (32:04):
So, is the vaccine spike and the virus spike the same?
Dr. Redfield (32:08):
More or less. They're the same. Same, more or less, same sequence, more or less, the same. Obviously, the virus is constantly changing things a little and the spike protein is sort of set in stone based on the sequences that were used for the vaccine at the time. But it's the mRNA that can co-opt the machinery of the cell to make spike protein that mRNA could come from the virus, or that mRNA could come from the vaccine.
Dana Parish (32:48):
Why is there this sense--you know--I look at everything, but there's this sort of side that says the virus is a cold, it's a flu, it's not dangerous, but the vaccines, they're the real problem. And then there's the other side that says the vaccines are safe and effective. I don't want to hear a thing about the vaccines that's negative and the virus is perpetually looming as a dangerous threat.
Dr. Redfield (33:13):
Yeah. Well, those are incorrect statements, unfortunately, even though they're said, first thing is to understand what covid infection is, what the underlying pathogenesis is for it to cause human disease. It's not a lung disease, which a lot of people think— it's a blood vessel disease. You got to remember that our blood vessels are coated with the ACE2 receptor, which is the key receptor that the spike protein binds to. And when they do, it opens up a series of the cytokine events that are cause inflammation and cause problems. When we first had, when I was CDC director, when we first looked at death in Covid—one of the things that jumped out, although people didn't really want to latch onto it, was the risk factor for death turned out to be obesity and hypertension and type two diabetes. (34:10):
Why hypertension? Even if it's controlled. And the reason is because diabetes and hypertension, one of the things that it is associated with is less resilience in your blood vessels. And this is why you get the micro-coagulation. That micro coagulation leads to clot. Those clots can get into your heart, they can get in your brain, they can get into your lungs, they can get into your organs, and that leads to death. Covid is not a cold. Covid is, as I say we're losing a 100 to 150 people a day die in America from Covid. I still get the data from Maryland. Right now, Maryland, we're losing--you know--2 to 3 adults every day are dying from Covid. They're not--you know--on death doorstep, adults. These are otherwise healthy adults that just happen to have hypertension that happens to be controlled or type two diabetes. So covid is, it's not a rhinovirus, it's not a mid pneumo virus. It's not a, or you know, it's not even flu, much more higher propensity cause death in vulnerable individuals. It doesn't cause death in non-vulnerable. So, you have a predisposing factor for death, which I will argue is some change in the resilience of your blood vessels.
Dana Parish (35:31):
I think that the greater threat may be repeated infections throughout your lifetime for the average person. What do you think about the implications of--you know--being infected a few times a year over, and also the implications of that many vaccines?
Dr. Redfield (35:50):
Well right now, since no one's figured out how to develop an Immunoprotective mechanism for preventing infection—the reality is there will be repetitive infections with covid virus. And if you look at children, they will get infected 2 or three 3 a year. And that will just be a state of life. Those of us that are older, that could have bad outcomes, I encourage to make an early diagnosis and to get on treatment to try to prevent hospitalization and death. There's no doubt that recurrent infections will have a propensity to shift the human body towards a pro-inflammatory state. I might argue that aging is nothing more than a pro-inflammatory disease. That just is reality. Some people argue against the repetitive vaccination like I do. But and I would like to see the FDA do a critical review of safety profile of--you know--of all 3 vaccines but particularly the Moderna and the Pfizer.
(37:20):
Because I do think that there's a safety advantage now to the killed protein vaccines. But you are right that recurrent infection. And some people will argue against me and have a--you know--some very smart people that I respect that don't like the idea of recurrent immunizations for the reasons they think that it might either burn out the immune system or it may cause the immune system to be triggered towards a pro-inflammatory state. This virus--
Dr. Redfield (37:51):
This virus was very engineered. And people need to realize that. I mean, it was a gain of function research virus that was engineered really for several characteristics. One, it needed to be transmitted by aerosol and highly infectious. Because the Chinese did not want to have to use injectable needles to vaccinate their military or their people.
Dana Parish (38:16):
So, what does that mean? How would people—just to be clear with the public, how would people receive that vaccine?
Dr. Redfield (38:24):
You could just get that vaccine lots of different ways, but in a population, you can just get it the way this pandemic spread in itself by--
Dana Parish (38:33):
So, you would be, so it's like a self-spreading, like I could get it. And then I could, by nature of the fact that I have it, I could give it to my family that I live with.
Dr. Redfield (38:45):
That's right. Yes. Or if you had a soldier goes into the barracks and he could infect everybody in the barracks and we're all vaccinated. So it could be, now some people would administer it medically by aerosolization. Some people would give it like intranasally. Right. If you look at some of the vaccines that are being developed. But the truth is, it could be a vaccine that could just be naturally spread. Alright.
Dana Parish (39:07):
Do we want that? I mean, does that? You know, isn't that sort of like, what if you don't want it? What happens? And you're at the mall.
Dr. Redfield (39:18):
Yeah. No, I could say, I wouldn't, as, I think the Chinese were building a vaccine vector that they wanted to use to vaccinate the Chinese military and the Chinese people. All right. That's what they were doing. It was purposeful research. And the other thing they did was they knocked out the interferon response element. So that meant when you got this virus, you didn't trigger interferon. And what that meant is you didn't get symptoms. Right. So, it was engineered to infect as a vaccine, but not cause symptoms. Right. Which is something you would want if you had a vaccine--you didn't--wouldn't want everyone to get sick.
Dana Parish (40:03):
So, how sure do you feel at this point? I know you've been able to look at a lot of classified documents. How strongly do you feel that this was bio-engineered versus a natural spillover, as they say?
Dr. Redfield (40:16):
No, I don't have any doubt in my mind. I’m a hundred percent confident that it was bioengineered.
Dana Parish (40:22):
And you feel sure that it was via vaccine research? Is there any--
Dr. Redfield (40:27):
Well, that's speculative. Because I don't have the inside data. I'm saying when I'm putting together--you know--you could either suggest it was purposeful research to make a dangerous pathogen for humans. Which I don't think it was. Or you could try to think what kind of purposeful research could they have done where this could have been a consequence. And that's where I say it could have been vaccine research to make a vaccine vector that could be spread by aerosol. That would not make you sick. And the third thing that it's done is the immunodominant response elements. So that when this virus infects you, it doesn't trigger your immune system to trigger an immune response—a dominant immune response that would persistently clear this virus and prevent this virus from infecting you again. Because they didn't want that. They wanted to be able to infect you over and over and over again with this vector. Because one day it would deliver measles, and the next day it might deliver polio, and the next day it might be hepatitis. So, they wanted a vector that they could use multiple times in the same individual. The individual wouldn't develop a durable, dominant immune response that would prevent the vector from working. That's what they were doing. And they were highly successful in doing it, by the way.
Dana Parish (41:56):
Yeah. Very successful. I mean, is this the future of vaccines?
Dr. Redfield (42:02):
You know, there's always you been a debate--you know--we've always had trouble vaccinating the world whether it's polio. And I was on the commission to eradicate polio in the world. One of the 8 board, 6 board members. And the challenge with eradicating polio is getting everybody vaccinated. Can you imagine if the way we vaccinated everybody against polio is just let them defecate in the water and get it dirty? And it just vaccinates everybody. You don't have to worry about it. In other words--
Dana Parish (42:38):
No, I can't imagine it.
Dr. Redfield (42:41):
You just exploit the method of transmission, whether it's aerosol or fecal oral, and use that as a mechanism to accomplish your goal, to vaccinate the world. It'd be a very effective way of doing it. It's not what's really done. But it would be a very effective way of done. It's a little bit why Sabin vaccine for polio was the way it was, where it was hoping to get herd immunity through vaccinated people sharing their virus, their live attenuated virus with unvaccinated people so that those unvaccinated people became vaccinated.
Dana Parish (43:20):
How do we deal with the ethical issues of that and informed consent?
Dr. Redfield (43:25):
Oh, I think it'd be huge issues. I'm not advocating this; I'm just saying that this is—I don't think that was a big issue in China or in the military. You know, if you're in the military, you don't really have you give up your freedom to choose. When I was in the military for 23 years, I gave up my freedom to say yes or no to the vaccines. And I think they put like 17 vaccines in my arm when I was in basic training. You know, there's certain situations where you give up that freedom. I think the Chinese military is very similar. I don't think they have a lot of freedom about what happens or what doesn't happen. But you were just asking me--you know--how I think that this vaccine was—this virus was engineered, I think it was intentionally engineered as a part of a biodefense program.
Dana Parish (44:16):
What was the US role in that?
Dr. Redfield (44:19):
I think it was substantial. And this is why--you know--when you look at the accountability for China, their accountability is not in the lab work. And the creation of the virus, their accountability is not following the international health regulations. After they realized that they had a problem and allowing people like me at CDC to come in and to help them within 48 hours, like they were obligated to based on the treaty. But the US role was substantial. One is they funded the research both from NIH, the State Department, U-S-A-I-D, and the Defense Department. All four of those agencies helped fund this research. Secondly, the scientific mastermind behind this research is a guy named Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina. And he was very involved in this research. I think he probably helped create some of the original viral lines, but I can't prove that. But he was very involved.
Dana Parish (45:16):
Some have said that they are concerned that it was actually developed here and China was framed. Is that possible?
Dr. Redfield (45:25):
Well, I don't know if they were framed, but I think there is a real possibility that the virus birthplace was Chapel Hill.
Dana Parish (45:36):
Yeah. What happened at the military games in October, 2019?
Dr. Redfield (45:39):
Well, in August, September the initial cases of Covid in Wuhan began—clearly by the middle of September, there was a significant problem. Okay. Because, and I can't remember the exact date. I think it's in the public domain now. It was classified, but I think it was September 19th. But they did three things. They changed the leadership of the lab since it was a dual use lab. They changed it from civilian to military. So, the military was now put in charge of the lab. They did something highly irregular, is they deleted the research sequences of Covid viruses that they had done years before. So, the whole database was deleted. Very unusual. And then the third thing they did, which I think is a telltale sign of what happened is they issued a contract to redo the ventilation system in the lab. Right.
Dana Parish (46:46):
We're talking about Wuhan Institute of Virology now. Right?
Dr. Redfield (46:51):
Correct. Wuhan Institute of Virology. Yeah. Back in September.
Dana Parish (46:53):
And this was a BSL2, right? Was this all done?
Dr. Redfield (46:56):
Well, it was a BSL3, BSL4 lab. But we have good documentation that they were doing most of the research at BSL2 levels.
Dana Parish (47:04):
Right.
Dr. Redfield (47:06):
Right. And we also have data in September that some of the people in the Wuhan Institute were developing respiratory illness. Right. Now remember what I said, it's largely asymptomatic in young people. That means people under the age of 60, 50. Right. So, you wouldn't know--
Dana Parish (47:27):
At that time, but would you say that now still?
Dr. Redfield (47:32):
That it's asymptomatic.
Dana Parish (47:33):
I friends--you know--20s, 30s, or get pretty sick.
Dr. Redfield (47:37):
Yeah. No, but I'm not saying--yeah--you might have friends that got pretty sick, but that it may have been 10% of your friends. I'm saying probably at least half the people who get Covid don't really get that sick. They don't notice anything. Right. It doesn't mean half don't get sick, but a lot of people don't feel like they're sick. And I suspect in September those lab workers got into Wuhan and they spread the virus. Okay. And the epidemic began. And if you look at trafficking patterns that are also declassified—you can start seeing the trafficking patterns changing to hospital utilization and hospital parking lots. And so, it's clear to me that the epidemic, this virus epidemic began in September expanded substantially in September to the point of being noticed by the local authorities. Right. And I suspect they notified Beijing, but it was handled at the local level. Okay. And then of course, the military gains came in early October. And, you know, again, something very irregular happened in that the Wuhan government blocked any spectators from going to the games.
Dana Parish (48:46):
Right.
Dr. Redfield (48:48):
Which is highly irregular. The whole purpose of these games was bringing the world together and to have people watch.
Dana Parish (49:04):
I heard it was just shut down. The whole city was just shut down.
Dr. Redfield (49:08):
It was shut down. And, but the games went on. But no spectators could go to the games. And then after the games, if you look at the countries that had the biggest problem like you mentioned already. I mean, why did Iran have a big problem? Well, Iran was one of the biggest participants of the games. The United States was a big participant of the games. France a big participant of the games, Spain.
Dana Parish (49:33):
Right. That was my question. Was that the first superspreader? Did it seed the world?
Dr. Redfield (49:38):
Yeah, I think it was the first superspreader event. And I wanted to, I tried, I couldn't succeed. I wanted to get the military groups around the world to agree along with my own military to allow us to do antibody testing of all of the people at the games in January. All right. To see what was the prevalence of infection already in those populations. Of course, we didn't get to do that. But--
Dana Parish (50:10):
Isn't some of this hasn't—haven't a few samples been clarified from Spain, and it was early [Covid]?
Dr. Redfield (50:20):
They found that instance found in Italy. They found that there was virus already there in Italy. Spain. Yeah. So.
Dana Parish (50:24):
But I meant from the athletes. I'm sorry. I meant from--
Dr. Redfield (50:28):
Yeah. I don't know the answer. You may have better data than I haven't researched it, but I'm sure that the athletes were infected at that time.
Dana Parish (50:36):
Yes. And why do you think this narrative of the wet market, which was months later, has been promoted and promoted and promoted?
Dr. Redfield (50:47):
Well, and it's one of the reasons why the scientific community has lost credibility. I think, and this, listen, I know that the wet market was a ruse. Right. When I talked to George Gao, my counterpart on New Year's Eve, he told me he had 27 cases of a new respiratory pneumonia that wasn't SARS and wasn't flu. Right. And they all came from the wet market.
Dana Parish (51:16):
Yeah.
Dr. Redfield (51:17):
I said to George--well--George sent me the little line items on all 27 cases. I said to George, what's your case definition? He said, unspecified pneumonia, not flu, not SARS from people from the wet market. I said--well--George, then by definition, everybody came from the wet market. Why are you trying to set it up that it all came from the wet market? Okay. I know SARS and I know MERS, but you're making a big mistake here. Like we did early in the AIDS epidemic where we said the--you know--HIV occurred in gays and drug addicts. And that's the only place people looked. I made my career by looking at average people. And I diagnosed husbands and wives and women, and showed that it was just a sexually transmitted disease. It had nothing to do with being gay or a drug addict.
(52:11):
It had to do with having sex with someone that was infected. Right. I said, George, you need to go out of the wet market and look at people that have unspecified pneumonia that have nothing to do with the wet market. And he did. And 2 or 3 days later, he called me and he was a little emotional. And he said, Bob, we have hundreds and hundreds of cases and it has nothing to do with the wet market. That's the CDC director of China. Said with the first week of January. The reason Fauci and the scientific community--all right--made the argument
it came from spillover. And they would argue, this is what always happens. Well, it is what always happened before we did gain of function research. Because there was no other way for a zoonotic pathogen to go into humans.
Dr. Redfield (53:04):
It had to go from nature to man. But once we started creating these pathogens, now there's another path that is from the laboratory. And the reason Tony, and they did it. Because I talked to Tony and Collins in January about going after both hypothesis, natural and spillover, and very rapidly, Jeremy Ferrar very rapidly. They had their private phone call. They didn't include me. And they all agreed that there was only one explanation. It had to be nature. They did the Lancet wedding announcement that I call it. They wrote the Proximal Origins paper, which is really a--in my view--a sort of a fraudulent paper.
Dana Parish (53:38):
Should it be retracted? That was--
Dr. Redfield (53:40):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Dana Parish (53:43):
That paper was crazy.
Dr. Redfield (53:45):
The epidemic started--you know--4 or 5 months before their paper, the papers not grounded on any truth at all. Right. But they did it for one reason. They're all highly conflicted. And they wanted to protect gain of function research. Because it was the gain of function research to cause this pandemic or another way to look at it, science cause this pandemic, not nature. And people like me want to see gain of function research highly regulated. Yeah. If not a moratorium. And it should not go forward until there's a broader debate in society. Do we need it? And I'm not convinced that we need it, but if society believes we need it, then how do we do it in a safe, responsible, and effective way? Which means that we have to really have an enormous focus with multiple checks and balances on Biocontainment.
Dana Parish (54:43):
Has anything good come out of gain of function research?
Dr. Redfield (54:46):
I don't see it.
Dana Parish (54:48):
No therapeutics, no vaccines.
Dr. Redfield (54:50):
Well, not to date. Yeah. I think we have such scientific power now. In the old days, you could gain me time to develop a vaccine or countermeasures. You know, rather than waiting 2 years, I may get a jumpstart. So, it takes 6 months. But now with the Zion technology that we have—I can make these countermeasures really within 2 to 6 weeks. I don't need gain of function research. It's really a risk. Now, if we are going to do it then we have to figure out where we're going to do it. What are the one or two, or three or four places in the world? We're going to do it. What are the redundancy in Biocontainment that we're going to have? I remind people when I was CDC director, I shut down Fort Detrick because CDC inspects our maximum containment labs across the country. And we saw some defects in their Biocontainment procedures.
Dana Parish (55:50):
That was in 2019. Correct?
Dr. Redfield (55:53):
Yeah. And we gave them time to correct them.
Dana Parish (55:55):
What was the problem?
Dr. Redfield (55:57):
I'm not going to go into the actual specifics, but they were substantial— things that you wouldn't--you know--let's something as simple as contaminating material being released into the environment on a regular basis. Like going down the drain.
Dana Parish (56:14):
These are huge, huge, huge concerns. And I think the public has absolutely no idea.
Dr. Redfield (56:19):
So, anyhow, I shut them down. It wasn't easy. Because A lot of these guys were my friends. I was in the Army for 23 years, and we shut them down for about 6 months until they corrected everything. And we were confident that they had upped their game in their Biocontainment procedures. But this is something that is really important right now. Gain of function research, as--you know--is being done in multiple universities throughout the country. And they don't have optimized containment at all. You know, NIH just opened up the money for University of Wisconsin to go back and restart their research on taking bird flu and making it efficiently able to infect man.
Dana Parish (57:05):
Yeah. I think that's a really important topic to cover. And you and I are both on the advisory board of Biosafety Now, so I know we both feel very strongly about this entire issue. And what do you think, before we get into bird flu, what do you think is the importance of the Risky Research Review Act that is on the table right now?
Dr. Redfield (57:27):
I think it's important. I think it's important. I think we have to have, unfortunately, the scientific community doesn't have credibility that they can do this in the interest of the national security of the United States. And there has to be national security evaluation of the research that we fund. So, if NIH or other agencies decide to fund research that may have national security implications, then I think it has to go through another committee that evaluates it and clears it from that national security perspective. And so, I'm a big advocate. I've reviewed this stuff. I think it's important. I've strongly urged them to put, initially they had one national security person on the panel. I told them they needed at least three. Because they could, the scientists could gang up on that one person pretty easy. And I think we should do a moratorium on gain of function research as I did in my Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, until all of this gets worked out.
Dana Parish (58:30):
I mean, this doesn't mean that we are not going to be attacked by biowarfare. It doesn't mean that--
Dr. Redfield (58:37):
Not at all.
Dana Parish (58:40):
And I think that's also important to talk about these things are still possible, even if we put parameters around this.
Dr. Redfield (58:45):
And we don't have to help, like we did in 2012, where we published exactly the 4 amino acids you need to change in bird flu to make it highly pathogenic for man. And just hand that to any nutcase that's out there. We don't need to be doing that.
Dana Parish (59:01):
Is it possible that Covid was an intentional release?
Dr. Redfield (59:08):
I don't think so. I really don't think so. I know some of the scientists involved. I just don't think that was it. I think it's more likely. I always said it's a consequence of scientific arrogance. I think the scientists that were involved were arrogant, that they didn't think anything could ever go wrong.
Dana Parish (59:26):
Oh, they're still incredibly arrogant, aren't they?
Dr. Redfield (59:28):
Yes. They don't think anything could go wrong. And, but I don't think it was intentional. And I do think--you know--you see how emotional Anthony Fauci gets when Rand Paul asks him a question. He said, he says, you're accusing me of killing 4 million people. Rand wanted to come back and say, no, I'm accusing you of killing 20 million people.
Dana Parish (59:47):
Yeah. Well, I think it's important to clarify Tony Fauci’s role in supporting, I mean, in my view, he’s one of the biggest proponents and funders of gain of function research.
Dr. Redfield (1:00:00):
Yeah, he's the poster boy. I've fought him since 2012 on this issue. He's the poster boy of gain of function research.
Dana Parish (1:00:05):
How does he have so much power?
Dr. Redfield (1:00:07):
So, he owned all the money for research. I mean, he had billions and billions of dollars. Plus, you may know, in 2002, 2003, Dick Cheney decided the United States needed a much more aggressive biodefense program. And so, he took it away from Fort Detrick and the US Army where it belongs. And he put it at NIH under Fauci and gave him $40 billion to run it. Fauci has been running our nation's biodefense program, in addition to running the NIH, NIAID's--you know--medical research program.
Dana Parish (1:00:45):
That is something that the public does not know.
Dr. Redfield (1:00:48):
Yeah, no. He's been doing--
Dana Parish (1:00:49):
He's an expert in biowarfare. He is an expert in aerosolizing pathogens.
Dr. Redfield (1:00:57):
He’s been running the program since 2002, 2003.
Dana Parish (1:01:00):
Yeah. It's absolutely incredible. So, you have expressed grave concerns about H5N1, about bird flu pandemic on the horizon. And first of all, why do you think it's going to happen if we have already had--you know--the great pandemic--you know--wasn't Covid the great pandemic? Why are we subject to two in a row? And how do you think this is going to emerge?
Dr. Redfield (1:01:25):
So, Covid is a minor pandemic. You know, I always say it was a minor, the lesser pandemic--you know--in Europe we had the great pox and the smallpox. Okay. The great pox people realize was syphilis. And it was a dangerous thing. It killed a lot of people. And then we had smallpox--which is--but the fact is covid was a minor pandemic. It did a lot of damage. You know, it killed over 20 million people. It cost probably $25 trillion of cost money. But it really wasn't a dangerous pathogen in that most individuals in the human species were non susceptible to bad outcomes. Okay. Bird flu on the contrary when it infects humans in general, if you look at the H5N1 that we've had, so H5 or H7N9 that we've had so far in the cases, mostly in Asia, Southeast Asia. Anywhere it's gone from say, a bird to man and then man’s a dead-end host. It doesn't go man to man. But when you look at those human cases it's had about a 40% mortality. And we haven't seen that yet in the early cases in the US but we're early in it. We have less than 19 cases in the US and--
Dana Parish (1:02:43):
Well, it has not gone, we should clarify. Because there's rumors that it's already human to human. It is not.
Dr. Redfield (1:02:49):
No. Never seen human to human. There's a paper from the Missouri folks that are down in Missouri or Mississippi, where they're under investigation by CDC for a potential human to human cases where they thought they had cases in individuals that didn't have exposure to birds or dairy cows. I think it was birds. But I've seen no evidence that they confirmed that. Okay. So, I have no evidence of any human-to-human transmission. But what I do have is evidence of a pandemic in chickens and turkeys that really started to really scale up in 2019. So that if we are looking here now, 6 years, 5 years later, we're looking at in excess of a 100 million chickens and turkeys are infected right now in the United States.
Dana Parish (1:03:43):
Why has there been so little effort to contain it?
Dr. Redfield (1:03:47):
Because the only way to contain it is to kill all the animals right now with their strategy. Okay. And you know, even you kind of look at the—when it got into the dairy cows, how the cattle ranchers didn't even want to diagnose it.
Dana Parish (1:04:03):
Right.
Dr. Redfield (1:04:05):
Okay. So, the only time they really start to see it, like in St. Minnesota and stuff, when they have it in their flocks, is the birds just die. And the real cost is then how to get rid of all the contaminated birds. Right. There should be more interest in this. And I'm working with another company on sort of what I call treatment for H5 and one for animals. Right. Because I think there could be agricultural advantage where we could learn how to treat them rather than kill them all—treat and isolate and then--you know--and rather than kill the entire flock, or particularly now we're getting, and we'll talk more--you know--we're got into dairy cows, which really got me concerned because dairy cows like to hang around pigs. And if flu got into pigs, that's a problem. Because that's where there, most of the rearrangement of flu happens for human infection. And of course, you saw that 2 weeks ago. We have the first cases now of bird flu in pigs.
Dana Parish (1:05:07):
I did. So, I did, but I also don't think that what you're saying is that this will evolve naturally to jump into humans.
Dr. Redfield (1:05:14):
Well, so that's the species. So right now, what's happened since we got into chickens and birds and ducks. Since 2019, we're now in 28 mammal species in the United States. So, in the last 6 years, it's figured out it's gone into bears and bobcats and mice and dolphins and seals. And then most recently dairy cows and now pig. So, we're in 28 mammals in America, right. Now within those mammals, it's not going mammal to mammal. There was some suspicion in the dairy cows, but it's really from the milking device it looks like is how they're infecting each other, contaminated milking devices. There is some evidence in South America that it might have gone seal to seal because they wiped out a lot of seals, but it's not really clear.
(1:06:15):
In general, it looks like this virus has not learned how to go mammal to it's capable of infecting a lot of a variety of mammals. And as--you know--we have what now, what, 9 cases in the US in humans or something. But it's not really able to go human to human. Now we know what it has to do to go human to human. It has to change 4 amino acids. And we know exactly where they have to be. But I agree with you, 4 amino acids in very specific positions is a huge species barrier. I mean, it is—it really could take decades, if not centuries for that to happen. However, in the laboratory where you're now paying people, the University of Wisconsin to go ahead and do this purposefully. I think it's very likely that we'll have a laboratory created bird flu that infects humans. And I think it's unlikely to have maximum containment. It will escape and it will infect the human species. And once it's out, it's out.
Dana Parish (1:07:23):
And what do you mean by that in terms of like with Covid, it is just never going to go away? Or you mean you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube once it's human to human, it's going to be a rapid fire spread. And we're going to see...
Dr. Redfield (1:07:37):
Yeah. You'll see tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people infected globally within a year.
Dana Parish (1:07:47):
Do you think that it is imminent?
Dr. Redfield (1:07:52):
I think because of the arrogance in science right now and the lack of the scientific community, to be honest and say--you know--we made a mistake here. I think it's unfortunately probable.
Dana Parish (1:08:11):
Are you seeing this potentially in the next 24 months?
Dr. Redfield (1:08:15):
Well, I think that's why we have to be vigilant about pushing moratorium on gain of function research. I think that's why we have to be vigilant on scaling up our Biocontainment.
Dana Parish (1:08:28):
Can we stop it? Is it too late? Given all things?
Dr. Redfield (1:08:32):
It's never too late. I mean, never too late. But I think--you know--I mean, I think there's lots of ways we can I mean, I could get universities to not do gain of function research within a week. Because all I do is say, fine, if you're doing gain of function research or involved in with any collaborators doing gain of function research, you're not going to receive any government science funding from NIH or any other government agency. They'd stop tomorrow.
Dana Parish (1:09:00):
So, it's of utmost importance to put parameters around this. Now.
Dr. Redfield (1:09:03):
I think we have to regulate it. And I think we have to be forceful. And you know, when people tell me--you know--we can't put limits on gain of function research, it's the whole world. And yet they think we can do climate change around the world. I say, I think it's pretty simple. If you're involved in gain of function research, you won't receive any funding from the United States for biomedical research period. And if you're working with a university or a company involved in it, you won't receive any money from the United States period. It's still your free choice. You want to do it fine, but the United States is not going to fund any aspect of your research. You know, for North Carolina. You know, I would just, let's say put--you know--North Carolina's research funding from NIH. If they don't want to fully cooperate on understanding what really happened with Covid, I would just put their funding on hold.
Dana Parish (1:09:54):
You've said before that you sort of quickly said it earlier in our interview today, that a vaccine is not going to be the answer for H5N1 for a bird flu pandemic.
Dr. Redfield (1:10:07):
That's right.
Dana Parish (1:10:09):
What would be the answer?
Dr. Redfield (1:10:10):
It's going to be antiviral drug development. They have antivirals that work and hopefully that work. I mean, I have one that I'm working on right now with the company I mentioned. We have one that's very active against H5N1. And the beautiful thing about it, it is one pill, one time, and it will last at least 2 weeks.
Dana Parish (1:10:32):
Could you use that prophylactically?
Dr. Redfield (1:10:35):
That's right. So, you can start thinking, you could go in and tell people, take a pill twice a month and use a chemo prophylactically. I think that's the answer. Antiviral drug development with therapeutic and chemo prophylactic efficacy. That's how we're going to confront it. Look at the--you know--we've had flu vaccines for a long time. Alright. And when you look at the flu vaccines on a good year—they're 50% efficacious. But the truth is they don't work very well. Like when I was CDC director my first year, the vaccine was about 25% effective and only 50% of the American people public took it. So that means 12.5% would be protected. Wouldn't control the pandemic at all. And so, flu vaccines just don't work that well. That's all I'm saying.
Dana Parish (1:11:27):
I think we should also talk about the possibility. Because again, there's a lot of hype around nasal vaccines, sterilizing vaccine--you know--intranasal vaccines that could block Covid infection, that could block flu infection. I think that there is one for flu that doesn't work very well. There have been trials for Covid one that failed in the second phase. What do you think about the possibility of that?
Dr. Redfield (1:11:53):
I think it's a reasonable thing to research. The idea would be that they would get higher levels of secretory IGA in the respiratory tract, which then may be better at neutralizing the virus from establishing an infection. But that's all hypothetical. And developing that into an effective vaccine that actually works and then works in more than 90%, 95% of people is a whole another ballgame. In general, our ability to Immunoprophylaxis against flu is not very good. Right. it's, as I said, it at best, it's a flip of the coin.
Dana Parish (1:12:36):
With what we have now, you're talking about XOfluza, Tamiflu.
Dr. Redfield (1:12:40):
Yeah. All of them. But now we have some good antivirals. I mean--you know--and we should get better antivirals and better antivirals. We have--you know-Baloxavir--Tamiflu we have, but I think we can get better and better antivirals. You know, the problem with Tamiflu and Baloxavir right now is that the flu virus knows how to get around them and develop resistance to both of them. So, you know, looking at what goes back to what you said before about having an operation war speed for antiviral drug development, I think that's really where the future is.
Dana Parish (1:13:16):
Will we ever have a time that Covid won't be a threat? And will we ever have a prophylaxis for Covid?
Dr. Redfield (1:13:27):
I don't know the answer to that. I doubt that we'll ever have a time where Covid is not a significant human pathogen that can cause death. Right. I think that we have this for the end of time whether or not we in science gets in deep and can understand what the immunoregulatory mechanisms are that we need to use to target to prevent Covid from being able to establish infection. I think that's a scientific question that should be able to be answered, but so far it hasn't. And you know, I mean, I try to remind people that--you know--we're going to lose 50 to 80,000 people this year from Covid. There's a lot of people.
Dana Parish (1:14:20):
Do you take any precautions at this point against it?
Dr. Redfield (1:14:24):
No. I mean I really, I don't perseverate about it. The biggest precaution I take is making sure I have rapid Covid tests at home along with Paxlovid in case I get infected.
Dana Parish (1:14:39):
Have you had Covid before and how did you do?
Dr. Redfield (1:14:43):
Yeah, I've had Covid twice. My wife's it 3 times. The mine were--you know-- critical fatigue and it really didn't feel well for a couple days. My wife was pretty sick the first time. We were in Africa and we were able to get her on Paxlovid, which did turn her around. I thought she might have to go to the hospital, but she turned around. And then the other two times again, just really tired and just feeling--you know--kind of cruddy for a couple days.
Dana Parish (1:15:31):
Do you have thoughts on Metformin and other--you know--Ivermectin things that were discredited but perhaps actually do have some utility?
Dr. Redfield (1:15:40):
I don't prescribe either in my Covid patients, but I'm very much against people who try to interfere with physicians from using off-label drugs for their patients with their patients' consent. So, you know, when hydroxychloroquine was being touted, I was CDC director. I had the MMWR publish everything we knew about hydroxychloroquine when it was used in people and CDC people got really mad at me. They said, you can't do that. And I said--well--I'm not advocating it.
Dana Parish (1:16:22):
What was their concern?
Dr. Redfield (1:16:25):
They felt by me putting it in that I was somehow advocating its use.
Dana Parish (1:16:29):
But there was an in vitro study right about SARS.
Dr. Redfield (1:16:33):
There were studies and I wanted people to know what we knew. If you choose to use it, I wanted you to know what we know about how to use it, who's used it. I think doctors deserve to know everything we knew about it. And that was my attitude. I didn't do it for--
Dana Parish (1:16:47):
What would've been the harm? I don't understand. We know it's an old, safe drug.
Dr. Redfield (1:16:50):
Yeah, because they were just against it. I mean, that's it. The people were just their minds were closed, the same reason they were closed against Ivermectin. If the gold standard scientific community didn't say this is what you should do, therefore you can't do it.
Dana Parish (1:17:05):
Is that because it's cheap and generic?
Dr. Redfield (1:17:07):
I don't know. I just know, it was inappropriate for them to try to control that they even took the licenses away for some doctors that use. I mean, I, right now, my long Covid clinic, which I do a lot of all my patients that I'm treating for long Covid, many of them I'm not treating, I'm just following. But all the ones that I'm treating are all on off-label regimens. Right?
Dana Parish (1:17:31):
Yeah, sure.
Dr. Redfield (1:17:33):
And so, I don't think there should be the heavy handedness that Fauci and the FDA showed about trying to prevent doctors from using off-label, whether it was Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine or Metformin. I think you should allow physicians and patients to make those judgements. And if we do have information like I did with the MMWR we should put that information out for people to be able to know what we do know.
Dana Parish (1:18:05):
Absolutely. I think it's fascinating that you are running a long Covid clinic and that you are getting really a front row seat to what this disease can be, has it informed your view of other complex, chronic illnesses? I had a very severe case of Lyme. I had heart failure. I'm lucky to be alive, but it took 12 doctors to diagnose and treat me with long-term antibiotics, which I took for really, a brief period about 8 months, and I got better. You know, chronic Lyme is a huge, also controversial political medical debacle that has a lot of similar overlap to Covid. Do you see these kinds of things differently now, or how did you view people like me with complex, chronic lyme?
Dr. Redfield (1:18:57):
Well, I cared for Lyme disease for a long time. Actually, I diagnosed the very first case of Lyme disease in Virginia in the 70s.
Dana Parish (1:19:06):
You're kidding. That's so interesting.
Dr. Redfield (1:19:08):
When everyone said it didn't happen outside of--
Dana Parish (1:19:10):
What did that look like? What did that look like? I didn't know that.
Dr. Redfield (1:19:12):
It was a piccolo player and a woman in our army band, and her symptoms was, she couldn't move her fingers as fast as she used to. And when I examined her, I found out she had a history of a tick bite with a--you know--red lesion. And everyone said--no--she couldn't have it. They're not here. And, you know, being inquisitive, we went out with blankets in her property and a tick drag. And we got a bunch of ticks. And we found that actually the tick that was associated with Lyme was in fact in Virginia. And then we did some special tests on her and proved that she did in fact have the spirochetes in the antibody of the Lyme. But and of course--you know--Lyme was already on a march to go throughout our country. I'm a big of the view that long-term antibiotic therapy in general is not indicated for Lyme. You know, after you get over say, 60 days. However, I'm also of the view that post Lyme symptomatology disease is very common and very severe and very debilitating and very--
Dana Parish (1:20:23):
Do you think it's a persistent, I mean, do you agree that the organism persists?
Dr. Redfield (1:20:28):
Yeah, I don't think it's driven by the organism. I think, again, and we're getting like Covid, I think it's driven by some of the organisms antigens that have triggered the immune system to go in the wrong direction.
Dana Parish (1:20:41):
So, you think that the organism has been cured?
Dr. Redfield (1:20:44):
Well, I would say it is not replicating in the body. Yeah. I'm not a—when you get the Lyme literate guys and the Maryland's big on it. Let me tell you, we have huge groups here when I was head of ID at Maryland, I was open-minded and went to all their stuff and learned everything they had. But I really don't think there's really compelling evidence that a significant number of people with long-term Lyme symptoms have actively replicating spirochetes.
Dana Parish (1:21:14):
But we know that it's been found in the spinal cord fluid after months [of antibiotics].
Dr. Redfield (1:21:18):
There have been some, and we saw the same thing with syphilis and, well--you know--one of my teachers was the one who did all the stuff with syphilis. The one thing we will say is that spirochetes are enormously sensitive to ceftriaxone and to penicillin. So, in general, I've not been an advocate. I think the longest I've ever treated anyone is 60 days.
Dana Parish (1:21:42):
So, what happens on day 61 when these symptoms turn into fibromyalgia and neurological disease? And we know that these Spirochetes have been found in the brains of Alzheimer's and MS patients?
Dr. Redfield (1:21:53):
Yeah. So, we continue to monitor and treat patients symptomatically, and I've had really, almost all of my patients within 12 months have significant resolution of their dominant complaint without prolonged antibiotics. So, when there's other practices here--
Dana Parish (1:22:08):
What do you do for it?
Dr. Redfield (1:22:12):
Well, it depends--you know--sometimes it's anti-inflammatory, sometimes it's just listening. But my argument is it's not antibiotics. I've had just as many patients that have had I--you know--long-term IVs put in them and ended up with secondary infections and really bad complications from prolonged IV antibiotic there.
Dana Parish (1:22:31):
I never used IVs. And I think antibiotics have to be used carefully and safely. But there's so much complexity. And there are other vector-borne diseases.
Dr. Redfield (1:22:39):
Biggest problem I have with chronic Lyme. And when I was CDC director, I wanted to do this, is very few people that have Lyme—only have Lyme.
Dana Parish (1:22:50):
Right.
Dr. Redfield (1:22:52):
The average tick that gives you Lyme donates at least two other diseases at the same time of which we don't diagnose. Whether it’s anaplasmosis or ehrlichia or even my own CDC discovered when I was director, we discovered a brand-new virus that was now in ticks. You know, so there's a huge number. What I was trying to do is get money from Congress to gather ticks from every region in the world, country, and to find out what pathogens are in each of those tick groups. So, I could put out a chart that said, these are the 7 ticks in this area, and these are the pathogens they carry. And here's a diagnostic test for your patient. Here's a matrix of let's say the test for Louisiana. Or here's the test from here so we can much more accurately diagnose, not that you have Lyme because that we have tests for that and people focus on it. But that you have Lyme plus this, this, and this. But when I treat people for a Lyme--you know, and I do those 60 days of antibiotics, I frequently treat them with a combination of multiple antibiotics that I think would treat 3 different pathogens.
Dana Parish (1:24:13):
I think that's extremely valuable advice and input from you. Are you looking at--you know--do you care about the tests or are you really making a clinical diagnosis? And then--
Dr. Redfield (1:24:25):
I don't like the tests very well--you know--they're not that good. We send it off. You know, in general what I'll do is really know the area, take a history and then look at what are the likely pathogens that I think may also be in the tick. And I guess.
Dana Parish (1:24:43):
And what are you treating with when you come to that?
Dr. Redfield (1:24:45):
It varies. It varies. It varies. It varies. You know, it obviously doxycycline, clindamycin, but it varies.
Dana Parish (1:24:52):
It's great to hear that you are using these combination therapies. Because I think that's what saved my life. I actually also had Bartonella, which is Cat-scratch disease, of course. you know. But all about that. And I'm sure actually--you know--way more about it than most people given your background in HIV.
Dr. Redfield (1:25:09):
Most people with post Lyme problems have much more than just Lyme. So, I usually try to treat— Bartonella is common. Anaplasmosis is common. Ehrlichia is common. You know, occasionally we will see babesiosis. You know, and truth is, doxycycline's not going to work for everything. So, this is why I do the combinations whether I do that and Clindamycin, or--
Dana Parish (1:25:38):
Have you had luck? I mean, Bartonella can be also so resistant.
Dr. Redfield (1:25:40):
Yeah.
Dana Parish (1:25:43):
And have you had luck with eradicating or at least eradicating the symptoms? Because what I hear from so many patients and parents, kids with PANS, I mean, it's really tough.
Dr. Redfield (1:25:52):
No, I think I've had pretty good luck. I mean, I've been doing it now for--well--since they first discovered it, which at AFIP, which was a long time ago.
Dana Parish (1:26:02):
So, Dr. Redfield, I am so thrilled that we got to have this conversation today. You've taught so many people, so many things. I know that you've written a book. Will we get to read it?
Dr. Redfield (1:26:12):
Yeah, so two things. My book is not--you know--it's sad. I wrote a--you know--like a 60-page primer try to get the big companies interested in my book, which I thought was important because I was a virologist and I was the head of CDC.
Dana Parish (1:26:29):
I think that's important too.
Dr. Redfield (1:26:31):
And I got pretty far along and I have a great ghost writer. He has 25 bestsellers, New York Times, he is very good. But he is not cheap. But at the end of the day, the big companies all turned down my book for the reason they felt that it was inappropriate, that I suggested that the Covid virus originated in a lab in China. Right now, I don't think they'd feel that now, that was 3 and a half, 4 years ago. And then once the company did offer to publish my book Skyhorse and they're good publisher, but they didn't offer me enough money to pay my ghost writer. So, I'm still going to do my book. I'm looking right now at 2026. By that time, hopefully Trump will declassify the rest of the information that's still classified and because Congress voted for it to all be classified, but Biden didn't ever do that. And so hopefully it will all be declassified. Because you know, the first time everybody in the Senate and the Congress voted to declassify was unanimous and he didn't do it. So, hopefully we'll get it all declassified and then I can be free to tell everything I know.
Dana Parish (1:27:48):
And that would be amazing.
Dr. Redfield (1:27:50):
And the purpose of the book is to look--you know--of kind of what happened, but more importantly, to focus the book more on preparing, our preparing for the next pandemic. I'm a big advocate that we have to have a program in the United States proportional to the threat. And I think that bios secure. I'm giving a talk, actually I'm leaving this afternoon. I'm giving a talk tomorrow, national security talk where you—I believe biosecurity is one of the biggest national security threats in the United States.
Dana Parish (1:28:24):
And me too.
Dr. Redfield (1:28:26):
And I think we need to develop a program proportional to the threat. So, I'd like to get a program proportional. We have the defense department and defense contractors for the traditional threat. We need to have another program with biosecurity contractors for the biosecurity threat.
Dana Parish (1:28:45):
This is a huge biosecurity, national security, and global security issue. And I think it's important to hear you clarify that because there's articles coming out in the lay press about the next pandemic. But public can't do anything about this. This has to come from the government.
Dr. Redfield (1:29:00):
Yeah. And the government's got to do it. I'm trying to get the energy department to house it. Because they have 5 good labs and then they can manage the contractors, which would be a large group of contractors in antiviral drug development, vaccine development—you know--diagnostics PPEs, targeted medical equipment. So that we really had a team of long-term contractors to build an industry. It's probably about a $200, $250 billion a year requirement. But it would prepare our nation so that we won't end up with what I will anticipate would be a catastrophic loss of life if we don't do it.
Dana Parish (1:29:44):
Absolutely. So, is this what keeps you up at night?
Dr. Redfield (1:29:46):
Yeah.
Dana Parish (1:29:47):
Is this the thing?
Dr. Redfield (1:29:48):
This is the thing. This is what keeps me politically activated.
Dana Parish (1:29:53):
So, if patients want to reach you to make an appointment, are you open for business?
Dr. Redfield (1:30:00):
Yeah, I am. I don’t know if you can see, that's my card. Can you see it?
Dana Parish (1:30:05):
Yeah. I can see it. So, it's gbmc.org, is that correct?
Dr. Redfield (1:30:11):
GBMC. What does it say? The phone number here to make an appointment. Robert Redfield, MD. It's 410-683-3380.
Dana Parish (1:30:29):
Oh, you're in Maryland, correct?
Dr. Redfield (1:30:31):
In Maryland, yep. And it's in my office is in Timonium, Maryland.
Dana Parish (1:30:39):
And you're using things like miravorac. And you're having some success it sounds like, treating--
Dr. Redfield (1:30:42):
Yeah. I'm having a lot of success. And I'm using I have different regimens for different things. If it's micro clotting, I'm looking at triple anticoagulation therapy. If it's cognitive dysfunction, I'm doing a lot of maraviroc and other modifiers of your chemokine pathways. We're also doing a lot of mass cell stabilization therapy. But we're getting to really remarkable results.
Dana Parish (1:31:07):
Great. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Redfield. Really appreciate it.
I, for one, "noised abroad" your Redfield video here and there with the following "click-bate" comment
H5N1 bird flu with human to human transmission that is NOW IN THE PROCESS OF BEING MADE in the lab AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN (with a 40% ? ? ? mortality)
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEbo3d8rd_Q&t=4020s starting at 1:07:00 and ongoing into the video - Redfield - big pharma Real covid prevention denier and Real covid treatment denier, now starting to tell some of the Real Truth, addresses H5N1 bird flu with human to human transmission that is NOW IN THE PROCESS OF BEING MADE in the lab AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN (with a 40% ? ? ? mortality - Redfield mentions this level of H5N1 mortality in another context)
perhaps a less click-bate - "Redfield disclosure - H5N1 gain of function to enable human to human transmission with Real Potential to kill 100's of millions is underway at the University of Wiscon sin"