Eric Topol || Public Service Announcement: Separating Facts from Myths in the Pandemic

In the teen group of 12-17 and in young adults, mostly males, across these ages—that is, between 18 and 30-odd—there is an increased risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis with mRNA vaccines. It's more with Moderna than Pfizer because the Moderna dose is much higher than that of Pfizer. It's almost a doubling there. It's extremely rare, though, and most of the cases are self-limited.

If we all took the vaccines and boosters, you know, this pandemic would be not very concerning at all ... Today, we will hit 900,000 confirmed deaths. There's a lot more of actual excess mortality and an immense amount of morbidity, which was, much of it, unnecessary, especially after the vaccines rolled out.

After you've given over 10 billion doses, for there to be claims about safety concerns or lack of efficacy, 'it doesn't work,' I mean, these are all completely bogus.

I've argued strongly with the CDC that people who have had a confirmed infection should be recognized as having some immunity, at least equivalent to one dose of vaccine.

There may be a signal of ivermectin having some efficacy. However, we can't be sure because there hasn't been any good trial large enough... to prove it.

It's taken about 10 years, on average, from identification of a pathogen to a successful vaccine.

We know vaccines are reducing long COVID, which does occur in children.

We've done very poor with vaccinations in this country. There's been a fierce anti-vaccine, anti-science, anti-mask and growing momentum movement against the progress that we could have made. And that's why we're so far behind many other countries around the world that have basically gotten Omicron under wraps, and they're going to be in much better shape.