March 14, 2025 • 30 mins
This week is the 5-year Anniversary of the beginning of the COVID Pandemic. Dr Jay Wolfson, a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Health, Medicine, and Pharmacy at the University of South Florida, joins us to discuss what we’ve learned, what we did right and wrong, and whether we’re better or worse prepared for the next pandemic.
From something serious, to something fun. We hear about the history and significance of St Patrick’s Day, from Christopher Klein, an historian and author, his website is christopherklein.com
From something serious, to something fun. We hear about the history and significance of St Patrick’s Day, from Christopher Klein, an historian and author, his website is christopherklein.com
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on
the biggest issues in facting you.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This week, Here's Many Munio's.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And welcome to another edition of Iheartradios Communities. As you heard,
I am Manny Munyo's. It was five years ago that
COVID nineteen was officially declared a global pandemic. Hard to
imagine it's been that long with everything that has happened
since then.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
But what did we do right? What did we do wrong?
What have we learned?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
And are we better or worse off prepared to deal
with the next one. It's bringing an expert to answer
some of those questions for us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Doctor J.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wolfson is a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Health, Medicine
and Pharmacy the University of South Florida. Doctor Wolfson, I
appreciate the time. Thanks for sharing it with us, My pleasure.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Man, It's always good to speak with you.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, you as well, sir. Let me start off with that.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I remember after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.
The next day we went into the supermarket. You couldn't
find a lyesol or bleach inexplicably, for some reason, we
couldn't find toilet paper either. In some ways, it's hard
to believe it's been five years, and many others it isn't.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It is hard to produce in five years. Time flies,
whether you're having fun or not. In those early days,
I think many of us either remember it very clearly
or it's a blur. I remember as early as December
I began seeing data from Europe about the spread of
respiratory viruses and some cardiovascular systems. By January, it was
(01:38):
clear that we had something more than just a new
flu on our hands. And it wasn't until just five
years ago in March, that the World Health Organization was
able to put together enough of its own data to
say this is a real pandemic, which means it's not
just isolated to one country or one region, but infectious
(02:00):
disease and spreading across the world. And people were scared.
People were dying, they were dying in large numbers, and
because it was unclear exactly what was going on, a
lot of people actually felt that we were in being
invaded by something, that we were at war, that there
was some kind of disease or illness that was us.
(02:22):
It took the World Health Organization while to get to
the point of declaring the pandemic. Many of us thought
that by February it was pretty clear. But the World
Health Organization also dropped the ball on a few other issues.
Many The biggest one, I think was they did not
push China hard enough in the early days of this
(02:45):
to make data available that will never be found again
about the source about So we learned a lot about
what the World Health Organization didn't do.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, and that's something that's going to be one of
the biggest questions arguably about the pandemic, right how exactly
did it really start? There's still the debate that was
it an accidental an accident at the Wuhan lab, there
was it human animal to human transmission.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
At the wet lab. And because of the.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Lack of transparency by the Chinese early on, we'll never
get those answers for sure, will.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We We will not. But I think we kind of
have to move on, and you kind of suggest that
before we can't just dwell on the path and say,
oh my god, you know, what, what did we do wrong?
What did we do wrong? We know that some of
the things we did wrong, we can learn from those
things and some of the lessons are very very important.
A lot of it, A lot of it has to
(03:41):
do with good science, good medicine, the rollover media, how
social media played into medicine and science in ways that
none of us had ever previously expected, and it changed
the way we as citizens, whether we're healthcare professionals or
(04:03):
or or workers in public look look to look to
the government, and look to public health for guidance, advice,
and accurate information.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, and we're going to get into a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And one of the reasons I was always happy to
speak to you about this is because not only are
you objective and you present both sides, but the politics
has taken out of it while we're discussing all of
these things with you, and you brought up a lot
of issues there.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
But let me start off with this.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
What did we and by we, I mean you public
health officials and us as Americans? What did we do
right at least initially? Did we do anything right early on?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah? Yeah, I think we tried to do something right.
But I want to make sure that there's a there's
a kind of a predicate lane. Unlike many other countries,
the United States does not have a single public health system.
We have separate state systems. Every single state is responsible
for a managing its own public health systems and information.
(05:02):
We have the centrist to disease control and prevention. We
have the FDA. We have some other organizations, but those
are more agencies that collect data, but they don't have power,
they don't have regulatory authority over what the states do.
So it's not like most of Europe and most of
the other countries in the world that have a centralized
national public health system. So part of the issue is
(05:26):
simply communicating information as we learned what was going on.
I think it became clear early on that this was
a new type of disease, that we had to be
careful what we did, and that there were some things
that made sense in the early days. It made sense
to think about locking down to a limited degree. It
(05:48):
seemed to make sense to socially distanced. It seemed to
make sense to mask It seemed to make sense, even
perhaps at the early days, to consider closing schools. But
most of those things turned out to be not good
for long term policy and practice, and some of them
were just bad decisions because we already had a lot
(06:12):
of information early on in the pandemic manny. I'd say
by March, in April and May, we knew an awful
lot and we didn't convey it to the public. That
what we I think the most important thing we learned
was that we've failed to exercise transparency. We were afraid,
as a matter of public policy, I think, in public
(06:34):
health at both the state and federal levels, to put
fear into people's heads that they shouldn't take these aggressive actions.
And as a consequence, we limited the kind of information
that was available to the public. Right, and that was
that i think became long a long term damaging issue.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, and that might affect us.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And when we faced the next pandemic, this last one
was handled because you've mentioned this before. Even respected medical professionals, doctors, scientists.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Who might have had what at the time would.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Have been contrarian views, those conversations were kind of squealshed,
right those they were never allowed to be brought into
a mainstream conversation about how to address the virus.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Spot on manny. And these are hundreds of respected scientists
and physicians and researchers across the country. They weren't only
question Some of them lost their jobs. As a consequence,
they produced good research. It was not published. The major
journals were very, very limited in what they would publish, uh,
(07:42):
and that that helped I think all of us later
later on understand that there is there's a there's a
controlling force even within the respective literature. But historically many
you know, it was it's it's science is a process
of asking questions, of getting some contrary information, of discussing it,
(08:04):
of looking around it, and sometimes recognizing that what you
thought was true yesterday may not be true today and
that may change tomorrow. Keeping it open and transparent and
the dialogue open is what we didn't do, and that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Do you think it was done in the name of
trying to save lives and keep the country safe or
was it done for some other reasons.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I think ultimately there was to save lives and keep
the country safe, but beneath that there were other reasons.
There was a belief at fairly high levels that vaccines
in all cases are the best way to solve infectious
disease problems, especially these kinds of viruses, and that perspective
(08:50):
became a driving force at the national level of public
health at the CDC at the FDA of the National
Institutes of Health, and it was a adopted that the
policy incentive, the policy requirement, and was what was ignored.
What was ignored early on was if that natural immunity
(09:12):
is something that occurs with viruses like this. While the
COVID virus was unique, it was not unknown. It was
not something that we knew nothing about it all. We
kind of knew things about how it behaved. It behaved
in many ways knew and differently from some other viruses
(09:33):
because it embedded in muscle tissue and it would wait
until even after the acute episodes of illness to erupt
in some people, creating myocarditis and respiratory illnesses and brain
fog and skin rashes. But we also knew that if
you acquired a disease like that, there's a pretty good
chance that you would have natural immunity, and that factor
(09:56):
was nearly ignored as a matter of public health policy.
People who had gotten the disease were told they had
to get immunized. We also knew very early on, and
this is really important because it came out as part
of the Grand jury reports that I know that you've
read the three Grand Jewry Reports, the State of Florida,
the Special Grand Julia. On COVID, we knew early on
(10:18):
that young men between the ages of eighteen thirty were
more prone to something Mark card did its inflammation of
the heart, and even before, long before COVID, we've all
heard stories of young high school and young college athletes,
men just collapsing on the field during training or during
the game and having heart attacks on some of the
nine that was the deal. But we know that that population,
(10:41):
for a number of reasons, has a higher likelihood of
having minor cardatists. We learned early on that COVID itself
also created a higher risk of that for that population.
And as the pharmaceutical companies we reveled into vaccines in
their political trials recognize that as well, but it was
(11:01):
never revealed. So there were a lot of things early
on that we learned we didn't deployed. We said, everybody's
got to get vaccinated. It's important, you know, everybody's got
to get locked down. That was not a good idea.
Distancing is important, we learned early on that wasn't important.
Wearing the masks. The idea of going the mask is
useful if you use the right kind of mask, which
most people didn't if you use it correctly, which very
(11:24):
few people didn't, and as a consequence, they had a
false sense of security about the role of masks s.
Cool closures. Of course, for many we learned early on
may not have been a good idea, and now we
have a whole generation of young people who lost, in
some cases six or nine months of learning and socialization.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
A few more minutes here with doctor J.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Wilson, he's a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Health Medicine
Pharmacy at the University of South Florida, discussing the fifth
anniversary of the beginning of the COVID pandemic. We knew
early on those most at risk, those with the elderly
pre exist conditions. The younger and healthier you were, the
less of a threat this virus was to you. And
(12:05):
it doesn't seem like the advice we got generally speaking
by our public health professionals, as you mentioned, acknowledge.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
That that's exactly the point. And as a consequence, I
think public health lost trust among the population and we
have to recover from that. If we can come back
to respecting and treasuring and trusting what public health has
to offer is terribly important because many surveillance, surveillance of
communities is the core of public health. It's kind of
(12:36):
like the old forest fire towers that we even had
some places in Florida where there be a ranger looking out,
you know, over miles and miles looking for the possibility
of a little smoke, and once you see it, you
have to determine whether it's real smoke or whether somebody's
having a campfire, and you go after that smoke and
you fix it before it spreads. Surveillance and public health
(12:57):
works very well when you've got a number of diseases
and conditions that you're monitoring communities and you look for spikes,
and when you find them, you report them, You isolate them,
and you intervene, You monitor, and then you report. And
what happened for the twenty years before the COVID is
most states, including Florida, had reduced their expenditures on public
(13:21):
health infrastructure and reporting, so we weren't prepared to conduct
the surveillance to monitor effectively. And what we have to
do is make sure that that's in place, certainly for
the next epidemic, which we're bound to have at some
point well.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And I want to get into that before we let
you go.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
About one point more than a one point two million
Americans have died because of COVID nineteen. Hard to ever
really know because did they die because of COVID nineteen
or did they die with COVID nineteen. But far more
than any other country, is that because of the price
(13:58):
we pay for our freedoms here. Is that the pushback
that some in the public we saw throughout the pandemic
because of the steps the government took.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I think it's a combination of all of those things.
And I think at some point, certainly in the early
part of the pandemic, reasonable people had caused to believe
that they didn't know who to trust and what to do,
and because the information about what could be done and
should be done trickled out slowly, and sometimes it was contradicted,
(14:34):
we may have done some damage to ourselves and emphasizing
vaccines rather than the value of natural immunity, taking kids
out of school. Some of the things we did were
not very healthy in Florida. However, I got to say
we did a really good job governors antis early on
and recognized that the first priority was going to be
seniors and nursing homes, and that was spot on. That
(14:57):
was really important to do. Not every state did that,
and this was just a matter of effective communication, people
knowing what they could do. It was a very contagious disease, certainly,
the delta and the omicron, and you and I have
talked about just before, Manny, when it comes down to
what you really need to count on common sense. You know,
if your kid is sick, you're not going to send
(15:19):
in the school. If somebody else's kid is sick, you
don't want to being brought to your kid's birthday party.
You know, if you're not feeling well, don't take a
chance on feeling worse by straining yourself. Exercise common sense.
It's one of one of the most important things. In
some suggest that we've lost the good part.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Of that, no question about that. And I always like
to say, if you can't trust your doctor, who are
you going to trust? The thing that amazes me and
I'm looking at the clock here, it's been about sixteen minutes.
We've spent all of that time discussing the things we
did wrong right in our last couple of minutes here,
did we do anything right in terms of addressing the virus,
(15:56):
in terms of trying to keep Americans safe, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Think we did. I think we prioritize seniors for immunization.
I think we recognized that certain populations might be a
high risk of The Johnson and Johnson vaccine was taken
off the market early on because of of of adverse effects,
and there were other vaccines that were not allowed into
the market because they were demonstrating adversary. So we did
(16:23):
make some good clinical decisions, who made some good public
policy decisions. I think we tried very hard to inform
the public through a variety of data sources, what the
spread of disease were looking like, where it was high,
where it was particularly in setious, which populations were most
likely to be affected by it. We created data systems
(16:45):
and reporting systems that we didn't have. We didn't have
really fast. The most extraordinary thing we did, quite frankly,
was warp speed. We developed a vaccine in just a
few months that normally takes you know, a decade, and
we did it with the with the advantage of big data.
To Drew used artificial intelligence to help analyze data, and
(17:08):
that's taught us that we have the capacity using good
science and good medicine to really develop interventions that can
make a difference to securing and improving the health of
our population. That's one of the most significant things we've done.
What we now have to do is get over that
that created hump of distrust of the government and of
(17:29):
the distrust of vaccines and interventions.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And that leads to me to the final two questions.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I don't think there's any question that the vaccine saved
tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of lives worldwide,
But at the same time, because of some of the mistrust,
we also have people who that We also have many
more questioning the legitimacy or efficacy of vaccinations because of that.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
And we're seeing that right now with the with the
re emergence of measles in the United States, which is
terribly unfortunate. We had stopped measles in this country for
quite a while, and now it's coming back in Texas
and California. We had that's some cases here. That's unfortunate
because the distrust people have had just because of COVID
and what was done wrong that may affect their children's lives.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Last thing for you then with everything that we've learned,
and I fear that because of what we went through
with COVID, we are worse off prepared for the next pandemic.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I think more people will die because of it.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Do you think we're better prepared for the next pandemic
because every virologists, stepidemiologist I speak to says it's going
to happen sooner rather than later in our in our lifetime.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
It's going to have a pseudor rather than later our
lifetime manage. There's no question about it. This is the
way these things work. I have a half more than
half full glass good. I think that we are an
incredibly resilient people. Our nation, our republic has gone through
trials and tribulations since it's in self, and we've gotten
through things, and we're creative and we come together brilliantly
(19:05):
around challenges. And while some say history repeats itself and
some folks don't learn from history, I'm more optimistic and
I'd like to think that we do, and that we've
put in place systems of surveillance, of monitoring. What we
have to get over is the politicization of medicine and
the politicization of science. There is no room for that.
But that means that all scientists, all competent, bonafide scientists,
(19:29):
need to be heard. And that's why I'm so pleased
that doctor j Bottaria, who was one of the authors
of the Great Barrington Declaration early on in the COVID,
is the candidate for the Director of the Nationalistitutes of Health.
He is a solid, well trained physician, and he's an economist,
(19:50):
and he's a balanced guy. He's not an anti vaxxer.
He's a good scientist. But we need balanced views by
good scientists who welcome dialogue, debate, discussion, and alternative considerations.
And in the end, that's what I think we'll.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Do that that's what science is supposed to be, right,
Doctor J. Wolfson, Distinguished Professor, Service Professor, Public Health, Medicine
Pharmacy at the University of South Florida. I'm truly appreciative
to you for your time, your expertise.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Be well, doc, my pleasure many you'd be well and
be safe. Take care bybye.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
From something very serious to something a little bit fun.
When you think of Saint Patrick's Day, you might think
of wearing green or drinking green beer. Whiskey, things like that, parades,
corn beef and cabbage. But have you ever stopped to
wonder about the history of Saint Patrick's Day and why
we celebrate it the way we do. Even if you haven't,
we're gonna learn about it now as we bring in
(20:41):
Christopher Klein. He's an historian and author. His website is
Christopher Klein dot com. Christopher, I appreciate.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
The time, good to talk to here, manny.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
So let's start off with that Saint Patrick's Day, Uh,
the way we celebrated here. Let's start off with the
way it's celebrated in Ireland because that's where that's where
this all original.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Yeah, and it's very different than what we're accustomed to
these days. So in Ireland, for centuries, Saint Patrick's Day
was more a holy day than a holiday. So it
was this solemn remembrance of the anniversary of the death
of Saint Patrick on March seventeenth every year, and it was,
you know, as you expect many holy days to be celebrated.
(21:23):
You'd go to church in the morning, there might be
a low key meal in the afternoon, but that was
pretty much it for centuries and even well into the
nineteen hundreds, pubs in Ireland would be closed on Saint
Patrick's Day. Until nineteen sixty one, the only place you
could get a beer on Saint Patrick's Day would be
(21:45):
at the dog show that they were holding in Dublin.
And it's not really until really like the nineteen nineties
that they start in Dublin to adopt the parades that
we're so used to here in the United States.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
How did that transition from religious day to kind of
a symbol of Irish national identity take place.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Well, it occurs here in the United States because of
the experiences of the Irish immigrants who are coming into
this country. So large scale Irish immigration really starts to
happen in the eighteen hundreds and really takes off in
eighteen forty five when the potato crop starts to fail
(22:27):
in Ireland, where you just get ways of immigrants coming
into this country. So from eighteen forty five eighteen fifty
two you have more than a million Irish immigrants who
are coming into this country as a result of the
failure of the potato crop and so coming to America.
The way to sort of express their Irish identity was
(22:48):
to embrace the customs that they had back at home,
and it becomes a bit more of this festive environment
for Saint Patrick's Day becomes that holiday where they're celebrating
with parades and showing off their Irish pride. And then
when they faced the backlash in this country from Nativis
(23:13):
in the eighteen fifties eighteen sixties, again they sort of
you know, turned into their Irishness and as a source
of pride, they're more prominent in celebrating Saint Patrick's. So
that's really become when it becomes more of this festive
occasion for the Irish in America.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Who was Saint Patrick? Why is he celebrated to begin with?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
So he's a patron saint of Ireland, and although we
connect him with Ireland, he was actually born in what
we know is Great Britain. They think maybe somewhere in
Wales is where he grew up. And this is in
the late fourth century and Britain still this outpost of
(23:57):
the crumbling Roman Empire, and Saint Patrick is kidnapped by
a group of Irish and taken as a slave to Ireland,
where he lived for sixty years. And then his faith
really deepened when he was the slave in Ireland and
(24:19):
he gets this divine message. According to his confessio his autobiography,
they wrote, he got a divine message that he should
try to escape, and he manages to find a boat,
escapes from Britain, comes back to his homeland, escape from Ireland,
gets back to his homeland and Britain then gets another
(24:41):
divine message that he should become a priest and go
back to Ireland to serve there as a missionary. So
after training as a priest, he is sent back to
Ireland to serve those Christians in Ireland, but also to
do the work of trying to convert a lot of
(25:01):
the Irish to Christianity at that time. And so he
does that for decades and decades there and his death
is on March seventeenth and what we believe is four
sixty one AD. And it's his connection to Ireland and
becoming a patron saint for the country is why he's
(25:21):
so important. There is really thought that he's the one
who brings Christianity into Ireland, and of course Ireland became
a very Catholic country still means so today one of
the more Catholic countries in the world.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
We're speaking with Christopher Klein. He's in his story and
an author. His website is Christopher Klein dot com. Was
there something about snakes somewhere along the line to or
am I confusing that was somebody else?
Speaker 4 (25:48):
That's definitely the legend that is associated with Saint Patrick
that he supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. Probably
that legend is more a metaphor of maybe driving the
paganism out of Ireland. So it is true you you
will not find any snakes native to Ireland, but it's
(26:11):
thought that basically by the time like the ice sheets
had had receded, and then Ireland is surrounded by water,
basically the climate wasn't right for any snakes to be there,
and then they certainly weren't going to be able to
cross over the water right to get to the island.
So so yeah, it's it is this. It is true
(26:32):
that there are no snakes there, and Saint Patrick is
the one who's given credit for for that fact. So
if I know, it's a little bit different than a
lot of areous country down in Florida and elsewhere where
you got snakes. But so if you don't like any serpents,
Ireland's place.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
To go, the wearing green, the drinking green beer, the
three laf clovers and corn beef and cabbage, stuff like that.
The americanization of Saint Patrick's day is that something that
we've seen transfer over to Ireland.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Does any of that stuff happen there?
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Yes, you're getting You're starting to see that more and
more in the last couple of decades. So the colors
that are traditionally associated with Saint Patrick's actually a blue
with the color that was associated with him, but green
became more connected to Irish nationalism. Ireland was a colony
(27:29):
of the British for centuries until the nineteen hundreds, and
Irish nationalists in late seventeen hundreds eighteen hundreds adopted symbols
like a gold harp on it. They had flags of
a gold harp on a green background, and green, the
natural color of green, the forty shade of green, got
(27:50):
tied up with Irish nationalism, and so you saw that
color being connected more and more here in America and
back in Ireland. And so that's sort of the origin
where we get our shamrock shakes and coming the Chicago River,
green bagels, everything green. On March seventeenth is connected to that.
(28:15):
And the corn beef and cabbage is actually interesting because
that really is an American twist. It would be more
traditional to have ham and cabbage as a meal on
Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland, but for many of the
Irish in America, ham was a little too expensive for them.
(28:37):
So what they do, particularly this really starts in the
lower East side of New York City and you have
a lot of Irish shooes who settled there. What they
would do is when ships would come back from their
voyages that they had any leftover salted beef that was
pretty cheap that they could afford, So they buy the
corned beef. They boil it three times to try to
(29:00):
take the Brian out of it. Last time they'd boil
with cabbage. And that's when you get to corn beef
and cabbage. And so you're sort of seeing now when
the advent of television and these broadcasts at the big
parade and festivities United States, make your way back to Ireland,
that's when you start getting Now you'll see a lot
more of the green the associated with Saint Patrick, the
(29:23):
corn beef and cabbage, those sort of American twists on St.
Patrick's Day you'll find back in Ireland.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Well, keep the corn, beef and cabbage, because I'm happy
with that one. Christopher Klein, historian, author website Christopher Klein
dot com. Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
That was fascinating, great, great to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
And that'll do it for another edition of Iheartradios Communities.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I'm Manny Wuno's Until next time, m
Welcome to iHeartRadio Communities, a public affairs special focusing on
the biggest issues in facting you.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This week, Here's Many Munio's.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And welcome to another edition of Iheartradios Communities. As you heard,
I am Manny Munyo's. It was five years ago that
COVID nineteen was officially declared a global pandemic. Hard to
imagine it's been that long with everything that has happened
since then.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
But what did we do right? What did we do wrong?
What have we learned?
Speaker 1 (00:31):
And are we better or worse off prepared to deal
with the next one. It's bringing an expert to answer
some of those questions for us.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Doctor J.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Wolfson is a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Health, Medicine
and Pharmacy the University of South Florida. Doctor Wolfson, I
appreciate the time. Thanks for sharing it with us, My pleasure.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Man, It's always good to speak with you.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, you as well, sir. Let me start off with that.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I remember after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.
The next day we went into the supermarket. You couldn't
find a lyesol or bleach inexplicably, for some reason, we
couldn't find toilet paper either. In some ways, it's hard
to believe it's been five years, and many others it isn't.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
It is hard to produce in five years. Time flies,
whether you're having fun or not. In those early days,
I think many of us either remember it very clearly
or it's a blur. I remember as early as December
I began seeing data from Europe about the spread of
respiratory viruses and some cardiovascular systems. By January, it was
(01:38):
clear that we had something more than just a new
flu on our hands. And it wasn't until just five
years ago in March, that the World Health Organization was
able to put together enough of its own data to
say this is a real pandemic, which means it's not
just isolated to one country or one region, but infectious
(02:00):
disease and spreading across the world. And people were scared.
People were dying, they were dying in large numbers, and
because it was unclear exactly what was going on, a
lot of people actually felt that we were in being
invaded by something, that we were at war, that there
was some kind of disease or illness that was us.
(02:22):
It took the World Health Organization while to get to
the point of declaring the pandemic. Many of us thought
that by February it was pretty clear. But the World
Health Organization also dropped the ball on a few other issues.
Many The biggest one, I think was they did not
push China hard enough in the early days of this
(02:45):
to make data available that will never be found again
about the source about So we learned a lot about
what the World Health Organization didn't do.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, and that's something that's going to be one of
the biggest questions arguably about the pandemic, right how exactly
did it really start? There's still the debate that was
it an accidental an accident at the Wuhan lab, there
was it human animal to human transmission.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
At the wet lab. And because of the.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Lack of transparency by the Chinese early on, we'll never
get those answers for sure, will.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
We We will not. But I think we kind of
have to move on, and you kind of suggest that
before we can't just dwell on the path and say,
oh my god, you know, what, what did we do wrong?
What did we do wrong? We know that some of
the things we did wrong, we can learn from those
things and some of the lessons are very very important.
A lot of it, A lot of it has to
(03:41):
do with good science, good medicine, the rollover media, how
social media played into medicine and science in ways that
none of us had ever previously expected, and it changed
the way we as citizens, whether we're healthcare professionals or
(04:03):
or or workers in public look look to look to
the government, and look to public health for guidance, advice,
and accurate information.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, and we're going to get into a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And one of the reasons I was always happy to
speak to you about this is because not only are
you objective and you present both sides, but the politics
has taken out of it while we're discussing all of
these things with you, and you brought up a lot
of issues there.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
But let me start off with this.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
What did we and by we, I mean you public
health officials and us as Americans? What did we do
right at least initially? Did we do anything right early on?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah? Yeah, I think we tried to do something right.
But I want to make sure that there's a there's
a kind of a predicate lane. Unlike many other countries,
the United States does not have a single public health system.
We have separate state systems. Every single state is responsible
for a managing its own public health systems and information.
(05:02):
We have the centrist to disease control and prevention. We
have the FDA. We have some other organizations, but those
are more agencies that collect data, but they don't have power,
they don't have regulatory authority over what the states do.
So it's not like most of Europe and most of
the other countries in the world that have a centralized
national public health system. So part of the issue is
(05:26):
simply communicating information as we learned what was going on.
I think it became clear early on that this was
a new type of disease, that we had to be
careful what we did, and that there were some things
that made sense in the early days. It made sense
to think about locking down to a limited degree. It
(05:48):
seemed to make sense to socially distanced. It seemed to
make sense to mask It seemed to make sense, even
perhaps at the early days, to consider closing schools. But
most of those things turned out to be not good
for long term policy and practice, and some of them
were just bad decisions because we already had a lot
(06:12):
of information early on in the pandemic manny. I'd say
by March, in April and May, we knew an awful
lot and we didn't convey it to the public. That
what we I think the most important thing we learned
was that we've failed to exercise transparency. We were afraid,
as a matter of public policy, I think, in public
(06:34):
health at both the state and federal levels, to put
fear into people's heads that they shouldn't take these aggressive actions.
And as a consequence, we limited the kind of information
that was available to the public. Right, and that was
that i think became long a long term damaging issue.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, and that might affect us.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And when we faced the next pandemic, this last one
was handled because you've mentioned this before. Even respected medical professionals, doctors, scientists.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Who might have had what at the time would.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Have been contrarian views, those conversations were kind of squealshed,
right those they were never allowed to be brought into
a mainstream conversation about how to address the virus.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Spot on manny. And these are hundreds of respected scientists
and physicians and researchers across the country. They weren't only
question Some of them lost their jobs. As a consequence,
they produced good research. It was not published. The major
journals were very, very limited in what they would publish, uh,
(07:42):
and that that helped I think all of us later
later on understand that there is there's a there's a
controlling force even within the respective literature. But historically many
you know, it was it's it's science is a process
of asking questions, of getting some contrary information, of discussing it,
(08:04):
of looking around it, and sometimes recognizing that what you
thought was true yesterday may not be true today and
that may change tomorrow. Keeping it open and transparent and
the dialogue open is what we didn't do, and that's unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Do you think it was done in the name of
trying to save lives and keep the country safe or
was it done for some other reasons.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I think ultimately there was to save lives and keep
the country safe, but beneath that there were other reasons.
There was a belief at fairly high levels that vaccines
in all cases are the best way to solve infectious
disease problems, especially these kinds of viruses, and that perspective
(08:50):
became a driving force at the national level of public
health at the CDC at the FDA of the National
Institutes of Health, and it was a adopted that the
policy incentive, the policy requirement, and was what was ignored.
What was ignored early on was if that natural immunity
(09:12):
is something that occurs with viruses like this. While the
COVID virus was unique, it was not unknown. It was
not something that we knew nothing about it all. We
kind of knew things about how it behaved. It behaved
in many ways knew and differently from some other viruses
(09:33):
because it embedded in muscle tissue and it would wait
until even after the acute episodes of illness to erupt
in some people, creating myocarditis and respiratory illnesses and brain
fog and skin rashes. But we also knew that if
you acquired a disease like that, there's a pretty good
chance that you would have natural immunity, and that factor
(09:56):
was nearly ignored as a matter of public health policy.
People who had gotten the disease were told they had
to get immunized. We also knew very early on, and
this is really important because it came out as part
of the Grand jury reports that I know that you've
read the three Grand Jewry Reports, the State of Florida,
the Special Grand Julia. On COVID, we knew early on
(10:18):
that young men between the ages of eighteen thirty were
more prone to something Mark card did its inflammation of
the heart, and even before, long before COVID, we've all
heard stories of young high school and young college athletes,
men just collapsing on the field during training or during
the game and having heart attacks on some of the
nine that was the deal. But we know that that population,
(10:41):
for a number of reasons, has a higher likelihood of
having minor cardatists. We learned early on that COVID itself
also created a higher risk of that for that population.
And as the pharmaceutical companies we reveled into vaccines in
their political trials recognize that as well, but it was
(11:01):
never revealed. So there were a lot of things early
on that we learned we didn't deployed. We said, everybody's
got to get vaccinated. It's important, you know, everybody's got
to get locked down. That was not a good idea.
Distancing is important, we learned early on that wasn't important.
Wearing the masks. The idea of going the mask is
useful if you use the right kind of mask, which
most people didn't if you use it correctly, which very
(11:24):
few people didn't, and as a consequence, they had a
false sense of security about the role of masks s.
Cool closures. Of course, for many we learned early on
may not have been a good idea, and now we
have a whole generation of young people who lost, in
some cases six or nine months of learning and socialization.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
A few more minutes here with doctor J.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Wilson, he's a Distinguished Service Professor of Public Health Medicine
Pharmacy at the University of South Florida, discussing the fifth
anniversary of the beginning of the COVID pandemic. We knew
early on those most at risk, those with the elderly
pre exist conditions. The younger and healthier you were, the
less of a threat this virus was to you. And
(12:05):
it doesn't seem like the advice we got generally speaking
by our public health professionals, as you mentioned, acknowledge.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
That that's exactly the point. And as a consequence, I
think public health lost trust among the population and we
have to recover from that. If we can come back
to respecting and treasuring and trusting what public health has
to offer is terribly important because many surveillance, surveillance of
communities is the core of public health. It's kind of
(12:36):
like the old forest fire towers that we even had
some places in Florida where there be a ranger looking out,
you know, over miles and miles looking for the possibility
of a little smoke, and once you see it, you
have to determine whether it's real smoke or whether somebody's
having a campfire, and you go after that smoke and
you fix it before it spreads. Surveillance and public health
(12:57):
works very well when you've got a number of diseases
and conditions that you're monitoring communities and you look for spikes,
and when you find them, you report them, You isolate them,
and you intervene, You monitor, and then you report. And
what happened for the twenty years before the COVID is
most states, including Florida, had reduced their expenditures on public
(13:21):
health infrastructure and reporting, so we weren't prepared to conduct
the surveillance to monitor effectively. And what we have to
do is make sure that that's in place, certainly for
the next epidemic, which we're bound to have at some
point well.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And I want to get into that before we let
you go.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
About one point more than a one point two million
Americans have died because of COVID nineteen. Hard to ever
really know because did they die because of COVID nineteen
or did they die with COVID nineteen. But far more
than any other country, is that because of the price
(13:58):
we pay for our freedoms here. Is that the pushback
that some in the public we saw throughout the pandemic
because of the steps the government took.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I think it's a combination of all of those things.
And I think at some point, certainly in the early
part of the pandemic, reasonable people had caused to believe
that they didn't know who to trust and what to do,
and because the information about what could be done and
should be done trickled out slowly, and sometimes it was contradicted,
(14:34):
we may have done some damage to ourselves and emphasizing
vaccines rather than the value of natural immunity, taking kids
out of school. Some of the things we did were
not very healthy in Florida. However, I got to say
we did a really good job governors antis early on
and recognized that the first priority was going to be
seniors and nursing homes, and that was spot on. That
(14:57):
was really important to do. Not every state did that,
and this was just a matter of effective communication, people
knowing what they could do. It was a very contagious disease, certainly,
the delta and the omicron, and you and I have
talked about just before, Manny, when it comes down to
what you really need to count on common sense. You know,
if your kid is sick, you're not going to send
(15:19):
in the school. If somebody else's kid is sick, you
don't want to being brought to your kid's birthday party.
You know, if you're not feeling well, don't take a
chance on feeling worse by straining yourself. Exercise common sense.
It's one of one of the most important things. In
some suggest that we've lost the good part.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Of that, no question about that. And I always like
to say, if you can't trust your doctor, who are
you going to trust? The thing that amazes me and
I'm looking at the clock here, it's been about sixteen minutes.
We've spent all of that time discussing the things we
did wrong right in our last couple of minutes here,
did we do anything right in terms of addressing the virus,
(15:56):
in terms of trying to keep Americans safe, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Think we did. I think we prioritize seniors for immunization.
I think we recognized that certain populations might be a
high risk of The Johnson and Johnson vaccine was taken
off the market early on because of of of adverse effects,
and there were other vaccines that were not allowed into
the market because they were demonstrating adversary. So we did
(16:23):
make some good clinical decisions, who made some good public
policy decisions. I think we tried very hard to inform
the public through a variety of data sources, what the
spread of disease were looking like, where it was high,
where it was particularly in setious, which populations were most
likely to be affected by it. We created data systems
(16:45):
and reporting systems that we didn't have. We didn't have
really fast. The most extraordinary thing we did, quite frankly,
was warp speed. We developed a vaccine in just a
few months that normally takes you know, a decade, and
we did it with the with the advantage of big data.
To Drew used artificial intelligence to help analyze data, and
(17:08):
that's taught us that we have the capacity using good
science and good medicine to really develop interventions that can
make a difference to securing and improving the health of
our population. That's one of the most significant things we've done.
What we now have to do is get over that
that created hump of distrust of the government and of
(17:29):
the distrust of vaccines and interventions.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And that leads to me to the final two questions.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I don't think there's any question that the vaccine saved
tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of lives worldwide,
But at the same time, because of some of the mistrust,
we also have people who that We also have many
more questioning the legitimacy or efficacy of vaccinations because of that.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
And we're seeing that right now with the with the
re emergence of measles in the United States, which is
terribly unfortunate. We had stopped measles in this country for
quite a while, and now it's coming back in Texas
and California. We had that's some cases here. That's unfortunate
because the distrust people have had just because of COVID
and what was done wrong that may affect their children's lives.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Last thing for you then with everything that we've learned,
and I fear that because of what we went through
with COVID, we are worse off prepared for the next pandemic.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
I think more people will die because of it.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Do you think we're better prepared for the next pandemic
because every virologists, stepidemiologist I speak to says it's going
to happen sooner rather than later in our in our lifetime.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
It's going to have a pseudor rather than later our
lifetime manage. There's no question about it. This is the
way these things work. I have a half more than
half full glass good. I think that we are an
incredibly resilient people. Our nation, our republic has gone through
trials and tribulations since it's in self, and we've gotten
through things, and we're creative and we come together brilliantly
(19:05):
around challenges. And while some say history repeats itself and
some folks don't learn from history, I'm more optimistic and
I'd like to think that we do, and that we've
put in place systems of surveillance, of monitoring. What we
have to get over is the politicization of medicine and
the politicization of science. There is no room for that.
But that means that all scientists, all competent, bonafide scientists,
(19:29):
need to be heard. And that's why I'm so pleased
that doctor j Bottaria, who was one of the authors
of the Great Barrington Declaration early on in the COVID,
is the candidate for the Director of the Nationalistitutes of Health.
He is a solid, well trained physician, and he's an economist,
(19:50):
and he's a balanced guy. He's not an anti vaxxer.
He's a good scientist. But we need balanced views by
good scientists who welcome dialogue, debate, discussion, and alternative considerations.
And in the end, that's what I think we'll.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Do that that's what science is supposed to be, right,
Doctor J. Wolfson, Distinguished Professor, Service Professor, Public Health, Medicine
Pharmacy at the University of South Florida. I'm truly appreciative
to you for your time, your expertise.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Be well, doc, my pleasure many you'd be well and
be safe. Take care bybye.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
From something very serious to something a little bit fun.
When you think of Saint Patrick's Day, you might think
of wearing green or drinking green beer. Whiskey, things like that, parades,
corn beef and cabbage. But have you ever stopped to
wonder about the history of Saint Patrick's Day and why
we celebrate it the way we do. Even if you haven't,
we're gonna learn about it now as we bring in
(20:41):
Christopher Klein. He's an historian and author. His website is
Christopher Klein dot com. Christopher, I appreciate.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
The time, good to talk to here, manny.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
So let's start off with that Saint Patrick's Day, Uh,
the way we celebrated here. Let's start off with the
way it's celebrated in Ireland because that's where that's where
this all original.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Yeah, and it's very different than what we're accustomed to
these days. So in Ireland, for centuries, Saint Patrick's Day
was more a holy day than a holiday. So it
was this solemn remembrance of the anniversary of the death
of Saint Patrick on March seventeenth every year, and it was,
you know, as you expect many holy days to be celebrated.
(21:23):
You'd go to church in the morning, there might be
a low key meal in the afternoon, but that was
pretty much it for centuries and even well into the
nineteen hundreds, pubs in Ireland would be closed on Saint
Patrick's Day. Until nineteen sixty one, the only place you
could get a beer on Saint Patrick's Day would be
(21:45):
at the dog show that they were holding in Dublin.
And it's not really until really like the nineteen nineties
that they start in Dublin to adopt the parades that
we're so used to here in the United States.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
How did that transition from religious day to kind of
a symbol of Irish national identity take place.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Well, it occurs here in the United States because of
the experiences of the Irish immigrants who are coming into
this country. So large scale Irish immigration really starts to
happen in the eighteen hundreds and really takes off in
eighteen forty five when the potato crop starts to fail
(22:27):
in Ireland, where you just get ways of immigrants coming
into this country. So from eighteen forty five eighteen fifty
two you have more than a million Irish immigrants who
are coming into this country as a result of the
failure of the potato crop and so coming to America.
The way to sort of express their Irish identity was
(22:48):
to embrace the customs that they had back at home,
and it becomes a bit more of this festive environment
for Saint Patrick's Day becomes that holiday where they're celebrating
with parades and showing off their Irish pride. And then
when they faced the backlash in this country from Nativis
(23:13):
in the eighteen fifties eighteen sixties, again they sort of
you know, turned into their Irishness and as a source
of pride, they're more prominent in celebrating Saint Patrick's. So
that's really become when it becomes more of this festive
occasion for the Irish in America.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Who was Saint Patrick? Why is he celebrated to begin with?
Speaker 4 (23:37):
So he's a patron saint of Ireland, and although we
connect him with Ireland, he was actually born in what
we know is Great Britain. They think maybe somewhere in
Wales is where he grew up. And this is in
the late fourth century and Britain still this outpost of
(23:57):
the crumbling Roman Empire, and Saint Patrick is kidnapped by
a group of Irish and taken as a slave to Ireland,
where he lived for sixty years. And then his faith
really deepened when he was the slave in Ireland and
(24:19):
he gets this divine message. According to his confessio his autobiography,
they wrote, he got a divine message that he should
try to escape, and he manages to find a boat,
escapes from Britain, comes back to his homeland, escape from Ireland,
gets back to his homeland and Britain then gets another
(24:41):
divine message that he should become a priest and go
back to Ireland to serve there as a missionary. So
after training as a priest, he is sent back to
Ireland to serve those Christians in Ireland, but also to
do the work of trying to convert a lot of
(25:01):
the Irish to Christianity at that time. And so he
does that for decades and decades there and his death
is on March seventeenth and what we believe is four
sixty one AD. And it's his connection to Ireland and
becoming a patron saint for the country is why he's
(25:21):
so important. There is really thought that he's the one
who brings Christianity into Ireland, and of course Ireland became
a very Catholic country still means so today one of
the more Catholic countries in the world.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
We're speaking with Christopher Klein. He's in his story and
an author. His website is Christopher Klein dot com. Was
there something about snakes somewhere along the line to or
am I confusing that was somebody else?
Speaker 4 (25:48):
That's definitely the legend that is associated with Saint Patrick
that he supposedly drove the snakes out of Ireland. Probably
that legend is more a metaphor of maybe driving the
paganism out of Ireland. So it is true you you
will not find any snakes native to Ireland, but it's
(26:11):
thought that basically by the time like the ice sheets
had had receded, and then Ireland is surrounded by water,
basically the climate wasn't right for any snakes to be there,
and then they certainly weren't going to be able to
cross over the water right to get to the island.
So so yeah, it's it is this. It is true
(26:32):
that there are no snakes there, and Saint Patrick is
the one who's given credit for for that fact. So
if I know, it's a little bit different than a
lot of areous country down in Florida and elsewhere where
you got snakes. But so if you don't like any serpents,
Ireland's place.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
To go, the wearing green, the drinking green beer, the
three laf clovers and corn beef and cabbage, stuff like that.
The americanization of Saint Patrick's day is that something that
we've seen transfer over to Ireland.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Does any of that stuff happen there?
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Yes, you're getting You're starting to see that more and
more in the last couple of decades. So the colors
that are traditionally associated with Saint Patrick's actually a blue
with the color that was associated with him, but green
became more connected to Irish nationalism. Ireland was a colony
(27:29):
of the British for centuries until the nineteen hundreds, and
Irish nationalists in late seventeen hundreds eighteen hundreds adopted symbols
like a gold harp on it. They had flags of
a gold harp on a green background, and green, the
natural color of green, the forty shade of green, got
(27:50):
tied up with Irish nationalism, and so you saw that
color being connected more and more here in America and
back in Ireland. And so that's sort of the origin
where we get our shamrock shakes and coming the Chicago River,
green bagels, everything green. On March seventeenth is connected to that.
(28:15):
And the corn beef and cabbage is actually interesting because
that really is an American twist. It would be more
traditional to have ham and cabbage as a meal on
Saint Patrick's Day in Ireland, but for many of the
Irish in America, ham was a little too expensive for them.
(28:37):
So what they do, particularly this really starts in the
lower East side of New York City and you have
a lot of Irish shooes who settled there. What they
would do is when ships would come back from their
voyages that they had any leftover salted beef that was
pretty cheap that they could afford, So they buy the
corned beef. They boil it three times to try to
(29:00):
take the Brian out of it. Last time they'd boil
with cabbage. And that's when you get to corn beef
and cabbage. And so you're sort of seeing now when
the advent of television and these broadcasts at the big
parade and festivities United States, make your way back to Ireland,
that's when you start getting Now you'll see a lot
more of the green the associated with Saint Patrick, the
(29:23):
corn beef and cabbage, those sort of American twists on St.
Patrick's Day you'll find back in Ireland.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Well, keep the corn, beef and cabbage, because I'm happy
with that one. Christopher Klein, historian, author website Christopher Klein
dot com. Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
That was fascinating, great, great to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
And that'll do it for another edition of Iheartradios Communities.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I'm Manny Wuno's Until next time, m
Host
Manny Munoz
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