Fantastically clear-eyed and data-driven interview.

Part 1 I am an RV lurker. I rarely if ever post. But I felt the necessity to comment on this presentation. Background: Assistant professor of Pediatrics at a university teaching hospital. 30 years in the ER and community clinics. Owner / operator of a medium sized Clinic (40,000 visits per year). I straddle both the medical and business worlds. Like most conversations / discussions about COVID and policy responses, I find that this one: 1) Raises important issues that need to be discussed and examined but 2) Focuses on case counts and mortality and fails to elaborate on the critical nuances related to morbidity 3) Makes the claims that current methods at controlling the spread of the virus are doing more harm than good, but ignores critical data that diminish their arguments and offers no solutions for communities that are reaching the capacity their health care systems. I will focus on a few aspects of the discussion. A complete rebuttal is beyond the scope of a comment section. Masks Respiratory viruses are passed on by two primary methods: respiratory droplets (micro-droplets of secretions) and aerosol (fine mist). Respiratory droplets being heavier can only travel a certain distance before they fall to the ground or onto a surface. Aerosols can stay suspended in the air for extended periods of time. While not established at the beginning of the pandemic, it is now been shown that SARSCoV-2 is transmitted by both of these methods. When we catch a respiratory virus it is commonly inhaled into the nose or mouth, introduced to the respiratory mucosa by touching a contaminated surface or enters through the eyes (via touch or respiratory droplet or aerosol.) This last part is critically important. Without protecting your eyes, you cannot adequately protect yourself. The lining of your eyes is one continuous surface with your nose and throat. Therefore, if you want to protect yourself, the eyes and nose and mouth are critical. When the interviewees talk about masks, what type of masks are we talking about? A cloth mask made out of an old t-shirt? A 3-ply “procedure/surgical” mask? An N-95 mask? A Fitted N-95 mask? Making statements about the exact type of masks is of little value. Masks in general are intended to prevent a person from spreading the virus to others. They are not intend to protect the wearer. Your cloth mask is pretty useless at preventing spread.. A procedure mask is very good at preventing the spread of droplets but less so for aerosol. This also assumes that the masks being worn over the nose and not down around your chin! As far as protection goes procedure mask offers mild protection. A fitted N-95 mask offers protection to the wearer as it is sealed on the side and the only air that comes in is filtered. For protection an N-95 and a face shield/visor is the best combination possible. The face shield prevents droplets from landing in your eyes, the other major source of entry for the virus into the body. The interviewees suggest having vulnerable people wear N-95 masks. They completely disregard the fact the N-95 makes are still in short supply in many countries. And very hard to procure for the average person. Nice idea but not doable in the real world. Incidence The interviewees make the valid point that a PCR test, because it looks for fragments of the virus and not the whole virus, can still be positive after you have had the illness. Viral particles linger in your mucosa but there are no viable viruses. They then incorrectly make the assumption that many people who present to the ER and have a positive test actually have a false positive. Why? In many hospitals, patients who present with viral symptoms are administered a respiratory panel, in addition to a COVID test. Respiratory panels will look for up to 21 or so respiratory virus such as influenza, para-influenza, adenovirus, meta-pneumovirus, RSV, etc. In our hospital, in the depths of this winter over 95% of the panels are negative and only positive for SARSCoV-2. Right now, other than a few case of adenovirus, we are seeing absolutely nothing else! Basically in our community, if you have a cold, you have COVID. This has never been seen before. If a patient has respiratory symptoms and the only viral pathogen we can detect is SARSCoV-2, can the interviewees please tell me what infection they have? Do they still believe it to be a false positive? I am not saying false positives don’t occur. They however are not the majority of cases. Incidence is also after by a multitude of factors, including seasonality / weather, humidity, population density, cultural habits, adherence to social distancing, etc. What works for one community is not necessarily the best for others. The interviewees make no attempt to distinguish various responses for various communities.

Thanks to Mike and RV for another great interview. I'm in agreement with most of what Mike and his guests said. I've expressed many of these ideas to others practically going back to the beginning of the disease. One of the retorts I get to the false positives issue is what Neil Howe (world class demographer) often says about the people who die at home or in an accident who are positive, but were never tested; therefore, we're underestimating cv19 death. I wish Mike would have asked his guests about that. Setting aside the dead virus issue, has anyone looked at how many dead people aren't tested so that we could at least put an upper bound on that underreporting error factor?

Love how these arguments are made by people at low risk. Yes, I get the logic. But if you have all the young people get COVID, then you bridge it to the older population as well. There is no way to have a Chinese wall between the two age groups. And then you overwhelm the hospitals, as they are today, where people with high risk of dying are being sent home to die due to the lack of space. It would create such a health crisis that it may shut down the economy versus opening it up. Other option is to wear masks, get vaccines distributed, and then get back to normal by being practical and patient. If everyone wore masks, 95% of biz will be normal. Per David Rosenberg's newsletter on the 12th, all the major industries being impacted by COVID are 6% of consumer spending and 4% of GDP. Restaurants are the largest at 4.3% of consumption. Why not hire restaurants to make meals (instead of all these PPP loans to profitable businesses and free checks to employed people making less than $75,000) to feed those standing in line at food banks? Amusement parks are .3% of total consumption. Same for motels and hotels. Airlines are .4%. Casinos are .6%. Movies, theater and sporting events are .1%. So instead of having a wide blown epidemic per these guys' recommendation that overwhelms the health system, let's financially help the impacted industries that are very small part of the overall economy, get the vaccines developed, wear masks in the short term, and be practical on how to deal with this. Nothing like listening to economists giving out healthcare policy strategies. If they are such good economists, maybe they need to research the size of the industries being impacted and consult with additional healthcare experts on how to best approach this pandemic.

First Mike Green agreed with Louis Gave that the hospitals are empty and now this. Mike seems to be in a competition with Kyle Bass for the loopiest guests. Instead of calling it RealVision, let's change the name to Fantasy Island.

Not sure why Sweden is considered a failure. Just to point out 7 (seven!) people under 20yrs died, from total deaths of 9262. More than half the deaths are people older than the total life expectancy. 800 deaths of people under 70yrs of age, less than 10% of the deaths.

Sadly this is the largest group of Covid deniers I have seen in a while. I guess everybody is lying except them. The Hospitals are lying because they make more money, the emergency wards in LA Hospitals are lying because they are hiring thousands of actors to act as sick patients, Funeral Directors are lying because nobody is dying of Covid. They are both young - why aren't they going out and getting themselves infected and throwing parties so all their friends can get infected and have a high old time. I went to their web site and didn't find a list of Scientist and Doctors that support their lies and rubbish just a big Donate button. But then again when everybody is lying except them why do they need Science or Scientist and Doctors.

There can be no denying that Covid-19 is highly contagious and deadly to those who are vulnerable. However, the PCR test methodology appears flawed and the statistics will likely be revised once the raw data is reviewed and scrutinized. In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine published in March, 2020, Dr. Fauci stated the following: " If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively." As to the efficacy of masks, this also from the N/E Journal of Medicine (May, 2020): "We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection. Public health authorities define a significant exposure to Covid-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic Covid-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes). The chance of catching Covid-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal. In many cases, the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic." It's no wonder there are deniers. One interesting point from the presentation was the idea of the young and healthy being out in circulation to develop herd immunity - rather than in lock down. What we all want are accurate peer reviewed statistics so each person can assess his or her risk of death from Covid-19.

i was watching this and forgot i was on realvision exited out of full screen surprised this video hasn't been taken down also i was looking for the tags that say joe Biden is president elect and the CDC says covid blah blah and then it hit me I'm now conditioned to look for the warning tags

Who knew that a middle market PE guy, a macro research salesman, and a vol trader who waited until a pandemic to shred weight doing keto, had all the convenient answers a selfish 30-something like me was looking for? I hate lockdowns and masks too! Finally, I’ve found others like me.

I am all for having speakers on who challenge conventional wisdom, but RV should do so with an interviewer who is knowledgable of the science and can push back with hard data when they make claims like masks don’t work and this is no worse than other corona viruses. There are now many studies showing that high quality masks work. Regular corona viruses don’t kill younger people. The claim that asymptomatic people don’t spread the virus is also counter to real world data. Please offer up science to back their claims. They offered no solutions to protect the elderly. In the real world, people live in multi-generation households and the young bring the virus back to the more vulnerable older generation. They are advocating the Swedish model, which the Swedes have now admitted was a big failure. I didn’t expect RV to turn into the Fox Opinion hour throwing out pseudo science.

Make this video available free on YouTube please. People need to watch this it’s outstanding.

There is an important discussion to be had on the effect of lock-downs on the economy and other unintended consequences on the population, but when economists and fund managers start confidently spouting their opinions on whether mask wearing is effective, testing methodology is flawed, deaths are not really caused by COVID, etc, this becomes self-aggrandizing crap. This is the same type of BS you hear from climate change deniers, that scientists are somehow biased and profiting from the science that they are doing. Science is science - it develops over time and in some cases, based on new ideas and new data, we learn that things we previously thought were the truth, were in fact wrong. However, it is science that shows this to be the case. At the start of the pandemic, mask wearing was not thought to be useful, and at this point, more recent science suggests that wearing a mask is probably beneficial. It may be that at some later date, we assess this and discover that masks were in fact not helpful. However, the current recommendation from the majority of experts is that masks are helpful. If I am diagnosed with cancer, I'll take advice from an oncologist. And faced with an unknown set of health consequences associated with a novel virus, I'll rank the advice provided by epidemiologists and public health officers far above this. RV tries to stay out of talking sides on politics - I'd suggest you do the same with conspiracy theorists.

Unfortunately they only had very vague answers to Mike's pivotal question - what do we do about the extremely limited hospital capacity we currently have, and have experienced at other pain points in the pandemic? The question is basically waved away: "It means focus your resources on protecting the vulnerable and let everybody get on with their lives and develop immunity as quickly as possible amongst people to whom the risk of this disease is absolutely negligible. That is the simple statement." ... "If you have not secured sufficient surge capacity in your hospital system, that is not a reason to lock down or to install mask mandates or to do any of these things. It is helpful just to step back and look at the broader picture of appropriate public health policy." Also slightly ironic coming from two South Africans where the public health sector is woefully inadequate and most middle/upper South Africans rely on the private sector. The SA govt does not even have the $$ to secure vaccines, and a large % of the population is already immunosuppressed due to HIV/AIDS I'm not that enthusiastic about their recommendation for the young, healthy to go out and build up herd immunity (a strategy which has failed in Sweden), also herd immunity itself may prove to be fanciful, e.g. Manaus Brazil where supposedly 44-66% were infected in the first wave, but now hospitalisations are back at all-time highs Also, what about the risks of 'long Covid' - those who suffer long-term neurological and respiratory issues post-Covid? This could place further strain on healthcare resources in the future, and one of the reasons I think govt's are taking a tougher approach than might appear warranted in trying to suppress Covid (if indeed there is a method to the seeming madness)...

Absolutely fantastic -- thank you for making this happen, Mike, and many thanks to Nick and Russell. Really enjoyed this one, and a very important watch to understand what's really going on. Cheers.

You guys at RV should make this available free to the general public. Lets get this out on the web

Brillant. I have learned a lot.

This is pure gold. RV, please post it on your YT channel.

This is a brilliant interview showing The HOAX sold around the world !!!

Power Share seems to be broken? Or is it just me?

skip

Compelling case argument. Question is, are lockdowns being used as a control mechanism for the populace? Secondly, why does Mike have a security camera INSIDE his office? :D

Interesting points early on about lockdowns and consideration of pushing people over the poverty line. It's also good pointing out the massive mis-incentives in out medical and pharmaceutical system. The commentary on masks is questionable, as is the idea that children and young people are immune when there are clearly cases of long-term damage to unknown extents. I also tend to dislike the speculation on people's emotional reactions to things from mask wearing to information - people will adjust. The idea of permanent damage to children from one school year with masks and distancing is laughable given the extreme difficulties that children of the poorer half routinely face and overcome. Medically the other side of this is the US reaction to tuberculosis outbreaks in assuming children were immune only to find they had problems later. Still, I welcome rational discussion on these issues. The most frustrating thing about the modern world is the degree of micromanagement we have, where we can't even effectively get vaccines rolling out because those with the power to make decisions are incentivized to push responsibility beaurocratically while those charged with implementation have good ideas but are not allowed to act.

Largest production of masks and mask wearing per capita is in Taiwan. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan/

An excellent Real Vision video. What is surprising is many of your subscribers make nonsense excuses for masks and shutdowns, even though it has been proved scientifically that masks do not stop viruses. And shut downs have been shown to fail to stop the spread of viruses and only cause problems, suicides etc. COVID is a new common cold, and the death rates are high because of a vitamin D and Zinc deficiency. Vitamin D: Death rates for the USA, Italy and Japan show a distinct difference in outcomes. Both USA and Italy have high death rates. Why does Japan have a low death rate? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Country Deaths/Million USA 1149 Italy 1298 Japan 31 Italy "...Italian women aged 60-80 found values of Vitamin D lower than 5 ng/ml in 27% of the women and lower than 12 ng/ml in as many as 76% of women tested" Japan "Japan has a strikingly low incidence of Vitamin D deficiency vs Europe" "...prevalence of Vitamin D <30 ng/ml in active elderly was below 5%" YouTube: Ivor Cummins The Last Word on Sweden Viral Issue - Understanding the Reality! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7cy6Fsmlg YouTube: Ivor Cummins Vitamin D and Viral Special with Dr. David Grimes et al - Vital Viewing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD_96ybTMNE Sweden did not shut down, and the population naturally takes vitamin D supplements. Sweden death rates are now normal. See: https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/. Adults should take 1000IU to 4000IU of Vitamin D daily. Zinc: Further, we have a Zinc deficiency. And people should take the RDA for Zinc daily to reduce the effect of COVID, the common cold in general, and the flu. “COVID-19: Poor outcomes in patients with zinc deficiency (International Journal of Infectious Diseases, November 2020)”. COVID-19 and Zinc Dr. John Campbell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIvRR_y5i-k Adults should take the recommended dietary allowance for zinc daily.

Refreshing and thought-provoking. Thanks RV and PANDA! Meanwhile...in my cherished nation of Canada - https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/canada-fury-coronavirus-holiday-travel-455257 We're all in this together....Do your part...Another 2 weeks....right, folks..? Right?

Please don't take this video seriously. The entire logistical framework of their platform is flawed. More quack science out of SA's finest. I honestly don't know where to begin to pick apart their argument. Is it even worth it ? And guys, its Lives AND Economy. There is no OR. See Australia - or what, that didn't fit your narrative ? QLD did nearly 20k tests yesterday, zero positive cases. All free tests. But according to your narrative, there should be hundreds of positive cases. If we get the same results tomorrow, we will be out of the 3 day lockdown we just had. Where are the incentives to keep anyone at home? Nobody wins. And guess what, we save both lives and the economy. Its no wonder HIV is still a huge issue in SA with this blatherskite. It's just sad. And comparing lockdowns to apartheid ? Doesn't even make sense. Please just stop already. Hugh Hendrie on his worst day is 10 times better than this. One should be suspicious when the interviewees cannot look at the camera. I did gain one important bit of knowledge from this - the COVID pandemic is going to be with us for much longer precisely because of the traction these quacks are gaining.

Engaging conversation, especially segment on China. My biggest concern here at the moment though, is why do we only get Justine at the end of the videos?

I think the real,problem with this is Mike let them get a way with a lot of statements and claims that while interesting should have been challenged a lot more. I suspect that Mike is really biased in the same direction. RV needs to make sure the interviewer is more neutral.

One of the best pieces on Real Vision. Thanks you.

Amazing to see something like this here that balks against the conventional narrative.

One of the best discussions of responses to #COVID-19 I have seen. Thank-you.

The devil is in the details, as always. We are bombarded with cherry-picked data and misleading information. I see the huge conflicts of interest by the many parties involved in this "pandemic" response: - Pharmas want to sell vaccines. They also would love to mass test their new and super promising mRNA technology (praying this work long-term). - Governments see their powers increased and amid the panic and confusion are able to pass legislation and give contracts to their buddies. - Linked to the point before this crisis is the best excuse to print, spend and stoke the inflation needed to erase government debt in real terms as well as to further enrich the already rich by the cantillion effect. - Media thrives with fear and polarization. Clickbait and fear porn skyrockets. Revenue too. - Big companies massively benefit form this. Cheaper funding, better logistics, internet presence. Small businesses get crushed under the restrictions and lack of access to capital. - Testing contracts. What a business at ~$150 usd a pop for a pcr test!! The more positive tests the better as you generate more panic and obv you need to go for a retest after a positive outcome. While I don't think this is a totally orchestrated move from a Bond-like villain I think there are many colluding interested parties that just go along with the flow and the narrative that benefits them. These people are not denier quacks. They are asking the hard questions that governments will not address becuase it would expose their corruption and failures. On top of the infuriating ridiculous, inconsistent and intelligence-insulting restrictions that we are submitted to currently imagine if we learned that it was all for nothing! When I try and look at what are the incentives of the people like Nick or Russell asking the hard questions I find it way harder to see why they would want to lie to you. They are already suffering enough criticism and are treated as pariahs by the mob. I keep watching with interest https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps. European excess mortality. There is some extra excess mortality this year but does it justify the madness we are going through? This winter so far is incredibly normal. Now comes more hard questions: How do you quantify the life toll of lockdowns? - Anxiety about a deadly virus - Isolation. Lack of human contact. - Loss of livelihoods. Feeling of uncertainty about the future. - Normal screenings for serious illnesses delayed because patients are discouraged or scared to go to hospital. Lockdowns kill, that is what we know for sure.

Very strong déja vu these days... (Location: Northern China) It was about a year ago my community was locked down. It was about a year ago I would see elderly people lugging 25kg bags of rice or flour. It was almost exactly a year and a month ago I started swimming just so that it gets closed down on me around this time. The lockdown solved the problem for most of the cities in a couple of months. The virus was off the mind of folks for an eternity here (since May!), through the whole summer until Christmas. Everything as back to NORMAL. Not some kind of imaginary new normal RVDB people are promoting. People went on holiday and business trips without worries. Then some of them started to return from overseas... Today I see people lugging food, my community is in lockdown (with tests every 3 days), restaurants and entire areas of the city are getting closed...and obviously the swimming pool is closed. WTF (to use the RV style) are you talking about? I wholeheartedly support questioning the status quo but, even after investing a year of time into this work, you should always leave your ivory tower and smell reality from time to time.

This is the first Real Vision video I've seen that takes into consideration the well being of the people who are not lucky enough to take in Real Vision content.

I now know what drove me nuts when I listened to the clowns from the Panda Project- they sound just like famous Creationist Duane Gish! Same drivel just a different spew. Years ago I attended a debate between Gish and a real Evolutionary Biologist. It drove me nuts in the same way that these guys annoy me now. Gish was well known for a technique called the "Gish gallop" - from Wikipedia: The Gish gallop is a term for an eristic technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott; it is named after the creationist Duane Gish, who used the technique frequently against proponents of evolution. It is similar to a methodology used in formal debate called spreading. That is why they are so annoying and hard to listen too - one out of context distortion, followed by a half truth, followed by a partial fact or a rumor then they mix and repeat multiple times. Sadly Mike Green, who I deeply respect for his other work, has fallen into the trap of thinking this "Gish gallop" is some form of higher truth rather than an assortment of crusty fetid excrement that commonly lies at the bottom of an ancient truck stop toilet.

Covid Patients’ Symptoms Persist Six Months in Foreboding Study https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-08/covid-patients-symptoms-persist-six-months-in-foreboding-study

This presentation could have been improved. They didn't get into the mortality data which shows that Covid infection mortality is at worst 3 to 5 times higher than seasonal influenza, and the excess mortality is accounted for entirely by its impact on the elderly and sick. I am 67 years old and perfectly willing to run this risk in exchange for my kids and grandkids not losing a year or two of their productive lives. When this more mercenary motivation is coupled with the deadly impact of the shutdown on billions of disadvantaged people globally, opposition to the economic shutdown is a moral and scientific slam dunk. The global pandemic response will be viewed by history as the greatest public policy blunder in 6000 years of human history. The stakeholders are too powerful, numerous, and leveraged in their position for the truth to be generally understood before most of us are dead. The mortality data patterns were clear by the end of March so ignorance will not be an excuse. My greatest joy and surprise would be if I live to see the architects of this blunder taken to task.

Great discussion. People should be able to make their own decisions on whether they want to lock themselves in their home and wait out until a vaccine. Don’t force it upon the population. Always error on side of freedom and choice.

Excellent and one of the main reasons why I will renew my membership this year. I'm heading to Miami to have a broad family viewing of this. That is how important this was for me.

This was a profound disappointment, and so unworthy of Real Vision that I am now on the edge of canceling my subscription. I was going to take some time here to walk through all of the disinformation and nonsense being spread during this interview, but there's really too much. Suffice to say, the people being interviewed clearly have not a gram of expertise in the relevant fields, and are instead spinning a garbage political narrative for their own financial benefit. Utter rubbish. We come to Real Vision for better than this.

I cannot take seriously anyone (Hudson) who equates (A) a temporary lockdown to get control over a deadly virus with (B) apartheid. This is morally and intellectually specious. He has also characterized Dr. Anthony Fauci as a “panic porn artist.” This interview is beneath RV and ((I’d like to think) Mike Green.

This was really great! Thanks for sharing!

Very underwhelmed. Too much hand-waving and no nuance. I came for objective evidence of the harm of lockdown and received a bunch of non sequiturs, straw men and dubious medical analysis outside the circle of competence of the guests. Lockdowns cause more harm than good - stated without any empirical evidence, when natural experiments exist. Japan - fared well without lockdowns by minimizing superspreader events. Sweden - attempted to let the virus burn through the young. suffered severe economic contraction and now is moving towards increased restrictions. Vietnam - the first country to eradicate SARS and has to a large extent protected its economy by virtually effectively suppressing. Why does the UK (which has a a government-funded national health service) miscatagorize covid deaths? Because the US has misaligned incentives. To be fair there does seem to be a lot of fraud and rent-seeking in the UK, but that happened after the hospitals ran out of PPE etc. Just because viral RNA is found in dead people doesn't mean that an active viral infection killed them. Correct - people tend to die from covid-19 after clearing the initial infection, when the body has an abnormal inflammatory response (sometimes called a cytokine storm) or due to secondary clotting problems. It is incorrect to categorize these as covid deaths? Masks don't work, haven't been used before and harm childrens' development. Physics and biological evidence disagree, masks were used during the Spanish flu and children in the far east have grown up with regular mask wearing for almost a generation without the sort of psychological harms hypothesized. In some countries it is considered to be socially respectful to wear a mask when suffering even minor illness to avoid infecting people around them. Hospital capacity isn't an issue. Assuming it is possible to exponentially scale up a labor and capital-intensive industry (Italy and the UK indicate it isn't), how do we prevent cross-contamination between staff and other hospitalized individuals? Sick people are one of the groups most vulnerable to the virus. Politicians should not lie to their citizens. Completely agree - they should not make authoritative statements that they can back up. But this interview has the same issue.

"Focus your protection on the vulnerable". Sounds great, but it is not possible to separate the elderly from the rest. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that younger populations are susceptible and risk death. I respect Mike Green on financial issues. But unleashing libertarianism on public health, using libertarian "experts" is well beyond his expertise.

I think the closing comments were perhaps the most important of all. There can be no "party line" in science. It is an open competition of ideas and analysis. We may respect the ability of a PhD in virology or whatever, but if they are not able to demonstrate, even to those not so educated, why they hold the opinions (never TRUTH) that they do, we need to treat their pronouncements with caution. And the current official party line has de-platformed even a lot of scientists and doctors who have dared to question the official TRUTH. And I put it in caps because that is how the officials treat it. I am a retired engineer, trained to analyze problems and try to arrive at solutions that are at least workable, although always subject to revision and improvement as more data comes in, and as more creative people look for better options. I am appalled at the deference given to the approved scientists, and how no one is allowed to question or challenge their statements because "they are the expert." This is a great interview, and I say that even though I don't agree with all of their conclusions. I respect them as individuals who are trying to bring more truth to light. For example, they repeat various times that unless you are elderly, you are at little risk from Covid, but if you are obese, diabetic, have high blood pressure, or a number of other co-morbidities, your risk goes way up. I have a dear friend in intensive care with Covid at this moment who falls into that category. In her forties, but fighting for her life, and the prognosis is not good. And sadly, in the US today, there is a large cohort of the population that does fall into the high-risk category.

"I am not a scientist, but I play one on R.V.T.V.!" After looking at the website, what came to mind was a quote that Mike Green evokes often; "There are lies, damn lies and statistics." Opinions are like body parts; we all have them and quite often, they stink! It is a bit like watching an aerospace engineer bag their own groceries. Stick to your field of expertise.

Whilst an interesting discussion, I was not persuaded on the main points. For 98% of my life, I have enjoyed living in a county where considerable individual autonomy is encouraged and dissent is allowed. But the pandemic (the 2%) has shown the failings of this system. Autocratic regimes with complaint populations have been able to impose effective measures to combat the virus and the long term impacts to life and to quality of life have therefore been minimised. Other countries have tried to build public consensus but the resulting actions have lacked sufficient speed and force. The result is pergutory, or the worst of all worlds. Whilst lockdowns extract a terrible price particularly on the vulnerable, I have yet to hear a convincing alternative. It may offend against liberty and freedom, but in most western countries we would be in a better place if the populations had just got behind efforts to eradicate the virus with unquestioning resolve.

The reasoning: 'We have services focused economies in the UK and US where a ton of people make s*** money while good education is very expensive and US healthcare is the most expensive in the western world. So let's protect these poor people by keeping them in their jobs and not locking down'. Look up wealth (re)distribution, social mobility, education scores, life expectancy, political diversification (vs two party systems) etc. These countries aren't exactly front runners there. If you're born a dime, better hope you're born in Denmark or Zwitserland.

When these guys talk about "using CT of 40" they're making it sound like every sample will be subject to 40 cycles and then you decide if it's positive or negative. That is not the case, the CT value is more of an "up to" and positives are mostly detected at much lower cycles. E.g. https://twitter.com/_johnbye/status/1343698250411479040/photo/1

Brave! Quite refreshing to have a deep discussion on this topic. Kudos to Mike.

Great interview. Finally a different perspective.

So what was the point of this discussion? People are snowflakes so we shouldn’t bother with measures that have worked in the east?

This is a brilliant interview with Catherine Austin Fitts on the topic. https://vimeo.com/496526543?fbclid=IwAR3U9TvP2O9zJO44MgVC1RusmTIo33Uhwu9ZBboVI7N-aVtGwmJvr6Sbjco

I live in Singapore but have family living both in the UK and Sweden. As I write this Sweden has 9000 deaths and a population of 10 million people. Singapore has roughly half the population size and 29 deaths. The economy in Singapore is open and we are now rolling out the vaccine. The big difference is that Singapore have seen this before with SARS and us who live here started wearing masks immediately, borders were closed, distancing was respected and a trace and track system was developed very quickly. The strategy works (so far) because there is a belief in the strategy and everyone works together to make it a success. Heavy fines and the risk of deportation is there but these measures have only been exercised rarely and mainly in the beginning of the outbreak. When I speak to my family in Europe they are still trying to live their lives as normal as possible despite the situation being worse than ever.

Thanks guys.... we'll done.

Life is less valuable in Africa apparently. Culture matters.

Outstanding topic with excellent guests. This one should be put on Youtube.

This was great, I couldn’t agree w/ these gentlemen more.

If this gets posted on YouTube it probably gets flagged.

Typo in description. Should be filmed on January 4, 2021 not 2020.

What he says about UK excess deaths attribution is wrong. I wish he were right but he's not. It is driven by COVID. Also, the filming date is January 4, 2021, not 2020.

Thank you for this interview. Opened my mind to a different way of seeing things. What is the argument against places like Sweden that did not lock down and are having a hard time?

Really liked this one. Huge fan of Mike. One thought: While there isn’t a price that reflects the availabikity of beds - it now takes an awfully long time in many places to allow ambulances to unload.

Thank you for airing this. I thought it was really well done. One of the strengths of this interview was the broad scope of the conversation. This is not a critique; however I would love to see a dry, fact filled and somewhat choregraphed series of interviews with these guys. I think that would interesting to a wider audience.

Well this really just seemed like a Libertarian grievance airing hour. All I heard was hindsight-heavy complaints with no genuine solutions for things. When Mike presses them for solutions to ICU's reaching capacity it's just non-answers. Too bad.

I'm so glad that with Mike G. one of the smartest and most rational Real Vision contributers is leading this interview. Finally someone who everybody else can't just lable a conspiracy theorist just because he's really listening to and trying to understand people not preaching the mainstream narrative. Should really go out on YouTube. But they would go on and censor this, as they've done with almost everybody who i've heard stating these or similar arguments as brought forward by Russel and Nick.

governments lie to control. wow. now do global warming. same people.

Please get this out on your free to view platforms ASAP!

I totally agree with Richard C on getting this out everywhere. If trends go as they have YouTube will likely take it down as they have with much other material against the official narrative but there are a lot of other places to put it as well

Excellent discussion - thankyou