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April 29, 2022 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:06:02
Has HERD IMMUNITY already been achieved for COVID-19? Dr. Paul Cottrell explains
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Welcome everyone.
This is Mike Adams, founder of Brighteon.com.
This is another episode of Brighteon Conversations.
Today we're joined by Dr.
Paul Cottrell, who is, you know, we've interviewed him many times.
He's been following all of these issues surrounding coronavirus, COVID-19, herd immunity, vaccines, immunology, virology, and so much more.
He's in medical school and he's already got a PhD, is why I refer to him as a doctor, and he's a brilliant person who understands a lot of things, even market dynamics, chaos theory in financial markets and so on.
He's also got a lot of very popular blogs and podcasts up on brighteon.com, so be sure to check out his channel there on brighteon.com.
He joins us today to talk about herd immunity, Do we need vaccines at this point?
And how does the immune system really work in defeating this coronavirus?
Thank you, Dr.
Cottrell, for joining us today.
It's always a pleasure to be able to speak with you.
Well thank you for having me Mike.
I like coming on and talking to you about all these important topics.
Well, it's great to have you back on.
It's been a few weeks since we were able to get together.
A lot has happened since then.
Now we are seeing, well, still this push for vaccines, vaccine mandate talk out there about pushing vaccine mandates, severe lockdowns in Australia and New Zealand, mandatory quarantine camps, almost really medical police state type of tactics.
So here's the question to you to start with.
Let's just jump right into the vaccine issue.
Do we need vaccines to solve this pandemic?
Because that is what's being pushed by the media, that we're helpless until a vaccine saves us.
Is that true?
In the short, no, we do not need a vaccine for this crisis.
Now, I want to make it very clear, I'm not anti-vax.
Some people would say, well, that just means that you're anti-vax.
Some vaccines are important to have.
I had a friend that had polio.
He got polio because he didn't get the vaccine.
I'm for smart vaccines.
I'm for safe vaccines.
I'm for third-party testing and making sure that we don't have all the junk that is in these vaccines.
But this particular situation, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, No, we do not.
And the reason being is that there's adequate data, not just in the United States, but also in Europe, where there's this magic number anywhere from 19 to about 23% of the population needs to be infected, where you start to see this decline in cases and hospitalizations.
And assuming that there's not another virus that they leak out, And they don't hit us with something else.
The one that's currently out in the public, what I call the G614 version, a lot of regions already have herd immunity, such as New York.
So individuals at home that are playing the home game, all they have to do is take their trusty calculator and go the R0 minus 1 divided by R0. That will tell you what the herd immunity percentage needs to be.
The R-naught value that's going on with this particular virus at this particular time is about 1.2 to 1.3.
And if it's less, you need less herd immunity.
So there is no reason whatsoever to have a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 because many places already have reached the 19 to 23 percent magic number.
Well, that's really fascinating, especially given this change in the R0 value.
And I'd like to ask you, to what do you attribute that change?
Because, of course, early on, early R0 values, when the virus was more formidable, more transmissible...
And had much higher case fatality rates in Italy, for example, or the early days of New York City in, let's say, the first half of April of this year.
The R-naught values were estimated by some scientists to be anywhere from 3.0 to even 6 in some cases.
But it has dramatically fallen, as you've said.
To what do you attribute that?
Is it host adaptation or, you know, virology, natural mutation?
What is it?
It's not just one variable.
It's a combination.
One, when you're right in the middle of something like that and it's very chaotic and you're getting new data, that number is going to be inflated.
But as you get better data and you understand the dynamics of what's going on, the R-naught value is going to start to go down.
Part of it is data collection.
Part of it is what we were talking about on previous shows, the smashing of the curve.
Some of these protocols, and this is an important piece that you're bringing up here, that some of these protocols, by having the mask on and having some prudent measures within the society as we were going through this crisis, reduce the transmissiveness by having the mask on and having some prudent measures within the society as we were Right.
So it's not just the virus ability to attach to the ACE2 receptor and infect us.
It's also the social dynamics that were plugged in for smashing the curve that allowed it to bring it down.
On top of that, now we have this plasma treatment.
So now we have individuals.
This is important.
We have now individuals within the society that have the antibodies.
Well, we can take this convalescent plasma treatment and give it to individuals that are mild cases or severe cases and reduce the fatality rate.
Yes, yes.
So now we have better medicines.
We have a better protocol on how to treat it.
There was that social dynamic that was plugged into it, so there was a combination of things.
Medicine, the social dynamics, and better data collection that allows us to see this thing.
Plus attenuation is another important piece to this.
This is that as a virus mutates, it's going to...
Lose its original infectivity.
It's called attenuation.
That's how most viruses die out in a population is that they can't produce as well.
But again, there are caveats with this.
We don't know if they release something else.
And we don't know if down the road there's gain of function with another receptor.
This 1.2 or 1.3 R0 that we're talking about is assuming the current state of receptor affinity.
Now, what's also important, and it was Dr.
Todaro over at Columbia University.
Now, Columbia, obviously, in New York, you know, it's a lot of data about what's going on.
And I know personally the people that are in the pathology, the molecular pathology lab in there.
That's doing the testing.
And he stated today that there's cross-reactivity from basic coronaviruses that we've been developing antibodies.
Our body has memory cells from previous infection, and some of those antibodies have cross-reactivity to the new virus.
The novel virus, right?
That is a good thing, because what that does is that it's not perfect, but at least we have a little bit of an immune response for some people.
Not everybody, but for some people.
That's also part of the reason why it brings down that R0 value.
It's a multifactorial problem here.
Makes sense.
I'm glad you mentioned, too, that the R-naught value is not a property of the virus alone, that it takes into account the human response, the social and medical response, mask wearing and so on, social distancing and so on.
And time dependent.
It's a time dependent function.
That's the key there.
It's a time dependent function.
Good point.
So the R-naught value clearly was much higher in, let's say, the last half of March in New York City than it is now.
It's significantly lower now for all the reasons that you just mentioned.
But it brings up a question that I've been meaning to ask you.
You know, there are many, many people out there now with theories that claim that there's no virus.
They claim the entire thing was a hoax.
They claim that China faked it.
That China faked all their deaths in order to deceive the world into locking down and destroying Western civilization economies.
And my question to you is, where do you think we would be today if, as a nation, we had completely ignored this pandemic in March and we had no lockdowns?
We had no masks, no social distancing, nothing.
And I'm not saying that all those things were done correctly, by the way.
I think the lockdowns have gone on far too long.
You know, I disagree with police state mask mandates and so on.
But if we had done nothing and just ignored it, where would we be right now, in your opinion?
We would have more infection and we would have more deaths.
For sure.
There's no doubt about it.
I mean, that's the point here, is that a lot of people have this black and white thought that if you do this, you have to do it all the time.
No, it's time dependent.
We had to do certain things early on to, quote, smash the curve.
But that doesn't mean that you have to do that all the time.
Because we have better pharmaceuticals out, we understand the virus better, we know that if you treat it early with a certain type of protocol, if the FDA just got out of the way, that we would be able to have a lot better outcomes here.
So for sure, if we didn't Shut down the system, the economy, and had shelter in place.
If we didn't have that, we would have had a higher R-not value.
This is why I say it's time-dependent and based on our social dynamics on top of the biological dynamics.
Definitely, we would have much higher rates.
I think that some of the numbers that I was predicting in terms of deaths...
Would have come to fruition if it wasn't for the severe shelter in place.
Unfortunately, and we're seeing it in New York, one third of the small businesses are out of business.
I mean, it's not like they're closed and they're waiting to come back.
No, no, no.
They're out of business.
They're gone.
Yeah, they're gone.
And I mean, New York.
The last time we were talking, we said, well, New York's going to the 1980s, pre-Giuliani.
We passed the 1980s.
We're now in the 70s.
You know, the garbage flying all over the place.
There's rats running around all over the place.
People just being shot in the streets.
I mean, it's just, you know, defecation all over.
I mean, it's just, it's sad.
Well, then, see, and those lockdowns are justified under the thinking that there are so many, quote, cases that the lockdowns have to continue.
So my follow-up question to you is we've got to dig into this definition of a, quote, case, because my understanding is that before all of this happened, a case of an infection usually required two things.
You had to identify the pathogen that the patient was infected with, and then the patient had to be symptomatic, sick, in other words, caused by that pathogen.
That's considered a case.
But now the media is reporting every positive test as a, quote, case.
When people are completely asymptomatic, they may have antibodies, they're not sick, they're not hospitalized, these are all being reported as, quote, cases, and then this kind of, well, I'm going to call it hysteria, is being used in many cases to justify lockdowns when there really aren't any sick people, or very few sick people.
What's your interpretation of this use of the word, quote, case, to describe people who just test positive but aren't sick?
Yeah, there seems to be a theme in our conversation today, and that's time dependency.
See, we have the luxury of covering this whole thing from day one, when it was the Wuhan crisis, and it wasn't at our shores yet.
So at that time, early on, there were this idea that you could be asymptomatic and still spread.
That's true.
And we did not have an adequate testing protocol from the CDC yet at that time.
Right.
I remember.
Then, all right, so we had this big fear, all right?
And so we were saying anything, and even the CDC was publishing this, anything that was flu-like symptoms was Was suspicious and therefore should be considered a potential case.
Now, as we move through this timeline and we had better testing, then there were...
At that time, you had to send it to the CDC for testing.
They didn't have local testing.
And a case would be confirmed by the CDC, and it would be published by Johns Hopkins.
So an official confirmed case at that time in the United States was something that tested positive with the RT-PCR that was run by the CDC. But the CDC guidelines, excuse me for interrupting, but the CDC guidelines, I remember, in February said that only symptomatic people should be tested.
That's true.
And doctors had to write a form asking to send samples to the CDC even if they were symptomatic or asymptomatic.
There were many doctors complaining, hey, we're concerned and we need to be testing these asymptomatic individuals too.
You know, the medical community was pushing the CDC.
Now, at that time, the CDC was kind of like keeping the numbers low.
That's right.
That's right.
Then Trump comes in and then says, you know what, I want everyone tested.
And then the testing started really inflating.
Because you remember, there was this big push between the Trump administration and the CDC on testing more.
The CDC didn't want to test as many.
No, no, the first batch of, the CDC screwed up the first testing kits for a month, over a month.
The testing kits in February that were sent out all over the country were bad, bad reagents.
They didn't even work.
Right, so I mean, you know, then, you know, during that time period, then the question is, who's really positive, who's really negative, you know?
But fast forward to now, I mean, what is the appropriate way, in your view, that we should deal with this?
Because, you know, when the media is reporting cases, I think the average consumer listens to that and thinks, oh, you know, a thousand cases means there's a thousand sick people.
But it isn't.
It might be ten sick people and 990 asymptomatic carriers.
Well, my take on this is this.
You're obviously going to be a case if you test positive for the RT-PCR. Now, you can have a false positive, you can have a false negative with those tests.
But it's getting better.
But let's just say that in a perfect world, it's 100% accurate.
Obviously, an RT-PCR positive means that you are a, quote, case for COVID-19, all right?
You test for SARS-CoV-2, all right?
Now, the thing is, is that you could test positive on the RT-PCR and be asymptomatic.
Sure.
All right.
So if you're testing everybody, then that seems to be the better capture of who is exposed to SARS-CoV-2, at least detectable exposure to SARS-CoV-2.
Now, there's a subset of that population that would be asymptomatic.
Now, for me, I would consider them as cases that...
Now, in data science, when you start collecting more and more data, you start to see that there are anomalies within the data, or you start to see different categories or subcategories.
So the data set should start bifurcating what a case is.
Asymptomatic versus symptomatic.
This is where anyone that's worked in a large organization has noticed, especially in finance, as you're building more and more data, you'll have subcategories within a certain category.
And it's important to have that granularity.
Unfortunately, the CDC isn't publishing that granularity.
Who are the ones that are passing RT-PCR that are asymptomatic versus symptomatic?
And I think that's an important number to have.
Yeah, yeah.
And just to dig into this a little more deeply, I don't think that...
Lots of people carry, for example, the virus of hepatitis A or even hep C, but they're not symptomatic.
But they're not considered cases of hepatitis until they become sick from it.
The same thing from the flu.
I mean, lots and lots of people all across America each year Probably would test positive for influenza if the testing were more widespread, even though they never showed symptoms, not sick, they didn't even know that they had.
I don't think that we would call those cases of influenza.
No, no, I see your point, but here's the minor detail that's different here.
We know about the dynamics of those diseases.
We don't know the dynamics of this disease.
We're starting to gain more knowledge of it, but is there something that we don't know?
Remember, I talked about the pinballing, or it going dormant and then re-emerging.
We still don't understand that yet.
So it's better to be on the side of caution when you're looking at a, quote, complex system or a chaotic system.
We're still looking at a chaotic system here.
It's better to side on caution, and that caution is that if testing positive for an RT-PCR test...
Then we should still categorize it as a case, but again, it should be treated as an asymptomatic case.
So we would be able to at least have that data set to follow to see if there's some sort of strange dormancy that we do not understand about this particular virus.
So we can't treat this situation like all the other viruses that have been...
for decades it's different it's yeah and we need to learn we need to learn a lot more about it but as we learn about that and we understand that that that dynamic then I would totally agree with you that we would just go back to the way we would do the these other these other viruses that if you're asymptomatic and you just happen to have it within your within within your blood or whatever that you would be can you wouldn't be considered a case yeah true
This virus, we've only had experience with it for, what, seven or eight months, roughly?
Right.
And that's not much for epidemiology.
We haven't been through a winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, right?
So we don't really know what's going to happen.
Exactly.
The fall.
Right.
The fall is going to be the big, big determinator of where is this really going?
Is it getting better or is it going to get worse?
Absolutely.
Okay, next question for you.
One reason I really enjoy interviewing you is because you and I can banter about these very technical topics because you're a scientist and you're in medical school.
I'm a published scientist, run a lab.
But what we see in a lot of, especially independent media, but also in mainstream media, is since COVID-19 came out, so many people who have no science background at all suddenly claiming to be experts in everything related to gene sequencing and PCR and all these things.
And it's like, wow.
And there's been a viral video that I want to ask you about where, I don't know who made it, but somebody Found a sequence of only 18 base pairs of genetic code that is part of the PCR test for SARS-CoV-2.
That they found that same sequence of 18 base pairs in a human chromosome map, right?
And so this video went viral.
It was exploding all over the internet.
Oh my God, everybody who's a human being will test positive for SARS-CoV-2.
And I was thinking, well, the test isn't just 18 base pairs.
I did a video on this.
I call it the chromosome 8 RTP-CR theory.
Yes.
They are calling off...
So in RT-PCR, it's a reverse transcriptase PCR testing.
So there is a forward primer, a reverse primer, and a probe.
The probe is what fluoresces.
So when you're multiplying whatever you're looking for, it will fluoresce and you will be able to determine that you have what you're looking for.
It's a FAM probe.
The forward primer and the reverse primer helps with capturing the area of the RNA or DNA you're looking for.
They call off on this chromosome 8 the reverse primer sequence.
For a primer to anneal, it has to anneal to the opposite sequence.
So when you type in the code for the reverse primer and it just pops up on BLAST and says, oh, it's the same code as chromosome 8, wrong.
For it to anneal, it has to be the opposite.
T goes to A, C goes to G. See?
So it wouldn't anneal to be able to make the content And then you would have to make sure whatever is in between the forward and the reverse primer is what the FAM sequence is going to be attached to.
So they obviously don't know anything about PCR. Well, right, but they're absolutely convinced that they've found that...
And from that video, people claim the entire thing is a hoax, that there is no virus.
Here's the problem is that they have to have a certain basic understanding of the testing protocol to understand what the reverse primer means.
We read stuff from 5' to 3' as it's polymerasing.
And you have to attach whatever your template is.
Your primer has to be the opposite.
it, for it to anneal to the template, right?
T to A, C to G, right?
So if you're looking at a primer that's in the CDC protocol, and in this case it was actually the Institute of Pasteur, that's the protocol that they were looking at.
The CDC protocol doesn't have it, if you look.
But the Louis Pasteur protocol has this reverse primer sequence that if you type it in directly, it pops up for 18 nucleotides.
For the part of the P arm of chromosome 8.
But that doesn't mean anything because the primer would not anneal to that area.
So it's not looking for that area.
I get it, but the problem is then we have to take the whole country through, you know, biology 101.
This is the problem.
The baseline is so low that we have people that are making these videos that go, you know, to millions of views.
You know, and...
So, okay, so another one.
It's a bonus theory.
Well, I agree.
And by the way, it's not just 18 base pairs that the PCR instruments are looking at.
It's got to be hundreds of base pairs.
You're right, but that's true.
Because what it is, the thing is that the probe is about 18.
Yeah, I guess so.
So your forward, your reverse probe is 18, and your fan probe is about 24 base pairs.
So when you do the probability, what's the probability of accidentally finding what you're looking for with a 18 forward probe and 18 reverse, you know, I'm sorry, a forward primer, reverse primer, both are 18 nucleotides, and then a 24 nucleotide fan probe.
The probability is so low that you might as well just throw it out and say that there's no way I'm going to accidentally find something in the genome.
Now, what is interesting and a lot of people don't understand is, is that, that, and they never mentioned this chromosome eight is important.
It was part of our evolutionary process and it has a high mutation rate.
All right.
And a lot of researchers are saying that that is one of the chromosomes that kind of like leaped us for going from a primate cognitive function to human cognitive function.
Oh, so.
Well, that explains a lot.
I think Joe Biden is missing chromosome.
Well, it could be.
It could be.
But the thing is, it's an important chromosome.
But when you have high mutation, and you know this, when you are in an environment that is dynamic, you're going to be exposed to pathogens.
And there are going to be sequences naturally through evolution where they're going to insert We have tons of little viral DNA all scattered in our genome through evolutionary biology.
It's not a, wow, can you imagine that there's 18 pairs of something that happens to be of another organism?
Well, that's how we evolve.
A lot of people don't think that.
Everyone thinks that our genome is going to be 100% different than, let's say, to a rat.
Well, there's going to be a lot of similarity to a rat.
Look, it's co-evolution with other life forms all around us and inside us and everything.
Let me get to a second video on this that's also, I think, a similar thing, where somebody out there, I forgot who it was, maybe it was a doctor, was trying to show that masks don't work at all.
So he inhaled from a vaping pen and then he put on the mask and then he exhaled through the mask.
And the vaping, you know, smoke, so to speak, goes out through the mask and out the sides.
And then everybody looking at that says, oh my god, masks don't work!
And I'm thinking, what do you mean masks don't work?
Most of the breath went through the mask.
It's a filtration media there.
It's doing the job.
It's going to trap some things, but mostly masks are supposed to be worn by people who are infected to trap their spit.
We're not saying that masks are airtight, but you see, I think this is another video that people were saying, well, then it's proof that masks don't work, that they never work, that no one should ever wear a mask, including, I guess, drywall construction workers who are protecting themselves from sawdust and everything.
But, you know, why is it that people can be so tricked by these little parlor trick videos?
I mean, why are people tricked by just basic magic at the fair?
It's the same thing.
If you're not paying attention, someone can trick you.
But there's these different levels of infectivity of viruses.
We have a level one, level two, level three, level four, all right?
So, look, researchers out there, you know, level one, you don't really need any protection.
Level two, you need a little bit of protection.
Level three, you need more protection.
Level four, you need, you know, airtight systems and stuff.
You know, with back pressure and everything.
So people need to start just using some common sense.
You're right.
For a level 2-3, you're talking more about droplets and not so much pure aerosol.
then you're going to need a much tighter mass that's, you know, much airtight, and you need probably an oxygen tank and everything else.
Right.
But these masks are really to block the droplets.
But what's more important is people should start thinking it's not just watching, viewing it.
You have to chemically test it.
What is in the mask after the person exhaled the vape material?
Right.
And what's outside the mask.
It probably traps some of that material.
Right, right.
And you would do a control test, okay, without the mask and have him exhale and you analyze that.
And then you do another test where he's exhaling and what's in between the mask and his mouth, what type of, what's the percentage of compound, whatever you're looking for.
And then what's After the mask.
Let's pass the mask.
And you'll notice that there's quite a bit that's filtered.
Yes.
Those masks are designed so you can breathe, too.
Yeah, you've got to be able to breathe.
But they keep saying, well, there's no scientific evidence that masks work.
And I tell some of these people, well, there's no scientific evidence that underwear works, but you're wearing underwear, I hope.
Well, you know, they do work because we've reduced infection in masks.
In the OR by doctors and nurses wearing masks.
I mean, it was well known that before they did that, there were post-op infection.
Well, I know, but do we have to go back to the era of Semmelweis and say to people, okay, we're going to teach you about washing hands?
You know, that washing hands works.
And there's going to be the same people saying, there's no proof that washing hands works.
You know, it's like, really?
Like, how far back do we have to go here in the germ theory to start teaching people the basics?
Right.
I mean, this is the problem.
This is like...
See, the nuance is that early on, it was very prudent to have the masks.
But as we're developing our herd immunity through this, assuming there's not gain-of-function and there's nothing else leaked out, The reliance on mass will need to go down.
We won't need it.
Yeah, it makes sense.
But here's the problem.
This is that we have a stupid public.
And you almost have to tell them, just keep on wearing the mask.
Because they don't realize.
You can't tell them you won't need the mask later.
Because they don't understand time dependency.
See?
Everything's black or white.
You told me that I don't need to wear the mask.
And then there'll be someone on the internet months from now saying, see?
This proves that we never needed the mask.
No, we needed the mask at a certain time.
Because there was time dependency on this.
Well, you've got people on the internet right now that say, well, all the projections were wrong because after the lockdowns and after the masks, we didn't get as many deaths as were projected.
So all the projections were wrong.
But it's a feedback system.
Exactly.
When we do something, it's going to affect it.
And therefore, that's a social system.
That's a good thing.
I know.
We did something and it made it better.
We want that.
It's like if you're driving down Highway 101 and you're about to drive off a cliff, you know, and your buddy in the car, you tell him, okay, I'm going to adjust the steering here, otherwise we're going to fly off the cliff and die.
So you adjust the steering and you stay on the road, and your buddy says, you lied, we didn't die!
There's no cliff, right.
Yeah, there's no cliff, yeah.
Yeah.
It is very frustrating.
I'm sure you feel the same way.
For me, it's very frustrating.
The level of basic science and just basic reasoning is so low.
I mean, it's really, really low.
And I don't know if you've read Atlas Shrugged, but I watched just recently a documentary on Anne Rand talking about her writing career.
And she was warning people that you need to use reason.
This is the main theme of Atlas Shrug.
If you don't use reason, then people will take advantage of you.
They'll keep on taxing you.
They'll take away your rights and stuff.
And the ones that are producing for the society will just shrug their shoulders and walk away.
That's Atlas Shrug.
Atlas was holding the world, and it's the producers, the creative class, the ones that want to move forward society are the ones that are holding up the world.
That's Atlas.
And when we shrug our shoulders and say, we've had enough of this, then the society starts to decay.
Well, now, and that's beginning to happen, quite literally, in places like New York City, where you live.
So, the mass exodus out of New York City, and also what's happening in Los Angeles and Chicago and Seattle and Portland, I mean, everywhere that the mayors allow left-wing rioters and terrorists to just burn down the city, people are like, well, maybe I shouldn't live in a city if they're going to burn it down.
Because that's rational, you know?
And then the bureaucrats keep raising taxes on the producers.
Because the budget shortfalls are enormous.
We should probably do a whole episode on that later this year as these governments run out of money.
The massive cuts are coming, but they're taxing the producers to death, and the producers are like, I'm out of here.
I'm leaving.
Exactly.
It's a downward spiral.
If you have a growing economy and it's reasonable in terms of taxation and regulation, then you'll have economic clusters to grow if the society becomes more prosperous.
But once you have taxation increasing, Way beyond what it should be.
And in tougher regulations on industry, then those economic clusters will start to shrink.
Now, we were too young to actually see the race riots of the early 60s.
But we definitely lived through the aftermath of those race riots, 70s and 80s.
Now, some cities like New York did get back on track after Giuliani.
Yeah, thanks to Giuliani.
Right.
But there were many cities, Chicago, Detroit, Newark, many cities across the country when they were having the race riots of 64 and 68.
They didn't come back until many, many, many decades later.
Detroit started to come back in 1998.
Well, New York was coming back at around 1986.
Alright?
87.
Alright?
But it started, the burning of the city started in 64.
Alright?
So you see that span of time Where the producers, the ones that had businesses, they got out.
There was the white flight.
Everyone was leaving the city and, you know, it was just decay and it just kept on spiraling and the corruption and all this.
Detroit was a big, big city that had huge amounts of corruption and it just kept on spiraling down with Coleman Young.
You know, and it's a shame because I think what we're seeing is across the country something very similar to what was going on in the early 60s.
And it took decades for some of these cities to come back, if ever.
Some of them never came back.
I would say it's more devastating economically than what we saw in the 60s.
This is almost like having your city bombed by an enemy.
I mean, New York City, I think over 50% of the restaurants are closed, and similar numbers in Los Angeles.
And like you said, probably a third of former businesses are closed permanently.
These cities, we will not see recovery for 20 years from these numbers.
I mean, you can't just spring back all the capital and all the expertise and the labor force and everything.
I mean, people are leaving.
And there's the other dynamic, and that is technology.
We have learned that we can do more with less, and we can be remote.
So what is the benefit of New York City?
Because the whole idea was to have a bunch of people in a very concentrated area in a building working together.
Well, you don't need that now with this type of technology.
So I don't think New York's going to come back like it did right after 9-11.
When it literally was bombed.
These cities, we have that added component of high-speed broadband technologies and these types of systems that we're working on now, like Zoom and whatnot.
We don't need the city anymore.
Right, right.
We don't need the city anymore.
That's a really profound statement.
I think you're right.
And I think people are realizing, too, the cost of living in a city, not just financially, but also then the risk cost of being targeted by radical left-wing terrorists or having your business burned down or taxation costs and so on.
I think a lot of people are doing the math on this, finally.
You know, when it's painful enough, 2 plus 2 really does equal 4.
And...
They're getting out.
So, I think you're right.
But, I mean, you're still there because you're in school, right?
Is that the main reason you're there?
Right.
You know, I have a plan.
That plan is finish my education, and once I get into my residency, wherever I end up, because, you know, you don't know where you'll be for residency, then, you know, that's, you know, when I relocate.
But, you know, that will be in three years.
So, and I just have to just...
Bear it for three years and hopefully the whole system doesn't kill me in the process.
What does the city look like to you when you're walking down the sidewalk today?
What are your observations?
Well, New York has some safe areas still.
But there is a lot of...
You go down any avenue, 2nd Avenue, 1st Avenue, 5th Avenue, you see one right after another, a store is closed permanently.
And they have the brown paper on the window inside, and they'll say for rent.
There are some smashed windows, not that many.
There are some.
Now, along Fifth Ave, because it's a little bit more higher end, there are still buildings, storefronts that are boarded up with the plywood and stuff.
Um, The trash, I mean, they're just not picking up the trash because what's happening is they don't have the tax revenue.
So they're cutting services.
So the trash is just blowing all over the place now.
And that's going to feed disease.
There's homeless.
There's more homeless now, you know, underneath the scaffolding and stuff.
I read that record numbers of New Yorkers are purchasing ballistic vests now.
Is that something?
I didn't know that.
No, I haven't seen that.
I didn't know that.
I know that there's a record number of people leaving the city and going to Long Island or upstate New York.
I mean, there's 18 months worth of inventory for condos and co-ops.
Oh, I would imagine.
But no, it was a story about a New York City-based retailer that sells ballistic vests and has been selling just huge numbers.
And then there was another story about a New Yorker who was mugged and his ballistic vest was stolen by the mugger.
Because, you know, you can wear a ballistic vest, but you can't carry a gun in New York City, so you can still be mugged and have your vest stolen by a mugger who now is bulletproof.
So, you know, I mean, great policies there.
It is getting dangerous in the Bronx area.
It's getting dangerous anywhere you have the projects.
It's not as safe as it used to be.
You can see the city is starting to decay.
I mean, it was decent during Bloomberg.
I moved in when Bloomberg was mayor.
And it was only his last two years where the graffiti just started.
And graffiti is somewhat benign, but I mean, it's an eyesore.
But then what happens is it's that broken window theory.
You just have enough of the graffiti, enough of the broken windows, and then all of a sudden the society starts to go down.
And once de Blasio came in, there was such an infighting between the police and him That the city started radically just going downhill.
Then you had COVID. So New York was starting to decline because of de Blasio.
And then COVID was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
I don't think that New York is going to be coming back like it was during Bloomberg's first administration or second administration.
Well, no.
I mean, everything the Democrats run, they eventually destroy.
And anything they can't control, they want to destroy.
I didn't even realize it at first, but it was the documentary that I just saw about Ayn Rand.
She was foretelling us that this was going to happen to America.
And she even wrote...
Atlas Shrugged to warn people because she was from Russia and she saw what was happening.
And then she's now, as she was living through, you know, in the United States, she started seeing that there was this socialism that was creeping in in the 60s and the 70s.
And, you know, here we go with, you know, this, we have these cities that are run by Democrats.
And what do you have?
You have scenes right out of, you know, Escape from New York or Atlas Shrugged.
Well, okay, so let me ask you this, because this ties right in.
So many Democrats are trying to use COVID-19 as a cover story for requesting bailouts from the Federal Reserve to cover for their, you know, horrendous corruption and bribery and spending and kickbacks and everything.
We see this with de Blasio.
We see it with Cuomo.
We see it with Newsom in New York.
Nancy Pelosi is right now putting her foot down and saying she demands Trillions of dollars of bailouts, she demands Trump agree to these bailouts, to bail out mostly liberal cities and states that have been spending money like mad and have bloated pension systems and bloated welfare systems and so on.
And Trump is saying no.
And I understand why Pelosi is being so adamant right now, because if they don't get this free money, these states and cities will go bankrupt and they can't print money.
They can't print money in California like the Fed can.
So, you know, New York said, didn't de Blasio already say he's going to have to fire 22,000 city workers soon?
Just because of budget shortfalls?
They're going to do that, and they're going to totally reduce the 40%.
And this is shocking, because most people in New York do not have cars.
They rely on the MTA system, which is the mass transit system, the bus and the subways.
They're going to reduce service by 40% because of their billions of shortfall.
And they're begging for that bailout.
If they don't get it, the MTA is down to, you know, it will be reduced by 40%.
Didn't I read that MTA was burning through $200 million a day?
I don't know if it's a day or not, but I don't know.
It seems like it was a day.
It doesn't have a lot of money for a day.
No, no, it's a lot.
But the thing is, here's the big point, is that when you look at all of the liabilities, you're a businessman.
I mean, you've got to look at your assets and your liabilities and your cash flows and all this, all right?
And you've got to make sure that you have enough coming in to be able to manage your business.
Well, they have less cash flow, but they have all these liabilities.
And a big part of those liabilities is these overblown pension plans that they have.
And there should be no reason for these things.
So they need to curtail that.
They have pension plans that are so much better than the average citizen in that city.
So either tell those individuals...
Invest in a 401k or they don't get the defined benefit, but it would be a defined contribution plan where it reduces the level of burden on the city and it puts more of the responsibility of the retirement savings on the actual pensioner for the city worker.
They need to restructure the pension plans for these things.
Oh, it's coming.
They're going to have to.
There's no choice.
Right, right.
Exactly.
By forcing the issue, by not giving them the bailout, they're going to have to seriously cut services.
Now, what is happening in New York is they'll cut the trash, they'll cut everything else, but the big elephant in the room, and that is the pension.
Well, then it brings up the obvious question.
You plan to live there in New York City for three more years.
Three years from now, what city services are going to exist?
I mean, what infrastructure of a city is even going to be there?
I mean, you're going to be walking over heaps of trash like a scene out of Idiocracy where they had...
Remember the mountains of trash and they had trash avalanches?
You're going to be living...
That movie!
In trash.
Yeah, I know.
It's starting.
It's starting.
Literally, it's starting.
You know, there's lots of rats running around, you know, going from one trash bin to another, and they breed fast, and, you know, it's...
The thing is, is that, what, do you give the heroin addict more heroin?
Or do you tell them no and you get them off?
Well, these democratic cities are a bunch of heroin addicts, literally.
And the only way to do it is to cut them off.
And unfortunately, it's going to take 20 years to fix the problem.
Because the society will decay.
The ones that produce for that area will move out.
And you're going to have a 20 to 25 year Mediocrity in that area, with crime and everything else, until someone comes in and says, I'm going to redevelop it.
Like another Giuliani.
But what happens if Trump caves in and agrees and pays the trillions, trillions, to these cities, which effectively means the taxpayers all across middle America, farmers in Indiana, are paying to bail out corruption in New York City?
You know, that's not going to be a popular move if that happens.
I don't think Trump's going to go for it.
But then...
As Ayn Rand says, then you're just perpetuating the bad decisions even longer.
The cancer just continues to fester and grow because you haven't excised the tumor from the system.
Exactly.
Right.
And not only that, we don't have the money.
We don't have the money.
But again, now we have to teach Economics 101 to the country now, too, because...
Because what it is, who's getting the money?
The ones that aren't producing.
Who's going to be bearing the burden of the debt?
The ones that aren't producing.
They'll just pile more on us until we shrug our shoulders and say, enough is enough.
I'm not going to carry the weight anymore.
That was the main point.
So I think we should just give tough love and let these cities crumble, including New York.
Because one, we don't really need them anymore because we have technology.
And two, what are these societies really producing?
And this dovetails to a conversation that you had two, maybe three weeks ago on Dr.
Keith's show.
It's about the morality of the country.
What did we have last year at about this time?
It was around June or July of last year.
We had fashion designers and the whole gay pride thing in overdrive in the United States.
You could see they were projecting it on children.
They had different outfits with the whole pride thing, independent of where you are on that spectrum.
But there is such a thing as moral decay in a society.
This is a fact.
We've seen it with the Greeks, we've seen it with the Romans, and now we're seeing it with our people.
The thing is that if we don't stand up to some level of morality in terms of how do we want the society to move forward and to protect that family unit, the nuclear family, The society is going to decay.
All right?
And what has been happening in the last 10 years in this country is the erosion of the nuclear family.
You know, father and mother raising a child?
No, the child should be raised by the state.
Well, that's statism.
Or, you know, promote...
Abortion.
I mean, I was so appalled at what was going on in New York and other state houses when they were passing late-term abortion laws and clapping.
Post-birth abortion.
Yeah.
I mean, and the thing was, they were clapping after they passed it.
No, they celebrate that.
I mean, and, you know, it's like...
From a personal point of view, I'm a little scared as I'm going and learning medicine.
I'm going to have to learn on how to do that.
And I don't know what that...
Because in some cases you have to because of life and death situations.
But in terms of it's just an option for a mother, I don't know.
Personally, for me, I would prefer the child to be born.
But when you're going through the training to actually perform the abortion, doctors have to be trained to do that.
It's a procedure.
But it scares me, Mike.
It truly, deep down inside my soul, it scares me.
Well, that's because you have a soul.
That's because you still have morality, unlike these demon creatures that love chopping up babies after they're born.
But I was going to say, I'm surprised they haven't already deleted all the sections from your medical textbooks that refer to female biology, male biology, reproductive endocrinology, and so on.
Because apparently now, according to the left, there is no such thing as biology.
So I don't know what you're supposed to be learning, because you can have a biological male come in to have his, quote, vagina checked out.
This is the madness of society today.
There was a speaker at the DNC convention who's like a king, queen, mermaid, transgender, non-binary, whatever.
It's like, you're not a mermaid, you're just a psychopath, actually.
But this is what society has become.
And they're going to come after doctors next.
You have to do OBGYN checkups on males, just so you know.
Right.
So as you go through the process of learning the trade, being a medical doctor, you take a history.
Well, now we're being told.
It's not just, okay, what's your...
You know, sex.
All right, you know, male, female.
But what would you be, what would you like to be called?
You know, would you like to identify as a male or female?
You know, so I'm just like, so when you're doing these examinations, you know, in theory, someone could say, you know what, there could be a male, let's say that you're examining, and they state, well, you know, I'm lactating.
And could you feel my breasts because I think I have something wrong with my lactation gland or something?
It can get really, really odd and really, really weird, but if you don't do certain things, you...
May be up for discrimination.
But that's the thing.
The transgenderism movement.
In our society.
Yeah.
They require you to participate in their delusion.
And if you don't participate, then you're a bigot or, you know, transphobe or whatever.
No, you're a doctor.
Biology is real, folks.
It's real.
Jeez.
Right, right.
You know, what it is, is that you had the left that take these rare, rare genetic disorders.
You know, these cases where, you know, there are an XXXY, you know, individuals can have multiple Xs, right?
And instead of just XX or XY, um...
These are very rare cases.
During development, the genitalia isn't forming right, or there's something wrong with the endocrine system.
Females may be more male-oriented.
This is what they call middle sex.
These things happen, but they're not common.
Here's the interesting thing.
This goes into the whole glycosate and making sure that we stay away from GMOs and stuff.
When you disrupt the endocrine system, it's affecting your testosterone and estrogen levels.
Sure.
And this is the reason why you start seeing the soy boys and all this stuff that's going on in the societies.
Because we are flooded with garbage in our food and in our water and on our TVs.
Yeah, and atrazine, it's a chemical castrator.
It's a hormone disruptor.
It's the second most common herbicide that's used in the world today, right after glyphosate.
By the way, our lab, we're working on a method to quantitate atrazine contamination in foods.
That's, just as a side note, something we're working on at the moment.
So we're going to be really taking a closer look at atrazine.
It's all over the place.
I mean, you wouldn't believe what we find just in terms of glyphosate in lentils.
So many lentils and oats are sprayed with glyphosate.
They're not even GMO crops, but they're sprayed with it as a desiccant to dry the crops in the field before harvesting to speed the drying time.
And so glyphosate is residual.
It's a very robust, small molecule, very difficult to denature.
It survives digestion, it survives microwaving, sunlight, radiation, everything.
It's still there.
And it gets into the water table, right?
Absolutely.
It's a very small molecule.
It goes right through everything.
And it's a water-soluble, mostly polar molecule.
This is toxic, and it's just one of many toxins, as you said.
So I'm just adding to what you said, because you're absolutely right.
Look, we're about out of time here.
I think we went down so many rabbit holes that we've hit the end here.
What are your final thoughts about today?
We've covered a lot of interesting subjects.
Well, I think the common theme, there was two common themes, was time dependency.
And that let's...
The herd immunity.
I think that 21-23% is a magic number in the United States.
Let's keep that in mind so we don't buy into this whole idea that we have to have a vaccine.
That's a key component to it.
But it's something that we didn't address, was that we have to hold people accountable that developed this.
That's Fauci, Birx, and Redfield.
They were involved in a weapons program that goes all the way back to before 2014.
But it stopped around 2014 and it was further developed at Wuhan.
It was financed by Fauci.
There was a money trail.
And there was an affidavit that was signed by Mikevitz.
Just recently, about this very topic.
There was over $7 million that was given for gain-of-function for coronaviruses.
There needs to be a huge investigation on Fauci, Birx, and Redfield.
Redfield and Birx were involved in an HIV vaccine Back in the 90s, we're the doctor of the data saying that it was more effective than it really was.
Now, how could those two people be so close to the President of the United States in this kind of pandemic?
They shouldn't be 10 kilometers from the President for what they did in the 90s.
Who?
Who?
Advise the President to have them in his circle.
And then we'll understand who we can't trust.
Yeah, and the key word there is who.
We can't trust who as well.
Right, exactly.
I also find it interesting you use the term kilometers there in that description.
I mean, but I prefer the metric system too, but I don't hear that often from Americans.
But nevertheless, I always enjoy brainstorming with you and covering these topics, and I think our audience does as well.
It's a rare treat to be able to talk with you and explore these ideas of finance, medicine, genetics, philosophy, morality, all these things.
So I just want to thank you for your time today.
Give us your websites where people can follow more of your work, please.
My website is the-studio-rekovic.com.
I publish a lot on the Brighteon system now, your platform.
I... I have a lot of videos.
I'm approaching now 100.
I'm trying to upload to that 100 mark, and then I get upgraded to another user, being a third level, I guess.
And then I also publish on YouTube, and I have a Patreon account.
But yeah, you can follow me on those channels, and it's Dr.
Paul Cottrell or Paul Cottrell on those channels.
Okay, fantastic.
Well, I personally enjoy your videos on Brighton as well, so thank you for contributing to the network.
And I will continue.
I mean, I'm going to be uploading my whole catalog, as I said.
I've been trying to promote your platform with the guests that I interview on my channel and say, hey, there is a free speech area that you can publish, and that's Brighton.
Yeah, well, and it's becoming more and more obvious to many people who are being, you know, just banned off of YouTube.
I mean, long-time users.
Right now, for example, we're helping Stefan Molyneux upload 3,500 videos to Brighteon, because it turns out that was his library, and I promised him we would upload his library before he told me how many videos were in his library, and then it's 3,500.
I'm like, oh my gosh!
Well, this is going to take some time, but...
We're trying to help restore freedom of speech for philosophers and scientists and great thinkers.
So thank you for your contributions to that area.
We really appreciate it.
Yeah, well, thank you for having me and thank you for having a platform like Brighton for us to contribute and have this dialogue.
We're investing in it all the time.
We've got an R&D team making improvements all the time.
Brighteon is good now.
It's going to get even better.
But again, thank you, Dr.
Cottrell.
It's always a pleasure to speak with you.
And for those of you watching, share this video everywhere that you can.
Note that Brighteon URLs are banned on Facebook.
And probably other places as well.
So you might have to embed this video in your own webpage and then share that page on Facebook in order to share this video.
But thanks for doing your part.
Thanks for supporting this platform.
And we will continue to support your right to speak.
This is Mike Adams here, the founder of Brighteon.com.
Thank you for watching.
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