 Less than 60 seconds. Less than 60 seconds. We gotta get her somebody to count us down. I know, right? Here you go. Live from the White House. Live from the Trap House. Trap House via the White House. We're the White House, man. In the Trap House. We're in the White House. In the White House. Whose house? Man, that's the new one. Man, I'd be watching you on CNN and MSNBC and all that good stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How you guys doing? We're pretty good. How are you? Hanging in there. Hanging in there. I heard that. Well, let's get it started. All right, let's do it. All right, watch this. Welcome back to the 85th South Show. We have a super, super special guest checking in with us today. We never thought this would happen. Made it happen. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Fauci. Dr. Fauci. How you doing today? I'm really well, thanks. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Man, they've been working the hell out of you, man. You've been on every network. Yeah, I know. Busy time. Tough situation we're going through. What is going on right now, Dr. Fauci? Well, we're still in the middle of this surge for Omicron, which is that new variant. So it's really spiked up. It's starting to turn around a bit in the big cities in New York City and Chicago and the Northeast and the upper Midwest. But other regions of the country are still having a real problem with cases soaring up. We're averaging about over 2,000 hospitalizations a day, about 150,000 people in the hospital, about 700,000 cases. So we're still in a bit of an issue here with cases in some places going up. But luckily, in some of the cities, they're starting to come down. We just got to get more people vaccinated and more people getting tested and more people wearing masks when they're indoors. My question is, when we first heard that you wanted to talk to us, we were kind of taking it back like, why us? But now we realize the importance of our platform and what we bring to our fan base in our community. But my question to you is, it seems like there's been a lot of push towards the black community for vaccinations that's a lot heavier than most other communities. Why do you think that is? Well, first of all, if you look from the very beginning of the outbreak, for a number of reasons, African-Americans in this country have had a greater risk of infection, mostly due to the kinds of jobs that they have more likely than others out in the community doing services in the community, which puts them at more risk. The other thing that's really important is that they have a greater risk of serious disease when they get infected, because they have a higher incidence of some of the underlying medical conditions that when you do get infected with COVID, you have a greater likelihood of getting serious disease and dying. And if you look at the statistics on a case-by-case basis, on a population basis, African-Americans are a couple of times more likely to get hospitalized, a couple of times more likely to die if they get infected with COVID. So we wanted to make sure that we got our African-American brothers and sisters vaccinated because they had an increased risk. And that was the reason why we had been pushing both in the clinical trials and in the pushing for public service announcements to make sure they get vaccinated. We started off that they were less well-vaccinated than the general population, but thankfully, over the last few months, the percentage of blacks who are vaccinated compared to whites as well as Hispanics is about even now, which is really, really good news. But we have some work to do because we know that booster shots, when the effect of the vaccine wears down a bit and it wanes, booster shots are really, really important in bringing the level of protection back up so that the risk of hospitalization is less. However, we got to catch up because just like in the beginning, when there were fewer African-Americans getting vaccinated than whites, and we corrected that, we got to do the same thing with boosters. So the real message now is that for those African-Americans who haven't been vaccinated, please get vaccinated. And for those who have been vaccinated, get boosted because boosting is really, really important to optimize your protection. All right, I'm gonna just keep you all the way real with you. When the CDC came out and said they weren't gonna tell people what's in the vaccination for 75 years, that turned a lot of black people off. Why did they say 75 years? I don't know what you're talking about. They never said that. Seriously, I think that's myth. You mean they said they weren't gonna tell anybody what's in the vaccine for 75 years? I don't think they've ever said that, sir. You better check that. I've been checking it. Yeah, well. They won't tell us what's in it. One thing that I do know that has been said is that natural immunity is greater than the vaccine. So if natural immunity and you getting COVID builds up a greater immunity and a better resistance to the disease and the sickness, why has there been such a heavy push towards getting vaccinations if natural immunity is so important? Reasonable question. If you're infected and you recover and nothing bad happens to you, natural immunity does protect you for a period of time. It isn't indefinite, but it protects you. The only trouble is if you get infected, you are at a risk of not only getting seriously ill, but of dying, 860,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. Those are 860,000 people that natural immunity is not gonna do any good for. So do you wanna take a chance of getting infected, perhaps getting very ill, perhaps dying, perhaps spreading it inadvertently to a loved one, someone in your family, someone who has a condition that makes them more likely to get seriously ill? I don't think you'd wanna do that. So yes, natural immunity, if you're lucky enough to get infected and to recover could in fact protect you for a while, but it's much better to get vaccinated not get sick and get as much or more protection than you would get from natural immunity. What is this and where did it come from? Like we had grown 30 plus, we'd never heard of this. Like now the world is shut down because of this. Where did this come from? Well, we had an outbreak of what we call SARS-CoV-1 in 2002 and 2003 and it was proven that it was a virus that was originally in the animal reservoir in a bat. And there's a lot of viruses like this that are in bats. They jump species, they infect an intermediate animal and then intermediate animals that come in contact with humans, start it. That's exactly what happened in 2002. In China, in China, in the Guangdong province of China we had individuals who were actually infected from an animal species and then spread it around. Luckily, we were able to control that by public health measures. The same thing happened with a less dramatic outbreak in the Far East, in the Middle East, excuse me. And that was a virus that jumped from a bat to a camel and infected a lot of people in Saudi Arabia. We don't know exactly where this came from but it is very likely the same thing happened. It jumped species from an animal like a bat to a human and in the wet markets where people come to shop for food usually in China and in other Asian countries they come in contact with these animals, they get infected and the next thing you know you have an outbreak. Well, question is funny as this question may sound. How come the focus hasn't been getting bats vaccinated? Cause it seems like it's a lot of bats and animals and all of these type of things. So you hear that and you think, well, wouldn't it be more prudent to just worry about getting the bat population under control than before against the human? Well, that's not an unreasonable question except logistically it's impossible. There are trillions of bats in the world. How are you going to be able to capture them and vaccinate each of them? I mean, that's very true but it's kind of like, you know, you're not going to have any resistance from bats like you're going to have from humans because there's been a lot of misinformation and a lot of disinformation that's been spread amongst, you know, like for example, one of the questions that I get a lot from people is that, you know, there's a certain sterilization period after vaccination and you know, there's been talks of women having problems with their menstrual cycles and various things like that. So is there any truth to the fact that if you get the vaccine, you won't be able to have children? No, that is absolutely incorrect. And one of the real problems we're facing is the misinformation and disinformation that's spread usually on social media. Well, give us the real information. What's going on? Is it working? Is the vaccine working? It absolutely is working. If you look at the data, the facts, not the rumors, not the conjectures, not the disinformation on social media and you look at the people who are hospitalized and die, it's overwhelmingly those people who are unvaccinated. When you compare the unvaccinated to the vaccinated and look at the charts, the vaccinated people are like this, the unvaccinated people way up, a major, major difference. It's 40 something times more likely that you would die from COVID if you were unvaccinated versus vaccinated. Those are the data, those are the facts. I lost my mother to COVID last year on May 4th. She passed away from it. She had an underlying condition. But I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you. But my question is, you know, with the masks and everything, I remember when it first started, you yourself said, well, mask is not necessary. It don't work. And then it switched to you need to wear a mask. And now it's like you, it went from 14 days to five days and you can go out if you vaccinated with a mask. So my question is really what's next? Like if we're not able to get everybody vaccinated, if everybody doesn't follow protocol and, you know, it's not in contrast to what you guys think is necessary, what do we do? Do we just have to look forward to wearing mask and being able to, you know, social distance for the rest of our days or is there some type of end goal? No, absolutely not. That's not the case. We are gonna get out of this. We will get out of it sooner rather than later. If more and more people get vaccinated and boosted, they will reach a period when enough people will be vaccinated and boosted or infected and recover and hopefully get boosted that the level of protection in the general community will be high enough that although the virus won't be eradicated, we've only eradicated one virus in all of history. Small, small, small, yeah. Yeah, small, but we'll be reading over here. But we've eliminated some virus. We've eliminated polio from this country. We've eliminated measles for the most part. So we may not be able to eliminate it, but we are hoping, and I think we can accomplish this, is to get the level of infection in the community so low that it doesn't disrupt our lives, doesn't disrupt the economy, doesn't prevent us from the normal interaction socially, going to the theater, going to a restaurant, doing things that we don't have to worry about the danger of getting infected and getting seriously ill. We will reach that point, I promise you. And hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. Have you had COVID and have you been vaccinated? I have not had COVID. I've been vaccinated and I've been boosted. Okay, well, the question is to you there, realistically, and this is just coming from us who has a very big following in our community. They are just people who are not going to trust the government and trust what it is that they say is necessary for us to do being as though the history in our community being so negative in regards to trusting the things that the government has told us. So what do you do with those people? Do you dismiss those people? Do you get rid of, like, what is the plan for the people who just refuse? Well, first of all, let me tell you that I certainly respect the community that through the tradition that has been down from grandparent to parent to children about a concern for a time in our history, which is long gone, but nonetheless is a fact of our history of the mistreatment of communities such as the African-American communities by the health enterprise. That's happened. That's something we have to admit. It's not something that we hope ever happens again. However, if you don't trust the government, and I guess I can understand that, but I wish that you would, but if you don't, then look at and learn from trusted representatives in your community, clergy, your physicians, pediatricians, people who've gotten vaccinated, sports heroes. I mean, I've been on with some of the real people that I admire in the community, people like Karim Abul-Jabbar, Steph Curry, and other people who are really heroes, heroes of mine, and I'm sure heroes of yours who are out there encouraging their brothers and sisters to get vaccinated. So it isn't just trusting the government, that's understandable. I'm talking about trusted messages that you care about. You ever heard of Karim Abul-Jabbar? Ha ha ha, you get it. Abul-Jabbar. Abul-Jabbar, you got the Abdul, you got to put that D in there, Paul. It is Abdul, sorry. But yeah, I mean, you know, we talk to a lot of people and you know, it's a lot of people who just, you know, don't understand the ruling. Like it's now to where, you know, it's been dropped down to five days. And I believe the reason for that is because there's so many people who are out in the community who have jobs that are servicing the community that have been out of work and that you need to be able to service those jobs. So for the people who decide not to get vaccinated, is it, are they supposed to be under a different type of circumstance? Like they can lose their jobs, they can, you know, lose their healthcare, lose all of these different things. Do you think that that's fair because they make a decision within themselves to not do something that the majority chooses to do? You know, that's a tough one because you have to think in terms of not only your own liberty and freedom to make up your mind about what you want to do but there are circumstances in life when you have to look at your communal responsibility. And I think that we should look in terms of each of us, you and me, our friends, our neighbors, we only have to not only worry about ourselves and our own individual choice but how does your individual choice impact society? And do we have a communal responsibility that we're in the really tragic and terrible experience of a historic outbreak that we have to think about not only ourselves but our responsibility to end this outbreak? And the responsibility to end the outbreak is really to protect yourself so that you don't become part of the problem of the spread of the virus, you become part of the solution. Dr. Fauci, is there anything laid out for like the healthcare workers who are risking their lives right now going to work every day, working double shifts, 20 hour shifts, being exposed to this virus? They're like really putting their life on the line for this and they're really just getting paid hourly and are there any like stimulus incentives or bonuses or anything like that that could be in place for the healthcare workers? Well, I hope that there are because I agree with you because these are all the people that I work with all the time, my entire professional life because I'm a physician too and I've been on the front line not at this time, I'm in a different position now. So I know what it's like to put it on the line every day to take care of sick individuals. And I agree that they are the heroes and the heroines in our society for what they do. I wish that we could compensate them more. We being society, because most of these people don't work for the federal government. They work for local hospitals and cities and states. So I would hope that we do give them an additional bonus for what they do but I don't have control over that. Okay, I've also read something that it said marijuana helps to reduce the effects of COVID in the body. Is there any truth to that? There is no study that has shown that that's the case. So we got to be careful. These are anecdotal discussions. There's no study that has proven that marijuana will make things better with COVID. Well, do you think we need to get a study started? No, I wouldn't be surprised if there already is a study looking at that as a matter of fact, because there is a thing called long COVID, which when you recover from the acute stage of infection, a substantial proportion of people, it can be anywhere from 10 to 30 or 40% have the persistence over weeks and sometimes months of rather debilitating symptomatology, fatigue, really profound fatigue that interferes with your ability to function, muscle aches, sleep disturbances, psychological issues, inability to concentrate. A lot of different studies are being done to see what is the underlying mechanism of that and is there anything we can do to treat it? So I'm sure there gonna be a lot of clinical trials trying a lot of things. I don't know if marijuana is gonna be one of them. I don't know that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were. My last question for you, Dr. Foucher. I know we gotta wrap it up, but prior to all of this stuff happening, healthcare was a big topic of discussion. A lot of people still didn't have adequate healthcare. And now they, you know, a lot of people are getting COVID without adequate healthcare. Like, is anybody studying the long-term effects of COVID? Like, I know a lot of people are discovering, you know, health things after having COVID that are long-term, like, and they're not gonna be able to get access to healthcare. Well, that's a really great question. And that we've invested $1.12 billion in studying just that. What are the long-term effects, the post-acute COVID syndrome effects? And we're looking at cohorts of tens of thousands of people trying to figure out what the long-term effects are and what we can do about it. So that's a great question, because that's what we are addressing. My last question to you, Dr. Foucher, is unfortunately a lot of the general public don't have the opportunity to sit and talk to you directly. So my question is for those people who may have doubt or may feel, you know, inadequate about the process that we're going through now, what are some of the local programs and local people that are set up that they can talk to and hold responsible for the way that they feel about this brand-new thing that we're all figuring out as we go? Like, where can people go to get answers that, you know, might not be able to talk to you? Facts, they can get facts. They can get facts from regarding this pandemic and this disease. Well, I would think the best place to go, I go there myself to get information, is you just go online to cdc.gov, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is the premier public health institution in the world, has really the facts that you need. They have a search engine. You go to cdc.gov and the upper right is a search bar. Click in the question you have and it directs you to hopefully will be the answer that will help you. Gotcha. Well, we really appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to us and give us the information, you know, directly from you. And we appreciate it, Dr. Felton. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be with you guys. Thank you for having me. No problem. No problem. Thank you. I know when to get up now. What'd you think? I think it was good. Great job, everybody. I'm gonna shit.