Dr. Henry Miller - Is the measles outbreak becoming a bigger threat?

Nearly 2,000 measles cases have now been reported nationwide, and most involve people who were not vaccinated. Are health officials facing a growing public health challenge?

Dr. Henry Miller is a physician, molecular biologist, and the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology. He joins the show to discuss the current measles outbreak, the risks associated with infection, vaccination trends, and what the latest data reveals about the spread of the disease.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey, welcome back to the Larren Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails in a moment. You know almost 2,000 Americans have now been infected in the measles outbreak, the most recent one, and 92% of those people were unvaccinated. Are we watching a preventable crisis become a pandemic? Dr. Henry Miller joins me now, a medical doctor and molecular biologist. He is the Glenn Swagger Distinguished Scholar at the Science Literacy Project. Dr. Miller, welcome back. Good to be with you, Laura. How bad and by the way, I I know because I checked my doctor, a young lady, uh had me check years ago, you know, about about eight or ten years ago, uh my measles shot from a long, long time ago is still active and I'm still immune. But uh why is this happening now, and what do we need to do to bring it to a halt? And is there a giant concern that this is going to get much bigger than it already is?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Well, there's significant concern. And the reason is that uh, as you know very well, there's been a lot of anti-vaccine propaganda uh, unfortunately, by a lot of uh conservative right-wing uh influencers. Uh and as a result, um we've gotten below the threshold of uh vaccination that's necessary to uh retain what's called herd immunity. That is, enough people uh immune because of previous infection or vaccination that um the the virus can't find any new susceptible targets. So measles is so infectious that we need to have um about 95% of the uh populace immune.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

And we're about 92 right now, so we're just below that.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

92. And in some places uh it's it's much lower than that, and those are the high measles states. Now the the top five states, interestingly, are South Carolina, Utah, Texas, Florida, and Arizona. And you can you know what they have in common. They're red states.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Uh and uh it's not a good it's not a good look, and it's not a good public health situation.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Okay, but b by the way, Doctor, I I know you put a lot of this on conservatives. I'll I'll take ownership of that. I I was anti-the COVID shot, and I still am. Uh and and but that doesn't mean I'm necessarily anti-immunization nor anti-vaccination. But I'm gonna tell you something. I think the medical community uh has a lot of the responsibility because of things we were told that turned out not to be true, and the medical community knew they weren't it wasn't true when they told us that, and they took the risk of saying we can lie to the people now because we, you know, we need we feel the need to lie to people, whether it's about the wet market in Wuhan or anything else, and and they're now bearing the consequence of that today, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

It there there's been very little that was misrepresented, Lars, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

I honestly disagree with you, Doc, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I know you do. Uh when there was a uh very early on, when there was a shortage of protective equipment, uh Fauci uh said that the uh the cheaper cloth masks were sufficient, and that was wrong. That was incorrect. And uh he did it, I think, out of good intentions because there wasn't enough protective equipment to go around for the healthcare professionals in doctors' offices and hospitals. Uh the the uh the Wuhan uh business, the origin of the uh COVID virus is still up for grabs. It's not it's not definitively.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

But his own staff had said, we believe that you know one of the most likely sources is the Wuhan lab. And and he went in and engineered his way around that so that his own team turned out something that they didn't originally believe. Uh and and he got them to back to say, no, it's probably not the lab. It's it's got to be some other source. And that kind of deception has consequences later on, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Well, it it would if uh it were known that he was lying, if he knew that he was lying and and the his the other public officials did, but it is still not proven. So uh uh and the uh the things that many people objected to, uh the mandates for vaccines and the uh closing of schools and so on, were in my opinion uh very justified uh and prevented uh in in this country thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths. Well uh as a result of the.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

When you compare states like Florida and California, similar populations, except Florida is a lot older and presumably much more at risk than California's, which is a younger population. And yet when you look at the total lockdown of California and the not very locked down Florida, and and then you got similar outcomes at the end of it, you say, well, hold on, if if California had gone the route of Florida without all the lockdowns, without all the other damage that came about as a result of that, wouldn't that have been a a better a better way to go?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Well, but the the you know the populations uh are very different. Uh the in Florida, um fewer people work, uh many of them were able to to stay at home, have uh food delivered, and so on. Uh and uh so it they're they're not really directly comparable. Uh and also they were more conscientious about initial COVID shots and getting boosters. So it's it's very hard to to compare. Um what we what we're seeing though is you know the reality is where we are today. And um we're we're seeing uh as many we have almost as many cases already uh of measles as we did last year for the for the entire year.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Uh and uh it's it's a it's a bad disease for a number of reasons. Uh it's preferentially infecting kids, uh, and it induces uh quite often what's called immune amnesia, which is uh a destruction of uh both parts of the immune system, uh the part that produces antibodies and the part that produces uh lymphocytes that respond to infections. And so uh what what you have is uh the ability of uh organisms, viruses, and bacteria that people have previously established immunity to disappears. The immunity disappears. And so they're susceptible uh to all sorts of things, uh uh skin infections, respiratory infections, GI infections that normally they would have been able to fight off.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

And that's the concern as well. Dr. Henry Miller from the Science Literacy Project. Dr. Miller, I appreciate your time and thanks very much tonight. Hey, by the way, Father's Day is coming up, and if you don't know what to get your dad, I've got the perfect answer. Skip the random last-minute gift and get dad something he'll actually use. The Chef IQ SenseSmart thermometer. I've got one and I absolutely love it. Actually, I've got three of them. This thing connects to your phone. It tells you exactly when your food is done. No guessing, no cutting into a steak to see if it's ready. It tracks your cooking in real time and then walks you through every step. It tells you when to flip, when to pull, when to rest it, and when to serve it. It turns I think it's done into I know it's perfect. That's why dads like me absolutely love it. Whether you're cooking steaks, burgers, chicken, fish, or just about anything else, Chef IQ Sends delivers restaurant quality results right at home. It works on the grill, in the oven, on the smoker, whatever you happen to be cooking. And best of all, you don't have to babysit your food. You watch the game, spend time with your family, and let your phone let you know when everything is ready. It's like having a personal cooking coach right in your pocket. And right now during the Father's Day sale, save 40% off site wide when you use the promo code Lars. Go to chefyq.com and use promo code Lars for 40% off site wide. That's chef IQ.com promo code Lars.