He had an academic guest on his podcast that was stating that the spike protein in covid vaccines causes damage the same way that the spike protein in the virus itself causes damage, when the vaccine creators specifically took measures to make the vaccine's version of the spike protein safer and less damaging to cells.
In general there's a fine line to walk with being cautious around vaccines vs 100% assuming they are safe, but he got it wrong with the guest he had on talking about cytotoxic spike proteins in the vaccine. At least that seems to be the overall scientific consensus that I've seen (but who knows! it's a rapidly evolving topic!).
Relevant:
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“The sound bite ‘SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is toxic’ is not technically wrong—also not news at per se—but that has nothing to do with overall established safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines,” Lee said.
That’s in part because, according to Machamer, the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2 is different than the spike protein created after the administration of the mRNA vaccines.
“The vaccine, at least the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, they supply the information to make spike, but it’s not exactly the spike that’s in the virus,” she said.
“There are changes that were made on purpose that would prevent the spike protein from being able to undergo binding to the receptor and fusion,” Machamer explained. “And so, all this business about toxicity that has been shown for the real spike protein, the one that doesn't have that block, is totally irrelevant for the vaccine.”
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bret and his brother eric have made a name for themselves as contrarians. right or wrong they will take a hot take on whatever hot topic is available and do the podcast and tweet tour with it, all the while screaming to their millions of listeners how they are being silenced.
Also, he and his brother have (IMHO) quite obvious inferiority complexes about their academic careers. So much of what they both say boils down to how the academic system doesn't respect their intelligence, and implied is that they deserve it.
I mean, who doesn't feel that way about their field? But to speak at length on podcasts about it, which are only popular due to Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, is pretty exhausting to me.
I listened to a couple of Bret’s own podcasts after he was a guest on Lex’s show. I think it’s important to be able to discuss this stuff (origins of the virus, emerging therapeutics, potential risks or adverse effects of vaccines) freely without being censored by YouTube. It shouldn’t be censored and some of these ideas may turn out to be correct. In the meanwhile, I’ll happily take an mRNA vaccine based on my own personal/public health risk analysis.
That said, I take everything he and his brother Eric say with a large pinch of salt - they are clearly both very intelligent but I don’t like this cult leader like absolute certainty of their own ideas and the audience (and revenue) building based on controversy and semi-conspiracy. I think it’s essential to have many voices though so I welcome what they are bringing in to the mix, but personally for me it gets tiring after a couple of podcasts.
