ZDoggMD discusses and debunks controversial statements made by Dan Stock, MD, to Indiana's Mt. Vernon School Board that went viral.
Following is a rough transcript (note that errors are possible).
ZDoggMD: All right guys, I'm making a video I just don't even wanna make, but so many people have sent me this video about this Mt. Vernon School Board meeting, and a doctor who goes up there and bravely tells them what's true about vaccines and CDC and starting school and all that. All right, let's just go through some of the claims and who this guy is quickly, so that we can be done with this and no one needs to send me this video again.
All right, this guy, Dr. Dan Stock, he's a family medicine doc, Indianapolis, Indiana, somewhere. Runs a concierge/direct primary care practice, which I think is awesome. Lifestyle medicine [Note from ZDogg: I meant to say "functional medicine" not "lifestyle medicine," they are not the same. Apologies!], which can be really awesome, but also is a space full of kind of weird, unproven stuff and quackery, but it can also be awesome, right? So this is kinda where this guy's coming from. Goes to the school board meeting and basically tells them what's up. And let's just go through his claims and look at each one.
All right, so viral particles. These viral particles for the SARS-CoV-2 are so small they go through all masks. Well, that's just simply not quite right, cause there is a mask called an N95 that does block the vast majority of viral particles. So that ... I guess he's talking about masks and kids. I'm also quite ambivalent about masks and kids, so I get it, but let's not start with, like, a blatant untruth, that the particles go through the masks. All right. The masks probably lower overall viral inoculum. They probably prevent a kid from blowing snot on another kid, but we don't really know how they work in kids because kids are weird, right?
When the thing gets soaked with mucus all day, it's full of boogers, we don't know how effective it is in practice, and the data have not been that compelling to me, but whatever. It's probably not a high-risk intervention unless you worry about language development and socialization and things like that, and also just stigmatizing children and making them feel like they're a pestilence. But okay, fine. That's his first claim.
The second one is no one can make this virus go away because it has animal reservoirs, it's a respiratory virus, it's not so pathogenic that it kills its host right away. I agree with that. You are going to be living with SARS-CoV-2 forever. Anybody who thinks we can eradicate this virus, Bret Weinstein, who says we can drive it to extinction, you can't. You can't. It's gonna be with us forever, but it's gonna evolve into a less pathogenic form, meaning probably like a common cold, which is also a lot of coronaviruses, right? So this is probably the natural course of it. You're not gonna stamp it out. And anybody who thinks you can is not right. So I agree with him there.
So then he says vaccination changes none of this basically, and he says, it's clear that he's against coronavirus vaccination. And this is where I really take issue with him because he's just wrong. And there's a lot of misinformation here. So he says, "Why are we having a breakout outbreak of coronavirus in the middle of the summer? When it's a respiratory virus, it shouldn't be doing that." And then he says, "It's because of the vaccinations." Let's unpack all of this.
He is citing something called antibody-mediated enhancement, or antibody-dependent viral enhancement, which I've done shows on. What it means is, and we've seen it with attempts at an RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, vaccine back in the day where what you do is you end up making antibodies that are triggered by the vaccine to parts of the virus that don't neutralize the virus, but instead, cause the immune system to take up the virus into its own cells, kind of like a Trojan horse thing without destroying or inactivating the virus, and that actually makes the infection worse, hence the antibody-dependent enhancement of infection. And we've seen it with RSV.
Now he goes on to say, "Well, you know, with the SARS-CoV-2 in animal trials, that's what we saw!" It's like, nope, nope we didn't. Next, the point with antibody-dependent enhancement is that vaccinated people would then get more sick than unvaccinated people. They would have enhanced disease. Well, what we see in this outbreak in the summer is the opposite. It is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. So unvaccinated people are the ones filling up hospitals, right? Vaccinated, a very tiny proportion of that.
And he says, "Well, this shouldn't be happening in the summer." Except it did last summer too, particularly in the warmer Southern states and Southwestern states where the summer is like the winter in that you go indoors because of air conditioning, because it's so hot outside. And that promotes the spread of the virus. So it happened last year before vaccinations. So that whole argument is nonsense.
There's no evidence of antibody-dependent enhancement with our current vaccines. In fact, the opposite. There is less disease, less severe disease, less symptomatic disease, and actually probably less infection as well, which we should talk about. So this is just complete nonsense.
Then he says, "Vaccines never prevent infection ever," which is a pretty strong phrase, but you don't get symptomatic. So you may not get symptomatic. So they'll prevent severe disease. Yeah, that's what you want. So I agree with him there, yeah.
Oh, you want to prevent symptomatic and severe disease. Except with these vaccines, it's clear that you actually have about ... at least in Santa Clara data, about a four-fold reduction in test positivity. So it seems to actually prevent infection. Okay? So that's a big deal! Especially when he's saying the opposite.
And then he says, "You're gonna be chasing yourself, your tail if you expect your infection positivity testing to be zero in schools." I agree. Don't even test them. That's what I think. These kids are generally low-risk. Generally, not always, but generally low-risk. Why would you be testing them every week or whatever certain policy, crazy policies are?
And then mandating vaccinations for kids, assuming they could even be vaccinated. If they're 12 and below, they can't be yet, also seems unnecessary to me. So in that sense, I agree with him, absolutely.
And I like the fact that he stands up in front of the board and he's like, "I will testify for you." I mean, I like his passion. I like this guy's passion. He's just wrong about some things here.
So this is where the twist happens. Okay. So he says, "Why would we even want to vaccinate when we have treatments for SARS-CoV-2?" This is where it gets ugly. Ivermectin, vitamin D, zinc, okay. Then he goes on to say, "I've treated 15, one-five, patients. And guess what? None of them got hospitalized cause I did this stuff for them." Come on, dude. Come on, really? That's your trial? An uncontrolled trial of 15 people, all of whom were probably gonna get better anyways, who you gave placebo to? Come on, dude. So ivermectin trials are still ongoing. I've done videos on this. We're waiting on randomized trials on ivermectin. I'm not holding my breath for reasons I've mentioned with Dr. Prasad on the show.
So already he's got a bias against the vaccines, right? With all this misinformation he's already spread. And then he says, people with prior infection get no benefit from vaccines. All right. So this is a gray area. I agree if you've been infected before, you're probably immune against severe disease, right? But there is data that says that if you get another dose, your neutralizing antibodies are higher, and that may be correlated with protection against infection and severe disease. So it's still a little gray area. Doesn't mean you should go run out and get vaccinated if you've already had the disease. I agree with him on that. But I don't think we can speak in absolutes about this.
And then he goes on to say the school policies and CDC is totally counterfactual, don't listen to them. If you get sued, I'll be your expert witness, etc. All right. So here's how we can think about everything he said. He's wrong about the vaccines. He's right that we should question schools' policies if it comes to preventing our children from being in person in class for school that we are paying for, with a teacher, class that should be protected with vaccines and masks, and let the kids go back to school. I agree with him on that. He's absolutely right. Right? And I admire the fact that he would stand up and do that.
But everything he's saying about vaccines is wrong. The other stuff he talks about, the viral dynamics, is just crazy talk. But that's my take on it. All right? So you guys wanted to know. Please don't send me this video again. Please don't ask me to comment on it, and please don't go watching school board videos that aren't in your own district because it just doesn't matter. Crazy. All right, guys, I love you. We out. Show the video, whatever, I don't care.
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