NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca, Delta Variant Transmission Claims
NPR science correspondent Joe Palca reports on leaked CDC documents suggesting the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox. Palca presents a theory regarding "local immunity," claiming the Delta variant replicates specifically in the nose and throat of vaccinated individuals, allowing them to transmit the virus despite systemic protection. Critics argue this localized infection theory lacks medical consensus and serves as a narrative shift to explain vaccine breakthrough cases.
joe palca· npr· delta variant· cdc· chickenpox· nasal immunity· vaccines
00:00 Have more kids. Have more kids! Rabbit, rabbit and broadcasting live from the heart of Texas Hill Country FEMA region number six in the morning everybody I'm Adam Curry. And from northern Silicon Valley where the Delta variant exists and thrives I'm John C. DuBois. I guess you got it there huh? It's all over! The Delta... Delta has landed. Delta delta delta. Eh...I'd like to make an observation
00:45 to start the show off. The vaccines do not work and instead of Pfizer saying, and the big pharma saying hey you know they don't work we got to figure this out Instead let's just blame it on the unvaccinated which of course are Trumpers which of course live in the red states Which of course are douchebags and should be eliminated and purged Am I kind of getting close? Well, there's obviously some element of that or we wouldn't be hearing so much about it. The vaccines... well, I don't know if i want to start off with the series of clips but I heard on NPR the Delta Wacky these is wacky
01:35 I wish we had more doctors listen to this show. I want to hear some feedback about the screwiest theory I've ever heard on public broadcasting anything, it's a science writer goes on and off about this You want to play these? Yeah, no. I know I'm teasing the hell out of it! The first clip is the tease actually too and it's Delta Wacky 1 and this words are Delta wackies combined Health officials around the world are adjusting their plans for combating the coronavirus pandemic in light of the more infectious delta variant and concern that even vaccinated people can spread it
02:20 Here in the United States, for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is once again recommending that everyone including those who are vaccinated wear masks indoors in high-risk areas. We wondered why the Delta variant is causing problems that other variants haven't so we asked NPR science correspondent Joe Pelka to help explain that hi Joe. And we should probably also mention and what a great catch you had in the newsletter There's a large chance the term chickenpox may show up in every single report we play today. I know, I caught it early You gotta tell everybody about that because that was...I mean I looked at it and went oh! This was this is a CDC memo that supposedly leaked Did you know that? It was leaked No Yes Of course we don't buy that for what you discovered go ahead say it tell everybody it was great
03:13 Everybody, it's in the newsletter. Everybody who on all the news channels and I'm waiting for the supercut to come out they're all equating the Delta variant with the chickenpox It says can...and the quote is this contagious as the chicken pox! Hold on here's a 20 second example Growing urgency behind President Biden's new vaccination push. Yesterday, he announced that federal workers must be vaccinated or you have to get regular testing and now the Washington Post reports that leaked internal CDC documents suggest that this Delta variant which is a dominant strain in America may be spread as easily as a chicken pox. Yeah leak my ass! So they're all saying that And uh... The point is Is Uh That really wraps it up
04:03 Think of the children. There's another point that wasn't made in the newsletter, I mean the main point was well think of the children because you associate chickenpox with children and children can't get the vaccine Well they're getting ready to... Children are getting vaccinated but they want more They want younger Yeah You wanna get their under 12s The kids, you wanna get babies Get the embryos Just shoot it right through the pregnant mother stomach Might as well. Yeah, all right so they bring this guy on the science guy now I want you to listen to this and tell me what you think that I got These are all short, there are five of them except the number four is a little long but let's go with Delta Wacky Number Two. Hi Kelsey! So what is it about the Delta variant that's causing all of these problems? How are people who are vaccinated supposed to think about this? Well the first thing they should know is that the vaccines work and what they're supposed to do is prevent you from getting extremely sick or winding up in the hospital or dying
04:59 So that's the first thing, keep that in mind. But vaccines give you systemic immunity meaning all the inner organs of your body like the lung and kidney and liver are protected but it doesn't give you local immunity That is in the nose and throat And thats where the virus gets in What? I'm no doctor! But what is this local immunity in your nose all of a sudden Okay He's just getting started Wait do we have a name for this douche Yeah, he has his name. It was in the intro. I also left it in the outro so you can write him down if you want to send him a note. This is great! I'm excited! Okay here we go three... Now turns out the Delta variant is particularly good at replicating IN THE NOSE AND THROAT So it can take hold there even though a vaccinated person will be protected from serious disease. So what you're saying is that current vaccines are not really designed to prevent the coronavirus from infecting the nose and throat?
05:57 Not specifically, but I talked with Frances Lund who's chair of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Birmingham in Alabama about that and she says if you have a really...I'm sorry it's the University of Alabama in Birmingham. And she says if you have a really strong immune response after getting vaccinated then you might be protected in both the lungs and the upper airway such as the nose and throat from infection on the other hand If your vaccine response is not super duper or it's starting to wane a little bit and you have a virus that can replicate really fast, then yeah you will end up with some limited period of time where that virus is replicating even in the vaccinated people. Wait what happened there? This guy's talking and then they go to eclipse so quick
06:44 Or was that someone else in the room? I didn't understand. No, no That's the doctor from the University of Alabama and Birmingham now Okay She doesn't confirm his crackpot theory at all that you can have a localized version Of the disease in your throat Doesn't go anywhere else just in my nose or just in your nose which makes no sense whatsoever She just talks about that people some people can get to a very you know mild version if they didn't get ever and she's also Reiterating the idea that if you get sick as a dog from the vaccine, that means it's working which has been a common scene My favorite. Yeah, if you get sick, okay team of this show. Yeah Oh, she almost died for the shot. I mean he's working. Yes
07:35 I've never noticed this with any other vaccine i've ever gotten. I mean, I had yellow fever shots. I had the Prevenar recently. I never had near-death experience from the shot that means it's working? Oh! It's working Hey, I'm sick as a dog doc. I just got this shot all it means is working and come on So now we have this localized you just get up you get COVID in one spot of your body and it doesn't do it This is crazy Crazy yeah, so let's go to clip but I think we're under four for our four I believe three no I think with three
08:13 Yeah, sorry about that three it is now. It turns out the Delta variant is particularly good at replicating in the nose and we just played this we just played this okay I don't remember best funny what happened to two? Okay, well, please we played the teaser and then two was the first okay right right okay Let's go to four So if you were to take a nasal swab from that person, and yes they'd be infected but the key is that for someone who is vaccinated the virus might not be able to main its foothold in someone's nose. If you'll forgive me. Wow! In other words they might be infectious for a day or two
08:50 Somebody who's not vaccinated, it'll be a week or more that they could be transmitting the virus. So what determines whether someone who does have the virus in their nose will transmit it to other people? Do we know? Well, not specifically but it's this idea that every time you cough or sneeze or even if your breathing heavily and you happen to be standing near someone the more viruses there is in the nose. The more likely these sneezes and coughs will contain virus particles that could infect someone And what does this mean about those breakthrough infections among vaccinated people we're hearing so much about right now? So much! Well, the Delta variant may be slightly slightly more likely cause a breakthrough infection That's not certain
09:31 Since it's spreading now and since it's the main virus out there, if you're going to have any kind of breakthrough infection, it's going to be with the Delta variant. So since we know all of this is anybody working on a vaccine that would block the virus from infecting those cells in the nose and throat in the first place? Yes, these are vaccines that are administered by as a nasal spray and they have something like that for the flu vaccine. Francis Lunn says there are seven different COVID-19 vaccines being studied in human subjects and it's early days for those studies and it's not clear whether any of them work because creating nasal vaccines against the coronavirus is something researchers are just learning to do This...it feels like
10:13 The advertiser called up and said, okay guys we got poison Tylenol. You gotta run some interference while we figure it out It sounds a little like that and you can kind of spot it by the way he's doing this reporting He's talking about they bring him Nate and its like a script she is reading from the script he has got the same script They bring up the nasal vaccines and then he just jumps to, oh we're working on seven different kinds of new other vaccines. Oh that's Pfizer then it's got to be a Pfizer shill This guy? Yeah. No, he's a regular guy. He's their science guy. Oh yeah okay sure I'm not maybe...I don't think so. Well he'll be all in. The whole company is all in and that's the deal you just do what you're told but this guy talks about the nasal vaccine because that's the way to get rid of this localized version of COVID
11:12 And then he jumps to the seven vaccines he's talking about. He never says that even one of them is a nasal vaccine, but this is an example of that conflation idea where you kind of talk about two things at the same time and hopefully people will ignore the fact that what you're saying is nonsense because you're talking about one thing and then talking about another thing that's not really confirming anything you're talking about originally. I would like to play the end of that again if you can't, if you can find that spot. Yeah, of course. new problem I think around here. In the first place, yes these are vaccines that are administered by as a nasal spray and they have something like that for the flu vaccine Francis Lunn says there are seven different COVID-19 vaccines being studied in human subjects and it's early days for those studies and it's not clear whether any of them work because creating nasal vaccines against the coronavirus virus is something researchers are just learning to do
12:08 So at no point does he say any of those seven vaccines are nasal vaccines. No, but he implies that all seven of them are! Yeah... so this is the kind of really bad thing You know what it also could be? I know a version of this type of journalist It's the music journalist and what happens is The music journalists gets invited to come into the studio when they're laying in the last tracks down or doing the mixing And you're so involved in that process, in that case the creative process. So I'm sure a science journalist would be very enamored with the incredible space age moonshot of these? Science journalists, photography journalists are given these junkets by Kodak in the day old days, all real estate journalists which are considered
13:00 What I do is promote real estate. Well, what I like most about you is when you went on a junket You would take the junket and then write a shitty review. I had this theory Which which I was great journalist as they said yes It's it's the conflict of interest that go on these junkets But not if your honest Go on to junk it and tell it like it is even if it's a very negative thing These people are not your friends. You'll find that out by the way Like I found out after I'm out in business Yeah, none of these people are your friends you were deplatformed before it was the en vogue man And you can you can blast the hell out of the junket to you know The people putting on the junket because to be honest about it once you go on the junket You're not going on it again. If you write a good review, you've done your job They're not inviting you back if you write a bad review they're not inviting you back. They're not inviting you back So just just you know
13:57 If it's worth a blast or you want to write something critical, don't worry about it. And if everyone took that advice and these junkets would be... they'd be structured a little differently I mean there are some junkets are just poorly structured It's long story but beside the point let's get through this Delta variant 5, this maniac in this end of eclipse So seven different vaccine candidates being studied. That's a lot, but that you like you said can take awhile What can people do if they don't want to transmit the virus to others while they're waiting? Well they could lock themselves in a closet and not interact with anybody but that's probably
14:35 a bad plan. A much better plan is to wear a mask, that's what health officials have been saying. A lot of the time you don't know when you're sick that's the devious thing about this virus but you can still be infectious so a mask is the safest thing to do when you're in a place where you could possibly infect other people. That was NPR science correspondent Joe Palca. Joe thanks for joining us. So just to reiterate what you started this show off with Vaccines don't work? I think these clips prove it. Yeah! As much as they're trying not to prove it, but the idea that you're gonna get COVID in your nose and throat but nowhere else than your body and you're going to transmit it is crazy talk. I could be wrong...I'm not a doctor. No, no, no. But have you ever heard of such a thing? No. Of course not. Oh this guy yeah he's got
