RTE Roundtable Talk #10: Fighting for the Right to Treat (Transcript)
Featuring York Hsiang
See our other Roundtable discussions here.
York’s perspectives on those things that are wrong with the entire medical system (in Canada, but also the West broadly) are among the best I’ve heard.
[00:00:00] Liam Sturgess: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Rounding the Earth: the podcast. Rounding the Earth is a popular newsletter series published on Substack written by applied statistician and educator Mathew Crawford. Topics of discussion range from critical analysis of conventional wisdom. To Bitcoin and everything in between.
[00:00:43] And of course, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, which once again, will be our subject for today. Our goal is a careful examination of important topics and perspectives shaping the world that too few people talk about though, more are talking about them every single day, [00:01:00] subscribe to Rounding the Earth on Substack, Rumble, YouTube, and now Rokfin to join a burgeoning research community and to help us unflatten the Earth.
[00:01:09] My name is Liam Sturgess. I am a musician music producer, and a writer/editor coming at you live from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and I will be your host for today. And please allow me to introduce the author of Rounding the Earth and my co-host Mathew Crawford. How are you, Mathew?
[00:01:27] Mathew Crawford: Hey Liam. I'm well.
[00:01:29] Liam Sturgess: Excellent.
[00:01:31] Mathew Crawford: You know, I'd love our intro, the double cello that that's good. I dig it.
[00:01:38] Liam Sturgess: Rock on. I love it, too. We've gotten some good feedback on it. And it shows you how Fiverr can really be an excellent resource. Yeah. So today we've got a personal friend of mine, someone who I've had the honor of sharing dinner with, and a local hero of mine.
[00:01:52] Someone who's fighting the good fight for not just his profession, but really for people all around Canada and the world. Please [00:02:00] welcome Dr. York Hsiang. How are you York?
[00:02:03] York Hsiang: Very well. Morning, Liam, morning, Mathew morning.
[00:02:07] Liam Sturgess: So do you want to briefly introduce yourself to the people who may not know who you are?
[00:02:13] Of course, we will have some people coming in who have heard you speak before or met you, but for those who haven't, could you give us an introduction?
[00:02:20] York Hsiang: Sure. So my name's York Hsiang. I was a consultant vascular surgeon at the Vancouver General Hospital for 32 years. And I was a professor of vascular surgery until December of last year.
[00:02:35] Liam Sturgess: And what happened December last year?
[00:02:38] York Hsiang: Well as some of you may recall December of last year was when the mandates were imposed by the provincial health officer, that's Dr. Bonnie Henry or her office insisting that all healthcare workers had to be vaccinated in order to work. And if you were not vaccinated a number of healthcare workers who were probably quite senior at [00:03:00] the time, decided just to take early retirement those who were not that senior, face the dilemma of whether they should get vaccinated to work or for whatever reason they did not feel comfortable to take the vaccine.
[00:03:14] They would then choose to become essentially terminated or put on leave without pay for an indefinite period. So in my case when that choice was essentially placed before me, I chose early retirement in both situations.
[00:03:31] Mathew Crawford: So they were willing to sacrifice 32 years of experience vascular surgeon during a year when we're seeing, am I right in saying that we've never seen this many vascular issues?
[00:03:44] York Hsiang: I would say that is correct. We've never seen so many vascular issues related to, let's say a viral infection that was quite novel.
[00:03:53] Liam Sturgess: In your work, before you took your early retirement, did you see, was there an uptick in such cases [00:04:00] prior to the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccinations?
[00:04:04] York Hsiang: No you know, we've always had a background of well, let me explain to you simply. Vascular surgery sounds very exotic but for your listeners, it is careful plumbing, shall we say? So we essentially, we deal with pipes. These are arteries and veins of all different sizes and the pipes instead of containing water, it contains a special fluid called blood.
[00:04:28] And now the interaction with the blood and the lining of the pipes. And so that lining is like a teflon lining. If anything goes wrong with the telfon lining, you will clot. And that's the basis of, of blood.
[00:04:44] Liam Sturgess: Now a, a, a number of our, well, many of our listeners will already have a lot of context and understand some of what's gone on.
[00:04:51] And some of what other doctors, for example, the work of Dr. Charles Hoffe, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, these are individuals who have documented in [00:05:00] in good detail and done a good job of explaining the mechanisms behind what's happening, you know, in the the endothelial wall of the of the blood vessels, if I'm using those words properly.
[00:05:12] So why is it, first of all, that we we're speaking specifically about the COVID-19 vaccines. We're not necessarily discussing vaccines in general, that caused so many healthcare workers to take early retirement. Is that right?
[00:05:24] York Hsiang: There's a similarity here. The COVID infection in itself is produced by this spike protein on the virus itself, the COVID-19 vaccines specifically replicates the spike protein.
[00:05:45] And it does so in your body by having your body's tissues actually replicates more and more of the spike. This spike is the toxin, whether it is from the actual viral infection or the vaccine, [00:06:00] the consequence of it is the same.
[00:06:04] Mathew Crawford: Yeah. Yeah. One, one of the things that I did not understand about SARS-CoV-2 in the beginning was that a lot of the infection is, is happening in the gut.
[00:06:12] Is that right?
[00:06:13] York Hsiang: I don't think so. So typically for a viral infection, this is an aerosolized virus. And so it, it gains entry to your body through the what's not as the aerodigestive tract. And so it comes in through your nose, your mouth and then it seeds itself into the airway passages.
[00:06:32] And so the first portal of entry is there. And the first major organ to be affected would really naturally be your lungs. If it gains entry from there into your circulation, then it can really attack any part of your body.
[00:06:49] Mathew Crawford: But with an injection it's much closer to your circulatory system from the get go.
[00:06:55] York Hsiang: Well, I would say yes. And so with the injection, this is a kind of a, [00:07:00] it's different this jab. Some people call it a vaccine is different from other types of vaccines where vaccines are typically after it's injected into your tissues. It tends to stay there with this COVID injection. There has been some in fact, a considerable amount of evidence that it doesn't stay in that one location and then disseminates throughout your body and concentrates in certain tissues.
[00:07:26] Mathew Crawford: Yeah, I'll toss this in. My wife is has been examining data where with blood drawn and they're finding mRNA two weeks after. And, you know, clearly that's not even just being drawn from the injection site, you know, that that's just blood draw.
[00:07:42] York Hsiang: That's correct. And in fact, there have been other studies which shows that the the spike persists for up to about two months afterwards.
[00:07:49] And it's only two months afterwards, cuz I think that's a length of the study. If you actually took the study out further and looked at three, six months, you know who [00:08:00] knows perhaps it, it will, you'll always be producing spike.
[00:08:04] Liam Sturgess: So the argument here or the issue of contention is not an issue of pro or anti-vaccine I am I right?
[00:08:13] Because that seems to be how people tend to like, to wave the discussion away. And they, it, there seems to be an effort to vilify doctors who either don't take it and therefore put their patients in danger or say anything that may contribute to vaccine hesitancy and it winds up being you're in either this box or this box.
[00:08:35] So, so clear this up for me. Is this a case of broadly speaking being anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine or is this something else?
[00:08:44] York Hsiang: No, it is, it is not. It is I would say a number of people have placed all of those people who have elected not to take this vaccine in particular as anti-vaccine. And that is simply not true.
[00:08:58] I have never, I have not [00:09:00] met a healthcare worker who has refused to take any other type of vaccine. All of us have taken all of our vaccines. It's this one, which we're hesitant to take. The reason is because this is number one. It's like no other vaccine. The technology is not standard vaccine technology, the way it was rolled out so quickly, the studies that were published, these are poorly done studies with only very short term results two months, maybe six months at the most.