Transcript of AE 1118 - Interview: Anti-vaxxers & Covid Conspiracy Theories with Dr. Dan Wilson

G'day, you mob. How's it going? Pete Smissen here, the host of Aussie English, and today I bring you an amazing interview with Dr Dan Wilson. Now Dr Wilson earned his Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology and Molecular Biology from Clarion University and his PhD in Molecular Biology from Carnegie Mellon University in the US, which focussed on how cells build ribosomes, the nano machines in all of our cells that are responsible for making proteins.

He's a passionate science communicator that has shot to fame recently on YouTube with his channel "Debunk the Funk", where he debunks the claims of anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers and the misinformation that they have increasingly spread throughout the pandemic. Always focussing on sharing what the science has to say about these claims.

He's an incredibly patient and respectful interlocutor who's gone head-to-head, with many scientists holding opposing views, so I think you're going to get a lot out of this series.

So, today is part one of a four-part series with Dr Wilson, and we discuss today, anti-vaxxers, COVID conspiracy theories, Dan's background as once being a young conspiracy theorist himself, the good and the bad of how different countries around the world have responded to COVID, including the United States of America, Japan and Australia, and how he ended up so passionate about science communication and why it's so important.

So, without any further ado, guys, slap the bird, I give you Dr Dan Wilson. G'day, guys, how's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English today. I have Dr Dan Wilson on the podcast. Now as a bit of back story I found you on YouTube when I was going down quite a few rabbit holes related to COVID conspiracy theories and vaccines.

Do you want to tell me a bit about yourself, your background in science and how you ended up starting your YouTube channel just to get started?

Yeah, sure. So, my background is in molecular biology. I did my undergraduate degree at Clarion University and then I got my PhD from Carnegie Mellon University being ribosome assembly. So, basically, how cells make their own ribosomes. But while I was doing all that science, I always had this passion for science communication and that came from a spot- A space of me having once been a conspiracy theorist.

So, I once believed in a lot of conspiracy theories and I think science was a really important tool for me to pull myself out of that rabbit hole, so to speak. And getting into my- Starting my scientific career, sorry, my scientific education was a big step in that process as well. So, now looking back and kind of incorporating this passion I have for science communication into that, I do it from an angle of, why are certain claims are wrong?

And I like to teach science that way. And so, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get a job in science communication because jobs and science communication are very rare and don't pay very well...

And you pretty much need a journalist degree, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's really tough. So, you know, I just figured, okay, I'll continue just staying in science. But on the side, you know, what am I going to do? And I thought, should I start a blog? Should I- Should I just get involved in like the community? Like, what can I do? And I did a little of those things, but then I kind of settled on this idea of making a YouTube channel. It was something I always kind of wanted to try.

And again, coming from the space of like having believed in conspiracy theories, YouTube was a huge part of that, both getting into that rabbit hole and even getting out. There were some really great science communicators on YouTube that I really appreciated during that whole process. So, I thought, why not just try it? Let's see where it goes. So, that was- I made the channel in like January or February of 2020 and then COVID hit. So...

What was the initial reason to start the channel then? If this was- It's obviously COVID heavy material now, but if you started it prior to COVID, beginning was it just science, education and communication in general? Or were there sort of specific areas that you were really nailing down on?

So, I was initially really focussed on the anti-vaccine movement, which has been around for decades, obviously, but if you- I mean, I don't recommend it, but if you go back to see my first few videos where my hair is really short and not very good quality because I was figuring this out. They mostly focus on like well-known anti-vaxxers kind of before COVID hit, like Del Bigtree, those kinds of people.

So, it was meant to be like a fun way to tackle kind of like these Alex Jones of the anti-vaccine world kind of people. And I thought, I'll just get like, you know, maybe a few hundred subscribers and I'll interact with the comments regularly and it'll be a fun thing for me to do on the weekend. And then, yeah, a year went by, and it grew, and now I hardly ever read the comments, so.

I think you get inundated, right?

I do. Yeah.

Far out. So, do you mind me asking which conspiracy theories did you kind of get sucked into and perhaps explain the trajectory of getting out? Because it would be so interesting to know the stats on people who end up believing a certain conspiracy theory compared to the number of them that end up letting go of that belief or searching further and moving on from it, right?

Yeah, so I got sucked into the 911 conspiracy theory when I was younger, so this was over 10 years ago now, and it all started with me just watching YouTube videos.

And I just got hooked, you know, I thought that when I was younger, 911 was kind of a scary event and seeing it in this different light, this idea of, oh, it's, you know, it all makes sense and fits into this nice, tidy little package where it's not these- This complicated situation with terrorists overseas.

It's actually our own leaders and we know the truth and we have the right knowledge. That all just really like grabbed me and pulled me in. And I became obsessed, I was commenting on YouTube video comment sections late into the night arguing with people. It gave me like a- It gave me an identity almost.

Yeah.

And so, through- Ironically, through all those- All that commenting on YouTube videos, there were some people who took the time to really like engage with me in these like hundred comment long chains where, you know, they wouldn't let me off the hook. So, instead of saying, oh, this guy is crazy, I'll leave him alone. They talked to me...

And in a way that was constructive and polite, or was it a somewhat of a dumpster fire kind of exchange where your just at each other's throats?

You know, I think it was more on the side of polite. I don't think it was all like, you know, gentle and nice and cordial, but I think it definitely was from a perspective of like, okay, you are making a claim. Now, support it with evidence, where is your evidence?

Yeah.

And it just kept holding my feet to the fire. Like, where is your evidence? Where is your evidence? And eventually there were these little things where I thought that I was making a really, really good point, but I'd have to eventually acknowledge, okay, that wasn't such a great point, but I still believe the whole thing.

But over so many iterations of that, it just chips away until it's like, okay, maybe I need to rethink this whole thing. So, it was over the course of months and then I really started thinking, okay, I want to actually be a biologist, I want to study biology, I want that to be my career.

And learning the science and how science works in the field of biology helped me apply that scientific reasoning to all these conspiracy theories that I had believed. And that all those things kind of helped me over the course of several months pull out of that rabbit hole and think, no, those are all wrong, those are- I don't know what I was thinking. I completely changed my mind. So, that was how that kind of went.

It is interesting how important the scientific process is to understand in order to equip yourself to avoid those kinds of traps. Because this- I've had this argument with a friend that I was chatting to recently and I sent you some of the articles he was sending to me. And a lot of the time he was using these phrases of, well, it makes sense. Well, it seems right, or it feels right.

And I was just like, the whole time being like, look, you can- You- Anything can feel like it makes sense based on the person who's presented those arguments to you without actually ever backing any of it up with science, right? Like, anyone can sell you anything, really.

But you need to dig further and do the work, right, and that's what I think a lot of people have trouble with or are just sort of, I don't want to say lazy, but they just don't have time, right.

But you sort of have to make time, and I feel like that's really important if you really want to hold to certain ideas and be 100% certain of their veracity or their truth, right, you need to have also put in a proportionate amount of time into fact checking them to make sure that they're backed up.

You can't just kind of go through the library of ideas, pick out one and be like, this is my champion, without doing the work, right?

(Distorted) ...Yeah, you're totally right, and I think, you know, doing the work is the part that I say a lot too. It really does take work, especially, you know, in this information age where everybody has so much information at their fingertips. We kind of reached that stage so fast, it's like we don't really know how to behave with it.

You know, there are so many different sources of information, and everything has to get clicks so fast that, you know, it almost encourages this environment where you expect everybody to have done the work already for you, and you see it reported, and then, of course, your preconceived biases come into play as well. But then you don't end up doing the work to, like, see what else is out there, to see if it's actually true.

But do you think too, it's sort of the science communicators responsibility to- We need to get better at communicating science, because the problem is that as a scientist, you know, you'll know exactly the same thing that as you start doing your own research, you'll find papers and research that back up quite often opposite sides of whatever it is that you're looking at, right?

So, you'll have, you know, it seems like there'll be papers that are published that support every possible thing, and you have to, as a scientist, kind of deal with the ambiguity and try and come up with a consensus based on all the research out there.

But I think the average person doesn't really understand that and they think if you do science right, all scientists should find exactly the right answer every single time. And your kind of like, look, science doesn't prove anything. It disproves things and clears away what, you know, what is definitely wrong.

But that's kind of a really difficult thing I've found to communicate to people who seem to not really understand how science works. Do you have a probably a better way of explaining that to the layman?

No, I mean, I totally agree with what you said at the start of that, that scientists can do a better job. What I think a lot of people- Just to give people some insight into how difficult this problem is. You know, scientists are already expected to do a ton of stuff...

Yeah.

...You know, if you're a- If you get a job, a new job as a professor at a university, you know, you have to teach classes, you have to run a lab, you have to hire people to work in that lab, you have to train them, you have to make sure that they know what they're doing, you have to write grants, you have to... (distortion) ...In the lab, you have to do faculty duties. You have all this stuff to...

You have to publish.

You have to publish, yes. And so, to then also expect scientists to do outreach, do communication to take the time to sit down with the journalists and make sure, like, this is what my work means. That's more to ask, and so it's tough, it's really tough, which is why I think a lot of scientists just often don't engage in public discourse. It's changing, like if you see on Twitter, there are now plenty of scientists who tweet about stuff.

But I think it's going to take more than tweeting to solve the science communication problems that we see today, especially during the COVID pandemic, which I think has really exposed a lot of the problems in science communication.

I think you're right. I went through- I did a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a PhD, and I think probably throughout every sing- Like that was about 11-12 years of education, and I think I probably had one subject that was an option to do for science communication in undergrad. And I don't even think- I don't think I did that; I think I had friends doing that.

But I was like, I can't be bothered with that, I just want to fill it up with the more interesting, you know, ecology or biology side of things. I'm not going to spend an entire subject working on how to communicate with people. But it seems like now they're going to have to try and squeeze that in way more, because COVID has kind of opened up this huge wound that's shown just how important good communication is.

And if we don't have it, people can die, right, like it can lead to very extreme things. Anyway, let's get into conspiracy theories with COVID a little bit here. What are some of the most common COVID conspiracy theories that you've come across and debunked?

So, I think the craziest- You asked about the craziest, right? You cut out a little bit.

Sorry, common, most common, can be crazy if you want.

Oh, common, okay. Yeah. So, you know, I was thinking about this and a lot of ideas, a lot of the popular ideas among COVID conspiracy theorists, they become just as common as each other as they kind of go around the echo chamber of conspiracy circles. But I think probably the most common one, it's not really a conspiracy theory, more of a misunderstanding is this idea that COVID is essentially no big deal.

Or maybe the conspiracy part of that is that the deaths are inflated. That's probably one of the more common ones I see where people think that the pandemic is overblown. They think that because they haven't seen people dropping dead in the streets, that this isn't a real pandemic. You know, they think life is a movie and that's how things actually happen.

But yeah, that's the most common, and it's really sad how easy it is to debunk because we have these public free to use databases where most countries in the world will report their total death numbers, for example. So, for any given year, they'll report how many deaths the country recorded.

And if you go into those databases and look at the years, 2020 and 2021 and compare those years to the five-year average, it's- There are huge spikes, massive spikes in excess deaths.

I think- Sorry to pause you there. I think this was one of the claims in that article that I shared with you about COVID effectively taking the place of the flu, right, and that any deaths from COVID were just the equivalent of what would happen from the flu.

But I was like the data that seemed to be used there to back up his claim was so cherry picked from specific places that I was like, you just have to do a simple Google search or even, you know, do some deeper searching than that for excess deaths to work out what is the average over time, and do we have a higher average, as of, you know, the last two years with COVID. And there have been millions of excess deaths, right? Worldwide.

Worldwide, yes. Yes. Worldwide, it's definitely millions. And the whole idea of COVID replacing the flu, you can also go into public databases and look at how many people have died from flu each year, so you can do that for the US. And I did this last year, a long time ago now, and I haven't done it since, because doing it back then made the point.

But back then, when COVID death numbers were smaller, obviously, than they are now, already at that point in the US, COVID had killed more people than the last 10 flu seasons combined. And that's all- That's all- That was all in under a year and a half at that point.

So, yeah, it's just very glaring when you actually look at the data, when you do that work to look into it. How many- How much bigger this is than just the flu or, you know, how big of a deal it actually is.

Do you think there are any conspiracy theories with COVID that are particularly malicious or pernicious, right, that are actually doing a great deal of harm? Because I think it's one thing for you to just think COVID's no real big deal, at least on a personal level, you think that, and you go out and live your life as normal.

You know, you may end up spreading COVID or catching COVID, and maybe, unfortunately, someone you know dies as a result of that. But you're not really leading to tens of thousands of people dying from that idea, I would imagine. But are there particularly pernicious ideas that at a large scale, the global scale do end up doing a significant amount of damage, say, like maybe undermining vaccine usage and that sort of stuff?

Yes, that and I would also argue that, you know, if you have a platform and you're telling your followers that COVID is no big deal, then that is a pernicious global- Something that has global consequences. Because, yeah, you could argue if I'm making bad choices and I spread it to one other person who gets hospitalised or dies. You know, yeah, that's really bad, but you could say, oh, well, it's not tens of thousands of people.

But you- If tens of thousands of people are believing that and not taking precautions in their daily lives, that adds up to a long chain of transmission where a lot of suffering happens...

Yeah.

...And of course, you know, part of those precautions that people should be taking is vaccination. And so, yes, people who spread all sorts of ideas about how vaccines are harmful or not needed, those ideas are causing a lot of harm.

It's not only keeping it- Keeping vaccines away from people who need them in their own country who believe they don't need them, but it's also making the problem drag on in more developed countries that have a surplus of vaccine.

And as the problem drags on in those countries, those countries are going to be less willing to give up their supply to other countries or invest resources into getting vaccines to countries that haven't been able to vaccinate a significant portion of their population yet.

And so, as a result, you have, you know, countries like Israel, where it's only around 70% of the population is vaccinated and their certain figures in the country were talking about giving a fourth shot.

And it's like, what? Are you kidding me? You're thinking about getting a fourth shot when people in several countries around the world haven't gotten their first?

That's sort of an interesting ethical question, right? And an ethical thing to deal with. Because I've just had my booster in Australia.

And so, like, it'll be interesting here to talk a little bit about the US versus Australia because you guys are a constant source of just mind blowing material at times where you're just like, how is- Like, clearly the majority of the US is, you know, sensible, but you still have, it seems, you know, with all due respect, a huge proportion of your population that are- I guess, the politics is a big part of it, but that sort of conspiratorial and everything.

Like in Australia at the moment, I think if I've got the stats here, we're at- The booster doses are now 42% of the entire population, even children who can't be vaccinated yet. And I think we're almost at 79.3% for two days- Two doses out of our entire population. And then when we look at the US, I think you guys- I've got the data here. What are you at? You're at about one dose is like 76%, fully vaccinated is 67% and the boost is 30%.

Do you sort of have a, obviously, a personal insight into why the US is one of these, you know, the most developed country in the world, but seems to lag behind countries like, you know, Australia or Sweden or Great Britain in terms of something like, you know, getting vaccinated?

It's really complicated. I don't think I can summarise the problems in any simple way. It's just- There's so much. I mean, one factor definitely is the political end of it. You know, it has been extremely politicised since early on in the pandemic.

Yeah.

It became an issue of, you know, if you- If you're for masks, then you're a Democrat, and if you're against masks, you're a Republican, that's a weird concept. Like that- It's public health, it shouldn't be political, but that has kind of permeated through a lot of the different issues that have come up in COVID.

And it's been very divisive, very polarising, and it's- That's definitely one aspect of it that has fuelled a lot of this, but it's such a complicated thing.

Yeah, I find it really interesting. It's like you guys, you know, from an outsider's perspective, especially from Australia, where we do have somewhat much more of a nanny state, right? Like, so we can't buy guns like you guys can. You know, the laws on drugs are much tougher, we can't buy cannabis recreationally, all that sort of stuff.

But it's almost like in situations with like a pandemic, the US's level of internalised freedom and independence and how important the individual is almost shoots yourselves in the foot a little bit when the pandemic requires people to act at a population scale and do things that aren't necessarily in their personal interest, first and foremost, but at the population level.

So, throughout this pandemic, it's kind of been really interesting to see not just the US, how all countries have handled it, but definitely like the number of Americans who seem to allow their political views to really come in and say, you know, freedom, I don't want to have to wear a mask. I shouldn't have to do- I shouldn't have to get vaccinated, blah blah blah.

Whereas for me, as an Australian, it was always like, yeah, I mean, I'd be pissed if the government said, you need to do this, and we had loads of lockdowns and it was crazy. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I think the average Australian was thinking, this isn't about me, this is about my neighbours, it's about the population.

I don't want my grandparents to die from this, you know, I don't want people that I don't know dying from this because I decided to go out without a mask, and it ended up infecting other people. So, it has been insane. And like you guys are almost up to, I think, 920,000 deaths from almost 80 million cases. And Australia, we've had almost 3 million cases and not even 5,000 deaths.

And I looked at that and that's like 7.5 times more likely to die of COVID in the US than, or like based on those case numbers. And I remember when Joe Rogan was on his podcast saying that Australia was a failed state, a police state, because of the lockdowns.

And I was just thinking, mate, it's have a look at the numbers, like, how have you not looked at the deaths? I mean, that may be the case, that we've got more draconian laws and, you know, the lockdowns weren't exactly fun. But have a look at the numbers of deaths, like the US has almost lost, what, twice as many people as died in WWII? And your kind of like...

Yeah.

...At what point do you start saying this- It just blows my mind that it gets to that point with such high numbers and there's still such a political and like a libertarian kind of take on things. Anyway, sorry for the rant.

Yeah. No, no. I think you're absolutely right. It is kind of mind blowing, and that is something that I've heard... (Distorted) ...About this, you know, the individualism of the US. It's not great.

You know, to- I always say that to combat a communicable disease, you need community solutions, you need to work as a community and- Yeah, I guess America just isn't great at doing that all the time. We certainly can about some things, but I- We didn't about this. And yeah, that's been frustrating to see.

Which countries from your perspective do you think have done a really good job? Again, you don- You know, don't feel like you need to say Australia or anything like that. But from the countries you've seen handle this, have you noticed any that you're like they have done, you know, about as good as you could do or has everyone kind of done a haphazard job that's, you know, is what it is?

Yeah, I mean, I'm not- I wouldn't call myself an expert on the different policies that each country took but looking at the numbers alone Australia did do a good job of containing the pandemic. I think that lockdowns are not the best tool, like not the best go to tool. They're kind of like a- I see lockdowns as a last resort kind of thing, you know. Like you- Ideally a country should not have to lock down.

Ideally, a country should be prepared, they should be able to enforce other non-pharmaceutical interventions, come up with policies and systems that are sustainable, but still keep cases low. And ideally not get to the point where they need to lock down. So, you know, on paper, Australia did a great job, but could their policies have been better? Probably. Yeah.

And what happens, right, as a result of these lockdown- I had a friend who tragically took her own life during lockdowns. So, you're sort of like, what is all this other stuff that we can't currently see that has come through doing these lockdowns?

We've got fewer deaths from COVID as a result, but I mean, you look at China, where they were going through and like literally welding doors up to make sure people couldn't get out of apartments where there was an outbreak. And your kind of like at some point there's kind of a you've gone too far with the control, right?

Definitely, definitely. Yeah, and all the damage that lockdowns are doing, and the frustrating part is they're not wrong, they're just misinterpreting things, you know, like, yes, lockdowns are not fun for anybody. Yes, they have negative consequences. But what's the alternative? The alternative is you have many times more COVID deaths. And so, you have to weigh that, you know?

It would be nice if a government had the wherewithal, had the foresight to have these policies in place where, you know, they don't have to get to lockdowns and if they do, they have proper support for people who have to go into lockdown. That would be ideal. But... (Distortion) ...Comes to mind as a country where it seemed like...

Sorry, you broke up there, which country was it?

Oh, Japan. So, it seems like most of the Japanese communities understood that mask wearing is important, that social distancing is important, and they were able to keep cases really, really low for a very long time. I believe up until the Delta wave, their cases were extremely low.

Yeah.

And then cases, if you look at Japan's curves, you see cases shoot up and then they shoot back down really fast and they never get extremely high, you know, compared to other countries and considering how densely populated so many of their cities are. So, it's all really actually very impressive how Japanese communities were able to do that. Created a really good example, I think, for people to learn from.

And then their deaths also never got very high, because of course, if they're controlling their cases, cases are relatively low, they'll be able to keep their hospitals from flooding and that's really the goal in these pandemic control measures, is to keep the hospitals from overflowing.

Because when that happens, you get all sorts of secondary effects, you start having more people dying of non-COVID causes than should be dying because, you know, just for simple reasons of like someone has to get a check up on a tumour that they knew they had to see if it's malignant or maybe they had an appointment to get it removed.

They missed that appointment because health care systems just overwhelmed. And then suddenly that tumour progresses to later stages of cancer, and it becomes untreatable. I mean, that- That's happened...

Yeah.

...And it's really sad that it didn't need to because we have the tools to control the pandemic, we have tools to keep cases low and keep hospitals from overflowing. But when we don't do that than many more people than just COVID victims will suffer. So, that's something I think not a lot of COVID deniers realise, and it's important to point out.

It's going to be so interesting to see a post-op done on a global scale of how different countries have reacted and responded to the- To COVID locally in their countries to see which were the most effective, you know, and what were the unforeseen issues that happened as a result of certain things that were implemented, say, like lockdowns or even mask usage.

At the moment, we have kids that have to wear them at school, and you know, it makes sense they're all inside of a classroom and there's heaps of them. But what kind of effects does that have on children who are developing, you know, social skills at various different ages or whatever when you can't see the face or half the face of someone?

So, it is such a weird time to be alive and to see all these things kind of happening and to, yeah, not know what's going to come out of it. Where can people find out more about you and what you're doing if they want to check out your channel and everything like that?

Yeah. So, I'm on YouTube. My YouTube channel is "Debunk the funk with Dr. Wilson". I'm on Twitter @Debunk_the_Funk. My Facebook page is "Doc Wilson debunks". And I'm on Instagram as well, I think that's also "debunk.the.funk". But if you want, get in touch with me, I have my contact information for the accounts that I check regularly in the description of all my videos.