- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Here when you need us most.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Working for a more a healthier, more equitable New Jersey.

New Jersey Children’s Foundation.

Giving all Newark students the opportunity to achieve.

Newark Board of Education.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

Lighting the way to a clean energy future.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

And by The Adler Aphasia Center.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

And by ROI-NJ.

Informing and connecting businesses in New Jersey.

[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We welcome back our good friend and expert on public health for the entire program, Dr. Perry Halkitis.

He's the Dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health.

Good to see you, Dr. Halkitis.

- Hey, Steve.

How are you doing today?

- Good.

We are taping on the 16th of July.

The date will come up to put things in context.

But you also have a book coming out.

When?

- The end of 2024, beginning of 2025, a book called "People & Public Health: "How Americans Created the HIV, COVID-19, "and Other Modern-day Pandemics."

- All right.

So let's do this.

Yeah.

- I could just ask you about COVID and lessons of and I will but I wanna put in context.

It's one of the advantages of having you for the entire half-hour.

You were very engaged, very involved in the HIV-AIDS issue.

Put that in context, your experience with that horrific situation, that public health crisis.

And then we'll transition to COVID.

Talk to us about AIDS.

- Yeah, so I love that question because there are certainly similarities between the two epidemics, right?

We saw in the 1980s this virus was taking control and ruining people's lives.

And we saw the COVID pandemic also do very similar things.

Now, here's the thing.

I feel like what's similar about both HIV and COVID-19 is the way people reacted, often in irrational ways, sometimes in spiteful ways, and not always making the best decisions for their lives, right?

And so what the book's really about, it's about thinking about how human beings interact with situations that are presented to them that are about their health.

And they don't always make the right decisions, right?

We all know we shouldn't be smoking, we shouldn't be drinking nonstop, that we shouldn't be eating fatty foods.

But people do those things.

And what the book argues about is how we have to focus on what are those human characteristics that make people not wear masks, make people continue to engage in unprotected sex, make people eat, smoke cigarettes.

And like my argument in the book is that we have to focus on the person.

Now, let me get back to your original question, which is lots of similarities, lots of, you know, destruction that took place.

Here's the difference.

The difference is 43 years into the HIV epidemic, we don't have a vaccine.

One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we had a vaccine, right?

And so we have right now, in our country, the means to be able to prevent every single infection from COVID-19 moving forward and any single death from COVID-19 moving forward.

In HIV, we have medications that keep people alive but people are still dying.

And I think one of the things that people don't realize, Steve, is that we still have 30 to 40,000 new HIV infections in this country every year.

We don't talk about that.

We don't talk about the fact that people are not accessing meds, that they're dying still.

But it sort of just exists in the background as if it went away.

- Let's do this.

So I was in getting ready for the program and you were kind enough to have an offline conversation with me that was so helpful in addition to talking to our producers but I wanna share this with you.

And I don't know if it's connected to this so-called Libertarian concept of the Great Barrington Declaration, which we'll talk about, which came out in October of 2020, I think.

But let me just say this.

I have a fair number of friends in my circle of friends who have argued from day one, call it March 13th, 2020, "I don't trust the government.

"This mask thing is BS.

"Steve, stop wearing a mask."

This was literally into the spring and summer.

And it's gone on for four-plus years, almost five years now.

"Steve, stop with the mask."

And my wife had COVID recently and we stayed away from each other.

And some of our friends said, "So why can't she come out to dinner?"

I said, "No, no, she can't because we don't want."

"Oh, stop.

That COVID thing is overblown."

Not to mention a significant number of these folks, trust me there's a question here, refuse to take the vaccine and argue that those who did, those of us, were stupid for doing it and putting poison in our body.

Here's the question.

The Great Barrington Declaration, published in October, 2020, three scientists from Harvard, Oxford, Stanford basically said, "Look, "stop with this COVID thing.

"Let everybody get it.

There'll be herd immunity.

"The herd immunity is really "what we are gonna ultimately achieve.

"And if you get sick, you're not gonna die.

"It's not a big deal."

- Yeah, well, I know.

- There's a question there somewhere.

- Well, look, there's absolutely a question there.

You know.

- Please talk.

- There's countries, you know, you know, in the Nordic region that followed the same sort of idea, that you just let people get sick and eventually it works itself through the system.

Here's my response to that.

My response to that is let's think about the flu, right?

And we think about all the destruction the flu has created.

Okay, so we think about that for the last 100 years.

The fact of the matter is that every year in this country, there is 20 or 25,000 people who die of the flu.

And basically what I think the folks from the Great Barrington, you know, sort of orientation are saying to us is like 20 or 25,000 people are expendable each year.

It doesn't really matter.

Well, let's just let this thing continue to spread the way it is.

It's very different from a public health approach, which wants to save every single life, right?

And so to me, it's about putting humanity before the disease.

The Barrington people are focusing on the virus.

The Halkitis people are focusing on the people and the humanity and how we keep every single person alive, especially those who are most vulnerable and who would die from the disease.

You know, our parents, our grandparents, and what have you, we don't want those people to like lose their lives because we're being irresponsible.

That's the difference.

Are we thinking about this biomedically, which is one way to think about it, which is yeah, I guess what they're saying in Barrington is in some ways there's some truth to that or are we saying it from a biopsychosocial perspective, which understands that people who become sick in this country are not those people like me and you who have access and who have, you know, care that we need and get every vaccination and have good food but the people who are the most vulnerable, who are gonna get sick and who are going to die because they don't have the same means.

- Stay on this, and by the way, I told Perry I was reading Dr. Fauci's book and we're working on booking Dr Fauci.

And the reason I'm mentioning it is because there's a lot in this book that will be in Perry's book but from Perry Halkitis's perspective.

And so I'm gonna follow up with this.

A lot of the folks I'm talking about, friends of mine and others, millions of Americans, who the heck is Perry Halkitis?

Who is Dr. Fauci?

Who are any of these people, particularly in the government, much less academia where you are, Perry, to tell us how to live our lives?

Stay out of my life.

I will make the decisions about my own health, the health of my family.

And you don't tell me about the mask, about the vaccine, about six feet.

And plus, by the way, they changed all that after we got new information.

Six feet, we weren't sure whether that mattered, whether the mask was really help.

Stay out of my business, Perry Halkitis.

Not me saying that.

Millions of people, many watching right now, are thinking that you say what to them?

- Also, stay out of my, women's bodies, by the way.

We should add that to that but I don't know if they're saying that necessarily.

- They're not saying that to the Supreme Court.

- They're not saying that.

They're not saying that to the Supreme Court.

Look, I mean, the bottom line is this.

If you look and if you understand and if people understand anything about the way governments are formed and about social compacts, that we all make decisions to be part of a country, be part of a city, part of a state, part of a country.

Part of doing that bestows upon us benefits.

Those benefits include protections, services and what have you.

Part of that means that you give up certain amounts of your rights to be able to do that.

And what I'm saying is that it's our responsibility in a civil society not to just take care of ourselves but to take care of the people who are around us.

So if you wanna be part of this country, if you wanna be part of New Jersey, if you wanna be part of Newark, you have to follow some rules that are not just about you.

Otherwise, we have complete and utter chaos.

That's all.

- But what about the lack of-- - Don't listen to me-- Yeah, go ahead.

- Go ahead, I'm sorry.

All right.

Go ahead, finish your point.

I'm sorry.

- I'm saying don't listen to me as a scientist, right?

Yeah, I mean, I can argue the science with you.

But people can argue the science the other way too.

Listen to me as a human being that's saying to you you have a responsibility to care for the people around you instead of making them say, "Don't make me sick.

"You have a right not to wear a mask.

"I have a right not to get sick "because you don't wear a mask."

- I have a right to smoke, not that I do.

I have a right to smoke but the laws, the rules say I don't have a right except in certain casinos to blow smoke in your face.

Is that the same principle?

- I think it is the same principle because what we're doing is protecting the larger population from the behavior of a smaller set of the population, right?

And so it's interesting, Steve, because I'm gonna tie it back to AIDS, right, Because I think there's a lot here.

You know, in the '80s people were like, "Don't tell us not to wear condoms every time.

"Like, who are you to tell us we have to wear "a condom every single time?"

And people didn't listen, right?

And the epidemic spread.

And had we been, you know, responsible in realizing we should wear condoms, less people would've gotten sick.

So it's not again just about what's good for me but what's good for the community at large.

- From your perspective, let's talk about some of the lessons from COVID.

- Yeah.

- And you mentioned this in your writing.

And I'm sure it's gonna be in Perry's book, coming out when again, Perry?

- End of '24, beginning of '25.

- You have made it clear that you acknowledge that there were real losses in decisions that were made by government and at every level in school systems.

Let's talk about the mental health of our children, the social isolation of our children who were not in school for a very long time.

If we're talking about lessons, Perry, would you argue that you know what, mistake?

We should have allowed our kids to be in school much sooner with certain guidelines?

It took too long.

- So I think that the evidence around isolation is mixed at this point, right?

And maybe we should have opened up the schools a little bit sooner.

I think that what was very clear from every teacher that I speak with right now is that those children, especially the younger children, two years are lost, right?

So your third grader who was there in third grade when they started COVID is still a third grader in some ways just 'cause of those years.

So yes, I do believe that there might have been a more rapid response.

I think we were in some ways overly cautious in our response.

Nonetheless, right, you know, people, you know.

And we should've given people a choice about what they wanted to do with their kids.

So you bring up mental health and I would say in response to that, "The mental health, "the physical health, the social health, "they all go together, right?"

So what we did is we made the physical health the most important thing, right, which was the virus and containing the virus, without any acknowledgement of what's happening to the social and emotional health.

- But how could a kid have gone to school?

How could a parent have said, "I wanna send my kid "to school," if there was no school?

- Well, that's right.

And so what I think we should've happened is more engagement with families and with communities, with parents about what they were seeing going on in their homes because certainly the school districts weren't seeing it.

But we were seeing it.

Those of us who know people who have kids were seeing it.

You saw that going on all the time.

And what I think about it's not, again, not like the upper middle class, upper class kids who had the computers.

How about those kids, those kids who are living in like a basement apartment with their families with no internet?

Like, what happened to those kids?

We don't even talk about the devastation in terms of emotional health and intellectual health.

Those kids, you know, we're only beginning to understand how much damage has been done to them.

But dialogue.

You know what you're talking about, Steve?

Dialogue.

There was a little.

When I get upset with people in public health for pointing fingers, it's because they don't engage in dialogue and they don't talk to the people.

And here's a moment.

And I'll stop after I say this.

We've got this moment right now, right, where we could be out there talking to people, like all the public health people who showed up knocking at your door saying, "Steve, "take this vaccine, take this vaccine."

They should be right now going out into their communities and talking to people and getting to know them so when the next thing comes around, we built a trust with the people that were making the decisions for us.

- Dr. Perry Halkitis, the Dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, who's written a powerful and important book about AIDS, COVID, lessons for the public health community.

More with Perry Halkitis right after this.

Stay with us.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're back with Dr. Perry Halkitis, Dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health.

Perry, let's jump on this issue.

As I'm reading Dr. Fauci's book, and I'm reading about the threats to him, to his family, to the demonization of Dr. Fauci, to all kinds of charges.

If he was wrong about certain things, okay, he's wrong.

But that his motives were questioned, his intent questioned, why the heck would people go into the public health arena, particularly in government, seeing what happened?

And I'm not turning Dr. Fauci into a martyr, but I mean, what's happened to him?

It's like, why?

Why would you go in?

Why would you do it?

- And I think a lot of people are asking that question, and we see this huge, huge, huge diminishing number of people in the public health workforce.

And all of a sudden, we're at, you know, here we are without people to actually do the work.

We have departments of health not being able to fill positions, right?

So what we need to be able to do is, you know, we need to acknowledge the fact that the attacks on Dr. Fauci were based on nothing rational other than hate, right?

Hate, which perpetuates illness, hate, which perpetuates, you know, disease.

But also we have to reorient the public to what public health actually is, right?

Because right now, I think that if you ask the average American, what is public health?

They'll tell you vaccines and what Perry Halkitis is trying to say to you in this book, is let's orient public health so it's about families, so it's about, you know, religious institutions, so it's about schools, so it's about people.

And we're taking care of the health of the people in those entities.

And that's the work that public health needs to do.

You know, Fauci was demonized in the eighties too, but he's my hero because at the end.

- Did you interact with him in the eighties?

- Well, I mean, we, all of us did.

Who were part of Act Up and the other entities, because, you know, he was the leader making these decisions.

And he, you know, God love him, recognizes like now with COVID that then he made mistakes too, because that's what science is.

You don't have the answers right away, right?

- But you have to communicate, Perry.

I'm sorry for interrupting.

So when Dr. Fauci talked about masks, and in reading the book, he talks.

- Yeah.

- I'm not gonna make this about Fauci's book, but this is interesting 'cause it goes to Dr. Halkitis' point about we're not always right.

They're not always right.

When he first said we didn't need masks, he argues in the book that he was saying that because the public health workers, the people on the front lines needed the masks.

And we weren't sure how many masks the really, the good mask, the N95, you know?

- Right.

- We didn't know how many we had.

That's why he said that.

So the response, Fauci lied.

- Yeah, and you know, wouldn't it be so much better if people could just admit that they made a mistake?

Right, I think he does.

But not.

- Why is that so hard?

- I don't know.

I mean, I was raised by good Greek parents who told me to tell them, to say when I did something wrong, that I did something wrong, right?

So I think it's an this is, look, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna blame the Barrington people and the haters, right, for everything.

There is a responsibility for people like myself, right?

People who are working in public health to go out into the public and say, hey, we weren't right about these things.

We weren't right about, maybe the schools should have opened sooner.

Maybe the masks should have happened sooner.

- Yeah.

- But we learned, and like, and then you at least admit a humanity, a fallibility that I think builds trust with people.

- Stay on that because making mistakes in public life around public health issues with imperfect information, with incomplete information.

I've had four interviews with Governor Murphy, in which I ask him the same question every time.

I'm sure he's irritated by it.

And Governor Cuomo, before he was taken out of office, he was asked the same thing.

And you know where I'm going with this.

I said, governor, let me ask you, when you sent, when the edict came down from you aligned with Governor Cuomo in New York to send people who had COVID in nursing homes, who went to the hospital, back into the nursing homes, and then it got really bad in those nursing homes, was it a mistake?

His response, which I thought he was gonna say, you know what, in retrospect, it was a mistake.

What he said was, the nursing homes promised us they would separate people, and they didn't do it.

So he blamed the nursing home operators.

And my question was, what the heck is the State Department of Health and other federal state agencies that are supposed to regulate that?

My point isn't about blaming, it's about owning one's mistakes.

Am I oversimplifying this, Perry?

- No, I actually don't think you are.

I think there's like this great shame associated with making an error, right?

Somehow like, you know, you don't hit that home run at the end of the ninth inning and you've made a mistake and it's over or hit that or like, you know, you know, you don't stop that Spanish soccer player from hitting that second goal last weekend, and you're all of a sudden you're demonized right?

I think people are not reading Americans correctly.

And I think Americans wanna hear from people that they're fallible, that they make mistakes, that they don't always get things right.

They will, that is, I think, something that government officials need to learn really very clearly 'cause we can't always be right.

And scientists need to learn in their conversation.

I say this to my students all the time.

My students ask me a question.

I'm like, oh, wait a second.

No, that wasn't right, what I just said.

Let me correct myself.

That creates a bond and a trust that I think is much more likely to make government officials and public health people more accessible to the general public.

- Stay on that point.

Fast forward, we're taping this on the 16th of July, several days after an assassination attempt on the life of former President Trump.

A lot of things are gonna happen.

We don't know what they are.

But let's assume for a second, that Donald Trump becomes president again.

Just play that out.

When Donald Trump said in a public press conference that he was holding with public health officials around, including Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci and others, just shoot the bleach under your arm, inject it, it'll put some light there and it'll go away.

He never said he was wrong.

He never said it was dangerous.

He never apologized.

And Fauci, Dr. Fauci said, you know what it's like to be in the administration and have to say the president was wrong?

Question, if President Trump were elected again, this is not about politics, it's about public health.

- Yeah.

- Given President Trump's track record around COVID, yes, COVID, the vaccine was developed under his presidency, but his public statements and attitudes about public health and those who support him, what concerns, if any, do you have if he were the president again and we faced another massive public health crisis?

- I worry less about him per se, that and more about the people he surrounds himself with, who would like to see the Department of Health and Human Services completely destroyed.

And so that, I think public health is in grave danger should that happen.

Because the people who are supporting the former president, the people who would be in the administration, believe that the structures that are in place right now around health and human services are not adequately addressing the health of the American people.

And my argument is it's not because, it's not because they're not trying, it's maybe because they need to figure out how to communicate better.

How to, like, you know, to share better.

You know, I'm on a panel right now that's thinking about the work that we did about COVID and communication for the National Academies of Sciences.

And we're thinking about what went right and what went wrong.

And I, you know, I've been very clear all along, over the last four years that one of the things that we've done least effectively is communicate to the general public and talk to people in a real way.

So my worry is, back to your question, my worry is that bad for public health did that happen?

- Can we shift gears dramatically?

You wrote an op-ed piece with one of your colleagues.

It's on NJ.com.

Check it out.

It's a piece that you wrote with Paul Guberstein.

- Mhmm, correct.

- We're doing this on the 16th of July.

Okay, just remember that.

President Biden is running as we speak.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

President Biden and the psychology of letting go.

I know we're shifting gears dramatically.

The message in this op-ed piece in NJ.com is what?

And how does it relate to the larger question of people in public life who get into their seventies, eighties, and beyond?

- And not just public life, but you know, higher education.

I'm even gonna say tennis 'cause I still wonder why Novak Djokovic is still playing at 37 years old.

But that's a whole other story.

I would say that the message is this, that, look, there are a group of people who have no choice but to work into their seventies and eighties because of their financial means.

But there is another group of people, people in political life, people in higher education, who have a choice, right?

Because they have the means.

And what I am, what we are saying in this op-ed, is that we have to make it safe for individuals to be able to move on to transition from their jobs, right?

And we don't do that.

And they hold on with dear life until their seventies and eighties to a point where they're not functioning particularly well.

So that's number one.

And we don't make it safe for people emotionally to be able to leave their work.

Number two, I think the argument we're making in this op-ed is this, we don't do that, the next generation is not gonna be equipped to lead.

And you know, the example that I used in the article?

The 96-year-old queen who gives the crown to the 73-year-old son who was already sick.

And what I'm saying is that I, as a 61-year-old, have an obligation to prepare the path for the people who are younger than me to become the leaders.

And what does that mean?

That means Halkitis needs to get out of the way relatively soon.

- Do do all of us in our 60, are you saying that we, even if we love what we do, think we're good at what we do, we gotta get out?

- I'm not saying we have to get out, I'm just saying we just have to make room.

Look, I don't have to lead, I don't have to be like the dean anymore.

I can make room for a 40-year-old to be the dean right?

I'm saying let me continue to do my work that I do, maybe in a different way.

Maybe not making all the decisions, maybe not being the President of the United States, maybe not being the dean of the school.

Maybe just being.

- Maybe not being on the United States Supreme Court.

- Correct, correct.

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg stayed long, and it had extraordinary implications for the court and for our country, no?

- It's had enormous implications.

And it's because people's pride, their emotions are tied to what their work is.

And I think that we've gotta disentangle that, and tell people, you know, you're no less if you leave this position, right?

And I, it's heartbreaking because, you know, I see, do I think in my heart of hearts that President Biden really, really, really wants to be the president for next year?

Why would he?

It's the most exhausting job in the whole world.

I think he has no choice.

But what have we done to prepare future leaders?

We haven't done anything.

- On that note, we don't know if the president's gonna continue in this race.

I remind everyone.

16th of July we're taping.

Dr., I do know this.

Dr. Perry Halkitis is the dean of the Rutgers School of Health until further notice.

And he also has a powerful and important book coming out.

Perry, my friend, I cannot thank you enough for your time, your expertise, and your insight.

Thank you, Perry.

- Thank you, Steve.

It's always, always, always a pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

That's Dr. Halkitis.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

New Jersey Children’s Foundation.

Newark Board of Education.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

New Jersey’s Clean Energy program.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

And by The Adler Aphasia Center.

Promotional support provided by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

And by ROI-NJ.