Guys, this livecast,
if you're listening on a
podcast after the fact,
or you're watching on
YouTube after the fact,
it is a few days after we've done this.
We went live for supporters first.
Facebook supporters there's
a link in the description
on how you can join for $4.99 a month,
and join a tribe of
people that care deeply
about transforming healthcare.
There are thousands of us now.
We have nightly discussions.
We go live here first,
because we want to get that energy
and that engagement from the super fans
around topics that we deeply care about.
Then we might bring it to the main page,
if you're good.
Definitely sign up as a supporter,
if you want to see this stuff first,
and have your voice
and comments heard now.
I want supporters to comment on this,
because this is an important topic,
and we have an important guest today.
Today we have Dr. Todd Wolynn
who is the CEO of Kids Plus Care in,
did I say it right?
- [Todd] Kids Plus Pediatrics.
- Kids Plus Pediatrics in Pittsburg!
See, I had one thing to
remember and I forgot it.
Kids Plus Pediatrics in Pittsburg.
He is a crusader, a vaccine avenger.
Put up the triptych for me.
There it is.
You see him?
A vaccine avenger and pediatrician,
which is exactly what he is,
because he's gonna teach us today,
about how we can actually,
whether it's physicians or
nurses, healthcare professionals,
how we can fight back when antivaxxers,
and other anti science lunatics.
That's my word, not his.
He's much more professional
than me, come at us,
because it's been a thing.
Doctors have been attacked.
They've had their reputations destroyed.
These horrible vitals.com,
and these other websites,
that do physician grading,
have become cesspools of antivax nonsense,
so Todd has taken it as a crusade,
to try to fight back,
because so often we're disempowered.
Todd, welcome to the show brother.
- Thank you.
Thanks so much for having me.
- Man, how, tell me a little
bit about your background.
You're a pediatrician.
How did all that happen?
- Pediatrician, born
and raised in Pittsburg.
Stayed there.
Also a Board Certified
Lactation Consultant.
- That, put up the thing again, Logan.
- International Board
Certified Lactation Consultant.
- [Zubin] International Board
Certified Lactation Consultant.
- Yes.
- [Zubin] So you're a breast Nazi?
- I am not a breast Nazi.
I am supportive of providing
evidence based medicine
in support for breastfeeding.
- I love it, I love it.
So that's really actually
quite convenient,
because you're also a pediatrician,
so you can do both.
- That's where it comes.
Evidence based.
So our mantra at our practice is
we're gonna support women the
way they want to be supported
but I wouldn't make a
recommendation on anything
like a vaccine without
giving you informed consent.
I don't know why people aren't
giving informed consent on feeding.
If I told you your risk for lymphoma,
and leukemia for kids
decreased with breastfeeding,
or the mother's risk for breast cancer
and ovarian cancer
decreased by breastfeeding,
you should know that information.
Doesn't mean you have to breastfeed,
but you should have informed consent.
- It makes perfect sense.
Now it's funny,
because you use the term informed consent,
which is one of these antivax slogans.
If we had informed consent,
then we would not choose to vaccinate.
How did you get involved in
this great vaccine struggle?
- Yeah, our practice was involved
with actually clinical
vaccine studies for 14 years,
so I was involved with over 40 studies,
as a sub, about 40 principal
investigator on three
so I got my feet wet in vaccines
and got to see how
intensively they're studied,
to see how everything
has to be written down.
The storage of the vaccine.
Any complaint anybody has.
We got to see this from the beginning
all the way through,
and we pretty much almost any vaccine
that's currently in the regimen,
we were involved in most
of the original studies.
- That's incredible, and
you're a private group.
- Independent pediatric group.
One of the proud remaining 20%
of independent pediatricians.
- Fantastic, and you work with AAP,
and some other organizations
too on advocacy?
- Correct, yeah, I do a lot of work
with the American Academy of Pediatrics.
I've started doing some work
with the International
Pediatric Association as well,
because specifically on the topic
of vaccine hesitancy or confidence.
It's a global issue now.
We have people that are
putting out disinformation
that are eroding vaccine herd immunity,
like in Pakistan they just
killed vaccine workers,
and the police that guard them.
Disinformation can be life threatening,
and people receive death threats
here in the U.S. because
they promote vaccines.
- This to me, is why I wanted
to have you on the show,
because when you emailed me,
you're like, this is the work we're doing.
Would love your opinion on it,
and I'm like yeah, my
opinion is come on the show,
and teach me about this now,
because so many physicians
have messaged me specifically
and nurses as well.
I just got in this debate online
with these antivaxers.
I had no idea they existed like this.
I had no idea how crazy they are,
and now they're trying
to ruin my reputation
writing these false reviews, attacking,
calling my hospital, telling them,
that I'm advocating child murder,
and turning children
into autistic zombies,
and have you yourself ever
been a victim of this?
- Yeah, first I want to
put things into context.
In the U.S. we have about 75% of people
who are vaccine accepting.
You say I recommend the vaccine,
and they're totally down with it.
- [Zubin] 75%.
- 75%
- That are just down.
- I just say I recommend the vaccine,
and they say sure, got it.
About 23% are vaccine hesitant,
and you have about 1% to
2% that are anti-vaccine.
Where the real issue here is,
and where the science is going.
They talk about communication sciences.
Trying to figure out and reach
the people that are hesitant.
When you get to that 1% to
2% that are anti-vaccine,
you're dealing with a
completely different entity,
and there's a hybrid even amongst them,
and to your question, yes,
we were the victim of a global
coordinated anti vaccine attack.
So, we, Kids Plus Pediatrics,
for posting a video
called We Prevent Cancer.
Broke 100,000 views.
It was a shot in our.
- [Zubin] Legit.
- Yeah, yeah,
and we have a production studio on site,
so I want to throw a big
shout out to Chad Herman
who is the Kids Plus pediatrics
communications director.
He's been with us since Kids Plus formed,
and he was the one that told us,
we need to get heavy into social media.
He said, video's really the right media
that we should really
eventually be working in,
and he said, they promised me,
but I knew they'd never do it,
but we built out a production studio
about three years ago.
Actually, launching a podcast
in another month, but.
- By the way, that's all a scam.
I don't believe in video, podcasts,
or social media at all Todd.
By the way, how can
people find that video?
- The video is if you go to
our YouTube or Vimeo channels
you'll be able to find them,
or on to our Facebook page.
That's where the 100,000 views occurred.
- Search Kids Plus Pediatrics.
So you did this video.
Okay, I want to back up for a second,
because some stuff you said,
is actually a little bit of
news to me, those numbers.
- Yeah.
- I'm learning as I go about this stuff.
I'm kind of like,
I'm like a weirdly intuitive creature,
that then turns to data
after the intuition,
so my intuition was always,
there's always a hardcore
fringe of anti-vaxers
that are delusional and dangerous,
and then there's the rest
that are on the fence,
and then the vast majority
that are actually reasonably accepting,
and have been conditioned a certain way,
whatever it is, they
realize there are experts,
and they're recommending this,
and they trust their experts,
because they feel like they have
the child's best interest in mind,
but it's that 1% to 2%,
that cause all the trouble.
Especially for the 20%
that are on the fence.
This has actually been looked
at in terms of percentages?
- It has been.
It's been shown again and again,
and what's most exciting,
is that the most influential,
most impactful resource
for parents to go to,
is their trusted physicians.
Pediatricians or other
physicians or healthcare workers.
- Nurses in particular, yeah.
- Yeah, nurses even higher, right?
If you look, I went to the
AAP's legislative conference,
and they said they ranked
like most trusted professions
and there was nurses,
there was pediatricians,
there was teachers, there was Sith lord,
there was Congressman, right?
It was kind of like in that order.
- [Zubin] Sith lord beats Congressman.
That makes sense.
- It was just like that.
- That makes sense, yeah.
- But here's the travesty.
In 2019, this is the realm you need
to be making the recommendations,
and so while you have most physicians
are not yet immersed into social media,
you have a younger
generation of physicians,
who are comfortable with the concept,
but whose practices or even
larger healthcare systems
are restraining them and saying,
we don't want you to engage,
or we don't want you to
put this information out,
and all it takes is one of these attacks.
Chad, just two weeks ago,
had a quaternary pediatric
children's hospital,
five communications people from there
called him, asking him, how
they should deal with this,
because their leadership is telling them
not to put out anything
that's vaccine related.
- Okay, there's so much here Todd.
I'm so glad you came on this show,
and I'm so glad we didn't talk much
about this beforehand,
because now you get to
see my response live.
- [Todd] I'm gonna get a drink.
- Yes, please do,
and I apologize because occasionally
you'll see me break eye contact
with you to read comments
because there's a lot and
Scott Pango whose an ID doc,
is saying damn I'm gonna
have to listen to this later,
because this is on point.
Here's the thing.
The fact that these 1%
to 2% of anti-vaxers,
have frightened the large groups,
the corporations into backing down
from what they know is
right is disgusting.
It's disgusting that these
people, the 1% to 2% exist.
It's also disgusting that
our big groups have no balls,
and again, I can say this,
you don't get to say this,
but this is the thing.
I've had major organizations be afraid
to even touch me because
of my pro vaccine sentiment
which is crazy,
because we all know in the science field
that this is the right thing for children.
The other thing is, even we did a show
at my hospital where I'm on staff,
where I love them and they love me,
and we did a thing with flu vaccine,
and the anti-vaxxers took one little clip
out of context of a live show we did,
and started saying oh we
don't like autistic children,
because I said Tom you're
about to get your shot.
Prepare to get all the autism,
and it was just a passing comment.
They take it out of context,
because that's what they like to do,
and then the administration
of the hospital said,
you know what, we would
never ask you to do this,
but we are getting
thousands of angry messages.
Can you please make
those messages go away?
I said the only way to do that,
is that I take down that video,
and do a separate video,
where I attack these people specifically.
So I did that and I responded,
but I did have to take that video down.
That was terrible,
because that was a video that was
spreading the word about flu vaccination.
We all got it live.
A bunch of doctors got it live,
in the physician lounge at UMC hospital,
and we had to take it down,
because of pressure on the organization.
Back to you, your small
private pediatrics group
has a communication
director, a video platform,
is making waves and bigger groups
are coming to you asking.
- Yeah, the attack went down like this,
just so you get the history behind it.
We post.
- Was it like the night
king in Game of Thrones?
A bunch of undead zombies.
- It was kind of scary like that.
It started off nice, right?
- Then you lost all your Dothraki.
- Westeros.
Everybody's happy.
What happens is we posted August 23rd,
and we have about 15,000 views.
People loving it, and
basically we were saying,
we prevent cancer, by
administering the vaccine.
You can too.
You, the parent, so come on in.
Loving it, and it did we asked it to do.
People made their appointments,
but about three weeks later.
I think it was September
15th, the attack starts.
Over 880 people globally.
We tracked this.
Posting over 10,000 times,
to our Facebook site,
and then attacking our
Google and Yelp rating.
It was coordinated because there was some
pro vaccine people lurking in these groups
who were sending us screenshots,
saying dude, you better get ready.
This is what's coming.
- [Zubin] Winter is coming.
- Winter is coming.
We literally use that.
Winter was coming.
We said look, we can either be victimized,
and there was a couple
other large scale attacks
we were aware of,
but we didn't choose to be victims,
and this is my favorite sound byte,
that one of the newspapers picked up,
but we did choose to take a stand,
and we said they messed
with the wrong practice.
- [Zubin] I love it, I love it.
- It was bold letters,
but we fought back with the things
that scientists and physicians should.
Research.
We collaborated with the
University of Pittsburg
Graduate School of Public Health
and studied the hell out of this attack.
By the way, lead author, Beth Hoffman,
huge ZDogg fan.
She asked me to give.
- See, scientists occasionally like us.
- Love you,
and Travis Lewis is our resident P.A.
Who is our ZDogg connection.
- Did you say Travis Lewis?
Travis is a Zpacker?
- [Todd] He is huge.
- Travis, you complete me, okay buddy?
I don't know what this was.
It was supposed to be a heart,
but it ended up being
some misshapen thing.
Anyways back to you.
- We studied the attack, right?
We look at the breakdown
of these patients.
You know the usual fight is
liberty or purity is how they come at it.
You can't tell me what to do,
or it's not safe in there.
- [Zubin] You nailed it.
- The study further subdivided that,
into conspiracy and
safety and alternatives.
They broke it out into four groups,
to give us a little bit
of a more nuanced approach
to maybe vaccine hesitant people
as opposed to again, the anti vax,
but the other three ways we
fought back besides research
was one, to create a toolkit,
which we are 80 pages
into a living document,
based on the platform.
If you're attacked on Facebook,
this is what you do.
If you're attacked on
Twitter, this is what you do.
If your Google reviews have been hit,
this is what you do.
It's 80 pages.
Our story, the philosophy,
and then if you're in
the midst of the attack
and don't have time to dive into this,
likely Pulitzer prize winning document,
you can go to the back and say,
I'm getting attacked on Google,
and just work off this really quick page,
that shows you how to start dealing
with your reviews being hit.
Or Yelp, Or Twitter, or on Facebook,
and this is what people
need, so there's a toolkit.
The other thing we created
was something called
Shots Heard Round the World,
which is a vetted private pro vaccine
rapid response social
media rescue network,
so if you're getting attacked,
we light the fires of Gondor,
and signal fires of Gondor,
and we come to your aid.
- Where was Gondor?
When they were claiming my child
was autistic because of the vaccines,
where was Gondor?
Where was Gondor?
That's amazing.
Keep going, keep going.
I'm fired up now.
- And the fourth thing has been this
kind of presentation and
media awareness campaign.
We have been on the L.A.
Times, Washington Post.
I presented down.
I was able to help in Panama,
at the International
Pediatric Association,
because this is a global phenomenon,
and presenting in Philly, coast to coast.
I mean we're doing this
internationally now.
- Okay, let me recap this.
This is amazing.
So you have this big
document that is a resource
and then at the back a quick tool
to say how do I respond
on Twitter, Facebook,
wherever I'm getting attacked.
- [Todd] We're calling it the Kids Plus
Social Media Strategy Guide,
and Anti Vaccine Combat Toolkit.
- That's not complicated.
Is there an acronym for that?
- [Todd] No, we're working on it.
Give me some time.
- I'll give you time.
I'll give you time,
because Gordon Bodson asked,
how do we get the toolkit,
and we'll put links and stuff.
- So we currently don't have it out.
It's still in draft form,
because it is a living document.
It's already been revised
two or three times,
but we want to work with
hopefully a non profit
that has a distribution network,
that can allow us to get this out
and get it to everybody.
We're working hard on that right now.
- Okay, the pitch here is,
if you are a non profit or an organization
that thinks can put some steam behind this
and get it out as a distribution.
Obviously, we offer our
services to get it out,
but it'd be nice to have
a legit org behind it,
that isn't ZDogg MD, pushing it out.
Hit us up in the comments.
Actually message your group
through your website, yeah?
- Yeah, and to be frank, we're for profit.
We put thousands of hours already.
We have three people,
working the Shots Heard
Round the World team,
all on our dime, so we are looking
to try and work with a non profit
to get some support for
the work that we're doing,
because this comes at the
expense of seeing patients.
My partners think, yeah
this is really awesome,
but dude, we gotta pay the electricity.
- We got RVUs to generate, yeah.
- So we're trying to find
a nice support network
to get this to happen.
- That's awesome.
Now the second thing,
speaking of support network,
the second tier of what you're doing,
is this global response action squad.
- Shots Heard.
It's at Shots Heard.
We just launched the account
yesterday on Twitter.
- [Zubin] Shots Heard.
- Shots Heard, at Shots Heard,
and the formal name Shots
Heard Round the World.
- That's great, and so
if you get attacked.
What if you're?
Okay, I get a lot of these messages.
ZDogg, I got in this brawl with,
I'm a nurse, I got in a brawl
with another nurse on
Facebook about vaccines.
She sent me all this crap.
Could they reach out to you?
Or more of a big attack?
- Yeah, correct coordinated attacks.
If you have a coordinated attacked,
and we could tell you,
because Chad dealt with
this literally 24/7.
I mean he took some sleep over that time,
but he was every day waking up
to thousands more hits,
and so what we noticed was,
when we put the word out,
and I actually happened to be
at the American Academy of
Pediatric National Meeting
when the attack occurred on our group.
I could literally ask for help.
I was talking to Bob,
and I was talking to other people there.
We were actually putting
the word out in social media
and so when the calvary arrived,
we saw that that's when this curve
literally the attack,
the attack's coming up,
and then all these people
come in to start helping us,
and the attack seems to go away,
and what Chad likes to say is,
when a bully gets punched back,
they seem to walk away,
and so we studied them and we also got,
Physicians Mom group, and
tens of thousands of people
starts attacking with
data and explicatives,
and it was beautiful.
SOAPM, SOAPM I love you.
They're big Zdogg fans.
Section on Administration
Practice Management.
They're bad ass pediatricians.
They came to our aid.
Vince Iannelli came to our aid.
A bunch of people.
When that happened, we
wanted to reproduce that.
We said this is something special,
let's make it not so hard
to recreate every time
someone gets attacked
on a large scale.
- That is so awesome,
because it validates everything
that we kind of believe.
I had to take the mic off the stand,
because I'm so angry.
It actually means nothing.
It's just fun to hold something.
Like I have a strange fetish that way.
Holding objects.
Here's the thing.
You noticed data,
because you're a data guy,
I can tell, and I'm not.
I'm more like, I steal other people's data
and parse it in a way that non
data people can understand.
You saw that the attack
started to trail off
when the cavalry came in in
the form of social media juice,
and this is what we've
noticed with our platform.
You'll get a smattering of
attacks on ZDogg's page,
but they get destroyed.
They get devastated by two
million healthcare professionals
that are like shut the heck up.
Most healthcare professionals
don't have the juice
to defend themselves in that way,
so they're overwhelmed by this kadra.
It's actually a rather small
but vocal kadra of anti-vaxxers.
What you're offering is saying,
well here's a cavalry
that you can activate,
especially for concerted attacks.
Particularly for those,
because now we can fight back
and drown them out.
Out basically juice them on social media,
which means SEO and all
the things that you use
are now juiced in your favor.
Oh my gosh, this has
been so long in coming.
I'm so glad, and you know what?
You know what's interesting?
It's not an academic group that did this.
It's not like some big organization.
It's a small upstart for profit
pediatric group in Pittsburg
that cares enough about their patients,
that they're entrepreneurial
and they're like you know what,
this costs us money,
but we're gonna do it.
That is dope man.
Kudos to you.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I will show you the graph.
You could even post it
up there if you want,
but we have the graph of
where the attack occurs,
and where the counter attack,
or the support comes in,
and it's a thing of beauty.
We want to, exactly like you said,
if you're not big enough,
even if you're solo,
or there's a practice down in Oklahoma,
that got devastated,
because she didn't have those resources,
and we talked and want this
help out there for any group
and it doesn't have to be just physician.
If it's a vaccine advocate that's a target
of a coordinated large scale attack.
- Coordinated, right?
Monique Tello just wrote
a piece in Kevin MD
and she and I have been in cahoots,
and she interviewed me about this,
and the truth is we need this.
This is what we need,
because listen, let's be honest.
Most physicians are physicians,
because they're a little risk averse.
- [Todd] Really risk averse.
- You know, they know
that what they can do
can hurt people if they don't do it right.
We're conditioned to be
careful and methodical.
Part of the reason we go into medicine
is so that we can drive a Camry for sure.
We know we're gonna have this
level of income at minimum
which as a pediatrician, what
are you driving by the way?
- It's a 2014 Honda Odyssey.
It's almost got 60,000 miles right now.
- God bless you.
- It's pimped out though.
It has a sun roof.
- Oh you got a sun roof.
You know what?
You're not a real pediatrician.
My buddy has a Honda.
My pediatrician buddy has
a Honda Accord, no sunroof.
I myself drive a Toyota Camry,
but it's a hybrid,
because I'm a hospitalist,
and we take it to the next level.
The truth is, and I'm sure you get accused
of shilling and all the usual stuff.
- Power Shill.
- [Zubin] Yes, power shill.
- I do some consulting for sure.
I do it with Merck, with Sanofi.
I've worked a lot on vaccine
confidence issues as of late.
I do work with the American
Academy of Pediatrics.
I do work with the International
Pediatric Association.
I work with the International
Lactation Consultation Association.
I work with lots of people.
I'm proud of what I do,
but at the core of everything I do,
it's needs to be evidence based,
and that's where this craziness comes in
where nobody is pushing back,
because physicians are
in the right position.
They have the trust.
They have the relationship.
If I look you in the eye and I said look,
I wouldn't recommend anything to you
that I wouldn't give to my own child,
and in fact, I've given
these all to my kids,
that's what people need to hear,
but they're so terrorized,
by this weaponized social media.
Whether it's via post or via Tweet,
and now the newest thing they do
in coordinated fashion,
is go after their Google reviews,
and their Yelp Reviews,
because that is a real
deal financial hit, right?
If you're a millennial,
and you're looking for a group,
and you're like one star versus
somebody that's quarter mile
away and they're four stars,
are you really going
to dig into the reviews
and try and figure out
what this was about?
No.
- But if you did,
if you're a millennial and
you're watching this show,
and you're like how do
I parse these reviews?
Read the reviews, and watch what they say.
Such and such forces vaccinations.
Such and such doesn't
believe in informed consent.
Such and such is a shill for big pharma.
The minute you see those things,
assume that that's one
of the better doctors
you're gonna find,
because they've provoked the outrage
of really really awful people.
- I have a good story
for you on the reviews.
You ready for this?
So here we are,
we're getting pounded on reviews.
We go from four stars,
down to like less than a star.
We reach out to.
We own our sites,
and we have this all in the toolkit,
on how to work through this,
but we go to Yelp, and we say to Yelp,
here's what's going on.
Within two weeks, within a week,
Yelp puts up a banner,
this sites under review,
for suspicious activity.
Some people came and
gave five star protective
fraudulent reviews to balance
out the one star reviews,
so that they were trying
to come to our aid.
Within two weeks, Yelp
had everything cleaned up.
Totally gone.
One woman that Chad likes to talk about,
one of the anti-vaxxers,
was so determined,
she kept putting another one star in,
and they would keep taking it away,
and finally, after the
fourth one she stopped.
Yelp is our gold standard of
how this needs to be handled,
and we've told Yelp,
and we've talked with Yelp,
and we've even talked about,
maybe doing some collaboration.
Let me tell you about Google.
Google, you can't get to Google directly.
Even if you own your site.
Matter of fact, you as an
outside viewer of my site,
can mark reviews as just
as fraudulent as I can.
I don't have any more
power owning the site
than you do to say, and by the way,
fraudulent is not even a,
you can mark it as spam,
or two other categories.
So we go ahead, and we mark it.
We can't get in touch with them.
We can't get in touch with them.
Finally, Chad gets them through
a Twittermybiz.com
handle through a backdoor
and gets a canned response,
we'll look into it.
Okay, so after about a
month and a half or two,
they remove, an unbeknownst
to us why they chose these,
a third of the fraudulent reviews.
Mind you we have
screenshots of them saying,
I'm gonna post a fraudulent review.
I live in Sydney Australia.
I like essential oils and
here's a one star review,
and we show them the screenshots,
and they don't remove those.
We're like which ones, why
are they picking these?
He spends three more months.
Now we're like six months almost into it,
and they remove another
third of the reviews.
Now we're six months in, so our rankings,
our reviews are coming
back up to two or three,
so you can understand how
these can be devastating.
345 days later, a third of
the reviews still remained.
Fraudulent reviews,
and it isn't until the
Guardian, thank you Guardian,
runs the story on our attack,
and then talks about
the fraudulent reviews,
that magically the very next
day after the Guardian piece,
the last third of Google,
and I bashed them every chance I can,
because I keep asking
them for an audience.
I would love to talk to you guys.
Tell you what's going on.
Make you accountable.
Have you help people,
but right now you don't give a crap
about the authenticity of your reviews,
just like Dr. Sam Erlich is going on
in Western Pennsylvania.
I counted yesterday, 41 one star reviews
within about a three hour period,
because the anti-vaxxers
are attacking right now.
- [Zubin] Yeah, Sam got attacked.
- Google, you have a responsibility,
an accountability.
Yelp takes it seriously.
I recommend you use their methodology,
and I'm still happy to
talk to you any time.
- Google.
- [Todd] I'm a little
passionate about this.
- I'm so angry at Google right now,
because Google hasn't
done crap for us either,
but I'll say that, fix your ish Google.
Like listen, people who take
care of other human beings
for a living that one
day will be taking care
of you and your family,
you're gonna let this shit
happen to their careers
because some horrible human beings
decide to fraudulently use your platform.
Grow up, do something right for a change,
and kudos to Yelp if
Yelp is actually helping,
and by the way, vitals.com,
I heard from Monique, was not helpful,
so we should start shaming
these organizations that suck.
Okay, I'm looking you in the eye,
and I'm telling you this.
Man, that is awesome.
Thank you for sharing that,
because I didn't know that about Google.
- Yeah, it's been a bear,
and I will tell you other
groups are suffering
and how much is it gonna
take from one person
that's particularly off the scale
to read something like that,
and do something even more atrocious.
- [Zubin] The death threat.
- Yeah.
- How do you handle people who get death,
because I get hundreds of death threats.
- We aren't to your level.
- Well, you know, no one is.
I mean no one's gonna get
killed as brutally as me
by an anti-vaxxer.
They're gonna vaccinate me to death.
- We got, you're baby killers.
You're killing people.
We didn't get the out
and out death threats.
We certainly got lots of
horrible things said about us,
but we certainly have
talked to several groups,
and that's another thing that we're doing
is we're interviewing other groups,
that have been attacked,
and one of the side pieces of
Shots Heard Round the World,
is we've now created a
prospective database,
for future attacks,
so that we can look at strategies,
and methodologies and characteristics
so we have more data behind these.
Again, University of Pittsburg,
School of Public Health,
and their Center for Research
on Media, Technology and Health.
They're the ones that we did the,
we were published in the journal
Vaccine on this research.
- [Zubin] Congratulations.
- Thanks, so we're pretty pumped right.
So go at them with research and science.
- I'm so inspired by
the stuff you're doing,
because you know, sometimes it feels
like you're fighting in a vacuum,
but look, we have this
huge social media tribe,
the ZPack and they are
with us on this ride,
but each of them individually
can get very scared,
because they feel powerless
in the setting of all this,
so to see again, you guys
have a lot on the line.
Your livelihood depends on patients
trusting you and believing you,
and when they have to parse that
through stuff they read on Google or Yelp,
and it's incorrect, that is a huge hit,
but you're willing to take that risk
and fight back and give others
the tools to fight back.
That's a huge thing man.
- There's some really
important system level changes
that are still necessary.
I mean we've talked to Paul
Offit, Richard Pan, Peter Hotez,
Renee Diresta, and we're looking for.
- The four horsemen of the apocalypse,
as far as the anti-vaxxers are concerned.
- For instance, look at Twitter right.
There are block bots you can put together.
I'm not infringing on your
first amendment free speech
if I don't want to hear
what you have to say, right?
You can say what you want
to say to your group,
but I can preblock that.
Facebook doesn't have that.
We've created almost a no fly list,
of people that have attacked us,
so that yeah could you go in and enter
800 or 900 or 1,000 names.
Why can't Facebook say,
anybody associated with
vaccine myths and discussions,
or any of these pseudo,
like they're out there trying to vaccines
when in fact, they're anti-vax,
why can't we block them ahead of time?
They don't have to follow me.
I don't have to follow them,
but Facebook yet doesn't
allow that ability.
- And Facebook talks about changing it.
What's interesting is again, Zuckerberg,
is married to Priscilla Chan.
Priscilla Chan is a fierce advocate
of public health and vaccines.
When I moved back to the Bay,
I'm gonna try to sneak in,
to whatever office they're in,
and be like hey bro, let's check it out.
If you don't know me, I'm a bald man,
but I care deeply about your platform
being used for good,
because we think we're using it for good.
- [Todd] Absolutely.
- Man, that's awesome.
So let me ask then,
what's next on your list?
Do you want to find,
get a non profit to help
you get juice behind the?
- [Todd] The toolkit.
- Yeah, the toolkit.
You have your Shots Heard.
- Round the World, or just
Shots Heard on Twitter.
It's at Shots Heard.
This group, it's literally,
I waited to formally launch it.
Tied into coming out here,
because I was so excited.
- [Zubin] That's awesome.
- We did the soft launch about
a month and a half ago.
We have 150 plus people already vetted,
so if you're interested in joining,
it's join at Shotsheard.com
That's the email,
and basically you're gonna
get, a Survey Monkey.
Please fill it out.
It allows us to help vet you,
to see your previous
performance on social media
so we know you're the real deal,
and then basically you are
now part of an email list,
that you'll see when there are attacks,
that we put the word out.
Please provide support to this account.
We also have a closed Facebook group
where there's some discussion
that goes on board there with
Chad heading that effort.
- I love it.
You know, and it's good,
because I get a lot of messages.
Can you please support
this doctor, this doctor,
this doctor, this nurse, this doctor,
and the truth is if I did that every time,
it would lose juice for me.
In other words, my fans don't
want to constantly hear about
doctors getting attacked,
so it's good that there's a bigger tribe,
where we can all be a part of that,
and so that's a great way to sign up
and answering the survey questions,
means they're not a robot,
they're not an anti-vaxxer.
- Yeah, it helps us.
We literally are paying people
to vet through this to make sure
we have a group that's
supportive of vaccines
and then when there's an issue,
they just email us at alert@shotsheard.com
to let us know where
the attack's occurring.
- What I'll have you do is
when we're done with the show
I'll have you email me a bunch of links
and different things so we
can put it in the show notes
on the web post when we repost this
to the full tribe,
and that way people will have
all the resources in one place,
and it's also nice,
because you could send
people to that interview,
and also because again,
these are the logistics, right?
People don't realize there's a lot of work
that goes into reaching
people on social media.
You have to have experience.
You have to have the juice.
You have to grow the juice.
You have to know how to deploy the juice
without screwing it up.
I call it the juice.
It's really this magical
influence, is what it is,
and you want to use it for good.
- Absolutely.
I mean if there's one
message I hope to convey,
it's that science based
evidence based health advocates,
pediatricians, physicians,
public health workers,
anybody I want them to find
their social media voice,
because right now I think
that the anti science
anti vaccine groups can
kind of bully, threaten,
and overwhelm people,
but there's way more of
us than there are of them
and we have science on our side,
so I want you to find your voices,
and to feel comfortable and confident,
that you can do this,
and you have people that have your back.
- I love it.
Can I ask you a question?
And this is just.
- [Todd] Blue.
- Of course, I knew it.
What kind of milk do you drink?
Blue.
Because he's a Star Wars fan.
I'm gonna ask you a question from
colleague to colleague
about what I'm doing
and whether you think it's
a good thing or a bad thing.
When anti-vaxxers come on my page,
I have started just banning them.
I used to let them rant,
because people should see what they say.
Now I know, the 1% to
2% are just delusional
and unchangeable and I get messages
from the 20% who are like,
you helped me understand this.
Thank you.
Now I vaccinate my children,
or I am so scared.
I hear all these things.
I watch what you do.
I don't know what to do,
and then you can have a
good discussion, right?
Because you know that
they're willing to hear
at least an emotional argument,
and then the science,
as opposed to hitting
them with the science,
so we do all that, but there are times,
when there will be a
particular anti-vaxxer,
who will do something and I will launch
every missile in my armamentarium at once,
and it will be shame ridicule,
scorn, more ridicule,
ad hominems, everything they do to us,
I throw back at them with interest,
and it destroys them.
In other words, they disappear.
They stop because they've never
been attacked back at scale.
It's like you said, a bully
whose punched right in the face
by someone 17 times
stronger than them, right?
Which our platform is,
it just eviscerates them.
Now people have criticized me and said,
you're stopping to their level.
You're not using science.
You're talking about ad hominems.
You're this and that,
and I'm like yeah, there
are plenty of good people
like yourself, like Paul
Offit, and Peter Hotez,
that take the high road and
really have earned that.
My job is to fight dirty sometimes.
Do you disagree with
that as a premise for me?
- For you, I would say you
should do what's right for you,
and I think that is a reasonable approach
because I think you are taking this
from a completely different angle
than the groups that we talk to.
From the groups that we talk to,
and I need to kind of put that in here,
the number one strategy
we say, is don't engage,
because it'll overwhelm the resources.
You have a platform,
and you have resources,
and you have a message,
that I think comes at it from
a completely different angle
and I think to your point as we said,
when these people have something
thrown right back at them,
it really takes the
wind out of their sails,
but the question we get all the time
is what do we do,
and as Chad our
communications director says
is don't engage, hide, ban, and delete.
I do want to be clear again,
you're talking about the anti-vaxxers.
It's the other group,
where the communication science
really is lying right now,
which is you can't
throw data down at them.
You can't throw facts,
because what the communication science is
if you're already hesitant,
that causes you to dig your heels in more.
So it's making sure that we're nuanced
and understand that there's
actually some science
that's now on a platform,
that's come out of collaborative research
with the Indiana University,
John Parish Brow,
and Sanofi Pasteur Angus
Thompson that's called AMES
which is another kind of initial based,
acronym for announce,
inquire, mirror, and secure.
It's all relationship based.
It's communication science.
Relationship based.
First announce.
Just say today you're
gonna get the vaccine.
75% are gonna say yeah,
but if the 25% say oh I'm not sure,
you want to inquire and understand
what their concerns are,
not just immediately
say, look, don't worry.
Here's the numbers.
It's safe.
You want to.
The science behind this says
you want them to feel felt.
You want them to know that you know
what they're feeling, and if you do that,
you'll see an enormous
percentage of those people,
once they realize you're not there
just to shove something down their throat,
I just rounded the other day,
in the hospital and this mom
had refused the Hepatitis B for her baby
and I said can I ask you what's going on?
She said, nobody will answer me straight.
They basically tell me just
get the vaccine just because
and I feel like I'm being talked down to,
and nobody really is interested
in what my concerns are.
My mom told me I didn't have
to get all these vaccines
and I spent 25 minutes
with her in the room
just talking about it,
and she said, that was awesome.
She goes I'm fine getting it.
Nobody talked to me yet,
and that was all it took.
Back to your original question, yeah.
I think what you're doing
is amazingly powerful
and I think it does kind of take
a serious hit back,
at people that are
attacking us unrelentingly,
but I want everybody to be clear,
that this is relationship
based communication
to reach the people.
That chunk of 23% that will vaccinate
if we can help them understand
the real deal behind vaccines.
- Wow.
Okay, wow, wow.
What you just did was exactly
what I was hoping you would do
which is distinguish
between what we're doing
which is attacking 1% to 2%.
Shaming them off of the internet,
and what needs to be done to
communicate to our patients,
which are the 20% that are hesitant,
and what you just
described is so on point,
because it goes back to everything
we talk about with elephant and rider,
and this unconscious
emotional intuitive self
that we ignore when we
start throwing data,
because we're talking to
the little rider on top
but that rider is gonna dig in their heels
if their elephant is
scared or feels otherwise.
I want to go through that one more time,
before we end this.
A is announced.
- Is announced.
Because, and again, think of
this in efficiency manner.
75% are gonna say yes.
Today, Jimmy needs his
TDAP, HPV, and Mening.
- Let's do that.
You don't prime them and say,
you know a lot of people
are nervous about vaccines,
but here's the thing.
You go okay this is what
we're gonna do today.
If they then push back, and say hold on,
then you inquire.
What's your concern?
- Oftentimes HPV seems to,
and I serve on National
Management Board for HPV as well
I do a lot of work in that area.
- And you're covered with warts.
That's the other thing.
- Good makeup job by the way.
Thank you.
But I'll say, can you
tell me a little bit more
about what your concerns are.
In that case the HPV, I'll say,
can you tell me more what your concern is,
and you might start hearing
some of the disinformation.
I heard it sterilizes kids.
I heard it makes them more promiscuous.
I heard that and you go through
and you say can you tell me,
how'd you hear that?
Where'd you hear that?
My sister posted that
on her Facebook page,
and so then you kind of move
to the other side of the table
and say that would scare
the hell out of me,
if I thought that my kid
was gonna be sterilized
with this vaccine, right?
Really try and help meet
them on their ground
to understand through their eyes
what's terrifying them.
Then once you inquire and you mirror
what they're explaining is their concerns,
if they show you that they're
willing to talk further
which oftentimes is
shifting that conversation
over to I can see why you're scared.
Let's talk more about it.
You're already trusted right.
They're in your office
with their kid for care.
They already trust you,
because they came through your door,
so instead of beating them up with data,
take some extra time and understand
we all pressed to see the next patient
because of what the time
constraints are in medicine,
but that extra time,
whether when rounding
like I did with that mom
or in the exam room,
is enough to let them be heard.
To have a meaningful discussion.
To have a heart to heart with you.
They can open it up.
If after inquire, mirror,
it still wasn't there,
then you secure it,
you can say look,
I can see we aren't gonna agree on this.
We're gonna agree to disagree today,
but I think what's most important is
we both have Jimmy's best
health and interest at heart.
You're here for a visit.
I'm here to help provide care,
so let's see if we can
talk further next time,
but let's provide the care
that we both agree on today.
- That's an actionable
sequence and toolkit
that all healthcare professionals
can use to communicate.
- I'll tell you the International
Pediatric Association
has just adopted that.
When I was down in Panama,
that's what they were teaching,
and it's communication
relationship based science,
and we should all be better communicators.
At the end of the day,
we need to be better communicators.
- It's crazy to me,
that all we are is relationships,
and yet, we're kind of bad
at it a lot of the time.
We are reductionist.
We are materialist.
We're molecules.
It's really this,
and we're gonna have another
doc on the show tomorrow,
who is an end of life specialist at USC,
and her whole thing is,
words are like a scalpel.
Especially in palliative care.
You make cuts, you make incisions.
You have outcomes with your words.
They matter, so the relational
nature of what we do,
is at the heart of everything,
and what everything you've told me today
is about how we can
heal those relationships
and best use techniques to make sure
we're doing the right thing for patients,
and again, I think this just makes us
better human beings,
when we actually are able to.
It's a thing I like to call compassion.
It's love and concern in the face
of struggle and suffering.
That's absolutely wonderful,
and I think a pretty good
way for us to go out.
Unless you have any
other thoughts on this.
- No, I just again,
I think we all have a voice.
I hope we all can express
it on social media,
and educate and help our families,
and I'm super thankful for the opportunity
to be on the show today.
- Just so you guys know,
sometimes I get an email from a guest,
a potential guest,
and they're super enthusiastic
on the email like Todd was
and I don't know Todd.
We haven't spoken.
I look through some of the stuff.
I'm like this looks legit.
You know what.
Let's just take a risk and have them.
He'll come out and we'll
have him on the show,
and then I sit here and I'm just floored
at what a perfect perfect mouthpiece
for what we're trying to
teach you have been Todd,
so thank you for coming
out here on your own time,
teaching, and again,
doing everything you do,
to help us on the frontlines,
take better care of children, and adults.
- Thanks very much.
- Thanks again.
- Everybody, if you are a supporter,
thanks for supporting this show.
If you're not, become a supporter.
If you're still not,
and you don't want to be, that's cool,
but you know how you can help us,
share this video.
Tell your friends.
If you're listening to the
podcast, leave a review on iTunes
because that actually helps
bump us up in rankings
so we can keep up with these Peter Atias,
and these Neil Degrassi Tysons
and yeah, I just said it Degrassi,
because I don't respect you Neil.
All right, because I want your success.
Thank you again, to Todd Wolynn,
of Kids Plus Pediatrics in Pittsburg.
I got it right,
and we out Todd.
Thanks brother.
- Thanks.
