Dr. Drew trusted Fauci and ‘the experts’ — now he regrets it



When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Dr. Drew was among those who decided to trust the experts — but his initial reaction did not last long.

“At first, I was trying to get everybody to calm down. I could see the panic, the delusionality,” he tells BlazeTV host Alex Stein on “Prime Time with Alex Stein.”

“The part I really got wrong, I said, ‘Just listen to the CDC, listen to Dr. Fauci, I know these guys, let Fauci be your north star, he’ll get us through this,’” Drew explains. “I said that every single time, and that’s the thing I got the most wrong.”


“I was very active in the AIDs pandemic, I treated hundreds, maybe thousands of AIDs patients,” he continues. “He was extremely helpful for me as a practitioner working on AIDs patients. He was a good north star 35 years ago. Now, didn’t work out that way.”

Stein’s own faith in the medical community was rocked when his mother fell ill with COVID, and rather than saving her, the hospital put her on remdesivir against his wishes. She passed away just seven days later.

“I am not a conspiracy theorist when I say this. They wanted more people to die from this because it would make their narrative more true, that this was a deadly thing and that there wasn’t a 99% survival rate,” Stein tells Drew.

“My mom died in my arms. She went from talking to me, and then five days later, she can’t even breathe,” he continues.

“I’m very, very sure you should have lost faith. Public health proved itself to be a catastrophe,” Drew responds. “I can’t even believe the lack of caretaking, the fact that they all responded to centralized authority rather than their ultimate sacred responsibility of just taking care of the person in front of them.”

“It just didn’t seem like they even wanted to save my mom. And I’m not saying that they killed my mom, even though that’s how I personally feel,” Stein says, adding, “This is going to happen again, Dr. Drew.”

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Beijing previously indicated that fewer than 90,000 died in China from COVID-19. Turns out, the number is likely well over 1.5 million —  just in the first few months of 2023.



The Chinese communist regime tried to cover up the outbreak of COVID-19 and has done its best in the intervening years to downplay the strong likelihood that the Wuhan lab — known for its dangerous gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses — was the source of the virus that has killed millions worldwide.

The world has grown wise to both deceitful efforts. Now, it appears as though another narrative favored by Beijing is collapsing.

Whereas the Chinese regime suggested that the number of COVID-19 deaths inside China was under 90,000 since the beginning of the pandemic, the number is likely well into the millions — just for the first few months of this year.

As of Feb. 9, China's official COVID-19 death count was 83,150 deaths.

Researchers at the time suggested this figure was a gross undercount since it only included those infected with the virus who died in hospitals but not those who died at home, reported the New York Times.

According to the Guardian, beside requiring that COVID-19 deaths take place in hospitals to be counted, China also stipulated that only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure following a COVID infection would be counted, meaning sepsis and other complications associated with the virus didn't factor.

Zuo-Feng Zhang, chair of the epidemiology department at the Fielding School of Public Health at University of California, Los Angeles, told Time magazine in January the reported number was likely only "the tip of the iceberg."

On the basis of a report from Peking University, which indicated 64% of the Chinese population had been infected by mid-January, Zhang suggested 900,000 likely had died inside a window of just five weeks, presuming a conservative 0.1% case fatality rate.

Yong Cai, a demographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies mortality in China, told the Times that the official figure was "certainly an underreport of all [COVID] deaths. ... There's no question about that."

Shengjie Lai, an epidemiologist at the University of Southampton, intimated that with the hospitals overloaded and the ICU beds maxed out following the relaxation of China's "zero COVID" restrictions, many Chinese died outside of hospitals.

Earlier this year, the Times provided four estimates from academic teams concerning post-restriction death counts based on: 1) the Shanghai outbreak; 2) travel patterns; 3) recent testing data; and 4) American death rates. The estimates were 1.6 million, 970,000, 1.5 million, and 1.1 million deaths, respectively.

These stood in stark contrast not just with Beijing's official count but with the World Health Organization's claim that China has only seen 121,536 COVID-19 deaths since January 2020.

This week, official data briefly appeared on a provincial government website that hinted at the academic teams' estimates being in the right ballpark.

Cremation tallies were shared Thursday to the government website for the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, reported the Times.

While the data was only available briefly before being taken down, epidemiologists have since had an opportunity to pore over a cached version of the information.

They learned that cremations rose 70% in Zhejiang in Q1 2023 to 171,000 — 72,000 more than in the same period last year.

Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, reckons that if the new data out of Zhejiang, which has a population of roughly 65.8 million people, is extrapolated to China's population of 1.4 billion, the death toll is nowhere near the official count but rather "consistent with the estimates of around 1.5 million."

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Hong Kong reportedly also reached a rough estimate of roughly 1.54 million deaths from December 2022 through March on the basis of the cremation figures.

The Times further intimated that the cremation figures, coupled with substantial declines in life expectancy around China, are together indicative of untold carnage. If the real death count ever comes out of China, it will likely dwarf America's.

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Washington Post: Influential public health expert finally admits COVID-19 deaths are wildly overcounted, asks if people are dying 'from' or 'with' COVID



In February 2020, the first American died from COVID-19, according to health officials. In the nearly three years since, there have been 1,095,149 COVID-19 deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, a prominent public health expert warns that officials have been overcounting COVID-19 deaths.

Leana Wen is an emergency physician, CNN medical analyst, Washington Post contributor, and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Wen previously served as a global health fellow at the World Health Organization and as the president of Planned Parenthood.

Wen wasn't only a talking head on cable TV. Politico reported in April, "Wen also has some direct lines into the White House as part of a group of health experts who have received private briefings on Covid policy throughout the pandemic."

The White House has cited Wen's opinions about coronavirus in the past.

Wen rose to fame during the COVID-19 pandemic. The medical pundit made a name for herself by preaching hardline proposals such as not permitting unvaccinated Americans to travel. Wen urged President Joe Biden to enact draconian measures against unvaccinated individuals.

In September 2021, she proposed that anyone not vaccinated for COVID-19 should be barred from interstate travel, businesses should not serve the unvaccinated, called for mandating every American over the age of 12 to be vaccinated, and require all U.S. residents have a national proof of vaccination.

At the same time, Wen demonized unvaccinated Americans — comparing them to drunk drivers.

In October 2020, Wen demanded a national mask mandate and declared, "Masks work. They are the single most effective intervention we have to stop the tidal wave of COVID-19."

Last January, Wen advocated for universal masking regardless of vaccination status. She even championed wearing two face masks at the same time.

"Everyone should be wearing at least a three-ply surgical mask — a cloth mask on top can help with fit," Wen stated.

However, Wen said in December 2021, "Cloth masks are little more than facial decorations. There’s no place for them in light of Omicron."

On Friday, Wen arrived to a conclusion regarding COVID deaths that has been proposed by others years ago.

Wen penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled: "We are overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations. That’s a problem."

In the article, Wen asked a question that conservatives have been asking since near the beginning of the pandemic: "But are these Americans dying from covid or with covid?"

Wen proposed, "Understanding this distinction is crucial to putting the continuing toll of the coronavirus into perspective. Determining how likely an infection will result in hospitalization or death helps people weigh their own risk. It also enables health officials to assess when vaccine effectiveness wanes and future rounds of boosters are needed."

Shira Doron — the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine health system — told Wen that "some days" only 10% of those hospitalized at the Tufts Medical Center were there because of COVID-19 illness.

Robin Dretler — an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America — estimates that 90% of the patients at his hospital diagnosed with COVID-19 are actually in the hospital for another illness.

"Since every hospitalized patient gets tested for covid, many are incidentally positive," Dretler said.

Dretler added, "People who have very low white blood cell counts from chemotherapy might be admitted because of bacterial pneumonia or foot gangrene. They may also have covid, but covid is not the main reason why they’re so sick."

Wen suggested, "A gunshot victim or someone who had a heart attack, for example, could test positive for the virus, but the infection has no bearing on why they sought medical care."

"If these patients die, covid might get added to their death certificate along with the other diagnoses," Wen wrote. "But the coronavirus was not the primary contributor to their death and often played no role at all."

However, this concept of labeling COVID-19 deaths as something completely irrelevant is nothing new.

In July 2020, TheBlaze reported how deaths in Florida were wrongly attributed to COVID-19. A 60-year-old Palm Beach County man who died from a gunshot wound to the head was categorized as a COVID-19 death. The investigative team at WPEC-TV found that a "90-year-old man who fell and died from complications of a hip fracture" and "a 77-year-old woman who died of Parkinson's disease" were labeled as COVID-19 deaths.

In the same month, a man in his 20s was listed as a COVID-19 death despite dying in a motorcycle crash.

In November 2020, a 51-year-old Croatian man who died after falling off a 10-foot ladder was listed as a COVID-19 fatality.

In August 2020, TheBlaze senior editor Daniel Horowitz exposed how COVID-19 deaths were overcounted in Maricopa County, Arizona.

In fact, the CDC previously admitted that only a small percentage of COVID-19 deaths were solely from coronavirus. TheBlaze cited the CDC in August 2020, "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death."

Doron warned, "Overcounting covid deaths undermines people's sense of security and the efficacy of vaccines."

Wen concluded, "Most importantly, knowing who exactly is dying from covid can help us identify who is truly vulnerable. These are the patients we need to protect through better vaccines and treatments."

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Horowitz: Almost every single COVID death in Australian state was vaccinated

Unlike America, Australia did it “right.” The country implemented a “real” lockdown and de facto travel ban until vaccines were distributed. As such, the few deaths Australians experienced prior to the vaccines should be gone by now, right? In fact, nearly all their deaths have taken place after most vulnerable people got at least three doses of the magic juice. Indeed, not so magical after all.

An Australian writer has collated the recent reports from New South Wales Health and found that out of 798 reported COVID deaths in the most populous Aussie state over the past eight weeks, just two of them might have been unvaccinated. For the latest full week ending on July 16, all 142 reported deaths were jabbed and 68% of them were triple-jabbed.

They tend to avoid using the word “unvaccinated” and resort to telling people how many were fully vaccinated, so it’s unclear whether the two had one jab or zero jabs, but for argument’s sake let’s just say they were unvaccinated. This means that just 0.0025% of the COVID deaths in the state over the past eight weeks were unjabbed, even though the unjabbed compose 5% of the population.

Now, inevitably, naysayers will suggest that most of the vulnerable people are seniors, and they have a nearly 100% vaccination rate, so of course the deaths will be among the vaccinated. The problem with this premise is that it would only work if the raw numbers of deaths decreased, not increased, with the vaccination. In other words, you’d have even fewer deaths than pre-vaccination, but the few deaths there are would be among the vaccinated seniors. That is what you would expect from a vaccine that has anywhere near the efficacy against death that its proponents are suggesting.

As you can see, Australia didn’t really begin to start having problems with COVID deaths until the beginning of 2022, after nearly every Australian senior had been vaccinated. As of now, 94% of seniors have had three doses, and 60% even had their fourth! Yet 98% of their deaths took place in 2022 with Omicron, the least pathogenic version of the virus. And they are just getting warmed up, because they currently have one of the highest death rates in the world.

In fact, the only reason why Australia is not claiming the international title right now is because it is being outstripped by New Zealand, which, by far, has the highest death rate in the world. Just like Australia, New Zealand had a strict lockdown and travel ban until the vaccines were distributed. More than 98% of its deaths occurred after March 2022 – more than two years after the pandemic began.

Already in February, before the Omicron wave hit, 75% of those eligible for boosters in New Zealand had their third dose. The bottom line is that if this vaccine had any degree of efficacy even against death and serious illness, we should not be seeing endless curves only after everyone is boosted, much worse than ever before in these countries. This is occurring in all the Pacific Rim and Far East countries.



Prior to 2022, there were two parts of the world that skated through the pandemic without excess deaths: the Far East and Africa. Yet since 2022 began, the Far East has finally gotten its share of deaths, while Africa seems to be doing just fine with herd immunity. Take a look at the difference between some of the Far East countries and Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

What is the characteristic distinguishing these countries from Nigeria (and most other African countries) that occurred sometime in 2021, after both parts of the world seemed to do well with COVID?

It’s the magic juice! Sadly, the Western world is doing everything it can to push the shots on Africa to ensure that Africans share in the same misery. No control group can be left standing on earth.

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