Great conversation, Yascha. This format was much more informative -- and paradoxically, fairer -- to Dr. Prasad and his views than a speech or podcast by him alone would have been. Your questions served not only to highlight the holes in his reasoning, but where it was strong as well.

It's unfortunate that Dr. Prasad lets what appears to be a very personal animus against Dr. Anthony Fauci color his statements; you did a better job of getting him around this that he was able to do himself. The same for his insistence on the lab leak hypothesis: it was only under questioning that he was willing to state that his suspicions have not yet been proven. The same for the deleterious role that teachers' unions played in extending school closures to ridiculous extents. To his credit, Dr. Prasad owned up to both, but not without prodding.

As for the wisdom or lack of it of vaccination mandates, I think that to make any progress on that issue we need to get back to basics, which we seldom ever do in this discussion. The three great pillars of our faith in vaccination mandates are, antibiotics excepted, our three greatest public health triumphs of the past century: the conquest of smallpox, of polio, and of measles. I would find arguments against covid vaccination requirements more convincing if I heard some evidence that contrasted them with the results of those three epochal programs. Especially at a time when irrational objections to vaccination are eroding our longstanding and once thought irreversible progress against measles, that discussion has never been more important.