Jonathan Howard and Wendy Orent open with new evidence on myocarditis risk among vaccinated and unvaccinated young people, revisiting how vaccine-associated myocarditis was amplified while the cardiac and mortality risks of infection were minimized. They then turn to the resurgence of measles, the consequences of falling vaccination rates, and the gap between public-health leadership and the urgency of the moment.

The heart of the episode is a wide-ranging critique of the lab-leak movement. Howard and Orent outline why they believe the available molecular, epidemiological, and geographic evidence supports a zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2. They argue that the debate has too often become a political weapon aimed at scientists and public-health officials, while zoonotic spillover, wildlife trade, habitat disruption, and pandemic preparedness receive less attention.

The conversation focuses especially on the contradiction between expressing intense concern about the first infection while partnering with or defending figures who promoted herd immunity through widespread infection. Through discussions of Matt Ridley, Alina Chan, Richard Ebright, Bryce Nickels, Jay Bhattacharya, and others, the hosts describe what they call "toxic apathy": treating the origin of infection number one as paramount while overlooking the preventable infections, hospitalizations, and deaths that followed.

• Why infection itself—not vaccination—was associated with the highest myocarditis, pericarditis, and mortality risk in the study discussed

• How fear-driven messaging about rare vaccine side effects may have shaped decisions among young people and parents

• The expanding measles crisis, falling MMR coverage, and the threat of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE)

• Why the hosts believe public-health leaders must communicate far more forcefully about measles vaccination

• The molecular, evolutionary, geographic, and epidemiological case the hosts present for zoonotic emergence

• Why secrecy by Chinese authorities does not, by itself, establish that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a laboratory

• How lab-leak advocacy became intertwined with attacks on Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, and other scientists

• The rhetoric used against researchers who support a zoonotic origin and the consequences of turning a scientific question into a loyalty test

• Matt Ridley's 2020 advocacy for infection-derived herd immunity and the claim that student infections could protect older adults

• Alina Chan's collaboration with Ridley and the hosts' critique of separating origin claims from pandemic-era policy positions

• Why knowing the origin of SARS-CoV-2 would not erase the need to prepare for both laboratory accidents and zoonotic spillover

• The episode's central warning: origin narratives should never become an excuse to abandon mitigation during the next pandemic

The hosts contend that pandemic preparedness requires more than assigning blame for how SARS-CoV-2 first entered the human population. It requires confronting misinformation, protecting people from preventable infection, supporting vaccination, preparing for multiple pathways of emergence, and judging public-health leaders by real-world outcomes.

• CIDRAP reporting on mRNA vaccination and myocarditis risk in teens and young adults

• The Great Barrington Declaration

• Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley

• Science-Based Medicine

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — Measles

We Want Them Infected examines the doctors, academics, pundits, and political movements that promoted widespread infection during the COVID-19 pandemic—and the lasting consequences of those ideas for public health.

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This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. The views expressed are those of the speakers. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional regarding personal medical decisions.

It's 2026, but according to Jonathan Howard and Wendy Orent, some of the most powerful voices in American public health still can't stop relitigating 2020.

In this episode of We Want Them Infected, Jonathan and Wendy break down a series of recent interviews and public appearances featuring Jay Bhattacharya, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and others. They examine claims about the childhood vaccine schedule, splitting the MMR vaccine into separate shots, vaccine safety, measles outbreaks, and the continued effort to blame today's public-health problems on decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They also revisit Bhattacharya's pandemic-era predictions and contrast them with his current role and responsibilities, including his responses to questions about declining public trust, vaccine misinformation, and the deadly CDC shooting.

Later, Jonathan and Wendy discuss the tragic death of Cambridge professor Jason Arday and the online rhetoric surrounding the story, leading to a broader conversation about "crank magnetism" and how extreme beliefs can cluster together.

• The push to change the childhood vaccine schedule and separate the MMR vaccine
• Stephen Miller's vaccine claims in the Oval Office
• Why Jay Bhattacharya keeps returning to the public-health decisions of 2020
• Bhattacharya's past pandemic predictions versus his current leadership role
• Measles outbreaks, vaccination rates, and public trust
• RFK Jr.'s claims about vaccine safety and Anthony Fauci
• Trump's comments about the volume and timing of childhood vaccines
• The CDC shooting and questions about the consequences of vaccine misinformation
• Bill Cassidy's defense of his decision to support RFK Jr.'s confirmation
• Fauci's diaries and renewed arguments over COVID vaccines and pregnancy
• The death of Jason Arday and the rhetoric that followed
• "Crank magnetism" and the overlap between misinformation and other extreme beliefs

We Want Them Infected examines the ideas, people, and policies that shaped the COVID-19 pandemic and continue to influence public health today. Hosts Jonathan Howard and Wendy Orent revisit the claims made by prominent pandemic contrarians and compare them with what happened in the real world.

A major surgical society has invited a former FDA commissioner to headline its clinical congress, introducing him with a bio that lists the bestsellers and the endowed chairs and mentions none of the pandemic-era claims, the accusations leveled at colleagues, or the circumstances of his departure. The hosts read the introduction in full, then read what it leaves out — and use it to make a broader point: the most dangerous thing happening in medicine right now isn't any single false claim, it's the speed with which discredited records are being smoothed over and their authors welcomed back onto main stages.

From there the conversation turns to a widely shared magazine essay arguing that public health should make common cause with the MAHA movement, and to the Substack defense of that essay written by the hosts of a podcast built around cross-divide conversation. The hosts read both at length and take them apart, drawing a distinction they say the "dialogue" camp collapses: how a physician talks with a vaccine-hesitant patient in an exam room is not the same act as platforming movement leaders who have invoked Nuremberg trials and Holocaust imagery against doctors. One is medicine. The other, they argue, launders danger into an intellectual parlor game.

The episode closes on what is being done to scientists in the meantime — a researcher detained at an airport, a retired NIH scientist taken from his home in handcuffs, an 85-year-old former agency director facing hearings whose stated purpose was imprisonment — and on the quieter counter-story: the people who have left the anti-vaccine movement, and the patient, unglamorous outreach that actually changed their minds.

Topics Include

• A surgical society's sanitized introduction of a former FDA commissioner — and everything the bio omits

• The medical-error-as-third-leading-cause-of-death statistic and its origins

• Why records should still be cited after someone leaves power

• Headlines: reported White House pressure on HHS over childhood vaccines; new data on flu vaccine effectiveness against pediatric mortality

• The Atlantic's "Public Health Needs MAHA" essay and the rebuttals from Science-Based Medicine and others

• "Name one hit" — what MAHA has actually delivered on pesticides, food, and chronic disease

• Podcasting as an end in itself: the "Why Should I Trust You?" roster and the ethics of platforming

• Violent rhetoric in the anti-vaccine movement: Nuremberg framing, Holocaust comparisons, and fundraising off both

• Reactionary centrism and the demand that the people who were right apologize to the people who weren't

• Public health didn't lose trust — it was politicized

• Fauci: the noble lie on masks, the decision to take the Fifth, and the campaign against him

• Scientists detained, arrested, and blamed for origins they had nothing to do with

• How deconversion actually happens — Vaxopedia, a five-minute conversation with a nurse, and the parents who changed their minds

About the Show

We Want Them Infected is hosted by Dr. Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist in New York City, and Wendy Orent, a science writer specializing in the evolution of infectious disease. The show covers medical misinformation, public health policy, and the people shaping both.

The views expressed are those of the hosts and guests.