Aug 31, 2026 3-5pm ET
Monday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:
Hour 1
The Herd Immunity Fallacy Dr. Jennifer Smith argues that herd immunity is often oversimplified in vaccination debates, tracing the term to livestock science in 1894 when Daniel Elmer Salmon used it for well-fed hog populations, then to Bureau of Animal Industry work on brucellosis in cattle in 1916, mouse epidemic experiments by Topley and Wilson in 1923, and later application to human diphtheria, scarlet fever, and influenza, before mass vaccination campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s recast it as a policy goal rather than a description of naturally accumulating immunity. She defines herd or community immunity as enough people being immune through recovery or vaccination that a germ no longer spreads easily, notes that early researchers never settled on a clear definition, and says it can work only in a closed system, which does not exist because newborns lose maternal immunity and travelers can reintroduce disease. A 1933 observation that measles outbreaks could be prevented if about 68 percent of children had already been infected is contrasted with current estimates that roughly 94 percent population immunity is needed for measles, combining recovery and two vaccine doses. She lists reasons herd immunity may be unattainable for some diseases: frequent mutation and escape variants, short-lived immunity from infection or shots, asymptomatic spread, and environmental reservoirs such as tetanus, with influenza, RSV, and SARS-CoV-2 cited as poor candidates. During COVID-19, officials including Dr. Anthony Fauci discussed 60 to 80 percent or 75 to 80 percent immunity as an endpoint for normality, but Plotkin’s Vaccines textbook states that a vaccine protecting only against disease and not infection cannot reduce community transmission or confer herd immunity. CDC recorded 10,262 U.S. vaccine breakthrough infections from 46 states by April 30, 2021, then limited monitoring to hospitalizations and deaths, while New Zealand reached about 90 percent first-dose and 80 percent second-dose coverage with fewer than 1 percent previously infected before reopening, after which Omicron drove a sharp rise in cases. Moderna and Pfizer trial endpoints focused on symptomatic COVID-19 rather than infection or transmission, and a Pfizer executive later said transmissibility was not tested before rollout, so Smith concludes classical herd immunity was unlikely given viral mutation, waning immunity, births, and travel, and should be treated as a shifting balance rather than a fixed threshold or mandate justification.
Vinay Prasad: Public Health in This Country Is So Broken In an August 26, 2026 Reason interview with Zach Weissmueller, former FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research director Vinay Prasad said U.S. public health remains broken and politically captured, that he would not yet trust it again, and that working inside an 18,000-person FDA after DOGE cuts taught him more in one year than the prior decade and made him more libertarian, including openness to competing Consumer Reports-style approval bodies so Americans can choose different safety and efficacy bars. He said Anthony Fauci’s diaries and Slack messages around the Proximal Origin paper showed a gap between private doubt and public certainty on COVID origins, that Fauci funded EcoHealth work tied to Wuhan, pushed school closures including advice to Bill de Blasio, opposed Florida’s 2020 reopening, and promoted one-size-fits-all shots and boosters for young people who had already had COVID, adding he cannot think of a single pandemic policy Fauci got right. Prasad defended rejecting Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, later approved after he left, and a memo stating at least 10 children died after and because of COVID vaccination, saying staff first reported 10 possible, probable, or likely deaths that were later cut to seven for political or professional reasons after publicity, with a second unpublished memo adding three more in another age group, while the official post-departure report listed zero certain, five possible, and two probable deaths. He said myocarditis is a known mRNA side effect at rates as high as one in 3,000 in an Israeli report, that zero vaccine-related child deaths would be the implausible finding, that VAERS is passive and incomplete, and that mandating shots for healthy children and college students was a bad policy public health should admit. He distinguished raising the bar for healthy-population vaccines from more flexible rare-disease and gene-therapy pathways, supported some over-the-counter switches such as simvastatin, and said peptides are mixed, with some access fights driven more by patents than safety.
BREAKING: BioNTech mRNA Cancer “Vaccine” Trial TERMINATED Over Alarming Mortality Signal Nicolas Hulscher reports that BioNTech terminated Phase 2 trial BNT122-01 (NCT04486378) of its personalized mRNA cancer immunotherapy autogene cevumeran (BNT122/RO7198457) after an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board found a numerical imbalance in overall survival between treatment arms and recommended stopping treatment and ending the study, a recommendation BioNTech accepted. The trial enrolled about 327 patients with surgically resected high-risk Stage II or Stage III colorectal cancer who remained circulating-tumor-DNA positive and randomized them to the mRNA product or watchful waiting. Patients in the mRNA arm were scheduled for up to 15 intravenous infusions over about one year, six weekly doses in the first six weeks, two more at two-week intervals the following month, then seven doses every six weeks for the rest of the year. Overall survival measures how long patients remain alive after entering a trial, so an imbalance is a mortality signal, but BioNTech has not disclosed deaths per arm, mortality rates, hazard ratio, causes of death, or which group fared worse. Hulscher writes that the trial had already crossed a prespecified futility boundary in October 2025, meaning accumulating results were unlikely to show the intended efficacy, yet the company continued the study until the monitoring board said continuing was also unlikely to change the efficacy outcome. He frames the termination as another failure of the mRNA platform in cancer patients and calls for ending what he describes as unchecked expansion of mRNA technology.
Health Freedom Index: 2026 Edition The Center for Modern Health and West Virginia University’s Knee Regulatory Research Center published the August 2026 Health Freedom Index as a joint ranking of legal, regulatory, and policy environments in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, scoring the degree of choice available to patients, clinicians, insurers, and entrepreneurs rather than health outcomes, quality, or costs. Authors Jared Rhoads, Reinier Schuur, Colleen Smith, Alicia Plemmons, and Drake A. Thibodaux scored 54 unweighted policy variables on a 1-to-5 scale, with 5 meaning a less restrictive environment, then averaged them into five domains, Professional Freedom (13 variables such as license portability, postgraduate training, continuing education hours, and scope of practice for nurse practitioners, midwives, pharmacists, dental hygienists, and CRNAs), Institutional Freedom (11 variables including certificate-of-need limits, freestanding birth centers and emergency departments, compounding-pharmacy rules, provider taxes, practice ownership, and hospital rate-setting), Patient Freedom (10 variables including off-label speech, Right-to-Try, medical aid in dying, reproductive technology, and related access rules), Payment Freedom (11 variables including insurance benefit mandates, individual mandates, short-term plans, out-of-state insurers, HSA taxes, PBM rules, and Medicaid direct-pay options), and Delivery Freedom (9 variables including telepharmacy, online prescribing and eye exams, opioid-supply rules, Good Samaritan protections, and whether direct primary care is treated as insurance). Category scores average 5.0 at the top of each domain and the overall index averages those five categories, with reported overall scores ranging from 19.0 to 13.2. Arizona and Colorado tied for first at 19.0, followed by Idaho 18.8, North Dakota 17.9, Utah 17.8, New Hampshire and Montana 17.7, Maine 17.6, Oklahoma 17.5, and Oregon and Iowa 17.4, while New Jersey scored 13.2. Compared with the 2020 Healthcare Openness and Accessibility Project that this index expands, New Hampshire and Florida each rose about 26 places and Oklahoma about 13, with the authors warning that year-to-year shifts are approximate because variables changed. The report says small rank gaps are not meaningful and presents the index as a conversation starter on competition, voluntary exchange, and targeted reform.
Welcome back to another “Homeopathic Hits” episode on The Robert Scott Bell Show!
Today’s Homeopathic Hit is Mercurius iodatus flavus, also known as Proto-iodide of Mercury.
Boericke highlights this remedy for throat affections with greatly swollen glands, a characteristic yellow-coated tongue, right-sided tonsillar involvement, long-lasting induration after chancre, hard swollen inguinal glands, and mammary tumors with warm perspiration and gastric disturbance.
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Hour 2
The GNHS Team:
Mitch Fleisher, Kim Elia, Andrew Chambers, Annalisa Percy, Gregory Pais, Shonna Calica
Anonymous Client: “Mr. E”
Homeopathy in Action – Special Live Case Evaluation Follow-up: Today, Robert teams up with the expert homeopathic provider team at Global Natural Health Solutions (GNHS) for a special live look behind the scenes of homeopathic case analysis. The GNHS team regularly uses collaborative “Roundtables” to examine complex or highly layered cases, bringing multiple practitioner perspectives together to evaluate the full symptom picture and the nuances of the individual.
During today’s special event, Robert joins the GNHS providers as they follow-up on last week’s spotlight of an anonymous case submitted by a member of the audience and work through it together in real time. Viewers get a firsthand look at how experienced homeopathic practitioners compare perspectives, discuss symptoms and individual characteristics, and move through their clinical decision-making process step by step.
Remember Friends, The Power to Heal is Yours!
