Ask Dr. Drew - Actor Refuses mRNA Vaccine After Natural Immunity, Gets Cancelled. w/ Clifton Duncan - Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 144

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Clifton Duncan is an award-winning actor who says his career was cancelled after he refused to get a mandated mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 because he’d already been infected by the virus and had ��natural immunity.” The controversy led to the loss of his manager and his prospect of a five-figure weekly salary. “I refuse to allow any employer or, by extension, the government to act as my health care provider and to dictate what I inject into my body,” Clifton says. “I refused to be bullied or coerced or shamed into taking a medical product I neither want or need.” Clifton Duncan graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting from New York University’s Graduate Acting Program and appeared in critically-acclaimed productions on and off-Broadway. His TV slate includes work for NBC, Fox, CBS and Starz. Follow him at twitter.com/cliftonaduncan and listen to the Clifton Duncan Podcast. 「 SPONSORED BY 」 • BIRCH GOLD - Don’t let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get 10% off with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. Hundreds of millions of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine, and serious adverse reactions are uncommon. Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician and Dr. Kelly Victory is a board-certified emergency specialist. Portions of this program will examine countervailing views on important medical issues. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 GEAR PROVIDED BY 」 • BLUE MICS - Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue • ELGATO - See how Elgato's lights transformed Dr. Drew's set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/ 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And as you see there, yes, we're going to have Ed Dowd back for an update on all that data he's been collecting to see if things are getting better or worse or what we're going to make sense of all this. Speaking of making sense of things, Clifton Duncan is one of our favorite guests. He, of course, is the host of the Clifton Duncan podcast. He's a classically trained actor who got his Master's of Fine Arts from NYU. NYU, and he was a critically acclaimed, award-winning Broadway and off-Broadway star until he dared to raise his hand and say, I'm not sure I really want this vaccine thing, at which point he was summarily dismissed by his peers and, of course, the bureaucratic structures that be. I saw him speaking once. I forget where it was now, but I just thought, oh, I got to talk to that guy. He's got something to say. We had a great meeting with him a few months ago, and I have noticed he has been on fire

on Twitter lately. And I said, I think we need to get Clifton back in here because something's going on there. I don't want to hear what he's thinking. So, and just stay with us here in just a moment. I'll bring you Clifton Duncan. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre the psychopaths start this right he was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography ptsd love addiction fentanyl and heroin ridiculous i'm a doctor for where the hell you think i learned that i'm just saying you go to treatment before you kill people i am a clinician i observe things about these chemicals let's just deal with what's real and we used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and

to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. We'll be right back. or your style. There's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. A sportsbook worth a slam dunk. An authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager.

Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant

to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. And as always, watching the restream and the rumble rants, and we were out on Twitter spaces. I'm not sure if we're going to be taking any calls today or not, but apologies if we do not just to remind you, our schedule is getting a little wonky in the next couple of weeks.

We will be here on Monday with calls again. So we'll be able to ask your questions. Then we had a nice time yesterday talking to you guys. And then Ed Dowd on Tuesday with Kelly dunk, Kelly, Kelly victory for an update on his data to see what is going on. I've noticed that Dr. Malhotra has recently been posting some, I've actually retweeted, some data out of UK that looks very, very, very disturbing. And I posted some data yesterday where I said we we need to explain this. And of course,

Twitter, in their infinite wisdom, interprets that as, oh, you don't know what's going on. Don't you know it's the jab? Okay. First of all, we need to establish the denominator. We need to establish that our models are actually accurate for anticipated deaths. Is that accurate or not? Or is this excess death that we see and we think we're seeing growing real, or is it an artifact of novel, of our model? And if it's real, what the hell's going on? What is going on here? And why is the government silent? Why are all the government agencies silent? And why is the press silent? Why has not the press raised their hand and go, huh, some interesting data coming out of all of Western Europe and UK and the United States. And I'm wondering if that means anything. Let's just ask the question and see if somebody is willing to answer it and maybe interview a couple of people

about it. No, they are weirdly silent on the whole issue. And that to me is profoundly disturbing. I of course tweeted that and that doesn't get ratioed the way everything else does. Ratioed is always about what somebody said you said it's not ever what you said that's the extraordinary thing about twitter so let me bring in my friend clifton duncan he's the host of the clifton duncan podcast the latest episodes of the wacky world of woke theater i want to hear a little bit about that and married to the truth in a world divorced from reality, both very pertinent topics. Please welcome Clifton Duncan. There you are.

Like I use enough. Let's start with. Using a ratio now. You know the lingo now. Well, you guys taught me before the mics heated up. So now I appreciate it. I thought I knew what it was and I just had checked in with you guys. Do I really understand what it is?

So yeah, now I get it. So let's start with the guys. Do I really understand what it is? So yeah, now I get it. So let's start with the podcast. What is the Wacky World of Woke Theater? And what about truth in a world where truth doesn't exist? Well, so yeah, the Wacky World of Woke Theater, I had a wonderful lady named Mary McDonald Lewis, who a lot of people will recognize as the voice of Lady J from G.I. Joe. People are really excited about that. But she lives in Portland, Oregon, which is one of the most wokest places on the place of the earth. And she talked about how she got canceled for just not going along with the regime. And she's a font of wisdom and inspiration. And she talked about, I mean, my show is mainly based around artists. And if I can be an ambassador for

the arts in any way, then I'm happy to do that. So that's sort of what that's about. And then on my Rumble channel, so I'm building up my Rumble channel. I'm verified on there, by the way. So check me out there. That's wedded to the truth in a world, you know, divorced from reality. I spoke to a wonderful couple named Daniel Cotsen and Jennifer Say. Jennifer made waves when she was canceled by Levi Strauss and Company for speaking out about school closures. And she also they tried to make her do some kind of woke struggle sessions.

And then basically she got booted out and called a racist, which is if anyone knows her personally, they know that there's no way that's true at all. Her husband, Daniel, was a former uh democrat lawyer in san francisco he got banned from twitter for uh for his spicy hot takes a very very fiery guy and um just for nothing else just watch that episode to see the interplay between the two of them because daniel's like yeah fuck this and jennifer is like well you know she's like more she's like way more tactful. But no, they're both extraordinary people. I mean, I always have the best people on my podcast.

I mean, come on now. But things are going to go its way. I'm sure it's catching wind because you always have an interesting take. You're not afraid to express yourself, which I really do appreciate. And by the way, I got your little bio off the Mises Institute. Not everybody gets to speak before that. So again, every time, every place I find you, I'm thinking, well, my boy, it's crazy. It's how we, how do you show up here?

That's amazing. I don't know either, man, but it's hilarious to me. I said this in the speech as well. There's no reason I ever should have been at the Mises Institute. You know what I mean? There's just no reason, but also, but it's it's also weird you know because people are in these sort of little boxes right now so i have people now who are saying i can't believe you got wrapped up with those mises people you know these crazy farm like they're a bunch of economists dude like that's

that's it they're a bunch of nerds about the economy that's all that's all it is right yeah they are they are libertarians at heart and and they have And there's all kinds of subgroups within the libertarian groups. The Mises hates the, what's the, I always thought Mises and what's the other, shit. Keynes. The other economist, was it? John Maynard Keynes. Not Keynes, but the Keynes foil. Keynes foil.

Oh. Oh, help me, Caleb. Let's look up opposite of canes but anyway i always thought mises and that guy were in the same camp until i talked to some of the mises guy and they were deeply offended that i thought that so these are all these these fragments these factions within economics that only people within these factions really care you know that the that they're don't that their territory is maintained. In any event, it'll occur to me somewhere along the way. The other thing I noticed recently as it pertains to cancellation,

I was really kind of disturbed to see something Elon Musk tweeted today about how activists had caused such a profound drop in their ad revenues by muscling the advertisers that at least by his claim, that's what's leading to all the layoffs of all the Twitter employees. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, if there's a direct line to the layoff, but what does concern me is something I have seen over and again is these small groups of so-called activists destroying things on behalf of other people, really being destructive. I don't understand why the board here, the county board in Los Angeles listens to these people.

I don't understand why the state of California listens to these people. I don't understand why the advertisers of California listens to these people. I don't understand why the advertisers on Twitter listen to these people. They are destructive, awful people that seem to be interested in nothing except dismantling what is. Well, you know, there's a few things going on. You use the word dismantle. I mean, they're very much into deconstructionism right now. They want to, they believe that we exist in a massive sort of white European patriarchal capitalist cis-hetero normative society that must be taken down and destroyed. Of course, what they want to replace it with, you know, it's a utopian vision, which of course is impossible.

It literally means no place. But my issue is less with the activists themselves, because I think they're actually very small in number. And we all know that they're morons. But it's the people on the outskirts who are watching it, and they're just kind of trying to go along to get along. They don't say anything about it. I mean, for the longest time before I was purged from the entertainment industry, I just, you know, for a while, it's just like, why would I allow myself to be bullied by people who are so obviously imbecilic? You know, but I think what's more insidious about it, maybe what's most insidious, is that they play on, they take advantage of people's desire, A, to avoid conflict, but also their desire to just be good people. It's sort of weaponized, and they're weaponizing empathy in a way. We want to be nice people. We want to be kind. We want to be accepting. We want

to be tolerant, so to speak. We want to be inclusive, I think. I think most of us want to be, if we're not more live and let live, you know, it's kind of leave me alone. Don't bother me. Just, you know, you might, you might be kind of weird, but whatever. We also just, we want to be considered kind and caring and you don't want to be on the wrong side of an issue. So we're sort of dealing with these competing virtues right now, I think, in society. It's, you know, it's like, do we want to be nice people or do we want to stay rooted in, uh, reality and things that are smart? And, uh, it is possible. It is possible to do both. It is possible to be civic minded. It is possible to be community engaged and possible to be pragmatic and be roll up your sleeve and solve problems by the way without being uh toxically

masculine or white supremacist you can do all those things you and not be those horrible things it's possible and yet uh you're called names for doing any of them no well i don't even believe like i don't my i don't even say toxic masculinity anymore i just say what we used to say which is asshole you know like the people that uh the people i found that i like that and and by the way there's there's something strange about it because people talk about toxic masculinity but they never seem to want to touch uh touch on gang culture for instance they never want to talk about that i feel like that could be a subject you never see these uh roigy biv haired uh fat feminists going down into like the ghettos in

baltimore and cincinnati and chicago and and lecturing those people or south central talking about toxic masculinity it's funny how that works isn't it um interesting yeah it is interesting by the way the economist i was trying to think of was hayek hayek oh hi i was at hayek and mises yeah i always thought hayek and mises were serving the same camp until i talked to the mises guys and they're like oh fuck that so anyway so the the point is it's it's libertarianism it's about you know letting letting all boats rise getting everybody you know nurtured into into engagement and doing better and productivity and creativity. And I don't understand why that's not something that everyone would want to sign up for. I understand that it needs some regulation.

Go ahead. Well, people also, they try to label them as extremists when they don't know anything. I'm like, dude, one of their foundational principles is a non-aggression principle. They literally are just like, don't tread on me and nothing's going to happen. Don't F, well, we can say fuck, that's right. Don't fuck around and you won't find out. It's so bizarre how people get sort of miscast and mischaracterized, especially on Twitter. Are you feeling any differently about your peers?

Last time we talked, you were like, geez, I don't think I ever want to go back to the arts community that treated me so horribly. No. Look, right now, so I've made this joke lately because you see all these articles, article after article now about how shows are closing, about how audiences are slow to come back. And this is a worldwide phenomenon, by the way. I just got off of a call with a wonderful British lady who was saying the same thing's happening over there. But what they'll say is, you know, audiences are slow to return after the pandemic. And, of course, they say it's because of the pandemic and not the ridiculous response to it.

And like I posted the other day on Twitter, somebody was complaining on social media about a show at the Metropolitan Opera, which is one of the most prestigious institutions in the US for opera. And they were like, oh my God, this cast is amazing. The singing is wonderful, but why is nobody buying tickets to this?

And it turns out that maybe if you treated COVID like the Black Death and you alienated swaths and swaths of a foreign and domestic audience and you terrified your own patrons from being indoors, they're not gonna come to see your shows. On top of that, you helped crash the economy. So people can't even afford to go see these shows now. So what I say now is that people might say, oh, it's just sour grapes. Yes, I'm dining on a banquet, a full banquet of sour grapes, but I'm washing it down with some sweet, sweet schadenfreude right now. And it tastes great. I'm watching everything just burn down.

And they did it to themselves. They let the government call them non-essential in a city where the arts are big business and it's part of the city's identity. And they said they were deemed less essential than McDonald's and liquor stores. And now they're finding out they're getting a very harsh lesson in just how non-essential the public thinks they are. Meanwhile, I mean, UFC is still going strong.

People are still going to football games and basketball games. So, you know, sorry. And it's not just the people. They also chased out everybody that could afford Metropolitan Opera tickets. You know, they chased them out of the city or told them they're bad or they don't need them anymore or taxed them so much or whatever they just got they got rid of their fan base who can pay 300 you know a seat it's like that's it's why are we surprised and by the way what what you're a cut you're accustomed from the arts as you said the woke theater you're accustomed to going in there and being preached at

and people are just and same thing with movies, same thing. All these things are sort of like, I just want something good. I want to escape. I want some, I want to sort of have experience of awe at the, at the rapture of the music. I don't want to be, I don't want, I don't want a sociology lesson. And this is how disconnected these people are as well. You know, it's, it's after two years, right. Of being beaten down, of being horrified, filled with angst, filled with terror. People, you know, people lost people, obviously, the tragedy of that. Why would you return? Nobody wants to see, sorry, you know, a gender and race swapped, genderqueer revival of 1776. Even the critics dumped on that show. Nobody wants to see this. Nobody wants to talk about the programming right now. That's really problematic and bad. From what I hear, the COVID protocols are still pretty strong there. They've just extended them. They can't even keep enough swings and understudies in shows right now. People are

always calling out. Shows are closing prematurely. I mean, it's just ridiculous. But they did it, like I said, they did it themselves. So I can't really feel bad about it. I can only sit here from the outskirts and do my little podcast and bullshit on Twitter and laugh about it. It is interesting that it's to the point of them doing it to themselves. They're still in a bit of a panic, not a bit, a total panic about COVID, where if one person shows up with a it was a community theater production, but sort of a high-end community production. And a couple people got COVID.

And the conceit was, we care about our audience too much to keep going. Because somebody could expose somebody to something. It's like, no, test everybody. They're all negative. On with the show. On with the show. Let's go. But no, no, no.

Somebody's uncomfortable in the cast that we might hurt the audience well you know or instead of testing everyone just have faith that your audience just don't want to yeah well you know well look well our union right the actors equity my former union the actors Association, they sent out an email back in 2020, and they said explicitly that the adage that the show must go on is not only unsafe, but also racist. And I'm thinking to myself, hold on, we used to pride ourselves as performers, especially performers in New York City, on being tough, on persevering. Whatever's happening, you show up, you have an obligation, you have a duty to this paying audience to put on the best show of your life because they've never seen it before. But now we're so fraught with safetyism and this idea that we have to protect everybody and sanitize for everyone's protection.

It's like, no, why don't we let people make their own decisions and take their own risks and get on with our lives. Life has to go on. By the way, I've taken care of a lot of Omicron lately, and I've noticed that typically people aren't even converting. In other words, they're not really producing significant amount of virus until like day three of symptoms. So they know they're sick by the time they're infectious. This idea of asymptomatic spread, uh-uh. I'm telling you that is not a thing. And even symptomatic spread, it takes a few days before you're likely to infect somebody else. And even then, it seems to be, I'm not going to go on the record with this one,

but my experience has been it's kind of a narrow window of infectivity. But again, that may be my experience. But definitely a pattern that it takes a couple days before people start producing the virus to be infectious. So Emily Oster wrote an article in The Atlantic about just this is what got my attention. Clifton was tweeting quite a bit about this, that we just can't we all just get along. Let's just leave this thing behind us. The mistakes were made. And let's give a nod to Emily because she was actually somebody that helped get the schools open, right? She was on the right side of that. Before that, she was in the Clifton had also tweeted this particular cartoon, put this cartoon up in response.

Let's read the, can you read the caption there, Susan? Are you able to read it for us? Read the, it shows somebody being burned at the stake. Witches after all. Okay, hold on a second. Hold on a second. It shows two pilgrims, two settlers from the 16th century

burning somebody at the stake, and they're saying to each other, Susan... Mistakes were made on both sides. No, no, no, the first part. Oops, turns out they weren't witches after all. Oops, as she's burning up, and the person's burning to death, and then they... I think Clifton should have read it, because I'm not that good. Then they call out, what, Susan?

Mistakes were made on both sides. That's right. Sorry you burned to death, but mistakes were made on both sides. And people like Clifton, who was someone burned at the stake, I myself was too when I think about it. There were a lot of people burned at the stake that are like, no, no, no, no. It can take a little more than just flat out amnesty, at least acknowledging where you are wrong, apologizing and amends. By the way, amends is

cleaning up your mess and then talking about what we do to make sure this never happens again. Yeah. I kind of felt bad for Ms. Oster oster maybe dr oster i don't know um because she just she um the piece just unleashed so much rage i believe i believe when i tweeted about it i believe my quote was you can fuck right off with this shit um as eloquent i think i saw that i think i think the cartoon was just a kinder, gentler version of that. You know, well, because for me, you know, it's not that any sort of forgiveness is bad. So, you know, per se, it's just that to me, it was so tone deaf and disconnected from all the damage that's been done. I mean, there is not one element of society I can think of right now, either on a political level, an economic level, an interpersonal level that hasn't been affected by the hysteria,

the complete mismanagement, some might say fraud and corruption that's happened over the past couple of years. I mean, they've destroyed just about everything or brought it to the brink of destruction. And so I'm not going to sit back and be like, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, you know what? Come here, man. Give me a hug. I'm not going to do that. I lost so much by saying what I've said, by taking my position. And sure, people will say you made your choices. That's fine. As you can see, I mean, I'm pretty nonplussed about it. I'm laughing right now for various reasons. But so many people, I mean, I know people who's, I mean, one woman I know, her stepson died within 12 hours of taking the JMJ shot, which is safe and effective, by the way. But he wouldn't have taken it.

Don't worry, we'll post that. Okay. But he wouldn't have taken it if he weren't coerced into doing so in order to maintain his job. And that's the point about all of this this is that there's so much damage has been done. People have been divorced. You know, there was some study I read the other day that I saw the other day that, you know, in 2020, instances of like childhood head trauma had increased massively. So there's all these kinds of effects that have happened, not to mention overdoses, suicides, you know, all kinds of things that they did. And for what benefit? That's the main question, because then these same people will turn right around and say, well, a million plus Americans died. Really? So we did all this stuff. And yet these people still died.

Are you I mean, so what's been the benefit of all of this? And so once you see all of that and you're one of those people who's been affected by it, it's hard to just walk away and say, you know what, that's cool, man, we all good. Yeah, you know, Clifton, I think it is important to kind of walk through that data a little bit because we rarely, and I really try to understand it

from the standpoint of people who defend what was done. But the fact is, it's a fact that the virus may have slowed what it did but it did what it did and was going to do it no matter what we did that the zero covid policy was was an insane idea that they adopted from the chinese communist party who continues this insanity it could never work with a respiratory virus it didn't work it. It killed as many people it was going to kill anyway. And in the process of the hysteria around the categorical actualization of that plan, they harmed God knows how many people.

And they're not even taking an accounting of that, not to mention what they did to the generation of school children, not to mention what they burdened the marginalized and often black and brown kids are going to get disproportionately. The ones they were so, so interested in creating the equity for are the ones they harmed the most. How about you don't really look at this, you don't let it happen again. Think about what we'll do differently next time. There's a lot we have to do, though, I'm afraid, though, in terms of curtailing the totalitarian power of our public health system.

That's an unfortunate thing that has been shown to be the case, and that the people who are making those totalitarian decisions often are woefully under-trained to make these decisions and themselves were in an absolute panic, had a set of priorities that were just wrong, and could not make a risk-reward analysis to sort of temper some of their approaches. Then, on top of that, anyone who dared to question, raise their hand, asked to think about alternative interventions or what we're doing were people, and often the very best and brightest people, people with prolonged academic careers, extraordinary pedigrees had to be crushed as marginal marginal and quacks and those are turning out to

be the people that were speaking not a categorical truth but but a tempered approach that would have saved god knows how many lives as the excess deaths accelerate on a daily basis in western world i'll let you sort of react to that. Yeah, sure. Well, it was fabulous. It was wonderful. You mentioned the T word, totalitarianism. That's been a big part of this. I mean, one of the offensive things about Emily's article, she mentioned when we were in the dark about COVID. Well, you put yourselves there. Because as you just said, we had people from the beginning who were saying don't close the schools for a protracted period of time this is going to happen to you or this is what's going

to happen to society and to these kids and who it's going to affect the most don't uh don't shut down uh don't shut down the economy don't shut down all these businesses because this is what's going to happen not just on a local level but on a global scale the the i mean the unicef put out uh you know an article i think it was in 2020 that were like dude millions of children are going to starve as a result of supply chain disruptions and and economic uh uh disruptions as a result of these policies and so but they completely ignored any of these warnings. And I'm just a dumb fucking actor, right? Why is it that I'm somebody who's able to say, well, you know, to have some kind of a concept about a risk benefit analysis? Why is it somebody like me who's out there saying,

and part of my rejection at the beginning of all this was like, you know, I'm somebody who, my bleeding heart, my sensitive soul, I'm saying everything we're being asked to do to mitigate the spread of this virus is antithetical to living a rich, fulfilling life, which is going to be a part of keeping you healthy. You know, these people just they seem to be so disconnected who are making these decisions. Not only are they seem unqualified to, you know, to make these medical choices and government choices or policy choices, but also just life choices. And, um, I just, so, so for Emily and I, I don't want to come down on her specifically, but I mean, she wrote the shit. So there you go. But, uh, to say that, you know, we were in the dark about this. Um, I'm like, no, well, you blinded yourselves. You, you had blinders on. That's why you thought you were in the dark, but there were people who were screaming,

don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And you said that they were a bunch of fringe conspiracy theorists or as Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci said, Anthony Fauci's a fucking cunt by the way. It's an inside joke. YouTube, not the opinion.

Sorry, it's a joke he's very nice and agreeable we all like Anthony Fauci he's fine but they just didn't listen to people and they dismissed them completely people with you know Nobel laureates Ivy League scientists

who were saying don't do this and they just completely refuse to do it so again i'm not going to say it's all cool bro and you and give you some amnesty or whatever when you're the people who've been acting you know poorly sorry about that i just i can't do it yeah and you last time we spoke you said something that has stayed with me to this day is and it's you paraphrased it a little bit in what you just said which they took which they took away from us. This is your quote. Cause I will never forget it. They took away from us everything that made life meaningful. That was your quote. And I thought, wow, he is so exactly correct. That is exactly what it felt like, like life, the me. And, and by the way, since you've said

that to me, I've noticed there's generations of young people who are having real difficulty finding meaning again. There's a lot of nihilism and what's the purpose. As you said, the arts aren't thriving. The things that would normally give us the richness and create the meaning, it's hard to know what to care about. For me, it's inexcusable, especially for artists. I've made this point recently is that, you know, especially as actors, right, we're supposed to be in our loftiest ambitions, you just kind of sit back and go along with everything. That's been one of the most eye opening things for me. We've totally failed. We have failed our public. We have failed our society. You know, in many ways, I think, you know, this is not terminology I would have used,

you know, before all this started. But, you know, the soul of our society, the soul of our culture, the spirit of our culture, we give them soul food and we've completely just said, nah, pay me not to work. Meanwhile, you have restaurant owners, barbers, gym owners fighting tooth and nail against their own government just to stay open. I came down to Atlanta, people are working, which didn't really close down that much. People just work in 12, 14, 16 hour shifts, trying to make something out of their lives. But these pampered, pretentious, quote unquote, progressives living off of Broadway royalties from Broadway cast recordings. A lot of people are still work. We're still working on TV, doing commercials or whatever, collecting residuals, all that stuff. So they're

sitting pretty they're still doing their stuff but everybody else has you know has to shut down uh you know their their own businesses or they're killing people it's just it's i i'm so disappointed in these people is this this is your tweet everything we're being asked to do in order to mitigate the spread of this virus goes against everything that makes life worth living yeah that's it there it is said on the episode on August 23rd. Yeah. I'm impressed that you got that up. That's fantastic. It was a profound statement. And before I take a little break here, I want to do a couple things. I want to go back around on Dr. Fauci and explain my situation with him. He has been a guiding light for me most of my career.

He's somebody I've looked up to my entire career. And now when I look back on some of the things that some of his excesses back during the AIDS epidemic and things, I, I, the seeds of this moment were clearly sown. He, he, uh, asked us to use fear to, uh, he kept saying, there's going to be 2 million AIDS deaths, 2 million AIDS deaths.

You have to go out and scare people and tell them. And so fear and models that predict excess death were his sort of, that's his bread and butter. And he was not kind to dissenters back then either. It was not as obvious as this one, but I think now when I see his biases now, and again, I have a hard time. I choke on not admiring him.

It's hard for me because you spend a career following somebody, listening to somebody, admiring them, and then they do stuff that you think, what are you doing? The other thing that troubles me is some of these people, someone said that Ezra Klein has been saying this lately, believe that it was executed properly, that they think everything was done the way it should have been done. Yeah, and I can't, I always try to understand the other side of the table when people have opinions that are different from mine, but I can't get it.

I can't understand it. Here it is. If you talk to someone like Ezra Klein, the editor of the New York Times, he would say basically they made no mistake, same fauci from chucky cheese and i and to me that's i think he's right i i do but you want to react to that go ahead i do because i you know well there there is a i have no idea well i have some opinions about it but but why all of these quote-unquote elites or the intelligentsia whatever you want to call them think that it's a great idea that we should copy the approach to the pandemic that was taken by a totalitarian regime across the world which has no regard

what yes yeah it's weird and and and in doing so i i understand that they got hoodwinked and they were lied to and by their Chinese counterparts and things. And then they got in a panic and they were doing the best they could. Okay, I can have a charitable interpretation of what happened. But you harmed people. To say you didn't harm people in the process, that is disgusting. That is disgusting to the people that were harmed. So let's take a little break and then I'm going to let Duncan pick up right there.

Consumer price index yet again going up. Stock market in turmoil. What's our government doing to quell the surge of inflation that is gutting American families? Oh, yeah, they're spending more money and adding to the burden. Don't bury your head in the sand while your savings get decimated. It's time to do something about this. Visit birchgold.com slash drew.

Now, I don't give investment advice, but you can visit birchgold, B-I-R-C-H, gold.com slash drew. Birch Gold will send you a free info kit on protecting your savings with gold in a tax-sheltered account. Great people with almost 20 years of experience converting IRAs and 401ks into precious metals IRAs. Don't let your savings lose value.

Visit birchgold.com and claim your free no-obligation info kit from Birch Gold. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Birch Gold has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews, and thousands of satisfied customers. Check them out now. Visit birchgold.com slash drew and secure your future with gold. Do it now. For a long time, I've been talking about the holy grail of skincare, GenuCell, and the amazing results that both Susan and I have seen. I'm a big fan of GenuCell's Silky Smooth XV. It's a moisturizer soaked right into my skin instantly, and with its immediate effects, I saw fine lines and wrinkles visibly disappear within 12 hours. Susan loves GenuCell's Vitamin C Serum. Infused with the purest vitamin C, absorbs to the deepest layer

of the skin thanks to GenuCell's proprietary skincare technology. I am a snob when it comes to using products on my face. The dermatologist makes a ton of money for me. But when I was introduced to Genucel, I was so happy because it's so affordable and it works great. I was introduced to the Ultra Retinol Cream, which I love at night. All the eye creams are amazing. People notice my skin all the time, and I'm so excited because it's actually working. And right now, Genucel has bundled my favorite products and Susan's for you to try today for up to 60% off retail pricing. That's right. Save up to 60% on my favorite GenuCell products today. Just go to GenuCell.com

slash Drew to see what's in our bundles and receive an extra 10% off at checkout when you enroll in their personal concierge at checkout. That again is GenuCell.com slash Drew, G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash D-R-E-W. We are back with Clifton Duncan. I want to give him a chance to pick up where I left off. Clifton, I don't know if you had something to say after my little diatribe there, but go ahead. Oh, well, you know, I just finished talking to, there's a very interesting guy. I don't know if you've heard of him named Michael Sanger, who was banned from Twitter, actually. But he wrote a book basically about Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party and how they were drivers of a

lot of stuff. And, you know, I don't want to get too much into it, but, you know, I think it's a worthy read. It's a very shocking read. But this idea that you see all these sort of, and I'm going to say that I hate to be this partisan about it, but all these like left wing intellectuals, so to speak, like an Ezra Klein, just signing off on this and saying that we should do what China, or that we did it correctly. And, um, you know, it just flies in the face of all reality. And I just, I don't understand. There it is. Um, I just, I don't get, uh, well, I mean, some people might say it's, it's, you know, there's some money here at play. Maybe there's like an ideological perspective that, that they, uh, you know, that there's like some tentacles there and, and, and they're sort of media apparatus, but apparatus but um it's just strange because then like you said uh you said earlier drew that you know if remember early on when they were like you

know china has eliminated virus well if that were the case then why are they still locking people down they they clearly didn't do it so you know why why would we emulate what they did which didn't work obviously it just doesn't make any sense to me right they're not they're not there there's no logic here i i think i think again i i always try to take the other position right so i think somebody that was defending what china did would say well because of their extreme reactions they may may have mitigated deaths from alpha and delta Like perhaps they really were able to kind of dampen those first waves with what they did. I don't know that that's true because we can't rely on any of the data that came out of there. Let's remind ourselves, they had enough of a surge that they had to build new hospitals overnight to deal with it. And we certainly saw lots of images of young people dying, whether that was real or not. Who the hell knows? But they got hit pretty good.

And I don't know that lockdown did anything other than the usual ebb and flow of a pandemic. It comes and it goes. The same thing happened in New York City. It came hard, and then it goes down. But locking down, it's not clear that it does anything. It's never been used before. There's no evidence for it. I mean, what's the evidence?

Did somebody do a study of lockdown versus focused quarantine? No, it's never been done. The lockdown was made up out of whole cloth by the Chinese Communist Party. The idea of six feet was made up out of whole cloth by the National Institute of Health and the FDA. They were trying to decide between three feet and 60 feet. And they finally decided, oh, six feet sounds right. People will comply with that. And it'll help. Then masking. There was excitement about the Danish study on masking. Finally, we're going to find out what masking does. Turned out to be completely negative. No one will publish it. New England Journal had it on the slate to publish,

sent it away. JAMA won't publish it. Finally published in Annals. It was a negative study. Bangladesh, negative study. Showed no effect. Now, you can wear your N95 mask. It probably does help individuals from getting it when you're immediately exposed to somebody, but you don't save anybody else. This hysteria around you're going to kill grandma if you don't. And I want to get real with you about the grandma thing, too, in a second. But you're going to kill grandma if you don't wear your mask, if you don't isolate, and if you don't take your vaccine. And all these things that you could not question, you were picking up a gun and shooting old people. Well, you know, there's a, you know, going back to what Sanger was talking about, he covered this concept called Fang Kong, F-A-N-G, K-O-N-G.

And it's this marriage, public health and crime, this idea that, uh, you know, you could reeducate somebody like, you know, someone has a sort of mind virus. And, um, that's sort of what I saw with the whole, you know, you're going to kill grandma thing, which is if you have this ideology, which says that, you know, we need to, we need to take a better risk benefit analysis. We need to do more focus protection, yada, yada, yada. Um know, I don't think there's any, there's much benefit to wearing these specific kinds of masks, whatever. It's sort of like a mind virus. And that mind virus makes you culpable in the murder of other people. They're casting people as criminals. It's very, it's such a dangerous, divisive thing to do. And the fact that, but it was also, it was so, so utterly effective, the sort of psychological destruction programming.

Some people might say psychological operation. It's such a loaded term. But the propaganda on that has just been insane. So, again, it's hard. So even if we were to say, you know, let's forgive and forget, give some amnesty, it just seems like the psychological damage has been done. I don't know how you reverse that. Because I mean, there's no amount of data you could show these people. There's no amount of logic or common sense that you can say to these, that you can give these people. I mean, we're almost three

years in, the people are still putting their kids in masks. I'm here in Atlanta, right? Atlanta, they had a really lackadaisical response. You can go to one block and masks weren't required, but the block next to that, you have to wear your masks. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I think largely here that the pandemic is pretty much over for people, but there's still people down here who are putting their kids in masks and who are walking around, you know, driving by themselves with masks on. I saw somebody the other day with like a big fat individual with a big heavy beard with two masks on. What are you doing? You're not doing anything. And for me, that's really unforgivable, the sort of psychological damage they've done, the psychological toll they've taken on people with this endless stream of propaganda. And the fact that someone like an Ezra Klein can just say, oh, we did it all right.

Yeah, I don't think so, buddy. Sorry. I think you're wrong about that. Yeah, and it's become sort of a religious, there's a definite religious quality to all of it with sinners and dirty people and outliers and and there's a canon and then there's there's blasphemy and then there's rituals and if you do the rituals no matter how ridiculous they are the more you signal your unity with the religion and it also because it's so non-rational, it begs no discussion. That's what's sort of scary and frustrating about it.

Yeah. You know, well, it goes back to the, um, I mean, I just think about totalitarianism, you know, this idea that you can't, you can't discuss and debate publicly. There's only one way to do things. And if you don't say this, then, you know, you don't have a job, you don't get to travel. Um, not even allowed in these in these uh public spaces it's very very uh strange but i mean you call it a religion um i think a religion still has an air of respectability so i call them a cult you're much more kind than i am okay cult is good cult is good there's sociologists that believe that most religions start as cults so there's a relationship there maybe historically well what what do you what do you think happened to us what what what is the mass formation what

what do you have a theory you've been thinking about this a while you've been you know sort of doing podcasting talking about it do you have a theory about what what happened to us and by the way it happened to the whole world which i find it's easy for me to look at the American psyche and go, oh yeah, we were, you know, we got some stuff going on. We've had a lot of trauma and we've had a lot of, you know, a lot of reasons I could make it up. I could sort of make up a story that would explain the American response, but the whole world did it. It's incredible. What happened? I think, and again, as someone who is quite staunchly atheistic, you hear conservatives talk all the time about the God-shaped hole in society. Now, I'm not saying that religion or God or anything like that is the answer, but there is

clearly a... One of the things that really struck me at the beginning of all of this was that how many people were so willing to just sort of abandon any sort of connection and human connection, interaction, and warmth, and just kind of stay inside forever. And to me, I'm like, God, what kind of loser are you that you have nothing going on in your life? And I think that's kind of part of it. There is a, I mean, there's a huge lack of meaning that people don't, don't have in their lives. There's nothing,

there's nothing there at their core. I think that's, that's part of it. I agree. And the guys that, that Desmond, Dr. Desmond and blank in his last name now too,

who T. S. Des and Matthias Desmond, right. Who had sort of been thinking about this for years well before the pandemic he had a he was trying to understand how you know things like nazism and these things you know and bolshevism and all the stuff sweeps and one of the things he had on his list was meaning lack of meaning meaning making reduced meaning making and i would argue that's exacerbated

now that's not better that's worse right now well i also think that on top of that right so it makes me think about um when i was in conservatory there was a my my voice and speech uh teacher at one point um she talked about how we're more married now to technology and this idea you know there was a time right where like if you if you're like living in anton chekhov's time and yet you're writing a love letter or something you have to wait a week or two to get the response. You know, there's a sort of psychophysical connection with the pen and the paper and you're translating your thoughts and, you know, and getting that back to you. And, you know, you're more connected and rooted to nature and reality. But now, you know, we have all this artificialness around us, all this artifice, all this technology that we're increasingly reliant on.

And that is also disconnecting us. We feel like we're more connected globally with everyone else and information travels so quickly now, but we're still stuck in this, we're stuck to this. You know what I mean? We're words and phones as opposed to being flesh and blood human beings. So we're more disconnected. And on top of all of that, what we're consuming, the media apparatus, I mean, one of the smartest things I did was just like I got rid of my TV like in 2009. So I don't really watch TV. I stopped kind of watching it.

Like I like to read news aggregators, but consuming the news, I mean, it's driving people insane. And I think that's part of it too. And we live in an era now where, again, information travels so quickly and so fast that, and you have what I call the reality cartel, you know, the Googles, the Facebooks, Silicon Valley, all those people who are curating these messages and working in concert with these media organizations, which are really profit-driven corporations and trying to get clicks and ratings. And what sex sells, it's like sex violence, sensationalism, doom, crises.

Those are the things that attract us. So we're married to that. And we're constantly bombarded with all these messages that are uh that are just they're driving us insane i have this concept called the anti-matrix where um everyone is like everyone who's outside the matrix like in the film if you're in the matrix you know you can eat your you can eat your steak and have your red wine or whatever everything's cool you don't understand the reality of your of your horrid existence but now in the anti-matrix people on the outside are saying like you know things are kind of they could be better but it's kind of okay but people inside the matrix are like

just going fucking crazy and they just seem to get worse and worse and worse and so i don't know how you uh how you pull us out of that ditch you know do you have any ideas i i think about it all the time and and i i kind of feel like we're somehow organically moving in a positive direction at least i feel i've noticed you can speak about reality and have conversations about reality without being crushed like it's possible to have an opinion it's possible to describe reality and not have these horrible reactions um i think maybe on a political level we're about to see a huge backlash uh against a lot of this stuff um but i'm not sure because from a technological standpoint everything now i mean it's just so

convenient so why would we give up these machines now just right integrated no we're too well yeah we're too we're too addicted yeah no i don't know that we're gonna i i but it but it's but it's we can on one hand say the the machines had something to do with this that being in the matrix is this is not a healthy place and not require that everybody put down their phone necessarily to find their way out, right? I think people are not going to put their phones down. So we have to find other ways to get people out of it. I mean, maybe Elon will figure it out. I don't know. But I want to bring up a different topic really quick, which is you mentioned safetyism, safety uber alice, I call that.

The safetyism was bizarre. I think we have spent so many generations now disconnected from our biological reality, not seeing disease, not seeing death. It's all hidden away in hospitals and only physicians get to see it. That when biology scares us and then we make stupid judgments around it and say things like one death is too many and blah, blah, blah. We can't make decisions any longer when we're confronted with our biological reality. and this didn't surprise me, that the average life expectancy for a male admitted to a nursing home,

which is, again, where predominantly where the excess mortality was, was in nursing home patients. If you are so far gone, we're talking about chronic nursing home placement, as a male, that you need somebody, institutional support to feed you, help you turn, wash your ass after you shit, whatever it is, you need more than one person to help you do that around the clock, and you're admitted to a nursing home to get that care, your life expectancy is on average six months. Six months. So the women are a couple of years, but the men are six months.

So let's just for the sake of argument, let's say it's two years for everybody just on average. So people that died in nursing homes were taken, two years of life was taken from them. In terms of years of life lost, what's happening now in terms of young people dying, I don't know if it's fentanyl, I don't know if it's suicide, I don't know if it's a vaccine, I don't know if it's some effective lockdown. For every one 30-year-old life lost, you have to lose essentially 40 of these nursing home patients in terms of years of life lost, right? A 30-year-old has 60 years of life ahead. Not six months, not two years.

60 years are taken away. So when young people start dying, which seems to be what's happening right now with the excess deaths we're seeing, that is a profoundly different problem. And I don't see anybody talking about it. I don't hear governments asking questions. I don't see anybody talking about it. I don't hear governments asking questions. I don't see the press demanding any action. And yet the number of excess deaths are approaching the excess deaths during the pandemic. And it's not exclusively old people

or people with illnesses, though that's happening also. But it is certainly a larger share of young, healthy people leaving us. Well, who cares? As Rick Klein said, it's fine. So what does it matter? Exactly. Yeah. And Emily Oster said, get over it.

Emily Oster said, get over it. It's fine. Just amnesty. But I think it's so devastating when I think about, I mean, I was thinking about children specifically. I'm like, you know, I don't know about anybody else, but I was a kid once and I remember what that was like. And I also am old enough to remember what it was like being in my late teens, early twenties, you know, trying to make my way in the world,

you know, throughout my twentiess and my 30s. And I think part of, I wonder if part of it is that when you see so many institutions on such a mass scale fail at the same time, I mean, how demoralizing is that? I know for myself, once the lockdown started, I mean, I didn't leave my apartment except to get grocery. I didn't even bathe for like a month. I'm like, I'm not even joking. I can't imagine the sort of grief that people have been experiencing, the sort of demoralization they've been experiencing. But yeah, you know, a lot of people have been talking about these excess deaths. And, you know, when you think about the infection fatality rate of the virus versus the people who are dead, it's just what's going on.

And a lot of people will say it's these certain interventions, which we are totally safe and effective, by the way. I just want to put that out there. I think the lack of interest is what disturbs me the most about it. Yes, that's what I'm saying. That's a scandal. That's a scandal that somebody doesn't go, hey, we're seeing some data here. Let's take a look at it. Let's take a look at this.

What's going on? Just tell us. Help us. What's going on? That's scandalous that nobody's saying that. Well, the same people who are saying, you know, who are saying if it saves one life seem completely disinterested in finding out what's taking these people's lives. And it does go. And for me, I'm going to get into the issue of vaccine injuries. I mean, you know, it's I understand that we don't want to create, you know, hesitancy or whatever.

But at the same time, I mean, I like I said before, I know personally who, I mean, their children have died within hours of taking these things. Let's say that, and Clifford, let's say those are direct vaccine injuries. Let's say those are life. I'm sure it happens. It does happen. I mean, we know it happens. But let's get the data and see how bad that really is relative to lives saved from the vaccine. Look, I wouldn't say I started as a vaccine enthusiast because it was working.

It was preventing severe illness. We have all this T cell response left behind. We know that it's helping us. It probably dampened the pandemic. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm saying it's a good thing. But we're getting a signal. A signal is telling us that, huh, for young people where the illness is really mild and

not going to kill them, particularly under 45, we don't have to worry about it. Maybe we shouldn't be making young, healthy people sick at the rate that it seems to be happening. And what is that rate relative to what are we saving? We don't, those questions are not being asked. It's just take it, take it, simplify the messaging. The director of the CDC had the temerity to say, yes, I know Dr. Paul Offit thinks that 30-year-old males shouldn't take this vaccine, but we're just simplifying our messaging. Everybody above 12, take it.

That was the most insane moment of the pandemic for me. But Drew, here's the thing, right? So your need, your impulse to walk back and say, you know, well, let's put all these put all these, these qualifiers around it to, to sort of protect, I mean, I know you got to protect your show and you have to, you know, it goes back to this idea of this religiosity about it. You know what I mean? For, for me, and we discussed this before we came on, when it, when it comes to the subject of vaccines, I think most people, you know, have, they're either, they have benign opinions or they just are like, yeah, you know, they seem really great. But why can't

we as a culture even just ask questions about this? I'm not, I'm not coming, I'm not drawing any specific conclusions. I'm just saying what you're saying, but it's such a social third rail. Why is that? And especially when you're talking about a drug, which is brand new and which is being mandated by by various institutions we need to be able to talk about these things and be transparent about it and transparency it might it might create hesitancy in the short term but it's better for everyone in the long term and why can't we why can't we understand that more i don't understand what but not only that i i have no i have no trouble walking a nuanced line.

I vaccinate my elderly patients. I don't see any real long-term risk to them, and I'm seeing lots of benefit. Just today, a patient asked me, and she'd had two boosters. Then she had Omicron three weeks after her last booster. Shocking. It was bad. Then she had Paxlovid, and then had Paxlovid rebound and is now two months out, three months out from all that. And there she'd been pressured to take the vaccine. I said,

no, at least wait six months from your illness. You've got great immunity there. And sorry about the rebound from the Paxlovid, by the way, but you've got the immunity and we'll see. And by the way, in three months from now, we'll have some more experience with this vaccine in your age group specifically, and we'll know a little more what we're doing. And you've got great immunity for six months from Omicron. It's an excellent—you really get good—I know personally I had great natural immunity. I was stuck in the room with my sick family on two different occasions after my Omicron and didn't catch it from either experience. Three days in a room with somebody with active Omicron,

I didn't get it because I had natural immunity. But in any event, the safetyism, the insanity of some of the, well, back to what you were saying about the third rail, where is the press? Aren't they supposed to ask questions? Are they not seeing this data?

Are they assuming the data is just wrong or hysterical and therefore they can't raise the issue? Back, you said, you know, half an hour ago, you said, where are the people in the arts who are supposed to show, you know, reflect back to us what we're doing and just sort of give us some insight into what we are. Where were the comedians? That was the thing that got me. Where were the comedians?

They were also frozen in place. And if you look back on that history, it's Dave Chappelle. Yeah, one. Dave Chappelle. Jim Brewer. Wasn't it Chappelle? It was Jim. Brewer was first?

Jim Brewer. Jim Brewer came out just hardcore and was just like... I mean, maybe Chappelle did, but I know Jim Brewer for sure came out very forcefully. He just said... I think he had a comedy special that said someone had to say it.

He spends the first part of his set just talking about all the nonsense. It's really funny. Well, I've got to go back and see it because I didn't see it. I've known Jim for many years and he's a great comedian. I will literally seek that out to watch

because I didn't know that. The first one that caught my attention was Chappelle. And I felt like when stuff like that started happening, I felt like I could breathe, like I could fill my lungs with air. Otherwise, I felt like somebody

had their boot on my back, like always scared, always afraid to, to speak up. So, so the fact that we can have this conversation is a improvement, right? And we are not saying that this wasn't a horrible pandemic. We're not saying that people didn't die

disproportionately affect elderly people. The people on the restream are saying, but young people died too. Yes, young people did die too. And it was extra horrible. Very few, very few. It was a rare event. It was less, well under 1%.

And if you get over 65, over 75, well, then you're getting to that 10 to 15% range sometimes, depending on the cases. And so it, yeah, it's a different thing in different age groups. And now we have excess deaths that is approaching pandemic levels for reasons that don't seem well explained. Now, it's possible our numerator is wrong. Possibly we got the denominators wrong.

We got a model that tells us what our excess should be. Maybe that model is broken. Maybe we ought to look at that model. Maybe the excess deaths aren't as bad as they seem. But boy, I just tweeted something from Dr. Malhotra that there were something like 40,000 excess cardiac deaths in young people in the UK alone. I was like, let me make sure I quote that right. I may be misspeaking. Give me one second.

It is 30,000 excess cardiac deaths in england according to the british heart foundation 30 000 in young people so you know what that sounds like to me what uh that sounds like uh amnesty let's forget about it let's put it aside let's like something that should be amnesty right now and and by the way if it you know i i would way, I would trade you amnesty for truth. You know what I'm saying? If we could step forward and go, yeah, we figured out here's what's going on. Let's move forward. I'm not sure I could do that. I'm not sure I could do that. It'd be hard because of the burning at the stake stuff that we mentioned earlier. So yeah, it's so weird that we're doing this all again. It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy of such epic proportions. Like it's even, it's hard to comprehend it. And some people, I've not used this word

as much as I have in the past two years. I mean, to me, there's an evil about it. There's such a callousness, a complete denial of what's going on, a complete denial of all the harms that are taking place. And again, you said, where are the journalists? Where are the artists talking about this? No, they're right in line with all of this. They're not serving as a mirror right now onto what's happening because they've been complicit in it, honestly.

A lot of them, they've been complicit in it honestly um you know a lot of them they've been they've been working they're fine so whatever it's just it's it i think part of the part of what's difficult to accept about it is just when you when you think about the the scope of damage that has been done um it's it's breathtaking it's breathtaking but as a client said we did it it right, so it's fine. It does feel evil. You're right. I have a mixed. Evil to me sort of pulls me out of trying to explain what the human experience was because I want to understand what made us do all this and why the soil was so fertile for something like this and why so many horrible judgments were made

and why the press was so duplicitous in all of it, complicit, and why the artists were complicit and why people felt it was the right thing to destroy people who were raising issues. It's just all so weird to me. But again, I'm trying to understand it. I'm getting a better understanding than I had. Last time we spoke, it was really mysterious to me.

I'm kind of, at least I'm putting the pieces together of what happened. I'm starting to see what happened. And back to your point about the Chinese Communist Party, I see that that was where it started. I kind of thought that might be it, and now there's evidence that that was it. And then once they decided how they were going to do it. They used fear consciously, which is, to me, the evil part. That's kind of evil to scare people into submission, even though you think it's for their own best interest. I feel like that's kind of an evil move. And then to do the burning at the stake, which we've all agreed,

whether you were looking at the Committee Against Un-American Activity and McCarthy or the actual witch trials and what Arthur Miller pointed out to us, we have all agreed burning people at the stake unfairly without due process, accusing people of things just because of their beliefs is absolutely horrific. And yet the same people that would have said that five years ago participated in the witch burning. And I would just wish people could, if those people can search their souls and figure out what happened, we could end up in a better place. I don't think those people are evil. I think they were swept into something that I blame. The evil was the press, the press, and the fear.

The press and the fear. I saw it when it was happening. I felt that way at the time. I was hubristic in my response to it because I could see it. It bothered me. And now it's the evil part. That's the evil part. People exerting their will that shouldn't even have

had an opinion. They have no business in determining medical care and then using fear to terrorize people into submission. That's kind of the evil part. Don't you agree? I do. And it's one thing for people who were seduced, shall we say, by the propaganda and the fear. I have compassion for them. I was one of those people. I mean, I remember those videos coming out. I actually had a dark joke about this where, you know, the videos of the people, you know, Chinese citizens sort of dropping, collapsing, have now been, which I think Michael Singer makes a strong case that they were fake, honestly. But these fake videos of citizens collapsing have been replaced now by real videos of athletes collapsing.

But I have compassion for people who've been afraid because I was one of those people. I don't know if you remember, but from January to March 2020, I was one of those people. So I understand where this is coming from. Yeah, you told me that. Yeah, that's right. Right. It's the people, it's the public health officials, the government, the press, the people who are in control of the levers of power and of the mess that I think are, I'm going to say evil again. Yeah, well, I think we have to figure out a way to curtail it a bit

it's it's excessive it needs we need to really uh look at it uh oh somebody's uh okay yeah somebody's quote texting me about john campbell who's been worried about what's going on in uh uk as well of course i'm very aware of that and I've been watching him carefully. And he was a guy that was also very afraid of COVID and very concerned about it and very pro-vaccine. And now has sort of morphed, and as he keeps saying on his podcast every day, which is, as the data comes in, I change my opinion.

That's what we do. We try to get the best possible opinion given with the currently available wisdom. And it looks like right now we're getting it kind of wrong and we should be figuring that out and responding to it with the same urgency that we respond to the outbreak itself. But we seem to be completely ignoring it. But again, here we are. So Clifton, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. And I always feel like I come away richer from our conversations because I like how your experience is important. I like how you think about this.

I feel like your heart's in the right place. You're trying to do something that makes things better, aren't you? I mean, isn't that your goal? Let's come out of this better than we've been. Yeah. Well, first of all, I appreciate all that. I really do. It's been. Yeah. Well, you know, first of all, I appreciate all that. I really do. It's, you know, it's been really difficult.

I mean, just earlier today, you know, someone asked me the other day, as a matter of fact, you know, are you going to do Secret Garden in L.A.? There's John himself right there. You know, I did a show. They were going to do a Broadway revival of Secret Garden, and I was going to play the role that Mandy Patinkin originated on Broadway, and now I can't work at all. So I see things like that, and it makes me upset. But at the same time, A, it's funny because I've become more quote-unquote famous by not being on Broadway than being on it.

But at the same time, I feel like my circle of my network of people now, it's so much more actually diverse in terms of professions, ideology. The IQ is way, way, way higher. And I'm also now, I found sort of another mission in a way. Like I feel like just the podcasts alone are generating the great sort of conversations about art and artists and our role in society right now, especially at the time like right now um then with even my nonsense on twitter you know people message me all the time like i feel like i'm not alone i feel like i'm not the only person seeing all this stuff that's going on yeah and you know and i feel i feel like i i feel like what you have to say will be have greater um impact as time goes on i feel like like, you know, this is, this is, I feel your artistic creativity contributing to these thoughts. And then of course you have these,

you have clarity of thinking and you have a great way of expressing yourself. But I, I feel like that artistic creative piece of you is a really important contribution to this whole conversation. And I just look forward to you continuing to create the pods and reach out on social media. And I think you'll find greater and greater support as this begins to catch wind. Because people seem to be kind of, reality seems to be coming in. Reality seems to be seeping into people's psyche and and the more it does the the more value i think what you have to offer will will uh be worn out so i appreciate you coming here as always uh any last thoughts before we kind of wrap things up um no not really you know i appreciate uh everything you just said and um you know my my sense now what my instincts are my

intuition is telling me is that people really are. I mean, yeah, we want accountability. We're not ready for amnesty, but we are ready to move on to bigger, uh, to bigger things and life has to go on. So hopefully I can be of service in that way and,

and giving people something that, uh, that really nourishes their soul, uh, going forward in the future. So look out for that. Well, it's,

it is also on Twitter. I, I value your sense of humor and irony and also where appropriate to tell people to fuck off. So it's all, it always lands. It lands for me. So keep it going. It has not gone unnoticed particularly lately. And keep, you know, if there's a next level, I'll be watching.

So thank you for that. And I'll be retweeting also, everybody, so you can expect that. So do you want people just to go to the podcast or are there other places you like to send people? There's at Clifton Duncan, obviously, Clifton A. Duncan on Twitter, obviously. Podcast is Clifton Duncan Podcast. Anywhere else? Yeah, so I'm growing my Rumble channel now. So go to Rumble Clifton Duncan. I'm verified on there. We're growing that channel as well right now. Yes, and we have our RumbleRanters

also. Let me see what they're saying about you. Hold on. Come on, you guys. Jay Hepp and all you guys. Give Cliffon a nice welcome there because you should all be over at his channel as well. All right, I'll send all my people over there to you. Hopefully, we can actually meet as well. All right, I'll send all my people over there to you.

Hopefully, we can actually meet in person one of these days when you're out here. When I'm in Atlanta, we'll figure it out. Well, shoot, I go to Pasadena first. Atlanta, I don't know. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. If you want to come to Pasadena, I know what you want with this place. One thing the pandemic has done is make Pasadena, if it's possible, more

boring than it already was. So you're welcome here. Bring a little of your humor to this environment. It'd be nice. Well, if I may say so, I actually got an email from the artistic director of the Pasadena House. I did a show there. I did ragtime there back in 2019. It's the last stage show I did. It was very successful. And they're struggling for money right now. I wonder why that is. Maybe I'll pop by and say hello.

Well, you should. I was aware of that production. I had no idea you were in it. Some of my patients are active with the board there. And so they've actually been doing okay through a lot of this. But they do need, like all theater more support and people who don't know the passing playhouse is this old theater that essentially nurtured the careers of a lot of the people you see on broadway and a lot of people used to see on films in the 40s and 50s in particular and it has this old rich um heritage and it still puts on really high quality productions that that

need an outlet before they go to the bigger, bigger venues. And, uh, that rack time was a huge hit. So thank you for that. I'm, I'm, my patients were,

were raving about it. They're raving about it. So, uh, hopefully that was really, I'm going to find out if that was you that they were, that they understood was, uh,

front and center of that. I'm going to hear more. So come to the playhouse, come on. We can have a, we can, there's a place to eat right across the street. We go have coffee or something there all right my friend great to talk to you see you soon uh and for the rest of y'all uh let me quickly just see what you're doing

up on the rumbles yes they are applauding you clifton uh clifton effing rules is what they're saying there so you'll have more amazing we definitely need to get him back he's always great yeah uh old town baby people are saying from Twitch. Yes, Old Town has kind of been boring lately, though. Let's see what you guys are saying on the restream before I head out of here. Yeah, you guys are always so interesting. I love your comments there.

Anything you saw there, Caleb, that a lot of John Campbell talk on the restream? I've been putting a lot of them up on screen as they've been posting. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. It's going to be interesting. By the next time I talk to Clifton, you know, where is this?

You know, will we have more information about why these excess deaths? Or actually, are there excess deaths? And what is the role? I know today the Pfizer briefed the White House on some of their post-marketing data. I find it odd that it's only going to the White House and not the public or the press. Maybe it's out by now, but I've not seen anything. So we'll see if there is actually anything to be learned from the Pfizer data. But it's all concerning.

Do you think they'll ever actually admit it? Do you think they'll ever actually acknowledge that it's happening? I mean, the data is the data. It's all concerning. Do you think they'll ever actually admit it? Do you think they'll ever actually acknowledge that it's happening? I mean, the data's the data. If they're adulterating the data, they will get much bigger trouble. Believe me, much bigger trouble than by saying, hey, there's a signal here. Let's pay attention. Let me look at Twitter real quick and see if anybody is saying anything about the – let's see.

Hold on one second. I don't see anybody talking about any data. Usually Alex Berenson is out there right away. People calling me a Scientologist, of course. Yeah, right. It's all very odd. It's very weird what people think on Twitter. Okay. Yeah. Let me look at Alex Berenson really quick, see if he said anything. No, I don't see anything where that Pfizer data is. So apparently Pfizer was giving data. No.

No. So keep your eyes off people for the Pfizer data. It went to the White House today, but it has not been shown to the public yet. I'm guessing that's because there's a problem. I'm just guessing. And we have to figure this out. It's not going to be all good, all bad. It's not, look, all medical interventions have problems.

They do. They're all dangerous. Every time you walk into a doctor's office, it's dangerous. Every time you put a pill in your mouth, it's dangerous. You've got to understand that. It's when the risk is worth it. When we understand what the risk is, we've defined it very clearly, so we understand what the potential risk is relative to the anticipated

benefit. So we as physicians can make that call for your specific clinical circumstance. Are you being preserved from bad illness? Do you have multiple risk factors? Are you elderly where this thing is likely to have a serious consequence for you. We as physicians make those decisions all day long. It's not the same for every single individual. And by the way, the individual's risk tolerance and what the individual's motivation is should figure into it. The decisions made with the patient, with the doctor, together, they make the decision for that given individual.

We've got to have all the data to do that. We have to understand what we're talking about. And we're not there yet. We will get there. Callers on Monday. Hopefully, I'll have more information to give you on Monday. I'll be out on Twitter spaces. We will take your calls off Twitter spaces then. That's all we'll do for an hour and a half. And then Edward Dowd on Tuesday with Dr. Kelly Avicte and Mr. Dowd is going to give us his data update. He's been, uh, curing, querying, uh, healthcare systems, uh, literally, uh, uh, insurance companies and, uh, you know, sort of, uh, uh, funeral homes and things like that, he's going to take all of that and try to put it

together and tell us what's happening. Again, call us on Monday. I'll see you then at three o'clock. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine

here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published.

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me, call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.