Ask Dr. Drew - Why 2024 Polling Data CAN’T Be Trusted with Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey Tucker – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 306

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Jeffrey A. Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, warns against placing too much trust in polling data and surveys: “How sure can we really be that the numbers we are given are even based in reality?” “What if the people who don’t respond to surveys are much different than those who do? What we end up with is data that’s just fuzzier than it used to be…” Tucker quotes an article by Josh Zumbrun in The Wall Street Journal. “This has created an environment in which it’s easy to cherry pick a starting point for data comparisons and come up with nearly any result you would like.” “If all of this is correct, we don’t really know the inflation rate,” observes Tucker. “We don’t know the GDP. We don’t know the jobs situation. We don’t know expenditures. We don’t know much of anything we cite as a signal of economic health.” [Keep reading] Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Follow him at https://x.com/jeffreyatucker and https://brownstone.org/ 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • PROVIA - Dreading premature hair thinning or hair loss? Provia uses a safe, natural ingredient (Procapil) to effectively target the three main causes of premature hair thinning and hair loss. Susan loves it! Get an extra discount at https://proviahair.com/drew • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • 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. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew • COZY EARTH - Susan and Drew love Cozy Earth's sheets & clothing made with super-soft viscose from bamboo! Use code DREW for a huge discount at https://drdrew.com/cozy • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. 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. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 Dr. Drew is a board-certified physician with over 35 years of national radio, NYT bestselling books, and countless TV shows bearing his name. He's known for Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Teen Mom OG (MTV), The Masked Singer (FOX), multiple hit podcasts, and the iconic Loveline radio show. Dr. Drew Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. Read more at https://drdrew.com/about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome everybody to 2024. My new slogan for 2024 is we can do better. And I mean that globally in all respects. We can do better, everybody. Speaking of doing better, we are very privileged to be joined today by Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, also senior economic columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on a variety of topics.

You can follow him on X at Jeffrey Tucker, G-E-F-F-R-E-Y, Tucker, T-U-C-K-E-R, and also roundstone.org. What's that? J, not G. Jeffrey, what did I say, G? Did I say G? I beg your pardon. G, like that. I was looking to go, oh, am I spelling your pardon. J-E-F-F-R-E-Y. That's in French, the G and the J are flipped.

And I've been listening to a lot of French lately. It must be the thing. G, H-I-G. G is the J. And J, anyway, whatever. Whatever. Let's get right to it after this break. Our laws as it pertains 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 say where the hell you think i learned that i'm just saying you go to treatment before you kill people i I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. 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. well most of my career i've been urging people to kick habits change habits well this time i'd like to suggest getting into the habit of adding paleo valley grass-fed bone broth protein to your daily nutrition regimen here's ceo autumn smith it's made from cows with 100 grass-fed and finished and bones their bones rather than the hide most bone broth or collagen pow It's made from cows with 100% grass-fed and finished and bones. They're bones. Rather than the hide, most bone broth or collagen powders are made from hides or hooves, but ours is actually made from the bone. It'll contain additional nutrients. Bone broth is a way to bring back those nutrients, those minerals, and there's glucose aminoglycans, and then there's collagen, which helps us prevent wrinkles and joint pain and

actually heals our gut. There's gelatin and there's just all of these ingredients that the modern diet has kind of left by the wayside. Susan and I have been mixing the chocolate favorite bone broth literally into our coffee every morning for months. And we've noticed a difference in our energy, appearance of our hair, skin, nails. Susan's particularly very happy with this. The bioavailable protein also helps us feel satiated. That's the part I'm happy with. Paleo Valley Bone Broth also comes in vanilla and pure, unflavored, and can easily be added to your coffee, smoothies, yogurt. Go to drdrew.com slash paleo, P-A-L-E-O, for 15% off your first order. Again, that is drdrew.com slash paleo. And as I said, Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder

and president of the Brownstone Institute. He has written an article there warning that placing too much trust in data, particular polling data and surveys, could create some problems. And if we've learned nothing else during COVID is that data and models can be terribly misleading. We've become preoccupied with them. I think part of the issue is around things like economic modeling and climate modeling and now infectious disease modeling. And I'm here to tell you, biological modeling does not have a great track record. Again, he is at brownstone.org and on X at Jeffrey Tucker. Reminder, coming up tomorrow, Brian Kilmeade joins us. I think Jim Brewer had to reschedule on Thursday. Roseanne coming up next week, Dr. Paul Alexander. So we'll give you updated schedule soon enough. But right

now, let's welcome Jeff Tucker back to the program. Jeffrey, thank you so much for being here. It's good to be here. Thank you. And you can call me Joffrey if you want. I like that with the G. Joffrey. Jeff.

Joffrey. Jeff. See, in French, it's A-B-C-D-E-H-A-C-H-E-G. Wait a minute. A-B-C-D-E-H-A-C-H-E-G is J. And A-B-C-D-E-F-G, whatever. I can do better. That's the minute. Ash E. G. is J. And ABCDF, whatever. I can do better. That's the point.

I can do better. That's the cry for 2024. We can do better, everybody. So can I. So talk to us a little bit about that article and data. It caught my eye because for no other reason than for me, I've been noticing that data is being used to support any argument you like. And that is not how data was meant. That's not what data is supposed to be doing.

One wouldn't think so. You know, your little introduction here reminds me that one of the things that flipped the trump administration over to the lockdown side of things because trump had been personally been resisting this based on you know a common sense understanding of infectious disease you know they come they go people die uh unhealthy people get a get a bug they you know but but yeah but he He was sending out on March 9th, 2020, tweets like, well, look, 70,000 people died from the flu. Why is everybody getting bent out of shape here?

Two days later, he flipped on the other side, and part of the reason was that he was presented with these data models by fancy scientists, Neil Ferguson in particular in the UK, that said, look, look, look, here's our model. Look at my chart.

Look, all these people are going to die. But if you lock down, they won't. So he was put in a position of having been sort of pressured to trust the great data scientists over his gut instincts. And then, you know, look where that got us as a country. So I've been a little suspicious because, you know, as you know, I've been involved in this COVID situation now for a very long time.

Brownstone was founded in response to it. And throughout the whole period, we've seen strange data manipulations going on. You see a startling conclusion. And then you're like, does that make sense? And then you look at it carefully and you spot the problems. Or you have to get a specialist

to spot the problems. And then you see a long list. One of the common things in COVID was that you weren't considered, none of the people that were comparing the vaccinated and unvaccinated were considering people vaccinated until two weeks after the shot. Okay, that's going to change your conclusions about infections, about deaths, about lots of things. So we've been living with this, but it also spills over into two other areas. And that's

what I wrote my article that appeared this morning on. And it was based on a very startling piece in the Wall Street Journal by Josh Zombrin, I think is his name. And he's the guy whose job it is to write about data. And he's just started off the new year with a column that kind of explains two areas in particular. It starts off with the opinion polls. It turns out that 20 years ago, opinion polls were genuine random samples of the population.

They would just call people on the phone. People would pick up the phone. They'd get flattered to get a phone call. Oh, sure, I'll talk to a pollster, no problem. Well, 90% of the polls 20 years ago were conducted this way. Guess what? These days, people will not

pick up the phone they just or if they do they think it's a spam call and they just get outraged they don't want to share their opinions with anybody so the pollsters have given up on this which i didn't entirely know until i read this column now only uh something like just a handful of pollsters even try this anymore all the rest rest, 90% actually, use these focus groups. So they find groups that they consider to be the cooperative people that they can trust, and they poll them again and again and again on their attitudes and follow changes and swings and use a normal distribution to extract that and then extrapolate that to the general population and then announce it as a poll well is it we don't really know i mean we've been

following all the ups and downs of of polling now on on this this race but we have no hard evidence of truly anything yet and we won't for a while. And yet, we think we know who's up and who's down. I mean, I've been, and which is a grave cause for manipulation. Like, it was just, what, like several weeks ago, suddenly the national press was all over Nikki Haley. Oh, she's great, she's great. Well, do you know anybody? I mean, I don't, who suddenly said, hey, I really like Nikki Haley.

I mean, where did that even come from? I mean, what's it based on? I mean, do don't, who suddenly said, hey, I really like Nikki Haley. I mean, where did that even come from? I mean, what's it based on? I mean, do we even know this for sure? And lots of my friends, especially in the economics world, say, oh, don't trust the polls. You should trust the Benioffs. And maybe they are more trustworthy. I hear that too. I hear that also. Maybe they're more trustworthy, but you have to ask yourself, what they based on I mean those in turn are based on perceptions of the polls in other words you have to make judgments on something and and the question is is is any of what we think we know even valid and he also raises the point that it's true also for things like polls about the national mood. You know, we rely on these things.

Are the American people satisfied or are they not satisfied? Are they happy? Are they optimistic? What are they scared of? What are the issues that motivate them? We read all these things, right? We people in the opinion industry or the knowledge workers, as they call us, care about this stuff. Well, what if?

Knowledge workers. That's a new, I think, sex worker has a well what is knowledge workers that's that's a new i think sex worker has a higher higher uh appeal than knowledge worker i probably got that from the new york times and my my apologies that's a pathetic that's a pathetic phrase it's all over the new york times this morning uh but anyway people like us we care about this stuff well what if uh there's really no basis for any of these things, you know, and we're really at sea? That may be true. So the second part of his article gets into the economic data. Now, this is what interested me in particular, because I have noticed, as you probably have over the last, say, I'm going to say year and a half, that there have

been some strange anomalies in all of the reporting data on economics. And I'm talking about factory orders on CPI, GDP, all the things that require a vast collection apparatus. One thing, the press releases that the bureaus are coming out with are contradicted by the particulars of the data itself. And so I scramble every time with the jobs reports coming out. And I've noticed they say, oh, look, there's 350,000 new jobs. Do you look at it and see the multiple job holders? And people have not just a full-time job, but an additional part-time job, where the people who have lost full-time jobs and taken up two part-time jobs, and it gets a lot murkier. It turns out we have more multiple job holders now than ever before on record, ever before, at least according to the data. And labor participation is lower than before the pandemic. So it's really dropped dramatically. So you combine those two charts,

which I think I did at some point, and it's actually alarming. So a lot of what's going on here is double counting. And it's been fun, not fun, amusing, scary to compare. Also, there's two surveys that are involved in the jobs reports. One is a household survey, and the other is an institutional business survey.

They're diverged to the point you can't actually make sense of the trend in either one. They seem to be incompatible. They can't both be true. Well, what this Zumbren column does is he explains that a lot of this data comes from surveys that these agencies themselves are collecting from people willing to give the answers. And it turns out that far fewer people are willing to give answers to the pollsters to government agencies than they ever have before. And he gives examples like the Consumer Price Index for housing

is drawn from population surveys. And the response rate, whereas it was in 2014, 71%, now it's down to 58% in commodities and services for the CPI. And this doesn't include all the other weird things that are going on with strange surcharges and shrinkflation, none of which can really be captured in the CPI. But just the response rate to the surveys themselves are down from 2014 of 67%.

Now they're down to 54%. It's true with employment costs, current expenditures, current employment, job openings. I mean, that used to be, yeah, get this. It used to be in 2014, 65% participation rate. Now it's down to 32%. So we don't even know how many jobs are available, you know? And it's unsurprised me because whenever I discuss this topic with people, without exception, people say, I will never answer those questions. I would never. I mean, who knows what they're going to do with it.

I could get in trouble, which is an odd thing in this country. I've never seen anything like that before. This sort of paranoia that somehow, you know, their belief system or somehow their experience is going to be used against them. That's the state we're in. It doesn't surprise me that it's dropped like this.

So the Department of Labor calls up, you know, whatever the grocery store across the street and says, how many jobs you got open? They're going to be like,

we're too busy right now. Hang up. Right? So if they're not answering properly, then, you know,? They're going to be like, we're too busy by now. Hang up. If they're not answering properly, then what are you going to do? I noticed last year, at some point, I was looking at some jobs numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of St.

Louis. They were pretty interesting. I thought, well, these are strange little jobs numbers. They don't come from the Department of Labor. Well, it turns out they came from interesting. I thought, well, these are strange little jobs. They don't come from the Department of Labor. Well, it turns out they came from Indeed. That's crazy. Right. Now, if you know anything about Indeed,

anybody who's used Indeed knows for sure that job applicants are gamed. I had a job at the Brownstone Institute, naive me. I went on and put it on Indeed. I got about 3,000 applications for one job. Digging through them, and this was about, I'm going to say, a year ago. Digging through them, I realized none of these things were quite a good fit, and I couldn't understand why they applied but it turned out

people were um applying for jobs just to uh to re-qualify for unemployment benefits and part of oh interesting that's crazy yeah and so part of uh part of containing those benefits is that you have to show you've you've applied for jobs so people wake up in the morning everybody games every system you set up right so people wake up in the morning and and and and look at you know stupid vulnerable people like me and send me an application then check that a box and then they continue to get to unemployment so i knew for sure these indeed numbers were ridiculous so why is the federal reserve bank of st lou Louis using them as valid data? So it's not quite right. No, not at all. No.

And then it also impacts on things like the GDP. Okay. So GDP, I tell you, Dr. Drew, I'm thinking some scary thoughts about this GDP number these days? Because we use this number to describe not just if the economy is growing or shrinking, are we in recovery, are we in recession, are we good times or bad?

But we even use GDP numbers around the world to rank, you know, how advanced the civilization is. Right, right. So, oh, the U.S., we're really advanced. Mexico, that's a terrible place.

Well, you go to Mexico, it seems like everybody's happy, things are going great, you get everything you want. I mean, how is that a developed or undeveloped or third world country or developing country, whatever you want to call it these days, whereas the U.S. is considered first world and rich and fabulous? Well, it's the GDP numbers. Well, you know, I've really begun to suspect that maybe this isn't the right number we should be using as a definition or a summing up of the quality of our life. For one thing, national income accounting statistics were invented in the 1930s. They weren't used in the 1910s. That's the 1880s or the 1810s to say nothing of 1650. They don't descend from the clouds. They have to be collected.

And then they have to be assembled. And there has to be a formula. And that formula of GDP is weird. It has always included government spending as productivity. Good boy. so it spends more and more money that's by definition proof of a growing and productive economy now i that makes no theoretical sense maybe if you're living in a weird world of 1934 and you believe all the nonsense from from fascism and socialism floating around you're going to believe that but nobody believes that now. And yet, that's still going on.

I'll tell you another thing. The GDP counts imports as subtracting from the GDP, whereas exports add to it. Now, you could maybe justify that in the old days when there were these flows of goods and dollars back and forth when it was all based on gold. So you'd have to ship gold out and bring gold in and you could have a mercantilist sort of view like,

well, the more gold we have, the richer we are, the less gold we have, the poorer we are. Well, since 1971, that hasn't been an issue. And yet, the GDP calculation hasn't changed. It's still the case. If you import something, then that's a national loss. If you export something, that's a national gain. So all that is true in the GDP.

But beyond that, and those are just numbers that you can maybe verify, like how much is government spending? How much are imports? How much are exports? Because they have to go through customs. So that's sort of objective. But what about things like factory orders?, you know, how many widgets you've made yesterday or how many jobs are created? These are much more elusive and the subject to the exigencies of reporting. So if the reporting

is not right, if you've got very few people, like a third of people that the government calls asking for reports and that stuff to just hang up the phone, how do we even know this? And you add to that the theoretical problems of GDP and the sheer size and vastness, how do we know that it's even accurate at all? I mean, we don't actually know. I mean, my intuition is that since March 2020, we've been at a constant state of recession and that we haven't actually gotten out of it. We're not going to go to a soft landing because we've never really taken off. That's my sort of intuition from just looking around and looking at debt levels and savings and real income and things that are more or less objective. It doesn't seem like a healthy environment.

And yet the GDP comes out and they're like, oh, look, annualized in real terms, we're up 4% for the year. Like, really? Is that really true? Yeah, it's hard to believe, right? Yeah. And so based on this Zimbran column, I concluded my article on this by saying, on one hand, this is catastrophic.

If what he's saying is correct, it's catastrophic, namely that we know far less than we think we know. On the other hand, maybe it's comforting that our intuitions may be more valid than we know. They may be actually just as valid or more valid than all the data we're getting from all the sources that are surrounding us. That's interesting. University of Chicago is the economic school that's most associated with quant, right? With quantification of everything. Have they come in recently with any change in their attitude or new models or anything? There's a lot of alternative statistics out there,

but a lot of the alternative statistics are based on rearranging the existing statistics. So if you can't collect these things, you're kind of at a loss. Right. And it's particularly true for inflation. We want to know what is the inflation rate, but I mean,

if you've been to a restaurant lately and you look at your bill, it's like always larger than the math in your head. Yes, yes. And you're like, wait, I'm pretty sure I spent $30.

Why is my bill $85? Yeah. Well, for one thing, restaurants figured out two years ago that, this won't surprise you, that if you can get people to drink,

they're far more willing to spend money. And so they charge more for the drinks. And so when the bill comes, you're like, oh, whatever, you're going to pay the bill. So there's that. There's huge drink inflation actually on site. Cocktails didn't used to cost $20, by the way. But apart from that, now you see all these other charges. Special service charge, large group charges. I saw floating around on the internet this morning. Music charges and all sorts of cook charges. Music charges where they're playing music. Charges for the music. So all these other things.

Now, are those captured by the CPI? I don't think so. And then last month, I did a deep dive into the whole question of shrinkflation because you know, I mean, we go to stores now, I mean, it's become almost laughable. You know, a huge bag of chips with this much in the bottom. Or my favorite

example is, I don't know if you've noticed this, but one of my favorite holiday treats is a cheese ball. And I guess people in the future will think a cheese ball is the size of a golf ball. I can promise you that the cheese ball used to be the size of a softball. No more. Yeah, that's right. Cheese balls are tiny at the store, yeah.

That's right. They used to be things you cut with a knife, right? Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Those are disgusting, too. How dare you take with a knife, right? Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Those are disgusting, too. How dare you take Aima Jeffries' preferences? I love cheese balls. You're some sort of cheese elitist. I guess if you get used to them.

You're a ball elitist. Oh, I had cheese balls when I was a kid. Cheese balls are just... I just associate them with holidays and, you know, without a cheese ball, it's not really a holiday, so we're all product of our history. You have to jump with your own Susan's balls just to make sure. They're really chittery, right?

Yes, they're very chittery. But I mean, the point is trick play is just not really captured by the Department of Labor. Yeah, not at all. I used to think that the Department of Labor sent people out to the stores, you know, writing things down, oh, how much is this?

They don't do that anymore. Now, it's all just digital and phone calls and reporting and that sort of thing. I just don't know. So one wonders about it. It seems to me the inflation is a lot higher. I mean, it's certainly not conquered. And the Federal reserve is already talking about lowering rates to you know because oh we've beat inflation so now we can go back to

lower rates well how odd is it that the rhetoric around inflation is why is it why aren't these businesses lowering their prices wait a minute we we don't have deflation we have reduced inflation it's just the most insane stuff i hear and i don't do they really mean that or that just some weird rhetoric there was some political nonsense that they used to sort of rally the troops isn't it this the strangest thing uh i don't know if it's statistical ignorance or even basic math ignorance on the part of the public or maybe the Biden administration. Oh, my goodness. Idiots or what? But no, I mean, a lower rate of inflation does not mean following prices.

But they keep talking about that as though it does. I can't. It just shocks me when I heard that the other thing is I remember six years ago or so always a lot of talk about well this many people have fallen out of the labor force and have not and are not even looking for jobs anymore yeah I never hear that number anymore never hear about right that was the major focus for about five years yeah and we've got lower uh labor participation uh than we've ever had since world war ii i mean that's and it has not recovered since pandemics pandemic since the pandemic response since the lockdowns it has not recovered

yet uh people just demoralized they're just to work. They can't figure their way back in. One piece of data I would like to see that I've yet to see is how many professional women with school-age, with young children, that used to work full-time, that dropped out completely because they could not find, because daycares were all shut. And so they suddenly became stay-at-home moms, and they couldn't get care for their kids. They still can't. I heard that story a lot. I heard that repeatedly. Yeah, you've heard that story. I know many cases myself, but I have yet to see any data on it. And I know for sure that women's, in general, labor participation has not recovered

to the extent that men's have. But I have not seen the data broken down by women with young school-age kids. I mean, that would be fascinating to me. And if it's true, which I assume it is true, that the lockdowns, the pandemic response, policy response to the pandemic, actually took us back to, say, 1985 levels of women with children participating in the workforce. Wouldn't you think that that would be sort of big news and that there would be a lobby out there that would say, this was a bad idea, look what it's done, to women's participation

and professional life? Wouldn't you think we'd be talking, at least talking about that? But I've not even seen that data yet. You're not allowed to, with any great degree of freedom, say out loud that lockdowns were a failure or that there might be some issues with the vaccine and these are things that if you if you say or that masks you know surgical masks have never been shown to have any utility whatsoever i but you say that and people go nuts isn't it crazy we're still we're still not really having a serious debate outside very small circles your show is one brownstone's dedicated

to this entirely there's handfuls of children's health defense and so on but generally in the public culture we're supposed to just move on as if it's all just fantastic and by the way this isn't just on the left this is on the right too, not just for the vaccine, but for the ventilators and for the PPE he ordered from China. And they were going, oh, he did a great job on the pandemic response. So it's on all sides. Everybody got invested in the COVID response, even though it wrecked the country, even though everybody's still demoralized, nothing is back to normal on any area, whether it's education or health or economics, you name it, it's all just been shattered. We still cannot have a serious

discussion about whether any of it was a good idea. How it happened, you know, who was behind it, who or what divided the workforce between essential and unessential, I would like to know. Who gave the order and why to shut down all the hospitals in the country for everything, effectively, except COVID, even canceling diagnostics and electrosurgeries. I mean, canceled them all. So they became all over the country, ghost town. Who gave that edict? I still can't find that out.

I mean, I assume it's somebody at HHS, but who was responsible for making that decision and why did they think that was wise? And shouldn't we have some accountability for this? Well, forget accountability. I would just like some open public discussion of it rather than this weird silent treatment. Yeah. Yes. I personally don't need accountability.

I really don't want anyone to be hard. It's bad. We're in bad enough shape. We don't need to go around taking. Look, the guillotines are always a bad idea. Guillotines start to spread and other, you know, it's just a terrible idea. We just need to take a look at this thing

and see what we got wrong. My suspicion is it's Burke's. You read her book. I didn't read the book. I don't know if it was in any way alluded to there, but whenever, you and I had this conversation last time, I'm gonna say it again. Physicians that become evangelical on a topic do harm.

That's it, period. That's a universal rule. And she was evangelizing about lockdowns all over the country. And so the potential for harm was out of control right there. Yeah, for a better part of a year. Dr. Drew, I'm very curious what you think about this. You know, her thesis of the book was that SARS-CoV-2 was not a normal respiratory infection, so it required a completely different response. One much closer to an AIDS-style response, right? Where you try to keep everybody from getting it.

Even though it's fast mutating, even though it's fast spreading, even though it had an animal reservoir, right? She somehow thought it was fast mutating, even though it's fast spreading, even though it had an animal reservoir, right? She somehow thought it was eight. And the basis upon which she believed this, and the title of her book is called Silent Spread. She said that SARS-CoV-2, compared to other respiratory infections of the coronavirus family, had an unusually long period of latency. Turned out not to be that big a deal. family had an unusually long period of latency. And you remember- Turned out not to be that big a deal. That turned out not to be so. That's right.

But do you remember in the early days of spring of 2020, everybody was screaming about the long period of latency? You know? Yeah. Asymptomatic spread. Asymptomatic spread. Asymptomatic spread. That's all you heard about.

Exactly. Everyone's a danger. Everyone's all you heard about. Exactly. Everyone's a danger. Everyone's got cooties. Everyone. That's right. And they were throwing around pseudoscientific numbers. Here we go again. 14 days.

That was the usual claim of the latency period of SARS-CoV-2. Well, it turns out there's no basis for this whatsoever. It has the same latency as you would get from a normal respiratory infection. You know? When I was growing up, the doctor would always say, well, you're asymptomatic for two or three days before, and you're going to have it for two or three days,

or maybe a little longer, but two or three days before all your symptoms are gone, you're no longer going to spread it. That's what they used to tell me growing up. And that seems more or less to be true for SARS-CoV-2. In any case, there's no evidence. It's closer. It's closer.

But she did get right, though, that this was a more serious illness. See, that's the part we have to reconcile, is that the way this thing affected people, it was quite odd. And it's odd to me also that she knew that it was not that. Like, what did she know? How did she get that information? What did she know about the gain of function stuff? You know, because that's where this is kind of alludes to that.

And you got to wonder, we need to get back to the source of this thing to understand what it was and where it came from and how this could happen. And if it really was manipulated by man, then we need to know that. We should understand that. And did they think it was a bioweapon? Right. And so if you thought it was a bioweapon, you'd go out there with pretty aggressive stuff too. And so she got right the – and by the way,

if we're going to go protect people like we did with AIDS, you protect the risk population. That's what you do. You go get the people that are at risk, and you isolate the sick. And we did that all wrong. We got that all wrong. And we have to really look at that. They presumed all sorts of things.

I think you're right. Look, I'm just guessing because guess what? We don't have access. We don't know what actually they were saying between, I'm just going to make some numbers up, between the, let's just say February 15th and March 16th, 2020. We don't actually know what transpired, who said what to whom. You know, what did, who called Tucker Carlson to tell him to go to Trump? And what did Tucker Carlson tell Trump? And then when Trump went back to the White House,

what did Birx tell him? We still don't know. Nobody's talking. It's all classified. But I think your intuition here is correct. My guess is, and again, this is just a guess, that

sometime in late January to early February, Fauci and Farrar both got the word that this had definitely leaked from a lab in Wuhan that American taxpayers had supported, that we had this close, tight relationship between the NIH and the Wuhan lab working on gain of function, which is mostly bioweapon research. Well, I think it's entirely bioweapon research. At least that's what all the experts say.

And that's something that leaks. So they thought that it was a kind of bioweapon. And maybe they believed it was a retaliatory bioweapon to respond to Trump's trade war. You see what I mean? So if they believe that, and then Birx brings her knowledge of AIDS, which is that, yeah, the fewer people that get AIDS, the better. So we have to absolutely minimize infections.

And then we have to wait for the antidote, right? The antidote, yeah, that's right. Yeah, we have to wait for the antidote, right? The antidote, yeah, that's right. Yeah, we have to wait for the antidote, like in the movies, right? Like in the movie. That's right. That's right. It was like in a movie.

It's really interesting. Whatever, what's that other movie with the guy? But anyway, it's like, oh, no, everybody's going to get sick. Well, somebody invent the cure. Somebody invent the cure. And then Pfizer and Moderna are like, we've got the cure right here. Well, you better make it fast. Well, what if we make a mistake?

Don't worry about it. We've got you. We'll indemnify you against damages. Well, how do we get it approved? Well, but you'll get an approval. You just watch. And so maybe they just told Trump, look, we've got a bioweapon. We've got to minimize infections.

The fewer people that get this, the better. So that means lockdowns. And how long are we going to lockdown? Well, we've got the antidote coming because we've got these various companies. And you're going to get the credit for it. They had it locked and loaded and ready to go. That is well established. That model of an mRNA vaccine against the spike protein of coronavirus was already well underway, and they just finished off the job. And I actually think it was a good,

I think everything they did was right, given the circumstance of the moment. The odd part is rolling forward from there, once it was no longer that big an issue, continuing to mandate and push. And that's the part that's confusing to me. And again, there's a very simple question. Why did they focus a vaccine on the pathogenic part of the... Why did they create a vaccine

that produced a protein that is the pathogenic part of the virus, the spike protein? Because they knew that that was going to be the part that was going to be preserved because it is pathogenic. If you were going to develop a vaccine, you'd do whole virus or you'd do nuclear capsid. You would never do the spike protein. You wouldn't do that.

And that's what they did, and that's what they continued to push. And strangely, Covaxin is still available. Covaxin, a whole viral vaccine, is available. You don't hear anything about it. And it's an excellent vaccine. Never hear about it. That's interesting. I've heard you talk about this.

That's weird. I'm not a specialist on this. I mean, my general intuition of this whole thing was that a virus that mutates this quickly and spreads this fast and with new variants all the time, that you cannot back your way out of a pandemic in the middle of such a thing. And if you do, you'll fail. But also you could risk actually, you know, original antigenic sin, right? I mean, this is the problem.

Rewiring the immune system to make people more vulnerable to other things. And also, we had never had a successful vaccine for a coronavirus ever. So I knew all this going into it. So I was very suspicious of these claims of the magic cure is going to come along. And it didn't come along until November. You remember Fauci deliberately delayed its release until after the election, which I don't understand why that's not a scandal. But anyway, we know for sure he deliberately delayed the vaccine until after the election. And then it came out, and I was startled at how quickly it did. But I never thought, I mean, to me, getting COVID was always the solution.

I'm not saying you should go out and deliberately get it, although I was not exactly careful myself, but I had seen the demographics of danger from mid-February 2020, Dr. Drew. That's when we pretty much had the data on who the vulnerable populations were. Yeah. We actually do it well before that too, of course. Really? Oh, yeah.

It was right away. It was very clear. But okay, debatable. All right. Mid-February. You said February 2020. Of 2020? I thought you were saying 2021.

No, no, no. That's about right. I think we had enough data from mid-February 2020 to know who the vulnerable populations were. Maybe not a month early, but by mid-February we had enough data and we could have known who the vulnerable

populations were. And the normal strategy under those conditions is to alert the vulnerable. There's a new pathogen out there and everybody's going to get it. Ideally, you would, if you're afraid of it, if this is your choice, if this is something that concerns you because you have other health issues and things, herd immunity will arise.

Indemnity, what we call indemnity, will arrive, and chances are you can actually avoid it. I mean, that's a tough, maybe that's too tough a message and American people weren't ready for it or something. But then we got, I got to take a break here in a second, but we got into this chanting, if no one is saved, if one person is not saved, no one is saved. If there's one death, there's too many.

And I'm like, well, first of all, there's more than one. If one death is too many, we're not in a pandemic because that's defined by excess death. So what are we talking about? And then if one person is not safe, no one is safe. And then if you don't adhere to that, you're a bad person. You don't care about other people. It's like, what the hell do you?

It's just the oddest thing. But hold the thought. Hold the thought. They're about to come out of your mouth. We're going to be back with Jeffrey Tucker, brownstone.org, right back after the people that help about to come out of your mouth we're going to be back with jeffrey tucker brownstone.org right back after uh the hearing from the people that help us to do this project so take pay attention ladies and gentlemen it is the holiday season and our friends at genucell skincare want to give you the gift of younger looking skin with their best sale of the year for the first time ever, get over 60% off

our favorite skincare bundles at GenuCell.com slash Drew. GenuCell has so many products that Susan and I love. GenuCell's XV Moisturizer, it locks in moisture, making dry spots a thing of the past. It's especially great with the colder weather coming in. And with its immediate effects too, you can see these results in as little as 12 hours guaranteed or your money back. Susan loves GenuCell's vitamin C serum and the new deep correcting serum with lactic acid. It hydrates your skin while preventing future wrinkles from developing. Take advantage of this amazing holiday savings by going to GenuCell.com and getting over 60% off right now. Plus, all orders are upgraded to free shipping for the rest of the holiday season.

Use code Drew at checkout for an extra 10% off your entire order. That's GenuCell.com slash Drew, G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash D-R-E-W. If you're trying to figure out the right present for someone, you will not go wrong with gifting the most comfortable sheets, clothing, and accessories that your friends and family have ever felt. Of course, I'm talking about Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth has the softest and most comfortable sheets, blankets, towels, PJs, joggers, and more guaranteed. Susan and I love them. In fact, we still have Cozy Earth sheets on our bed. I slept in them last night. I was thinking of how great they were. And look at this. I'm wearing one of their super comfortable t-shirts right now. I don't get,

I just can't get enough of Cozy Earth. Their sheets are durable, machine washable, and come with a 10-year warranty against defects. So no surprise that Cozy Earth's brand has been featured on Oprah's favorite things for five years in a row. Whether it's their luxury pajamas, super soft bedding, loungewear, or plush bath towels, you will love shopping and gift giving at Cozy Earth. Here's my gift to you this holiday season. Go to CozyEarth.com, enter code Drew to save 40%. That's CozyEarth.com with code Drew. CozyEarth.com, code Drew, save 40%. I think everyone knows the next medical crisis could be just around the corner,

whether it comes in the form of another pandemic or something much more routine, like a tick bite. You and your family need to be prepared. That's where the wellness company comes in. You know the wellness company. We have their physicians on, like Dr. McCullough, frequently. The wellness company and their doctors are medical professionals you can trust. And their new medical emergency kits are the gold standard when it comes to keeping you safe and healthy. It's really, it's a safety net. It's an insurance policy that you hope you're not

going to need, but if you need it, you sure as heck are going to wish you had it if you need it. Be ready for anything. This medical emergency kit contains an assortment of life-saving medications, including ivermectin, Z-Pak. The medical emergency kit provides a guidebook to aid in the safe use of all these life-saving medications. From anthrax to tick bites to COVID-19, the Wellness Company's medical emergency kit is exactly what you need to have on hand to be prepared. Rest assured, knowing that you have emergency antibiotics, antivirals, and antiparasitics on hand to help you and your family stay safe from whatever life throws at you next. Go to drdrew.com slash TWC. That is D-R-D-R-E-W.com forward slash TWC to get 10% off today. Just click on that link. We are back with Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org. Jeffrey, welcome. I interrupted you. You had something at the tip of your tongue. Is it still there?

Oh, gosh. You know, no. I do have some good news maybe for you. The last three days have been whatever you call these holiday weekends, you know, a three-day weekend. And I used it to finish up my next book, which is Life After Lockdowns. So I'm covering all these topics that have been roiling around in my head. Because, you know, I wrote Liberty of Lockdown in September. I finished it September 2020, if you can believe it.

I haven't had a book out since then. So this has been a long time, and there's been a lot happening, and there's been so much research. Yes. And I've got a great team of researchers at Brownstone. They're all over this. We've discovered so many things. So I finally decided to put it all together in a book.

So that's coming soon. Oh, I look forward to it. I can't wait to see it. As soon as it comes out, come back here coming soon. I look forward to it. I can't wait to see it. As soon as it comes out, come back here, please. Let's talk about it. Yeah, yeah. But it really strikes me,

just the folly of the whole period. I'm seeing it like hardly, no day goes by where I'm not just overwhelmed with the folly of what began in March 2020 and just continued on and on and on. And just the isolation that so many of us felt for that period. And to think that it was all the way to October until we got the Great Barrington Declaration out,

when it was almost complete silence. I mean, it was tough in those days, even to find anybody who was questioning anything. But the social distancing meant that you couldn't meet up with friends to discuss what was happening. It was a strange period. You couldn't have more than 10 people in your house for the longest time in many parts of the country. Churches were shut. AA meetings were collapsed, bands broke up, civic organizations. And then it became very divisive after that, politically divisive. Because after Trump was a champion of the lockdowns, and then I would say like by July and August,

he started kind of losing interest in the whole thing and thinking this isn't quite right. And then Scott Atlas came along to the White House and convinced him amazing basic medical facts and and at that point trump just moved on just washed his hands of the thing he didn't want to talk about it which i think was a grave uh political error because the country was in shambles you know by the time november rolled around i mean still downtowns are boarded up and people are demoralizing and walking around.

And then the mask mandates came along. And that became a very divisive issue. I never wanted to wear a mask. I hated it. But I would go into the grocery stores without a mask, hoping to inspire people. Like, oh, that man's not wearing a mask. Maybe I'll take my mask off too. Thinking I was spreading an emancipatory message.

Had the opposite effect, right? People were mad at me. Put on your mask, you diseased, you diseased bad person. You want to kill people. You want to hurt people. You don't care enough about other people to wear this talisman. And so then they wanted to hurt me, right? And so that became crazy.

And we thought that was divisive enough. Well, I think, you know, just to go back to what you were saying before, you were about to say that the strangest thing about the response from the initial period was the idea that if you follow our protocols, you will not get covid and if you get it yeah that will be evidence that you are in some sense not compliant or you're not careful or you're irresponsible and you deserve to be stigmatized and probably denounced and and and and it shows that you're a bad person that was the think about how medieval that is think about how medieval that is. Think about how medieval that is, right? It's incredible. It was a thing. There is this. I know.

I agree. And Instagram, I wrote an article the other day about an Instagram influencer who started a fashion line called something like Something Navy. And when New York shut down, Dr. Drew, I cannot. It's hard to go back to these times. You cannot even understand what was going on. I know. But she got COVID.

This was like in early April 2020. She gets COVID. And so she bundles up her family, and she goes to a house in upstate New York somewhere, some fancy house that she has, and takes an Instagram picture of her there. Well, the times are so bad that people denounced her for it. And a social media mob went after her. How dare you travel in the middle of this pandemic? First you get COVID, then you spread COVID all over New York

by your traveling. I mean, what? I wasn't even clear what she did wrong. Well, she was so shamed, so hard, that she actually had to issue this groveling apology.

I'm sorry. I pledged to take COVID really seriously in the future. I'm sorry I got sick. I'm sorry. I pledged to take COVID really seriously in the future. I'm sorry I got sick. I'm sorry I went with my family to our summer home. I behaved very badly, and from now on, I'll do good again. I mean, you read the stories from that time. What were people thinking? Why were we doing this to people?

It was shaming people for getting sick, shaming people for driving somewhere. I mean, it was crazy times. Then the mask came along. And then, of course, nothing compares to the divisiveness of the vax, right? That's what split families, broke up communities, ruined churches. There was no chance of putting society back together again after that. And then we had this aggressive campaign that came from the Biden administration

that all the unvaccinated people are prolonging the pandemic. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. That's what they said. And they were issuing fake science to back this up. And it was all fake. You know, we didn't have to go into it, but it was all fake science. And it was amazing because. Will that be in your book?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I cover all this stuff. I cover all this stuff. But to say that the unvaccinated were causing everybody else to suffer, it was a revival of early medieval practice, which in those days we had a thing that we called the flagellants. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. The flagellants were an interesting crowd because when the plague would come along, the theory was that the plague was punishment by God for our sins. And this was because people weren't going to confession enough,

they were doing bad things, they were partying, having fun, and God finally got sick of it and set a plague. So the flagellants were a group of deeply religious penitents that would travel from town to town and wearing sackcloth and ashes and sad clothes, like in the Monty Python skit. That was a real thing. But here's the question.

Why did they travel? Why did they go from town to town? And why did they always go to the center of the town? Well, the reason was to shame everybody else. Yeah. And their message was, their message was,

I am having to suffer because of your sins, because you're sinful and impious. I am having to go through this ridiculous thing of punishing myself constantly and suffering. I'm suffering on your behalf. That's what the flagellants did. They believed that their suffering was imposed upon them by everybody else's parties and fun and commerce and normal life.

Dr. Drew, we came very close to replicating that. Very close. I know. I was aware of it at the time. It looked so familiar to me. And they went after it back in those days. They went after the prostitutes and prosecuted them for bringing it in. Or they went after people that earned too much money anybody

that invoked any kind of envy or unsun uncleanliness you had you had to destroy them and yeah if you're dancing or you know going about your business like life is normal the flagellants where it showed up to make you make it clear that your fun was coming at their expense and they're suffering they're having to suffer an extra amount because of what you're doing i mean we've reproduced this almost to a t uh and we seem to have we seem to have no awareness in this country of the historical sort of um phenomenology that repeats around these of these particular kinds of events. And people are hearing me talk about this probably until

they're sick of me talking about it lately. But I've been really digging into the French lately. I happen to be studying their language and I started listening to academic lectures about... Well, first of all, when we were in France about a year and a half ago, I was struck by the youth who were in the streets campaigning, demonstrating against vaccine mandates.

And they were very explicit. This was a country built on liberty. This is not an expression of liberty. You've told us we are young, we're not at risk, and now you're going to force us to get a vaccine? No. And I thought, oh, something is going on here. This is interesting. And it's young people.

While at the same time, at that period of the pandemic, this country's young people was asking for more mandates, more masking in college, more vaccines. It was so bizarre and odd. And so I thought, wow, this is something going on. And the other thing that started to happen over there uh because i'm listening to them very carefully i i just feel like there is something there that is the beginning of something and that something is something likely to grow that they're looking at their history that has had a very they call it the black myth or something of napoleon and robespierre and denton and they're going now wait a minute this This was our history.

And these guys were not all bad. They did some, there were some bad things that happened. But we need to embrace our history and be French. And enough of this delusion of who we are. We are done. And we are, they're re-embracing Napoleon in particular, which is a very odd thing for them to do. And they're like, this guy,

there's some things that happened and really it was the British that made him look so bad. The point is their identity, their culture, their dedication to liberty is really coming on. I don't know.

I think there's something happening there. Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah, I don't know if I'm seeing that so much here. At least I'm not seeing much evidence. No, no, there's none of it here. None of it here yet. Yeah. And it's, go ahead.

Well, part of the problem was that prior to the pandemic hysteria, you had a whole generation or two or three that had really lacked meaningful, you know, what we call meaningful lives or a sense of mission and meaning in their lives. And so when you had this sort of dramatic thing come along that seemed to be life-threatening with a series of wild protocols from don't dance and drink and douse yourself with hand sanitizer and here's your special mask to wear and here's your special shot to get. It was like a religious experience for many of these people.

Literally the first thing that had ever really happened to a whole generation of kids that have been raised on Instagram and then TikTok and their lives are boring and prosperous. And this was exciting. It was a chance to suffer, to do something meaningful, to browbeat others, to throw themselves into some big cultural war. And yeah, it was really tragic. I mean, at least in my experience, the people who were most fanatically attached to all the COVID protocols were the under 30s. They were the people that were all into it.

And you remember the earliest press conferences of Dr. Birx. You remember, I think even from March 16th, 2020, she made a special appeal to the young. Join me in these efforts. It's going to be up to you to convince your parents it's really up to them oh my god it's a hitler youth yeah that's what she said that's what she said in march march 16 2020 of that initial lockdown press report and report the unclean report them yeah oh my god it is report them. It is, you know, there's a certain feeling I had during the whole, like two years. You know, California, you gotta remember, we blocked down for two years.

There was a refusal to open the schools, refusal to do anything. And we had, in this county, in LA County, we had this yellow, red, uh scale that we had to achieve in order to be released from our lockdown and the green the green i wish i'd saved her i probably took pictures of it somewhere the green category was literally we would not be there right now there's too much around for us to be we it was a zero covid policy very clearly and i kept saying we're never getting out of this thing if we continue to follow this. Right, and the data was fake probably, or at least contingent highly on

testing, right? Which we all assumed, boy, have we learned. Haven't we learned? I've learned a lot. Early on, I believed all these charts that I was seeing online. What a great time to be alive when we can see the whole progress of a disease. Oh,

it's there. Oh, now it's gone. Oh, now it's popped up somewhere else. Well, I didn't realize a lot of this Our World and Data stuff that we used, a website that was funded by FTX, by the way, but that Our World and Data was all based on the collection which in turn was contingent upon testing which in turn was dependent upon the accuracy of the PCR tests. What was that website called? The COVID

Remember you used to go to it every day and read the charts. Yeah, I thought I was getting some picture of reality. Looking back at it, it's like, what? I mean, COVID's probably spreading from October 2019, you know, but we didn't see that in the data. And so, you know, when Trump was panicked, like, oh, no, we're getting more cases.

Well, maybe we weren't getting more cases. Maybe we just had better testing. You know, we just don't actually know these things. But, yeah, I believed all that. So I'll tell you something else that's interesting about your little color scheme. They used it in New York, too. But you know what? It's very interesting to me about this.

It was L.A. County's thing, Caleb. It was not the state. It was an L.A. County deal. The state had their own thing. But go ahead, Jeffrey. Yeah. Well, one of the things that's interesting, Dr. Drew, is remember sometime in mid-April of 2020, Trump was sick of it. He was like, look, like look this is just we really need to start thinking about reopening you're right he talked about easter um but he was really you know thinking look we we really need to open up and jared kushner comes up

to comes up trump said look it's a huge mistake for you just say oh open everything let's end the emergency go on with like that is a huge mistake because we've got, now we've got, look, we've got science behind us. We have a reopening plan. And you have to follow the plan. That way we can reopen safely. And it's like, oh, yeah?

What is it? Well, I have an article about this, a chapter in my book about it. I call it something like the reopening racket, something like that. But it's so convoluted. You have to go, I can't remember the exact details, but there's something like, well, you had to be 14 days with 80% testing, with a 20% decline

that hasn't changed in a while. Right, we had stuff like that. You had to meet like four or five conditions. And the strange thing about those conditions is that it wasn't as if you qualify for the conditions one time and then you're open. Then, oh, life's normal. Right.

That wasn't it at all. You go back. It was that, yeah, is that the conditions could change in any moment, right? So suddenly— Let's be clear. Let's be clear. You say there's science behind it.

It was all made up. It was completely out of thin air. It was brought to us by the people that brought the six-feet distancing nonsense that was also pulled out of thin air. This is not science. It's astonishing reopening plan was designed to mollify trump's desire i mean it was very clever right oh we're opening mr president we are opening as we know but we're doing it scientifically um okay well it was it was a

strategy to keep it keep him keep keep him buying into the lockdown stuff. So he shut up about it. And it worked, right, for another 30 days, another 30 days, and another 30 days, and so on it went. But that was a scam from the very beginning. And same with the license, what you call LA County. It wasn't as if you're in a green zone, so now you can just go about your life. No, at any moment, you could have what they called in Australia,

remember what they called it in Australia? Flash lockdowns. Remember that phrase? So you're paying attention to the news. Suddenly it's like, lockdown. Oh, we're back in a green zone. Okay, go about your normal business, but be careful and wear a mask. And only if you're vaccinated.

It just went on for two years, three years. Unbelievable. And it seems like so few of our, particularly federal representatives, are really going after this. I mean, Rand Paul still has it in his craw, I guess, and a few others. But I always worry when they get too focused

on retribution and consequence and all that stuff, because of course people are then going to defend themselves to the absolute highest. They're going to absolutely prevent anything from, just like you were in a court of law, where you were being threatened with some terrible consequence. You defend yourself. No, no more defense. Let's just look at what happened. Let's just examine it.

That's all. Let's just find out. Let's just find out who knew what, when, and who said what to whom, and who made all these plans, and how did they get approved, and did they ever worry that maybe this was contrary to the Bill of Rights. It would be just nice to know. This would be such a moment of national healing. Yeah.

And this is important. And, you know, Dr. Rube, we were talking earlier about how people are not talking about this anymore. Like, you don't hear about it in the national media. The candidates are not debating the COVID response in their debates and things like that. But I tell you what, and you've probably been through this too, any time I meet with people, even people I've just only recently met, and we

have 10, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, a lunch, and the topic comes up, people have such tragic stories. People are seriously still thinking about this. How did this happen to this country? Look what it did to my family. My friend owned a business. It was successful. It went out of business. People are still hurting from this. Deep hurt. But they also, I agree with that 100%. And also, they are prone to getting into these bizarre bizarre conflicts where everyone's, I literally am aware of it as feeling my abdominal muscles tighten up. It's right here when we get into it. And I just watched it with Bill Maher and his good friend, Seth McFarlane.

They started getting into a conversation about vaccine. That was an interesting conversation. But those are guys that admire each other, who are good friends, and it just became that thing again. There it was. And I thought, oh, man. We can't even talk about this. And part of the reason we can't talk about it is that there's been too much silence and hasn't been talk about it.

So I agree with you. And I think you make an excellent point I hadn't entirely thought of, that the Nuremberg 2.0 people are actually creating conditions to cause even more silence because the more penalties of course we're speaking the truth guillotines again it's guillotines put the guillotines away everybody i i predicted them they came it's a narcissistic impulse to scapegoat and to bring out more and more and more but you know back to the french look at their history man Look at their history, man. Look at their history. It was a terrible, terrible, terrible mistake.

But you're right. Fauci has been... There is a House committee on the COVID response that is ongoing. And now they're coming back into session. And they are bringing Fauci in in two weeks. He will testify again. And in particular on all sorts of issues about

what that paper that came out in, what is it, February 2nd? The Nature article? The initial draft was produced by February 4th, I think, 2020. It was a letter. It was a letter to Nature.

I've read it carefully. It was good. It actually was good. i i've read it carefully it was good it actually was good if you really read it it's very compelling it's very good i've listened to then podcast about various authors uh lead authors in that group who talked about the experience of bringing it forward they'd convince themselves it was not a lie and they were not coerced and it was an argument that science that science everybody it was an argument. That's science. That's science, everybody. It was an opinion. You're talking about the initial one denying the lab leak? You're talking about that paper? The one that

really came, the one that really supported the animal, the wet market source. Yeah, that was... It was good. It was a little oddly fast, but it was not an article. It was a letter. Those can be done quickly. And it was not an article. It was a letter, you know, and those can be done quickly.

And it was fine. I have no problem with that. But then to condemn the re-examination and to look at alternative explanations, that's the part that is the problem. That's the non-science part. That's the disgusting part. And by the way, and they're the way, undoubtedly, the Chinese Communist Party has a department of cognitive defense. They have a brainwashing department

that is part of their military. And trust me, they were hard at work during all this. And if you listen to your, look at what you, anybody out there, if you behaved in the following way, silencing anybody who brought up the examination of the lab leak theory, you silenced them.

You were doing the work of the Chinese Communist Party. They were the ones whipping that into a frenzy, and you fell for it. You were brainwashed. Look at what you did. Those are the people that I want to really examine themselves. Fascinating. Yeah. Well, we may find out more.

Look, we're not going to find out the full truth from from fauci on uh in two weeks we won't but we will get some more clues of where else to look um for me this is like this whole thing has been like an agatha christie novel that never ends right right evermore right chapter 450 Right, right. Ever more. Right. Chapter 450. And to that extent, it's been intriguing. But I think I have a sense of what happened, but I can't, I just can't verify it. But I can't also, I can't, I'm just obsessively gathering data and information on things and tweeting it out as much as I possibly can and sharing it with all my colleagues. We started this conversation on data and you're right. The story is sort of unfolding and being told and the people who were hurt by this and

harmed by this are the ones that are still carrying the sword forward and see themselves as courageous. And you know, you. And I, you know, you had another article on the hero journey, uh, just today or a couple of days ago. And I think that's an important thing for people to remember the purpose and, you know, be your own hero. And they, Jordan Peterson used to talk about this and, uh, and really, uh, get back to the basics of why we're here and what good work is and what you should be doing. I, you know, both you and I are doing this thing. We're talking about this topic.

I didn't, this is what I expect to be doing right now in the beginning of 2024 at all, but it's, we're doing it because it's important. And we really, I can't imagine not doing it. And think about all the issues that are impacted by this COVID response. Yeah. I mean, so we've got the inflation problem. We've got a loss of confidence in our institutions, whether it's academia or media or science in general, to say nothing of government.

The learning losses are continuing to increase. Horrible. We initially thought it was one year. Terrible. It turns out it's two years. It turns out it's three years, fourrible. We initially thought it was one year. Terrible. It turns out it's two years. It turns out it's three years, four years. We've got excess stats. We've got substance abuse problems, which we all know.

We've got dramatic declines in public health. I mean, the obesity rates are going through the roof. People had put on 20, 25 pounds, and now people are getting addicted. We've got another round of pharmaceuticals and people are taking popping pills to lose the weight, which is fine. Listeners do that. That's what you want to do.

Okay, I have plenty of friends doing that. But just the crisis, the cultural crisis, the economic crisis, the cultural crisis, the economic crisis, the education, and just the loss of trust. That's the thing that I never knew or understood of what it would be like to live in a world in which there was such a loss of trust in all of our basic institutions. All of this was kicked off by the COVID response. And every bit of it traces to that. And I checked my intuition. And yet...

Go ahead. Go ahead. And yet it's justified. I talk to people all the time. I'm like, am I right that it was the COVID response that kicked all this off? And they all say, yep, that's exactly what happened. My mind goes back to an article in the Wall street journal written by of all people henry kissinger

and i think it was i'm going to just put a date on of march 20 uh 2020 when he said he said the world will never be the same after this because he saw everything that was unfolding. And he says at the end, governments better get this right, or else we're going to discover at the end of it that the world is on fire. That's what he said. Well, that's the problem. The world is on fire. The world is on fire.

He was right. He was exactly right about this. That's why we need to talk about it. That's why we need truth. There is a flip side to that, which is to say that the skepticism now is well-earned and appropriate, and maybe it's good that we are more aware of these things and we can work to correct them.

And maybe let the fire be a little kindling, a little smoldering. maybe it's good that we are more aware of these things and we can work to correct them and uh maybe let the fire be a little kindling a little smoldering rather than a conflagration that's a good way to look through it look at it you know we've all made it this far um yeah and i would say that 2023 was a year of kind of putting the pieces back together for all of us um and coming to terms with our new reality or our new views on things i don't know anybody who has the same view of lots of things you know politics in particular that's right philosophy or ideology we've all we've all changed uh throughout the course of the last three years. I agree.

What's your prescription for going forward? I think 2024 has to be the year of stabilizing and settling into the new us, coming to terms with what it's like to not depend. Without hysteria. Yeah, without hysteria, come to terms with what it's like to live in a world without trustworthy institutions, but still finding our way towards living a good, beautiful, productive, happy life where we strive to serve ourselves and serve others in a traditional way. And rekindling virtue, good civilized norms, basic moral principles, heroism in our own lives.

I hope that that is what 2024 will be about. I know in my own life, that's the way I look at it. So may that be true for everyone. And certainly if you look at every great epic poem or piece of literature from certainly ancient world, you find something like that in there, which is Voltaire put it down to cultivate your own garden. And Gilgamesh said, go back and be the king and serve your community humbly. And it's always something about being of service and building a life and making purpose

and having a good life, not a life free of disease or never is soiled in any way. I mean, this is this safety Uber Alice thing. It's got to be, that is not heroism. That's not courageous. That's the opposite. We need to go forward realizing we are biological entities. We take reasonable risks.

We don't hurt each other, but that we should expect as biological agents, shit will go down in some fashion, at some point in each of our lives. And that's, we'll do the best we can to mitigate that, but that's how it works. In the meantime, about leading a good life is, look, do you think Jesus was happy at the end of his life?

You know what I mean? But he lived a good life. Did you think he didn't suffer? No, he suffered. He led a good life. And so a good life is often a life that requires a little bit of sacrifice or some discomfort at some point for all of us.

You know, there's one other point. I'll let you say the last word. Well, during the last three years, we've also found not just a loss of trust in these big institutions, but we've found people and institutions and communities that we do trust, actually, that have earned our trust.

And you know this. Everybody knows this. We've put together new communities. and communities that we do trust, actually, that have earned our trust. And you know this. Everybody knows this. We've put together new communities. I know we started a separate club, a Brownstone separate club, a couple of years ago. And now these people are so close, so tight. It's funny.

We meet monthly. And wow, you're just at you know, at 5.30 when people start gathering, it's just a wild exuberance of happiness and smiles and love in that room because we all went through this together. So we have found new communities of trust. And maybe that's good. You know, these are forged. And parallel economies. You know, people are tired of buying things

and having them being served by people that either don't like them or disdain them. Fine. But again, you've got to have the freedom to be able to do that. So pay attention to that. Pay attention. It doesn't come automatically.

Well, Jeffrey, thank you so much. Brownstone.org. Go, go. Sign up. Get the publications. And Epic Times also. We can find you there, right? That's also where you.org, go sign up, get the publications. And Epic Times also, we can find you there, right? That's also where you are? Every day.

Every day, I'm right there. And I want to hear more about these meetings in New York. I'd love to bear witness to some of that one day. Well, we can talk, Dr. Drew. You would be a great star, that's for sure. It'd be very interesting. All right, Jeffrey Tucker, thank you so much, and hopefully I'll see you very soon.

Such a pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Drew. Cheers. And for the rest of you, we are coming up tomorrow. I know Jim Brewer got rescheduled. I think Sean Baker may be coming in. Yeah, instead. He was supposed to come today.

I'm so happy for 2024. We can look back at all this crap and maybe not do it again. That certainly, we got to get Susan on that camera. I don't look so good right now. Okay. It's okay. All right, I disagree. I have a bra on, I'm sitting here.

Yeah, that's desperate times. I know you like to show me off. Kill me tomorrow. And then Sean Baker, I think on the 4th, Rosanna on the 10th. Dr. Paul Alexander on the 11th. Emily Bartschman, we're hard at work scheduling all of the holidays. She's working her bones. Fingers to the bones. Again, a shout-out to all the people that make it possible to do this show.

Please listen to these. Drdrew.com slash sponsors has all the links for our sponsors. Buy something. Yeah, we appreciate it. Speaking of parallel economies. It keeps the boat afloat. We appreciate it very much. The bone broth's amazing.

I had it today. When I heard that ad about it, I was thinking, I didn't have it today. I miss it. It really is a great product. I had it. Such a great product. Okay, but again, more to come. We have more coming, by the way, with the Weldus Company.

We have some really, really interesting things to empower patients. I am very excited. You don't even know about this stuff yet. Very excited. Foreplay 2 on Rumble says, I love you, Dr. Drew. Thank you, Foreplay. Kevin McKernan. I don't know who that is.

Jep said, I bet you look beautiful, Susan. I love you, Jep. Yes. I look good on the radio. No, no, no. She has very high standards, Susan. I love you, Jeff. Yes. I look good on the radio. No, no, no. No, no, no. She has very high standards, though. Okay, everybody.

Well, it's great to be here in 2024. Jeffrey did not disappoint. I thought that was a really interesting way to kind of kick things off and get the year going a little bit. Is it me or does it feel like the world, except for the poor people in Japan that had that big earthquake, everything is sort of, everybody's kind of uplifted and ready for change or i i feel like people are done with a lot of stuff they're really frustrated and done and want to find something more i feel like it's something more um compelling like they want they want to be excited about life and the country they live in and the

jobs they're doing. People are looking for traction. I feel like we have more offers for sponsors. People feel like they have more cash flow. Maybe it is the economy. Maybe that's a lot of it too because if that really starts to go, I think people will feel a little bit better.

And then maybe there's something happened in the economy where the home prices, I don't know, the interest rates weren't going up or something and got us a little excited. Maybe. Back to Kevin McKierna. We have requested him, but he's not going to get back to us. If anybody else has a contact or can help us with that, reach out to him. We'd be happy. We'll talk to him.

She's booked way into February. I know. I know, but we got a whole year to do here. All right. In any event, we appreciate y'all being here. We appreciate you being part of this little community. Do tell a friend. Oh boy, Emily Vars is speculating that things aren't going to be all great, but let's stay positive. Oh, God. Emily. And thank you all. Happy New Year, everybody. And we will see you tomorrow at 3 o'clock Pacific time.

Ta-ta. 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.