Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 553 | My Family’s COVID Experience & Why I Lost Faith in the 'Experts'

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

Today we're talking about COVID and Allie's personal experience with the virus. After nearly two years, the 'vid finally visited the Stuckey household. We discuss how this saga put in perspective the rest of the pandemic and reminds us of all the times the government and the media shot their own credibility in the foot. We also talk about the Biden administration's apparent desire to worsen the pandemic, as evidenced by the FDA's removal of emergency use authorization for some types of monoclonal antibodies. --- Today's Sponsors: Masterworks is an alternative investment platform that's made investing in multi-million dollar art easy & affordable for everyday investors. Log on to Masterworks.art/ALLIE to skip the waitlist & receive priority access! Birch Gold protects your savings by hedging against inflation — they'll help you convert an eligible IRA or 401(k) into an IRA back by real gold. Text 'ALLIE' to 989898 now to get a no-cost, no-obligation info kit! Marley Spoon & Martha Stewart is the meal kit that tastes like no other, delivering fresh & premium pre-portioned ingredients for Martha's favorite recipes directly to your door! Go to MarleySpoon.com & use promo code 'ALLIE' to save $120 off your first 5 boxes! --- Show Links: COVID-Net: "Rates of COVID-19 Hospitalization as of Jan. 15, 2022" https://bit.ly/32EQVXW New Yorker's Intelligencer: "The Science Of Masking Kids at School Remains Uncertain" https://nym.ag/3AO1PY5 The Atlantic: "The CDC's Flawed Case for Wearing Masks in School" https://bit.ly/3u2S5aM The Wall Street Journal: "The Pandemic's Toll on Teen Mental Health" https://on.wsj.com/3nXNmDG --- Previous Episode Mentioned: Ep 544: Why American COVID Policy Has Failed Us & How to Fix It | Guest: Dr. Bret Weinstein https://apple.co/345askx --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I am coming to you from my home. Why am I recording from home instead of in my lovely studio with all of my fancy equipment that makes this sound and look the best that it possibly can? because my family and I are recovering from being sick. If you follow me on Instagram, you know this. That's why I didn't have a new show Monday, Tuesday. You should still go listen to those replay episodes.

I try to pick popular episodes and replay them on Monday, Tuesday. But we are recovering from being thick. And because I care about my team and I don't want to infect them, I am still recording from home, although we are feeling better. I'm going to get into our experience with our sickness, which maybe you have guessed was COVID-19. It finally caught us. And I'm going to use that as a jumping off point to talk about a lot of different things that have been pinned up over the past couple of weeks about COVID and COVID policy and all of that

and all the developments. And we're going to answer the question and analyze the question is the tide turning. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. They ship better than organic chicken and craft beef right to your front door. Love Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com slash Alley for a really good deal. So, guys, after two years, my family finally caught the vid. Now let me pause for just one second because if you're watching this on YouTube,

you know, I already said this looks different because I'm not in my studio, but I'm also going to be looking down something that I don't do very much when I'm recording from my studio because I can have the notes in front of me right where the camera is, but now I just have them on my computer. And I really like writing out my entire episode and making sure that I get the things that I want to say right verbatim. That's just how I prepare. That's how I do things.

I sometimes do it extemporaneously, but I really like to make sure that I say, what I planned on saying. So that is why you will see me if you are watching on YouTube looking down. I'm referencing my notes and making sure that I am saying what I wanted to say. So after two years, my family finally caught COVID.

Like I said, I'm better now, but still recording from home because I don't want to, I don't want to spread it to anyone, even though I don't think I'm contagious anymore. I actually think today is like day five or six, and I've been a few days now without any symptoms. And so I think it would be fine. But, you know, better safe than sorry when it comes to that.

So over the past couple years, we have lived our lives pretty normally, except for when we have gone to places that have restrictions. You know, we've made the choice to go into a store, knowing that we didn't have to make the choice to go into a store. but if we were choosing to go into a store and they were requiring us to, you know, do something wearing a mask. Of course, when we traveled, we wore a mask. We followed those rules. Of course, we avoided having to go anywhere that had those restrictions when possible. But we also didn't want to not live our lives.

We wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy for us and for our kids. And so we've gone to church. We've gone out to eat. We've hung out with friends and family. We've flown places. We've traveled. I've spoken at lots of conversations. conferences, talked to lots of people. I have taken pictures with, shaking hands with, and hugged and

met a ton of you over the past couple of years when the conferences finally did pick back up, like at the beginning of 2021. I got to meet a lot of you. I've gotten to do that over the past year. And somehow we avoided COVID. So this is since like April of 2020. So we took pretty seriously when President Trump was like two weeks slow the spread. After two weeks, we kind of were like, okay, well, we've got to go back to living our lives. So we resumed the family dinners with my parents and with my brothers and nephews and all of that. We started going back to church and we really, like I said, have tried to maintain as much as we can a sense of normalcy and routine and fellowship and community in our lives, realizing that there is more to life than avoid. a virus. And when this whole thing started, we had an eight-month-old. Now I had two kids. Now I had a two-year-old and a

nine-month-old. And so a lot has changed over the past couple years. But when this whole thing started, I had an eight-month-old. And even though I was really, like, I was really worried about this virus spreading to her. Of course, we didn't know everything. Then I also didn't want the first year. And then now, of course, it turned out to be two years, two years of her life to be isolated, to be stuck inside and to be characterized by fear. People are more than just bodies. We are more than just vectors for a virus. We have emotional and relational and spiritual needs and we just wanted to make sure that those things were being met without being totally reckless. And there were times over the past couple of years because like I said, we're not being reckless. We weren't being

thoughtless. I was actually kind of calculating the risks every time we did something, whether we traveled, you know, went to the beach or I spoke at a conference. And there were many times when I thought, okay, this is the time. This is the time that we're going to get COVID. For sure, I'm going to get it. And it just didn't happen. I was surprised over the last couple of years, especially when we would go through a surge of the media talking about everyone getting it, everyone dying from it. And I would take a risk and I would go somewhere. I'd get on a plane and I still wouldn't get it and I was just surprised by that. Finally, though, my husband got it first and then he passed it to our kids and then I got it.

And I was just praying. So this was all, this was last week. This was the end of last week. I was praying that either A, I wouldn't get it or B, that I would get it last. And not because I was scared to get it or I didn't want to get it. And I would rather, you know, my kids and my husband get it and not me. It wasn't about that. It was because I knew that I was needed to take care of everything.

everyone and I knew that would be a lot more difficult for me to do that if I was sick. So graciously, seriously, by the grace of God, I was the last one in our family to get sick. And so I really was able to take care of everyone as they got better. So let me tell you, and probably by now, you have either had COVID or you know lots of people who have had COVID. And so me telling you like our experience with it is not going, it's not going to be news for a lot of you, but maybe some of you, you've been like us and you've been able to outrun it for the past. couple of years and you're worried because you're hearing about Omicron being so transmissible and you're thinking kind of like me, okay, this is the time that you're going to get it. Maybe I'll be

helpful to some of you to just hear my experience. And as someone who is a hypochondriac, if you are someone who is riddled with anxiety still about this, I do understand. I can't relate to that. And maybe hearing our experience with it will make you feel better. So I started feeling that on Saturday. I had the same symptoms that my husband started feeling on Thursday. So achy, headache, fever for a few hours, a little congested. Really, it was the tiredness that lingered through Monday and Tuesday. That was why I didn't record an episode. But by Tuesday afternoon, I really, I felt like a new woman. I felt like I was totally recovered in today. Like I feel 100%. We didn't take any medications. Obviously,

am not against medications. We just didn't take any. We did have some treatment at our disposal. Disposal. Disposal. We just decided to take some immune supplements that had been recommended to us by a friend. Instead of taking any medication, I'm like I said, not anti-medication. I would rather not. Like if I can knock something naturally, that's going to be my go-to first. And so I just wanted to kind of see how it would be if it ran its course and it did run its course and it wasn't bad. So for my husband and I, that's what it was. It was a couple of days. It's just not feeling great, but it was way better than most colds that I've had, certainly better than the flu. I mean, I've had, I've kind of had some bad sicknesses. Like I had shingles when I was in college. I would say that's the worst sickness that I

that I've had. Shingles was terrible. I mean, I had to go home and stay home for like three weeks. It was absolutely awful. I remember I had mono in high school. Mono was terrible. I don't remember the last time I had the flu, I don't know, probably a few years, maybe 10 years, maybe since college. I used to get struck through, you know, in high school and college. You're just around German people all the time.

And so you get sick. And this, just in our experience, it was way better than any of those things. And for the kids, it was even better than that. So toddler, baby, almost completely unnoticeable. honestly if I didn't know that my husband had had COVID, I don't know that we would have even noticed that our kids were sick. The toddler just kind of didn't feel well. Maybe a slight fever took a three hour nap really was like as good as new after that. The baby had fever and fussiness on an offer about a day.

That was worse, I would say, actually, than the toddler. But neither had coughs or congestion or anything like that. they both had RSV over the summer and that was literally not exaggerating 100 times worse. RSV was bad. Thankfully, our baby was eight weeks old at the time. And we didn't have to go to the hospital. Thank the Lord. But a lot of babies have to end up in the hospital because of RSV because really it's just a lot worse for babies and for kids than COVID.

I mean, that was that was a seven day sickness where they were coughed. they were restless, they had fevers. It was just awful, truly awful. This COVID did not even come within close range of that. So if you are someone who your kid has had a bad cold, your kid has had the flu, your kid has had RSB, probably, probably and statistically I think this is true, you really don't need to worry about the severity of COVID for your kids. And that's not me saying that from a medically professional, a medical professional standpoint. I'm saying that from the data that we have. And the millions, it seems like,

or at least hundreds of thousands of anecdotes that we have from parents who had the same experience. I'm guessing that this means that we had Omicron. Of course, we don't know. That's apparently more transmissible, but a less severe variant than the original variant or the Delta variant. although most people I know, no matter what variant they had, below the age of 70,

I've had a similar experience with COVID as the one that we had vaccinated or not. I also know people, mostly older people, who have had a tough go with it. So I'm not saying that that doesn't happen. Obviously, we know it does. I have friends whose parents went to the hospital. So I'm not downplaying that. But I think our experience was characteristic of most people's experience with COVID, especially in our age range without underlying conditions.

My husband is 31. I'm almost 30. I'll be 30 next month. And so for our age cohort, like we knew the statistics. We knew that we had a 99.99% chance of not even going to the hospital, not even talking about our death chances. I mean, we take bigger chances every day getting into our car. And so we weren't worried about that.

But I do, I mean, over the past few weeks, I have seen lots of vaccinated and unvaccinated people in my life have COVID. And this has been true since the vaccine came out. You know, it's been true for the past year. I've seen people fully vaccinated who have gotten COVID, but especially recently, the symptoms. And this is just in my circle. But again, I think that the data shows pretty well that this is care. characteristic of everything that's going on in general. The symptoms of the people in my life who are vaccinated versus the people in my life who are unvaccinated, the exact same. Like I have not,

one, I haven't had anyone in my life who has had Omicron and has had like a really tough go of it, had severe symptoms. But they had the same types of symptoms as the people in my life who are vaccinated. And as I said, there are a lot of people who are vaccinated in my life who got symptoms with Omicron. And I think the data shows us that possibly for some age cohorts, it may reduce hospitalizations in death, although I'm going to ask a question about that in just a second that I think is interesting that I truly want to know the answer to. So I think that's true for certain groups that it could lessen the severity, it could lessen the severity. But I just want to remind us in general what the hospitalization rates are for each age group regardless of vaccination,

okay? Because we keep hearing, you know, you're selfish for not getting the vaccine, even if it doesn't stop infection or transmission, which we know by now that it doesn't. You're selfish because you're going to burden the health care system because you're going to go to the hospital, you're going to have to get on put on a ventilator and die. Like, I think that we just need to remember how low the chances of that happening are. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Okay, so according to the CDC, and this is just a good reminder, again, if you're someone who is riddled with things,

about this. And I'm not saying that you don't have any valid reason to feel that way, especially if you have people in your life who really struggled through COVID. And maybe you had a parent or a grandparent go to the ICU or you had a friend that somehow took a turn for the worst and thought that they were young and healthy. I understand that happens. But it's important for us to put this into perspective. It's important for us to know the statistics and know the actual probability. There's this interesting study and it just came to mind. So I don't have to in front of me. I've cited it before, I think a few months ago. It might have even been like almost a year ago now. But it asks people who identify as liberals and people who identify as

conservatives, what they estimate the chances of going to the hospital are if you have COVID. For liberals, they thought that it was about a 50% chance, a 50% chance that if you get COVID, then you are going to the hospital. And even people who identified as conservatives, who answered this poll, they way overestimated. I think they thought it was like 10 to 20%. Here's the reality. So for ages 0 to 17, ages 0 to 17, 0.003 to 0.006% of this age cohort is going to end up in the hospital with COVID.

So at its lowest, this is according to the CDC, we'll link it in the description of this episode at its lowest, 0.0003% of kids, we're going to the hospital with COVID, at the highest, 0.006%. And that has been true throughout. That's as effectively close to a 0% as it gets. I just think it's interesting, too, just a side note that RSV is so much more severe for this age group, especially babies. And why aren't we seeing a push? Now, I'm not saying that we should see a push, but why aren't we seeing a push for a vaccine for that? But for something that 0.0003% of kids are going to go to the hospital for, you're seeing people say, oh, I just can't wait to see this vaccine approved for this age group.

I just don't really totally understand that. Ages 18 to 49.002% to 0.02%. That's the percentage of, people in that age group that are going to end up in the hospital because of COVID. Ages 50 to 63, 0.002% to 0.03% to 0.03% to 0.07%. That's crazy. Like that's according to the CDC. That's not me, you know, cobbling together different numbers based on what I want the hospitalization rates to be. I mean, you would never think that. according to the reporting that we're seeing, what this administration is saying,

some of the restrictions that have been put in place in this country and around the world, for ages 64 plus 0.003% to 0.07% of that age group will end up in the hospital. And get this, this is crazy. I really didn't know this. I mean, a lot of you, maybe you did because you're following the CDC tracker every day. And I understand the CDC is not necessarily the most reliable institution. in this country right now, and that is understanding it. But I was also looking at the death rate numbers over time.

Or actually, no, this is the hospitalization numbers over time for all age groups put together. Did you know that we are actually at the beginning of January 2022? That was the highest hospitalization rate that we've ever had throughout. So that includes last January. when very few people had the vaccine. So it is higher the debt or the hospitalization rate with COVID was higher at the beginning of January of 2022 than it's been throughout the entire pandemic, including last January when we had that big surge.

When we had no vaccine, according to our world and data on January 26 of 2021, we only had 1.6% of the country vaccinated with two doses. Now we have 63% fully vaccinated, 76% with at least one dose, and our hospitalization rate this month, while still extremely low overall, as I just explained, is higher than it's been the entire pandemic. And if you are still pushing this meant that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, which is so silly since the vaccinated still carry and spread the virus and maybe even more so, since they're not subjected to, the same testing standards in many places. So maybe they don't know that they have it

if they have, you know, mild symptoms. And they also are allowed into more public spaces than the unvaccinated are in some cities. So we know that they are getting and spreading it. So if you're still spreading that myth that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, knowing those things, if you're still pushing that myth, you would still think that the hospitalization rate

would be lower today. than it was a year ago since so many people have these life-saving vaccines. I truly don't know the answer to that because at the same time, the CDC's website shows that the unvaccinated are more likely to go to the hospital and die than the vaccinated. So why would overall hospitalizations be at their highest ever this month? And why wouldn't overall deaths be lower than they are if these vaccines are as affected as we keep hearing? I don't understand that. And even if they are that effective, They obviously aren't stopping infection and transmission. We're seeing that openly admitted now more and more.

So what is the point of the draconian requirements? If we know that for a fact, you hear that, okay, so they don't stop infection or transmission, but they stop you from going to the hospital, probably dying, so you will be overburdening our health care system, like we mentioned before. And this is, of course, the same health care system that just fired thousands of nurses and doctors

because they wouldn't get this vaccine. So you're told you're selfish for not getting it because you're going to burden the hospital if you don't get the shot. Except, again, there's a 99.99% chance that you won't, depending on your age and health status. If you're below the age of 70 without underlying conditions, the chances of you going to the hospital for COVID are almost zero.

So all of these people who have COVID after the vaccine always say, wow, I'm so glad that I got the vaccine because it would be so much worse if I didn't get the vaccine. Like, no, probably not. Probably not. Statistically, that's not true. Like, you probably would have been totally fine, maybe even had just the exact same symptoms.

So there's absolutely no selfishness in someone in a certain age group and health category. Really, I think it should be a personal decision no matter what. But if you're trying to make the argument that someone is going to burden the hospital system by not giving the shot and they're selfish, there's just no selfishness in someone in a certain age in health category, denied that. that is really more therapeutic in nature than a deterrent to transmission because they're not going to burden the hospital. Statistically, it is just so incredibly unlikely.

So you have to break this down for me. You have to kind of riddle me this question, which I posed on Twitter and I didn't get any good answers from the other side about this. How is it selfish for a person who, as soon as they feel themselves getting sick, stay home until they stays home until they get better. So they're not going out. They're not infected anyone. They don't go to the hospital. And now they have immunity. Far better immunity than any vaccinated person. By the way, there was a recently published study by the CDC confirming that natural immunity is much more effective against the Delta variant than the

vaccine, which we've known in Israel preprint studies of the same things several months ago. So a person who stays home while sick until all their symptoms are gone, doesn't put a strain on any hospital has natural immunity and then goes about their life, can you explain to me how exactly that person is selfish? Like how did that person's decision negatively impact anyone? How is that person failing to love your neighbor? I challenge you to logically, that's the stipulation that tends to trip people up when they're trying to answer this. Logically, how does their decision and their experience negatively impact anyone? That person looked at the data, and said, wow, my chances of having a manageable case here are almost 100%.

And I don't know quite enough about the vaccine yet. And so maybe they're saying that they want to see what happens. And so they do see what happens. They get sick. They recover. They refuse the vaccine that wouldn't have stopped their infection in the first place. How is that selfish in any way? Now, unfortunately, we don't get an answer to these questions from our media.

It would be a very interesting question for the media to try to grapple with or from our president who just revoked the emergency use authorization, by the way, for monoclonal antibodies for no other reason that I can see, except that he just wants to push a vaccine-only strategy, which is so stupid. Like if you actually want to save people's lives, even if you were the biggest believer in the vaccine, your biggest vaccine advocate ever, like, wouldn't you still want to give people another chance, another opportunity, another measure? Even vaccinated people are taking monoclonal antibodies because you know an unvaccinated person under the age of 40 is actually less likely to die from the virus than a vaccinated elderly person. I mean, that's just the truth.

And so these monoclonal antibodies are also helping people who are vaccinated who need them to get better. And yet he revoked the emergency use authorization. And the excuse that we're hearing is that it's ineffective. The monoclonal antibodies are ineffective against Omicron. But A, Delta is still circulating, which is more deadly, apparently, than Omicron. And B, masks and vaccines are also proving to be ineffective against infection and transmission when it comes to Omicron, yet his administration is still pushing them. So what purpose is this, what purpose does it serve to revoke the emergency use authorization for monoclonal antibodies besides cruelty? I mean, I mean, It gets so tiresome to say, but if Trump, like if Trump did something like that, I mean,

you would just, you would be hearing people say over it, you would be hearing evangelical stand up and say, oh, this is not pro-life, this is so cruel, this is so terrible. And I just haven't seen the same people stand up and say anything about this decision by the president. Everything has just gotten so incredibly off-rails, so incredibly insane. This is not about the science. I don't know that it ever has been. But certainly over the last few months,

certainly I would say over the past year since Joe Biden has taken office, it's just, it defies explanation, any logical explanation, I should say. As Brett Weinstein said on my show, that incompetence does not explain how the government, how governments around the world and how public health the agencies have responded to this because incompetence could explain someone fumbling the ball or making a few mistakes. But doing the exact opposite of what should be done, that seems to be a little bit more malicious. And what I mean by that is that if you really wanted people to not get COVID or

to be able to recover from COVID, you would not pursue a vaccine only strategy, maybe, maybe a primary vaccine strategy if that floats your boat, but not a vaccine only strategy. That would not be the only thing that you're pushing. You would not demonize very safe and effective, both prophylactics and therapeutics against COVID, which they have. They've demonized these treatments. They've also demonized the doctors that have pushed them as some kind of conspiracy theorists. You would not be shutting down debate. You would not be calling people who simply have questions about the vaccine, a conspiracy theorist or fearmongers or telling them to just shut up and comply, you wouldn't have to force it on people by threatening to take away their livelihood if it was

something that you were able to convince the public that they really needed. You would be talking about the importance of overall health. You'd be talking about the importance of vitamin D of getting outside, but the government and its agencies have decided to take the opposite approach. And it's really hard to see how there isn't some malice behind it. So I want to back up a little bit and talk about how at least for me, I saw this get off rails. And when I started losing so much trust and gaining so much frustration and resentment and cynicism about the response to all of this, and so I'm going to give you a little bit of a timeline. So let me tell you my journey in all of this a little bit, especially for those of you who haven't necessarily, maybe you haven't

been following for the past couple of years. Now that I've had COVID, I've paused to reflect on how my feelings and perspectives have changed since the very beginning. In the very beginning of all of this, I was one of those people who, it hits just crunch to think about now, but I was one of those people who was urging people to stay home and to stay inside and to consider the health of the most vulnerable and to consider the plight of your neighbor before going to work, et cetera. And to be fair, that's because at the start, we just didn't know. I thought that this could have a 20% death rate. That's kind of what we were hearing.

We didn't know how it spread, how contagious it was, how long it was going to last and what the proper measures were to stop it from, you know, killing people. And thanks to the corruption of the Chinese Communist Party and cahoots with a corrupt WHO, there was very little reliable information about this virus that had been. We found out only later in 2020 circulating in China for months in 2019 before it was uncovered and before China admitted that it was actually being transmitted from human to human. So it was shrouded in a lot of mystery. We just didn't know.

So because of so much cover up and manipulation and secrecy and because of propaganda videos being published by the Chinese Communist Party where we saw people, in China dropping dead in the street, or at least it looked that way from COVID. We just really didn't know what was going on. And is someone who was already a bit of a germaphobe. This was like my worst nightmare. As I said in the beginning, we had an eight-month-old at the time. I was so worried that this was going to hurt her.

And I was just incensed that there were still people going to the beach and going to pools for spring break and living life as usual. And you'll remember that Democrats at the time in February of 2020, they were really also like downplaying this. President Trump tried to shut down travel from China in February of 2020. He was called a xenophob. Nancy Pelosi got on TV in San Francisco and said, come on down to Chinatown. You know, it's great. Everything is fine.

The New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the same thing on television, telling everyone to live their lives as usual. Trump, of course, was called a. a fearmonger. And I was worried. There were so many mixed messages, so much unknown. And while I think my concern was understandable, I was also looking back. The reason why I say it's cringe is because I was so annoying in my insistence that people, you know, pause their lives and try to work from home without considering just briefly. But I did suspend my consideration of this that the vast majority of people don't have the ability to work from home, totally ignoring the fact that most people just can't pause their lives because of this potential threat and that people still needed

to live their lives. So I apologize for at the very beginning, again, like I would say March, beginning of March 2020, apologize for being so ignorant of all of this from the start. But it only took me a couple weeks to wise up, which I will say. say is better than the couple years that it's taken a lot of people on, I would say the moderate laugh to now are being like hailed as heroes because they're saying, wow, lockdowns for kids are bad. Kids need to go back in school. Welcome to the party, pal. Yeah, we've been saying that for a long time. It only took me a couple weeks to realize kind of what was going on, at least in the sense that this was more political than it was about science. So we figured out that the death rate was

much lower than we originally thought. We heard that it was maybe 5% and then it was obvious at the death rate for people below 70 was well below 1%. And yet even with that information, we saw states shutting down, schools closing, small businesses going under. People effectively ordered in their homes indefinitely. I saw the changing messages without any scientific explanation as to why. So first, we were told that we're selfish for wearing masks. And actually, we were condescissive and patronized if we wanted to wear a mask. And Dr. Fauci in March of 2020 did that interview where he just said it was so ridiculous to think that a mask could possibly stop infection.

And we were told, okay, you can wear a mask or you should wear a mask if you're sick, if you have symptoms. Or if you're around someone for a long period of time who is sick, then maybe a mask can be, a mask can be beneficial. And that actually made some kind of logical sense. And then we got into this whole realm of asymptomatic spread, which we now know is not really spreading the transmission of the virus. And we were told that everyone, no matter what, healthy people, that you have to wear a mask and that a cloth mask is this life-saving device that if you don't wear it, you're a grandma killer. I mean, it escalated so quickly.

It was the summer of 2020 that all of a sudden it just changed on a dime. and we were never told why. But the thing that really did it for me, I mean, there were lots of little things in between that started chipping away at my trust and therefore my concern in a lot of ways. And it was, so the moment that I stopped listening completely to Dr. Fauci or anyone in the public health establishment

about the dangers of COVID and the need to stay inside, to skip vacation and to forego family gatherings for the holidays was the reaction to George Boyd. When we saw those same people praise everyone who was gathering in the street in the name of racial justice and then claim stunningly that these protests won't drive an outbreak or that it's okay because racism is also an epidemic. While because of virtual learning, your kindergartner can no longer read, your artistic son is regressing developmentally. Your 80-year-old mother with Alzheimer's is decaying alone in her nursing home. Your husband died alone in the hospital.

Your daughter missed your high school graduation. Your depressed nephew is spiraling into suicidal despair because of loneliness, while kids who rely on schools for meals and welfare checks or forced to spend all day in the homes of adults who abuse and neglect them, while you have to close your doors, the doors of your restaurant that you have been running for 30 years. years while your small business is being shut down in the name of the common good and you're brought to financial ruin. People were setting buildings on fire and stealing flat screens from

Best Buy and they were either ignored or they were patted on the back because of social justice or some nonsense. And we were told that this is not going to negatively impact COVID at all. That was when it was over for me. Not that I stopped believing in COVID. I never have. denied its existence or its potential severity, but that's when I realized that the response to this virus, mostly from the left, is political and it's not about health. It's not about science. It has nothing to do with that or evidence, and I guess I shouldn't be surprised that that anti-science stance is coming from the same people who think that a man can become a woman or that a baby inside the world was just a comp of cells unless you want it. I guess it shouldn't

be that surprising to me. And as the months have gone on, that realization has only, been reaffirmed. When I saw nurses making TikTok dancing videos as hospitals were supposedly overrun with dying patients, like that was a clue for me. When I saw every single Democratic politician who has been pushing draconian restrictions, Nancy Pelosi, Greshon Whitmer, Muriel Bowser, Lori Lightfoot, Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer, just to name a few, refused to abide by their own rules, going maskless, gathering in crowds, doing what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it because they can and feeling no remorse for the lives. Their fearmongering rhetoric and their policies have ruined when I saw Pfizer refused to announce the development of their vaccine

until after Biden won the election for fear that it might help Donald Trump, even though Trump's operation warps be, whatever you think about the vaccine, it is responsible for the development of it. When Amazon only set up to help distribute the vaccine after Biden took office, when I saw Kamala Harris, Joy Reed and so many other Democratic commentators and politicians go from saying that they would never trust the Trump vaccine to painting everyone who refuses the vaccine as a danger to society. Like that was a clue for me that this is more about politics than about health. When I noticed that somehow Biden was somehow being credited with the development of the vaccine that he didn't have any part of.

When I saw that Trump was blamed for every single solitary death of a person who died with COVID while he was in office, but Biden, even though more people have died with it under his watch, has been blamed for zero of them. When I've seen people's livelihoods taken away because they won't take a vaccine that doesn't stop infection nor transmission. And for a disease that has always had less than a 1% death rate than that millions of people have natural immunity for, which has proved to be several times.

times stronger than vaccine immunity. Yeah, it's helped me realize that this is more about politics and health. People who were once called frontline heroes have been fired for refusing to take this vaccine that they do not want and in a lot of cases do not need. Meanwhile, now in hospitals across the country, they are so understaffed that vaccinated health care workers who test positive are being told they have to come to work so long as their symptoms are mild, even though they can still pass the virus. So if you're vaccinated while you're sick,

you have to work. If you're unvaccinated while you're healthy, you're fired. That doesn't seem to be scientifically or logically consistent. When I've seen parts of Canada and Australia and European countries and states in the U.S. become almost police states, beating peaceful protesters,

forcing people into court. facilities, unable to go outside without permission in countries, like, in places like Australia, demanding patrons, including children show vaccine papers in order to eat or look at art in a museum. That's true in New York City here. When I watched governments around the world doubled down on the vaccine passports and the mask mandates and the lockdowns and the closure despite their case and death numbers showing absolutely no correlation whatsoever to these measures, I've realized. that yeah, this is a lot more about politics than it is about health.

What I've seen our own government say, in the midst of a food shortage and a supply chain crisis and inflation that unvaccinated truckers who are alone in their trucks cannot cross over our borders to deliver supplies, while at the same time taking illegal migrants from the southern border and flying them to who knows where in the interior of the United States without a vaccine requirement for them or in most cases even a taxing requirement. Secretary of Majorcas, you probably saw this. It was a few months ago. He has repeatedly said that a person being here illegally isn't grounds for deportation,

but a trucker carrying necessary goods from Canada to the United States who is not vaccinated against a virus with over 99% survival rate is. Like that's enough to keep them out. When I've seen the CDC cout to the demands of the teachers, unions rather than following the science in recommending school closures and masks for children as young as two years old. No other country in the world has been as strict about masking children as the United States has and based on no data, not Australia, not New Zealand, no European countries. The WHO, even the WHO recommends against children wearing masks and yet our agencies have

doubled down on it without providing any evidence that this is necessary or helpful. when it took a journalist, David's Wick, to uncover the two big studies that the CDC published last year, the CDC said, proved mask mandates and schools worked. He presented, or when they presented a summary of their findings, they purposely excluded facts that they found within the study that undermined the conclusions that they said that they came to about masks. will include his two articles in the description of this episode to show you what I'm talking about. There's no data that the CDC has been able to provide to show that mask mandates and schools are helpful at all. So young kids across the country are still forced to wear masks. They're still forced to sit in classrooms watching teachers whose smiles they can't see, whose expressions they can't discern,

whose words they can't make out. They're kids who are hard of hearing and kids who are forced to sit through speech therapy lessons, who are unable to read the lips of their instruct. and for what? Not for health. For politics. It's for politics. The Democrats that run the schools in the school districts in Republican states like Florida, Texas, and Virginia are doubling down on mass mandates to play politics. Meanwhile, accusing Republicans of playing politics with people's lives. It's the exact opposite. It's always projection from the Democrats. Watch or listen to, depending on what medium you're using right now, this British commentator who appeared on Great Britain news. She was reacting to the news that the UK is rolling

back COVID measures, so good for them. So no more vaccine passports or mandates or mask mandates, which is incredible. She was a student when those restrictions were being put in place. When some schools were requiring the masks for certain age groups and were canceling exams, here's what she says to all of that. They literally ruined our life. And nobody nobody spoke about it at all and the commentators they had union reps come on and say this is what the schools should have put in place

and they didn't care about what this did so on. And this is the first time I've ever spoken about on TV because I knew that I cry about it but I literally watched and felt like my entire life was falling apart because of what this government did to young people and nobody cares. Not one person has cared about children

in this pandemic. They think, oh, let's throw... Why are we putting masks on them where people can go to football stadiums and they can go to theaters and play Nadim Zahari sitting there at the teaching awards with no mask and yet we're disrespecting kids. This pandemic will finish. The damage this has done for artists forever.

I posted the full clip, which I think it's worth watching on my Instagram, totally unforgivable. It's totally unforgivable, totally irreparable harm. Like these kids are not going to get their childhoods back. It is up to us as adults to do everything we can to give them normalcy, to make sure if they can go hang out with friends, to go to school without a mask on. Unfortunately, there are too many parents who just aren't willing to do that.

It's a shame that's advocating your responsibility to your kids. According to a Wall Street Journal article analyzing recently released CDC data, quote, the proportion of children seeking emergency mental health services who required immediate hospitalization, including for eating disorders, rose 75% in 2020, compared to 2019. Suicide attempts increased by 51% for girls. Wow. Versus 3.7% for boys.

I would say that disparity is probably due to social media. In California, 134 people under the age of 18 died by suicide in 2020 versus only 23 people in the same age group that died with COVID. And from the teachers unions and the Democratic politicians, we keep hearing, the kids are resilient. The kids are resilient. It's fine. No, they're not.

They just don't have the ability to articulate what's wrong and they're trusting the adults in their lives to do what's best for them because that's what they've been told that they should do and they really don't have any other choice because they have no power. And so many of them have been taught that questioning masks or mandates is akin to being a bigot or a conspiracy theorist. You're not loving your neighbor and who wants to stand out when your biggest concern is an adolescent is to fit in.

It's absolutely unforgivable. what adults, mainly in the Democratic Party, but not completely, what adults have done to children over the past couple of years. As we say so often in this podcast in so many different ways, it's obvious that our society hates children, whether it's abortion, whether it's to radical gender theory and hormone experimentation, whether it's these draconian restrictions that have done nothing to protect their health and have only harmed them over the past couple of years. kids are always laid on the altar of adult swims. And it's typically progressive adult swims. I do not forgive the people that did this to children that are still doing this to children. You know, school districts in Flint, Michigan, that I think is 90% minority kids, most of them are very vulnerable, impoverished.

they are switching to virtual learning indefinitely. Kids can't learn virtually. And what are parents supposed to do? If the parents work. I mean, how is it? Who is this protecting? And this is why, by the way, when people prioritize teachers getting vaccinated first?

I mean, what was the point of that? If kids are still going to be sacrificed and they're going to be pushed to the side because of some paranoid teachers and some crudely. school teachers unions. I mean, who has this helping? I don't forgive that. I'm sorry. I can forgive you for any loss I may have incurred, but I'm not going to for, right now, I'll say, I cannot forgive the people who have done this to kids, especially after knowing everything we know about how

virtually harmless this virus is to their physical health. I cannot forgive them right now for what they've done to our country's most vulnerable people, namely children. If there was any justice, these people would all be held accountable. I'm talking about the politicians. I'm talking about the people in the media. I'm talking about the public health bureaucrats that have advocated for lockdowns and have advocated for virtual learning that have advocated for masks for very young children. That I'm talking about all of the teachers, all of the teachers unions who have punished and segregated kids who are not vaccinated or who are not wearing masks. all of the teachers and the principals and the administrators

that as we talked about a couple of weeks ago have forced kids to eat outside and 38 degree weather and not talk to each other for fear of spreading the virus. I don't forgive those people, not right now. I just don't. And if there were any justice, like I said, all of those people would be held accountable as well as every single person in power

who has tried to cover up early treatment protocols being used effectively by doctors around the world, demonizing extremely safe options again for politics. People's lives are being taken by politics, maybe even more so than by COVID. And people wonder why there's hesitancy. People wonder why there's a mistrust in the media

and of the CDC and of our politicians. People wonder why millions of more people listen to Joe Rogan in the conversations that he is having than CNN. Because people know that something is not right. People's trust has been chipped away. way at over the past couple of years maybe not as significantly as mine has maybe not as early as mine was but people are waking up but yes it might have taken them a while and i don't know what took them so long but i do think the tide could be shifting i do want to know that there are

thousands and thousands and thousands of peaceful protesters in canada that are trying to push back in a civil way and a hopefully effective way against these mandates and against vaccine passports. There is a convoy that is traveling. I believe it's from Vancouver to Ottawa. I think that's the direction that it's going. And in protest of the mandate for truckers. And so I'm glad that people are pushing back.

People have been pushing back for a long time. there have been mass peaceful protest throughout Europe, in Australia, obviously in the United States and Canada, I would say keep pushing because we've seen in the UK, they're rolling back those restrictions. Praise God, I pray that it stays that way. And in some states, that needs to happen here, I mean, we'll see with the midterms coming up. Democrats know that their COVID policy, it's just not popular across the board in general. People are over it, especially for their kids. that doesn't mean that they don't care about people dying, but they realize that there, again,

there's more to life than being protected from a virus, that you're going to have to learn to live with it at some point. And hopefully the fact that Omicron is less severe, hopefully it means that it's going to continue to wane in severity, and it's just something that we deal with every season that people learn how to, you know, how to cope with. That's not ideal. but again, there are more to people's lives.

There are more to human beings than just their physical health. We are whole people. As we have said, that is something I have been, that's a refrain that I have said since March of 2020. We are whole people. So we don't just have physical needs. We also have mental needs. We have emotional needs. We have spiritual needs.

All those things have to be met in order to be healthy. Okay. And so if you are just now waking up, welcome. no hard feelings, I will say. But for those of you who haven't, who, because of your fearmongering and maybe your policymaking, you continue to sacrifice the well-being of children. There are very hard feelings. I'll just be honest there.

There are very hard feelings. Okay, a little bit more. Maybe this will just wake you up. And I just want to talk about a little bit of data. And then we'll close this out. So just some data that has been perpetually ignored, which, again, goes back to why people are so hesitant to trust the people in charge who say that they care about our health. So I've told you guys about E&MSC, who I follow on Twitter. He just compiles the data from the publicly available databases.

And so from the CDC, from the New York Times, from our world in data. and he just compares and contrast the states and the countries and their policies and their case rates. And so he has one graph and I'll pull it up and you can see it if you're watching on YouTube and you'll just have to trust me, I guess, if you're if you're listening. But this is from the CDC. And so he's tracking this from October to January, states that have a mask mandate and states that have no mask mandate, the daily, case rate. And what you'll see is that it follows the exact same trajectory. So if you're looking at all of the states that have a mask mandate, all of the states that don't have a mask mandate, actually right now, the cases are higher in states that do have a mask mandate than those that

don't have a mask mandate. But throughout over the past few months, it's been the exact same. It's been the exact same. There has been no significant. difference in case numbers between the states that have mask mandates and between the states that don't. And he just tweets this stuff like multiple times the day. The data is abundantly clear. The mask mandates, the vaccine passports, the vaccine mandates throughout the world are not corresponding with a reduction in cases or even a reduction in hospitalizations. Like I said, this January, highest hospitalization rate of the entire pandemic. after the vaccine mandates in certain sectors of our society and having the majority of our country

vaccinated highest hospitalization rate throughout the two years. Tell me how that makes sense. I really don't understand it. So you want to know why people have hesitancy. You want to know why people don't trust the media, why people don't trust our public health bureaucracy. I mean, this really does. It spells trouble. If there is another pandemic, please God, no. but if there is one day, no one's going to trust it. And say that does have a death rate of 25%. No one's going to believe it. And that is the media's fault.

That is the CDC's fault. That's Dr. Fauci's fault. They lied and they ignored and they politicized for so long. Of course, no one trusts anything anymore. That's a problem. Not that I think that I want us to have, you know, all of our hope and all of our faith in our institutions, but it would help if we were able to trust the sources of information and science that we have.

But unfortunately, we're not. Maybe there's some positivity in that, though. People are researching, people are reading, people are starting to think critically. People are starting to question. People are kind of starting to mistrust both political parties. There's some new data out from Pew that's showing that. I'm fine with that. I would like people to realize that our politicians are not our saviors and that we shouldn't be looking to them for moral guidance.

So maybe that's a silver lining in all of this. But it's time to wake up. Time to turn the lights on. No more of this. You have to continue to double down on what is true, especially for the sake of your kids. So let this renew your strength in standing up for your kids when it comes to these mask mandates and schools and these restrictions and virtual learning and all of that. it is your responsibility is our responsibility as adults to keep on pushing the truth for their sake and the sake of the most vulnerable.

All right. We'll be back here tomorrow with more good stuff and I'll see you guys in. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.