Some More News - SMN: Covid Is Over! We Did it!

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Hi. Today we celebrate the one year anniversary of defeating Covid and ending the pandemic, a thing we did and a thing that happened. Support SOME MORE NEWS: http://www.patreon.com/SomeMoreNews We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/somemorenews Grab Liquid I.V. in bulk nationwide at Costco or you can get 25% off when you go to http://LIQUIDIV.com and use code MORENEWS at checkout! Visit http://Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the TOP of the homepage, and type in MORENEWS and you'll get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts.  Executive Producer - Katy Stoll (@KatyStoll). Written by Lon Harris (@Lons) and David Christopher Bell (@Moviehooligan). Directed by Will Gordh (@will_gordh). Edited by Gregg Meller. Graphics by F. Clint DeNisco. Head Writer - David Christopher Bell. Producer - Nick Mundy. Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales (@mijo_marco). Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker (@LTP313). Follow us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is Cody. Hi. Shut the fuck up. Did you hear? Hear what? Cody, shut up. Bill Maher just said the pandemic is over. The Bill Maher?

No foolin'? No foolin'. It is over. It is finally over. We did it! Yeah! Woo! Woo! Yeah! Woo! Yeah!

It's the first annual Some More News COVID Victory Special, sponsored by AstraZeneca. Join us for a night of fun and excitement, commemorating one year of America officially defeating the coronavirus. Featuring the Impractical Jokers, from the Eternals, Druig, Martha Stewart featuring Snoop Dogg, the inventor of Wordle, Dr. Thaddeus

Turtle, those Squid Game VIPs, the terrifying ghost of Robert Durst, a performance from Johnny Depp and the Hollywood Vampires, President Joe Biden, the ethereal Void of Despair, and many more. And now, here's your host, Cody! Thank you, thank you, thank you so much! Oh, what a great crowd.

Hey, look at that. It's time for the news. And we've just got one story today. COVID. We did it! We have got a huge show for you today. Literally all of the people we just mentioned will be here. That was not a joke.

But first, we've got our roving correspondent, Warmbo, live from the big celebration at Some More News COVID Victory HQ. Warmbo, what's the scene like down there? Mr. Cody, everybody's having such a great time here at COVID Victory HQ. They're so excited to see Warmbo and how we can all be right next to each other in an enclosed space with no masks, except for potty masks. And it's totally safe because we've declared victory over COVID, and Warmbo isn't sad anymore.

That is just so great, Warmbo. You know, it was touch and go there right at the start of this outbreak, but then thank goodness we got a handle on it and everything worked out. Anyway, we'll let you get back to the party. Actually, I can keep talking to you. Warmbo isn't very good at parties and gets very nervous sometimes. He tried to make friends,

but nobody wants to talk to Warm- Okay, have fun you little scamp. We will get back to Warmbo later, eventually. Maybe. There's just so much to do. Obviously, America and the world been through a lot over the past few years with a pandemic that had the potential to seriously disrupt just about every facet

of our day-to-day lives. A crisis like this can really be a stress test looking for any weak or fragile links in the chain of our social community and economic system. And what do you know? We passed with flying colors. Wasn't even that hard. I mean, it seems like it should have been a whole thing that would drag on and affect the country for years to come.

But wow, Mr. Dr. Bill Maher, along with a variety of opinion pieces, say that it's over. And I will drink to that. Only the finest. Only the finest. So now to celebrate this historic victory, let's take a look at some of our favorite COVID clips from the show, starting with when it all began back in March of 2020. Roll that clip.

Was later described by witnesses as the culprit. And in other news, after the first coronavirus case was detected in Washington state back in January, the federal government launched into swift and decisive action. Thankfully, the National Security Council Directorate for Global Health and Security and Biodefense, which had been created during the Obama administration,

had been left intact by their successors. And why wouldn't it be? Why would you dismantle that? Out of weird personal spite against Obama? Not in this country. And so President Tim Kaine quickly snapped into action because boy, those first few weeks are extremely crucial when it comes to detection and containment

of a potentially deadly and infectious virus. You know, testing as many people as possible, despite whether or not they have symptoms or have been exposed to the illness, really got us ahead of the illness through strategies like contact tracing. If you work quickly and effectively, flood the system with tests,

you can actually follow the path of the virus, quarantine and isolate anyone who's exposed, and keep it from spreading everywhere, which is what we did. I'm sure you recall, it's weird I'm even talking about this considering that we totally accomplished all of it. Phew! But it's important to talk about what would have happened

if we didn't do this stuff. Like if we had a different, worse president than our beloved Tim Kaine, or perhaps simply didn't have a system that could handle a pandemic. Had we not done this in a timely fashion, then the disease would be allowed to spread through a population.

Soon enough, it's too late, forcing authorities to move on to mitigation strategies that just try to flatten the curve. What that would mean is that there's a specific amount of cases that our healthcare system can reasonably handle. So if a virus really started to spread, our focus would no longer be to stop it in its tracks, but simply try to promote enough protective measures

to ensure we don't get overwhelmed. And while I'm sure the American people are mature enough to do something like that, it really concerns me that our healthcare system would be designed like this. I don't know, I don't wanna be a squeaky wheel either, not with Tim Kaine in the White House. God bless that Tim Kaine. Also the CDC, who are really pulling through for us

by quickly and effectively taking this leadership role, communicating with the American people and not contradicting each other or bowing to the whims of the political and financial ruling class. And as much as I don't want to, I do have to give some credit to the GOP as well, who very early on in the pandemic pushed the CDC and president to step up their game. And this is a serious public health threat. The approach of the administration so far has been like its approach to so many other things, fundamentally unserious. And the time has come to ban commercial air travel from countries that have an active outbreak. The arguments the administration is giving against it don't make any sense. And the top priority, Sean,

should be to protect the health and safety of American citizens. We need to do more, we're not doing enough. And if the president won't act, then Congress should reconvene and Congress should act to protect the American people. Very good point by Ted Cruz, who despite his party,

has at least shown a lot of spine and conviction. Totally not spineless guy, Ted Cruz. And so I guess if the roles were reversed and the president was a Republican, it's good to know that they would still be taking this stance. Like, can you imagine that? If they got really concerned about an outbreak of something like Ebola during Obama's term,

and then suddenly didn't care just a few years later, and we were actually showing a clip of that for comedic purposes. Outrageous that would be and would have been. Ha! Great stuff! Folks, Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla are on their way out. But first we have a quick commercial break for you all. But before we get to them,

let's check in real quick with Warmbo at the victory party. Warmbo, how you doing little buddy? I've asked around and no one at this entire party has ever even had COVID. Several STDs, though. Also, one person did say they wish they could taste Wormbo, but I don't think that was about a symptom of...

Thanks! I have to say, this has been our most friction-free episode in quite a while. I might even tie my tie at some point, perhaps even after these ads. Stay tuned for more of the Some More News COVID Victory Special! Hello, my sweet little babies.

Oh, you've grown so much since the last time we spoke. I'm speaking, of course, to our substantial avian audience. Thanks to recent analytics, we've learned that people love putting the show on for their pet birds. And you know what birds love? They love water. And what better way to drink water than with Liquid IV, a hydration product that comes in a variety of tasty flavors like watermelon and caramel and strawberry. Birds actually shouldn't drink it, but people sure can.

In fact, I love using a stick of Liquid IV in my water after a long workout or in the morning. Or honestly, you can even just drink it all casual-like throughout the day and whatnot. I'm drinking some right now, and I bet you can't even tell. It has three times the electrolytes of traditional sports drinks and features the vitamins B3, B5, B6, B12, and good old C. Cheap, cheap, I say. Try this fabulous product. And right now, you can grab Liquid IV in bulk nationwide at Costco, or better yet, get 25% off when you go to liquidiv.com

and use code MORENEWS at checkout. That is 25% off anything you order when you use promo code MORENEWS at liquidiv.com. Experience better hydration today at liquidiv.com promo code morenews. Who is a pretty bird? It's you. It's you. You're a pretty bird.

The Some More News COVID Victory Special returns now. We are back and we're feeling good and we're celebrating our anniversary of kicking COVID's butt. Let's take a look at a few more clips, starting with the end of 2020 when the virus was seriously winding down. You remember that scene in Bloodshot where Vin Diesel gets shot in the face and then the nanobots slowly put his eyeball back together?

It was a lot like that. And I feel comfortable referencing that movie by now because it was such a huge box office hit. Anyway, between Bigfoot coin being declared America's official currency and President Keynes' impossibly smooth withdrawal from the Middle East and expectedly rocky invasion of Greenland,

you could almost forget that technically, there is still a pandemic going on. I know, right? COVID, remember that? Some Americans actually still have this thing. Thankfully, because of our strategic but rigorous early lockdowns and the mutual agreement from Americans

across all walks of life and political stripes to look out for one another and wear masks whenever they're in any kind of densely packed public spaces, we have managed to keep this thing under control throughout the entire first half of 2020. I just have to say, speaking personally, that the solidarity on this issue has actually been really refreshing to see.

Super smart for the government to send everyone free masks in the mail right when this all started, not to mention the immediate monthly relief checks ensuring that everyone can stay at home so as to not spread the virus. On top of that, there's really no other issues to cover thanks to President Tim Kaine

somehow managing to eliminate poverty by creating a universal basic income, reform our police and prison system, ban gerrymandering, repair our infrastructure, and beat the very concept of death so that we may all live eternal. In fact, I don't even have to cover the news. We can just talk about the bloodshot cinematic universe

if you want, the BCU. Who do you think is gonna play the villain in the Marcus Tibbs spinoff? They could literally get anyone they want. And furthermore, right, so what he said, everything was going great and is still going great. We'd beaten death, the film bloodshot with sweeping the globe,

and instead of playing politics or bending to corporate interests or trying to maintain the clearly failing capitalist system at the expense of people, we pushed all that aside and allowed people to stay at home immediately. Let's check in with the moment we officially declared victory. The beginning of 2021, after Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and America's favorite biotech company, AstraZeneca, had released the first COVID vaccines after Tim Kaine's successful operation Super Warp Speed.

And with air travel, cruises, and gender reveal parties all hitting record numbers in 2020, we sadly said goodbye to another several dozen endangered species, including the black rhino, the Sumatran elephant, the orangutan, and the... parrot? Just all parrots? Totally gone. Wow, they will sort of be missed. And of course, we also had to say goodbye

to former host Cody Johnston, who last week evolved into a being of pure light before ascending into Supreme World leader Tim Kaine's utopian cloud castle, as will we all once our number is called. Meanwhile, things are wrapping up on Earth when it comes to the COVID vaccine rollout. Quite frankly, this will probably be our last ever mention of the virus on this show. But because we did such a good job containing it,

many people are now questioning if the virus ever posed a real threat. Former billionaire Elon Musk stated this week during an episode of the New York Times podcast, and I quote, I'm not at risk for COVID, nor are my kids. Everybody dies. The question is what, on balance, serves the greater good. And while that would be an extremely ghoulish and ignorant statement to make in, let's say, a reality where COVID had already killed hundreds of thousands of people in this country alone, well, luckily that's not the case and everything turned out okay, so he's just being a little flip. But of course, we now have members of the GOP and CEOs also claiming that we overreacted to the coronavirus in the first place and that the pandemic was never really a threat. And I guess we'll never know for sure.

Maybe Elon's just miffed that his SpaceX and Tesla programs were made irrelevant after Tim Kaine granted all Americans the power of flight. And this just in. I, too, have begun my ascent to the next phase of humanity. May we all bask in the glory of Tim Kaine's Sky Kingdom of Endless Bliss! Wait, just a goddamn second. Did that clean-shaven, long-haired me just take a sip of a diet Dr. Pepper? That is disgusting.

Just like don't even have a soda at that point, right? Just drink a fresca or your own spit. There is no way I would have ever done that. In fact, I don't think any of those clips were from our reality. Damn, my little alternate coding machine must be on the fritz or maybe I hit a button. It doesn't matter, you get the premise.

Probably should have noticed sooner, but you know, I've been hitting this champagne pretty hard. So, dextromethorphan. Okay, well, that actually explains a lot of things. I got this damn cough for weeks, and I guess I didn't notice because I'm having trouble tasting things now. Sorry, everyone.

Looks like I made an oopsie. A real whoops of a goofle. And now that I'm remembering things a bit better, I don't think we put together any sort of victory party for Wormbo to attend either. I think I might have just put him in a cab and told him to find the first crowded area he saw. Hey, Wormbo, are you still there? Of course I'm still here, silly goat! Great, listen, um, you mentioned party masks earlier.

That's right! They're all wearing party masks! Yeah, like, sort of pearl white masks, maybe with encrusted jewels and exaggerated features? Yup, that's the masks! Yeah, yeah. And they're, um, are they naked? Mm-hmm. Right. That's what I thought. Thanks, Wormbo.

Okay, yeah, I think he got into that mansion a few blocks down. The one with all the embassy vehicles, he'll be fine. Anyway, let me just set this clip machine back to our timeline and fixed. Okay, do we have a clip from our timeline highlighting how we handled the COVID pandemic? I just wanna see the sky again.

Yeah, that checks out. That's the good old pandemic I remember. The one where in America, it's killed over 852,000 people and infected over 67 million. Became the number three cause of death in the United States. And that number quite possibly will change between the brief time we record this episode

and release it. So maybe it didn't go great, but it is over. That's the important thing. But before we can move on, we do need to understand what happened. Are you ready? No. Too bad!

For starters, only three months after the very first infections were reported in this country, hospitals were already experiencing a massive shortage in supplies. This included gowns, masks, eye protection, and of course the equipment needed to actually keep patients alive. And even the supplies needed to deal with patients

who weren't alive. We literally were running out of body bags, if you recall, which sounds more like a wrestling promo than a news headline. And if you're wondering why that happened, how we could have immediately run out of hospital supplies, well, it turns out we did a whole video about this right when it was going on.

In that video, we talked about something called a just-in-time supply chain that was practiced by both hospitals as well as grocery stores, otherwise known as that other place that ran out of supplies. In short, since the 1990s, hospitals have been greatly reducing their backup inventory

as a cost-cutting measure. The idea being that by using overseas manufacturers and computer algorithms to optimize efficiency and cost, they would order the minimal amount of a product at a time. Except once the coronavirus hit and overseas trade slowed way down, nobody could keep up with the suddenly high demand and hospitals very quickly ran out of all their limited supplies. And while it makes sense for a business to worry so much about cutting costs and not stockpile products,

it started to seem like perhaps hospitals shouldn't also have to operate like a fucking Best Buy. But as it turned out, public hospitals weren't nearly getting the funding they needed for like so many years, even before COVID hit and really had no choice but to look for tricks to reduce their overhead. In other words, unlike some other countries, healthcare in America is aggressively a for-profit business.

We could, and probably will, do a video about the history of health insurance and how exactly hospitals made this transition because spoilers, it wasn't always like this. But for the purposes of this video, all you really need to know, and probably already know, is that America really fucked up somewhere down the line and decided that hospitals would operate no different than a movie theater or a porn theater or some other porn thing and exist as a business that considered its patients as customers.

It's not really a utility or government service, but a fucking store. The big difference obviously being that patients aren't choosing to be there. And instead of realizing that's a case for perhaps not having hospitals charge for care, medical companies took it as a cue to raise prices as goddamn high as they want,

because who the fuck is gonna not pay it? And thanks to insurance, it all became part of this economy so embedded in the country that even the supposed left wing side of the political spectrum works very hard to protect this deeply fucked up system. It is without hyperbole, a dystopia. And while we've somehow been acclimated enough

to largely not notice it, the pandemic suddenly shined a very bright light on the problem. By there being a public health crisis that affected the entire world, suddenly these for-profit businesses were expected to handle a massive pandemic that didn't care about things

like supply chains or insurance. And so having our hospital system handle coronavirus was a little like having our army navy stores actually start supplying the army and navy. May our next war be fought with throwing stars. So yes, the hospital system and supply chain absolutely and immediately ate shit. But hey, at least the insurance companies

made an obscene amount of money. And boy, we will certainly talk more about that later. But what I'm getting at is that this supply chain issue and general healthcare collapse meant that hospitals were having to actually make decisions on who lives and who dies based on the supplies they had. On top of this, over 2020, we'd see an equally massive shortage of hospital staff.

Some states even resorting to taking healthcare employees out of retirement to deal with the holiday surges because people were still going out, you see. Airlines didn't close down. And as early as April, 2020, we started seeing a decline in people staying home in various parts of the country. Depending on which state you lived in,

there were already talks of opening things back up, if not measures already in place to do so. And so we never actually got ahead of the virus. We barely tried to keep people home. And while it's easy to just pin this on dipshits who refuse to follow the rules, for a lot of people, this had to do with employment and income.

The outbreak disproportionately impacted lower income communities for a number of reasons. To name a few, they tend to be more densely populated. People use public transportation more. Many local residents work outside of the home or have preexisting or chronic health conditions. And public health and medical services are lower quality and less available.

Minorities and migrant populations also face language and cultural barriers that prevented them from accessing public health information. And so during this first year, a clear separation occurred between people who could telecommute and access doctors and people who could not. And of course, the majority of people

still going out to work happened to be in the lower income bracket. This is because of service jobs like delivery and grocery employees not paying a living wage while also demanding that these people still do their extremely stressful jobs. People needed to eat after all. And so people still had to work for food and work in the food service industry. I don't know if you recall, but we never really got a lot of money from COVID relief. Maybe like a couple thousand total,

which would cover rent for maybe two months, depending on where you live. I'm not even gonna look up the exact number because reading it will make me piss the hottest of lava. Hint, it could cover almost three months worth of insulin. And as for non-essential or independent businesses, well, they just fucked right off. To be specific, 200 goddamn thousand establishments closed

in that first pandemic year. There was no saving them. But hey, at least Amazon made a bunch of money, so that's good. Yay for Amazon, huzzah! And I guess we should acknowledge that those PPP loans that famously went to people like Kanye West did actually help a lot of businesses during this time.

Although we're not entirely sure to what extent. Despite this, they were a good idea on paper. And so naturally our government did everything they could to fuck them up, including having too little oversight, not enough money, and ultimately just not doing nearly enough of them to keep businesses alive. Not to mention the black owned businesses found it way harder to get the loan than other businesses.

That's not the America I know, but at least the Ayn Rand Institute got one. You, me, the employees and the supporters of the Ayn Rand Institute, all of us are forced to support the welfare state, whether we agree with it or not. If the government offers to return some of the money taken from us by force, each of us is entitled to return some of the money taken from us by force,

each of us is entitled to reclaim some of what was taken. Yes, I believe it was John Galt who said, no, you don't understand. We took the money because we need it on principle. Anywho, so the PPP loans weren't enough and didn't solve it. And so unemployment quite obviously exploded. Only just like those loans, we soon learned that our unemployment system in this country was the equivalent of a mouse-packed barn car. For starters, unemployment differs wildly

from state to state. And we almost immediately learned that a lot of states simply haven't bothered to keep their underfunded systems up to date. Checks were delayed in many states due to their computers still running on COBOL, a computing language that hasn't been popular since the freaking 1990s, which coincidentally happens to be the last time

we gave a projectile fuck about actually funding our unemployment systems. That's a 2017 presentation by the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, which found that federal funding for these programs had dipped 30% since the glory days of gigapets and music television. Along with the technology, we also discovered that some systems

simply weren't meant to work. Florida, a state that's like 80% theme park, unsurprisingly had one of the higher unemployment rates during the pandemic, and almost immediately were flooded with stories of people completely unable to navigate their benefit system, higher unemployment rates during the pandemic. And almost immediately were flooded with stories of people completely unable to navigate their benefit system. A system that one DeSantis advisor described

as a shit sandwich by design. As in they had purposefully made the system hard to use because if fewer people get unemployment benefits, then that technically makes it look like there's less unemployment in the state. And boy, that's not how the government should be working. And again, this is just one of many states that put up a series of obstacles

in order for people to actually get unemployment payouts. Just one more reason why this pandemic was a gigantic bureaucratic nightmare. On top of all the, you know, deaths. And so, naturally, we saw a rise in depression and suicide because of course we did. People were broke and stuck at home and grappling with impossible government websites.

Or maybe they were forced to work after all. In fact, a June 2020 CDC study found that 21% of essential workers had said they seriously were considering suicide. This was all especially damaging to young, lower income and minority members of the population. Also women and children didn't have it great. Those two groups being the most common victims

of domestic violence, a thing that had of course risen across the board. A study by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice reviewed 12 separate studies spanning multiple areas of the country and estimated at the very least an 8% rise in domestic violence. On top of that, there was a 4% increase

in domestic violence-related shooting deaths in 2020, most of those victims being women. All of this amounted to a second healthcare failure in the form of a mental health crisis. Texts sent to the federal government mental health hotline rose nearly 1000%. You may have seen us pointed this with a sock puppet character, Mr. Bonkers,

who is now retired due to possibly making light of and dismissing the actual mental health issues people had before and during and because of the pandemic, though that was not our intention. It is an actual serious issue. And very little of the relief money went to clinics who found themselves having to lay off employees while simultaneously dealing with a surge

of mental health emergencies. And so that was yet another corner of our system that simply fell apart the moment COVID made things difficult. Oh, and this is all on top of the significant rise in drug overdoses that particularly affected black and native American communities. Feels like I should commit more than a few sentences

to that whole deal, but boy, we have a lot of scorched ground to cover in this episode. After all, we haven't even talked about the rise of anti-mask and anti-vaccine movements that came out of the pandemic, which I would also count as a systemic failure to some degree. Specifically, an entire political party

that was allowed to devolve into laughable conspiracy theories, headlined by a singular dry dildo of a president proudly declaring that he will not wear a mask. The president opted not to wear a face mask after announcing new CDC guidelines a day earlier for Americans to use them in public. I won't be doing it personally.

It's a recommendation. That was April of 2020 folks. And since then the entire GOP has perpetually pushed back on the basic idea of wearing a face mask. By one estimate during the first peak of the pandemic, there were roughly 30% of Americans barely wearing a mask. Most of them right leaning. We really don't stand back and appreciate

how amazingly damaging this moment was. And that perhaps you could argue that Trump being allowed to rally against masks should be considered an act of violence. Like, yeah, we're gonna be covering a lot in this episode and spreading the blame around a bit. We'll talk about the American system as a whole and failures from the Biden administration.

But one of the things we really can't stress enough is that most of the problems we're having are very much to the max with at least three X's, all Trump's fault. So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting. Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,

one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number of the lungs so it'd be interesting to check that so that you're gonna have to use medical doctors with but it sounds it sounds interesting to me. Many doctors think it is extremely successful the hydroxychloroquine coupled with the zinc and perhaps the zithromycin. But many doctors think it's extremely good. I'm good with masks. I'm OK with masks. I tell people wear masks. But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85 percent of the people that wear masks catch it. So, you know, this is a very tricky. That's what I heard. I feel about vaccines like

I feel about tests. This is going to go away without a vaccine. It's going to go away and it's we're not going to see it again. If people want to get tested, they get tested. We have the greatest capacity in the world. Not even close. If people want to get tested, they get tested. But for the most part, they shouldn't want to get tested. There's no reason. They feel good. They don't have sniffles. They don't have sore throats. They don't have any problem. If they do feel there's something happening, they have the absolute easy. In fact, Ron DeSantis of Florida, the governor, doing a fantastic job in Florida, he said he's got a little bit of the opposite problem. He's got so much testing that people sit around

and wait for people to come in, that they have far a great overcapacity for testing. And there are numerous other states that have told me the same thing. You know, case numbers, you know why we have so many case numbers? Because we do more testing than any country in the world times five, 10, 20. You have many countries don't do any testing, so they don't have any cases. It cannot be overstated that the president of the United States uses administration to regularly take a hard stance

against the basic concepts of science. And by breaking that seal with his base, proudly crossing that line of absolute ignorance, he has created a singular way for the GOP or really anyone to dismiss any information across the board that inconveniences them. Climate change, pro-choice, LGBTQ rights are all issues that have a lot of scientific evidence

backing them. Stuff that was once undeniable can now just be denied without shame instead of denied with noble, quiet shame. And those are just the abstract consequences. Trump has very unabstractedly pushed obvious misinformation about the virus that directly resulted in the deaths of countless

to the point that I'm still not exactly sure if he was secretly working for the virus. Have we checked his real estate records to see if COVID was renting one of his properties? There isn't even a partisan or strategic reason to do what he did. And in fact, it probably hurt his chances of being reelected ever again.

So like, what was he just like the Joker or some shit? Or perhaps they really were so incredibly all in on this idea of capitalism that people like Trump truly didn't see reality. And now the GOP is just permanently living in that deep end. Like, yeah, I know we say it all the time here on this show, but holy Christ shitting cocks, the Republican Party has over the course

of just a few years become full blown anti-vax. That is incredible when you really think about it. Like if you wound the clock back to 2019, the anti-vaccine movement was largely seen as a fringe, but growing group of people considered to be medically illiterate and therefore laughable in nature. The fact that we now have actual major politicians

like Ted Cruz taking a stance against Big Bird getting a vaccine is unreal. It's like if an entire political party suddenly ran on the singular issue of hashtag restore the Snyder verse. But hey now, Cody Bear, Ted's not anti-vax, he just doesn't like mandates. You know how the GOP is across the board against government health mandates,

except when they totally aren't when it comes to abortion. And so this isn't about the vaccine, but rather forcing people to get it. You know, the thing that Big Bird is clearly doing by tweeting that he got the vaccine, a thing Sesame Street has been literally doing for decades. I don't know, man, seems like it's not Big Bird that's changed,

but rather these weird freaks suddenly calling basic PR pushes for public health measures, government propaganda, despite also being in the government. Seems like Ted Cruz probably knows this and that children's programming has always done this and is actually courting the specific anti-vaccine crowd as opposed to taking a stance against mandates.

And I'm just spit balling here, but if a Senator is either this stupid or disingenuous about basic reality, they should really not be a Senator or really have any job where they make decisions about the lives of others. I don't even want him owning a pet, frankly. It's really hard to put into words how this idea of basic sanitation

and personal protection from disease was stonewalled by a political party in the name of vague individualism to the absolute confusion and horror of the rest of the world. It is so deeply embarrassing that it abstracts in the mind, indescribable as a grotesque failure,

like seeing God take a dump on his own face, or her face. You're welcome, ladies. Anywho, that's what actually has happened these last few years in terms of America's actual handling of this global pandemic. In short, we somehow tripped on our own dangling balls or labia and went head first into a pile of rusty screws

or wing nuts. That's the tool equivalent of a vagina, right? Getting distracted. What I'm tool equivalent of a vagina, right? Getting distracted. What I'm saying here is that America as a collection of ideologies, pro-capitalism, careless individualism, as well as our profoundly broken and apathetic political system was seemingly built to collapse under a pandemic that could only be solved

by a collective selflessness and personal discipline enabled by a government willing to give people the free resources needed to survive. So yeah, that all sucks, but I guess we now get to do some more ads. So we'll be right back with the first annual victory. We totally did it, COVID special. Hello, adoring fans.

Do you have time? I sure don't. I don't have any of the time. Sometimes I have to eat my dinner in the shower. I once did my taxes during a wedding ceremony. I've cut holes in all my walls because it takes too much time to get to the door. And so one thing I simply don't have time for

is going to the post office when I have a bunch of bulk letters to send. That's why I use stamps.com. Now don't get me wrong, we love the post office. I like to stick my hand in all the mail slots whenever I go, but stamps.com makes it so much easier to print official US postage 24 seven for any letter, any package, any class of mail,

anywhere you want to send right in your home. You get the services of the post office and UPS all in one place, plus discounts of up to 40% off post office rates and up to 62% off UPS shipping rates. So come on, get up and walk to your other computer and check out stamps.com. There's no risk. And with our promo code, more news,

you get a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in more news. That's stamps.com, promo code, more news. Okay, gotta go super in a hurry, bye.

Oh no, the time. Some more news, COVID victory special returns now. Oh great, we're still here. Let me just, yeah, I know it's cough syrup, what of it? And so now we need to ask a pretty important and probably depressing question about this giant pandemic that is apparently,

allegedly, over. Did we learn anything from all of this? Actually, more to the point, what lessons will we fail to learn from this? Because, you know. And I'd like to start on where we left off. The bizarre push by a shockingly mainstream group of people refusing to wear masks or get the vaccine.

Obviously we and many others have touched on the fact that this was a direct result of our then president choosing to treat this virus like some performatively rugged guy wearing a jean vest in the dead of winter to prove he's too tough to be cold. Then getting sick and trying to pretend like he's also too tough for that.

Real baby shit, very embarrassing. But I think Trump's hilarious spectacle distracted from another very important influence that led this anti-mask hogwash, which was the CDC itself. There's a lot of confusion among people and misinformation surrounding face masks. Can you discuss that? The masks are important for someone who's infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now, when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea, whatever, everybody's wearing a mask. Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks. You're sure of it? Because people are listening really closely to this. Right now, people should not be walking. There's no reason to be walking around with masks. You're sure of it? Because people are listening really closely to this.

Right now, people should not be, there's no reason to be walking around with a mask. That is for March of 2020. And before we all jump on Fauci, must protect God King Fauci, this was the official stance of both the CDC and Surgeon General during this period. By the time we got to that summer,

people were extremely confused by the mixed messaging coming from this branch of our government. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was actually understandable for Donald Trump to initially de-emphasize the use of masks because of this. What isn't understandable is his decision to stick to this message even when the CDC said otherwise. But what was happening here is that since the country

was running into that aforementioned supply chain shortage, the decision was made to tell the public not to wear masks in order to free them up for the healthcare workers who needed them the most. But instead of simply explaining that to people, we were told very sternly that masks were simply not needed, which really seemed like a lie after the fact,

which I guess it was. And as the CDC began to flip flop about this, they came across as untrustworthy and the public began to turn to other sources for their information. And those sources ranged greatly in quality. Even among Fox News watching Republicans, views on social distancing differed significantly

depending on whether or not you watched Tucker Carlson, who cautioned that the virus was indeed real. Congratulations, Tucker, you did it. I guess you're good now. Or Sean Hannity, who was more directly dismissive. So the lesson here is that being vague or unclear in that initial messaging made a rippling impact that probably cost a lot of lives. And this is a lesson that sure enough, we didn't learn when it came to the vaccine. Well, it's generally recommended that you get the booster that is the original regimen that you got in the

first place. But for one reason or other, and there may be different circumstances for people availability or just different personal choices, you can, as we say, mix and match. And those are the data that were discussed and were acted upon yesterday that you can now mix and match one with the other. Oh, okay. So if we have to, we can get the Pfizer booster shot even if we got the Moderna vaccine. Got it. With regard to your question for preference,

you know, we will not articulate a preference. My understanding is that most people will have done largely well with the initial vaccine that they got and may express a preference very much for the original vaccine series they got having done largely well with the initial vaccine that they got and may express a preference very much for the original vaccine series they got having done very well. There may be some people who might prefer another vaccine over the one that they received, and the current CDC recommendations now make that possible.

Okay, wait. The CDC does not recommend a preference between sticking with your original vaccine type or changing it for the booster, but is just saying that it's now possible. So like, should we, or shouldn't we? They're not saying which option is better, but just that we can. And depending on what study or news story we read, it can be hard to know what the best method is. But also some pharmacies were confused about the dosages

for this mix and match approach because they were waiting for guidelines about this. So it's all a bit confusing and inconsistent and can be easily used by grifters to somehow prove the CDC doesn't know what it's doing. The reality being that when dealing with all the science garbage, it's hard to give very solid answers.

And instead their message has and always was really noncommittal. So ultimately the problem wasn't just Trump, but rather that Trump was just such a big problem that he distracted us from these other smaller issues, sort of like a puppet at an orgy. And like a lot of things that went wrong during his administration,

it's really easy to just hand wave the problem as being exclusive to this one bad president as opposed to something larger. But this lesson is extremely important for us to learn. And by us, I mean the CDC. There's a certain pushback against experts in this country. And while it may seem unfair, that pushback makes it important for the people in charge

to be very clear about explaining complicated ideas in a way that we can all understand. For example, we don't even really have language to talk about what the pandemic's over means. Is it when the virus is completely gone? Is it when everything's open again? Is it when most people, even kids are vaccinated? We just give up trying to stop it spreading?

We're already seeing wildly different opinions about what Omicron will do to the virus. Both CNBC and Fox News saying that it will actually make the virus end quicker, while other reports saying the exact opposite. Fauci is saying very directly that our current boosters will protect us from Omicron and that we should get one immediately.

Meanwhile, the WHO is warning that by focusing boosters only on wealthy nations, it's actually going to make the virus worse because here's some news. It turns out that the only way to end a global pandemic fast is to think on a global scale. But despite mounting pressure, Moderna has outright refused to share its recipe

for the COVID-19 vaccine, and continues to sell doses almost exclusively to wealthy countries. Pfizer is doing the same, but they're taking a bit less heat because they didn't also take $2.5 billion from American taxpayers to help out with vaccine development. It's not even clear that there's anything we can do about it

to force their hand. Biden's chief science officer, David Kessler, has warned the company to step up and provide more vaccine doses to the world and has met with the company privately a few times, but we've seen no actual movement on the situation. Seems like the kind of thing that should have been worked out in advance.

Oh well. Maybe next time we all almost die. See, the thing is that every new infection gives the virus a chance to mutate into a way more transmissible version. It doesn't matter where the virus starts, as we saw with Omicron, it'll eventually make its way here.

So even if you want to think of this in the most cold-hearted, facts don't care about your feelings way, it's very much in our best interest to get the vaccine to as many countries as we can. Perhaps we shouldn't tie medical breakthroughs to the profits of private companies, you know, if we want this to end.

But also, the truth is that there really is no exact end, which is why people are struggling to define what an end would look like. That isn't to say things won't get back to what we define as normal, but rather the most experts agree that the coronavirus will ultimately become endemic, as in a virus that will be regularly seen

in our population like the flu. And in terms of where we are in that timeline, a lot of people are hoping and downright claiming that since Omicron appears less severe, it's going to be the start of that change. But we just don't know yet. We can certainly hope, hope is fine. We like hope, right?

A new hope, hope that floats, Doug Stan Hope. But this will once again be something that can easily confuse the public. Hey, you know what would be really helpful actually? If along with access to the same information, the public was able to easily access people who could tell them to their face what they should be doing. Like some kind of like a care physician

who is primary in their lives. A sort of guaranteed position that everyone has access to with the sole purpose of keeping them healthy. Some kind of healthy for all? Yes, I am talking of course about crystals. They absorb the universe's power and then allow you to channel it into your chi or possibly your chakras.

I'm not sure, I think you can smoke them too. Also, we should probably make sure people can occasionally see a doctor. I know, I know, here comes old man sexy Cody Longballs talking yet again about how perhaps it's very bad that more and more Americans don't have a primary care doctor and perhaps healthcare should be available

to everyone for free. But in the context of COVID, this problem became way more visible. The US was already falling behind other developed nations in the world before the COVID outbreak even started. And as you would expect, the pandemic has widened this gap even further. But what's especially revealing

is this study by the Robert Graham Center. It compared COVID deaths and infections to an area's community health index, which is a rating based in part on a community's access to primary care. And of course, they found that places with a lower health index rating would have a much higher rate of COVID deaths

both before and after the vaccine was rolled out. It was a 42% difference in fact. Geez, who would have thought that having easy and affordable access to a doctor would prevent you from getting a virus? And by not providing any kind of mechanism for people to get in front of real physicians, people they already knew and trusted,

when the pandemic hit, well, they ended up turning to places like Fox News or groups like America's Frontline Doctors, a right-wing grifter network that made obscene amounts of money doing online prescriptions of bogus coronavirus treatments. But at least we're now getting around to investigating them. You know, now that their customers died.

You remember them, right? They're the ones who did that video and newly purchased lab coats claiming they were coronavirus doctors and pushing hydroxychloroquine. And this video showed these people saying that you don't need masks, claiming that there is a cure out there,

that hydrochloroquine is effective, and that recent studies showing otherwise are fake science. They claim that the virus has a cure out there, that hydrochloroquine is effective, and that recent studies showing otherwise are fake science. They claim that the virus has a cure. Now, this video went viral on social media, partly because of outlets like Breitbart, and also, of course, because of President Trump and his son, who obviously have huge followings. Yeah, you remember those folks

where the head doctor turned out to have made a lot of previous statements about alien DNA? You know, you know the video. The one made up of painfully obvious grifters that has since been wiped from social media, but would then go viral because the president of the United States shared it on Twitter. Boy, I wonder what those folks are up to now.

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. At least they were arrested for something, but maybe should be arrested for other stuff too? I don't know. Maybe also arrest that president who tweeted their fake medical video. Just spit balling ideas. Also arrest all presidents, but mainly that last one.

Right now, I'm willing to settle for that last one, and then we can talk about the rest. Anyway, healthcare. We're sure gonna need it, especially but not exclusively after the pandemic. The lack of universal healthcare greatly impeded the country when first detecting and monitoring the virus. And unless this changes,

it will happen again with the next one. Not to mention the fact that COVID won't actually be over, even when the virus appears gone. That's thanks to something called long COVID, which is both the lasting effects of the virus and either the worst or best porn star name currently available. According to the American Academy of Physical Medicine

and Rehabilitation, anywhere from three to 10 million Americans have this long COVID, seeking treatment for a whole host of ailments that doctors suspect are related to their initial COVID diagnosis, but still remain poorly understood. This is actually something that happens with a lot of viruses, but is gaining visibility with COVID

because that's of course the big hotness right now in that it can give you a fever. And nearly two thirds of long COVID patients report brain fog, including memory loss. Half say they don't think they can return to full employment. Luckily, the Biden administration has said that people with long COVID may qualify for federal disability protections.

These conditions can sometimes, can sometimes rise to the level of a disability. So we're bringing agencies together to make sure Americans with long COVID who have a disability have access to the rights and resources that are due under the disability law. Super. Except, as it stands, it's actually very hard to prove that you have long COVID and actually get accepted to these programs. Doctors haven't been able to fully understand the illness and its related symptoms yet, making diagnoses uncertain and erratic. That said, we do know that if you're vaccinated, you're 50% less likely to get long COVID. So heck, maybe do that if you haven't yet. But in terms of long COVID,

there's simply a lack of hard evidence when someone has it. Many people who now have the symptoms don't even have a positive COVID test, especially if they got sick early in the pandemic when tests were in short supply. It can even be a challenge just to see a doctor to discuss your long COVID symptoms. Often these diagnoses require a network

of coordinated specialists who are all overbooked and have long wait times, like they do in those evil universal healthcare countries. And this is if your insurance will get you in to see them. Just starting from the research alone, this is going to be an extremely costly problem for years to come. That's assuming anyone will bother to give a shit, of course, because it's not like this isn't a problem for all of the people who currently have non-COVID related disabilities. Specifically,

the 70% of people who have social security disability insurance claims denied every year. Like long COVID, there are a lot of disabilities such as depression or chronic pain or really anything that's hard to diagnose that simply cuts people out of these benefits. And so even if COVID becomes endemic and fizzles out, it's just such a disservice to consider that as being back to normal, not only for the people suffering from long COVID, but also ignoring all the faults in our disability system

that leaves so many vulnerable people to fend for themselves. In terms of pain, these people often turn to dangerous methods to self-treat because no one will listen to them. Oh, right, that's another thing that rose during the pandemic. Overdoses, can't forget that.

Did we mention that? I think we did, but not nearly enough. God, there's just so many things that went horrifyingly wrong. On the subject of our most vulnerable populations. We haven't even mentioned that the majority of COVID deaths were our grandmas and grandpas and how we actually saw lawmakers on television saying this about it. And, you know, Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen,

are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that's the exchange, I'm all in. And that doesn't make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. And I want to, you know, live smart and see through this. But I don't want the whole country to be sacrificed. Dude said that out loud.

He processed it in his brain and ordered his tongue to make shapes resulting in how he thought it was better to let old people die than hurt our economy. And it wasn't just him, because thanks to failures in healthcare and supply and employee shortages, we absolutely did let our elderly die during this pandemic. Not just here, but all over the goddamn world. And we should feel extremely ashamed by that.

That we apparently designed a system so bad that we had to just forget elder care the moment a pandemic hit. And while I can't speak for the rest of the world, in this country, we've actually been doing that for a long time. For starters, by not paying the people charged to take care of our elders nearly enough. But more broadly, we've devised a system where the average American can't afford to take care of an elderly parent at home, nor can they afford to have their loved ones taken care of at a retirement home. By one estimate, in less than 10 years,

80% of middle-income seniors won't be able to afford assisted living. And so I guess this whole letting old people die for the economy thing is just a practice run for the really shitty future we are all giving ourselves. It's like Logan's run, but somehow way more drawn out and cruel and without those fun flowy future togas.

Same amount of turtlenecks though. And speaking of money, we should probably talk about the other long COVID you can experience, the COVID on your wallet. Back to you, Diane. Actually, wait, no, not back to Diane. I don't even know a Diane. What I'm getting at here is that even if you were infected

and didn't get lasting effects, you probably still got a massive motherfucking medical debt, especially if you are, you guessed it, from a demographic that lacks affordable healthcare. According to a survey of over 5,000 adults by the Commonwealth Fund, one half of uninsured adults who got COVID said they were having trouble paying off medical bills.

Heck, even one third of insured adults, as in people with employer coverage, also had this problem, which got a lot worse when the people surveyed were black or Hispanic adults who were far more likely to have medical debt or loss of income during the pandemic. Additionally, out of the people who did suffer

from medical debt, 35% said that debt completely dried up their savings. 43% said that debt resulted in a lower credit rating and 27% said that this debt made them unable to pay for things like food, rent, or utilities. And this is just one study as it relates to COVID. You see, while federal law ensured that both tests and vaccines were free,

this didn't extend out to the actual treatment of COVID. And while there is federal protection for both the uninsured and people on Medicaid, if you caught the virus while on private or employer insurance, there was nothing stopping those companies from doing just about whatever they want. Gee, seems like perhaps health insurance shouldn't be handled through your job, but whatever.

Point is that you probably heard about these horror stories of people being handed COVID bills for literally millions of dollars, and this is why. Simply put, the regulations our government put on insurance companies and hospitals when it came to COVID related treatment wasn't nearly enough, especially on a system that treats insurance like a business.

And so the lasting effects of this will span decades. And perhaps that's why a 2020 survey found that 80% of likely voters think that reducing healthcare costs needs to be a priority for the next president. You know, this next president. Let's get it done this year. This is all about a simple premise. Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege in America.

Let's get it done this year, he said in 2021. Healthcare should be a right. You remember when that was a thing we were hearing both after and especially before the election? This speech was from April of last year. And since then, we've seen a lot of good things Biden has done in terms of allowing better access to the systems we already have in place. But we're talking about something that needs heavy reform

and a willingness to make drastic changes. And since this speech, the more extreme ideas like Biden's push for a public option, not at all extreme, bare minimum healthcare reform, has since just faded away. It really just feels like since the election is over, everyone feels perfectly fine walking back the more progressive sentiments we saw

when everyone was trying to be the next president. Because it's too hard, you know, to actually gut our healthcare system and replace it with something that doesn't bury people in debt for the crime of getting a virus. Because hey, here's some not at all news. Poverty is not great in this country. And that naturally makes it harder for people

to get the proper healthcare they need. For example, 11 million US children, about one in seven, currently live in poverty, which has tremendously negative long-term consequences for their health and development. And COVID naturally exacerbated these issues as well. Millions of parents and caretakers lost jobs or were forced to quit so they could provide full-time childcare as schools closed.

The share of children living with unemployed parents peaked to more than 21% as of April 2020. That was the highest rate observed in the last 50 years. A few months later, this number did go down, but was still just below the same rate observed during the 2009 recession. And sweet Cheeto, I don't know if you know this, but kids suck, man.

You have to love them and junk. And if you're unemployed, you probably can't afford childcare. And if you can't afford childcare, it's pretty darn tough to find a job. As it stands now, a lot of states are beginning to kick in for subsidies aimed toward just that,

providing money for childcare so the adults can find a job. And that's great, they're doing that, but only in certain states and for certain jobs. You might also notice that this is just so late in the pandemic. Similarly, as of December of 2021, just like a month ago, a survey by the University of Michigan found 32%

of low-income families had yet to even receive a fucking dime in child tax credit payments. There are just so, so many people still twisting in the wind fucking years after this pandemic started. And much like healthcare, perhaps this could have been helped if we actually had free universal childcare in this country instead of simply talking about how we should have it.

Like a lot of these early 2021 Biden statements for universal childcare is yet another thing he's greatly scaled back since. Wouldn't it be great if he wanted to do good things and talked about how they were good every day until he did them? In his defense, I guess, Biden did raise the basic child tax credit

from $2,000 to $3,000 per child and included a measure to extend that credit in his Build Back Better plan. In his not defense, he still put a time limit on that instead of perhaps proposing we just do this from now on and very much super duper a million times not in his defense, the Build Back Better plan hasn't been motherfucking passed and so the child tax credit has not been renewed,

immediately sending families back into poverty. And just to be very clear, this shit really did help. We know for sure that direct cash payments to low-income families improve future outcomes. The poverty rate actually fell following the passage of the CARES Act, which sent out $1,200 payments to Americans early in the pandemic. Poverty fell to 9.1% in the 2020 census from 11.8% in 2019.

8.5 million people were lifted out of poverty just last year. That is unprecedented. And if we actually thought about these things on the long term, instead of giving them weird time limits like Biden is doing. Well, one estimate found that the child tax credit alone,

as in a $3,000 increase in annual family income, would result in a future 19% earnings increase for any child in that family. So this direct payment wouldn't just help with COVID right now, but actually begin to fix poverty as a whole. If you're into that. Right, you'd have to be horny for fixing poverty, I guess,

or at least kind of willing to. Or heck, let's say you don't give a fuck about kids at all. Maybe you're just a selfish prick who hates kids and doesn't care about people. Don't be ashamed. It's an unpleasant and contagious condition that impacts more and more Americans each year. But the thing is, even if you don't be ashamed. It's an unpleasant and contagious condition that impacts more and more Americans each year. But the thing is, even if you don't care and are more concerned with government spending

or some dumb shit like that, getting ahead of child poverty would actually make more money later. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine estimated that child poverty exacts a cost of 800 billion to $1.1 trillion in lost economic output annually. And so like a lot of lessons we should be learning from COVID,

most of it comes down to changing society in positive ways that would then naturally reduce the negative effects of the next pandemic. Universal basic income, free healthcare that wasn't tied to employment and guaranteed a primary care physician. And like a general get shit togetherness would not only just make the country better,

but better in a way that it wouldn't immediately buckle when the next deadly virus shows up to party. We also have to sit down and have a serious talk about the term essential worker, as well as the general idea that we have built a country that apparently needs to prioritize its economy over the deaths of its people. Because one thing this virus really exposed

is that this country as a whole was both figuratively and literally living paycheck to paycheck. And so we quickly got to a point where politicians were looking at entire industries as acceptable losses on top of our supply chain immediately collapsing. And while I'm absolutely not just talking about hospitals and healthcare employees, one of the strangest aspects of this pandemic was how we both prop them up while not actually helping them.

Because while we'll certainly applaud them as they go to work and give them free fast food, we're also not going to pay them more. And in fact, in some cases, if a healthcare professional tries to leave their current job for better working conditions, apparently it's totally cool for that hospital to issue a fucking restraining order, forcing those people to not be able to get a new job. That's a real thing that happened in Wisconsin

that has since thankfully been lifted in the courts. But apparently that's the lesson some of these hospitals learned, that it's easier to legally harass employees than treat them marginally better. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. How are we not seeing stories like this as America hitting rock bottom? Or have we already figured out a way to spin it as an inspirational story? Steve Hartman has the inspiring story of some young people to the rescue.

Steve Hartman has the inspiring story of some young people to the rescue. When people call for an ambulance in Sackets Harbor, New York, and the crew shows up at their front door, almost everyone has the same reaction. A lot of people just come up and ask you, like, wait, how old are you? You're the EMT? Or like, when's the ambulance coming? So what do you say? We just explain to them, when's the ambulance coming? So what do you say? We just explain to them we are the ambulance. These baby-faced first responders took over the village's emergency medical services

not long after COVID hit, when all the older EMS volunteers either couldn't or wouldn't do the job anymore. So cute. Look at those baby-faced ambulance drivers we're training to save lives Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha to fix the situation instead of considering perhaps, maybe rethinking a system that is clearly broken. Like nevermind considering things like making med school cheaper or perhaps free or raising workers pay. No, we're just gonna revert labor rights back to the early 1900s. Real retro, you know, bringing back the 20s and such.

And as it stands, we're experiencing a massive shortage in healthcare workers as one in five workers have quit their job because of stuff like burnout. And according to one survey, a lack of supplies at the hospital. That's right, as of late 2021, there is still a massive supply chain issue at hospitals and retailers.

Or to quote one business owner, "'The whole system is totally fucked.'" And so it turns out that we built that entire structure on a hilariously flimsy foundation, meaning that the entire way we deal with trade has to be rethought. And even our commerce secretary is saying that it's going to take time to get back to normal.

Depending on who you ask, this is either a tiny hiccup or simply what life will be from now on. But circling back to healthcare employees and essential workers getting that free fast food, here's a little riddle for you. Who exactly was cooking and giving them those meals? Robots, some kind of bird race we created in a lab. That's dumb.

Why would we let birds handle food? Perhaps it was also people. And so it's odd that the people who were forced to clock into these minimum wage service jobs weren't also applauded every day. And in fact, jobs like line cooks, security guards, and taxi drivers had some of the highest rates of COVID deaths during this pandemic.

And so, geez, along with healthcare workers, perhaps we should be paying these people a lot more since they're so vital to our economy that we're risking their lives. Perhaps it's extremely fucked up that childcare workers, for example, are making an average of $12 an hour despite being ridiculously important

in keeping people out of poverty. And so, no fucking wonder that we're seeing so many workers strikes suddenly happening in this country. Or as the New York Times put it, a mysterious and unexplained disease of commoner works folk demanding to not be treated like wet trash. Oh, what are we to do with this infectious new pridefulness

of the worthless lesser classes? This is actually one of the more positive lessons that some of us did for the most part succeed in learning from this pandemic. It's something that we're absolutely planning to do an episode about in the future, specifically these strikes and the progress that is or isn't being made.

For example, in October, 10,000 picketing workers from John Deere successfully negotiated 5% to 6% raises. On the other side, HelloFresh workers failed to unionize after the company launched a campaign against it, despite the many claims of unsafe working conditions for their employees. Yes, that's hellofresh.com, America's favorite way to have farm fresh food delivered straight to your door

by an extremely miserable employee. Use promo code, improve your working conditions. But overall, that is at least one positive mindset we're getting from this pandemic. The realization that the systems we had in place when threatened just a little bit, we're almost immediately willing to risk the American people instead of change.

Like if COVID was a bear and the government and large businesses were our spouse who chose to shove us between them and the bear, we would then have to seriously sit down and rethink that relationship. And so people are realizing more and more that things like raising the minimum wage and having universal healthcare should and can be demanded.

Because if we actually band together, it turns out we have way more power than them if we band together. Because the other thing we've learned from this should be evident in the fact that COVID is not even close to being over yet, despite some very loud people proclaiming otherwise. It's just gone on too long.

Nobody cares anymore. Last night, the Grubhub delivery guy was eating my French fries right in front of me. I mean, too long. I don't wanna live in your paranoid world anymore, your masked paranoid world. You know, you go out, it's silly now. You know, you have your mask, you have to have a card, you have to have a booster, they scan your head. Like you're a cashier and I'm a bunch of bananas.

I'm not bananas, you are. So let me start by saying, I understand the reason so many people are done with COVID. Emotionally speaking, I too am done with COVID. I don't know if you realize this, but literally no one wants COVID to keep happening. This pandemic, as we mentioned earlier, was profoundly difficult on mental health,

but I don't think we took enough time to really reflect on that, to reflect on the actual geography of our world changing, on businesses we enjoyed vanishing, on going to see movies or eating at restaurants becoming non-existent or at best extremely stressful, on seeing our loved ones die, and for many, on feeling this toxic resentment

toward individuals who simply refuse to accept the reality of what needs to be done from day one. Hey, Bill Maher, you're over COVID now? How is that different from when you were over COVID back in March of 2020? Hey, Bill Maher, I know I've said this on the show at least one other time, but could you perhaps consider for a moment,

just a tiny bit addressing my humble request for you to 100% absolutely shut the fuck up. There's this absolutely unreal and artificial pushback we're seeing against claims of medical fascism and draconian practices. People acting like it's brave to declare that they are done with COVID as if they live in an Orwellian world

of street marching mask squads, black bagging anyone without a vaccine. But like most large companies have already dropped mask requirements. Biden's minimal vaccine and testing mandates have been struck down by the courts. Businesses and schools are all open again. So I don't know, man,

what the fuck are these people even talking about? They won in that we have decided to just let COVID take us all, the dipshit anti-vaccine babies all got their bottle and then some. And since when did any of these dips spend so much as even a fucking day not whining about the extremely brief lockdown? The idea that we should be done with the pandemic

simply because people are tired of it, coming from those who never made an effort to actually try and reduce the spread of the virus from day one is something we need to reject wholeheartedly. Because I get it, I get why this type of message appeals to people who are just so fucking tired of the isolation and fear. But the only way to actually get out of this

is to be patient, do the work, and I guess continue to hound the government for some semblance of help, because holy sexy cow, the government gets a big old F on this one. For fun? And when you consider that everything we've talked about today

can and will be applied to future climate-related disasters, you know, the denial of science, lack of foresight in planning, refusal to spend the necessary resources or sacrifice the comfort of the upper classes, profound negligence towards minimum wage workers and the elderly in exchange for holding onto a dying economy, the lack of willingness to protect the most vulnerable,

the disinterest in redesigning our system to actually function, and this lack of people agreeing on a common vulnerable, the disinterest in redesigning our system to actually function, and this lack of people agreeing on a common reality and working towards a common goal. It's just not looking great for when the shit really starts to hit the fan. So sadly, the lesson is that we just can't rely on the systems in place anytime soon.

We can definitely push for change, expect the best, but practice for the worst. And we can do that right now during this pandemic, which eventually will, in some form, actually end. But for now, if you're in a position where you have the means to help others who don't, a landlord or an employer who can make lives a little easier, you just gotta do that.

You gotta support each other as best you can and think about how this can be avoided in the future. And maybe then we can actually have our celebrations and our clip show and all the puppets we can eat. Hey, speaking of, we haven't checked in with Warmbo in a while. Hey, Warmbo, how are things going on your end? Warmbo, are you well?

I'm sure he's fine. Man, we never got any of those guests here, huh? I really wanted to meet that void of sadness. I feel like we'd have a lot to talk about. Okay, happy COVID to all, I guess. Is that COVID? Happy, happy COVID day. COVID bad. make sure to do the YouTube things to the video and the channel and check out our merch store with things available.

We've got a patreon.com slash some more news. We've also got a podcast called even more news where all the podcasts are and this show that you just watched as a podcast. And I don't know. It was a long episode. So that's, bye. Get out of here.

Go on.