The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo Confronts COVID-19 Vaccine Myths and Misinformation

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Chris Cuomo dives into the political chaos surrounding COVID-19 and vaccine policies, condemning the lack of accountability and transparency from both sides. Debunking myths about ivermectin and criticizing both Joe Biden and Donald Trump for their mishandling of vaccine messaging, Cuomo calls for an honest review of pandemic-era decisions to restore trust and improve future responses. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with iGaming Ontario. Are you Dave, a claims-free, hybrid driving university grad who signed up online? Well, Dave, this jingles for you. Who says with TD Insurance? Because he's a claims-free, hybrid driving university grad who signed up online. It's Dave. Not Dave, no problem. TD Insurance has over 30 ways to save on home and auto. So,

you can totally save just not exactly like Dave. Save like only you can at tdinsurance.com slash ways to save. TD ready for you. I'm Chris Cuomo. This is the Chris Cuomo Project. This sounds very serious. And you may pick up a sardonic note in my tone and you should. I appreciate you being here, but we have to discuss something. It's very real, very resonant, and very, very fake. And that is the politics surrounding the pandemic, the vaccine, and all the drama and all the outrage. You know how I understand it? Because no one is positioned the way I am. Nobody is taking heat from two sides

of what should have no sides and sides that are making arguments that make no sense. Nobody's even arguing the data. They're only arguing convenience and political conformity. Literally, nobody is fighting the good fight and I see it better than anyone. And I'm gonna start off with some observations that I hope that you take the time to absorb.

First, I have never gotten my ass chewed on more by the right and left fringe than I am when it comes to pandemic policy and my coverage of it. And yet, no real media covers it. Where's the Wall Street Journal? Where's the Washington Post? Where's the Washington Times? Where's the New York Post?

These people cover my farts. Where are they? Why aren't they picking up thousands of people coming at me? Thousands of people coming at me for being an apologist to anti-vaxxers, kooky, fringy, crazy, righty, Trumpy folk. And how could I not apologize for being part of the big pharma jab pushing bullshit line machine of the pandemic era policies. All of that noise, thousands, here's what I see. Nobody in positions of power care. They don't want to talk about it. They ignore you. They think you're nuts. And the only response that

I get is from those who think you're nuts saying, why are you talking to the crazy people? What are you doing on that guy's podcast with that joke of a guy who's not even that funny? Why are you there? Why are you giving them oxygen? Think about that. We lived through an era where there was so much death, so much pain, and neither side of you talks about what we know. And there is something instructive in that. Not just that you're not about the numbers, you're just about the feelings, not facts, but feelings.

And that's the truth. And I know you don't like it, but that's too bad. I mean, no matter what you wanna look at, look, let's take low fruit, okay? Ivermectin, which is the metaphor for the madness of the pandemic. A drug that by no one's estimate is a major player in anything that can get you better from COVID or long COVID.

It's not a major player, okay? Could be a bit player, depends on the research, depends on how it evolves, depends on how it's used, depends on what it's used with, but it sure as fuck ain't a main player. Never has been, okay? But let's take that, low fruit, okay? You don't show me the studies.

You say you're on ivermectin for long COVID, you should apologize for telling people they shouldn't take it and that was only horse paste. Again, during the pandemic, somebody was spreading the word that ivermectin could cure you of COVID, and you didn't need to get vaccinated because you didn't have to worry about COVID.

And even if you did get it, you could just take ivermectin. And that message was out there so much with such resonance that there was a rush on prescriptions such that people couldn't get it. And they started buying the veterinary grade parasite anti-parasitic, horse paste. That's what I learned. And I said, that's crazy because the clinicians who were telling me about it, including the maker of ivermectin, Merck, who came out with a statement saying, we do not recommend its use for COVID.

But somehow that's not compelling to you. Oh, that's because it was now off label and anyone could make it so they weren't going to make money. So they just came out and said not to use something that they had made. Oh, well, they had another medicine that they wanted you to take, which is nothing like ivermectin and something they didn't want compared to ivermectin and something that by the way never wound up being any kind of great cure itself. That doesn't make sense, but you don't want it to make sense. You want it to be satisfying.

We were aggrieved. We were wronged. We were hurt. You were. I believe that. I believe that you feel that way. Now, have you bothered to take a look at why? No, why? Because when people are paying when they're hurt,

they don't get beyond that. They're just angry at the people who did it. And that's why you're asking me for an apology. Now, here's the part you don't know. I then get calls from people at the head of research institutions, which I don't give a shit what your politics are. If you know enough to know anything, you would respect institutions that do research for

a living. They're all bought off by Big Pharma. Then there's nothing. And the main truth in your life, the central truth is a fiction, which is you believe in God. You can't prove it. You can't demonstrate it. You can't calculate it.

You can't assess it. But you believe it with all your heart And I choose to have faith as well, but you're going to poo poo everything else when the central part of your life and existence Is a fiction It's not a fiction. It's real. I have faith Okay, so you're providing self-imposed proof To make something true But you are not open to any kind of analysis of it, but there's no other truth but that,

one that you decide for yourself. You see what I'm saying? You can't live that way. You have to be open. You have to be curious. And when I go on and talk to people who are against the vaccine or think it's poison or don't think they were treated the right way,

shouldn't have been mandates, all of these things, I get people who do nothing but research these things, calling me and saying, why are you talking to them? The vaccine did exactly what they designed it to do. It saved lives. It lowered hospitalizations. Ivermectin is not a mainline use for COVID. The research is abundant and clear. Stop talking about it. And you shouldn't take it for long COVID. You're making a mistake. It's not going to make a difference. It can give you GI upset.

Now that hasn't been my experience. I don't feel that much better either. That doesn't mean ivermectin doesn't work. Well, then what changed? Why aren't you apologizing? I'm not apologizing because I never said anything that was wrong. The overwhelming research is that ivermectin is not a main thing. The overwhelming research is that the vaccine early on made a huge difference and, and,

and. What I was speaking out against was not that I know everything about the vaccine, I want everybody to take the vaccine. That was never it. It's that the reasons that people weren't taking it now, you all want to say that you knew better, that you were skeptical, that you had read something, that you were an expert, that you heard from an expert. It's that the reasons that people weren't taking it now, you all want to say that you knew better, that you were skeptical, that you had read something, that you were an expert, that you heard from an expert. It's not true. What changed was the politics. When Trump was there saying the vaccine is coming, you were at minimum quiet, if not effusive in your

praise and you couldn't wait to take it. Then Biden comes in, now it's poison. And you know that that's true because you pointed it out about Kamala Harris. Remember Kamala Harris saying, I'm not taking any Trump vaccine? That was the same dynamic on the other side. So here I am trying to bridge this. Why? Because it matters. The part that none of you care about, none of you cares about it, is the only part that matters to me. The answers, a review of the pandemic era policies, we already know, you don't know jack shit.

It's unknown. How much spike protein does the vaccine make in people? It depends. Well, who's studying it? I don't really know. Well, is it centralized in any ways? The government over, no, not really. How?

That's the question. When the vaccine is put into your body, an mRNA vaccine, how much spike protein is it making in me versus you? We don't know. Well, who's studying that? Well, there's no real pressure on it. Why? Because that's not what you care about.

You're all zero sum because you're all playing the game of political advantage, whether you know it or not. And I think most of you do. You want an apology. You're not getting a damn apology for wanting to take a drug that the maker of it says don't take. I'm sorry Joe Rogan got beat up. Nobody should get beat up for anything. It was an emergent circumstance. There were a lot of people who were deciding to do something that everyone who knows is saying is reckless and it was judged in that moment. But this isn't about making, you know,

this shouldn't be about destroying people. It's about keeping people from destroying themselves. I mean, that was the public interest. Were mandates wrong? Maybe. How do we know? We got to assess it. Oh, well, we now know.'s very clear. That's bullshit, nothing is clear. I do this all the time. It's become an obsession of mine reading this shit. Well, you're talking about early on, this guy says, there was no vaccine for the early variants. It was only for the later ones.

Really? Google it. It's not true. What is true is that once you started treating, it started changing and it was changing anyway, and it seemed to accelerate in its change. And it got more and more resistant to the vaccine. Now, guess what?

That's not unusual. That generally happens. This fast, this way? No. That's what makes COVID special. Why is COVID special? We don't know. We can't get past where the thing even came from because they don't want to focus on China who made it. They want to focus on Tony Fauci. Why? Because it suits the game of advantage. Somehow Fauci is owned by Biden even though he worked for both of them, Trump and Biden, and Republicans and Democrats before that. He's a boogeyman. No, no, he was on the take. What take? No, no, he lied. Why? Why? He wanted

his life's work to be a lie during a pandemic where he made everyone sick. Yeah, cause big pharma was paying them off. He's not getting paid off. He just went out there and disclosed. He puts out an income statement every year. They had no proof otherwise. No, Fauci's bad, dude. Fauci's bad, dude.

That's the argument. Now, am I pro Tony Fauci? Yeah, I am. If I, am I pro Tony Fauci? Yeah, I am. If I found out things about Tony Fauci that he had lied to us about things, would I bring it out? Yeah, I would. I'd go to him first

and see what clarification I could get on it. But then I'd report it. That's called reporting. But that's not what we know. That's not what it is. Sure it is. They called it a vaccine. It's not a vaccine.

They changed the definition of vaccines for this whole class of vaccines, not just this one. Okay. But it doesn't work. It doesn't give you immunity. That was bad messaging. Should Tony be blamed for that? Yep. It was hyper-technical science speak instead of relaying it in ways that would make more sense to the rest of us. But I'll tell you who I blame for that. Trump, I'll tell you who else I blame for that. Biden, you know why? They both hid behind the white coats

because they didn't want to own this. And they let a guy who's not a political messenger, who doesn't know how to explain things to people like you and me, it's not who he usually talks to, in a way that made sense. And the messaging was deceptive. Why?

Because it doesn't give you immunity. They thought it might, and it kind of did early on, but that ceased and they did not correct their messaging. And the mandate stayed, even when it seemed the need for the mandate was abating. Now, how right is that statement? I don't know. I know that that's part is factually true,

but I don't know in context what it means because we need a review. And you guys roll your eye, oh, we don't want more process. I'm not talking about Congress. They're bullshit. Look what they're doing now with this sham hearing about COVID. Dragging people in, they don't even know what they're talking about. They have closed door sessions with lawyers who do all the research and reading and take it on like it was a legal matter. And then they have a public one. And these people only know trickle down of what the experts say.

And they're just grandstanding. They're no closer to finding out where the lab leak came from. If it was a lab leak or a wet market, my suspicion is lab leak. Do I know? No. But we could know. We could know.

Should we know? Yeah, but we could know. We could know. Should we know? Yeah, not just the lab leak. I wanna know why they made it the way they made it and what did they make it to do and who is they? And they is China, which Chinese? Who? And did they get help? Well, who?

We could find out. We're not gonna do it this way. It's gotta be an independent panel of people who are not in power. And you gotta have a wide complement of them, just like we did after the 9-11 situation in the commission we had there. It worked. And this one could work even better because you have real expertise in virology and vaccinology and all these different disciplines. It's different than looking at terror and politics and sociology. This is more precise. There's more factual basis for things. But nobody wants that. That's why the media is not covering this kerfluffle of the left telling me

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for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. If I could make one of the two sides happy, guess which one I would make happy? Wrong. I would pick the right side, the anti-vaxxers, the Trumpers. Why? Well, not because you're ever gonna watch me or make me your guy.

I'll never be your guy. I don't wanna be your guy. I don't wanna be anybody's guy. I'm not a follower. Okay, I'm not a mascot I'm not a team guy. I'm not a party guy It's not me. I'm not a joiner and I'm not a leader. I Just want to interpret what's going on I want to test power with what's going on the best I can and give you an ability to make good decisions for yourself That's what I want to do and I don't give you an ability to make good decisions for yourself. That's what I wanna do.

And I don't like that you feel so aggrieved. These people just feel that you're not worthy of attention because you're Trumpers and you say things that are irrational and you listen to comedians more than you do people who actually study this stuff. So they see you as the joke. And I don't think that's fair. One, I don't think it's fair to write off people

who just happen to have a talent as if they can't be curious citizens, and they can't talk to experts, and they can't get information and expertise. I don't think that's fair. But I think that you also have legitimate beef. I think that there were things that were done during this pandemic, maybe with good or benign or neutral intentions, but they wound up being bad and hurtful. with good or benign or neutral intentions, but they wound up being bad and hurtful. And I think they matter. But again, I'm going to say to you, why do you think Trump doesn't echo your animus on this? He wants to take up every other one of your fights. Why isn't he an anti-vaxxer? Why did he take the vaccine and a booster? Why does he tell you to take it? Why does he say the lockdowns were right?

Why is he attacking Biden about the mandates? Think about it. He's your boy, right? He's got your back, right? MAGA, make America great again. I guess that doesn't have anything to do with what happened during the pandemic. Because he doesn't say any of the things that you say. You hear him saying ivermectin?

Did you hear him saying ivermectin when he got sick? What did he say when he got sick? What was he quoted as saying? Which he has never denied. Don't give me any of that other shit. Give me the good stuff. What did they give him? Monoclonal antibodies.

They didn't give him hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin, and vitamin D, and send them home. So if he's your boy, and he is the agent of your animus, and he's gonna be your great Avenger, why isn't he apologizing to you? Why aren't you asking for his apology? See, that's why I don't take it as seriously as you want me to. Because you're just playing to advantage and you hate the media, but you love Trump.

And if Trump came out and told you to take the next vaccine that comes out for the flu and coronavirus, I don't even know if it's going to work. I don't know how it would work. I don't know what the efficacy is. Will I be more skeptical this time than last time? Hell yes, because I learned. But I'm not going to apologize for learning to be more skeptical because this technology doesn't work exactly how it's being described. Oh yeah, but I was saying that in the beginning. Bullshit. You're going to say that that's what you were beginning, but you don't have any problem with this stuff about Trump and

his inconsistencies. Come on. Come on. It's not believable. It's not credible. And to you who are telling me that I'm wasting my time talking to these people, fuck you too. I don't value citizens on the basis of their politics and their inclinations. And it's on you why they love Trump in the first place, because you've taken away so much of their confidence, so much of their confidence,

so much of their belief, so much of their faith. They're so desperate that they're clinging to somebody who seems to want to destroy what they hate. You did this as much as Trump did, if not more. Yeah, sure, he's a con man, fine, but he's selling people what they want and they want it because of you. And if you think not talking to them and isolating them is a way to win, you may be right. But long term, it's a losing proposition.

You are helping make us weak. And there are going to be more problems. And there are going to be biological problems. Who knows? Maybe there's bird flu shit. I don't know. But I know that people who study this stuff are worried about it. And you think there's going to be compliance? You think we're all going to be on the same page? It doesn't take many to disturb the many. We see it on social media all the time. And I'm telling you, these people are waiting for an opportunity to avenge and to create a different outcome than what happened the last time. And you think you're just going to ignore them? Not me. I'm going to engage. That's what the let's get after it means for me. I do it in every facet of my life.

I fail, I fail, I fail, I fail, I fail. But that's okay. I make no apologies for that either. I know conversation is the cure. There's a reason that even the Trumpiest lawmakers don't talk about pandemic Europe policy with any kind of scrutinizing eye towards Trump. Look at these hearings right now.

They are a bullshit sham. And they're all about advantage of one party over another. There's no progress. We don't know anything more about what the real science was behind masks and what we should do or distancing or mandates or lockdowns or kids and schools and how real myocarditis and pericarditis is, and is it a small thing that goes away,

or is it a big thing that will never go away, and long COVID, they don't even talk about it. And I am the lucky one. And my body temperature goes up and down three degrees, randomly, and I'm lucky, I'm functional. Randomly. And I'm lucky. I'm functional. Lighting up red, sweating for no fucking reason. Histamine response. And I'm a lucky one. And they don't even talk about it. And you think it's over.

Except for the vengeance. You're wrong. Because COVID's going nowhere. People are going to keep getting sick in ways we can't even imagine right now. And I'm not painting some fantasy. This is what the experts say. Long COVID is real. Long Vax may be real. You got to look at it. But stop saying, I said I'm vaccine injured. I never said that. It's a fucking lie. I didn't even take the Moderna vaccine. And I had my symptoms before I was vaccinated. And I can document it. I talked to people before I was vaccinated. And I can document it. I talked to people before I was vaccinated

about the symptoms I was having. It's not even a close call. Could you be vaccine injured? Of course. Why isn't anybody talking about it? Because you're not making them. You're just blaming. You're asking for apologies.

You're asking to move on. You're saying everybody's evil and part of some big pharma thing and believing Ryan Garcia you know that he has some insight into humanity and elites eating babies and you are believing that these people are not worth the paper that their names were ever written on and You two are killing us and I am doing a show for those who are between them because I'm not alone. There's a plurality of this country who's looking like this all the time. Like it's some kind of tennis match from hell

with two geriatric guys who are the least of us supposed to represent the best of us. That's why nobody's covering that you guys are coming after me and that you guys are coming after me for talking to them. That's why nobody's covering that you guys are coming after me and that you guys are coming after me for talking to them. That's why nobody's talking for pandemic review. That's why the congressional hearing is a sham,

except to whet your whistle about going after Tony Fauci like he's the reason that any of this went wrong. And there's gonna be a next one. And long COVID is real. And vaccine injuries are gonna continue. And our understanding isn't progressing with the threats and the risks because we're doing this. You want an apology, I want answers.

Oh, where was your curiosity then? So now I get punished for evolving and understanding and wanting to learn as I go? How do you live your life? You get everything right 100% the first time, and if not, you got to beg for forgiveness? Is that in Christianity, by the way? Remind me, are you supposed to judge people?

Are you worthy of apology and some kind of form of repentance? Are you God or do you pray to one? And you on the left, you really believe that you get to judge these people as being a bunch of mouth breathing assholes because they support someone you don't like. And that all their pain, all their suffering, everything they believe in, their sense of

patriotism, it's all nonsense because they're stupid, because you're so smart. Which is why things are going so well for you, right? You're in a dead heat with a party that you have a massive registration advantage over. You used to have the working class. That was Mario Cuomo's Democratic Party. Blue collar, baby, all day long, gap-tooth ethnic. We had the money to fix mine with veneers. So I'm the white guy in my family, not my pop. He wasn't called that. And that was his party, talking to the

people who had done dirty by the powerful and fighting for them. Now you are the powerful, and the right has taken over the work in man's pain. You gave them the American flag as a symbol of their party, and you think you know what you're doing? Ryden, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris? So I don't know why you think you're better. I don't know why anybody thinks they're better than anybody. I don't know why anybody thinks they're owed apologies or that they should be able to condemn or they should be able to redeem.

I don't know why any of you have this sense of yourselves that you do. That your feelings empower you in a way that they absolutely do not. And the proof is all around you. The powerful are laughing at you by doing nothing. Even your Trumpy friends. When's the last time you heard MTG or Gates or any of these people take up your cause on the pandemic.

Think about it. I'm okay getting attacked by both sides. If it's fighting the good fight and trying to bridge. And I know conversation is the cure and I'm not going to judge people on the basis of their feelings. I'm going to try to understand where the feelings are coming from and do what I can. And I'll tell you what I apologize for. I apologize with a deep sense of sorrow

that I couldn't have figured it out sooner. In my defense, I was curled up with a tequila bottle trying to figure out my life for one of the main years that all of this was coming out in 2022. I wasn't even on TV. And yes, mid, late 2021, it was becoming clear that we needed adjustments that weren't being made. Now, I'm sorry that my coverage didn't reflect that at that time in real time.

Could I blame it on the distractions of watching my brother's governorship implode and the media coming after me and winning and all this other stuff? Sure, but it doesn't change the reality. But I am where I am now, and I'm doing what I think is right. And I'm going to keep doing it. And by the way, who's doing it more than I am with a platform like mine, not some fringe guy who's in the podcast world where there's just this collective thing that never resonates or bubbles up to any of the seats of power.

Joe Rogan even, you know, the God of the digital world. He's only used as what a point of criticism most of the time by any of the halls of power. And you may say, well, I don't care. It's made him really rich, but it hasn't made him a change agent. We need change. And I'm here for it.

Are you? I'm okay taking the beating. I'm built for it. But are you built for being part of getting us to a better place? Think about it. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for subscribing and following. I appreciate you.

I need you. And I want you to believe that things can get better. And then you got to work towards making it so. My friends, be a free agent. Wear your independence. I use the money to go to good things. We're helping the kids who have been hurt in Gaza. We're going to help through the substack

to help people get treatment for long COVID if they can't afford it. It's five bucks a month and you get the podcast ad free and you get to go to school on my whole long COVID experience with my doctor and her expertise, which is formidable. Thank you for being here. Thank you for hearing me out. Let's get after it.