The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Alex Berenson

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

Alex Berenson

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the table, on the Table here on Sirius Radio and on podcast. We're here tonight with a pretty esteemed guest. His name is Alex Berenson. He's a former reporter for the New York Times, a new author of 12 novels and two nonfiction books, including Tell Your Children, A Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence. novels and two non-fiction books including tell your children the truth about marijuana mental illness and violence um but alex will be getting a lot of press for his contrarian views on the coronavirus in general on lockdowns in specific and um let's get right to it because alex is a hot guest we're lucky to have it's good it's a good get periel so um i don't know i saw i saw you on um tucker last night

so and let's just let's just go into it i know we all have a lot of questions first of all when you did you actually say this is that the average age of covid deaths is 80 uh yes i mean technically it's the median age, meaning half or above or below. In some states, it's a little bit higher than that. Like Massachusetts, it's 82. Minnesota, it's 83. In the country of Italy, it's 81. In a few states, especially states that have a lot of obesity, like in the South, it might be a little bit lower than that. But yes, worldwide, it looks to be about 80 is the median age of death. So, of course, I'm wondering what that tells us because or what point we should take for now. Because obviously, if everybody died between 79 and 81, you could have a median of 80. And if no, so it's still significant.

Well, what it tells you is that, look, the virus is definitely killing people, but that we need to be cognizant of where the risks are uh you know which is for the most part there are people who are elderly to some extent if you're younger and you have a severe comorbidity if you're severely obese you might have the risk of death by the way you can have other problems that don't you know that don't involve you dying right but for the most part it does look like people who recover do wind up recovering fully that you know some people may lose lung function. It's hard to know how many because it's only been a couple of months and whether or not those changes are permanent.

But when people, the death numbers here are very scary to people. And I understand that, but we really do need to be cognizant that the average age of that most people who are dying with this are actually older than the average life expectancy in the United States. And to some extent, that has to raise the question of whether some people are dying with and not of COVID. Although the counter argument to that is, well, if you look at the overall mortality in a place like New York City in the last six weeks or so,

there does seem to be quite a bit of excess mortality, which suggests that COVID is actually killing a fair number of these older people. So again, what's funny is people sometimes say, oh, I'm a COVID denier or something like that. That is not true. The virus is real. The virus can hurt and kill people. We just need to know who is really at risk here. And by the way, that's one reason it's really important to understand that is so we can protect the people who are really at risk and not just spend our time trying to scare everybody. The analogy that I use about this is with HIV. Back in the mid-80s, and certainly into the late 80s, people in the scientific community, the medical community, were very well aware that HIV was a disease that was spreading in the gay community. It was spreading among people who were injection drug users.

And yet we spent a lot of time trying to frighten 19-year-olds in college, straight 19-year-olds in college who really weren't at very great risk here. And only when the people in the gay community and injection drug users started to say, this is a waste, you are wasting your prevention efforts. You're putting them in the wrong place. Let's talk to us because we're at risk here. Did that start to change? And so it's sort of the same analogy here.

Instead of protecting people in nursing homes, which is what we really need to focus on, we're spending a lot of time trying to scare people who are, who are pretty low risk from this. Well, I'm scared. So anyway, so let me just, just for the sake, just so we have- You shouldn't be though. You really shouldn't be.

Hold on, let's get to this. I just want to bring up here some stats. I think you're going to agree that these are good stats, but just so we're all working from the same frame of reference and people at home

kind of get what the stats are. This is this off scene. Did it come up? This off scene, New York City, they kind of updated every day or two. So this shows, this is the total number of deaths on the right. So over 75 is 6,600, 65 is almost 10,000 over 65. And then like 4,000 to 3,500 below 65. So New York City is a bit of an outlier here

for reasons that are not entirely clear. In a place like Sweden, there are more people over 90 dying than under 60, and it's not close. So for whatever, the New York City numbers actually don't look much like the numbers from the rest of the world. It's not, again, it's not clear why that is.

Well, could it be because we all live on top of each other and take subways and stuff like that? It could be that. It could be that early on there were a lot of people getting aggressively treated with ventilators and that turned out not to be a great idea. We don't really know. But again, I'm not saying that the New York numbers do show that several hundred people under 45 have died. And that obviously, you know, is is is a problem and not something that I you know, I think we should anybody should we don't overlook. But I but I would just point out that that's not really the picture in the rest of the world. OK, but we don't have enough ventilators to have knocked

the stats up that high. It's got to be something a little more global than the number of... Yeah, this is a very good question. And I think it's something that as, you know, going forward, I hope there's investigative reporting around this. Why did things get so bad in New York so quickly? And, you know, what does it say about the fact that the death numbers look a little different? So I got one more quick question and then we'll go into a general discussion. I'd like to know, I'd like to arrive by the end of this conversation

on a plan for what we should do to save America. So I just noticed one thing last night, you came on Tucker's show. I just watched it. Right after he did a thing about how there's so many hypocrites among the people who are advocating the lockdown. And it was this, what's his name? The British guy, Randall- Neil Ferguson.

Neil Ferguson, who was the main proponent of the really scary models and was telling everybody to lock down and then was diagnosed positive and then had his mistress over who was married and she was going back to her husband and child child correct yes that's right but what bothered me right but what bothered me a little bit about tucker's presentation there was that i wasn't sure what point he was making if he was making the point that people can be outlandish hypocrites i get that but he seemed to be saying something more he seemed to be saying that because of this hypocrisy he was calling into question the underlying recommendations and I don't think that follows logically it's like if priests uh tell us that it's wrong to molest children and

we catch a lot of priests doing it themselves it's still no less wrong to molest children I mean the fact that this guy is a total hypocrite doesn't mean that the lockdown was a bad idea and And that seems to be what Tucker was saying. So I mean, you have to ask Tucker what he was saying. But I would say, how did you take it? I mean, I would say that if Neil Ferguson thinks that this is so incredibly serious, that the whole world needs to socially distance for weeks after he was diagnosed, okay, this wasn't him socially distancing because he was afraid he had gotten this. He had it. He knew he had it. And he was within the two-week period when he was active.

Then you can question whether or not Neil Ferguson actually believes this is as serious as he is telling people. No, no. I think you answered your own question. I think because he wouldn't have gone over to his mistress's house if she was the one who tested positive. He already had it. And he's a selfish pig and he didn't give a shit who he gave it to. I mean, you should have him on and ask him that. All right. So I've been saying for a long time, I know everybody else, and I've been saying for a long time now,

well, let me pull it up. There's this, do you remember the name of the economist, Dan? There's a minor impact, 100 days later, the impact would be huge. And I'm wondering, where do masks fit in to all this? Should we all be wearing masks? Would it have made a huge difference if we had all worn masks? So that question sounds sort of simple, but it's actually incredibly complicated. There's a whole bunch of sort of questions nested in there. And maybe the most important one is the one that people understand the least, which is, what is the point of the lockdowns? Okay. Six weeks ago, when this began, we were told that the point of the lockdowns was to flatten the curve. What that actually means is not, we're going to reduce the number of people who get this. What it means is we don't want our hospitals overrun in New York City, in Northern Italy, in Spain, wherever. There was a real risk

of health system collapse, okay? So what flatten the curve means is we're going to spread this out. So yes, people are going to get infected, but we're not going to affect so many people at the same time that hospitals are going to, you know, have bodies piling up. And we did that successfully. Okay. And outside of New York City, it wasn't even close, to be honest with you. So in fact, in most places in the United States right now, hospitals are considerably more empty than they were two months ago. So the point of the lockdown seems to have changed now to this idea of we're just going to prevent people from getting infected indefinitely or until there's some kind of vaccine, which nobody has any idea when that might be. It might be five years, it might be never.

So the question is, what does it matter on some level whether or not people get this in May or July or October or December if they're going to get it? In fact, you can argue they'd be better off getting it in the summer when they're not going to get the flu along with it, and so hospitals can better deal with them and they won't have two infections at once. So the mask question is sort of off to the side once you understand the point of what the lockdowns were supposed to be for. Okay, but I don't know. First of all, go ahead. I think that that's a very interesting point. I mean, as somebody who, you know, has been like screaming stay home from the rooftop since day one, that is something that is worth sort of thinking about.

Because the idea was, I mean, first of all, bodies were piling up in the hospitals in New York City, at least. But the idea initially was not, I think the understanding was that everybody was going to get this. The idea was that they wouldn't get it at once no no i'm that's yes well well there's i mean i don't think i haven't asked my question first of all this kind of reminds me of the rationales for the gulf war where they told us that it was because of weapons of mass destruction but we also knew there were there were adjacent rationales like bringing democracy to the Middle East and all these kinds of things. And here, I always thought-

How'd that work out for us? Didn't work out. I always thought that the flattening of the curve was the immediate reason, but that also at the same time, we were certainly playing for time, hoping that hydrochloroquine might turn out, that remdesivir might turn out,

that something else might turn out, that give everybody a chance to catch up. And I imagine there's always an incremental movement on just learning through trial and error how to treat things better. I imagine even without any new drug or therapy, we will lower the death rate a year from now, from where it is now. Like, hey, let them sleep on their stomachs instead of their backs. Well, that's saving a lot of lives. I think you're correct.

And I think that the Gilead drug has proven somewhat effective. It's not clear whether HCQ is effective. But yes, those things are incremental and will help. The cost of the lockdowns is far, far more than incremental. Listen, you don't have to tell me. I'm bleeding money like I'm going to see 20 years of my life wiped away by this. But I'm still getting back to math. I'll send this to you afterwards if you haven't seen it. It's a study. There's a lot of fancy Ivy League school names and logarithmic charts. So I think the study is absolutely legit. But let me just show you this graph if you haven't seen it. This is about masks and essentially

this efficacy of the masks and how many people actually wear them. And all this stuff that beginning to turn blue claims that if everybody wore masks, it could lower the R-naught below one, which obviously over time could extinguish a virus. It says the available evidence suggests that near universal adoption of non-medical masks went out in public in combination with what could successfully reduce the R-naught to below one, thereby stopping community spread. Have you seen that? Do you think? So I've not seen this paper, so I can't comment on it. I will say that I was, a few weeks ago, I felt more in favor of masks than I do now. And there's a couple reasons for that. There's

very strong evidence that outdoor transmission is simply not an important vector on this. Okay, this thing gets spread three or four ways. It gets spread in the home. It gets spread on public transportation. It gets spread nosocomially, which means in hospitals and nursing homes. And it may occasionally get spread in these sort of super spreader events, like a wedding inside or stuff like that. There is some small evidence of spread in retail and in um you know and office settings okay so the question is to knock out that five or ten percent of spread whatever percent it is it is a relatively low percent do we want this incredibly powerful signal that you know this is the new normal like or or is that the point really of the masks, after all, is not

actually to reduce the spread in a meaningful way, but to let people know that this is, you know, this virus is real, and we should all be frightened of it. And so, to me, that is a problematic reason to require masks outside when they are not really going to slow the spread, because the spread doesn't really happen outside. What about inside? I mean, you talk about public transportation, but to me, a restaurant is, I mean, a restaurant isn't moving, but it's still a subway car. And so is a comedy club. So there's just not that much evidence, again, that restaurants or retail or offices are major vectors. The problem with making people, I don't know how you make somebody wear a mask when they're eating. Okay, so I don't, I don't actually know how that works. And for most people who are

not healthcare workers, you go out, I mean, I'm out all the time, okay, people touch their masks, some people smoke through their masks, people wear their masks over beards, people have no idea how to wear this thing properly. And arguably, you're more likely to like increase spread if you're wearing it the wrong way. And I see people, I with you know surgical masks i see people with n95 masks i see people with real chemical weapons respirators and none of it none of it has anything to do with the way the virus spreads outside which is that it doesn't what would be a logical explanation for why a virus would spread in a subway for example and not in a crowded bar. I mean, it seems intuitively. So a subway has much less ventilation, right? A subway car is an enclosed space with relatively

little ventilation where people are standing, you know, in New York City, they stand inches from each other on the subway. In a bar, that's much less true. And by the way, it can spread in a bar, but most of the people in bars are aged 20 to 40. You know, not everybody, but they're relatively young. They're relatively good health. They're going to get this. And most of the time, they're not even going to know they get it. One of the many perverse things about the lockdown is it tends to push the virus at the people who would not be outside. And actually, New York City today said that the new infections were uh you know ongoing infections were happening two thirds in people's homes well of course exactly what the data are telling us but they're gonna i'm sorry my son is jumping on uh the bed right now as you gotta go as you gotta go uh believe

me i have i have i have the same uh problem so yeah but of course everybody's home but the two they would still spread two-thirds. That same, as you know as a dad, that same two-thirds would spread on top of whatever was going on outside when everybody comes home from work. But listen, we're arguing from two sides. We're arguing from across. It's the worst kind of argument

because we would probably both agree if we were both working from the same data. So afterwards, I'm going to send you my mask data. Okay. This is a Dwarven plan for what I would do if I were governor. Everybody wear masks. Well, yes, I would say right now, by penalty of law, like, you know, Massachusetts actually has a $300 fine,

and somewhere in California, New York is just like basically the honor system. I would say everybody, everybody is going to wear a mask and we're going to see what happens for two weeks. You're going to be very disappointed in the, in the change and spread with that. It's not going to make a difference. Right. But you don't know that, but let's say, that's what I would say. And then if we find that masks are, if we are still hovering at a low level, then we can start to let that out a little bit. Maybe having, allow people outside to take them off and test it. I would say trial and error is worth 20 IQ points. Test it step by step rather than making any assumptions about masks. Certainly, we have a lot of anecdotal reason to think based on Asia that masks do help and we can get used to masks. I mean, I have a comedy club. I don't think anybody's going to walk in there anyway without a mask. I mean, nobody's going to- Well, so that's the thing. People may well feel that they should wear masks and wear them anyway. And by the way, if you're symptomatic, it seems like you should clearly wear a mask.

If you're on a crowded subway for an hour, it makes sense to wear a mask. I'm not saying that under some circumstances, requiring or strongly encouraging the wearing of masks doesn't make a lot of sense. What I'm saying is telling people that they should be wearing these outside is ridiculous. And telling people that they should be wearing these like when they're shopping or in offices is probably not very helpful either so so i i'm a little bit probably i guess scared it sounds but but i still think that i think the outdoor thing is ridiculous all right so you don't think wearing masks indoors is crazy as a as a incremental measure no and certainly as you put in your comedy club,

in a bar, I mean, again, it would be a very odd look, but yes, in a subway, yes, all those places. And it should be optional. What? Go ahead, Dan. I mean, mandatory, strongly encouraged. Most people are going to wear them. I don't know that I favor the government

finding people who are not wearing them, but most people are going to wear them in any case. No, I'm a libertarian, but I favor it. Go ahead. If you were to implement that policy at the Comedy Cellar, how would you factor in the eating and drinking that goes on there

and that composes a fair amount of your revenue? Would you just eliminate that portion of it? Well, I guess they could put the straw up the mass. we won't if we can't serve food we can't serve food listen if we can't serve drinks we can't serve drinks it's the problem with all this is that it should be all it should be all derived from data and if this late in the game we still don't know whether masks help or not like we're flying blind it bothers me we should know that i agree with i i certainly agree with that but but we but we're not playing entirely blind because we know that even without large-scale mask wearing there's not a lot of outdoor transmission i mean i think the comedy club is an interesting case because you can't you can argue it either way do we know

i'm sorry dan got frozen i say i say you said that we there's not a lot of... I'm sorry? Dan got frozen. You said that there's not a lot of outdoor transmission, and we know that just from interrogating people that are sick or from what's going on in Sweden. How do we know that? So, well, Sweden's an interesting case, but no. In fact, in China, a couple of scientists tracked, they looked at 7,000 cases in China, and two of the 7,000 was confirmed outdoor transmission.

And they looked at, of those cases, there were 318 clusters of cases, totaling 1,200 cases. Not one was outdoors, and nearly all were in-home or public transportation. Again, retail is just not, I'm sorry ezra ezra you have to leave come on come on the show yeah come on say hi to everybody and then you gotta go what are their names what are their names you can see them right there hi there he is hey all right wave to everybody and then go upstairs all right you know your dad's a very Hi. There he is. All right. Wave to everybody and then go upstairs.

All right. You know, your dad's a pretty big shot today. I will get you a toy, but you have to go. You've got to go. Please. It's okay. So these Chinese scientists looked at this, and they found there were literally no outdoor clusters.

And in Taiwan, you could say, okay, it's China. We don't trust China. They've had similar results in Taiwan, where they tracked people very, very closely. This wasn't even trying to track them afterwards. This was tracking people they knew were symptomatic at the time. They found essentially all the transmission was familial or or you know or close friends this virus it clusters but what do you do in a city like new york if you can't have public transportation i mean that seems just cripplingly problematic i i agree so so that's a case where you know masks

make sense right and discouraging people from getting on the subway if they're sick makes sense. So, but yeah, New York's got hard decisions to make because the city is going to have to function. It's going to have to go back to something. Yeah. By the way, are you aware of whether the Taipei Times is a reliable organ? I mean, it's Taipei, it's Taiwan, I would imagine. Why do you ask? Because one of the things about masks, I have a virus outbreak, wearing masks greatly reducing spread. The Central Epidemic Command Center Specialist Advisory Panel says that the risk of infection is high if both are not wearing masks, but if only the

healthy person wears a mask, the risk of contracting is greatly reduced, possibly as much as 50 to 80 percent. If both are wearing masks, the risk is down to 80 or 90 percent. And I'm seeing this again and again. So here's the thing about me. I am happy to be convinced by data. If the data suggests that we all should be wearing masks all the time, and that's the way to get out of these lockdowns, then that's what we should be doing. Ezra, you need to go. Go.

I'm going to pick you up and go. Ezra. Ezra. That's enough. You've been cute. Now get out. Out, out, out. Come on.

Come on, dude. Hold on. Go. Go. Please. Go on. Go on, go on, go on. Bribery might be the only recourse at this time. Get him some candy. Tell him to put on Fox News and chill. I'm coming back. I'm coming back. That was fantastic. This is the best interview I've done since this whole thing started.

It happens all the time. We all have kids. My son comes home every time. Just to go back to this, listen, if that's what the data ultimately shows and that's where we get, then let's get there. Wearing masks and ending the lockdown is a lot better than no masks and the lockdown goes on forever. So I'm with you. Convince me,

and I'm with you. What's that? You have an email address, right? What about Sweden? What do you take from Sweden? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Give me one. Okay. You got to go. All right. What about Sweden? What is the question? What do you, what, what's your take on Sweden and how it's doing and what we learned from them? My take is that they've had roughly the same results as most of the rest of Northern Europe or certainly the UK, France. I guess you can argue about some of the Nordic countries, but they've had roughly the same results as most of the rest of Northern Europe or certainly the UK, France, I guess you can argue about some of the Nordic countries,

but they've had roughly the same results and they haven't blown up their economy or society to get there. So to me, that's a win. They have three times, three or four times as many vests as their close neighbors, but basically the same as like Ireland, right? Yeah, exactly. So people can, I guess, you know, I guess you can, Ezra, you need to go. Go on, please. The only thing that worries me about Ezra

is that you may not want to tweet it now. This reminds me of the get off the shed sketch of SNL where they're yelling. All right, I think he's bored now. All right. Okay. So listen, to me- He's giving some Benadryl.

I'm kidding. I think the results would have to be far worse Okay. So, so listen to me, I'm kidding. Results would have to be far worse than everybody else's for us to say that they've made a mistake. They have saved their economy. Their schools are, you know, are open. Primary schools are certainly open. They have not blown up their society. If their results are the same as the UK or France on a per capita basis and they haven't blown up their society and that's a win to me. Well I understand that there is a lot of there are a lot of economic repercussions even in Sweden because they do have they are taking a lot of

voluntary measures and so so it's you can't say their economy is unscathed I don't know to what extent. No no I agree they've been hit by, but it's the difference between a recession and a depression. Okay, now since we're running out of time, I'll ask you a question. I had a big argument with a friend of mine today. And whenever I argue, he calls me a Republican and I'm not a Republican, not at all. But because I was criticized,

because I, well, basically my argument was that I know that Trump is a jackass and I know that he he's, it's impossible to defend the man Trump, but I am yet to be convinced that any particular mistake that he made or didn't make has been that consequential. And I'd like to get your take on it. And by the way, are you, are you a Republican? You're not, or I mean, it doesn't seem like I'm a registered independent. I'm a registered. And you're not, are you a Trump supporter? I'm asking, you don't have to answer, but, uh, you know, I don't talk about my politics, but I think, I think you can go back and look at my tweets and see some pretty negative stuff that I wrote

about Donald Trump. Um, okay. So if we had a different president, what might he have done differently? How could we be better? Well, if we listen a different president what might he have done differently how could we be better well if we listen if barack obama were president the situation would be entirely different for two reasons first of all obama is much more he's clearly more data driven okay but the other reason that's possibly even more important is that the media would not be trying to kill him every day okay and and i think it is impossible to understand what's happened in the last two months without understanding the media dynamic here, which is, let's be honest. Okay. I worked for the New York times. Many people, the New York times hate Donald Trump. That's just a fact. And, and you don't have the light Donald Trump to think that that's a dangerous position for

the media to be in. So this thing, Donald Trump is very good at kind of confusing the media and baiting the media and making things into a joke. And in this case, those strategies all fail. Okay, people are really, really scared of the coronavirus. And when Trump tries to bluff, and he comes out like he doesn't know what he's talking about, like with the Lysol, he looks bad and they know it and they love it. And so they, they meaning the elite media, meaning CNN, New York Times, et cetera, have pushed this very hard. And that dynamic would not be happening with Barack Obama. And so we'd probably be at a more reasonable place in terms of our policy. I don't know what exactly it would be, but all I can tell you is in Germany right now, they're talking about a very quick reopening at this point based on the data. I'm not sure if I asked the wrong, I didn't get an answer,

but if you had been president, what would you have done differently back then? Now you have the benefit of some hindsight, like how could you have saved lives what should trump have done differently how could he have pushed this curve down well i think you you know you said it a few minutes ago you're not sure that any strategy would have worked right look at you know italy these countries that had very aggressive quick lockdowns nationally they've had terrible numbers you can make a case that the lockdowns don't seem to work at all. Again, if you look at Japan, you know, if you look at Sweden, in Japan there seem to be very few cases and no real lockdown. I know they've talked about some emergency measures now.

You know, Sweden, no hard lockdown. They have had deaths, but it hasn't been more or less than, you know, a lot of the rest of Europe. So I'm not sure that there is a winning strategy here. This virus, if it gets it, look, here's what is clear to me at this point, and I think should be clear to everybody. We need to protect elderly people.

We need to protect nursing homes. We need to protect elderly people in hospitals. We need a strategy that concentrates on the people who are most at risk. And to me, let the New York Times and CNN and the Washington Post fight about what Donald Trump or anybody else should have done in February and March. I'm interested in May. I'm interested in getting these lockdowns ended before we crater our whole society. I'm interested in getting schools open because children are at very, very low risk here. And we are endangering some children

by forcing them to stay in with abusive parents or neglectful parents. So the Alex Berenson question is not what went wrong in early March, although there is plenty that went wrong in early March and in February. It is what do we do now? But what did go wrong?

Again, I'm not interested in that. I'm just not going to answer that. I'm interested. You're the expert. All right. I mean, again, should we have had more testing and more contact tracing back then? Yeah. Would it have mattered?

I don't know. I mean, I don't know the answer to that. If the proposition is that ultimately, this is a novel virus, and it's gonna, it's gonna, everyone's gonna get a chance of getting it and 60 or 70, or 70% of people are ultimately going to get it, then on some level, that's going to happen, whatever the strategy is, unless you're going to be New Zealand, and really try to cut cases to zero and spend the rest of the eternity fighting to keep cases at zero. And this is not, look, I keep, you know, my, this is not what they called in the stand, Captain Trips. Okay, this does not kill 99% of the people it infects. It kills between one in probably about one in 600

to one in 250 people it infects. And those people are for the most part, extremely elderly or have comorbidities. So to me, that is not a proposition where shutting society down indefinitely makes a lot of sense. That's where I am right now. You can argue about what should have happened two months ago, but that's where I am. How do we protect the elderly? Well, we focus on nursing homes. We make sure that nursing homes have state surveyors there every day. We make sure that they have plans to keep sick people and sick staff members away from older people who don't have the virus. You try to make sure that they're hiring people who've already been infected and have immunity. There are reasonable, and I'm sure there are people

who are experts in nursing home infection protocol who have really good ideas, but that's where we should be focusing, not all of our attention, because this can hurt some people who are younger. But that's where we should be focused. Let's focus our attention on the people who are at risk. That's nursing homes. That's like their own little internment camp and nursing homes. But what about grandma at home with me? I mean, so grandma, probably like that's in some level, that's up to you as a healthy older person. How much risk do you want to take? Do you want to see your grandkids or are you not willing to? I mean, those are choices that I think as an individual you can make. You know, again, lockdowns drive people into the home, sometimes with elderly relatives,

and to some extent are likely to, or at least theoretically likely to incur or cause sickness that way. How do you send your kid to school in a multi-generational home without him coming home and getting everybody sick? So the evidence is quite strong that not only do kids not get very sick from this, they actually don't spread it to adults. It's not the flu. It's the opposite of the flu. Kids tend to get it from adults and clear it very adults. It's not the flu. It's the opposite of the flu. Kids tend to get it from adults and

clear it very quickly. Australia had a really good, very, very clear statement about this the other day. And the Australians are very aggressively trying to reopen their schools. We should be trying to reopen our schools. I will say that unequivocally. I think it's a terrible choice we've made to sacrifice our children's education here. And I will stand by that. I'm homeschooling two kids. I kind of think they're getting a better education in certain ways, but I don't know how much longer we can do.

Yeah, well guys, this was great. I mean, listen, it's a whole people, you know, this has only been going on six weeks. September is four months away. That's four more months with kids, no school. And I will say this, it's very clear to me in places like New York City, if there's any chance that the schools

are not going to reopen and run quasi-normally, people are going to leave New York. They're going to go to states where their kids can get school. I think you're right. All right. Well, this was great. I appreciate the sort of tough but fair questions.

I wish I got more of that. But I guess I got to go to a comedy show to get it. Well, boy, that's the highest praise I think I've ever... I mean, I couldn't ask for tough but fair. I love that. I hope you mean that. I do. I do. And I'm sorry that

Ezzy was a bit of a... No, that made it charming. We love that. Alright. Thanks, guys. Bye, Alex. I love right thanks guys thank you i know you don't need it i know but be safe you too and stay sane as i say to people stay sane i'm gonna send you some email all right thanks guys thanks nice meeting you alex uh perriel do we have dove coming on no's just us. We can keep it a short episode. He's a pretty interesting guy, right? Yes, he is. So this is, I didn't want to interrupt

because, you know, you are having so much fun, Noam. But I still don't feel like we have an answer to, I asked you this the other day also, we have 4% of the population, right, in America? New York City? 4% of what? also we have four percent of the population right in america new york city what the united states is four percent of the earth's population oh okay okay i'll take that uh arguendo yeah go ahead and we have 25 percent of the deaths globally for coronavirus. So how do you explain that? I don't know.

I have to check your stats, but we have, I guess that you could probably expand that same, like, you know, when you aggregate statistics, you could probably include Europe and most of the Western world as a fraction and come up with the same thing. The freer, more technologically advanced countries of the world are dying more. And listen, we don't know what the dictatorships are really suffering, but they're dying more and they're not locking down their people with the harshness that China can. And then maybe climate-wise, Africa is less vulnerable or maybe just hasn't started spreading in Africa yet.

But in the Western world, we live very close to each other. I mean, is there some conspiracy theory I haven't thought of? What's your angle on this? No, not at all. I mean, maybe there's a conspiracy theory that you haven't thought of, but I'm not thinking of a conspiracy theory I haven't thought of? What's your angle on this? No, not at all. I mean, maybe there's a conspiracy theory that you haven't thought of, but I'm not thinking of a conspiracy theory. I'm really wondering, you know...

You're suggesting we're doing something wrong. Correct. Thank you. I mean, I think your question is prudent of what could have been done differently. Are there 10 billion people in the world? No, I don't think there's quite 10 billion. I think it's about 7 billion, but I'm not sure. Is that with the math?

In my brain, let me see. Well, I think the point is either way, we were disproportionately affected. Yeah, 4.25%. Well, it could also be that those countries, as Noam said, deaths will come later if you flatten the curve. Or we're doing something wrong. Noam, did he convince you of anything or persuade you on any points tonight?

Well, he actually, I mean, he actually agreed with me. He's just working, seems to me, we're working from different data or assuming different data is correct. He didn't, he didn't reject that masks would work. He just is not yet convinced. In other words, if he, he seemed to say that if it's true that masks can reduce spread to the level that the Taipei Times said, then yeah, it would make sense to have people wear masks indoors at least. So I don't think we, you know, I disagreed about anything,

except that we don't have any short data to work from. That's really the point. But his main point was open up the schools and end the lockdown. I mean, that's sort of his main thing. He's saying that it's, that it's, he's taking it as an assumption or that kids, kids are not significant spreaders of this. Well, if they're not, yeah, it makes sense to open the schools, right? I mean, you know, it all comes down to the data. Well, he also favors sort of

ending lockdown generally, which I don't think. Yeah, no, I don't, I mean, I don't know. Let's say if masks don't work, let's say if masks have absolutely no effect, then. No, that's not true. How do we, no, but for the sake of argument, what would we do then?

And then I think that we would spend more and more time thinking about what he said, which is common sense, which is to focus our main energy on the, at the high risk populations and do everything we can so that the low risk or virtually no risk populations can go on about their lives, producing dollars and wealth for the rest of us. And to treat it as a one size fits all solution when

we see such stark differences between the cohorts, as they say, is not smart, doesn't seem smart. So if we know everybody below 40 has really no risk of, who doesn't have a comorbidity, has no risk of dying from this, then we do our best to try to isolate everybody that does have a comorbidity and is above 40, like a leper colony. That's not true. I mean, there are plenty of people who are dying who are not elderly and don't have comorbidities. Not plenty and not enough to shut down. And listen, we're playing with fire here. We cannot end our economy.

We can't just keep printing money. If we can print money indefinitely and it has no bad effect, then we have to reevaluate the whole concept of money and poverty. Like, okay, just give everybody money. Obviously, at some point. What we have to do is to make sure that those things that are necessary to life get produced meaning electricity has to continue to flow food has to continue to be cultivated um infrastructure has to be repaired however do comedy clubs have to open in order for society to survive? Probably not. Not comedy clubs, but restaurants and gathering. And people have a social need to

gather too. It's not. So I had a thought and I forgot it, but I think we have to find a way to end it. He's right. And he's right about that. And so he's working hard to try to figure out that solution. And if we have to separate the older... Oh, it was Cariel's point. That yes, there are some people dying who are young. I could bring up the chart again, or you could rewind. There are some people who are dying who are young without comorbidities, but it's very young.

It's nothing, for instance, to use an example I used years ago, which is we could cut out way more deaths by lowering the speed limit to 30 miles an hour on the highways, or 20 miles an hour, or five miles an hour. Every one of those will have a certain amount of lives saved, and the only cost is economic, and nobody would ever think to do that. There is a trade-off between economy and convenience and reality. There is. Maybe we can do an offset. You know how like companies, if they pollute, they got to offset it by planting trees or whatever.

Maybe we can offset coronavirus deaths by more vigorously enforcing drunken driving. This way we come out even at the end of the day. I don't know. Oh, I thought you were going to sell like carbon like carbon credits i'm going to have like coronavirus death credits like if you if you want to open more robustly you got to pay more money because you're going to kill more people in coronavirus well that's another idea i'm just saying that you know it's the idea then then everybody is going to get it and that something or that most people are going to get it because my

understanding was that the idea was to prevent people from getting this and if we all stay home the virus will eventually die no that was that was his whole point parallel his point that he's right that it was always told about flattening the curve. Flattening the curve meant bending the curve of people getting it down below the curve of hospital beds, essentially. It was never a permanent. And so long as the curve was below the hospital beds, kind of the idea was to proceed along. But I always thought, I think we said this, that that wasn't totally the whole story, that we were also at the same time playing for time.

Because in a certain amount of time, as I said, we can, maybe a therapy will emerge. Maybe we will catch up with the PPE. We'll catch up with all sorts of things that can better equip us to handle this. And I think it is, listen, if we're all going to get it, I think it's better if we all get it over five years than over six months, if we can have an economy. But if the economy is going to be crushed, and we're all going to get it, it's better to all get it tomorrow and then move on the next day. I mean, that's clearly the best thing. The number of deaths is the same.

Well, you know, this depends on where we're at with new treatments and vaccines and this and that and simply knowledge of how to treat it, which I don't know if there's been any great advances. I feel like there's been less news. You know, I feel like there was a flurry of news about treatments and different discoveries. And I haven't necessarily heard a lot recently about this. See, Dan, this is why the thing of masks intrigues me so much because masks are social distancing, social distancing. It's, it's a constructive social distance measure. It's instead of actual distance, you create the distance by blocking the flow of air. So, which is essentially what the distance is. When you want people to be eight feet apart or six

feet apart is because you're measuring how far the droplets can travel. And you say six feet, which I don't think is actually the accurate number. That's what they say, six feet. But if you have a contraption which can limit the travel to one foot, then with a mask, let's say, then you can social distance beyond one foot. And so, wait, I don't know. And then also masks are low tech. Beyond one foot. So why aren't we doing it? I don't know. And then also masks are low tech.

And I imagine that clever people, we've already seen a little bit of it, will find ingenious ways to make masks even more effective over the next three months. Because obviously if you can prevent the virus 100% from coming out of somebody's nose or mouth and then they can still socialize and go out to clubs and go to the movies and go to work, that's 90% of the ball game right there. And yeah, it sucks to walk around in a mask, but we'll just have to live with that until something else presents itself. The Asians do it and they seem to get used to it. So we can get used to it. But it doesn't seem like we're thinking that way.

Well, I don't know. I'm not sure if I don't know why we're not thinking that way, perhaps because we're not 100% sure that masks are the solution in terms of people in close quarters. In other words, if people sitting together at a movie theater, hundreds of people with masks on, is that effective? Would that be effective? I don't know, but it seems to me that there was a lot of- What if they're shoveling popcorn into their face half the time? I think that there was a lot of unspoken hope that the high-tech cavalry was going to arrive to save the day. It was testing, contact tracing, blah, blah, blah, therapies, hydrochloric, whatever it is. Trump obviously

was yearning for that. And we've been programmed maybe from too many movies to see the cure come just in time. And Dr. McCoy comes up with the vaccine right in the nick of time. And I'm not being facetious. I think these things do affect us. And I think that we have to resign ourselves to the idea that the high-tech cavalry is not on its way, and we're going to have to go back to low-tech solutions. And I had said that a wise old grandmother, a wise old Jewish grandmother, I said, would have been better as head of the CDC than these fancy doctors, because the fancy doctors are thinking about fancy solutions. And a grandmother would have said, wear a mask, stay away from people as much as you can, drink chicken soup to stay healthy, you know. I mean, this is all very, very, very basic common

sense. And in the end, the only things that have mattered have been our lack of common sense not shutting down new york in time all the dumb things fucking de blasio going to the gym i mean what what is we have had the worst luck you know we've had the worst luck if we had had a president and a governor like this far leftist mayor of San Francisco, we would have been way, way better off. She would have saved us more by being president and governor than all the socialist policies would ruin us if she had her way. And maybe that's not quite right, but you get my point. No, I'm a bike. Yeah.

Just to change the tenor of the conversation briefly. We only have 10 more minutes, but are we going to get Bernie Fabricant on to talk with Perrielle about her book on my knees? It's called, I believe. That would have been a great night to do it, but I didn't do it. Well, we would have had to act fast because we had thought that

Alex would be on for an entire hour, but... Yeah, I thought he was going to be on for an hour. Alright, it was okay. I think we actually covered most of the ground we wanted to cover with him. I want to hear, first of all, Dan, I want to know how you're doing and what's going

on over there, but I do want to answer noam's question very briefly um so my friend who is a pediatric er doctor um is in israel and she to answer your question it how israel just reopened all of its um you know primary schools and i asked her the same question you asked Alex. What did we do wrong? What could we have done differently? And the answer is that they shut everything down when there were like 100 cases there. And I mean, I think that that's really the answer.

And there were probably tens of thousands of cases in the U.S., especially in New York, before anything got closed. Right. Well, no, it was in the hundreds. But, oh, yeah, undiagnosed. I mean, undiagnosed. Dan, how are you? But listen, I just want to say something about Israel. First of all, be mindful of what Alex said, which is that, yeah, but as soon as they open up, they might catch up in no time. You know, you can obviously, yeah. And there's no reason to think they won't if nothing changes because there's really no difference. Maybe the weather's a little bit warmer, but

Israel's not that cold all the time. But so it's too soon. It's like, you know, the exit polls before the early returns in an election. You got to wait until all the districts come in, and it's the same thing with Israel. But I will say this about Israel. We as Americans have felt that the Israelis were crazy for voting for Netanyahu because we only cared about one issue, which was that we thought he shouldn't build settlements. Essentially, it comes down to that. And what we failed to realize

is that the Israelis have more than that issue. And it turns out that this dude, whatever you think about his Palestinian policy, is extremely competent. Not if you're Palestinian. Not if you're Palestinian. But in terms of... I'm trying to explain to you why the Israeli public has a broader decision before them about whether or not to have Netanyahu elected.

And we have to understand that just because they vote for Netanyahu is not necessarily an endorsement of the settlements, although many probably do agree with him, but many might not. The point is that he's extremely competent. And Israel, among all, I will call them a Western nation, Israel, among all the Western nations in the world, even considerably more than Germany, has kept this extremely low. Now, maybe that is just climate. I don't know. No, it's certainly not climate.

That's ridiculous. It's not climate at all. Well, you don't know that. You do know that. Why isn't it spreading more in Africa? Well, maybe it will. I mean... Okay.

Anyway, so can we get Bernie on to discuss On My Knees? It seems like... Now, Perrielle, it doesn't look like Noam's going to read your book. I know. I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. I just haven't had any chance to be allowed to masturbate. No, you're disgusting.

This shouldn't shock you because it's a book called On My Knees. It's a play on... Can you masturbate to the written word, Noam? No, actually, not in Perrielle's voice. I forgot it's her. No, forget it. Don't say that. It's actually really funny that you said that though,

because the sort of campaign when the book came out was, can a book be better than a blow job? No, I would say it can't. I would say this about a book. First of all, a very bad blow job and a very good book. You can't answer that until you read the book. But I would say that a book, of of course it gives you more steady enjoyment whereas the blow job lasts for how long it lasts especially if it's a good one doesn't last long no can you can you get off to the

written word was the question i posed to you that that uh you haven't answered i mean an erotic have you ever masturbated to erotic fiction or nonfiction? My wife's family will listen to this podcast. Leave me alone, please. I'm sorry. But look, you love to bring up this sort of stuff. No, you brought it up. You can't snivel out of it. Dan, how is your novel coming? Are you getting a lot of writing done? I'm getting more writing done than I would be outside of lockdown, but I'm not Stephen King, either in popularity, quality, or work ethic. He's written, he probably writes two books a year. No, I write very slowly. I'm writing more than I would have otherwise written. I'm at 60,000 words. I'm told that a novel in general, that publishing companies prefer 60 to 80,000 words that's what I've done well I'm almost at 60,000 no 80 to 100,000 words right 80 to 100,000 so if I'm at 60

you know I'm I'm getting there I'm like you know I'm in I'm in the fifth set of a five set match that's certainly the you know it's I can actually it actually seems like oh shit I might actually finish this when I first started, it seemed like I couldn't even think about finishing because it was too discouraging. But now I can think about finishing. The realistic possibility, even probability. Whether it'll be good or not is a whole other story,

of course. Periel, will you send me Alex's email address, please? Yeah. Where is he, by the way me Alex's email address, please? Yeah. Where is he, by the way? Is he in New York City? I think he is.

I'm not sure, though. I assume. Well, you know, that homie didn't seem very New York City-ish, I don't think. But I don't perfectly recall the image of his house. Yeah, that didn't look like an apartment in the city. It looked more like a bedroom. How are you guys nuts? You can't tell. It could be anywhere. No, that didn't look like an apartment in the city. It looked more like a bedroom. You can't tell it could be anywhere. No, I don't know. There's all kinds of apartments

in New York City. Wow. Can you send it to me now? Yes. Can we finish the show first? I am finished. You are such an asshole. Oh. Well, we like to give the people their full hour. I mean, do you think you can hang on to this for five minutes

while you're not arguing with somebody? Mom, are you really going to read Perrielle's book? Be realistic. Don't make promises you can't keep. You don't read emails. How the hell are you going to read a 300-page book? I will read it. You don't want to read it.

300 pages? It's not 300 pages. Whatever it is. It's 200-plus pages. But he can't believe I'm capable of stringing together so many words. Oh, that's not quite right. It's the efficiency of those words. Is there a cliff notes, the monarch notes to that by any chance?

Yes, it's called Bernie Fabricant is the monarch notes. He will come on. He will give us the- Listen, Perrielle, to be totally honest, Bernie is really into this book, and Bernie is no dope. So I would have to say on that limited data that this book, that you are a good writer

and this is an entertaining book. I have to say that. you are a good writer and this is a, this is an entertaining book. I, I, I have to say that. I am a good writer. Part of the reason, part of the reason Bernie's enjoying the book is because he knows Perrielle, at least via this podcast.

And when you know somebody, you know, it becomes more interesting. Would it be interesting? I mean, there were plenty of people who enjoyed that book that didn't know me personally. Okay, fine.

But I'm just saying it adds, it adds, it's even more interesting when it's someone you know, or with somebody you follow or listen to on a regular basis. What does Bernie Fabricant do other than be my favorite Fabricant, Steve Fabricant's brother? Can we get more guests? Can we get more guests like Alex Berenson and Ross Barker, these kind of like smart, left-of-center people who are ready to help? I mean, I like that he said the questions were tough but fair. We need guests like that.

People are not going to get all pissed off and storm off with joy. What is wrong with you? There's something wrong with you. You know that, right? I don't get you. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you, but why do you say that now? Because what kind of a conversation is that to have in the middle? I mean, yes,

what do you think I do with half of my day other than reach out to guests that I think you're going to like talking to? I wish I knew what the gene was. Because you have it, my wife has it. Like you take everything as a criticism. I'm saying I'd like to get more guests like that. And you say, all you hear is,

you're not getting enough guests like that. No, that's not what I heard. Yeah. Anyway, I thought he was a good guest. What's that? Well, you know, if you read his Twitter, he's a lot more, I would say reasonable, but a lot more. His Twitter feed's a lot more provocative and a lot more critical of the government response than he was on our show. But I guess that's typical when you talk to somebody as a human being in person.

It's not the same as reading them on Twitter. Yeah, well, Twitter has a perverse incentive, is that to get attention on it, you have to be more provocative. I mean, I don't want to impugn him in any way. I haven't even read his Twitter, so maybe that's not fair. You know who we could get on? But the problem is, Noam, is all these guests that you would love to have on, they're not all dying to be on. But maybe we can throw a Hail Mary and try to get Michael Moore on. He has a new documentary out that's been highly criticized. No, come on, he likes me.

You might underestimate how much people like to come on this show. And given the fact that nobody except for me tries to do that, I don't think you can say something like that. I think Michael Moore would come on. Ted Alexandro knows how to contact him. But he and I, Michael Moore sat in the olive tree for like an hour one time. And we had a really good, friendly conversation. We liked each other.

I don't like his work, to be honest. I don't, I don't, I don't, but, but personally, he was like kind of what you're describing that personally, he was a lot more reasonable and he's very bright and very, and very charming. You know, I liked him. Okay. That will be our next attempt to try to get Michael Moore.

His new documentary is called Planet of the Humans. It's a, he's not the narrator this time, he's just a producer, but he's, it's a scathing critique of the environmental movement and his scathing critique has it has itself been scathingly criticized. Like all his stuff. You know, I tend to, I mean, he's, I tend to view him as a propagandist with, you know, he probably wouldn't disagree with that. I mean, he's going to watch this and be like, I would have come on, but can you guys just. No, no. He got asked one time during whatever the one he did about Fahrenheit 9-11.

And he had some facts. He was confronted. I think it was like a Good Morning America. And he essentially answered kind of what Dan just said. He said, listen, I'm not here to be objective. I'm here to make a point or something like that. When they cornered him on his kind of like cherry picking facts or even spinning some facts, he has an agenda that he's trying to move forward and he's kind of, he kind of admits that from time to time. So I don't know, but he's, he's definitely, he's definitely quite bright. I'll tell you that.

If you have mine, you'll, you'll see he's quite bright. And listen, he, he understood. I think that he, there's a little ambivalence for him because the people that he started out his career championing, the autoworkers and was it GM and Roger and me? Roger and me was GM, yeah. Yeah. These are the people who are now, and they were like the people he was championing, they were the underdogs. And now we look down on those people. The same liberal Democratic Party that thought Michael Moore was so wonderful for elevating these people, for being concerned about them, now thinks of these people as the deplorables. And he struggles with that.

And that's why he was predicting that Trump would win. But those are his people. He doesn't hate them. He doesn't hate them the way the average liberal hates them. He feels he understands them. And doesn't hate them the way the average liberal hates them. He feels he understands them and he used to be their champion. He was their champion before Trump was their champion. Yeah, but Trump's not really their champion is the difference. Whatever the point is, but it's more than that because Trump may not really be their champion, but we talk about them, at least people, the Democratic Party and journalists especially

talk about these people like they're beneath contempt, Toothless, rubes, you've heard all these words. Those are the people that Michael Moore was writing about until immigrants all came along. And then they became the group that we all have to write stories, legitimate stories about how they're suffering and blah, blah, blah, and how they don't work and how they're getting under the heel of society. And now we don't care about the white working class anymore. That's old news. It's just how phony everybody is. It's just like Tara Reid and Kavanaugh. It's like, yeah, yeah, we'd never vote for anybody who grabbed pussy. And now the headlines are, yeah, I believe Biden did it, but I'll vote for him anyway. But if anybody had written, yeah, I think Trump grabbed pussy, but I'll vote for him anyway. Can you imagine what the response on the left would have been?

But that was, everybody knew that was going to be the fact that, yeah, people not happy he talked that way or did it even, but that's not what they vote on. But just the way they forgive themselves now. I was in a time today, I think Biden did it, but I'm going to vote for him anyway, which I totally respect. But whoever wrote that editorial, would they have respected that if somebody in a Wall Street Journal had written that in 2015? They would have been up in arms about it. How could you? What kind of monster are you? How could the people on the, how much do we hear? How could the people on the Christian right still vote for Trump after they find out what an adultery is? Really? Really? Maybe now you understand. Maybe now you fucking understand now that things are coming out about Biden and you still want to find an excuse to vote for Biden. And why don't we wrap it up? I think it

was a good tight show. I'd hate to, I'd hate to just prolong it just for the sake of prolonging it when we have a good tight little hour package here. It's been an hour. And can somebody please send me Alex's email? Immediately. If you want to follow Alex Berenson on Twitter, it's simply at Alex Berenson, A-L-E-X-B-E-R-E-N-S-O-N. If you want to follow Ezra Berenson, his son,

I don't have that information. We're here now doing it twice a week. A special lockdown bonus episodes. And you can send us your comments and suggestions at podcast.comedyseller.com And you can follow us on Instagram

at livefromthetable. And how much do you want to bet that within moments of me closing this, I'm going to get an email from Noam asking me for Alex's information. I'm not going to take that bet. We will see you next time. Thank you, everybody.