The Highwire with Del Bigtree - BILL MAHER’S COVID RANT UNDERSCORES THE HIGHWIRE’S EARLY ACCURACY

Episode Date: April 7, 2024

In a recent fiery segment on “Real Time,” Bill Maher unleashed a scorching critique of the oversights made by government and health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic. This viral moment offers a retrospective journey back to January 2020, highlighting how “The HighWire” was way ahead of the curve in exposing these critical misjudgments—from the debate over school closures to the undervaluation of natural immunity.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

I was just sitting backstage thinking how I say that at the top of every show, but I really, really think about what that means. We're an international show. Millions of people watching around the world. Right now, someone's crawled out of bed at about 4 a.m. in Australia to watch the high wire. They do this every single Thursday. Someone in Ishert, Bayesian, is staying up. It's about 10 p.m. hanging on for those last words to get their fix with a high wire. Why? I mean, why are they doing it? Why are we becoming... this sensation around the world, maybe because we have such an amazing track record of getting the story right when everyone else got it wrong. Well, we like to say every once in a while, I told you so. It doesn't make us happy because a lot of lives have been lost and destroyed because of what we got right. But this week, and I told you so, came from a unique place,

from a very liberal space known as Bill Maher. On the Bill Maher, real time with Bill Lillamarshot. Take a look at what he said just this week. I get it that we didn't know exactly what was happening at the beginning of COVID and some mistakes were inevitable. But four years on, I'm tired of hearing, well, we didn't know. No, we didn't. But some people guessed better than others. And the people who got it wrong don't seem to want to acknowledge that now. Some people said closing schools for so long was pointless and would cause much worse collateral damage the kids and they were right. Well, we're going to break down some of what he said.

Of course, right there, he's talking about closing down the schools. Now March of 2024, and finally, Bill Maher is coming out and telling everyone that watch this show, we've got to admit it, okay? We were wrong on a few things like shutting down schools. So we thought it'd be fun to look back at when was the first time we said we thought it was a really bad idea to shut down schools? Take a look at this. It's absolutely crazy.

I try to imagine what it would be like. If I was a kid back when I was in school, everybody got the cold, right? I mean, this is essentially what's happening. This is a widespread cold. It's really problematic for 0.26% that die around the world. But we know it's not really problematic at all for children. Can you imagine if we had been quarantining all these years every time someone had a cold in school, you would never be in school.

You would never be back to school. And to think we've been lending kids walk to the school that are HIV positive or have all sorts of fact. We passed laws to make sure that we didn't act too crazy around people that had life-threatening illnesses like that that were in school. And now what is really, and you can honestly say this for children less than the flu, much more like the common cold.

We are shutting down entire schools. It's a world run by hypochondriacs. And to think that, we're just, we're going to have to eliminate the common cold from the world we live in in order to get back to work or go back to school? Right. To begin with, that was August of 2020, you know, some, you know, almost four years ago that we were making that statement in the middle of COVID. Now, one of the things that Bill Marr said is that, well, I mean, we were just guessing. I guess guessing you get it once,

maybe twice, but when you started hitting it out of the park three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 times, at a certain point, maybe someone should check in with what we're talking about. I was attacked. The headlines said that we were calling it a common cold. There was no worse than a common cold. That's insane. But let's look at the stats. This is what anti-vaccine figure dealt biggers using Facebook and YouTube to encourage people

to intentionally contract the coronavirus. That was one of the headlines because I said for everybody under the age of, say, 60 or 70, if you're healthy, if you have no comorbidities, those other issues that are putting you at risk, you should go out and catch this cold so we can get to herd immunity. Well, let's look at what we now know. Was I wrong? I was definitely saying about the kids, zero to 19 years old. We now know across the world the fatality rate was 0.0003%.

We're reporting back in 2020 that the death rate worldwide seemed to be about somewhere around 0.27%. it ended up at 0.35%. We were right in the ballpark of a common cold, or maybe a bad flu season for many. So we had it right, not because we were guessing, because we were looking at the science coming out of China, coming out of Italy, and, of course, the cruise ship that made all of this famous. But let's move on to the next statement made by Bill Maher on what we got right and the rest of the world got wrong. Four years ago, the Daily Beast ran a story with the headline, Bill Maher, pushes Steve Bannon Wuhan lab conspiracy theory, which was typical of the mainstream media at the time. Of course, it wasn't a conspiracy theory, and it wasn't owned by Steve Bannon.

And now everyone, including the Biden administration, admits as at least a 50-50 chance that the virus could have begun in the lab in Wuhan that was doing gain of function research on that virus. Now, long before we had FOIA and got the Fauci emails that show that he was talking to all of his top scientists that were saying, it sure looks like there's an insert in this virus that would mean it had to come from a lab. Like we're 80% sure it's from a lab. Now, of course, he paid people off and manipulated them and they wrote a paper saying, no way this came from a lab. It's definitely natural origin. It's now proven to be one of the greatest frauds in science.

But we weren't just pushing a lab theory. We were bringing on scientists, as we do. And I've said from the beginning, you were a part of an investigation that we is ongoing here on the high wire. We brought in people with all sorts of different perspectives that were talking about things that looked odd and strange about this virus. Let's go back to Dr. James Lyons-Wiler that came in to talk about his own perspective of an insert that appeared to be in this virus. Take a look at this. If you're looking at this particular coronavirus, this coronavirus belongs to a family of viruses that are most closely related to the bat coronaviruses. However, phylogenetics has a hard time placing it with only 75% support. All of the other nodes you'll see on that tree, this is a phylogenetic tree of coronaviruses, actually have 100% support. So what's disrupting the phylogenetic signal of placing this into a unique, monophyletic group, as it's called in phylogenetics, is, I believe, this inserted element.

I found that it actually did match a vector technology. This vector technology is a mechanism by which molecular biologists insert new genes into viruses and bacteria. This vector technology is called a P-shuttle, S-N vector. Now, it's really unusual to find a vector technology. sequence in a virus that's circulating in humans. And so naturally, one thing that we can say, I think, for certain is this particular virus has a laboratory origin. That was January, what, 30th of 2020. I mean, we weren't even locked down yet.

And here on the high wire, we were talking to a scientist saying it looks like there's an insert that would, you know, make us believe that it's manmade. We don't see it in nature. He talks about the phylogenetics, meaning we still, to this day, they cannot find an animal, not a panglin, not a rat, not a mouse, not a bat that has SARS-CoV-2. We would see something really close nowhere near, as James Lyons-Wiler so accurately put, only about 75% of it adds up to what we see in nature. This is one of the major strikes against anyone that said this was of natural origin.

And of course, now the Farron-Cleavage site insert is what all the world is looking at. And was it a P-Shuttle, as James Lyons-Wiler said? Well, that would be a way to insert a Ferran's cleavent site, but I spoke with it recently. He said, we can't guarantee that for sure. But what we were talking about was inserts that made this virus look like something happened. Man-made was put in there. Could not have happened in nature, or it would be so extremely rare, especially since we saw nothing like it and still don't in nature.

January of 2020, here on the high wire. And then we got this for saying it. Media matters. Facebook and YouTube are letting anti-vaccine figure Del Bigtree push deadly coronavirus misinformation. This is another headline. January 30th, Bigtree baselessly floated a theory

that the coronavirus outbreak started with a vaccine development accident at a lab. He also suggested it is a bioweapon. Oh my God. Now we know that these bioweapons, labs are all over the world. There's always the potential for a lab leak, and we were even discussing it then. The Wuhan lab had had a previous lab leak that we told you about on the high wire. So the whole world has come around, and Bill Maher, we weren't guessing. We weren't

guessing. We had scientists who were actually reading the genetic code of the virus and pointing out anomalies all the way back in January of 2020. But go ahead. Keep tuning into CNN. Keep tuning into MSNBC. Keep paying that cable bill so that Foxx. can lie to you about what's on there or be totally dead to the actual conversations that involve science. But if you want science, stick with a high wire. Let's look at what else, he said. When COVID hit, we did a lot of stupid things because America never reacts.

It only overreacts. Ubers look like those Orthodox Jews who wrap themselves and saran rock in case their plane flies over a grave. We washed the mail. We played baseball in front of cardboard cutouts and ate in parking lots or with inflatable dolls? They closed the ocean.

We were told to wash our hands every five minutes and don't ever touch your face and if you absolutely must go to the beach for the sake of all that's wholly wear a mask. So funny if it wasn't so absolutely destructive to our constitutional rights as Americans, to our economy, to our jobs, to our children's education. But let's talk about it.

There's a couple of elements here. First of all, masks. What were we saying about masks? Was it just a hunch? Well, here's how we were reporting on it. Are you starting to see these images around the world? Children with masks and shelters in their schools being socially distant, stuck in square boxes, more than six feet away from each other?

this article by the world-renowned scientist, Dr. Russell Blaylock. Here's a couple of quotes from a brilliant article. Face masks pose serious risk to the healthy. Listen to this. As for the scientific support for the use of face masks, a recent careful examination of the literature in which 17 the best studies were analyzed, concluded that none of the studies established

a conclusive relationship between mask, respirator use, and protection against influenza infection. Several studies have indeed found significant problems, however, with wearing such a mask. This can vary from headaches to increased airway resistance, carbon dioxide accumulation, to hypoxia, all the way to serious life-threatening complications. That was May of 2020. Now the Cochrane collaboration is backed up in modern science, even having been through COVID, physical interventions interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses, basically finding wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no

difference to the outcome of influenza like illness, like illness compared to not wearing masks wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of a laboratory confirmed influenza SARS-CoV-2 compared to not wearing masks. It went on to say social distancing, and none of those things made sense. But let's talk about the health implications. So we were right. We were showing you that all the science that existed at the moment showed that masks were never designed to stop a particle as small as a virus, COVID being one of the smallest. So that was a charade we were all taking place with. But what about the dangers? I had my own son on the show. And for those of you that maybe weren't around with a high wire then, this was

maybe one of the most viral videos we ever put out. It was taken down three or four, maybe even five times. Our website was shut down behind because of it. Take a look at this. This is my son ever. Ever is 11 years old. And here in Texas, the mandate right now is that 10 and over have got to wear a mask. Ever has to wear a mask wherever we go. And so we bought this thing this week. This is, this measures the amount of CO2 that's in the air. Can we just look at the ocean numbers? Carbon dioxide levels and potential health problems are indicated below.

From 250, 350 is the background, normal outdoor level. 350 to 1,000 ppm, typical level found in occupied spaces with good air exchange, 1,000 and 2,000 level associated with complaints of drowsiness and poor air. Obviously, I don't want ever to have drowsiness or poor air. 2,000, level associated with headaches, sleepiness, and stagnant, stale, stuffy air, poor concentration, loss of attention, increased heart rate, and slightness.

nausea may also be present and then 5,000 ppm or more. This indicates unusual air conditions where high levels of the other gases also could be present, toxicity or oxygen deprivation could occur, meaning do not hit 5,000. All right, here we go. Right now we're at 848. So I'm going to go ahead and just insert this right, like as he did, right? It's underneath and try to keep it.

That feels pretty tight right there, right? Okay, so you can breathe naturally and let's just see what happens. Okay. All right, so we're at 1,367. We've already just passed two. So now we're in the place where he can be having headaches. He can be over at 3,786. Look at this. We've just passed 5,000. Now we're in the toxic level. Right now we can be doing this. 7,000. Inside this mask of the CO2, 7,000 parts per million. And now this thing's gone off the Richter scale, folks. It can. Can't even register how high the CO2 levels are inside. And look how many seconds that was. All right. Can I just. Yeah, you want to take that off?

You know, I still, it blows my mind the hours we had our children sucking their own CO2 all day, every day in schools. While many of us were on our offices taking it off, it's really an outrage that parents allowed that to happen to their kids at all. I wouldn't have done it. I pulled my kids out of school.

built our own school just so that wouldn't happen. That's how I handle things like that. But I want to sort of also let you know we reached out to some professionals from OSHA that said that we did that study. Right. Of course, I got attacked. It was taken down. It was misinformation. Now all of that's proven to be true. We are seeing the health outcomes and issues that came from that all the respiratory illnesses that were caused. A lot of fungal infections and lungs because of the masks. And I'll tell you, I was never able to get a mask on ever again. It didn't matter if we were going to Whole Foods, which was sort of like Nazi Germany

here in Austin, Texas. If you really wanted to get the full, like, San Francisco's experiences, you go to Whole Foods and they were, like, masked up and Ever would just walk in. And he said, come on, Ever, like, we got. And he was like, no way, Dad. He's like, I got PTSD from doing that thing on your show, man. I'm never putting one on again. So, you know, that's what happens when you get your family involved in what you're doing.

but that's what we do here. Now, beyond masks, we have the issue of social distancing, which we are now told by Tony Fauci in front of a Congress. It just sort of popped up out of nowhere. It had no basis in science. Do you realize that if we had known that it had no basis in real science, we would have never locked down. We would have never distance ourselves.

We wouldn't have had cardboard cutouts in baseball stadiums or had restaurants where sitting with, you know, blow-up dolls. All of that. The destruction of our economy was on. If we could keep everybody separated like six feet apart or not going outside, you know, wearing masks on beaches, we could stop this thing. Of course, all of that's proved to be baloney, but we were on top of it. And in many ways, we may have even had the source of the science behind social distancing. Look at this report.

We've been hearing scientists say over and over again, there's really no science behind social distancing. Well, where did it come from? Guess where it came from? A 14-year-old girl came up with social distancing as a part of a science project. This is an article that came out recently, the 2006 origins of the lockdown idea. But what is this mention of a high school daughter of 14?

Her name is Laura M. Glass. Laura, with some guidance from her dad, devised a computer simulation that showed how people, family members, co-workers, students in schools, people in social situations interact. Her program showed that in a hypothetical town of 10,000 people,

would be infected during a pandemic if no measures were taken, but only 500 would be infected if the schools were closed. Well, you know, great science experiment, and by the way, Laura, congratulations for you of doing something and writing an idea that the entire world followed. But was it a good idea? Most scientists say no.

Here's a recent article by a scientist. Two-meter social distancing rule was conjured out of nowhere. Professor claims, he goes on to say, There's never been a scientific basis for two meters. It's kind of a rule of thumb, but it's not like there's a whole kind of rigorous scientific literature that is founded upon. But hey, let's go ahead and make the entire world do it anyway. It's not like saying that if you challenge Tony Fauci, you're challenging the science

that doesn't exist. All way back in May 2020 that was taking place. You can imagine if we were on, imagine if this show was on primetime television. Seriously, right now. Imagine what the world would have looked like if our reporting was what you saw on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, what do you think would have happened? I mean, seriously, when you think that you're funding those news agencies, what would have happened if they had told the truth? Do you think they would have gotten away with it?

Do you think our country would have locked down? No way. So when people are like, what is the biggest problem right now in the world today? I say the news. The news is your biggest problem because it doesn't matter if your politicians even had it right. It doesn't matter if scientists had it right. If the news is brainwashing you every day and telling you a lie, you're going to believe it and you're going to let them rob you of your constitutional rights. Lastly, probably one of the biggest lies ever told around all of this.

One that I can't claim alone because Rand Paul was ranting and raving about this same issue the entire time he was in the government and nobody seemed to listen to him. He's been on my show. We talked a lot about it. If you haven't seen that show, go back and check it out. But what am I talking about? How about this? And if you do get COVID, remember, natural immunity is always the worst kind. So even if you've had the disease, you need a shot.

Yes, some very bad ideas were embraced as the conventional wisdom, ideas that haven't aged well. And a lot of dissenting opinions that were suppressed and ridiculed at the time have proven to be correct. It wasn't even a dissenting opinion. and it was the majority of all science as we know it always knew what we said on the show. When we talk about herd immunity so often, we hear that based on vaccination. But the true point, the true term herd immunity comes from natural immunity, because once you get a virus or a bacteria, you know, a live virus or a live bacteria and you have the illness, you have lifelong immunity, something that has just never been achieved by a vaccine. It's an inferior immunity that vaccines provide, which is why we see second, third, fourth, fifth doses of vaccines, why everyone has to get a flu shot every single year because they've never been able to achieve a lifelong or, you know, universal flu shot, as they describe it.

Well, of course, that still remains true. And though we could get no acceptance of the power of natural immunity, as Bill Amar said, we said even after getting natural immunity, you should vaccinate yourself. One of the most insane ideas ever stated in science. say unequivocally to this date. And now that we're through the COVID vaccine and COVID vaccine included, because I think we're on what shot number nine, I believe is the headline. Dose number nine CDC panel, green lights, yet another COVID-M RNA shot. So nine doses now to protect yourself from SARS-CoV-2. So I underestimated it saying like four or five in that review. So I didn't quite nail it. I didn't realize how bad this vaccine would actually be. But officially, unequivocally,

there is not a single vaccine ever made that has had a longer endurance and stronger immunity than natural immunity itself. The COVID proved to be no different. In fact, was just a little bit worse than all the rest. So there you have it, folks. We nailed it to the wall. No, it wasn't guessing. It was based on world-renowned, known science, peer-reviewed science, and that's what you can always expect here on the high wire.