The Joe Rogan Experience - #1582 - Alex Berenson

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

Alex Berenson is a journalist and award-winning author of both fiction and non-fiction. His newest work, "Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1: Introduction and Death Counts and Estimates", can be downloaded from Amazon and other ebook retailers.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! What's up? How are you? Good to see you. It's good to see you again, Joe. Good to see you again, under less hostile circumstances. I don't think the last one was hostile. I think maybe more people expected it to be hostile because you were not – I want to say you're anti-cannabis.

But I do think that you had a realistic perspective on cannabis. And we've talked about this before outside that I think a lot of people that are pro-cannabis like myself, they don't want to look at the negative aspects of it because they think that it will harm the chances of it being legalized. And I think that's irresponsible and I think it's not aspects of it because they think that it'll harm the chances of it being legalized. And I think that's irresponsible and I think it's not honest. I mean, I think that's true. And now that it does look, let's be honest, like it's going to be legal. Certainly every state or there are major states that voted to legalize like New Jersey and Arizona in the last election. And nationally it looks like it's going to be legal. It's time for people in the industry, I think, to start being more honest about who this product is for

and some of the downsides. I hope they do that. They have to be. I think they have to be. I brought you the paperback of Tell Your Children. Yes, excellent. Well, you really should tell your children. And again, this is coming from someone who enjoys pot.

I like it. I'm a fan. But I do know it's not for everybody, and I do know people that have gone crazy like legitimately gone schizophrenic from marijuana or maybe had a tendency towards schizophrenia and then smoked a lot of pot or ate a lot of pot and then the switch went off and they were gone and i think there's a direct correlation yes so i was glad to have that conversation with you even though a lot of people are like what well, you're supporting him. How are you on his side? I'm like, because it's true.

Just wait till you get the blowback you get for today, man. Well, let's establish your position, Alex, on COVID. What is your position on this? Sure. So people accuse me of being a COVID denialist, or I don't think it's real. I don't think anyone dies from it. That's all nonsense, Joe. COVID is real. It emerged from, we can talk about where it might've emerged from earlier this year, maybe in late 2019. It's killed a lot of people.

It's contagious. And it's been a problem this year. It's been a significant problem. It is not worthy of the response that we have had to it. I believe lockdowns have been a problem this year it's been a significant problem yeah it is not worthy of the response that we have had to it i believe lockdowns have been a mistake and we can go into all of it but but we have overreacted in an extremely dangerous way this year i believe we've overreacted as well and i i think that in particular one of the things that disturbs me the most is that there has been no accounting for the damage that has been done

by forcing people to shut down their businesses and their only the only thought has been making sure that the icu beds are open and that you know somehow or another people are able to get treatment for this there's been i've openly criticized the fact there's been no discussion whatsoever about getting healthy. No one's encouraging you because they're worried about being called a fat shamer or some other nonsensical term. Well, I mean, I think it's much worse than that. Because if you remember back in March, we were told 15 days, 15 days to slow the spread. Let's not have the hospitals be overrun. And at some point, maybe it was in April, maybe it was in May, somehow this became,

no one can ever get sick and die from COVID. It is wrong that this disease exists and we have to do everything to stop it, no matter what the consequences. And you mentioned businesses, businesses are important. But to me, what's even more important is what we're doing to our kids. What we've done with school closures, what we've done with normalizing the idea that being outside with your friends is dangerous. We are screwing over our kids in the worst possible way. I think we had an idea of what COVID was going to be. I don't know. I certainly did for the first few weeks.

I was like, this is going to kill everybody. I thought I was going to kill 10% of the population. I was really worried about it. I remember being in the supermarket, stocking up, and thinking, Jesus Christ, this feels so crazy. But I also remember thinking it was going to last two weeks. Yep. And now here we are, still reacting this way. We're now deep into December, almost into January.

A lot of my friends were caught including young jamie over here jamie beat it in a day uh tony hinchcliffe has it now he was sick yesterday and today feels good i mean this is the case with so many people whereas if they got the flu i knew i know a lot of the same people that have got the flu they were knocked down into the dirt for three or four days maybe a week maybe two weeks um it's different than we thought it was going to be but we're still reacting like it was the same thing and then there's this this fear porn that everybody likes to peddle it's this weird thing where everybody wants to think that you know if you catch it you have a 10 chance of dying or the sky is falling and it's just

it's weird how uh people want to pretend that it's still what it used to be and they want to say you know you should think about this because 300 000 americans have died you want to go stop no 300 000 americans have died from covid that also had a lot of other stuff. How many people have died just from COVID? And it's a relatively small number in comparison. It's like a bad flu year, right? So it's complicated. Here's the thing.

And I don't know if you, and as I said, I've got all this stuff for you. But the booklets, especially the first one, which is about death counting, how we count a COVID death. I go into this in detail. Okay. Well, let's talk about that right away. So, okay. Here's the most fundamental fact about COVID that the media doesn't report accurately, how stratified the risk is by age. So you mentioned, you mentioned, you know, people who are, who might be overweight or have diabetes, all that stuff does add to your risk. What really adds to your risk is age and people, and people don't really, I think this is true of almost everybody.

People don't really have a good idea of what, what risk is, right? So if I say, you know, like it's riskier to be old and have COVID than to be young, you might think, okay, it's like two to one or three to one or five to one. It's kind of like normal risks. Like what are the odds that the Jets are going to beat the Rams? Like one in 10, you know, last week. And that happened. The Jets beat the Rams.

This risk is not like that. It's like somewhere between 110,000 times the risk. At what age? So maybe 75 versus 25, 80 versus 25. If you look at who dies from this, it is overwhelmingly people over 65, 75, 85. The median age of death in European countries, which are a little bit healthier than the US, is in the low 80s. But that doesn't really tell you the real risk, because what you need to understand is that only 2% or 3% of the population is over 82 or 83. Now, what about people like, there was that guy who was a Broadway actor,

who was a young, healthy-looking guy who got sick and wound up dying from it. So that's going to happen. So there's two issues. First of all, that happens to people with the flu. I can point you to stories from 2018, you know, young, healthy teacher dies of the flu. It just was never reported nationally this way. That's A. B is if you look at those cases, oftentimes there's weird idiosyncratic stuff happening, of which the number one thing is a lot of those people were put on ventilators very early. They were put on ventilators and they never came off. We're not having that as much anymore. And if you look, the average age of death is actually creeping up now, it looks like. And okay, so that's one, is that the risk-

Can we talk about that? Yes. The ventilators? Yes. So what happened? So what happened was in March, especially, back when everybody was terrified, there's something called a nebulizing procedure. So there are procedures where you're inserting tubes into people and it releases a lot of

aerosols from them. And the fear was, this is going to get aerosolized and the nurses and the doctors are all going to get sick and die and we're going to have no medical staff. Ventilator avoids that problem, okay? So the feeling was, let's ventilate very early. This is a really serious disease. Let's get everybody we can on ventilators. That's when, remember when we needed 100,000 ventilators, 200,000 ventilators? That was the idea, okay? We're going to ventilate really early. Turns out that was a terrible idea. It turns out that, as Elon Musk likes to say, you know, your lungs, if you ventilate too early, it's just like a meat bellows. And you can blow out people's lungs if you overventilate.

And it looks like that happened. I will tell you, not that we don't use ventilators for COVID, but right now in the United States, I believe there are about 8,000 people on ventilators. Can I stop you for a second? We're like meat bellows. So like bellows, like a fireplace bellows, right? So you're just pushing this air in and you're, and like, if you push it in at pressure, that's too high, you can just blow out people's lungs. So you literally destroy their lungs. Yes. Yes. We did that with people. And, and, and it became clear, it became pretty clear pretty early on. And, and they, and they tried to stop doing it. And they have stopped doing it.

So that's why they were saying that 80% of the people they put on ventilators wound up dying. It's not just that they were so sick by the time they got to ventilators they were dying. That's right. And they couldn't save them. It was that the ventilators themselves. Did damage. That's correct. And I don't think that actually too many people would argue that even in hospitals.

I can point you to stories that have been written about this, and I can point you to sort of in-hospital discussion of this. Again, there is a role for ventilators for people who really cannot breathe on their own. But this early ventilation that we used back in March and April killed people. And some of the people it killed are people who were younger who probably would have survived. My friend Michael Yo was young when he got it and he was really beaten down. He did a lot of traveling He flew to New York He did morning radio the whole deal flew back drove to Vegas

Visited his family and drove home that night and then did a bunch of auditions in LA and then got sick real sick His doctor didn't put him on a ventilator because he said, if I put you on a ventilator, your lung is going to stop working and you're going to die. And he's okay today because of that. But he's a young, healthy, robust guy, and he got it and almost died. I mean, he was really, really sick for about two weeks. But he recovered, right?

Yes, he did. So again, we're not saying this disease isn't real, and we're not saying that some people, unfortunately, aren't going to have these bad reactions to it. But back in March, maybe he gets put on a ventilator, and maybe he dies. Well, he got it very early. So he was fortunate. He had a doctor who was smart.

Okay, so that's one issue with the death counting, is that so many of the people, so let's say you're, and I urge people, one of the things that I've done a couple of times on Twitter that always gets an interesting response is you can go look at coroner's reports, especially in Milwaukee, where they put them all online, of people who've died. So you can actually see the people who have died of COVID and you'll see how sick they are for the most part. I'm talking about people in their 80s and 90s who have multiple severe comorbidities. So in that case, it's really hard to tell. Did this person die with COVID or from COVID? You know, if my heart is failing and my kidneys are failing and I get this thing and I die the next day, okay, I died. Did I die with COVID or did I die two weeks before I would have died anyway? And we're counting that as from COVID. Or maybe even a year before you would have died anyway. But the 2.6 comorbidity factors,

that's the average for people that died of COVID. That's correct. Died with COVID. That's a good way of saying it. Again, it's very, very hard to distinguish with and from in these cases of people who are really sick. Now, sometimes it's not that way. Sometimes you can say, again, a 50-year-old who is relatively healthy gets COVID. They died. They died from COVID. COVID killed them. We can agree about that. But many of the cases are hard to understand, or not hard to understand, but hard to distinguish. And I'll make one more point about deaths. Very, very, very important point.

PCR testing. You, you, you know, you, I know, I know, you know, you know what this is. Yes. But you, you know, you, you look for a sample of the virus in, you know, usually it's in the nose. You multiply it and you run a cycle where it doubles over and over and over again. And when it gets to a certain point, they actually, it's, it's actually incredible technology. It's sort of, it's sort of magical. But they add a

fluorescent marker to it. And at some point, if you can see the fluorescence, it's considered a positive sample. Okay. Here's the thing. A 40-cycle PCR test means that you are multiplying any original viral material in that sample by 1 trillion times. So a single viral particle that you pick up becomes 1 trillion particles. It is very, very easy to find virus in people when you're running a PCR cycle at that level. It does not mean necessarily that they're very sick at the time. It doesn't even mean that they have active virus in their bodies at the time. They could have a piece of virus that the original sample is picking up and multiplying by 40x. It's clear, by the way,

when people have a low threshold, let's say 20 times, let's say it only takes 20 cycles, that's a million multiplications. If you're positive at 20 cycles, you're pretty sick. If you're positive at 25 cycles, you're probably pretty sick. If you're positive at 30 cycles, maybe not. 40 cycles, it doesn't really mean anything. It means that you have, you know, you have this one bit of virus in you that they've managed to find. Does it mean you're contagious? It probably doesn't mean you're contagious. I don't like that word. I don't like that word probably. Well, I try. Come around, grandma.

I don't like to say never unless I'm sure. Okay. So when I say probably, it usually means never, but I just don't like saying. I understand. Okay. When we count deaths, the states have a procedure, most states, they look at positive tests and they match them with death certificates. Okay. So let's say you had a positive test, okay, in tomorrow. Okay. And let's say it was 38 cycles. They're not going to tell you that,

but it was 38 cycles. Okay. You are not very sick at all with COVID. Okay. But you're in a registry somewhere. Your name's in a registry. A month and a half later, you die. Let's say you get hit by a car. That will still initially come up as a positive COVID death because you had a positive test and you died within a specific amount of time after having that test. But they don't distinguish from a violent accident? Not initially. Now, some of the states are trying to clear this up. But let's say you died of a heart attack, Joe.

Okay, a heart attack is a potential outcome of COVID. You're always going to be on there if you died of a heart attack. So you're saying that if you have this tiny amount of COVID in your system, you never wind up getting sick, but yet you have a heart attack a couple of weeks later, three, four weeks later, they will still call that a COVID death, even though you never got sick from COVID. 100%. That doesn't seem smart. The idea is to capture deaths as broadly as possible. The idea is this is a serious illness, and we want to know every possible person who's died from it. We don't do this with any other illness. Is it because they don't have the resources to differentiate between the people that have

died from heart attacks where it's clear? We looked at the person. They had a very small amount of the virus in their system. Four weeks later, there's no way they were sick from that. But is that... It's a function of decisions that have been made along the way. So they could have set the PCR threshold at lower. They could have set it at 30. They were aware from almost the beginning of this issue that,

you know, you can find a comment from Fauci in July talking about this, okay? And certainly, and you know, and certainly they knew well before this. The idea was, we want to know, sort of as broadly as possible, how many people have this. And then secondarily, we want to define deaths from COVID as broadly as possible. And what is the level set at currently? Different states have different levels, but in most places it's 37 to 40 cycles, which again means that a lot of those people at the high end are not sick and they certainly had COVID at some point, but they probably don't have it anymore. Here's the other reason to do this show. If you set it really high,

you're going to capture people on the way in just as they're getting sick. So if you're truly afraid of we want to quarantine everybody really early, then you have to set the threshold really high. So that, to the extent there's a logic behind it, that's the logic behind it. But it has all these negative side effects. So there was one other point I wanted to make, but I'll remember it in a second. So the negative side effects would be

that they're inflating the number of people that not just have it, but die from it because of the fact that they're inflating the number of people that not just have it but die from it because of the fact that they're making sure that these deaths that get linked within a certain time period. What is the time period? So in some states it's 30 days. In some states it's 60 days. I don't know if it's more than 60 anywhere.

But the states are sort of allowed to define it. Oh, here's – okay. So there's a negative for the person who's tested positive because you then have to isolate yourself. you can't work, you know, you're scared. And then there's this negative for society with the death counts later, right? But isn't that that negative that you have to isolate yourself and you can't work? That seems very rational. Because if you do test, like, let's say you're on the way in, you catch it, you have a little tiny bit of it in your system. And then like, you have to isolate, you have COVID. What if that person just went out and started drinking, got

run down, the COVID multiplies, and then they have a full-blown case, and then they start spreading? So that is, look, realistically, can that happen sometimes? Yes. That seems like that would happen a lot. Well, it doesn't happen that much because at 37, you're asymptomatic. So you're not going to know unless you have some reason to be tested. But isn't there a significant amount of spread from asymptomatic people? So this is another argument that we don't... There's asymptomatic spread.

It looks to be very rare. Although, you know, now Fauci is saying it's not so rare. There's pre-symptomatic spread. Pre-symptomatic spread appears to be more real. We need another person other than Fauci. That's the one guy. We do. Everyone says, Fauci says. We have this guy. Yes. Let me say one more thing about death counting. Okay. Back in March and April, people said COVID deaths are being undercounted. We're not doing enough testing. There's all these people dying. They're being

called pneumonia deaths. It's probably COVID. That was probably true at the time, especially in New York and New Jersey. You can look and you can see the number of what are called excess deaths, more people dying than you would expect in a normal year was higher than the number of COVID deaths, okay? And a lot of those deaths were in people who had pneumonia, okay? So that looks like, hey, we didn't even, you know, this is even worse than we thought. We're capturing, we're not even capturing everybody who died. Okay. But that was March and April. Let's talk about what's happening now. We know the PCR tests are going to capture a lot of people who aren't sick anymore and who maybe never were sick. We know that some of those people are going to be classified as COVID deaths. If they, again, I'm 88, I somehow was asymptomatic a month ago, but I got a positive PCR test,

now I die because I'm 88, that's a COVID death, okay? What we're seeing now in the United States, and certainly in Europe, we don't have data as good in the US from the last couple weeks, but we have some pretty good data from Europe and the UK, is that the number of COVID deaths, when you add it to the number of non-COVID deaths, is not as high as the overall number of deaths you would expect. So what does that tell you? That tells you that some non-COVID deaths are probably being classified as COVID deaths these days. So back in March and April, there were more people dying than you would have thought based on the number of COVID deaths. Now there are fewer people overall dying than you would think based on the number of COVID deaths. And I got to add one more thing. I know this gets complicated, but it's worth thinking about.

We also know that a significant number of people are dying from lockdown. Okay. And the number one way you can look at that is overdose. Okay, overdose deaths in this country have all, you know, they've been terrible for years. This year it looks like they're off the charts. So if 20 or 30 thousand people, and that's probably a reasonable estimate, 20 or 30 thousand extra people are dying this year from overdose alone, that should push up the number of overall deaths. And then if you'd add the COVID deaths, it should be even higher. When you put these three things together, right now you're getting fewer deaths than you would expect.

Again, what I'm trying to say is, I know this math can sort of seem complicated and the stacking can seem complicated, but right now it looks like a significant number of deaths that are being classified as COVID would have occurred anyway and are just sort of being shifted into the COVID pile. And that was not so true a few months ago. So when you see 3,000 people died today of COVID, until we get the true mortality figures for this year, for November and December, we're not going to know if that's really true. I understand that people want to be cautious, right?

And that's one of the reasons why they've classified things the way they have. But is there a financial incentive for hospitals to classify deaths as COVID? I have a friend, people love to make fun of me because I say these things, like I have a friend and this is what happened, but I have a friend, his grandfather died and they never tested his grandfather, but they listed his death as COVID and he was very old and he was in a nursing home,

but they never tested him for COVID. So the short answer to that is it doesn't seem, and I've done a fair bit of work on this, it doesn't seem like there's a financial incentive to classify deaths as COVID or non-COVID. There's a financial incentive for hospitals to classify cases as COVID. Okay.

Because you get, and this is known, this is not a secret, you get a 20% bump in your reimbursements if you classify cases COVID. Now they're not going to lie, okay? That doesn't mean they're going to say, Joe went in for whatever, surgery on his hand, and he cases COVID. Now, they're not going to lie. Okay? That doesn't mean they're going to say, you know, Joe went in for, you know, whatever, surgery on his hand, and he has COVID.

What it means is they're going to test you for COVID. Where are they getting this bump from? Medicare. Medicare. Yes, and the insurers typically follow Medicare. So if you get sick and you go to a hospital, is it possible that an unscrupulous hospital would say you have COVID even if you do not.

No, no. Not possible. What they'll do is test you for it. Test you for it. And even if you're totally asymptomatic, you're a COVID case, you get the bump. Got it. That's legal. So that conspiracy we can eliminate.

This conspiracy that the hospitals are incentivized to say that there's COVID cases that aren't. Correct. But that's different from they're incentivized to say there are COVID cases that there are. But what about COVID deaths? So if someone dies and there's not, are they incentivized to say that that was a COVID death, even if it wasn't a COVID death? No, but because they know you're COVID positive, if you then die in the hospital, it's going to be classified as it has to be right by our rules. And do we know have the numbers of pneumonia, death from flu, all those things? Are they different this year? Are they lower or higher? So again, if you look back in March and

April, pneumonia deaths were higher. And that's a good reason to think that we were actually undercounting COVID back then. Now, it looks like, first of all, there doesn't seem to be any flu right now, which is very weird. Either COVID has sort of pushed it aside because COVID is more effective, or we're just not testing for it. But is it also possible that wearing the masks and this practice of socially distancing and that people being paranoid and washing their hands and all that stuff has reduced the number of flu cases? Maybe marginally, maybe marginally. Social distancing probably more than masks. I don't have book three. I'm such a genius. I didn't bring you the third one, which is all about masks. How dare you? But masks are probably essentially useless. Social distancing? What? Yes. Masks are useless.

Not N95s. Not respirators. I'm talking about surgical and cloth masks. Probably useless. Really? Yes, really. My friend Reggie Watts has... Have you seen Reggie's mask? You've got to see this.

He's out of his mind. He's wearing a space helmet that you know that might not be useless but reggie's reggie's a trip anyway but what he's doing is he bought this thing and he's gonna come to visit me play this he's the shit i love this dude but play this look at it just play a little bit of it uh hi guys how you doing i'm uh just uh trying out the new uh helmet let me know if you can hear me so this has an eight hour charge and he's uh he's gonna fly here uh next month to visit with a fucking helmet on does he have an immune system joe oh he does

he's healthy as fuck he just listen reggie would wear that just because it's cool is it cool he's a trip reggie's a trip he's uh he's very uh technologically uh interested so he's he's very auditioning so this is the thing air hepa filters eight hour usage fan ventilation can you go back to another list a list of the stuff that does neck seal there which i need everyone needs a neck everyone impermeable fabric i also need that and then full expression i don't know what that means that sounds like it makes you come ah so this is the thing, microclimate. I mean, look at that dude.

He's got his fucking glasses on. He's from the future. This motherfucker's in a Tom Cruise movie. It's the traveler's air mask. I'm going to get one for my mom, and she'll visit me now. This is terrible. My mom is so scared. This is a terrible thing we're doing.

No joke. Full face and fog-free acrylic. But this will keep you from getting sick. I'll fucking visit anybody with that bitch on. You can cough in my face. Are you scared? Yes, I'm scared that people would wear this. I'm buying it right now.

You'll probably sell about a million of these right now. Good. As long as more people go visit people, I would like to visit people, man. This is not visiting people wearing that thing. What's happening to that lady's face? That's not good. That's not how they sold it.

This is like infrared protection. What is going on with her face? It seems like she just was in a dust factory. Okay, so that does nothing. That does nothing? Nothing. Really? Yeah, nothing.

How does it do nothing? Because the virus... Okay, you may have seen this meme of the mosquito and the chain link fence uh like i built the chain link fence to keep out the mosquitoes no okay well that's the idea is that the viral particle is so much smaller than the effective ability of a standard cloth or surgical this is so rude but doesn't it this is crazy don't yeah we get it you don't fucking cake these people up with powder the people people that are just listening, they're throwing this colored powder on these folks' faces. I don't know why they're doing that.

Because they want to sell some masks. They sold me one. I'm buying one right now. Jamie, order it up. Look, look. See? They're correct. Okay?

The mask doesn't prevent you. Okay, but look, her mouth has less. Doesn't it reduce the amount of viral load that you get? I love that word. Viral load. Just as it only takes one sperm to get you pregnant, it doesn't take a full like my coughing in your mouth

to get you sick. Okay, but let me play a devil's advocate then. If a little bit is in the air, and then that mask stops some of it, couldn't it possibly stop you from spreading possibly it's well that seems like that would be a reasonable thing to do no okay no no masks are not cost free okay they're not societally cost free they're not actually cost free but why are we talking about costs let's let's break we get to costs but let's talk about

effectiveness okay so so okay here's here's the fact okay people talk about a droplet when you hear the word droplet you know you're not a scientist you think oh that's like a spit globule or something right no all of this stuff is happening at sizes that are far far too small for people to see okay okay the virus itself is about 60 nanometers, okay? A nanometer is one one billionth of a meter, okay? Too small for you to even imagine seeing, okay? Most of the virus, when you exhale, it looks like is in droplets that are smaller than five microns, okay?

A micron is one millionth of a meter. Five microns is one five thousandth of an inch. Okay. If you're wearing a bandana or you're wearing a bandana or you're wearing a cloth mask or you're wearing a standard surgical mask, even if it's fitted right and people don't wear them right, they wear them off their noses, they wear them around, it's not stopping enough of the virus to matter. If you're wearing an N95, if you're actually a doctor or you

care enough to put on an N95 and wear it even though it's uncomfortable and it's fitted properly, you might actually have a chance to stop some of the virus on both the way out and the way in. If you're wearing one of these regular masks, it does nothing for you to protect you. And the best you can say about this idea of my mask protects you is that there is marginal evidence, marginal evidence, that maybe it reduces some of the viral load on the way out. No proof that that makes a difference. But that seems like that would make a difference. If you can reduce the viral load on the way out, you would reduce the amount of people that you infect.

Or you would reduce the amount of viral load that the people that you infect take in. And that does seem to have a significant impact on whether or not you get sick, right? Like people that work in ICU wards or they're around people that have COVID. They're wearing N95s. But if they don't, they're taking in more viral load, right? Rather than someone who just comes in close proximity to someone who has COVID, where you might get the tiniest amount of it and your immune system can fight it off.

Doesn't it impact you how much you take in? What you're saying seems plausible, but it's theoretical. There's no real evidence that you're reducing viral load enough to matter. And here's the real world proof of this, okay? Look at California right now. They are messed up. They are locked down. They are socially distanced. They're having 50,000 cases a day. Okay. In the real world, whether or not you wear masks seem to make no difference to the, to the spread of this virus. But don't you think that one of the things that's happening with California is that people are living in close proximity to each other and they're forced to go to work. Like a lot of the people that are getting it are in poor neighborhoods. A lot of them live with multiple family members in the household and they're

all on top of each other. And the fact that they're stuck inside would actually kind of accentuate the spread of this disease, but they're catching it because they have to go to work. Is that, is that accurate? It's not clear. So the first part of what you said is accurate.

The virus definitely spreads inside very aggressively. And the two places where it spreads the most are in sort of these congregate settings like hospitals and nursing homes and then when people are stuck indoors with each other for a long time. And bars seem to have had an impact because drunk talk i would imagine drunk talk when you actually try to find community spread out of bars it's hard to find in the real world it's like maybe call tony hinchcliffe

that's how he got it that's how he thinks he got it that motherfucker got it from bars he's in a bar every night he goes to bars every night and he got it. That's anecdotal, Joe. I guarantee you. It's anecdotal. I understand. By the way, can I say something? Please do. Back in April, I was screaming. And you can go find on my Twitter feed.

Don't tell fucking... I shouldn't curse. Don't tell people. You can curse on the internet. You don't care, but I want to be taken seriously. I don't want to curse. You don't think that cursing... Don't tell people to stay inside tell them to be outside this thing spreads inside it spreads open you

know the number one thing you could do to stop this open the windows okay open the windows and let fresh air in it doesn't spread outside at all, basically. When the Chinese months ago looked at transmission, all the cases they could find, I think they found two cases where there was outdoor spread. But I was reading something that was talking about the impact of the protests and that there was an uptick in the virus from the protests. Maybe, maybe not.

It's really hard to see. Just like Sturgis, it's really hard to see. You are correct. When people have to move inside, whether it's the upper Midwest in October or Arizona in July, you see rapid spread. Okay. That doesn't prove anything either way about masks. What it tells you is the virus is airborne and can ride around, especially in enclosed ventilated systems. Well, if we look at Asian countries and they have been wearing masks for a long time out of respect, right? The idea is that if you feel sick or there's something wrong, you wear a mask and it keeps you from getting other people sick. Yes. Is that not accurate? Why are they doing that?

So that's a really good question. Asian countries have had a better experience with the coronavirus, much better. We don't know exactly why. Masks are one theory. But when you look at flu in Asian countries, you know, they have bad flu outbreaks on an almost annual basis.

And we, even though they wear masks, here's what I'll say about the mask. If the idea of the mask is it's a signal, I'm feeling ill, stay away from me that makes sense okay that's like hey one person in this room is wearing a mask he doesn't feel well let's give him some space when you make everybody in the room wear the mask the signaling is useless the mask does have an impact on whether or not i pay attention to you on twitter if you have a mask in your profile picture, generally, I stay away from you because I

think, oof, this poor bastard. What if you're wearing your mask around the chin like I am? On your profile picture? Is that what you do? Yeah. Well, then you're an asshole. You joined the consensus, Joe. You're almost better off not wearing a mask.

Is there any evidence? Are there papers that have been published that shows the efficacy of masks? Yes. Yes, there are. And you dispute them? Well, I think, okay, define. I'm not going to say define paper. Here's the best evidence. The best evidence is you give a bunch of people a mask and you tell a bunch of people don't wear a mask and you see who gets sick.

That study was done. That doesn't necessarily mean they're all being in contact with the same human beings or experience that's that's correct that's correct yeah nonetheless that study was done it showed mass did not protect the wearer this the kind of study you're talking about where you would do a cluster trial where you give sort of two cities and have one of them wear masks everybody and one of them not wear masks has never been done is basically impossible. Well, also that doesn't, just because there's two cities, like Austin has way less cases than another city.

So ideally you try to find two cities that were basically at the same place on the curve. Okay. And you'd say, hey, you know, city A, you know, Des Moines versus Omaha or whatever. And you could surmise from the results. Right. But that's impossible.

Okay. That, first of all, you'd have to make everybody in the one city wear masks and make everybody in the other city not wear masks. And that would be unethical. People have to agree to do this. And second of all, it's just impractical. But wait, one second. So what we're left with, what the pro-mask people are left with when they talk about

papers is there's really three kinds of papers. One is the kind that talk about the theory that like that you've had, which is, yay, it looks like this might reduce the viral load. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Okay, that's one kind. The second kind is what are essentially lab trials where you like put a mask on a mannequin or you put it on a human volunteer and you see how many particles come in and out. The third kind is we're going to look at how things changed after a mask mandate was imposed. Okay. And so there are papers in all of those categories that show that masks seem to work, but they're not very good science. The good science would be the kind that I'm telling you about, and we've never done that.

And the only time we've done it with trying to see if masks protect the wearer, in general, those papers, including the most recent one, this big Danish mask study, show that masks don't protect the wearer. And I'd say that most serious people don't disagree with that. The only argument is, does my mask protect you? And what I'm telling you is, yes, you can build a case for that, and it can even sound kind of plausible, but when you look at the evidence, it's not really there.

But we do agree that the larger the viral load you take in, the more likely you are to catch the disease. We don't agree about that. That has not been proven. Let me give you... Does it impact the level of the disease? It might, okay, but let's say my immune system is terrible, okay?

Maybe I only need one virion to become sick. If your immune system is good, you can fight off a thousand. Right, but what if your immune system is terrible and someone doesn't have a mask on and you take in more, would you not get sicker?

So we are at sort of a level of immunology and virology that is kind of at the limit of my understanding, so I don't want to make a definitive statement about that. But from what I have read, it is not... You'd think that that was the case, right? Yes.

But it's not clear. And let me give you a different... But if it's not clear, wouldn't it be prudent to use it as a prophylactic? If there's no cost to it. So what is the cost? Well, the costs are both societal in that they tell

everybody that this is something to be really scared of and there's a and if you're you know if you're developmentally disabled mass can actually be frightening to you if you're a small child mass can be frightening to you um there's a there's a physical cost to having all these masks on the ground and they're they're gross and they're trash and you know they have people spit on them somebody has to clean those up i mean it you know like nothing is cost free in the world like that's that's part of the problem with this right but if it saves lives if it saves lives there's no evidence it saves lives have you debated anyone on this that is pro mask i i mean i talk to people on twitter on twitter about it all the time that is not a good debate i agree that's not a good

forum for human content. We agree about that. But you're asking me what the cost is. I'm telling you there's a real cost to it. By the way, masks, I kind of hate having to talk about masks because masks are the thing that make me sound sort of the most like conspiracy

and kind of out there because I know most people support mask wearing. I'd rather talk about things like school closing and lockdowns. We can definitely talk about that, but I'm talking about masks because it's such a polarizing aspect of this pandemic. And the reason I feel I have to talk about it is because the people who are pro-mask are relying on pseudoscience. And pseudoscience has driven so much of our response to this pandemic. And so I feel I have to push back on this. Okay. Well, whether they're relying on pseudoscience or not,

there's a bunch of things that they're signaling. One, they're signaling that they're compliant and that they're polite. So they're being polite to the people around them. They don't want other people to panic because people are panicking if you don't have a mask on. Yes. Unfortunately, that's just how it is now. Yes.

It's weird that a year ago that was not an issue at all ever. Yes. And now it's a giant issue one year later. There's never been a thing like that in our society where you're having almost universal compliance amongst everybody in the entire country. And this is something that people will argue to death over, to scream at you if you don't have a mask on.

Yes. That alone, it seems like it's just easier to not be an asshole and wear a mask. Yeah, that's the public pressure. Just like there's going to be immense public pressure to take the vaccine. Yes. Are you going to take the vaccine?

I'm not taking the NRA ones. Why is that? Because they didn't exist 10 months ago because this virus is not particularly dangerous to me or you or my kids or my wife. And, and I'd rather just get it and be done with it than take a vaccine who that's shown to have 17% serious side effects after the second dose in people who take it. 17%. Yes, one in six people has a fever of 102 or higher, or chills, like severe chills that when so this is called

a grade three or grade four adverse event. Grade three means that you basically aren't able to function for, you know, some period of time, like you're not able to eat or go to the bathroom. Grade four means usually that you're hospitalized. Grade five means you die. That's the five stages of grade one is mild grade two is moderate. When say 17 of people have had serious events after taking the vaccine i'm defining it the way the clinical trialists define it so you're defining by grade three or four yes most mostly grade three not four but some have been hospitalized yes yes one in one thousand people who got the moderna vaccine after the second dose had a fever of 104 degrees or higher. And most of those people were taking Tylenol or Advil or other stuff to bring down the fever.

Let me tell you, if you call your doctor and tell him you have 104, he's going to tell you if it doesn't go down pretty soon, you should go to the ER. So 1 in how many again? 1 in 1,000. 1 in 1,000. So that's a grade 4. Grade 3 was much, much higher. What is the numbers for grade three? So for fever, I want to say it was about 1.6%.

Okay. So somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.66 for 100. Right. Correct. One in 60 people. But then you look at these other adverse conditions, or other adverse effects. Again, chills, nausea, vomiting.

And how long do these usually last? You know, mostly one to three days. And then on the other end of it, you have an immunity to the disease. Yes. Right. Which may or may not be as lasting as natural immunity. We don't know.

Trials haven't been going on that long. Right. There's some evidence that for the Moderna vaccine specifically, so everybody develops antibodies, but T-cell immunity is more lasting. And it's not clear that the Moderna vaccine produces complete T-cell immunity.

So T-cell immunity is produced by people that have had the disease and beat it, like young Jamie. Yes. Then your T-cells are you know it was if this thing comes back in your body they're going to recognize it and they're going to ramp up your immune response um my by the way sorry go ahead please don't um so people look i'm not an anti-vaxxer i was vaccinated my kids have all had the normal vaccine schedule this this is different

to me for a couple of reasons. This technology is very new. These have not been in humans before. This is not something that we've been working on for 50 years. And the virus itself, unfortunately, what it looks like is the virus itself is quite dangerous to people, again, in their 80s, their 70s, 75 and over, you could say is the break point. again, in their 80s, their 70s, you know, 75 and over, you could say is the break point. The adverse responses go the other way. It looks like the younger you are, the more serious they are. So what I tell my mom, if she says to me, you know what, I think I should get this. You know what, mom, you're 76. Your lung function is not great. Go ahead. So the younger people who get the vaccine are having more adverse side effects?

Yes, that's correct. That's quite clear. Is this because of a cascade of immune system? Their immune system is more robust, likely is the reason. But it's not clear yet because we didn't – because there's a reason, Joe, that drugs usually take 5, 8, 10, sometimes 15 years to go from idea to human. We did this in 10 months. There's a lot we don't understand about this. So my mother, go ahead, get the vaccine. Certainly if you're 80

and you're in a nursing home, get the vaccine, okay? It can't be worse than dying from COVID. But me, I don't- How old are you? I'm 47. And I'm in reasonable shape. I'm 47. And you know, I'm in reasonable shape. I'm not in great shape, but I'm in reasonable shape. I'll take my chances. I'd rather wait for a vaccine that isn't based on this mRNA technology. And my kids, now my kids are under 18, so right now they're not eligible for this, but there's no way on earth they're getting this vaccine. Do you worry that there will be a forced compliance? I worry that there will be quasi mandates. You can already see this happening where essentially, you know what?

You don't have to get vaccinated. But if you ever want to go to a concert again, you have to get vaccinated. If you ever want to get on an airplane again, you have to get vaccinated. But you don't actually have to get vaccinated. Right. I don't think that's right. I don't think I think this should be a personal decision for people. Do you think that it's possible that a treatment could exist? Like, you know, like, if you have certain things,

you get penicillin, if you have something else, you take this, like some pure proven, clear treatment where we no longer have to think this way. I doubt that's going to happen. That doesn't exist for the flu. You know, you have these sort of antiretrovirals, but they don't work that well. That is a thing where there's never been a cure for the common cold. That's right. Yeah. I mean, so... Common cold is a coronavirus, correct?

Yes, it is. So bacteria, I mean, there are other kinds of viruses that can also cause the common cold, rhinoviruses, adenoviruses, but the coronaviruses cause the common cold too. What you're talking about with penicillin is those are bacteria. Right. So those are generally more susceptible to treatment. These viruses were just not that good at treating. Oh, I wanted to say one last thing about the particles.

And you mentioned how many particles, possibly it's more particles is more likely to get you sick. The size of the particles might also matter. So with anthrax, famously, if an anthrax spore gets into your lungs, it's terrible. I mean, you have like about an 80% lethality rate of anthrax getting into your lungs. If it gets into just your nose, it doesn't do that. Okay. It has to get all the way down. So it is possible, and I'm not saying this is true. It is possible that by filtering out larger particles as masks do, what you're left with is more dangerous particles

that are more likely to get into your lungs. So again, I'm not saying that's true. What I'm saying- Would you get those same particles if you had no mask? That's actually a good point. But the mix might be more both upper and lower respiratory. But again, I'm not saying that's something we have to be afraid of. What I'm saying is when you're talking about plausible theories like your plausible theory, you don't know. You need experimental data. And the experimental data is not very strong for mask use. Just to go back to that. My rationale for the way that masks work or don't work is the most crude. It's farts.

They go right through your underwear, right through your pants, and they'll go right through your fucking mask. So are we saying that COVID is not as dense as farts? Well, I mean, methane is smaller than the COVID. Is it? Yeah, methane is very... It's CH3. Or CH4, I guess. No, it's small. Okay. So maybe Reggie

has a point with that if he's going to fly. If he's going to fart, too. Because it's one of the worst things that happens on a plane is people farting in that tube. When I was flying down last night, yesterday, somebody was farting up a storm. That's how it goes. People are fucking nasty.

They eat bad food or they just don't care that people are around them. What do you think has been the best argument for masks? You said you've been debating people or going back and forth with people on Twitter. What's been the best argument for masks? Has anybody made a rational... I mean, not to...

Back to the fart thing. Not to kiss your ass, but it's the one that you make. It's that this could lower the viral load and possibly lead to some... Maybe some people who would have been infected don't get infected. Maybe some people who would have been seriously infected don't get as seriously infected.

I don't think the logic is particularly strong, but I think that's a case you can make. The idea that my mask protects me, you just can't make a case for it. But it would protect you if we're talking about a distribution of the viral load, then it's got to be protecting you in the same fashion that it's protecting other people from you.

Well, no. If it's reducing the amount of viral load, it's got to be reducing it intake as well as I'll take no no because what's airborne right what's around after a few minutes is all tiny so maybe it protects it catches these droplets coming out out but once they it's very clear they evaporate almost immediately so and you can find they've done really interesting so I mean there's been so much fascinating science around this.

They've plucked essentially floating virus out of the air in hospital rooms. It is airborne. There's no question about that. Now, who are the people that you've been going back and forth with on, you don't have to name them on Twitter, but have these been doctors, virologists? Have these been biologists? A lot of, yeah, all of the above. And what has their take been?

That I'm an asshole. You're an asshole. That doesn't care if people get sick and die and doesn't understand the science and lies. One of them called me a liar a bunch and then I said I might sue her, which anything's possible. And she sort of stopped calling

me a liar she also uh later admitted basically that masks don't work to protect the wearer which was really interesting after she'd been criticizing me but yes they they don't like me they say i'm cavalier about this uh that i'm cruel to older people and that uh i'm selfish it's um there's a virtue signaling thing going on as well that is unfortunately just a general part of communication through social media today that if you're not in compliance if you if you're a rebel if you go outside the lines and you say something hey i don't think this is the right way to do it people get very angry people were very angry at people saying that maybe these lockdowns were a bad idea eight months ago yes that now it's the general consensus that the lockdowns are terrible the only people that seem to like the lockdowns are people that are independently wealthy and or really crazy progressive people that think the government

should pay for everything and that we should siphon off the money from the wealthy people to you know pay people's mortgages and rents and and there's a lot of that discussion which is you know it there's there's some logic to it like why should corporations be getting bailed out and why shouldn't people that need their rent their mortgage paid get bailed out? Like, this doesn't make any sense. And if you look at the bill that was passed, I mean, I went over it last night. And there's a lot of weird shit in there. Like, why are we giving all this aid to foreign countries in this bill? Why is there a part of this aid bill that makes it a felony to illegally stream?

Like, how does this happen? They sneak things into these fucking bills. These people are monsters. They really are. Like, this should have been a real clear-cut thing. Aid to people that have lost all their income because of this, and they need a stimulus. The fact that they added in a felony provision

for people who stream movies and profit from them. Like, what the fuck is going on? Like, how is... You're not going to hear me disagree. Look. Why is Pakistan getting money? Why is Israel getting... Did you see it, Jamie?

It's bizarre. I don't understand the logic behind it. I don't understand how this got agreed to. Well, what happens is the idea is this thing's going to pass anyway, so you help out your favorite lobbyist, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, you sneak something in. Is that what it is? Yeah yeah that's clearly how it's fucking people here here's what i'll say okay this is why tell your children actually matters in this debate okay i wrote

this book and you can and you can say that's the pot book for folks yeah you can say like this guy like he doesn't understand a lot of people just like to get high and they can handle it. It shouldn't be criminal. And, you know, minorities bear the burden here. It's wrong. Let's legalize. Okay. Totally reasonable.

And by the way, alcohol kills a whole lot of people. It's legal. It's advertised on TV. It's legal. The rules should be the same. I totally get that. Okay. If you read the book, it's about something

else. It's about this is psychiatrically harmful to a lot of people and we're not talking about it. Yes. And by the way, there's a downstream violence that comes from that sometimes that we're not talking about either. Okay. To me, those things, if you read the book with an open mind are pretty factual and inarguable. It doesn't mean, by the way, that you can't then say cannabis should still be legal. You can read the book and agree with it and say, but you know what, should still be legal for those other reasons. Fine. That is not the way the book was treated last year. Okay. It was, you hate black people. You don't understand science. You're cherry picking. Go to hell. Okay. So when I saw this happening this year with COVID,

and I saw the New York Times where I used to work, and you know what, people can yell at me for saying I used to work there, but I worked there for 10 years, and I was a really good reporter there. And I'm not going to back down from my credentials, because I am a good reporter. You can say, you can say, you know what, like lockdowns are necessary and we need to protect these old people. And you know what? We can't let the hospitals get overrun. But if I present evidence to you, that's contrary.

Don't just shout at me that I'm an idiot and don't know what I'm talking about. Okay. It's not going to work. It didn't work with tell your children and it's not going to work this time. Okay. So, and what I recognized was that unfortunately, and it's sort of the elite levels of the media, the Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, the group think is overwhelming. It's overwhelming on cannabis, and it's overwhelming on all these woke progressive issues,

and it's gotten much, much worse since I left The Times 10 years ago. And I don't know what's going to turn it around. Okay. And, and, and it has terrible effects. Let me give you one example. Okay. We should all want to know where this virus came from. I don't care whether you're Republican or Democrat, liberal, conservative, I don't care what country you live in. You should want to know if this is the result of a Chinese lab accident. And there's some evidence that we can talk about that later. Okay. And you should at least want to know that there's been a complete independent investigation into this. Okay.

This thing has messed up the world in a mammoth way this year. Okay. And at the least, we should want to know where it came from. If it did come from some kind of accident, I'm not saying the Chinese released it intentionally. I'm saying there might be evidence that there was an accident because if that happened we better make sure it never ever ever happens again it's a very strange thing to me that people don't want to even investigate that they don't want to look at it and they're they're

i think they're afraid of racism or something there seems to be some sort of indication that there's a victim blaming thing there's a there's an aspect to it that also is anti-trump that's it yeah it's anti-trump okay what happened in march was the progressive media first of all they were terrified because what was happening in new york what seemed to be happening in new york and they all thought they were going to die and then once they realized they weren't all going to die they realized that they could beat donald trump over the head with this and he would lose the election and they did and he did. And look, I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat. What are you? I'm an independent. Basically, as I've said,

my politics are that it's impossible to be too cynical. Just like you said with the bill that they just passed. It's impossible to be too cynical about the way these people behave. They behave terribly. Okay. But so why is it that the New York Times won't even write stories about the fact that there's real questions about where this virus came from? Forget the ventilators. Forget the U.S. response. Forget, you know, Donald Trump. We should be asking that question. The groupthink is so serious that basic questions don't get asked right now.

Well, we were criticized on the podcast because I had Brett Weinstein, who's an evolutionary biologist, who discussed all the reasons, scientific reasons, why there's evidence that indicates that this is not a virus that naturally occurred. That's right. And also, just by coincidence, there happens to be a level four lab in Wuhan. That's right. What are the odds? Right. You would think that people would want to put those two together, but it was something

from the beginning that this groupthink was established that you are not to question that. And there was a whole article written about promoting this dangerous conspiracy theory that this came from a lab that's been disproven. But it hasn't been disproven. It has not been disproven at all. No, it hasn't been disproven. There's never been a real solid proof of where this has come from. That's right. Here nor there. That's right. And actually, you'd say the evidence is sort of going the other way now. I mean, in favor of this. And here's why. If this thing originally came from some animal,

right? We know that there was a virus that was 96% similar to it that they had at that lab, that was 96% similar to it that they had at that lab, okay? But we've never found the virus that's 99% similar in an animal, which is what we would expect to find, okay? That there'd be something really close that then made the jump from whether it's a civet cat or a bat or a mink or whatever to a human. They've never been able to find that. Why was the connection with pangolins? Why did they think it was...

So the virus is 96 percent uh bat it looks like very very similar and then near the most important part of it the part of it that binds to this receptor on your cells that enables it to get in it's called the receptor binding domain is pangolin okay so it just happens that it's a perfect cut of mostly this virus that we know was in this lab, this bat virus with a pangolin virus with a tiny addition that enables, it enables the spike to attach more efficiently. Okay. It's called the furrin cleavage. And again, we're at sort of the limits of my knowledge. I don't want to talk too specifically about it, but somehow this virus just happens to be mostly bat, a little bit pangolin, and we can't find any evidence of a virus that's like that to a

99 percentile in the wild. And believe me, don't you think the Chinese have looked in the last year? Or wouldn't they have looked if they thought they could find something? When SARS came, the original SARS, not SARS-CoV-2, they had found the viral host within a matter of months. I mean, the zoonotic one, the animal viral host, in a matter of months. And they published a paper on it. There's been nothing like that now you can choose to believe that's because you know what it's just in some cave in china that they haven't found the real thing yet or you can choose to question as you said there's this level four bsl lab in wuhan where it happens where this thing happens to seemingly have emerged from coincidence

coincidence crazy coincidence yeah but we're not allowed to talk about that yeah if you talk about it you're a trump supporter yeah the group thing is it's so strange with social media because the consequences of being attacked uh are so real people do get emotionally devastated by these gang attacks and they are very bullying i mean they really are bullying gang and people don't think of it as bullying because you're not physically in front of someone and you're not intimidating them and scaring them but you know what you're doing oh yeah they know what they're doing oh yeah and when they go after you and they see other people going after you they go oh it's a free shot at alex yeah it's dog let's go after him it's it's it's ugly and and i've learned that like

you know i there was one thing in May where I really got dogpiled. And the only thing to do is not to respond, to turn the computer off for a few hours and just let it go. Because the one thing about the mob is when they realize they can't touch you, when they realize that like they can't get you fired, that you have some independence, they will generally move on. But if they can touch you, they will. So I got my one last book here. The reason that I am able to write about this stuff in the way that I've been is because after I left the Times in 2010, I wrote spy novels for a number of years

and I was paid pretty well. I was fortunate. I had a good, this novel, believe it or not, I wrote in 2019. It's called Power Couple. That is yours to keep oh boy um yes did you make an audio version uh there is an audio version of stephen weber is the guy who did it stephen weber from wings i think so yeah no kidding really i met that guy back in the day

we were both on nbc together um nice guy but he said he liked the book by the way he talked it out that's cool um But so I'm fortunate. Like, I wrote these John Wells novels for a number of years. And I wrote this book, which I finished, again, fortunately, before all this happened. And so as long as people are willing to buy my fiction, I can tell the truth in my nonfiction. I'm not owned by the Times or anybody else. And I'm lucky. I wake up every day thinking how lucky I am to be in that position. That's the only reason why I can do this podcast.

The reason why I can do this podcast is I don't have a boss. If I had a boss or... And your audience trusts you. Well, I appreciate that. I'm glad they do. I'm honest. I do my best. I'm wrong often, but if I'm wrong, I'll tell you. But I don't think any of this would be possible if I worked for some large corporation that had to give in to the mob. You know, I just don't think. I don't think I'd be able to have you on. I don't think I'd be able to. There's a lot of topics.

I mean, they came after you with the trans stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, Abigail Schreier's book. Yeah. I'd be able to there's a lot of topics I mean they came after you with the trans stuff right yeah yeah well Abigail Abigail Schreier's book yeah and also with the trans athletes thing it's just

it's it's these concentrated attacks and this distortion of who you are like I don't mind if you're upset at who I actually am but when you distort who i am and what my positions are on things just because you want people to attack me that well then people are not going to trust you now and that's one of the things that's happened

to the people that know me from this podcast they know me from 1500 plus episodes that are more than three hours long often they know who i am so if you say that i'm this hateful person just wants to attack trans people no i don't i'm like i love everybody eddie isard's one of my favorite guests ever he's great it's a she now she's she now she's decided to she used to go back and forth right now she's decided that she is in girl mode all the time. All the time. I love that person, whatever they choose to be, girl, boy. She's still calling herself Eddie. It's like, great.

I remember an off-Broadway thing with, I guess I should say her, maybe 20 years ago. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Awesome human being and one of my favorite guests ever. ever seen awesome human being and one of my favorite guests ever my my position was about an mma fighter that wasn't telling people that they were they were male for 30 years we're only female for two and then we're fighting unbeknownst females you know and beating the fuck up and i was like this is crazy and the only reason why i jumped in is because you've entered into my world now now you're into the world of fighting. Like, I'm a martial arts expert.

You can't tell me there's no difference between male and female frames. Right. Male and female power. There's a lot of variables. And you can't deny those variables just because you want to be woke. And then people, the response to that is disturbing. The response to that is disturbing, but ultimately it will do them in because people know what it is. And the reaction to it has been less and less effective.

People realize it's more and more thought of as being hysterical and not based in reality. But it's a dangerous time, Joe, because, you know, so Trump, look, Trump lost, Trump, there's lots to dislike about Donald Trump. And, you know, who I voted for doesn't matter. But it's disturbing that in anonymous polls before the election, basically one in 10 Trump supporters wouldn't tell pollsters that they were going to vote for him. Right. I mean, the fact that they're that afraid of, you know, that people believe that the consequences of them may be so severe that they're not even allowed to talk anonymously about who they're going to vote for. That is not a healthy sign for our democracy or anything else. Yeah, it's not a healthy sign for communication. But it's also like he's such a polarizing guy it says he's the wrong guy for that i think he's the right guy for people to understand that it is possible for someone who's outside of the system who understands the system to win and

become president he's the wrong guy to unite america yeah he's so fucking polarizing i think this is so personally difficult to like yeah exactly i mean but he he's the king of the assholes this is what i said i was like the assholes have a king like they never had a king before like no politician was an open unapologetic asshole he's the first one yes and they're like yes that's my fucking god and so they felt like they i mean you look at some of the behavior of some of the trump supporters it's empowered by him yes people do need a leader that represents better yes right and that's what i think the one of the best things about obama is that he represented composure intelligence articulation and the composure, intelligence, articulation. And the composure is huge, man.

Because under pressure, he was never like yelling at reporters. He was always like, well, calm down. Let's handle this. Let's discuss this. It was all measured. And it made you feel like that guy's better than me, smarter than me. He should be president. With Trump, you're like, shut him the fuck up.

Like, why is he yelling? He's lying about this. He's lying about the number of people at his inauguration. And this is just like what has made him, oh, no, how dare you. This made him an extremely popular television host, this braggadocious behavior, this fact that he was like, you know, you're fired, fuck you, i'm the king you know that kind of shit yes but but on the flip side he did something terrible to the media he drove them

crazy yes he drove them so crazy that they would essentially said you know what anything goes to get this guy out yes and if we have to lie about it he's lying so f him we're gonna lie too it's dangerous it's dangerous then there could be someone who's like maybe not nearly as offensive but not the person they want into office and they might use the same strategy and tactics because they've already been sanctioned yes yes so and and that is what's happened with covid okay covid our response to covid is dangerous in and of itself the but it is even more dangerous as a signal of both legacy and tech censorship of ideas that don't fit the sort of Silicon Valley, DC, New York norm. And that is a bad place to be. Yeah, I agree. And I also think there's a thing that's going on where people

had locked into a mindset that they had at the beginning of the pandemic where this is going to devastate the population and kill a bunch of people or a large percentage, I should say, of the people, 10% or whatever the fuck they get it. And that didn't turn out to be the case. But we're still locked into that same mindset. Well, yeah. And it's funny. You said a few minutes ago, you said, well, lockdowns don't work. Everybody agreed on that. You may think everyone agrees on that, but look at what's happening.

I think there's a lot more people that are not in support of lockdowns, particularly people that are in danger or have already lost their business, restaurants, and the fact that why is it okay to go to Walgreens, but it's not okay to dine outside in California? That's right. Why is it okay to go to Walmart but not to go to agreens, but it's not okay to dine outside in California. That's right. Why is it okay to go to Walmart, but not to go to a church, right? But yet it's still happening. In my state of New York, they're talking about a complete lockdown again. It's as if we've learned nothing in the last few months. And as you and I were sort of starting to say a

few minutes ago, there's actually evidence that lockdowns are counterproductive because they force people into their homes and most transmission happens inside, not outside. So what do you think would be the best strategy to try to mitigate the amount of people that get sick if it's not lockdowns? The truth is people don't like hearing this, okay? There's not that much you can do once this becomes endemic, okay? So if you're not New Zealand, okay, if you can't sort of close your borders and quarantine everybody for 14 days and be some island in the Pacific with 5 million people, basically, there's a few things you have to do, right? You have to stand up the hospitals and make sure they have adequate equipment and that, you know, if there's a regional real crisis

that you get some extra nurses and doctors in there um you need to you know encourage people who are sick to stay home you know if you i mean that's that's been good advice forever if you're sick stay home if you have to go out wear a mask if you're sick okay if you're sick not everybody if this is the problem with people that work by the hour and don't get paid if you're sick not everybody if this is the problem with people that work by the hour and don't get paid if they're sick that's hard for them yes gig workers so so yeah so should we help those people yeah i think we should you know the simplest thing is called respiratory etiquette what that means is sneeze into your nose okay if you're out and you're sick sneeze into your nose sneeze into your nose i'm sorry sneeze into your elbow oh this how the fuck are you sneezing if you can do that you're impressive wash your hands there's not

there's not actually great evidence that hand washing does anything but we should all be washing our hands it's a good idea um and and you know in moments when you're there's a big surge would it make sense to sort of shut down, you know, let's say arenas? I mean, those are all shut down already, but like I'm talking about if we had a more normal response to this. So you say we'll postpone a concert. Maybe we'll close bars. OK, that's about it, Joe. The problem is that doesn't get Tony Fauci on TV every day.

That doesn't get Governor Cuomo, you know, a book deal and on TV. When you say to people, you know what a book deal and on TV. When you say to people, you know what, we're going to get through this. We're going to function as a society. This is, you know, oh, and look, if there's a way to protect nursing homes, because half the people, almost half the people who are dying from this are dying in nursing homes or congregate care settings. So those people are the people who are vulnerable. Maybe, you know, is there a way to sort of like try to install better ventilation in those nursing homes? Is there a way where staff should be tested every day? And if you're, you know, if you have a positive case in a nursing home, that person gets moved. Yes. Maybe there are things we could do.

Unfortunately, the idea of closing off nursing homes is not a great idea. And here's why. Fortunately, the idea of closing off nursing homes is not a great idea. And here's why. Look, those are not great jobs. Those are tough jobs for people. And one of the ways that you can be sort of sure that people are actually being taken care of, the residents in the homes, and they're not being neglected, is having family members come in, right? So the person who is demented know, shitting themselves is getting cleaned

up and not getting bed sores. Having family members keep an eye on nursing homes is unfortunately kind of necessary. And by the way, even if that's not happening, these people with Alzheimer's or dementia, when they don't have families, you know, they just sail off into space if people are not visiting them and talking to them and trying to keep them there. And it's pretty clear that deaths of people with Alzheimer's and dementia are up this year, independent of COVID, again, and that's because they're being neglected in these nursing homes. So shutting off nursing homes from society, even though it sounds like a good idea, we got to protect these people, isn't necessarily a great idea. In general, the idea should have been, we're going to do the minimum to sort of make things

work, and we're going to manage through this. Once we realized it wasn't the plague, once we realized that 10% of people weren't going to die, that, you know, somewhere between 997 and 999 out of 1000 people who get this will survive. It still means that people are going to die. And it still means, you know, it's a big country. It's a big world. The numbers can look kind of ugly. We should have said, the idea is going to be not to screw up society.

We're going to, and by the way, here's the one thing, Joe, and I will go to my grave being furious about this. The schools should have stayed open and they should have, and to the extent they closed, they should have reopened within weeks. Okay. That's what they did in Europe. That's what they, and they continue to leave them open even now, even when they had the second wave. What about the children transmitting it to the parents and the grandparents? It's almost always the other way. Kids don't get very sick from this and they clear it very quickly. When you look at transmission, when they've really researched it, they clear it very quickly when you look at transmission when they've really researched it they find it tends to go the other way there's some children that live in a household

with multiple family members including multiple generations they don't get very sick it goes the other way what do you mean in other words with the flu children are big vectors children they spread the flu around right with covid it doesn't seem to happen it doesn't seem to happen because the schools are shut down well no no when they've traced but don't you think that that's a significant factor no but hold on if all the schools are shut down yeah and you're saying that there's no factor with the children getting it in school and transmitting it to their parents or their grandparents how do we know because because they've contact traced in places where the schools are open and they found that they don't usually again i say usually you can pick on me and say

it's not always in general the transmission is adult to child right the thing is though we're trying to stop the spread as much as possible so this is where the masks like it could possibly get some people sick those people get sick and spread to other people this is a cascade effect right this is it's not as simple as like the children don't usually give it to the grandparents well they might give it to the grandparents the grandparents might give it to the parents they might give it to their friends they might give it to more people and then it spreads sure and i might get hit by lightning when i go outside no no no no it is that simple because it's not raining outside you're not going to get hit by lightning.

Okay, but the schools, closing schools, all the stuff you said might, might, might. Closing schools is real and enormous and negative. No argument. No, it has a massive impact on kids. And on adults. And on adults. I've seen it on my own kids. I've seen it.

And I know there's people also that are single parents that don't have someone to watch their children and they don't know what to do. And then it's horrible. There's a lot of factors here that we have to take into consideration. I don't agree with this one. I think there's one factor and it's that the children are at very low risk from this. Most teachers are at very low risk. The average teacher in the United States is 42 years old, 42 year olds. I'm not going to say never die from this, but they're not at high risk from this. The schools should be open, and they should have stayed open. And, yes, there's this theory. If grandma is living at home, can a child get it and spread it?

I'm not going to say that's never happened, but when you look at the contact tracing that's been done, it's very, very rare. I know of a college kid who gave it to his dad, and his dad went to the hospital. Okay. Yeah. He got it out partying and lived with his parents. I think he's 20, 21, somewhere in that range.

Gave it to his dad, and his dad wound up in the ICU. Okay. So it does happen. But by the way, 20 is not, we're talking, that's different. I'm not, so college, the risk is somewhat high. I'm talking about with elementary school kids and even high school.

Right. So first of all, again, it looks like the risk on this, if you're sort of under 15 for you, is close to zero. Well, once it was established that it's not, the risk for the actual children themselves

is extremely low, my question when they were like, we've got to protect these children, this was the talk of my kids' old school. I was like, well, what do you do when it's the flu? That's right. You don't do shit. That's right. And those kids could die of the flu.

That's right. The flu actually kills kids. It kills kids. It kills thousands of kids a year. It kills kids. It doesn't kill thousands of kids. Well, a good flu year will kill 100,000 people,

correct? Like a bad year? The worst year we've had recently, the initial estimate was 80,000. They revised that down to 60.

That was 2017, 2018. Well, let's say 60. You don't think that 1,000 of those are kids? No. I think the worst year for that actually,

and we could check this, so I shouldn't say no definitively. Okay. But- Okay, we'll say hundreds. Yes, hundreds. In 2009, the swine flu, for some reason, was very dangerous to kids relatively, and more than 1,000 kids died.

Okay. So that's a rare one. That's a rare one. More than 1,000 kids died. It says the high year is 188 reported kids. Kids. Kids. What is the number for

kids dying of COVID? There's a problem with that too, man, because they want to... I saw this one... I think they said otherwise healthy kid dies from COVID, and then I looked, he was 400 pounds, and he had diabetes.

It's just the table from the CDC, so it's... Okay, get to 1 to 4, 18 kids. So under 15, there's been fewer than 100 children. There's about 60 million people in that age range and fewer than 100 have died this year of COVID. And a lot of those deaths are overcounted. It is interesting when you look, when it gets 15 to 24, it goes way up. 4.58, it goes up by 10.

Yeah. Tenfold. Look at that four that's interesting yes no i have to 14 47 but 14 to 24 it goes up to 458 you know what that's from partying and fucking you dirty little kids stay home you're all drinking and not getting any sleep take a look how parabolic it is it doubles in every one of those brackets. More than doubles. Interesting how, yeah, look, it keeps going up and up and up. Yep. Yeah. That is interesting. 55 to 64 goes up to 33,000.

And then 65 to 74 goes up to almost 60,000. Right. Right. This is what I'm telling you. People don't understand how skewed it is. And 85 and over, that's 87,000. But there aren't the same number of people in that bracket. Right and those people already on death's door yes well respectfully that's just how it is look here 85 so 880 so there are 6 million of those people and 830 000 have died

this year anyway okay being 85 you don't have that much candle left. Right, there's not much left. And anything, and the flu could also do you in. Yes. Yeah. This is, it's such a polarizing subject, you're not allowed to look at it. You're only supposed to go with whatever the orthodoxy is. There's a dogma that you have to stick to. It's almost religious.

It's real weird with this. Like you can't question or talk about it or people start attacking you. So if you think back to HIV, it It's almost religious. It's real weird with this. You can't question or talk about it or people start attacking you. So if you think back to HIV, it's actually very interesting. So HIV in the 80s, by 85, 86, I think the virologists were aware how it was spread. It was spread through blood. It was spread through sex, especially anal sex. And they were aware of who was at risk. And they kind of made a decision at first, we're not going to tell the truth about that. We're going to try to scare everybody because if we focus i remember remember you know my god i remember i was in my car i lived in revere massachusetts and i found out that magic

johnson got aids that's right that's what we heard hiv no aids but i was in my car and i was like oh my god it was like a scene in a movie yep where the zombie apocalypse yeah it's here 28 days later when they let the chimp out and he attacks the lady and she gets the rage yep i was like, oh my God. It was like a scene in a movie where the zombie apocalypse. We're all going to die. The scene 28 days later where they let the chimp out and he attacks the lady and she gets the rage. I was like, fuck, we're doomed. We're all going to die. It turned out it wasn't true at all. But here's the problem, okay? So the people who did this did it with the intention of we don't want to marginalize gay people or IV drug users.

The problem was they didn't focus prevention on those people. And so those people, to some extent, didn't realize how much risk they had. And finally, what happened was gay groups especially said, we're at risk here. We know it. You need to focus the efforts on us so that we will like, you know, actually reduce our risk. Right. And once they did that, once the government stopped sort of, you know, lying about who was most at risk by far, behavior did start to change and eventually things got better. So that's sort of happening with this in, you know, in, in a hundredfold, we're not being honest honest so a lot of people who are very low risk are terrified

right a lot of these you know middle-aged people and young people young millennials they're scared to death of this thing for no reason and our societal response has been completely screwed up the aids one is so strange because i was i mean i remember being convinced that we're going to lose a giant percentage of the population. And it wasn't just going to be gay people. It was going to be everybody. I remember when I got my first HIV test for health insurance. I was terrified.

Terrified. I think I was, I may have been 22 or something like that at the time. I don't remember how old I was. I was like, just thinking of all the terrible decisions I've made. Just running them through my head. All the awesome, terrible decisions you've made. And I'm like fuck but it didn't turn out to really um be uh have a large impact on the heterosexual community no it didn't and the people here it's not weird it's a function of the virus

okay i know but it's still weird that it didn't just like everything that's happened with this virus is a function of the virus i know but i, but I'm not saying that it's not logical. It's clearly logical, right? But I'm saying these things that you think are going to be the end of the world and aren't, we never seem to... No one wants to bring any of that up. You might be bringing it up now because you're kind of a guy that's not afraid to talk about controversial subjects like that, but that's not something that you're going to see Fauci discuss who was at the

forefront of the fear campaign. That's right. He was the guy that was telling us we're going to lose 50% of the people. Like he was, he was saying some crazy shit back in the day. I don't know if he ever said that, but I'm just, but no,

but he did say, I believe it was in 1983 that he thought, uh, like sort of casual household transmission was a possibility with HIV. There's a paper that he wrote. Yep. We can find it. It's not worth finding, but we can find it. Well, he was also a guy that told you not to wear masks. That's true.

That was weird. That was when they were telling the truth about masks, Joe. They stopped telling the truth about masks. Well, he said the only reason why he did it was because he didn't want people to go out and buy masks, and then healthcare workers and first responders weren't able to get them. Bullshit. You think it's bullshit? Yeah, because N95s actually work, okay? He didn't say don't wear an N95.

He said surgical masks don't really work. They had enough surgical masks. They never ran out of surgical masks. There was a chance of a run on N95s. Right, but wasn't that his logic, though? Well, then he should have said, don't buy N95s. Yeah, but if you say don't buy N95s because they work. Then everyone's going to go buy N95s. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I think his logic holds true. The problem is once you say that and then you say, hey, I was lying. I didn't want you to buy a mask well now you've already said you've already opened the door to the fact that you might lie to us that's right that's a problem i agree wait for the vaccine there's you know this downplaying of the side effects it's crazy for them to do that they're much too widespread to hide the side effects especially the second dose i've had a lot of people um i've had people on this podcast even that are just so gung-ho about the the possibility of getting this vaccine they want to do it and then

i brought up the side effects they start debating like they know for a fact that it's not true or you're not gonna and so then i played i had this one guy and i played the video of bill gates talking about how 80 of the people who got the second dose got really sick. We can look it up. You know, the Moderna trial data. Look, I am not running around saying I've got a source inside the CDC or like some guy slipped me a thumb drive with secrets. My sources are public. And that's one of the things about the booklets, okay?

Everything I put in there that's important of the things about the booklets okay everything i put in there that's important you can go check the original it's you know the the hyperlinks are on the you know on the ebooks they're all in here you can check it for yourself and see if what i'm saying is correct and true to the source do you think it's possible that well if people survive the vaccine if they get that i think it's gonna be a very small the vaccine very small amount of people that are going to hit level four sure what would you say with stage four so so in the case of fever it's more than 104 degrees it's stuff that requires hospitalization stage four yeah so there's going to be a very small number of people great it's great for great for very small number of people that hit grade four yes

is it possible that people could die from it yes yeah i mean there's a small number of people that hit grade four yes is it possible that people could die from it yes yeah i mean there's a certain number of people who get 104 degree fever are going to die i mean i i don't know what the percentage is i'm sure we could you know look in the journal but would you agree that it's probably lower than the number of people that are going to die from covid 19 overall yes but here's where the age thing matters remember the curve is this for the vax for the for the risks of covid by age and it's this for the risks of vaccine by age so what you're doing is uh making a v you're going up down for audio people sorry yeah yeah it's a lot of people that just listen um so and they're going what the fuck is this what is he talking what what so the risk

of the vaccine uh increases as you are younger it looks like why is that again probably because you have a stronger immune response when you're younger so the dumbest thing was that one lady who's a nurse who apparently she just faints whenever she feels pain and they they decided let's use her like Like, what the... Why didn't she tell people, hey, occasionally when I get shots, I black out. Because everybody's like, oh my God, look what happened to that lady when she got the vaccine. Turns out that lady, if you gave her an Indian burn, she would black out. She just blacks out.

She stubs her toe. She just falls down. It makes you wonder what kind of nurse she is. It's crazy i just did a girl and her dad was a dentist and he would faint if he saw anything fucked up like one of their kids got uh one of her brother got like bad sunburn like blisters and the dad just fucking fainted that's not what you want in your medical it was it was by a lot it was genetic though because she would faint if she saw someone getting a needle in a movie.

We went to the movies, and someone was shooting up, and she was like, whoa, what the fuck is going on? She sounds like a good time. She's not the one you were worried about getting HIV from, it sounds like. Well, she just had a thing for fainting. I don't know what it was. I don't understand fainting. I've never fainted, but I've seen it. It's weird.

Especially if it's like you see something, just seeing something, and you can't take it. That's evolution telling you you're not supposed to be around. You're not supposed to be spreading them genes. When the war happens, you're supposed to just fall down and people just stomp you to death. While you're out cold. I don't fucking get it but that lady should have told everybody jesus christ she should have because if you gave that to jamie if you shot him with it he would just sit there and go yeah that hurts yeah you know and everybody would go well

the vaccine seems okay look at jamie he's got a smile on his face he doesn't give a fuck what is there a problem with people who have like like Jamie, Jamie's had COVID and beat it. Is there a problem with them getting the vaccine? It doesn't look like it. But the question we should be asking is why would these people get the vaccine at all? You have antibodies. You beat it. What about a year from now?

Two years from now? Okay, so naturally generated immunity in general, and again, I don't want to talk like a virologist. I'm not a virologist. My understanding of this is that naturally generated immunity, in other words, you get the actual illness and you beat it, is stronger in general than vaccine generated immunity. Right. So why are we encouraging people who have naturally generated immunity to bother with the vaccine, which at best

will give them the antibodies they already have and at worst will they'll have some kind of you know anaphylaxis they'll have some kind of shock reaction to I think that the reason being is that we can't prove that a person has had it and beat it there's no antibodies but what if you don't have the antibodies visually anymore like like Jamie barely has them okay but he has them you thought you might have had it right you didn't have any that's right so i can't prove that i had it didn't show in the test it didn't show in the test that's right and when i had the original test a few months ago it didn't show so i can't prove that i had it i've you know and i may not have had it so so maybe i should you know

get a vaccine at some point even if it's not the you know the mrna vaccine maybe i should get a vaccine at some point. Even if it's not the mRNA vaccine, maybe I should get a vaccine. That's my choice. And it can be informed by whether or not I have antibodies. But the idea that we're encouraging people willy-nilly to get this thing, even if they have beaten it, makes no sense. I think it's, again, because it's not documented. Because there's not a documented registry of people who have had the vaccine. I think in this case, you're... Or excuse me, people have had it and beat it.

I think you're being naive. I think that the reason that it's being pushed is the same reason that you're seeing lockdowns again right now, which is it's part of the societal-slash-public-health-slash-political pressure to get everyone vaccinated. So it's basically... So you think the lockdowns are right now just to get people vaccinated? No, not just to get everyone vaccinated. So it's basically- So you think the lockdowns are right now just to get people vaccinated?

No, not just to get people vaccinated. It's to give people, it's a stick, right? It's like, we got to get out of this. The way we're going to get out of this is by getting everybody vaccinated. Everybody. But why would they do that? Why would they risk these small businesses?

Why would they risk suicide, drug addiction, overdoses? Have you noticed our political leaders factoring any of those things into their considerations in the last 10 months? Especially the blue state ones? But don't they get some sort of encouragement or advice from the medical community? Well, they get it. Yes, they do. But they're basing this on the amount of ICU beds that are available, right?

They're basing it on... That's what King of the king of california says that's right that's right he is you know or that's what he says it's a nation state it's a nation state it no that's what he calls it and guess what every place where there's a surge goes through except new york in the spring where it looked somewhat worse every place goes through the same panic the same media and public health fed panic. We're out of ICU beds when they're not actually out of ICU beds. So you don't think California's really out of ICU beds?

No, first of all, they can add more beds, okay? That's a good question, right? Why didn't they do that? They had eight months to do that. Right, because in places where they've added beds, like even in New York, even in April, the field hospitals were empty, essentially. The hospital ships were empty, Right, because in places where they've added beds, like even in New York, even in April, the field hospitals were empty, essentially.

The hospital ships were empty and those are incredibly expensive to run. So despite all this theater, okay, ICUs are supposed to be almost full. They're supposed to run 80 to 90% full. They're incredibly expensive. They're like very skilled doctors and, you know, very skilled doctors and nurses and expensive machines sitting around. You think you want to be empty all the time? You want it to be, you don't want a lot of extra ICU capacity. You want some, but you don't want a lot.

Okay. So they're supposed to be mostly full. And guess what? I can find you pictures. They're easy to find of field tents being set up outside hospitals in 2018 in California for the flu. California, unlike actually Florida, California runs a little bit tighter. You can look at the number of hospital beds per person in California. It's fewer, okay? So is California tight right now? If you're a nurse in California, are you working long hours? Yeah. Does it probably suck for you? Yes, it does. Okay. Do you have my respect? Yes, you do. Okay. And if you're a doctor, and if you're a janitor, these are, these are people are working hard. They deserve our respect. That does not mean the medical system is near collapse. Okay. So what is the incentive? So if the incentive is to get people vaccinated,

and this is the reason why they're locking down, where is the directive coming from? Like, who is benefiting from this? Or who, I should say, who is pushing this idea that the way to move forward is to vaccinate everybody, and one of the ways we're going to be able to vaccinate everybody is to force a lockdown. It seems like a grand conspiracy theory. So it's not... It does.

I've got to say, if you wanted to go deep Alex Jones, you would say the reason why they're doing the lockdown is because they want people to take the vaccine and this is why they're setting this up. So if I said it that baldly, I'm pushing the limits of what i think that's not

exactly what i think i don't believe in conspiracy i believe in confluence okay okay so i like so so you are you're a public health expert okay you want people to get vaccinated you think that this is the way out of this okay you you're your your only focus is on beating COVID. Right. Okay. It's not on stopping suicides or, you know, that stuff is, it means something to you, but it's not your job. That's not right. Your job is to beat COVID. Okay. You think the best way to beat COVID is to get everybody vaccinated. And yeah, there's going to be some adverse events, but you know what? Most people who get it, the vaccine will be fine in nearly everybody. Okay. And maybe they'll have a couple days of fever, and maybe that fever will be bad, but they'll be fine. Okay. COVID kills

people. And you sort of ignore the fact that mainly, you know, 90% of people kills are over 70, or, you know, whatever the numbers exactly are, but it kills people. You want that to stop. Okay. You know, the vaccine is controversial and unpleasant to a lot of people, and we've never really forced adults to take a vaccine before. Okay. If lockdowns are also unpleasant and you think they're useful, you think they're going to slow the spread, what is the disincentive for you to recommend lockdowns to Gavin Newsom or anybody else? Okay. You think they're good in and of themselves because they slow the spread.

And you're aware that they are going to, you know, make people more willing to take a vaccine. That doesn't mean it's not a grand conspiracy. It's not like Bill Gates is calling, you know, Rachel, what's her name in Los Angeles County or whoever, you know, whoever the equivalent is in Texas. It's the incentives are lined up the same for everybody. They reach the same conclusions. When you look at the fact that Los Angeles said the longest lockdown and some of the most stringent lockdowns, but yet has the highest number of cases what has been the explanation for that like cuomo had the worst reaction he was like you know you didn't want to get fat you shouldn't eat the cheesecake you didn't wear your mask like he had the dumbest like fucking down home

dopey logic for why people were sick it was he was literally blaming the people who were sick and blaming the imminent lockdown on people being assholes right so so i mean i my response when you say that to me is it's obvious lockdowns do not work the public health establishment response is we didn't lock down hard enough yeah it's you know it's the cuomo it's we told you to stay inside we told you to not see your family for thanksgiving or christmas even yeah it's you know it's the cuomo it's we told you to stay inside we told you to not see your family for thanksgiving or christmas even though it's been the worst year your lives and like half of you are you know semi-suicidally depressed you know too bad this is going to go on and on and on to me that is completely inhumane and it ignores the fact that

lockdowns don't work yeah it doesn't seem to work but it did work in australia melbourne uh had a bit of a resurge but didn't sydney do a really good job of the lockdown didn't some parts of australia so fair point okay if you lock down for a really long time not weeks months okay and you're in a place where the spread is not endemic. So Australia, you know, it's not New Zealand. Okay. It's a lot bigger than New Zealand, but it's still its own continent. It's still less than the people in California and it's the contiguous size of the contiguous United States. And they can control entry and exit completely.

Right. Okay. So they locked down Melbourne in an incredibly strict way. I mean, and they were serious about it. They had drones patrolling and they were tracking license plates and they were arresting people and they were literally breaking into people's homes who were pushing back against the lockdown. The police weren't making arrests. There's videos of this stuff.

You can see it's not a conspiracy theory. You can see it. Eventually, you are able to burn the virus out after a matter of months in that region, it looks like. It also helps if the weather helps. Remember, it's the Southern Hemisphere. They were going into the summer, okay? The virus doesn't do as well in the summer in temperate areas. It's because it dies in the light, right? It dies in sunlight. There's also an issue with humidity. It appears to be, it does, heavy humidity is not great for the virus, it looks like. So get in the sauna.

That's get in the sauna. But you can't because the saunas are closed. Catch 22. Yeah. But just to go back to Australia. Okay. So now what do you get? You get to live in fear that this thing, that 99.7 to 99.9% of people survive, is going to come back.

So if there's another case or another 15 cases, you lock down again. Who wants to live this way? Who wants to pretend? Again, if it's anthrax, if it's the plague, okay, we're going to have to totally remake society. What do you think should be done? I told you. Right now. Right now.

Right now. You're the king of the world. Open the schools. Start with that. Okay. Open the schools. Open any places of worship that people want to go to. Restore people's lives to normality.

Okay? I have an issue with, I shouldn't say I have an issue, I have a concern with just the distribution of power. And this is not a conspiracy. This is a normal reaction to human beings when you all of a sudden give them the ability to control people's work, travel, anything. You give people the kind of power that Gavinavin newsom has claimed in california people are pushing back against people don't want to give that up they don't ever want to go okay we're back to normal again i can't tell you what to do yeah i mean it doesn't seem logical to me what how how are you such a like powerful person if you're telling me you know i have to stay home but i

guess people like it like no they don't like it i mean no i don't like it anymore no no i mean people like the people yeah yeah i don't understand it's not those are the kind of people that want to be a governor or mayor in the first place i guess that's right they're fucking weirdos you know and and now you know they feel like this power is theirs to wield right you know and i know what's best for you yeah the court has actually stepped in and kept him from making new laws that it doesn't get passed by the legislature. We're going to look back on this with such embarrassment and humiliation for the way we gave up our civil liberties so cavalierly. Well, especially when you see how hypocritical these politicians are. And the mayor of Austin, Texas got caught telling people now is not the time to relax while he was in Cabo.

Yes. Which is like, good Lord, man. That's the place where you go to relax. That's it. It's the craziest fucking thing to say. Flew in a private jet with eight other people to Cabo and then sanctimoniously told people now is not the time to relax. Yeah, no. And what about Berks?

Did you see what she did last week? What did she do? Okay, she got caught. By the way, I'd like to be a fly on the wall at her next family reunion because I think it was her daughter's sister-in-law who narked on her. She went to Thanksgiving. Essentially, the day after Thanksgiving, she and a bunch of family members went to her vacation home in delaware okay she's telling people you can't you can't see family one

household you need to stay at home she goes to this vacation home and what's her excuse joe this is the best oh it wasn't actually a thanksgiving gathering i was winterizing my house and i needed my family members there. Oh, well, the virus doesn't spread that way. Yeah, of course. During winterization, the virus has been shown to be 100% ineffective. Dr. Burke says she will retire. Oh, this is new.

After overwhelming holiday travel scandal. Oh, couldn't have happened to a nicer lady. Wow. My joke was she slipped and fell and landed on Thanksgiving's dick. L-O-L. Wow. My joke was she slipped and fell and landed on Thanksgiving's dick. LOL. There was a time, though, that I felt bad for her when she was sitting next to Trump and Trump was talking about, we could just inject him with disinfectant. That would work.

Perhaps get the light inside their bodies. And she's just sitting there going, oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah, they're hypocrites. I mean, Gavin Newsom getting busted at that restaurant, eating indoors, saying he was outdoors. Yes. It's a fucking chandelier above you, bro.

Yeah. You got pictures of it. Yeah. You're not wearing a mask. You're sitting right next to people. This is a guy telling people to wear a mask in between bites of food. I know. Tell you how to eat.

Okay. Which made less sense. And sending his kids to school. Yes. Yeah. Where they sat indoors. That's right. Yes. Yeah, where they sat indoors. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, safety precautions were put in place because he has money. It's not good. It's not good. None of it's good. But it is good that people get exposed to the fact that these people, they're not these just beautiful people that only care about you. Did we think that? Some people do. Some people love to believe that.

Some people believe that about fucking Joe Biden because he was the alternative to Trump. They're like, he's our savior. Joe's amazing. We're going to get him in office. It's going to fix everything. The guy that wrote the 1994 crime bill that put more people of color in jail

for the rest of their fucking lives for nonviolent drug offenses than anybody ever. You know that guy? Oh, yeah. nonviolent drug offenses than anybody ever. Yeah, that guy? Oh, yeah, he's going to fix it all. Yeah. It's crazy how we look to these people like daddy. Like daddy's going to come swoop in and fix everything. They're career politicians.

They've been corrupted from the jump, from the moment they got into office. Yeah, and that was Trump's value proposition, right? Like, I'm not one of those guys. Yeah, I'm an asshole. I'm the king of the assholes, but I'm not pretending to be anything else yeah well that's exactly what they were selling you know that's exactly what his people were selling as i i think we need someone who's not an asshole and is also not one of them i mean and that's that's that's maybe our next hope are you running joe oh fuck no dude listen all you people just no no don't i'm i'm dumb i'm not that person

i'm a cage fighting commentator and a stand-up comedian i have no desire to run anything or have any power over anybody definitely no run for office but i do have an interest in someone who's smart who does not like the way things go and and has that calling, and is not a part of this system. The problem is this system is so entrenched in its own corruption, its own influence, and all of the lobbyists and special interests. There's so much that's tangled in so many vines. many vines and the people that rise to these positions of senators and congressmen and mayors and they're so deeply infected by this fucked up system that we need someone that's outside of it or someone who is just of superior character well let me let me let me pivot to the vaccine again for a second you got me thinking about the vaccine we were talking about this here's what we've

forgotten or not thinking about about the vaccine. Vaccines are commercial products, okay? Yeah. They're made by for-profit companies that have done exceptionally well this year, okay? The top executive at both BioNTech, which is the German company that makes the Pfizer vaccine, and Moderna have made billions of dollars in stock gains this year billions okay generational wealth now i covered the drug industry for the times for for a number of years okay it's not that the companies want to kill people they don't they and sometimes they do really good things you know like like they created hiv medicines and viagra and and viagra and statins okay and they do good they've helped a lot of people okay when they are moving towards commercialization when they have put significant

money into a product that they believe is effective or that looks to be effective what's the biggest problem with these products usually it's not lack of effectiveness, although it can be. It's side effects. Okay. So they, in general, will not be honest about side effects. And that is what's happening. And I saw with drugs from major companies that I covered for the time,

the leading companies in the industry, including Merck, which everyone said was the best one, okay, in the whole industry. They won't tell the truth about side effects. Can I push back on that? Sure. Why do we know about all of the negative consequences of the vaccine then?

Okay, so the stuff is in clinical trial data. And in some cases, you have to actually sue the companies and get corporate records. Well, that's another problem. We can't sue these guys that's right and that's a very serious problem because if you're pfizer or whatever the last check on you is are we betting the company here if something goes wrong in this case if it all goes tits up with the vaccine i'm not saying it will it probably won't they're gonna say hey guys we did what the fda told us to do you wanted this fast and the white house we did what you told us you you protect you know who has total immunization you know who's vaccinated the companies are vaccinated from liability you cannot sue them

that's that is a new thing right that has never existed before it's been a fight actually about vaccines for a while vaccines you know you get compensated by the government there's been an issue around there's a vaccine court that's correct which is separate from like every other court and that sorry i'm sorry i don't mean to interrupt no no no go does that exist because of the biological variabilities of people that some people for whatever reason have adverse effects have adverse reactions i think it basically exists because the company said, look, you know what? If there's a one in a million chance that a healthy kid dies after our vaccine, or even one in 10 million, we're going to pay a billion dollars for that.

You know, a trial lawyer is going to kill us for that. So you have to protect us. The anti-vax community, like there's a whole community of people that attribute a series of ailments, including obviously that to vaccines. That is like the most maligned and marginalized of all the conspiracy groups. Because the thought is that you're not just pushing flat earth theories. You're actually harming people because kids are getting measles now that weren't getting

it before. And there's a consequence of like a real direct transmission of these diseases that we were protected against just just a decade or so you're screwing over your own kids and and honestly like i've never looked into sort of the the anti-vaccine arguments i've always thought of them as being generally uh flat earther i would say um and conspiratorial. With this vaccine, I know it's different, because the technology is new, because they want every healthy adult to take it. It feels different to me. It feels more like a pharmaceutical product, and that's something that I know about.

But just to go back, okay, so you asked me, where do we know about this stuff? Well, the companies, they will. Look, there was a phenomenon for a long time. It was called the file drawer clinical trial. So you'd run a trial. And if the results were negative, you never published it. OK, or if it showed a lot of side effects, you never published it. The FDA got the data.

But, you know, the FDA has a lot to do. And if the drug was already approved, they might never do anything with it. So the companies like accumulated bad data, sort of the pre-approval data, but then they'll do what they can to downplay it. So if you're the CEO of Moderna or the CEO of Pfizer, and you have a commercial product that you're getting paid for that's going into people's arms right now, do you want a discussion that says,

hey, maybe only people over 75 should really take this right now. By the way, the market size on that is 1 20th of the adult population. And we should make sure everybody else who's taking it is well aware of this potentially painful side effects. Or do you want the conversation around this to be, screw you, we're all getting it, and you're a real jerk if you even argue about it. Well, so is there, do they have any obligation to publish the potential side effects? I mean, well, at this point, they don't have a legal obligation. Although they might face criminal liability, I guess.

But I'm not saying that they haven't published it. What I said to you is I got the data from their publishing it. What I'm saying is the conversation is we're not having an honest conversation about it, and the companies have every financial incentive to keep the conversation dishonest. Right. Keeping the conversation dishonest, though, but there's a difference between keeping the conversation dishonest and not publishing the results. But you could keep the conversation dishonest and not publishing that's the results but you could keep the conversation dishonest but yet still have that information available that's correct and so they keep so if like if they had no concern whatsoever about profit

and they were just interested in transparency and they came out and said folks this, this is the virus. It's killing X amount of people. This is the vaccine. The vaccine is going to affect people in different ways, and a certain number of people are going to have a severe reaction that could potentially cause them to be hospitalized. You would be okay with that then? Yeah, that would be much more honest. Absolutely. What is their stance?

Are they just not mentioning this? It's like, it's funny. You got to kind of dig for it, right? You got to go. And they, because they have so much momentum and they sort of have the entire public health community on their side, they don't actually have to say that much right now.

I mean, there's been sort of positive stories written about Pfizer and Moderna. They don't have to market this as much because everyone's marketing for them. But let me give you another on-point example of this. So the Pfizer vaccine, there were 40,000 people in that clinical trial. They enrolled 40,000. They gave 18,000 or 19,000 the drug and 18,000 or 19,000 placebo. We looked at the data about who dies, right? It's mainly people over 65, especially 75, 85. How many of those 18,000 people who got the vaccine do you think were over 75? How many?

How many? Fewer than 1,000. 800. Fewer than 5%. Okay. If they'd wanted to run a good clinical trial, a really good clinical trial, they should have gone to every nursing home in the country. You know, not everyone, but they should have gotten a few thousand people who were actually at high risk from this into the trial. OK, you know why they didn't? A, it probably would have slowed things down. And this was a commercial race as well as, you know, they were told to go as fast as possible. B, it might have been expensive. as you know, they were told to go as fast as possible. B, it might have been expensive. And C,

that would have shown everybody where the risk is. And then maybe the discussion would have been around immunizing those people. Commercially, you want the trial set that's big and includes people in their 20s, even if they're not at high risk. Medically medically you want the trial set that includes the people who are at risk they didn't do that i mean they did they exclude those people no but they didn't try to enroll them specifically and they didn't get that many of them there was a really weird um thing that was published online that i was reading where they were discussing who was going to get the the vaccine first and they were advocating against getting it to older people because they were white yes did you see that yes yes generally tend to be white and it was about evening things out yep it was in the new york times this wasn't this wasn't somewhere this was a who advocated a guy named har named Harold Schmidt, who's a bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania,

said openly that it was not fair to give this to older people. By the way, there's a lot of older people who are black and Hispanic too, but that you should give it to essential workers first because so many of those people are black and Hispanic and older people are white. But isn't there an argument to give it to essential workers first because it slows the curve so i wouldn't give no because again those people slows the spread those people are because those are the people that are more likely to catch it right if you actually look at that there's not that much evidence that essential workers catch it at higher rates believe it just because again it's everywhere right everybody's out i mean except the

karens who never leave their homes everybody's out everybody's kind of passing it around and and here's the other thing i'd say and this is you know this is the true nightmare scenario it's very very unlikely suppose there's something really wrong with the vaccine well who have we been giving it to the last week we give it to doctors and nurses we've totally screwed ourselves if there's a real problem right oh which again i'm that's unlikely but so this guy who's this he's a bioethics professor what is his logic behind that like saying that white people have all the advantages in society and they don't deserve this one too even though he's a white guy he's a white guy yes harold schmidt you get h-a-r-A-L-D. You could definitely find it. It seems strange that you would openly advocate for singling out people based entirely on the fact that they're of a particular ethnicity or race. I agree.

But to make this distinction, is he advising this? Is that what he advising this? Is that what he was saying? Was this his personal opinion? Well, it was his opinion as a bioethicist and, you know, public policy expert. But does he have any input whatsoever on how things get administered? So I mean, does he have input? I don't think he's like on any committees.

I believe the state of Minnesota. Someone sent me this and I have to be honest, I didn't't check it i should have checked it before i came on with you um actually overtly followed this essentially this pattern in their first recommendation round but there have been people including what didn't nicholas kristakis uh recommend that it would be given to first responders jamie didn't he say that during the podcast? I believe that was something that he said about slowing the spread, because there are people that are most likely in contact with it. He didn't look at it from a racial perspective at all. I mean, I think that's a bad idea. Because I think, again, when you look at who's really at risk, it should be people over 75 who get it first. But I agree, like, that's a case,

you can make that case. Once you introduce race into it, you've polluted everything. Well, what has been the reaction to this guy? I've seen- That article, on that part where his quote is right here- Oh, there it is. It links to a study from 2012 in Princeton. Just to- This is a study.

Study reveals impact of socioeconomic factors and the racial gap in life expectancy. Right, but he's still so but go back to his yeah for balancing it out harold schmidt an expert in ethics and health policy at the university of pennsylvania said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults given the risks and that they are disproportionately minorities i get the risks part but the disproportionately minorities part is like strange older populations explicitly older populations are whiter dr schmidt said society is structured in a way that enables them to live

longer instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them we can start to level the playing field a bit wow yeah i mean know, this is not some random guy at the corner store. That's a crazy thing to say. It's crazy. Level the playing field a bit. What you're saying is allowing more vulnerable people to die so that we could change the racial structure of the people that are alive. I mean, that's literally what he's saying, right?

I mean, if more white people die, then there's more people of color than there are white people. He's making this weird distinction. But they're more likely to die, too, if they catch the disease. Look, it's stupid on many levels. What has been the reaction to this? Do you know? There's been pushback, but not as much as you might think.

But also support, right? You know, I don't want to speak. From what I've seen on Twitter, there's been pushback. Even among woke types. Progressives. Yeah. Even woke types. Yeah, well, people go too far and then they got to bring it back a little bit. Not yet.

Not yet. Wait a few years. That's right. That's right. It's just a crazy thing to say. It's just, it's crazy when people openly advocate for doing things based on race. Yes. It's like, okay.

Because society is unbalanced. Like, Jesus Christ, we're talking about life and death of old people. Someone's Nana. You know, sorry, Nana, you're white. We're trying to balance it out a little bit. You know, I think there's been some really interesting cultural moments with this. And I mean, you know, it's interesting that the people, that people who are most afraid seem to be, or at least who are the loudest about being afraid,

are women oftentimes in 20s, 30s, and 40s, middle class, upper middle class, you know, the stereotypical Karen, right? Although they're not all white. There's a lot of, you know, but they, but a lot of white. I feel bad for Karens that are nice. I really do. I think we should stop saying that well you're silly it's okay i mean

like i'm i'm a joe right so average joe like i'm cool with that it's fine yeah no karen there's gonna be nobody named karen but but but my question joe is is why i think why are these people who are at so little risk panicking the way they are? And in some cases, they're not just harming themselves. They're harming their children. Well, they feel – I'll tell you why. First of all, they feel vulnerable physically. Second of all, they maybe have not dived into this or dove into this as deeply as you have. So they're not aware of the real risks and real consequences.

And they're listening to all the fear porn that's spewed out all over cnn and all over these newspapers and they're affected by it and once people establish an initial reaction to a pandemic or an emergency response that's very difficult for them to readjust i have friends that are nice people that are fucking terrified that are women that are in their 40s you know like moms of some of my kids can you talk to them about it? They don't want to listen to me. I'm fucking crazy. They're not listening to this pot-smoking, cage-fighting commentator

who's telling them not to worry about shit. I'm covered in tattoos. I'm not the guy. I'm a little too risky. But they have an initial response that they got from the beginning. Like I got. I was scared at first. I was like, fuck, this is bad.

We got to lock down. We got to stay away from people. I'm thinking about, I got water treatment shit. I'm like, we got to make sure I have plenty of bullets. In February, I was scared too. I had friends that have never thought about having guns. They were telling me they want to get a gun. How do I get a gun?

Can I borrow one of your guns? They were telling me they want to get a gun. How do I get a gun? Can I borrow one of your guns? They were saying a bunch of crazy shit. And the gun ownership skyrocketed. That, to me, shows the paranoia. When liberals start waiting in line for hours to get a fucking rifle. This is what we saw.

So these women who are particularly vulnerable in that group, because they're physically vulnerable and maybe their husbands are pussies, and then they're there, and they're stuck, and they're like, no one's going to protect me. No one's going to protect my children. I'm scared. And then they're addicted to social media, and they're on Twitter all day because they don't have a job anymore because they lost their job, and now they're economically terrified. So they're online just hanging out with Alyssa Milano and tweeting up a fucking storm and they're all scared so i've answered it for you that's what i think that's what it is they're physically vulnerable and then on top of that they don't they they might not have

the ability to objectively go into this stuff with an open mind and look at the variables and say like what what is actually happening versus why what is the media saying and look at the variables and say, what is actually happening versus what is the media saying and why is the media saying it this way? Well, one of the reasons why, unfortunately, is fear sells. If it bleeds, it leads. All this clickbait shit that people are diving into, it's very valuable. It's a commodity to get people to click on things

and to get people to pay attention to your videos get people the best way to do it has always traditionally been in terms of like mainstream media scare the fuck out of people and they scared the fuck out of people something that's oh yes guaranteed you know to kill to 20 of the people we're all gonna die like there was all these these numbers that were being thrown around the beginning of the people were all going to die. There was all these numbers that were being thrown around at the beginning of the pandemic, and these people never let that initial fear go. And if you look at surveys,

a lot of people think it's far, far more dangerous than it is. And they think far, far more people have died. I mean, you know, it's... I guess people get locked in, and it's very hard for them to change their minds. Well, even intelligent people. I have a friend who was saying that he thought that Donald Trump still had a possibility of dying when he was on a steroid-fueled tweet storm. He was screaming, you know, make America great again.

He was all this crazy shit. I'm like, the guy's fine. He's 74 and fat. He eats nothing but burgers and fucking Kentucky Fried Chicken. He just kicked the shit. It's true. No, I mean,

you know, a couple of interesting things that you could see even into June and July. I don't think you see it as much anymore. People talking about how they hadn't left their apartments, you know, in New York. And these are people, these are like,

these are people who are in shitty, small apartments. Sometimes they have kids and like, they're like day 106. I'm beating this thing. I'm like, the only thing you're beating is your own fucking sanity. And your immune system, too, by the way.

And your immune system. Because you're not in contact with anything else. That's the ironic part about it, is the isolation is actually terrible for your immune system. Yes. Your immune system thrives on being in contact with other people. That's right. I mean, you know, it's like with kids and allergies, right? We've raised a whole bunch of kids.

We don't challenge them to be in dirt or anything. And they have these terrible allergies. And, you know, it's also interesting sort of culturally. So at the beginning of this, you might remember there was Chris Cuomo on CNN. You know, he got it. Is he going to survive? Is he going to make it? He seemed fine.

Yeah. You remember? He chipped his tooth. Okay. How did he chip his tooth? Because he was shivering so hard, he said. You know, I guess for him that's a war wound okay but you might believe that no you might i mean who knows but he's chipped his

veneer okay he's clearly at least been deceptive on some issues oh one of them was coming out of the basement right yes this is the first time emerging here i am emerging i credited that to a producer because i know how Hollywood works. I've been involved in shows where people fudge things and you've got to go with it because you want to keep your job. And that was like, Chris, we're going to get you. We're going to get you coming out of the basement. It's going to be a great shot.

That makes sense. But then he also got into a fight with a guy outside his house when he was still symptomatic. So here's what's really interesting back in the day back in april and may you saw a lot of these first person narratives and they were all kind of the same they're like i got sick i was so scared i had a fever of 102 for a night and then i was fine yeah and so and so i think i think the media sort of realized that those were not quite landing with the way that they wanted them to land. Well, he was on TV the whole time he was sick.

Yes, that's how sick he was. Which is crazy. He wasn't even coughing. He was wearing a suit. That's right. He was just in the basement. What the media figured out in about May was that the only thing that they needed to pick on to scare people was the top line death count. So that's all you hear.

Today, 3,000 people died. Now, 300,000 people have died. But the only way that works is if you don't tell people the truth about who's actually dying. So that's what they've done. And it's been incredibly effective. And it's horrible. It's led to horrible public policy decisions. And it's also a short-term gain for long-term disastrous results. The short-term gain of getting these ratings and getting all these people to pay attention and getting people locked into this concept of fear. And then also it's supported by a lot of these people in the community. But a lot of these people in these media communities, they're not robust

folks. I hate to say that, but they're not. There's an issue with people that don't exercise, don't take care of themselves, aren't eating well, aren't taking vitamins, and don't do a deep dive into how to optimize your immune system and your health. And these are the people that are telling you about what you're doing and who you're putting at risk when you want to have a birthday party for your kid. Right. Yes. And, I mean, I would say the group think is deeper than that.

Right? It's just, and I will say, I think in New York in March, people were scared. For sure. You know, the hospital, the hospital is really, they got as full as they've gotten anywhere. And there was the respirator thing where all these people were dying. Yep.

So, yeah, you know, we put all these people on ventilators. We killed a bunch of them. So people were scared. And I get that. But at some point, don't you have to say, like, the sky didn't fall and we need to stop scaring people? I'll tell you that one of the things that makes me the angriest about the Times, in May, they ran story after story about what was called

pediatric inflammatory syndrome. This idea that post-COVID, there were kids who were going to get inflammatory syndrome and die, and that this was going to be a really... Because kids were not dying from COVID itself, or very, very rarely. And so the idea was this post-COVID syndrome was really dangerous and terrible for kids. And it turned out basically to be a lie. Okay. There have been- Well, where'd it come from?

The story? The lie. Well, so there were a handful of case reports. Okay. It turned out this is really manageable. You give kids steroids. First of all, it can happen with the flu too, right? It's like myocarditis, right?

This idea, sometimes you can have an inflammation or an infection of the heart muscle with COVID. That's true of the flu too. A lot of this stuff is true with a lot of sort of standard viruses. So there were case reports, but instead of saying, and there's something called Kawasaki syndrome, which affects kids, which is known, this predates COVID, okay? And occasionally kids can get really sick. So this fit in these paradigms, like this, this was just a very rare condition that unfortunately a very few kids were going to get sick from after COVID, okay. The media went crazy with it. And that's

one reason why the schools have stayed closed for so long. And basically, by July, I mean, to a lot of people, it was pretty clear it was bullshit long. And basically, by July, I mean, to a lot of people, it was pretty clear it was bullshit from the beginning. But by July, even the people who had initially talked about it were essentially acknowledging it was bullshit. The Times, they never went back. They never said, hey, this doesn't look very serious. Kids are not just not at risk from COVID. They're really not at risk from this pediatric syndrome we've been trying to scare you about. They go chicken little over and over and over again. And when it turns out they're wrong, and the hospitals

don't collapse, and we don't need 100,000 ventilators, and a million people don't die, and the death rate is not 10%, and people are not dropping dead in the streets, all the stuff that you can remember hearing. It's not 10 years ago. It was 10 months ago. They just move on to the next thing. I can't stand this. With no consequence. What about long haulers?

Ah, yes, long haul. There's no evidence long haul's real. Well, what about people that have had COVID? Like here's an example. There's a guy named Cody Garbrandt. He's a former UFC Bantamweight champion, stud athlete, got COVID. Here's an example. There's a guy named Cody Garbrandt. He's a former UFC band and weight champion, stud athlete, got COVID and it significantly

affected him for a long period of time and it kept him from fighting in the title fight. He was supposed to fight for the flyweight title just last month and wasn't able to do it or earlier this month. Let me be clear about this. If you get COVID and you have a bad case

and you're in the ICU or you're on a ventilator. He wasn't. Okay. In those cases though, you're going to have, it's going to take you some time to recover, right? If you get sick with this, really sick with it, it's like anything else.

It's going to take you some time, right? The question about long haul isn't those people, right? It's whether or not, you know, some 40 year old who doesn't even know when she got it and in some cases doesn't have either a pcr or an antibody test to show that she got it is now complaining i have fatigue and i have pain and i have brain fog and i can't get out of bed there's no evidence for that as a real condition okay i don't know about your friend but that's a different but anecdotally if these people do have like my friend michael yo who i

talked to you about he's in his 40s he's a healthy robust guy months later he was still fatigued okay he's still at a hard time i mean there are people that have lung scarring correct yes yes that's okay so so again he was sick with covid right at the time, right? He actually had an active infection that was pretty damaging to him for a number of weeks, right? Right. Recovered from it, but months later was still recovering. Okay. So those cases to me, there's more evidence that that's a real thing. And that's something that we should look at and researchers should look at. But remember,

most people who get sick with COVID who are under 70 don't get particularly sick. So people like your friend are not like, it's worth looking at them. But Cody Garbrandt was suffering from blood clots. Okay. So he'd gone to the doctor and he found out that quite a bit after the initial infection when he,

you know, he's still fatigued and he was suffering from blood clots. So you can have blood clots if you essentially are immobile. So was he like in bed for weeks or months? Right. So we don't know. Right. So we're kind of speculating. What I'm talking about is this much greater population of people who never really got very sick and now say they have long COVID. And that seems to have a lot more in common with sort of fibromyalgia or restless leg syndrome or a lot of these quasi-somatic illnesses that unfortunately a lot of the population, or gluten intolerance.

I'm not talking about celiac disease, okay? Celiac disease is real. Gluten intolerance is, you know, I fart a lot when I eat too much bread. But it causes inflammation if you talk to people that understand so so there's again with celiac you can find that right yes right so with but that's more than inflammation with celiac right you're really ill so what so what i'm saying is with long covid it fits into this group of illnesses that are not well defined that sufferers are pretty organized and loud about their symptoms.

And again, I'm not talking about your friends. I'm talking about what you see online. And unfortunately, where there appears to be a significant, not always, but a significant somatic component. See, the thing about the blood clots, though, I think this has been pretty established in people that have died from COVID. Yes, that's correct. The blood clot issue.

What is the blood clot issue? So you have an inflammatory response, and you can have blood clots. You can die. I mean, COVID kills, right? It kills people, and one of the ways it kills people, I believe, is through clotting and strokes.

But when you get a guy who's in his 30s, who's a stud athlete like Cody Garbrandt and is suffering from blood clots quite a while after the infection i don't remember the exact time period but that's unusual yeah any other kind of disease right and i don't know i don't know if it's unusual for any other kind of disease and so like i don't want to i don't want to sound like i'm minimizing this right but we but i've never heard that attributed to the flu. Right.

So, again, could we go find a case report from the flu and blood clots? Probably. Would you find multiple case reports every year where it's become part of the narrative? Right. I don't know. Probably not, but I don't know. You know, I'm a little bit glib when I say long-haul doesn't exist, okay? And I shouldn't be that glib. Because again, if you got really sick with COVID, you're going to have consequences.

Certainly if you're hospitalized. What I'm talking about, again, is this much larger group of people who didn't get very sick and who are claiming long-term consequences. So what do you think is happening with them? You think it's psychosomatic? Yes, I think it's mostly psychosomatic.

I think that it's pretty indistinguishable from depression and anxiety in a lot of people. Oh, okay. And also this coincides with the lockdown. Losing your job. Losing your job. Your kid sucks now. You're fighting with your husband constantly. Of course you don't want to get out of bed.

Yeah. I mean, I hate to be that blunt about it but like that's you know it's it's indistinguishable from yeah it's indistinguishable from depression my heart is racing yeah anxiety can make your heart race yeah got it um so there's no evidence that there's some sort of a reaction to this disease that is very unusual that's causing these blood clots? Again, I don't want to talk about blood clots specifically. But the blood clots is a big one, right? Well, is it a big one in what sense? Is it something that I think is common?

I don't think it's common. With COVID patients? With this, again, we're talking about post-infection, months later. If that's come up a lot, that's not something I've read about. I thought it was one of the things that's common in autopsies with COVID patients. Right, right. But those are people who've died, right? So you've died from COVID, right?

You're dying for one reason or another. But they think one of the reasons why you're dying is the blood clots. And so it's not just this respiratory ailment, but it's also causing this. Yes, this thrombotic condition. Yes. Yeah, that seems to be, you know, and in fact, they tried to treat it with anticoagulants and anti-inflammatories that prevent clotting. And I think the response was not actually that strong for whatever reason. But this is sort of like, again, we talk about things that I don't like

to talk about because it's a level of medical precision that I don't want to pretend to. And that's sort of where this is. Do you think, though, that the people—hasn't there been evidence, though, that the people that even didn't suffer from severe symptoms had some lung scarring? Is that true? So there have been—this is sort of like the myocarditis issue this is about the like heart function issues there have been these small open label studies where essentially the the researchers know that the people had covid and they've said yeah we see abnormalities here on scans okay there's a couple things about that it's they're uncontrolled again so you're not

looking the right way to do this would be to take 100 people, 50 of whom had had COVID and 50 of whom had not, the researchers don't know who's who, scan them all, and see if you can find anything different. Okay? When you're looking at people you know are sick, and you're looking for abnormalities, sometimes you're more predisposed to find them. That's why clinical trials are run the way they are. The second thing is when these findings are announced, the media jumps them. So you may remember in the summer, there was this issue of myocarditis. It was healthy young people are getting inflammation of the heart and infections in the heart. I do remember that. Yes. And we can't have football because of it because they're all going to drop dead.

The Big Ten got scared. And it was based on this one German study. Okay. So first of all, the flu can cause myocarditis. It's a common reaction to respiratory viruses. Second of all, when you actually looked at this study, and again, this is something that I have to read about because I'm not qualified to judge the data myself. The data was much weaker than it appeared to be on first glance.

And in fact, the researchers basically walked back their conclusions. None of that stopped the media from panicking. So that's what happens. And with long haul, it's an even bigger problem. And here's why. There's money at stake. Again, there's money at stake for people who want disability. And there's even more money at stake for doctors. Okay. Who want to treat these people and who want insurers to cover it.

My joke about this, which is not really a joke, is wait till you see ketamine for long haul COVID. Okay. There are going to be very expensive treatments that are offered for this that which is not really a joke, is wait till you see ketamine for long-haul COVID. Okay? There are going to be very expensive treatments that are offered for this that are going to have nothing to do with it. Well, they're using ketamine for depression. Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Apparently it works. Well, it certainly works temporarily. Yeah, I've had people encourage me to try it just recreationally. I'm like, no, no, no Whitney Cummings. I'm not trying your ketamine. She loves it. She's got the mist. Oh, jeez.

Do you think that this is just the consequence of anytime there is any sort of a public illness. There's going to be people that overreact. There's going to be people that dismiss it. And we've got to kind of figure out what's correct. Unfortunately, no. I think two really big things have happened in the last, one in the last 10 years, one in the last 40 years. And they mean that this is more likely to happen again in the future, unfortunately. In a way, we're lucky with COVID because COVID is so non-threatening to most, you know, sort of healthy adults that this one's been a trial run, okay? Because imagine if COVID actually did kill 1%, much less 5% of the people who got it,

we'd be in lockdown forever. So here's the two things that have clearly happened. 5% of the people who got it, we'd be in lockdown forever. So here's the two things that have clearly happened. First of all, the medical, what I call the medical industrial complex, is bigger than it's ever been, both worldwide and in the U.S., okay? In 1960, the U.S. spent about $27 billion on healthcare. Now, adjusted for inflation, that was about $250 billion, on healthcare. Now adjusted for inflation, that was about 250 billion. Okay. This year, or last year, let's say pre COVID, we spent 4 trillion. Okay. One in $5 we spend is on healthcare. It's, it's, it's, you know, practically the biggest sector. These, look, I'm not saying doctors aren't good people. I'm not saying nurses aren't good people.

Even, you know, even in the drug companies, there are good people. They care about human health. But you need inputs. Patients are inputs, okay? And this disease created a lot of inputs. There's a lot of incentive to push, okay? And that, unfortunately, is not going away.

Healthcare is only becoming more powerful. And not just in the U.S., but worldwide, but especially in the US. But the second factor is even more important. Okay. The second factor is tech. We couldn't have done this 10 years ago. We certainly couldn't have done it 20 years ago, because we couldn't have shut all the offices in the country, all the nice white collar people who, you know, who are in charge had to go in. They don't have to go in anymore. If you work at Walmart, you got to go in. But if you're a lawyer, you can do it all on to go in. They don't have to go in anymore. If you work at Walmart, you got to go in. But if you're a lawyer, you can do it all on Zoom.

Okay? You don't even have to wear pants. And if you're Jeffrey Toobin, apparently you can jerk off while you're doing it. That poor guy has been hit on every podcast this week. Sorry, Jeffrey. Sorry, Jeffrey. I jerk off too, Jeffrey. I do too, but I try not to do it on Zoom calls. I think he tried too. he said he muted the video yeah that's you don't mute video buddy yeah that was your mistake right

there so so okay we couldn't have done this no joke now we can we have the bandwidth for a lot of the country to work virtually and guess what a lot of the country to work virtually. And guess what? A lot of the country, especially adults who don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old and want to be outside and seeing your friends, kind of like working virtually. They don't have to commute. There are some benefits to it. Yes. Or in the short term anyway, certainly. At the same time, guess who's done the best this year?

Amazon, Google, Facebook. Those companies are, they've made more money than they've ever made. Their stocks are higher than they've ever been. They benefit from this. They provide the technology and they benefit financially. And you think it's an accident that Amazon and Google are doing everything they can to suppress people like me? Are you kidding? I mean... How so? How are they trying to suppress you? Well, Amazon wouldn't publish these booklets. Now, these

booklets... Let me see these. I made them. I mean, I forced them to back down, basically, with the help of Elon. So, Amazon is selling them. Now they're selling them, yes. They them to back down basically with the help of elon so amazon is selling them now they're selling them yes they tried to censor them they've censored every booklet or every self-published work about covid is censored by amazon except this why because i made enough of a stink you made enough of a stink and you have enough credentials yes what was their rationalization

do they tell you why no they didn no. They didn't tell it. Do you really think that the reason why they're doing that is because they want people to not be aware of all the things you're saying? Or do you think that they're worried that what you're doing is you're spreading some conspiracy theories or some untruths that are going to cause real problems and cause people to make mistakes and spread the disease. They would say the latter. And I would say, I don't care.

Okay? You publish Mein Kampf. You can buy Mein Kampf on Amazon. Okay? Yeah. Absolutely. You can look it up. You can buy it right now.

They should be in the business. I don't want to look it up. I don't want that shit to be on my search. I don't want to look it up. I don't want that shit to be on my search. They should be in the business of allowing ideas to flourish and free debate to flourish. Now, again, am I saying that there's somebody at Amazon that Jeff Bezos says, hey, I know we made a lot of money this year.

Screw this Barron's about you. No. You do recognize, hold on, MindConf. Jesus Christ. There it is. It's Kindle Unlimited. You can get it for free and enjoy access to one million more titles. Don't click on it, Jamie. Look at all the reviews. It's four and a half stars. Jesus Christ. There it is. It's Kindle Unlimited. You can get it for free and enjoy access to one million more titles. Don't click on it, Jamie.

Look at all the reviews. It's four and a half stars. Jesus Christ. What the fuck? A thousand ratings. Don't click on that either. Jesus. Posties to Jewish charities and organizations.

Oh, that's good. Okay. That's nice. That's nice. But you do admit that there have been a lot of videos that have been released that give deceptive information and inaccurate information. A lot of crazy people have made videos that people sent this to me. Hey, what do you think about this? Yeah, 5G causes this. Yeah, 5G.

A friend of mine sent me. A friend of mine is not a dumb person. He's a successful person. Sent me this thing asking me if I think this is all a radiation disease. Yep. The vaccine causes infertility and it's going to, there's microchip. And yeah, there's crazy shit out there. Microchips.

Yeah, microchips. That's Bill Gates. Bill Gates wants to depopulate the planet apparently. Yes. Yes. So, so look, you've heard me. The audience has heard me for a while now. That's not where I'm coming from.

My view on this, by the way, is basically it should all be allowed to be out there. I agree. But don't you understand, though, that this is one of the reasons why long-form conversations are so valuable. You and I have talked right now for two and a half hours. Jesus. Yeah, so this, you've established your position. Most people are not going to listen to this. I hope they do. Well, a lot hours. Jesus. Yeah. So this, this, you've established your position. Most people are not going to listen to this. I hope they do.

Well, a lot of people will, I'm guarantee you millions will, but there's 330 million people or whatever it is in the country. There. Most people are not going to listen to this. And when Amazon gets a wind of the fact that you have a booklet like this, I don't think there's,

they're hiring a bunch of people to fact check. No, no, it's automated. It's just automated for that. So because of all these documentaries, these plandemics, and all these different things that have already been suppressed, there seems to be like an inclination to the first move is to suppress. Yes. So, okay, it's counterproductive on three levels.

First of all, in general, the antidote to speech is more speech. So they shouldn't... Second of all, okay. Second of all, suppressing people like me drives people, drives readers and ordinary people looking for information to crazier theories, right? If Berenson is being suppressed, then it must... You know what? Maybe the pandemic thing is true

right okay but and the third thing is what i said to you about the companies having a financial incentive for this to go on unfortunately is true okay and i'm not saying that's driving their decision making it's confluence again okay not conspiracy confluence they if you're amazon or youtube you should be bending over backwards to allow dissent because of your financial incentives you should show people that that's not driving your decision making i just don't imagine that that's really driving their decision making i think the the real consequences they're worried about is the pushback from people that are angry that you've been published. That's probably true.

That's probably their first choice. Yeah, because you've been attacked, and you've got to imagine that the same people who attacked you will probably attack the people that are willing to distribute your work even harder than they've attacked you, because they can't really do anything to you. But they can do something to Amazon. They can do something to someone who's distributing what you're producing right you've given this guy a platform you should be boycotted exactly yeah i guess there's but look big so big tech though these forces that are making tech even more and more central in our lives and making it possible for us to live virtually more and more and making tech more important and profitable, those forces are not going away.

So the medicalization of society, not going away. And the tech, you know, the techization of society, not going away. We would not have responded to this kind of shitty dismal little virus this way 20 years ago. Okay. And, and the same number of people would have died. And of course, someone would jump in and go, it's not a shitty dismal little virus. It's killed almost 300,000 people. That's right. Yeah, that's right. It's killed and it's killed. It's killed 1.6. If you believe, let's say that all the PCR tests are right. Let's say there's no overcounting. There's clearly overcounting right now.

It's killed 1.6 million people this year. 60 million people have died worldwide this year. Okay? Less than 3% died from this. And they're mostly extremely old people. That's the truth. You don't have to like it. You can say I'm a shitty person for saying it. It's the truth you don't have to like it you can say i'm a shitty person for saying it

it's the truth um is there less danger of a virus that kills old people are old people less valuable so this is if there's a way to protect old people shouldn't we do that of course if there's a way to protect all but by dismissing it in in regard, by saying, and I understand that you're being pragmatic and this is honest, that old people are essentially, look, we have lifespans, right? When you get to 85, 90 years old, the general consensus is you're at the end of the line. We are at the end of the line. Yeah.

Joe, ask it the other way. How many, like if you had to sacrifice a 10 year old or an 80 year old if you have to make that decision who on earth depends on the 10 year old a lot of those little kids are assholes no of course right yes yes I mean you'd if you'd be an asshole if you were an 80 year old and you wanted a 10 year old to die so you could live that's right yes why on earth is it not okay to say that um well because there's always a person who's looking to criticize you in any way, shape, or form, period. Especially if you're a line stepper like you are. If you're a dissenter.

If you're a person who goes away from the orthodoxy and not just publishes one, but three different booklets about this. And what are the titles? Unreported Truths of the COVID-19 and Lockdowns. So part one is The death counts and estimates. Part two is called, part two is a terrible title, Update and Examination of Lockdowns as a Strategy. And part three is masks. And people want me to do one on the PCR testing issue,

which I might, but I feel like I need to do one on vaccines. Because I think the vaccine issue is huge. How have these been reviewed, rather? Well, they've barely been reviewed. I mean, essentially, the media has ignored them. And one of the things, by the way, was so disappointing to me when Amazon initially tried to censor me back in June.

So Elon Musk said something. People in the conservative media said something. And there were a couple real smart sort of libertarian types like Glenn Greenwald, liberal but libertarian, who said, you know. Right. He sticks his neck out every time. He said, Berenson's an asshole, but you know what?

We shouldn't be censoring. Why does he think you're an asshole? You know, he didn't agree that we should lock down. Whatever. He didn't, you know, he had to sort of consensus smart person position. Well, his husband got it from wearing a mask. Is that true? Yeah.

His husband was protesting, wearing a mask inzil and got it and was really sick and his husband's very robust and and a young guy and he was saying like hey this is a fucked up virus right yeah so so anyway so greenwald said don't censor this guy but the people at the times didn't speak out for me at all okay so so what's happened in the months since well you can look at the Times didn't speak out for me at all. Okay. So what's happened in the months since? Well, you can look at the reviews. First of all, these three things have sold, like they've sold like a quarter million copies combined. And the reviews, they've gotten like 10,000 reviews on Amazon, which are basically almost five stars all. And they've been ignored by the media.

Just like I've been now, you know, the Times, they wrote a hit piece on me back in July. About this? No, no, just sort of about me and how I'd become this anti-lockdown. The hit piece is a little strong, but it was negative. Vanity Fair wrote two real hit pieces on me in April. Since then. And it's all about the lockdowns. About me and how I don't know what I'm talking about

and scientists hate me, blah, blah, blah. Two hit pieces. Yes, in Vanity Fair. The first one must have been very successful. The first one was sort of a slap and then they tried again with the second one. Since the Times kind of swiped at me and didn't really draw blood,

the media's position has basically been to ignore me. So I go on fox like you know i i'm on with tucker laura fair amount and that's the move that but but no i mean the problem is that i need to be i understand i understand listen glenn greenwald goes on them all the time i mean i like i like them they're smart They ask good questions. But I should be on. Rachel Maddow, you know what? As I've said, have me on live. You can ask me anything. As long as it's live so you don't get to edit and make me look like an asshole.

Well, they're worried about the blowback. They're worried about the blowback like we're talking about that I had from the Abigail Schreier podcast or any of the other podcasts that are controversial. They're worried about blowback. Pretending that you don't exist or that I don't exist is not helping these people. Your audience is huge. My audience is not as huge. It's not even a fraction as huge as yours, but it's real.

Well, they still think of themselves as the mainstream, and it's not really the case anymore. You're one of the mainstream. When there's other people that you don't consider mainstream and they have hundreds of millions of views. That's right. And you say that's not mainstream. Well, what the fuck is mainstream then? What do you consider? has not just a clear mandate, but that you get direction as to what you can and can't say

and who you can and can't have on. These gatekeepers of information and the idea that these gatekeepers should be influenced and also not just influenced but directed by financial decisions, whether it's financially viable, whether or not corporate interests are being served, whether or not advertisers are going to support this particular subject matter. But here's the thing. The Times and The Washington Post, those places have now failed as gatekeepers.

And that's why they're screaming for Google and Facebook to do their job for them, because they know they can't control it anymore. There's a little bit of that. But there's also a legitimate worry that some of these people, when you don't have any gatekeepers, right, and it's open information, there's some people that are going to say things that aren't accurate. And those things are going to become spread and retweeted. And then these conspiracies are going to become something that people actually believe in when they're not accurate.

What they would like is there to be some sort of gatekeeper or some sort of filter. But the problem is they've been so fucking shitty at it that no one trusts them anymore. That's right. You guys lie about so much and you distort so much. and you distort so much and you have this obvious political ideology that you're relying on and you filter everything through.

That's right. You can't, there's not a real clear objective news source that will say we're wrong about this or we've been wrong about that. Like you were talking about

with the various things that, especially with the child disease, that they didn't, they never pushed back against. They never went back and corrected it. They should have an equal response to the fact that they found out that they were in error. Yes, they should.

Yes. If they want to be trusted. Instead, they try to smear me and smear you. Like, I'm a QAnon. Does anything I say sound QAnon to you? A little bit. A little bit. Really? No, just kidding. I don't know what QAnon sounds Does anything I say sound QAnon to you? A little bit. A little bit. Really?

No, I'm just kidding. I don't know what QAnon sounds like exactly. Are you all right? I have friends who believe in that QAnon stuff. It gets weird. I've had people tell me it's real. I'm like, what? What's real?

Hold on. What's real? What are we saying here? It's a weird time, man. It's a weird time for information i think we're in this sort of transitionary period between these um media giants that have failed their audience in many respects because like if you ask people do you believe uh the story it was on cnn and you said that 10 years ago i think most people would say yes most people if you ask that to most intelligent

people today post this whole trump madness trump derangement syndrome and all the other shit that's been going on at the russia gate all that stuff i think a lot of people are like what is it about right you know what are the you know what is there an incentive for them are they motivated to not be honest is this a political thing have they made a motivated to not be honest? Is this a political thing? Have they made a decision to not be honest because they think it best serves the interests of the United States if they're not honest? All these considerations were never a factor before, and they are now. Yes. I mean, so when I worked at the Times, you know, people would accuse the Times of being biased and liberal. And I would tell them what I thought was the truth, okay,

which I really think was the truth at the time the time look there was some bias in terms of story selection in other words you know is things they cover yeah like like obviously it was easier to write stories about you know police brutality than how great the police were or something like that right but once that once you got past that idea, okay, you were supposed to report the facts. You were supposed to give people who you were, let's say it was a negative story, a chance to comment and report their answers honestly, not snarkily. Give them the space that they deserved because they have a point of view too. And you weren't supposed to, you know, lie in a meaningful way. In other words,

what, what the story was, was supposed to be an accurate representation of reality. And I don't think you can say those things about the New York times anymore. When did it shift? Well, I shifted with Trump and it shifted with this, with this sort of new generation of journalists they hired who, some of whom were not really journalists. They're sort of like new media people who were, you know, camera, you know, they were videographers, or they were web designers. They didn't come out of the idea that we're journalists first. And our first goal is to try to reflect reality as well as any, you know, human being can. can obviously we all live in the cave

we don't really know what reality is but we're gonna try there's an objective truth out there that we're gonna try to get to with trump it became the united states is filled with a bunch of fucking racist more here get me cursing it you did a bunch of racist morons and we're going to show them the way the truth and the light And that has been the last five years. And it's been devastating to journalism. It's the indoctrination, too, from the universities. This woke ideology is thought to be the way. And in many ways, it's a new religion.

It's like the religion of woke is more important than the objective dissemination of reality. effective dissemination of reality. And, and, you know, if I were, if I were in that camp, I'd really be saying to myself, why the hell is it that Donald Trump won more African American and other minority votes than, you know, Mitt Romney? I mean, the guys are racist. So many of the supporters are racist. And yet somehow, we've failed so badly. We are so over the top in our woke ideology, that we've lost support among these groups you know we call people lit you know latinx and they don't latinx yeah yeah whatever it is yeah like they don't like no yeah they don't like that yeah it's it's a joke what's happening i've seen latino people get angry at that distinction it's um it's strange to, and I wonder what saves journalism,

because I wish there was a place that I could go to that I knew there was not going to be any bias whatsoever, that I knew these are the facts as we know them, as it stands now. And it used to be The Times. I used to think The Times was that place. I still think The Times is better than most. Yes. But the problem is with these kids coming out of these universities,

they feel like they have this, there's an obligation to push some sort of social justice along with the news. Yes. And that just didn't be, that wasn't the case before. They might have had their own political leanings, but the news as it it stands what it is was most important but it also then you would get it from the times the most articulate and

intelligent way they were the best writers like you would read it and you're like this is yeah and some of it is still i mean they're still very very good but you know yeah like we're not even gonna just go all the way back to what we're talking at the beginning we're not even gonna ask this question of where the virus came from because it might you know give comfort to donald trump right you have lost your way as a journalist if that's your point of view well there was a thought that covering any of the hillary clinton email scandals was one of the reasons why donald trump got elected and so that they had fucked up and they had failed and then and guess what they did their best to hide the hunter biden yes and that was real don't tell me it wasn't real those the computer was real it's all real

it's all real i mean so so so you know it's funny you say like a centrist you know some kind of organization elon and i actually briefly talked about this back in the spring and you know he has a few other things to do and i got you, you know, kind of busy with COVID. But and we didn't even talk about should it be nonprofit? Should it be for profit? What would it look like? But, you know, is there a place for that news organization out there? And what would it cover? What would it be?

It's going to have to come from a place like that, where it starts from the beginning with that in mind. And that with that as like the the core tenets of you know objective reality right and the the obligation is to disseminate this objective reality and that not not social justice not you know not right-wing ideology none of the no biases and that's not really what we expect from certainly not what we expect from mainstream television news right but in the interim something is happening i mean and you're actually again i don't want to sound like i'm kissing your ass but look at the size of your audience you are the sort of the leader of it this this it's almost terrifying it's a shit but no it's true but it's

a citizen journalism but but you're doing it in the most organic possible way. You have people on who you think have something to say, and you ask them questions. That's what being a reporter is supposed to be. And there's other people out there who are pushing. But it's a slow process. Well, it is a slow process. But I think that there's a hunger for it.

And I think, unfortunately, I'm in this weird position where I have this weird obligation that I didn't expect. I just wanted to smoke pot and talk to my friends. And now I have to interview people. To be a fucking, some weirdo de facto

journalist based on that spotify contract i wouldn't complain too much no i'm not complaining but i i'm not i don't need a lot of money i'm not a that person but i do need some protection from um what i think is the overreach of tech censorship. And I've had a great time with YouTube. They really haven't done... They've really been very good. And I know they take a lot of shit, but in terms of how bad it could have gone, and I know that there's been a lot of censorship

that does exist with YouTube and some other places, I have no problems with them. With iTunes, same thing. I have no problems with them. With iTunes, same thing. I have no problems with them. Yeah, Apple's been great for me too. But I don't trust that it's going to stay that way. Right. I don't.

I just see too much. I see, you know, Brett Weinstein's organization. organization um he uh he had this uh unity 2020 twitter account where the idea was to take people from the left and people from the right that are reasonable educated intelligent people and great leaders and create a third sort of option for people their twitter account got shut down did it really yes it got shut down yes it there's violated terms of service or whatever the fuck it is it made no sense crazy just absolute fucking lunacy that just discussing the option

of a third party was by a public intellectual who's a scholar was thought to be so dangerous that they had to shut it down I can't complain about Twitter I guess you know we've all had different experiences with different platforms Twitter's been pretty fair to me i feel like they do a lot of things that i don't agree with at all you know there's there's a lot of crazy

shit that they they ban people from uh for and that's one of them that's just one of them but i don't know who's doing that here's the thing when you have an enormous group of human beings working together at twitter how much editorial control do individuals have? Like, is this stuff going through an algorithm or is there a person? You know, they have this trust and safety council that's filled with social justice weirdos. How Orwellian is that? Fucking weird. I'm reading 1984 again.

I just started reading it again. And it's bizarre. Yeah, that's a book you have to read now. Another book you have to read now is Illness as Metaphor. If you're thinking about long COVID, that's Susan Sontag writing about being ill and what it means. Because COVID has definitely taken on this metaphor. I mean, my joke was long-haul COVID is metaphor as illness. Yeah.

But the idea of you're in the kingdom of the sick or the kingdom of the well. We're in the kingdom of the sick right now. Right. But for most of human history, we've wanted to be well. We wanted to be in the kingdom of the well. And now it's like there's so many people who want to be sick, it feels like. Well, they're just scared. And there's also the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you is

the worst thing that's ever happened to you and if being afraid of catching a disease that 99 point whatever people survive from is the worst thing that happened to you it's still the worst thing that happened to you that's right you haven't gone through world war one you haven't seen your grandparents starve you haven't had these horrific violent encounters on a daily basis so how do you argue someone out of fear right this thing still is the worst thing you've encountered because so many people they inflate their adversity they make it seem like this unbelievable barrier that they've had such great difficulty overcoming because there's there's social value there's like social cred and there's social currency in suffering

and and in being a victim and so there's so many people that love to talk about it you know and make this big horrific deal about it i hate to say but yeah. I mean, this is part of the problem with human beings, is that we have this understanding of what real struggle is based on our own personal experience. And I think a lot of these people that are freaking out, they've really, they've had soft lives. It's part of the problem. You talk to people that are tough, that have had hard lives,

that have, like, you know, fucking struggled and come here from other countries and like really really strong i've really seen some horrific shit really seen crime and violence on a high level they're not nearly scared of this stuff no and nor should i mean i'll never forget being in baghdad in the summer of 2004 and walking through the central morgue and i I mean, you know, there were a lot of dead bodies in that morgue. People. 2004, you were in Baghdad? Yeah, I was working for the Times. Jesus.

What was that like? It wasn't great. I don't talk about it that much. It wasn't great. Why are you laughing? I'm just thinking about something. What are you thinking about? Doesn't matter. It must. Doesn't doesn't can't talk about it yeah okay i understand um but obviously people

gonna go you're laughing about a morgue um but that to you is you've seen one of the worst things that human beings experience war yeah you've seen it and you've seen the consequences of war yes yeah not just visit a base but go through the morgue no way people people die yeah and sometimes they die pretty horrifically yeah horrifically in a large scale yeah yeah and in something that seems very senseless and yes I don't know how we come out of this Alex and this is what I'm really worried about I'm worried about the tone of the country has shifted

people are looking to attack people that haven't really necessarily done anything people are looking to attack people with differing ideas or people that question things people willing to attack people that don't follow the orthodoxy or follow this dogma that seems to be laid out, and they're looking for targets. You know, someone said to me, I can't believe someone was mad at me, a person was saying about themselves, I can't believe someone's mad at me for saying this.

And I said, I don't really think they're mad at you. I think they look at you and that's a target they go oh there's one it's like whack-a-mole there he is get him you know like they're on twitter all day freaking out and they're they're nuts like the problem with social media is first of all it's addictive it's not regular human interaction it lacks all social cues it lacks all empathy you're not seeing the person you're saying mean things to them you don't feel any consequences of it whatsoever and it's it's something that has replaced human interaction with people for the most part like it's it's taken over the vast majority of their human interactions for for a lot of people that's i mean it's terrible for your mind look i was on the plane yesterday and you know i could have logged on to wi-fi i was like you know what i'm

gonna read a book i haven't read a book in so long and i and i did and i read like you know i read half of this very good book and i was like god you know i mean look twitter has been very you know important to me this year i've gotten a lot of followers i've gotten my message out and the internet has been very important to me i've gotten a lot of followers. I've gotten my message out. And the internet has been very important to me. I've gotten a lot of data. People contact me, they email me, they show me stuff. But it's devastating for all the reasons you said. And it's devastating the way you think these sort of bite-sized dopamine hits that you get when you're surfing around. It's not good. And even, let me give you an example of something that is sort of explicitly non-political. So earlier, I think it was Sunday,

Elle magazine published this article about this woman who'd been a reporter for Bloomberg and she'd covered a guy named Martin Shkreli, who was- Yeah, Pharma Bro. Yeah, Pharma Bro, exactly. And she basically, long story short, she fell in love with him. Oh, Jesus.

No, she did. What's her name? Her name is Christine. Jesus, Christine. Or Christy, I should say. Oh, Christy. No, no, no, no, no. Find, she did. What's her name? Her name is Christine. Jesus, Christine. Or Christy, I should say. Oh, Christy. No, no, no, no, no. Find yourself a real man.

You're going to feel bad about this when I tell you where this is going. So she falls in love. She's married, okay? Oh, no. Double no. She basically quits Bloomberg because she doesn't have sex with him. I don't even think she ever had any much physical contact with him. But she falls in sex with him. I don't even think she ever had any much physical contact with him, but she falls in love with him.

She quits Bloomberg in 2018 when they find out or when she discloses it. She just has a relationship with him, but is it in jail? Is he in jail at the time? He's in jail now. So she's not even intimate. Well, it was before he went to jail and then she sort of slowly fell in love with him.

Okay. She's writing letters on his behalf. He goes to jail. She leaves her husband. Jesus. She's waiting for him. Imagine being the husband. Imagine being that you were getting left for this piece of crap.

I went with crap. Instead of you thinking about saying shit, I saw it. Sorry. She leaves the husband. She's waiting for him. She's trying to get him out because of COVID. He's at such high risk from COVID. Okay.

Turns out at the end of the article, she basically hasn't talked to Skreli almost this whole year. And the reporter asked him for a statement. Okay. And his statement was something like, I wish her the best of luck on her future endeavors. Basically, like what you say to an employee you've just fired. Right. So it turns out, it turns out this is not a story of like a woman who's fallen in love with the wrong guy.

It turns out it's a story of delusion, like almost, almost psychotic delusion that this guy, that they have a relationship. Oh, wow. It's horrible. Okay. And people are making fun of her on Twitter. Like, how could you fall for this guy? What a fool you are.

Like, have some sympathy. Like, whatever happened to her, wherever she is right now, like, she needs, even if she doesn't know it and she doesn't know it because she's on Twitter and she's arguing with people, she needs to be left alone and she needs some help. Mental help. Yeah. Some mental health help. But she becomes like an object of derision in the media community. This is what, unfortunately, is what social media does to people. It is part of the plan, you know.

I mean, that's part of how it lays out when you stay online all day and again look for targets you find someone like that that's a soft target it's a very easy target that's right you're you're you're in love with the farmer bro and he doesn't even know you exist i mean but it's not a joke yeah that's crazy i mean there's a there's an update today from the los angeles times here at the end of the thing it says that when they found or of course that pops up now when he found out that wasn't going to be published he cut off all communication and previously was referred to or by his lawyers referred to her as his fiancee oh my god so he was basically just baiting her and using her

oh my god what does she look like? Don't show a picture of her, but show it to me. Don't show it online, but show it to me. Whoa. She's pretty. Yeah. Well, sometimes people are crazy, you know, and sometimes people have these romantic ideas about a person, particularly a person that's very vulnerable and dependent upon them, right? Like maybe her husband wasn't really that into her and maybe she looked at this guy who was locked up like the women fall in love with fucking serial killers that's right they do but i think that's like a danger thing there's a there's i actually talked to a psychologist about that and he was saying that there's there's something about um like very dangerous murderous people there's something about very dangerous, murderous people.

There's a certain small subset of women that are attracted to that. Well, it's like this Chris Watts guy, right? Who gets panties sent to him all the time. You know, the guy who killed... He's the one from Colorado who killed his wife and he killed the kids and he put them in the oil tank.

It was so... It was a terrible case. He gets panties sent to him? I mean, he's a good looking guy and it's like,'s crazy like what what do you think you're getting out of that if he gets out of jail I think I think we'd all like to assume that people that most people are rational I think there's a lot of people out there with nine volt brains and they just can't connect all

the dots and they just see oh he pretty I like his cheekbones he make baby with me you know there's and i don't even think they think they talk that way i just think there's people that are just dull-minded people well as somebody said this year has been an iq test for a lot of society unfortunately we failed it not just an iq but an emotional intelligence test yes and there's a lot of people that really fail with that. I've seen so many people arguing with people that they were friends with

on Twitter about fucking everything and anything. Yes. You know? Being unafraid might be more important than being smart.

Mm. Which is something you don't realize, I think, until you're older. Right, because if you're smart and terrified,

you don't do anything. Yep. Yeah. got to be willing to you know make mistakes and if we're not willing to allow people to make mistakes yes it's just like the tone of people's communication should be shunned this nasty shitty sniping tone should be really shunned because it's so it's one of the most detrimental things to our society and our culture in terms of like establishing community and friendships and and just spreading love it's very bad and yet i would push back on you on that a little bit with somebody like burks when she's a hypocrite the way she is yeah you have to say something about i prefer to mock her well yes just but in a funny way. Like, LOL, lady. I agree.

Well, I'm a little bit hypocritical as well because I've been shitting all over Gavin Newsom. Because I think he's so disingenuous. He's like such this obvious fraud of a human. He has great hair, though. Fuck, great hair. He's tall. I don't like his neck, though. It drives me crazy. It's too small.

I want to grab it. He's just, you know this what we would hate about politicians this this archetype of what we despise about a person who's a hypocritical politician who is using their position to gain very considerable wealth is Is he smart? Do you have any idea? Well, I saw a debate with him and Adam Carolla, and Adam Carolla just ran over him. Wow. Yeah. Well, Adam's pretty smart.

He is pretty smart, but it was also the way he was attacking him. It was an uncomfortable debate because it was about some very sensitive subjects, like about minorities and bank accounts and stuff like that but it was just sometimes people even though they they might have a functional mind they might be intelligent if they're running for office or if they are holding an office they're locked into a way of communicating where they can't stray outside the lines so even if they're intelligent they can't um they can't concede points they can't like and they have a they're trying to

win a conversation they're not just trying to discuss things i think one of the benefits of podcasts above any other kind of discourse generally speaking is that you don't have to be right you just have to talk and if someone else is right you should't have to be right. You just have to talk. And if someone else is right, you should be willing to go, oh, yeah, that's true. That makes sense. You should.

And if you don't, people aren't going to trust you. And politicians don't do that. They just fucking don't do that. And if they know they're wrong, they try to weasel their way around it or worm their way. And pundits do it too. And a lot of journalists do it unfortunately too and it that what people want to know is that they can trust you with basic reality

yep and I don't think most people trust politicians with basic reality so we're left with the people that make the most critical decisions in terms of like how our society is going to move forward what our response is going to be to disasters like this pandemic and we're leaving it with people that don't tell the truth because like they're not allowed to they're not allowed to be honest about things that do stray outside the lines they have to stick inside this pre-arranged or pre-organized pattern of thinking. But I would say, I think it's a little more than that too. I think a lot of people are afraid of science and scientists in both, even the intelligent people, even politicians. And so this mantra this year of trust the science, okay? So science isn't a thing, okay?

It's a process. It's I have an idea. I'm going to try to figure out how to test that idea. I'm going to see what the real world says about my idea, and then I'm going to go back and iterate it again. It's also an appeal to authority, right? But that's what it should, right? That's what it shouldn't be at all, right? But that's what it should, right? That's what it

shouldn't be at all. Okay. But people are afraid of science and there's something else that's happened, unfortunately, and this is just a function of science and its own complexity, with something like the mRNA vaccine. Okay. How many people are there in the world who truly understand it? And how many of those people are not working for one of the companies? So to some extent, I'm not saying who can't kind of understand it. You know, you can be a smart person and read, but I'm saying like who've spent their lives actually looking at this and can tell you the real risks in a meaningful way. The number is very small. Okay. And you know, it's, think of it the same, the quantum computing, how many people understand that? Like very few,

and most of them are working on it. And once you start working on something, no matter who you are and how honest you are, you have an incentive to want it. Okay. To want it to work, to want it to succeed in general. That's just human nature. So to some extent, we are dependent on these scientists, on these engineers, on these highly trained people who've spent their lives on one particular question. But what we shouldn't do, and this is where journalists have failed so completely, when you're dependent on them, the answer is not, when you're dependent on them, the answer is not, I'm going to take what you say as gospel because I'm afraid to ask. It's, I'm going to keep asking you until you can explain this to me and to the world in a way that I can understand. And I want you to help me understand the risks.

We didn't let Oppenheimer decide whether to drop the bomb. Truman decided, okay? Ultimately, the public health people, they are technicians. Their job is to lay out different courses of action with pros and cons. And it is the job of the politician, the lawmaker, the person who's been elected to make the decision to make the decision. And that was Trump's ultimate failing, okay? That he failed to say, I to make the decision. And that was Trump's ultimate failing, okay? That he failed to say, I'm in charge here. I'm making it, whatever it is, right or wrong, it's my decision.

I'm not going to be afraid of you because he is a germaphobe and he isn't that smart and he is afraid of scientists, okay? But journalists whose job it is to question all authority and to make sure that people's statements line up over time. If you have one job as a journalist, it's to make sure that what people are saying, you don't let them change their facts two days later, okay, or change their facts with what's published somewhere else, that you question them on that discrepancy. There are many jobs as journalists, but that's the most basic one. These people failed. They got intimidated by the word science. And it's a signal failure.

In closing, do you think that maybe it's wise to support the distribution of the vaccine because the potential downsides of the vaccine are less than the potential downsides of catching the disease and getting really sick from it. I mean, that's by age. Okay. If you're 85, yeah. If you're 75, yeah. If you're 65, I don't know.

Under 50, definitely not. Okay. This is what people, this has been the lie all along. And it's a double lie now. Because not only, again, I i keep repeating it not only the risks higher if you're older from covid but the vaccine side effects are lower so those people got to take it or should be encouraged if you are under 50 and you do get the vaccine and then you are immune to the disease you could potentially spread it less and then the people you know how

else you get immune to the disease by getting it and recovering from it right but you also can transmit it when you get it if you're symptomatic if you happen to be in a nursing i mean i understand i'm just playing devil's advocate i'm just looking at the pros and cons of supporting the idea of getting vaccinated so that is the best reason to encourage younger people to do it yeah you. You know what? During that period, when you might be symptomatic or pre-symptomatic, you're not going to be transmitting it. Good for you. You got the vaccine. You tolerated the side effects. You tolerated the questions. You did it for somebody else. You did it for older people. You want to sell it to people that way? No problem. I think that is the best way to sell it to people that's and i think if that's not the way it's being sold to people it's get the damn vaccine or you're not going to be able to go anywhere well forced compliance seems to be like it's just just

people want to tell other people to comply because they want to comply and they want to know that everyone else is complying as well they want to know that we're all in involved in groupthink that's right and and it's involuntary for everybody this is what i want to know that we're all involved in groupthink. That's right. And it's involuntary for everybody. This is what I want to do, and I know it's uncomfortable for me, so you got to do it too. Well, listen, man, stay off Twitter for a few days after tomorrow. I don't want you to experience too much blowback. I'm going to stay off Twitter as well. You think it's going to be that bad?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's going to be disingenuous. I think they're going to probably distort your perceptions on this, and I don't think they're going to listen to, which is what happens most of the time. Like, where right now, three hours and 15 minutes in or something like that, they're not going to listen. Three hours and 15 minutes in. They'll just find one line where I misspoke.

Yeah, well, they're going to try to find something that they can take out of context where you're saying don't get the vaccine, you know, or whatever it is. Whatever it is. Yeah, whatever it is. You know what? It'll be fun. Okay. Well, thank you, Alex whatever it is. Whatever it is. Yeah, whatever it is. You know what? It'll be fun. Okay.

Well, thank you, Alex. Joe, thanks for having me. My pleasure. Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen and non-binary folks.