TRIGGERnometry - The "We Had COVID" Episode

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

A special episode where hosts Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin discuss their experience of having Covid and whether they've changed their minds about the virus, lockdowns, and vaccines as a result.  Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I took a test, a lateral flow, and it was positive. And then I did a... I took my temperature, it was slightly raised, it was a temperature of 100. And then, but I thought, you know what, I'm fine. I'll be all right. Went to bed, woke up the next day. I was not fucking fine, mate. Hello and welcome to a special episode of trigonometry.

Yes, indeed. Welcome back. It's been a while since we recorded one of these, and we are going to get into the reason why that was, which is, of course, that we just both had COVID, didn't we, Francis? We did. It was exciting times. Not really. No, it wasn't actually.

It wasn't great times. But let's start with how we got it, we think. Yeah, we did. We attended that sex party. Yeah, which was great, but that's nothing to do with COVID. No, but seriously, we did our brilliant live show, the last live show of 2021 with Aisha Canby, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was really great. And then we hugged and kissed and fucking took pictures.

Consensually. Consensually. Yeah. Thanks for, mate, you're specifying that makes that even worse. Mate, we're comedians. We need to specify that. We took pictures. We're not left-wing comedians, so it's different.

But we took pictures with about 200 people, probably more than that. Then we hung around for a bit, et cetera. And then we came back to the studio and we had a few friends around, literally maybe five or six other people, and had a bit of a party to celebrate our last live show of the year, which is where I think we got COVID. Indeed. So what happened and I'll do my timeline and then you do yours. So I was, I remember in the evening feeling a little bit, starting to feel a bit ropy, but all right. Welcome up the next day.

Felt okay. Went to a few places, did a few things and by the evening I was starting to feel really rough, really bad. So what did you do? You went to see a comedy show? Yeah, I did and spread To everybody, no, I was, I didn't really, I didn't think, I just thought at the time that I just felt a little bit under weather the weather and a little bit tired. And to be fair, we haven't had a holiday for ages, we've been flat out, we worked hard all year, it would not be unusual for you to be a bit run down. Yeah, so that's all I felt. I felt a bit run down. And then I went to see the comedy show, came back, made me feel worse, which is what comedy does to me now. and then I went back to my girlfriend's house and then I took a test, a lateral flow, and it was positive. And then I did a...

I took my temperature, it was slightly raised, it was a temperature of 100. And then... But I thought, you know what, I'm fine. I'll be all right. Went to bed, woke up the next day. I was not fucking fine, mate. I was absolutely done in. temperature of 104 degrees. The bed was covered in sweat, not in a good way.

And I remember, like, you see... What's bed covered in a sweat in a good way? You know, when you... Mate, I'm physically fit. I don't sweat that much even when I'm having a good time. Well, I'm not. So anyway. So anyway, and then I remember like we were messaging on our group, on the WhatsApp.

And you saying, right, well, we've got to have a contingency plan. obviously, so we're going to have a meeting, can you join the meeting? And I felt terrible. No, I didn't say, can you? I said, like, are you up, something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't trying to force you to join it. No, no, no, no, absolutely you were. And I felt terrible because I was just in no way able to join in any type of meeting. Yeah. Yeah. And what I didn't expect from COVID is for it to knock me as it did. And I was completely out of action. For a week, done. Well, we should say, we're recording this on the second. of January, we caught COVID on the 11th of December. So it's now been over three weeks. And I would

say we're very close to being fully recovered now. But even so, I haven't done any vigorous exercise yet. I still have a bit of a lingering cough, even though I'm not infectious and negative for blah, blah, blah. So it took us over three weeks to recover. And we'll maybe talk once you've given the timeline about what it was like as well. Yeah. So the second day, I was really ill. Really, really, really sick. And I just couldn't, I just couldn't move. I couldn't move. The only thing I could do was go to Lou, come back, drink water. I didn't have anything to eat, nothing. Wednesday, again, pretty much the same. And then I came back here and from then on in, it was a gradual process of getting better. But it took a long time. And one thing that I was quite

shocked about is that I didn't have a desire to eat for about two weeks. That is shocking. I remember I bought a lovely dishing for me and Anton. Anton very much enjoyed it. I picked out the prawns out of my pawn curry and that was it. And what were some of your symptoms? I mean, here we go. So we had a temperature of 104. My digestive system was completely done in. I think that's as far as we need to take that. I had a really bad cough that at one point I was coughing up blood and I called up 1-1-1 and they assuaged my fears by going

just so you know, Mr. Foster, one of the very rare symptoms of COVID is blood clots on the lungs. So you coughing up blood might be a sign that you've got a blood clot on the lung so you're going to have to go to A&E. I actually do think that's unlikely because a blood clot would be in a blood vessel.

So I'm not sure that that makes sense. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not medical expert. But I mean, coughing up blood is not a good. thing to have. No, it's not even the fact that you do it. It's just that you look down at the seat, you go, yeah, I am not in good shape. Yeah. And then I said to Anton, I said, we're going to have to go to A&E. Anton went, no problem. I'll get a zip car. Turns up outside the flat, it's a van. So, if it was me, I'd put you in the fucking boot. So literally, he was in the front and I was in the back of the van getting knocked about like that. Well, that's how it should have been. We needed to

keep Anton away from it. By the way, Anton was at the same party. Didn't catch COVID. No. That's it, mate. Scouse genes, they're strong. Greek genes, maybe. Yeah, Greek scouse. Well, anyway, so you had to go to hospital. Yeah. They gave you some antibiotics for what? This was a thing, right? I turned up at a hospital, right? And then they were like, okay, I'm said I'm COVID positive.

I was wearing a proper mask, you know, that my friend had given me. Leather one. Yeah, exactly. And then we went to another, they went, right, you need to go to this particular part of the hospital. So we went there, I registered, and I went, oh, where am I going to wait? they went outside. So like for 40 minutes, I was outside in a bleakly cold December just waiting to get seen by the doctor

who, when I went to see him and he went to examine me, was fucking furious. Why? Because I had COVID. Okay. He wasn't impressed. So if you had AIDS, he'd be fine. Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Fair enough. Because it's not an airborne virus, mate. Okay, what if you had Ebola? I mean, I think that the protocol would have been sliding. I mean, in fairness, he's a doctor. He signed up to treat people who have disease.

What did you think he's going to get a bunch of fucking catwalk models turn up in bikinis, perfectly healthy? Just to entertain them, is that? It was the most perfunctory lung exam. Or he just went, breathe, breathe, breathe. You've got no blood clots. Here's some antibiotics. Get out.

Because he said you had a chest infection. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Cool. And you came back and you gradually kept recovering, basically. And I gradually kept recovering. And I remember once saying to Anton, Anton, do I look better? And he just looked at me and went, no.

But yeah, but gradually and then until we are where we are. So those were some of the symptoms. And I think we should also talk a lot. And I'll talk about this when I'm talking about me. The fact that COVID, then actually Dr. John Weyer, who we had on the show, he said this at the time. And I didn't really pay much attention to it. But he did say that any disease of that nature

that causes you to lose your sense of smell or taste means it's affecting your mind, well, not your mind, your brain, and therefore your mind to some extent. Everybody knows that one of the symptoms about COVID is that you lose your sense of smell and taste. That is proof. That can only happen when the virus has actually gone into your central nervous system.

So it is there. It has invaded the central nervous system. What is it doing there? Nobody knows. Is it possible that it's actually going to have an impact, which comes apparent 10, 20 years time. There are other examples of virus infections, which only showed neurological symptoms 20 years later,

30, 40 years later. Is it possible we're going to have an epidemic of some weird neurological conditions, even dementia or motor neuron disease or multiple sclerosis, which was actually intrigued by minor infections, which people didn't even notice? So I think you were very anxious.

Yeah. as well, which, to be fair, you're naturally, you lean that way. It's not a thing that I have. I'm more sort of irritable and impatient, which amplified massively for me. But for you, anxiety was a thing that you experienced. Oh, I had a panic attack. There was one particular day where like, I was just, I remember just going into the, just going into my bathroom and just feeling a cold sweat come over me. Just a cold sweat. There's a lot about sweating in this episode, guys. No, but the reason I bring it up is I think people might, well, you know, people have panic attacks irrespective of COVID or whatever, but I think my experience and having observed other people

around me and you and others in terms of how COVID affects people mentally is it seems to amplify, at least for some people, their pre-existing issues. What I'm trying to get at is you would not have had a panic attack if this had been a cold, probably. So it wasn't like you were scared about. COVID because you'd read something in the newspaper. It was more like physically it was making you anxious by fucking with your brain. It was making me anxious by fucking with brain and this is the thing that people don't talk enough about. It's the isolationary

aspect of it. That really gets you, that does you in. Yeah. After about six or seven days and you're starting to feel better but you can't see anyone, you can't talk to anyone, you can't socialize. It's really tough, really, really, really tough. Well, this is another thing. So I caught it probably at the same time as you. And I did the lateral flow when you did yours, but I had no symptoms at this point. And mine was negative.

And I was like, okay, so I probably would have been around the virus, blah, blah, blah. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do all the right things. I'm going to drink my tea with lemon and honey and go to bed early and get some rest and drink plenty of fluids. And I went to bed and I wake up the next day. and I felt absolutely fine. So I was like, okay, cool, I've beaten this COVID that I may and not have had.

Great. Time to, you know, get, because I'm an actor person. I like to do things. So I went out and I did lots of stuff. I did some shopping for Christmas. I went and got a Christmas tree. I did a bunch of different things. And that was not a good idea because by the evening, I had a fever.

Yeah. And at this point, I think it was sort of like I defeated it initially, but then I did too much stuff because I did have the sense that I should just rest. And then by the evening, I had a bit of a fever and instead of like taking more fluids and going to bed, I was just like, oh, you know, I've got stuff to do. So I did some work stuff.

I stayed up until like 2 in the morning, doing things, et cetera, which I sometimes do. And then I woke up the next day and I was properly ill as well. And I didn't have a fever quite as high as yours. But basically for the next three days, I had a fever and the only thing that I could do is be in bed and drink fluids and that was it. And after three days, I started feeling better.

I still had a bit of a fever, but I was much better. I was able to get up and walk around. So idiot that I am, I started doing stuff again. I started, you know, getting up, playing games. I wasn't doing that much work, but I was doing a little bit. And that was a big mistake because trying to work through having this disease really didn't go well for me. And I know anecdotally of many other people who did the same, there are MMA fighters who are super fit, but because they tried to fight through it instead of getting

rest, they had it much worse. And that's what happened to me. So I had it quite badly, but not particularly badly for a few days. Then I started to recover and I started doing stuff. And then after about two or three days of, oh, I can just carry on with my life, I then felt really bad again. and I started to notice a lot of physical and mental symptoms that I was just observing that were quite weird. So I am normally someone who likes the space to be quite warm. Like we joke about it in the studio, I'm always hanging out by the radiator.

I actually couldn't really feel cold that much at all in a way that was not normal for me, but I physically could not stand to be in any space where there was a draft. So obviously I was trying to keep the space ventilated and whatever, but the moment my wife opened the window somewhere in the flat, I would literally feel like I'm about to die. Just a horrible physical feeling. Another thing, obviously, my wife being pregnant, I said to her from day one, you've got to stay away from me. I know you'll be bringing me stuff and you're worried about me, whatever, but you've got to stay away from me.

And because of that, that isolation aspect that you talk about, I remember one time she could see that I was really not having a good time. And she just like came and sort of threw a semi-closed door, like touched me on the back. And I nearly burst out crying, which is very unusual for me, because of that lack of physical contact. But I don't think it's just a lack of physical contact. I think mentally there's something about this disease that makes you feel very alone. And I don't know what it is. It could be that, you know, we've whipped up a frenzy around how you mustn't be around people and whatever, or it could be just that that's what it does. Are you tired of using bulky old wallets giving you a bulge where you don't want it to be?

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of their product. They will give you 45 days to test drive their wallets. That means you can get the wallet, use it, and if you don't like it, you can return it within 45 days. Because Ridge are such great guys, they're going to give you 10% off and free worldwide shipping and returns. To take advantage of this incredible offer, go to ridge.com forward slash trigger. That's ridge.com forward slash trigger and use our special code, which is, of course, trigger. But mentally as well, see, I've still got a little bit of a lingering cough. I noticed that I've done a lot of personal development stuff. I've really learned to understand my own mind inside out.

And one of the things that people always teach you about how to manage your own mental well-being is that you've got to learn to understand that your mind is not you. So when you experience an emotion, you've got to realize that there's someone else that's observing that experience happening. And so when I see myself reacting in ways that are unnatural, I don't go, this is me, I am scared, I go, oh, that's interesting. There's the feeling of fear or the feeling of whatever. And I started to notice that my emotions were very different to my normal self. So in addition to amplifying my irritability and the fact that I can get angry about stuff,

that's not worth getting angry about and stuff like that, I also noticed that I felt very emotional. You know, I was drawn to watching movies that were very sad, like all of that stuff, which is very unusual for me. I normally really don't care about it. So mentally it was having an effect as well. I find that very interesting that you said that, that it exacerbates the parts of your, the parts of your mental condition, which are not as strong.

I know people who have depression, COVID exacerbated their depression. With me, it's anxiety. It absolutely exacerbated it. And like we said before, the fact that you are on your own all the time, I've got no problem with being on my own. You know, a day on my own, great. You get to do stuff. You get to whatever.

You get to sort your life out. But 10 days on your own, after about the fifth or sixth day, it starts to become wearing. Well, if you think about it, I mean, people, putting people in isolation is a form of torture. Yeah. Well, well known and well practiced. But like I say, I don't think it's just that. Yeah.

If you were healthy, you could manage five or six days on your own. Yeah. And it'd be fine, yeah, yeah. And also, you'd be able to go out and do stuff. And also the other mental thing that I noticed is, once I got to a point where I want, so I tested negative initially, then the next day when I'd had symptoms, I tested positive.

And then I did a PCR test that I ordered that didn't arrive for about three, or four days. God bless the government. And then I didn't really want to go out for a few days because I wasn't feeling well. But eventually, probably about eight or nine days after I first caught the disease and got the symptoms, I went out because you're allowed to go to the post office to post it. And I remember walking out and I was looking at people and you had the exact same experience the first time you went out and I nearly burst into tears because I was like, oh, there's a world of healthy people. That's how.

it fell. Yeah. I remember just walking along the river near our flat and just looking out across the river and just being awestruck because all I had known is the confines of the flat. And bless Anton who looked after me and got me food and all the rest of it. But I remember him saying to me, you can be in the flat, it's okay. You can just sit at one end, just open the window and then you can sit and the ability just to be able to sit. And even if he was working on an episode or doing something, but knowing there was another human being in the room, I mean, it made it so much more bearable.

Yeah. Now, the other thing about it, I find very odd, for me it's extremely unusual, is we had some of our staff getting in touch, asking questions, what do we do about this, what do we do about that? And I literally, for me, this is unheard of, because I think it's fair to say that I'm sort of like the big picture part of yeah, yeah, of course.

And I manage all of that. Yeah. And I love doing it. I love working with our team. I love going, we need to do this, we need to do that, let's work it out. And people were contacting me and I literally had to just say, guys, I'm ill, I can't do, like, you're just going to have to wait or resolve this yourself. That to me was shocking because that's not how I am.

Yeah. I'm never like that. Yeah. But that's how it was. Now, I should say, before we go on as well, Like, I know what we're describing sounds bad, and that's because it was very unpleasant. I have, to this day, I used to say this before we caught COVID a second time, I'll say it again, I have had flu worse than this. Yeah.

I have. But my point is, one of the realizations for me was that when people talk about even Omicron, which I still suspect is the variant that we had being mild, what they mean is you didn't have to go to hospital and stay in hospital. and stay in hospital. It does not necessarily mean you're going to have an easy time of it. Now, I never thought it was going to kill us or anything like that, but it was unpleasant, for sure. It was very, very, very unpleasant.

And I think the people who have just said, we hear this word mild and we inevitably think, oh, headache and a runny nose. But medically, mild, essentially, it's like you said, you don't end up in hospital. But that doesn't mean that it's not desperately unpleasant. And also as well, we trivialise flu. We go, it's a bit of flu.

I've had mates who've been hospitalized with flu, who are actually very fit, healthy people. And then caught COVID the next year and didn't have a problem. Yeah. And, you know, we're fine. You know, they're still rough, but they were fine with it. Yeah. So I think that we trivialise both flu and COVID.

Brett once I made this very point, I remember. Yeah. We trivialized both of these illnesses and go, oh, it's flu. They're both, you know, quite serious if you don't treat them well. or you're vulnerable in some way to them. Yes, I agree. However, the reason I think we do that is we accept that it's part of life. Yeah.

We accept that you are throughout the course of your life going to get flu probably 10, 15, 20, 30 times. It's just going to happen. Yeah. And we'll talk more about the conclusions that we draw from it. But one of them, for me, particularly seeing how infectious Omicron has been. Because when we had it, like everyone had it. Like, everyone I knew had it. Like, probably 30 or 40 people that I personally know,

including former guests and people, friends and whatever, all had it. Yeah. So one of the conclusions for me is, the reality is, everyone's going to, there is a pandemic of a highly contagious disease. Airborne disease. Airborne disease. Everyone's going to get it. Yeah.

So one of the conclusions, I think, we all reached. here is we've got to make sure that our physical and mental health is absolutely at its peak. And we've got to protect ourselves in that way. Because I don't think no amount of, you know, being careful wearing a mask that most of which don't even work. It's social, whatever, like you're going to live your life. Yeah. And you're probably going to catch it. Exactly.

And this idea of zero COVID, for me, it's ridiculous. because you're trying to deny a biological fact. You can't stop the spread of an airborne virus. You might remember at the start of this whole thing. The whole purpose of lockdown wasn't to stop it. It was to slow the spread, because everybody knows you can't stop it. Well, right, the idea was you want to spread out the disease over time,

but the same number of people are still going to catch it. And that, to me, is probably what is happening and will happen. Yeah. And this idea that we're going to have, you know, we're going to have, you know, not that we adopt this policy, adopted this policy in this country, but the idea, like we've seen it in New Zealand or Australia, zero COVID, I'm sorry, it's for the birds. It's just not going to happen. It's an impossibility. Yeah. Especially in this globalized world of us, what, you think you're going to stop an airborne virus from coming in. Yeah. And look at the,

I mean, we'll talk about the restrictions, but look at what's happening in Europe right now. They've got vaccine passports, restrictions, stay at home, vaccinated. fucking going in, you know, I nearly said going in the camps, but pretty much, right? They've got more cases and more disease and more deaths than we do in this country, you know? So just look at Wales. They're locking everything down, and they had Vax passports. Yeah, yeah.

So in many ways, I'm sure people will want to know our opinion. My opinion about all of the authoritarianism that COVID has engendered hasn't changed one bit. If anything, like I say, I think everyone's going to get it. So the priority for me is to protect yourself by being in peak physical condition, peak mental condition. For a lot of people, that will also mean being vaccinated because there are people who are so vulnerable to this disease that that was a thing for them. And look, I've always been very much sort of like natural immunity, but this has shown me you can catch COVID twice, particularly after you've had it a long time ago. we had it first time in February 2020. So to me, I think I think I would definitely admit that I was very cavalier about the idea of natural immunity.

If you're going to rely on that, which from now on, that's obviously a factor, right? You have to measure your antibody levels regularly, which I think Joe Rogan does, for example, right? He's not just like, well, I had COVID, that's it. He's measuring his antibodies and his team's antibodies. And that's what you've got to do. You can't just be like, well, I had COVID. three years ago, I'm going to be fine because these variants also evade the immunity. Right. The other thing I learned as well is, in order to get a very good natural immunity,

you have to have had it badly. And you sort of did have it quite badly the first time. But I had it very mildly the first time. So you probably had better natural immunity. And it still didn't help. It still didn't help because after, I think natural immunity on average lasts around six months. Yeah. So by the time, you know, the new variant's coming around. Or until there's a new variant. Yeah, or until there's a new variant and there's nothing you can do. But for me, when it comes to vaccinations, I have made a decision that I'm going to get vaccinated. Probably in around three months when my natural immunity starts to fade. And like I said, I will be doing, you know, the antibody test. That's something I need to get on top of it. But I will be getting

vaccinated because for a couple of reasons. Number one, I can't be getting ill like that again. I can't. It's, you know, because not only does it have an impact on you, it has an impact on everyone around you, the fact that I can't, I couldn't work, you know, it's not fine, obviously, but if you're employed, there's less, it's easier. It's easier. There's less of a burden, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, we're running a business. I can't be on my ass like I was for 10 days. Well, yeah, we were off work for three weeks. It wasn't 10 days. It was three weeks. We didn't work for three weeks. We didn't work for three weeks and that was obviously bad. However, I would say to you, and look, I am going to keep this whole thing under review. We know, I mean, Anton made this point the other day, we know a lot of people who were vaccinated, even triple vaccinated, younger than us, probably healthier than us or maybe, you know, whatever, who had it, and they had it just as bad. But statistically speaking, the statistics say you're less likely to have a serious illness. And I did see a lot of people who were vaccinated around me have a much less serious illness as well.

So I think statistically speaking, that's fine. I don't think I am going to get vaccinated at this. I certainly haven't made that decision. For me, I'm going to monitor my antibody levels and I'm also going to keep an eye on whatever else is going on. The reason that I am thinking about getting vaccinated is your natural immunity can't be boosted. So when it wanes, the only way you can boost it is by getting COVID again.

Whereas at least with vaccines, it seems like if you could have the natural immunity in a few months, you get vaccinated, you just take one dose. That boosts it and then you can boost it again whenever you need. And also they're putting out vaccines now that are using more conventional technology as opposed to the MRNA one. So that would be the thing that I'd be interested in doing because I am concerned, and I think it's objectively true, that we're not quite being told the truth about how safe the MRNA vaccines are. I'm not saying I know how safe they are. I'm just saying we're not quite being told the truth.

You know, the myocarditis thing is not being properly discussed, and that's a concern. And also, you know, I got a message the other day on Twitter from somebody who said, oh, I hope you're recovering. I'm sorry I had COVID, but please consider I'm a scientist, I got vaccinated, and now I have a seizure, a mini seizure every three minutes, like that, every three minutes, right? So to me, which of those two would I rather have? COVID again, the way that I had it, or have that? That's my concern. Now, statistically speaking, far less likely, but I'd much rather a higher risk of getting COVID badly, the way I had it before,

than a much lower risk of something completely terrible. Yeah. There are people who've had legs amputated because of things that the vaccine has done to them. It's been reported in the news. So that's my concern. So I'm going to wait. I'm going to see what the other vaccines are, what the safety profile for them looks like,

and I'm going to monitor my antibody lower. Yeah. Well, I'm probably going to get the Chinese one. because that's the most... Well, actually, the Chinese one is the one that uses the most conventional technology. Yeah. It just uses a weakened version of the virus.

Noodle jab, it's great, man. The Wang jab. Yeah, the Wang Jab. And I think Sputnik might as well, I'm not sure. But like I said, the reason that I'm going to do it is purely for myself because it's just not practical to be out of action for that long. It just isn't.

What I'm saying to you is you could still be out of action for that long. And also, unfortunately, getting vaccinated involves a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, but nonetheless risk of actual serious adverse effects. So that's what I'm weighing up. And everybody, like we always say on the show, everybody's going to make their own decision about it. Of course, of course. But, and we've touched on it, and we're going to touch on it again,

the authoritarian stuff. Yeah. I'll never be on board with that. It's always, always should be your boy. your choice. You analyze the risks, you read up, and then you make a decision. And then after that, it's up to you. Well, see, this is the other thing that I would confess to realizing is I do think that all of us now operate within a bit of a bubble. So, for example, when I was reading previously to catching COVID again about natural immunity, there are a lot of studies

that show natural immunity is better. 32 times is the one I read. I mean, I don't know that it's 32 times. But there's also some studies that don't show that. And they're not all quite as good as the ones blah, blah, blah. But basically, the comprehensive analysis is that the vaccine is, my understanding, Christakis wrote about this recently. The vaccine is much better at preventing serious illness, but they both are similarly effective at preventing you from catching COVID. So if you have natural immunity, you're between 80 to 95% protected. And it's similar with the vaccine. But apparently, according to this, you're less likely to have a serious illness.

Now, I wasn't quite aware of that because I was like, well, the studies that show natural immunity is better. So I'm fine, right? Well, not quite, right. There are people who claimed, and us getting ill coincided with Peter McCullough going on Joe. Rogan Show. You can't get it twice. We've never had a single case. But I have a friend that got it twice. What you have is you have a friend who thinks he had it twice. What happened is on one or more occasions, it's a false positive test, or he actually had the dead virus that he's carrying forward. Somebody in my family circles had COVID-19, for sure had it, got sick. That person tested positive

intermittently 17 times. Yeah, but this wasn't just a test positive. He got sick, he recovered, and then about seven, eight months later, he got sick again, tested positive again, and had a much milder case of it, but still got COVID twice. Yeah, it wasn't a second case. This is what's happened. For sure? Yeah, there's about 100 purported cases like this in the literature. I've looked at them all.

And so when I said, well, we've caught COVID for a second time, loads of people who know, it's impossible. This guy on the podcast said it. And I was like, well, I have COVID for a second time, right? Francis has COVID for a second time. We know we had COVID the first time because we caught it off a guy had just come back from China in February 2020

and then when he went to America and got tested and he was COVID positive, right? So we know we had it twice. But because we all live in this bubble where we want to believe certain things more than others, I think most of us now, we don't really follow the evidence enough and we follow our own biases too much.

And I did start to see that in how people were responding, even people who know and trust me. And I was like, guys, I do have it for a second time. Like, if you've trusted me for the last three years, you can kind of know I'm not making it up. But a lot of people were, you know, they don't want it to be true. And I get it because here's the truth, Francis. We're all very fucking tired of this shit. Yeah. We're all that.

We wanted to end, everyone. Whether you're vaccinated or not vaccinated or whatever, we all want to. the shit to end. And that's why people attach their emotion of, I just wanted to stop to various things. So people who are pro-vaccine attach their desire for things to stop to the fact that not enough people are vaccinated, even though in this country is like 92% of adults over 18 are vaccinated. But they believe that some people believe that the reason COVID goes on is there too many unvaccinated people, which is bullshit, complete bullshit. And there are also people who are leaning towards vaccine hesitancy or being anti-vax.

So they don't want to believe anything about it. They don't even want to believe it exists because they just want this shit to end. And I understand that. I do. Yeah. And that's, it's such a good point because it's, we're all tired of this. And I use the word tired in its most accurate sense. We're just tired. It's been two fucking years of constantly thinking about this, of it, dominating the news, of it disrupting our lives, of us not being able to plan, of us feeling that the world is changing, and we're looking at a world that is unrecognizable to the one

that we used to know two short years ago. And so you look for anything to confirm your bias. But the reality is, I remember I was talking to a friend about this at the very start of the pandemic, and he made this point, and it's such a good point, he went, just as we live in a post-AIDS world, we're going to live in a post-COVID world. And unfortunately, we're going to have to accept that. There's always going to be a new variant. There's always going to be people getting sick.

It's something that the NHS is going to have to cope with. I don't know how it's going to cope with it, but it's going to have to. We're now living in a post-COVID world. And the sooner we come to accept that. I don't know about that. I don't know that we live in a post-COVID world. I think we're still in the pandemic. in the crutches of it.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. But eventually, we're going to have to accept that this is part of our world. Yeah. And we need to. The reason I say we're not in the post-COVID world, Francis, is I've been talking to a lot of scientists because I've had the time. This is the other thing I realized

is no one has time to research things properly. I certainly didn't. So we go with headlines or newspaper articles when you actually, you have to do research, you have to look at studies, you have to talk to people who understand what's going on. So I've been talking to scientists, and one of the things that people have said to me,

There's a Russian Canadian scientist called Yuri Dagan who was one of the originators of the lab-lake hypothesis, the idea that the OG COVID, the original COVID, came from a lab in Wuhan. Was that his rat name, the OG COVID? The OG COVID, the gangster. But he says, I'm not saying it's true, I'm not saying I know, I don't have any way of evaluating it, but there are some evidence genetically that Omicron

transitioned through mice somehow. Okay. And what that likely means is that Omicron was made in a lab, quite possibly in a lab in South Africa. Can people please stop fucking making viruses in labs? I did suggest this to him. He's very much on board,

but he's not the one in charge, Francis. But basically, what people are saying is there are dozens of these labs where these fucking idiots are doing gain of function research, getting a functional research being you take a virus, you play around with it until a virus that only affects bats suddenly can infect humans now.

That's good. Right? So to suggest that this is over or we are about to live in a post-COVID world, is I think a possible scenario? But I think another scenario is that there are other variants that leak out of other labs or other variants that develop naturally through mutation.

And there is, it's true that over time, generally the trend tends to be that viruses become more contagious and less lethal, but it doesn't have to. There's no guarantee that that's going to happen. It could be contagious and lethal for a bit before he kills off everyone he's going to kill off and then be replaced. So that's my one reason that I would still consider getting vaccinated because you saw with people who were able to get the third jab and it topped up their immunity with natural immunity. that. So I don't think we're out of the woods by any stretch of imagination.

Yeah, I take your point. But what I mean by post-COVID, it was inaccurate. But what we need to do is we need to accept that this thing is here to stay. This idea that we're going to eradicate it, this idea that it's not going to become, you know, endemic. It's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. We are going to have to accept it. We're going to have to live with it. We need better technology in order to deal with it. You and I have spoken to I've been looking about this many times. I have no problem with having some kind of breathalyzer type test that you do if you want to go into a restaurant or a bar or, you know, breathe into it.

If that stopped someone from getting hospitalized, and I've got no problem at all. No, me neither. It should be, what they need to do is develop some kind of test where you just spit in a test tube and it's literally lights up red or green or something. Yeah. That's it. And if that was accurate and if that was readily available and it was cheap and you could mass produce it,

I've got no problem doing that. I'm against the authoritarianism, but to me, checking whether you have a disease, I don't, like I saw some people going, oh, GB News are now testing people before putting them on the set. I'm not doing that. I was like, why?

Why wouldn't you make sure that you're not going to infect other people? Because, as we know from our own experience, asymptomatic transmission is possible. No one at that party had COVID visibly. Yeah. But pretty much everyone except Anton got infected. Which means... It was Anton.

All along. But, yeah. So that's what we need to do. We need to have better technology. We need to... And it's just going to become a factor in our life. Well, while we were ill, actually, they approved monoclonal antibodies,

which we've known for a long time, prevent you from getting ill if you take it in the first couple of days. The reason that they only give it to super vulnerable people in the UK is it's expensive. it's like $2,000 for one... I think Rogan took it, didn't he didn't get ill, Dana White the same. I would have taken it if we had access to it in the UK,

we just don't have access to it. If we'd taken that, we wouldn't have got ill, almost certainly. They've also just approved a couple of antiviral drugs that can be taken as a cocktail to, again, prevent serious illness, but again, they're only giving it to the vulnerable, again, because it's expensive. Now, this is, I think, one of the reasons that they're pushing the vaccine so hard is they claim it's cheaper. I don't know whether it's true, by the way.

There's a lot of questions about that, but apparently it's cheaper, so that would make sense. If you can prevent people from getting ill where the cheaper thing is better than, from a financial perspective anyway. So new drugs are coming out, new treatments are going to come out,

and this is really maybe how the answer is going to be. Sure, everyone's going to get it, but almost no one's going to die from it because we have ways of treating it. I hope that's the path that it ends up being. Because, look, the reality is people talk about the unvaccinated or whatever, the overwhelming majority of people who are currently unvaccinated are going to stay unvaccinated.

That's the reality. You're not going to change those people's minds. And you're certainly not going to change those people's minds. Did you see that press release from the United States government about saying that, you know, the people who are vaccinated, you will be fine and blah, blah, blah, blah. The unvaccinated, you will have a rough time. No, it's not a rough time.

They said this new year will be a year of sickness and death. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, something horrible. And you just look at that and you go, how is that going to win hearts and minds? Well, it's not. Tony Blair calling people stupid and selfish for not getting vaccinated. Well, they're not stupid. They've got a different opinion.

Now, you may disagree with it, like we disagreed with you invading Iraq, right? Yeah. But it doesn't mean that they're stupid, right? And Austria is fining unvaccinated people. All of this. And Greece, apparently. I abhor completely. I mean, it's wrong.

And the point that, you know, Carissa Veliz made, if you remember, when we had her on the show, and it's the point I reinforce in my book, is you don't know how technology will be used later down the line. The Dutch had a very good system of statistics. They had a guy called Lenz who was one of the pioneers of statistics. And he wanted to build a system that followed people from cradle to grave. And in his census, there were a lot of questions, and there was data collection about your religious affiliation, but also your ancestry and things like where your grandparents lived. Now, in contrast, in France, they had made a decision since 1872 not to collect that kind of data for privacy reasons. And so when the Nazis arrived to France and asked, you know, where are the Jews?

They said, you know, we have no idea how many Jews. We have let alone where they live. So good luck with that. And the Nazis had to depend on either Jewish people turning themselves in or having neighbors to turn them in, which was very inefficient. And the result is that in the Netherlands, the Nazis found and killed 73% of the Jewish population. And in France, 25% of the Jewish population. And the difference is hundreds of thousands of people. So creating vaccine passport databases and all of that stuff, you have no idea how

that's going to be used. That's why those lines must never be crossed. But I don't mind spitting in a test tube that just gets thrown in the bin without being attached to my name before I enter a large venue, I've got no problem with that. In fact, while you're in the middle of this, I don't think it's a bad idea at all. I wish, you know, if we had something very simple,

very cheap, very easy to use at our live show, great. If we could do that with our guests and with ourselves to make sure that we're not passing, we've got people coming in here in the 80s. I don't want to give COVID to someone in the 80s. They could die. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, we had people saying, you know, there was a couple of people going, oh, do you agree with, you know, people taking my temperature before I go into a venue? And I was like, yes. Yeah, we do agree. I don't know how effective checking your temperature is. You could still have COVID. You could still have COVID. But you might have, but. That's why I'm saying you need good tests, not testing people's temperature. But also as well, if you've got a fever, you shouldn't be around people anyway. I agree. Well, I mean, but you've got to remember.

But remember Francis, it's like you had, you were not feeling well, and you went to a comedy show with 80 other people in a tiny comedy club. Because people make mistakes, people think they don't have COVID, they don't think they have COVID because they don't want to think that they have COVID. Human beings are not necessarily entirely consistent and logical, even with their own beliefs. Agreed. But if I went to the venue and they took your temperature, you go, look, you've got your temperature's a bit high, we're not letting you in. I would accept that. I would accept that and be like, well, that's absolutely fine. You know, I just, I don't think, I think the way that the Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Italy, France, France, it's...

Basically everyone. Yeah, everybody, exactly. Canada. Yeah, not only, you know, the authoritarian, it's dangerous, it's, what we're doing is we're playing with things. that we should not be playing with. And especially... You're going to go blind. Yeah.

When you play with things you should do. Yeah, exactly. Come on, man. Yeah. Particularly with when it concerns Western liberal democracies, but also it doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work. It's discriminatory for no good reason.

Vaccine passports are moronic because they don't prove that you don't have COVID. Yeah. Vaccinated people can pass it on. They can catch it, testing, checking whether someone is vaccinated isn't ensuring that people are safe. are safe. So if, while there's a super contagious variant like Omicron, we have a test way you go green in. Yeah. Great. Great. To me, that makes sense. I've got absolutely no problem with that. All this other authoritarian shit can get in the bin. But it's also as well, is they're bringing in

authoritarianism through the back door. Like my friend went to New York, went to a conference, took her temperature, she was fine. And then they took. They took her. scanned her face. Yeah. And she was like, well, hang on a second. They were, well, don't worry about it, madam, you can go through. She went, no, why are you scanning my face? You've just taken my data.

Yeah. What's going to happen to that data? Absolutely. It's going to get then sold on. So just, and for those people who are worried about it, it's like, Carissa Belize. Yeah. They could scan your face. 20 years time, you want to have life insurance and they'll go, well,

unfortunately, you've got a genetic predisposition, I don't know, to MS. Yeah. Therefore, we can't, we can't give you the life insurance. Well, how do you know that? Absolutely. Absolutely. So all of those doors that are being opened. And I'm glad to see people that we respect tremendously like Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray, who I believe, I don't know about Douglas. I suspect he's vaccinated. I don't know. I haven't asked him. And I don't think he's talked about it publicly. But let's assume that he is, Jordan is, I think double vaccinated. And I think there was even a point where Jordan said to people, just get the damn jab or something like that. Let's get back to normal. But we can all see now that the promises that we were made about people taking the vaccine means freedom.

Well, these things don't seem to be that correlated. If you look on the continent where people are getting vaccinated just like in the UK, not quite at the same levels, they're having all of this authoritarianism. And I think we're really in a dangerous place. And I think there will be people. who were thinking, oh, you had COVID badly, ha, ha, ha. Well, it doesn't change my opinion of any of this other stuff. It doesn't at all.

Yeah. You know? And you've got to remember as well, like, sure, you can force people to do things you don't want to do, and then you and I might not have got ill or whatever, not got ill as badly. But what about all the people who are suffering as a result of all these measures? Medically, physically, mentally, financially, in every way. me not getting ill for a couple of weeks, is that worth it?

I don't personally feel entitled to ruin other people's lives so that I don't have a bad flu for a couple of weeks. I don't. And it's also as well, you look at some of these, you know, some of the measures that are brought in by these European countries. They're anti-scientific. Italy demanding you wear masks outside. When the science says that your risk of contracting COVID outside

are minimal. So masks aren't. going to do anything. Yet they insist you... Well, most masks don't work. Yeah, exactly. No matter how badly I had COVID, I still am able to understand the data. Yeah. Most of the cloth masks that people wear don't work. They said this. There's this crazy woman on CNN called Leanna Wen, who's always like more, more vaccine, more lockdown, more everything. She came out and said it while we were ill on CNN that masks, cloth masks don't stop COVID. Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic.

It was, it's not appropriate for Omicron. It was not appropriate for Delta, Alpha, or any of the previous variants either because we're dealing with something that's airborne. Cloth masks don't stop COVID, right? And I've been saying this for a long time. They don't. Now, there are some masks that do help and 95 masks. Yeah.

They do work to reduce you transmitting it to other people, but also slightly to reduce you the risk of you catching it. So people need to understand the nuances of things. And like I said, you and I were cavalier about not understanding certain things, not doing the research. And I think a lot of people on all sides of the argument are doing that. You know, there are people who think, someone messaged me the other day, a friend from comedy, who called me an anti-vaxxer, which I'm not. I've always said vulnerable people should take the vaccine.

But also said that when I explained to him that I'm not, and we were having the conversation, It was like, well, all the people in hospital are unvaccinated. Well, that's completely not true, right? Now, statistically speaking, the data is suggesting that you're much less likely to be hospitalized if you're vaccinated. And that's true. If that's true, great. People should make their own decision about that. But my point is, people on both sides of the argument, they're not doing enough research.

And I include myself on this until recently to understand what they're actually talking about. because we all just wanted to be over. And so we all look for a scapego. You know, the scapego is China, or the scapego is the scientist, or the scapego is the unvaccinated, or the scapego is, you know, the great research or whatever. You know, everyone wants to have, like, an explanation

of there's a small group of evil people who we can blame on this. Well, pandemics happen. They've always happened throughout history. Usually we blame the Jews. Now we've leveled up and we're blaming people who are unvaccinated. people just need to take a step back and realize all of this happens man most people are going to catch it you're not going to get away from it protect yourself as best you can by improving your physical mental health if you want to get vaccinated get vaccinated that's it part of the problem as well is

before the pandemic there was this air of you know we've kind of conquered nature yeah we've conquered nature you know we're above nature yeah And as a result of that, we don't have to worry. We use nature for our ends. Well, the pandemic came along and reminded everybody, you ain't in control of shit, mate. Yeah. Well, I remember your dad came around here, didn't he?

A few weeks before we got COVID, and we were talking about this. And I said to him, oh, you know, no disrespect, but you're older than us, obviously. And you would have lived through the Hong Kong flu that was in the UK. And he was like, oh, yeah, I don't even remember it. But it was

There was a pandemic Of an airborne virus But because we didn't feel that We could do as much People just got on with life And I remember him saying that He took a week off school To look after my grandfather who had it

Yeah And that's just what you did You just coped and you got on with it Right You manned up You man up, you have a Lucas Aiden You walk it off And three weeks later

You're just fine Yeah Once you've had medical intervention. In your case. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, and what we need to do is

we need, and it's very difficult to say this, we need to take the emotion out of this. We need to take the emotion out of it. And try and be more rational, more scientific, and the government in to take responsibility. And the media. And the media. And the way they have ramped it up, the way

they've politicized it, the way they've used it to, you know, get clicks, sell coffee, or whatever it may be that, it's unforgivable. But also, this is one of the other things that people, you know, we put out the thread that I wrote earlier last year as a video, which has now been censored by YouTube, which have made an age-restricted,

even though there's nothing inappropriate for people under 18 minutes. Apart from the bouncing arses at the end, where you're in the rap video. Yeah, it's a great video, go check it out. You know, one of the things that experts and scientists, and particularly governments have done is they've lacked humility. And they have chosen the path of certainty in order to persuade people. But what they don't understand is if you say to people,

this is 100% true, you must do what I say. And then you're consistently proven to not quite be right about what you say. Eventually people are going to tune you out. And I think that is what's happened. you know, they said, don't wear a mask. Then they said, wear a mask. Then they said the vaccine is this, then it's that. They made a lot of claims about things. They said, oh, we just need to give it to the vulnerable. We gave it to the vulnerable. And they're like, no, no, no, everyone needs to take it. Right. Then they said, I mean, there was a clip of Rachel Maddo, huge in America,

saying, if you get the vaccine, you can't pass it on. Well, you can. Now we know that the vaccines work well enough, that the virus stops. with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus. The virus does not infect them. The virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else. It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people. Right?

And when you get all of the stuff coming out, it's fine because science, it works that way in that it never knows the exact answer and you're always feeling in the dark for what the actual answer is. but you've got to retain that humility. You've got to say, look, we don't know exactly. Currently, our best estimate is that if you get the vaccine, you're going to be protected. It may be that not everybody is, right?

And it's the same. And Peter McCuller, who I have some issues with, because, right, as you and I had COVID for the second time, he was saying you can't catch it and doing it without any humility on Joe Rogan. He was quite arrogant about it. At the same time, two weeks later, when it was clear that you can catch Omicron,

even if you've got natural immunity, To be fair, to me, came out on Twitter and said so. So that's how it should be. People need to, on both sides, need to take that certainty out of it. You don't know. Even if you're a scientist, you don't know. You just don't know exactly. So you can give people a best estimate.

But you can't claim that you know. And then when people don't believe you, because you keep getting things wrong, be upset. And it's also as well, there's a lot of scientists. particularly in the UK, who need to take responsibility for the modelling, and modeling these huge numbers of people dying. They did it with Omicron, they did it at the start, terrifying people, and then it doesn't come to fruition, but we go back to these people again and again, and Neil Ferguson.

At what point are we just going to say, just shut up? Well, one of the things that happened while we were real is that Fraser Nelson of The Spectator had an exchange on Twitter with one of the modelers, in which it essentially became clear. There's a very good spectator article that Fraser wrote about his experience of talking to this guy. It became clear that when they do models, basically I think the government asked them for the worst possible scenario and then they tell them the worst possible scenario without saying

this is actually statistically incredibly unlikely. Here's the most likely scenario, which is much milder. So basically for the last year, two years, it's basically the government have said, What's the worst thing that could happen? And they've gone, everyone's going to die! And then we have... Everyone's going to die! Lockdown and restrictions and whatever,

because we're operating not on the most likely scenario, but on the worst possible case. So there's something wrong there. Of course there's something wrong. It's something wrong there, because it's not just the impact on the government. It's the impact on ordinary people's lives. There are people who are more neurotic,

they're more anxious, They're more risk-averse. And you're terrifying them. And you're terrifying these people. And it's just not the effect it's having on their lives. It's the effect that it's having on their relationships. It's the effect it's having on businesses. People not going to coffee shops, restaurants, not going here, not going there.

This is having a huge effect. And we're not talking about it. The fact is, I can't remember now what the stat is. Tens of thousands of kids are no longer on the school role. Yeah, we don't know what's happened to them We just, we don't know Yeah What effect is that going to have

10, 20 years down the line Well, what effect is that going to have now What's happened to them? They could have been killed by By someone in their home or whatever We just don't know We don't know These kids have literally disappeared off the roll

So to me that's pretty bad Here's an unpleasant stat If you go into secondary school being behind Your peers Yeah The statistic is that you're never gonna You're never going to catch up Yeah

That's a stat. It's a famous stat in education. You're just never going to catch up. Very unlikely to, yeah. Yeah, highly unlikely to. But we have now a generation of children. Yeah. Yeah, but they're all stupid now. So that's fine.

Yeah, it's fine, mate. Well, listen, mate, speaking of COVID and, you know, our recovery, I'm, you know, I'm really enjoying me back to work. As you can see, I've got a bit of a lingering cough. I'm not infectious for people who are worried about me coughing and whatever. But, you know, we've done an hour, and I do feel like my energy levels are not, certainly not what they used to be in terms of doing this. So I think we'll wrap it up here.

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