CLAY: One of the things that happened today, which I feel like is kind of flying under the radar, is the federal government extended the mask mandate into March. Not really a surprise because weâve all gotten used to it. But that means that we are now two years since â15 days to stop the spreadâ with mask mandates still existing.
I want to play this cut from Dr. Fauci talking about fully vaccinated Americans with a booster still need to wear a mask â which, of course, is the exact opposite of what we were told in May when they ended the mask mandate for a very short relatively period of time before reinstituting it. But I want to ask Buck, does this ever end? As we look ahead, are we talking about decades of wearing masks on airplanes?
Are we ever going to be able to dial it back? Because Iâve got a couple of clips that I want to play. First, Anthony Fauci, number 8: Fully vaccinated Americans with a booster still need to wear mask. This has been extended until March for everybody traveling during spring break, all those things. The mask mandate is not going to go away. Play cut 8.
FAUCI: Weâre asking people to go get the booster shot, and the question just asked is very relevant. What you do is exactly what we were saying, and that is to be prudent and careful, and one of the things thatâs very clear is that if you have to be in an indoor congregate setting in which youâre unsure of what the vaccination status is of the people around you, wear a mask.
CLAY: Okay. So does it ever end? If thatâs the standard, I donât understand how we ever get away from wearing masks.
BUCK: Why only one mask? I know it points to the absurdity of all this. But we were told almost exactly a year ago, I think it was in January, that Fauci came out saying for an extra level of protection, two masks. Then you started seeing all these Democrats showing up looking like morons with two masks on. People just say, âWhy, it just makes sense!â
All right, letâs do three. Letâs do three. When is it too crazy, libs? Thatâs the question weâre always forced to ask: When is it too much? When have you turned into the kid who shows up for recess to play kick ball with a helmet and shoulder pads and a first aid kit on your backpack and a mouth guard? When are you that kid?
I think the problem is Democrats not only have been that â a lot of them for a long time, the Fauciites â this has become so politically polarized itâs amazing, isnât it? Everyone I know who is a Democrat in media is a Fauciite believer. How is this possible? Not everyone I know who is a Republican, by the way (or conservative) has been super critical of Fauci and super against him.
Thereâs actually more variation among this stuff on the right, in my experience, my own dealing with people talking with people. Every Democrat I know thinks Fauci is great. How is that possible? We talk about the metrics that Biden set up whereby if over 200,000 Americans die in a presidentâs watch, clearly that presidentâs bad.
Well, I think itâs over 300,000 now died under Joe Bidenâs watch. And he has a vaccine weâve all been told we must take or youâre a bad person. Itâs not⊠Letâs be very clear: Itâs not âtake the vaccine just,â comma, âfor your own health.â Itâs âtake the vaccine or youâre reckless and youâre putting people at risk!â Thatâs the message from the Democrats. Now, of course, itâs âtake the booster.â
You asked when it ends. It ends when enough people are finally, I think, so beaten down and are so sick of walking around like theyâre living in this Soviet Union, and theyâre approving of and agreeing with publicly the grain-harvest numbers when they know theyâre fake, but they feel like they have no choice. When their spirit is finally so broken from that that they donât care anymore, theyâll stop double masking outside and theyâll say, âYou know what? This is my seventh booster shot, Clay. I think Iâm good.â Thatâs I think when it finally goes away.
CLAY: I think itâs going to take an ass kicking in the midterms.
BUCK: I like your version better.
CLAY: Thatâs the only way that I can see it because, listen, there are a lot of people youâre talking about in the media. Did you hear this this morning on CNBC, Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC, who is supposed to be a rational person?
BUCK: Heâs a huge lib.
CLAY: But he is supposed to be rational, at least on CNBC. We played Jim Cramer who lost his mind talking about the necessity of the military. He wanted the military forcing mandates on everybody and putting them into locked homes. Listen to this argument with Congressman Mike Garcia. He starts screaming, âYou donât have the right to kill my mother!â Live on CNBC. Listen to this outrageous clip.
SORKIN: If we could get everybody vaccinated, uh⊠(sputters) I donât want to say itâs a panacea, but it would be a lot better. And thereâs nothing in the Constitution (huff) that says that you have the right (huff) to give me covid or anything else, and so I donât understand this argument about freedoms. And on the other side of it, weâre going to pay for it anyway. More than 40% of Americans are effectively insured by the government. Taxpayers â Medicare, Medicaid â are paying for all this. So (sputtering) thereâs â thereâs an actual health care costs, and thereâs an economic cost. So Iâm not sure⊠(sputtering) I donât understand why you wouldnât want to advocate.
GARCIA: Letâs remember, the Constitution does still exist. Despite the headwinds weâve had in the last two years and encroachments on the Constitution it still does exist, so that we do have rights. Itâs the First Amendment, the Tenth Amendment protecting us against federal mandates like this, the 14th Amendment.
CRAMER: But the rights⊠The rights are⊠(crosstalk sputtering) The rights are you canât kill my mother! (crosstalk) The right is you canât⊠You do not have the right â
GARCIA: Iâm not killing your mother.
BUCK: By the way, thatâs where we are. Thatâs where we are. That was the critical thing: âIâm not killing your mother.â People need to get a grip. You canât start walking around saying that human beings involved in breathing are a risk to everybody. You walk around and act like everybody you come into contact with has covid. First of all, itâs not true. So a lot of people that are theyâre harassing, theyâre sticking with needles, theyâre quarantining, doing all this stuff.
The vast majority⊠New York City has a surge going on right now. I know this because I just got tested for covid yesterday. You know what the testing metrics are in New York right now? Itâs 95% of people tested for covid do not have covid. Now, that means a lot of people who sound like me right now â a lot of people who might have some of the early covid symptoms â have colds.
CLAY: Itâs cold and flu.
BUCK: Exactly. Cold and flu season. Now thatâs interesting as well because people can get a cold if theyâre much older. Now, I understand. Covid is more dangerous. But if weâre going to take the standard of the cold and flu is something that we could accept as a society in the past, but we canât accept any risk at all of people having covid, I would want to know why.
This is the original argument. Remember the very early days of covid. We say 40,000 to 80,000 people a year, in America, die from the flu. Weâve never done any of this masking stuff. There have been shots, by the way. Iâm not opposed to vaccines! Iâm not opposed to people â neither are you â getting shots. Your parents, my parents. I got a shot. Iâm not getting another one.
Treating it like flu would have made sense, especially now that we have a vaccine, but they donât want to do that. They treat it like itâs something else, Clay, and thatâs why you asked, âWhen does it end?â You say in the midterm. I donât know. Because the midterms, youâre still going to have California and New York. And theyâre going to double down on how theyâre the safe places, theyâre the science places. Theyâve lost their minds. Iâm here in New York; people are crazy here.
CLAY: I wish the Congressman had the opportunity. He said, âIâm not killing your mother,â but when somebody is making such an irrational, emotional argument, âyou donât have the right to kill my mom,â usually itâs the grandmother. âYouâre killing grandmothers! You donât care!â Look, the response rationally to that is, your grandmother or your mother should get vaccinated if you have great fear of covid.
And they should also get boosters, and they are welcome to wear masks and limit their social encounters with others. Thatâs all well within their right. If they are neurotic and they are particularly afraid of covid, thatâs all in their rights. But your fears donât cancel out my freedoms, and they certainly donât cancel out the Constitution, Buck, and the more important issue here is this illusion that is being sold that if everybody were vaccinated covid would go way isnât true.
There are, in fact, studies out now that are showing that the infection rate for someone who is vaccinated versus someone who is unvaccinated is not very much different, and thatâs important right now. That means if you get covid, your likelihood of spreading covid â even after you get vaccinated â is not much different than somebody who is unvaccinated.
Now, the studies reflect that your odds of being hospitalized or dying yourself are lower. But in terms of actually spreading the virus, the implicit âyouâre killing my mother/youâre killing my grandmotherâ argument that Andrew Ross Sorkin is trying to make on CNBC is fundamentally not true. And the reason why I say, âItâs CNBC and Iâm upset by itâ is theoretically if youâre a financial analyst, you should have some knowledge of data and numbers and you should be more rational than all these idiots running around on social media who are just using emotion all the time.
BUCK: Iâm looking right now at the provisional U.S. covid death count by age, and itâs up on Statista, and itâs what weâve said all along. Effectively, this is a virus, if you are under the age of 50 â doing fast math here â there are about 45,000 to 50,000 people in the country, they think, who have died from covid, over 50.
CLAY: The people under the age of 50, too, because most people donât die. The population is way higher, in addition to that being a small number.
BUCK: If you are 65 to 74, 175,000. If youâre 75 to 84, 200,000. If youâre 85 years and older, 204,000. So, yes, if youâre 85 years or older, this thing is really nasty and really dangerous. Same 75, 65.
CLAY: If youâre a senior citizen, you should get the vaccine.
BUCK: Itâs a senior citizen plague. Itâs going after our seniors. Thatâs why weâve been saying, âGet vaccinated if youâre in that age range, please,â and we also tell you the data about the people going in the hospital in Michigan. Yeah, maybe 25% of them are vaccinated and still in the hospital, which is noteworthy because itâs not obviously a vaccine thatâs as good as we were told it is. But itâs still much better than the alternative if youâre in that high-risk category.
And thatâs why we tell you that 75% of the people⊠I can understand if youâre working in the emergency room right now in Detroit and youâre seeing somebody who is coming in who is 64-65 years old, theyâve got hypertension and theyâre unvaccinated. You want everyone who would be in that category to take the additional precaution.
Someone who is 30, someone who is 40, someone who is 10, what are they doing, Clay? This is where you ask me where it goes. I thought at this point that enough Americans would be rational, but part of the problem here, man, is weâre in an era of mass media and mass hysteria. You combine these two things and people are justâŠ
Theyâre all carrying around their covid panic meters on their phones. Theyâre watching. Theyâre reading. Theyâre seeing all this stuff all the time. Thereâs no escape from it. Thatâs how people are double masking alone outside. But weâre going to be with you through it, folks. It might be a rough winter, but weâll be with you every day.
CLAY: Thatâs how you end up on television screaming that someoneâs trying to kill your mom. Itâs a form of madness.