BUCK: We have more on the covid madness to discuss. People are starting to see that there has been a clear incrementalism at work here all along, and they’ve gone from, “Oh, yeah, sure. We can be reasonable, too,” to, “You’re gonna do this or else,” and that’s why the vaccine mandate getting real pushback — meaningful pushback, not just rhetorical pushback — from people at Southwest.

I realized, pilots and others who have decided, “Okay, we’re just not gonna show up for work if you’re gonna keep this stuff up.” That can have a real impact. And the problems that we’re seeing in the economy, it’s fascinating we see this playing out because, on the one hand the Democrats, the Fauciites, have terrified the vaccinated from working, and, on the other one, they’ve also demanded that the unvaccinated stop working.

And they’ve paid people to be home and not work in general. When you have all that, guess what? You start to have a worker shortage. And when you have a worker shortage, you also start to have a shortage of goods and services; then you have less economic output. You have supply chain issues. You have businesses going under. You have people losing jobs.

This is a negative cycle that we are seeing play out, and it’s all entirely predictable. None of this really had to happen the way that it is, but Democrats are ideologically invested in things going this way. And here’s an example… This is the kind of rhetoric they’ve used about vaccine mandates up to date.

ANTHONY FAUCI: No one likes to mandate people to do things that they may not want to do, but sometimes — for the greater good of society — you have to do that.

DON LEMON: You gotta start telling people, “If you don’t get vaccinated, you can’t come into office or this place of business.”

LEANA WEN: There are privileges associated with being an American, that if you wish to have these privileges, you need to get vaccinated. Traveling and having the right to travel interstate (snickering), it’s not a constitutional right, as far as I’m — as far as I know.

STEVE SCHMIDT: I think that he should approach this with an iron fist.

CEDRIC RICHMOND: And those governors that stand in the way, I think, was very clear from the president’s tone today that he will run over them.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: Screw your freedom!

LEANA WEN: You can stay unvaccinated if you want, but you’re not going to be able to travel to see your family.

JOE BIDEN: We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.

BUCK: “Our patience is wearing thin.” “Screw your freedom.” You hear this stuff, and you say to yourself, “They expect us to want to go along with all this still in good faith?” Their behavior is dishonest, and it’s thuggish. This is thuggish behavior from people that are insisting that everybody — and it’s not even rooted in a real scientific argument.

Well, there’s no ambiguity left. You’re either for this or you’re against it. And if you’re against it, the window of time to vote against it is closing rapidly. pic.twitter.com/Hk2c2v4Zng

— Chris Stigall (@ChrisStigall) October 10, 2021

As long as they do not allow… First of all, there’s a freedom argument and there’s a science argument that goes against the mandate. The freedom argument of course you’re all familiar with is the government should not be mandating people get a shot with a 99.7% survival rate from the virus itself — and a shot that fades dramatically in a matter of months in the first place.

Okay, this was not a value proposition that should have been dictated to all of us. So that’s the freedom to inject something in your body. How much more of this are we gonna be suffering through? For how many more years, right? So that’s the freedom part of it. But the science part is how can they think they’re on the side of science when they won’t allow for natural immunity to be a sufficient — a sufficient — condition to not necessitate getting the shot, right?

Essentially you get an opt-out if you’ve had natural immunity. They don’t deal with it. Why? Because they have a policy in mind, and they will pursue the policy at whatever cost they can get away with. That’s where the Southwest Airlines push back comes in. That elevates the cost. Finally, a company sees there will be c.

Because I can tell you in New York with the hospitals, because they didn’t have all nurses and all the doctors who didn’t want to get the shot pulling out at the same time; a lot of them decided they were just gonna get it — and, by the way, I’m passing no judgment on that. But at the last minute, they got the shot. I understand that decision.

People have mortgages. I could see myself in the similar situation making that choice about the job situation. So I sit here and I just see that finally I think there is enough rage — against the machine, if you will… Of course those guys are pro-vaccine mandate, in a classic left-wing irony, Rage Against the Machine, they’re like, “Get the vaccine or else.”

I could probably do a whole Rage Against the (Vaccine) Machine song for you guys. That’s where we are, ’cause they’re all about defying power and all that. Except for millionaires who want you to do exactly what the powerful want them to do because they’re leftists and the left as we know does not believe in individuality, individual thought or any of the rest.

But this is why their comedians all go on TV at night and make unfunny jokes at the expense of Republicans and they all make the same jokes. But this is a problem with collectivism in general and with radical equality in the minds of people who take too much power into their hands in the first place to institute what is impossible.

And we see this with covid in so many different respects. Dr. Wen is maybe the second worst doctor to be on TV during this. Fauci is number one. (impression) “Number one. Nobody else comes close.” But there are other doctors out there who are pretty horrible when it comes to covid stuff, and here she is, that she basically wants people to getting tested all the time. Test, test, test.

WEN: We need to reset our expectations here in the U.S. We need to recognize that we will be living with covid-19 for the foreseeable future. But that doesn’t mean that we need to be in a state of emergency around covid-19. There is a way for us to live with it so that it doesn’t have to be driving every single one of our decisions about school and work and travel and social activities.

That’s why testing is so important. Imagine what a big game-changer it would be if we make it the norm that before people get together for dinner or go to see a play that they all get tested beforehand! And so that’s why that rapid testing is so important and needs to be widely available.

BUCK: Is this woman insane? You’re gonna get tested for covid every time you go out to dinner? You’re gonna get tested for covid before you see members of your own family? Does she really think that all but the most neurotic, absurd, Democrat, CNN-obsessed, New York Times-subscribing wimps are gonna do that?

You’ve gotta be kidding me. But she’s saying it. She’s putting it out there, and just when you think… I’m telling you right now, I wish we could run this experiment. If Dr. Fauci went on TV tomorrow and said, “You have to wear three masks and goggles or else you’re not taking the virus seriously,” I would be able to show you photos from my walk into the studio here in New York of Democrats wearing three masks with goggles on. It would happen. That is how sad and desperate and incapable of thinking for themselves these people have become.