CLAY: One of the things that we’ve been saying, Buck, is that covid’s not going away. And Dr. Fauci and his cohorts back in the spring were basically saying, “I think we can eradicate covid,” when they were singing the early praises of the covid vaccine. And now Fauci, in addition to telling us all that we can go out trick-or-treating — so, thank you, Lord Fauci, for giving us the opportunity and just the sheer willingness of you to allow people like me who are parents to take our kids trick-or-treating.

I couldn’t have done it without your benediction. But what’s wild is Fauci now, Buck, is starting to walk back everything. And you know who he’s starting to sound a lot more like? This show, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, the guys that don’t have any idea what we’re talking about.

BUCK: He won’t come on the show but he may be listening every day just so he understands what reality is.

CLAY: Yeah. Maybe that’s what’s really going on here. Let’s go to cut 6 where Fauci effectively is saying, “Hey, covid’s never going away,” and then, Buck, I’ve been out in L.A. since Sunday. I want to tell you what my experience has been here. We certainly don’t have a covid vaccine mandate in L.A. yet like New York City, but I know a lot of people wonder what it might be like. You can tell us about New York City. I can kind of give a flavor for what I’ve seen in L.A. But first here’s Fauci, cut 6.

FAUCI: We are seeing now a decline in acceleration and the turnaround of cases. Where do we want to be? As I mentioned, it is gonna be very difficult — at least in the foreseeable future and maybe ever — to truly eliminate this highly transmissible virus. And again, as I mentioned, we’ve only eradicated one.

CLAY: So this is pretty significant, I think, Buck, as we start to break this down. Because if covid truly isn’t going away, if Covid Zero isn’t a possibility, then what that means is that we have to learn how to live with this virus like we basically had to live with every virus that has ever existed in human history.

I know you saw this headline, too, from Australia where they said, “Hey, now that you get the covid vaccine, you also may need to get covid just to make sure that you’re protected yourself,” which further means natural immunity is really — through herd immunity — the only way out of this if you don’t have a fail-safe, 100%-guaranteed vaccine.

BUCK: Well, they’re also admitting with that that you obviously can get it even if you have the vaccine. But they’ll say you’re unlikely to die or go to the hospital if you’ve been vaccinated against this. But, Clay, we’re gonna see… I’m sure your experience in L.A. is similar to what we see here in New York Cit,y which is that there are people for whom this has really become a lifestyle choice.

This is now the way they’re planning to live their lives — masking, constantly cautious around other humans. I still see people on the streets here walking around outside with a mask on. And part of the movement, I think, here, the Fauciite movement, is going to go in the, “It worked so great,” which is crazy, but they’ll say this.

“It worked so great against covid-19, we should do this stuff that we’ve done against the flu because the flu is dangerous too — and look at what we’ve proven! With hand washing, social distancing and masking, we can defeat covid.” By the way, of course that’s not what happened. We did not defeat covid with those things at all.

The only thing that has proven to have any real efficacy so far has been the vaccinations people have gotten against hospitalization and death. And even that is going down, as we know, as a protection. So that’s what we’re facing right now. We’re gonna have… I think you’re gonna have people masking for a long time to come, but this is all gonna change also based upon what the numbers look like this winter. I think Fauci might have a lot of explaining to do, Clay.

CLAY: My concern is that we’re gonna end up in a spot where people try to argue we have to have masks forever, basically, because my concern is these mask evangelists are going to pivot even when covid is declining and say, “Hey, look at what we did to the flu. Why aren’t we wearing masks all the time?” and I think there’s gonna be that argument out there.

But what I’m seeing here in L.A. … I was curious, ’cause I’m coming from the freedom-loving red states of America. I’ve been on the bus tour. We’re going to the Georgia-Kentucky game this weekend. I’ll be in Athens. All over the SEC, people aren’t wearing masks. There’s a hundred thousand people in stadiums. People are living their best lives.

But I haven’t spent time in New York City since the vaccine mandate where you are, Buck. And certainly, I hadn’t been in L.A. since the vaccine mandate or at least they announced the vaccine mandate. They haven’t been checking. But it doesn’t feel very different in L.A. I’m telling you, I’ve gone into hotels, restaurants all over L.A.

Now, I’ve mostly been in West L.A. But there’s nobody asking for anything. I told you that I went in and I’ve been getting my morning coffee, not wearing a mask. I’m walking in. I’ve been taking Ubers; nobody’s asking me to put on a mask. It feels… Nobody in the hotel, certainly nobody around the hotel gym is saying you have to wear a mask while you work out or anything crazy like that. It feels like L.A., at least in the parts of L.A. that I’ve been going around to, is over covid as well.

BUCK: Well, they might be over it also because right now, their caseload is pretty low. I haven’t checked the specific Los Angeles or even California numbers in probably a couple weeks now, but if you just look at the general heat map of cases that the New York Times has up or any these places, California is right now…

Yeah. I’m looking at it as I speak to you. It is at a low level. That anxiety can all return very quickly. The problem, Clay, I see is that people relax more based on the data and how things are going when it’s really low. But they still cling to these notions of, “Okay now it’s time to lean into Fauciism the hoax,” they get another surge.

And I think they’re lying to get another surge, at least of cases. I don’t know about hospitalizations and deaths. They’ll likely to get a surge in California in the wintertime, same thing here in New York, and then you’ll probably see a retreat to all the stuff that we’ve been told all along is gonna stop this and doesn’t stop it.

CLAY: Yeah, then we’ll will be like, “Hey, we need to mask harder,” as if we have had at any point… That’s the biggest lie that we’ve all been told about covid. We have been told that our behavior has impacted covid in a substantial way. Yet anybody who actually looks at the data and spends any time analyzing it in any kind of rudimentary way can see that virtually everything we have done to try to stop covid from spreading has been without any benefit whatsoever. The virus was gonna virus no matter what we did.

BUCK: There’s also a part of me that thinks, Clay, that the hesitancy to do really widespread serology testing to see how much natural immunity we have, I think that this will work to the Fauciites’ favor in time, because if we do have a pretty quiet winter and we go into the spring, I think there will be a case to be made that we’re probably at 50 or 60% natural immunity at that point.

I think roughly half the country at least, we’re gonna find out, has already been infected with covid over the last two years. But then they’re gonna turn around and they’re gonna forget about all that and say, “See? It took us awhile but we finally masked hard enough and vaxxed enough times. So we got through of because of Lord Fauci!” I worry that that’s… I should say I think that’s where the debate over this is going.

CLAY: I think the data matters here. I’m looking at the most recent numbers. This is, to me, pretty remarkable that nobody talks about it. The people who are at real danger here are elderly. Ninety-five percent of people 65 and up in this country have gotten at least one covid vaccine shot — 79% right, almost at 80%, almost 80% of adults have gotten the covid vaccine, and 77% of people 12 and up. That’s pretty remarkable compliance, particularly when you consider the number of people that would have natural immunity otherwise. And it’s like it’s not even discussed or even contemplated in any way.

BUCK: There’s one thing we should also know, and this data should be much more available so that people can make intelligent decisions about their own risk factors. Right now what, about 18, let’s call it 1,900 deaths average daily, according to the CDC data? So let’s call it about 2,000. You’re basically 2,000 people a day are dying from covid and have been for the last couple of months.

We should know what the age stratification of that mortality is, and we should also know — and it’s amazing that we don’t have a better sense of this, Clay — how many of these people are getting boostered and how many of them are fully vaccinated versus just partially vaccinated. We should know this stuff. Anyway, I find it kind of stunning. But they don’t want to give you all the data. They want you to just listen and do what you’re told.