BUCK: First, Clay, masks, vaccines, mandates, lockdowns, oh, my! “It’s deja vu all over again,” to quote Yogi Berra.

CLAY: It isn’t going away, Buck. Here is the problem that we are running into. There was the hope — and I think everyone out there hoped that it was true — that these covid vaccines were going to be a panacea, that it was going to end covid, that no one who took the vaccine was going to be able to get covid, that there was going to be no breakthroughs, that this was gonna last forever.

Or at least a decade or 15 or 20 years, that it was gonna be like the measles and the mumps vaccines that most of us got as kids and maybe you had to get a booster when you were going into high school or college or whenever it might have been to ensure that you never got those viruses. That is not what is going to happen, it doesn’t appear, based on all the data with covid.

Covid is going to become endemic. It is going to become like the flu. There are going to be many different versions of covid that circulate. You may well have a yearly covid shot that is coming down the pike in the years ahead. And as a result, the data that is coming in — and, again, let me just say right off the top people are like, “Oh, you’re anti-vax.”

No, no. I just want everybody out there to understand the facts. The facts — and we’ve been saying this for a long time, Buck — are if you’re over 65 years old you are under particularly susceptible covid-related dangers. You should get the vaccine and you should get the boosters or whatever else is put out there. If you are obese, if you have underlying substantial health conditions, let me be clear: Go get the vaccine.

Even though it is not perfect, it does, according to the data, a much better job at lowering the overall severity of your covid infection. All right? But there are studies including one from Israel which was written about — to the credit of the media, I read it everywhere, whether it’s New York Times, Wall Street Journal — that said that the Israeli studies have shown the Pfizer vaccine…

The Pfizer and the Moderna are two of the biggest. They haven’t really tested the Moderna vaccine. But the Pfizer vaccine is only 39% effective at stopping the covid infection. We were told early on, “Hey, these things are 95% effective against everything.” So the Delta variant, which everyone is talking about right now, in Israel…

Based on a fairly substantial study, there is only a 39% protection against infection that occurs from the covid vaccine there, according to this study, help to limit the severity of those infections. But, Buck, the reason why I am sharing all this data is I think it’s important that everybody out there listening to us hears the truth. And the truth is this: Covid doesn’t go away if you get a vaccine.

It just doesn’t go away, and so you still have the risk. There is the risk of infection. I’ll give you an example in the world of sports. Jon Rahm, Buck, was set to go play in the Olympics. He’s one of the best golfers in the world. People may remember that he was pulled off the golf course with the lead on Saturday going into a Sunday at the Memorial Tournament.

It cost him $1.7 million. He’d already had his first vaccine. He had covid, double vaccinated. He now has already tested positive for covid again. This is happening everywhere. I was in Los Angeles. You couldn’t even find covid tests. I mean, this is a big deal and it’s not going away.

BUCK: Here’s Dr. Anthony Fauci telling people that even if you’re vaccinated, maybe it’s time to mask up.

FAUCI: So it’s quite understandable, Neil, why local authorities are now saying, “Good that you’re vaccinated, but in a situation where you have people indoors, particularly crowded, you should wear a mask.”

BUCK: Now, Clay, “Covid Zero” is something that some countries have been trying to push for, meaning that covid is essentially eradicated. And this used to be considered almost a conspiracy theory to bring it up, that we would ever see countries where the goal was zero covid.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: We know if you’re going to be enmeshed in the global community, you’re gonna be dealing with this virus at some level. But the extreme Covid Zero approach which is what is now starting to look like some people, at least, want in this country has disastrous policy implications. I mean, you’re pointing out how effective the vaccines actually are in preventing transmission.

If this isn’t a one-and-done for everybody, they’ve created this whole regime of controls, of masking, of lockdowns, of limitations on indoors that will just be cycling through all the time for something that we should be considering to be, now, more similar to the flu. I mean, you look at the most recent data; we’re talking about an increase in cases right now across the country.

The New York Times has the counter up on its front page. New deaths, 269 as of July 25th, up 20% in the 14-day average. This is no longer a hospitalization-and-death pandemic in this country. So we have to adjust our thinking toward this. Instead, you’ve got the announcement from de Blasio saying you have to get covid tests every week if you’re not vaccinated and you’ve gotta mask up in the office, and they want private sector companies to enforce the same policies.

CLAY: Not only that, Buck, but I think what we’re headed for — and I think the NFL is a good example about this — is there is a focus on covid breakthroughs. It’s gonna be almost impossible to stop a ton of covid breakthrough infections from happening based on the lagging success of these vaccines. And right now, we just have a big blame factory.

And, Buck, right now any sort of infection increase is being blamed on people not getting the vaccine. Again, we ran through who definitely should be getting the vaccine. But what’s also creeping up, if you look at Israel and if you look at England who had higher rates of vaccination and are further down this path than us is, there is going to be a massive collision between covid cases with the vaccinated and covid cases with the unvaccinated.

In other words, this vaccine is not a panacea to prevent covid infections in the future. And at some point, we just have to acknowledge that this thing is here to stay, and — much like the flu — we can’t change the world forever based on a virus.

BUCK: And the problem with all of this is that if we actually get to that point, Clay, if Dr. Fauci finally relents and says, “You know what? It turns out that focused protection of the elderly, that vaccines by choice for those who are at substantial risk, that policies and procedures that are much closer to how we handle the seasonal flu.” I know this was much worse for fatalities overall for senior citizens and the seasonal flu was.

But in terms of our approach, it should be much more similar to what we do in flu season, which is vaccinations, stay away from sick people, things like that. It would be an admission that so much of what has been done for the last 18 months was madness

CLAY: It was worthless.

BUCK: — was not actually what we should have done as a country.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So the problem that we have now is that people don’t like to admit that they were wrong.

They certainly don’t like to admit that their critics were right. In some ways that’s even worse. And so Fauci on the whole global medical consensus such as it is don’t want to actually say, “You know what? Man. The people that were saying we need to learn to live with covid six months ago, 12 months ago —

CLAY: A year ago.

BUCK: — they had a point.

CLAY: You’re right. Effectively, Buck, you and I were right. Now, this is such a huge part here of how is this going to play out? Because right now again the blame factory has shifted to, “Oh, it’s all the red-staters, all these Trump voters who won’t get the vaccine.” But, by the way, that’s not the majority of people who are refusing to get the vaccine, is it, Buck? It’s as if you’re not allowed to talk about this.

BUCK: I have some data. I have some data I want everybody to be aware of because it has turned into something of a sport. Here is Don Lemon. Whenever CNN and all these personalities are talking about who’s being reckless, who’s to blame for this, it’s Trump supporters. Here’s CNN’s Don Lemon.

LEMON: You know, I heard over last couple of days ago that, you know, you shouldn’t be… uh, eh (sputters) “Don’t say bad things about people who don’t get the vaccine because then they’ll feel like you’re attacking them,” or whatever. But Michael, how much more…” You gotta call it what it is. If — if — if behavior is district court and nonsensical, I think you need to tell people that their behavior is idiotic and nonsensical!

Doesn’t mean that they are idiots. It’s just their behavior on — on — this particular point is not making sense. (sputters) So I — I don’t understand what has taken people so long and how many people have to die for adults, for adults… And why are adults believing people on the internet instead of science and experts?

BUCK: This is only possible at CNN because that audience is convinced of the daily drumbeat of, “This is Trump supporters! It’s MAGA hat wearers who refuse to get that vaccine. ” That’s what they tell their audience. Clay, I have some data about all of this about New York City. It turns out that that’s not really the case.

CLAY: That’s a hell all of tease. I can’t wait to hear that data.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CUOMO: The vaccine works. They work. And it’s proven in the numbers. Those who were vaccinated reduced the risk of hospitalizations by 94%. So if you’re vaccinated, you are much, much less likely to get the covid virus to begin with. And if you get it, it is not as severe and you’re not hospitalized. Those are facts. What we’re looking at is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, a pandemic of that 25% of the population that is still refused to get the vaccine.

CLAY: That is New York governor Andrew Cuomo. By the way, how many women have accused him of sexual harassment? The story just went away.

BUCK: By the way, the DOJ is not gonna investigate the nursing home debacle either.

CLAY: I saw that too.

BUCK: That’s not a shock, is it?

CLAY: Not a shock at all. It’s unbelievable what he has gotten away with. I, by the way, am Clay Travis. He is Buck Sexton. This is the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show. We wanted to bring back in Andrew Cuomo talking about the situation in New York because, Buck Sexton, you have data.

Let me just say this again. Right now, the unvaccinated is the blame factory for covid, and I believe in the next few weeks if you look at Israel and you look at England, that the unvaccinated are going to become more difficult to blame because the vaccines themselves are having a massive number of breakthrough infections.

Now, hopefully they are going to be less significant than if you had not been vaccinated. Again, I want to say, “If you’re over 65 and you’re unhealthy this makes a lot of sense.” Continuing, Buck, they’re not talking about all the people including you and me who have already had covid in this discussion at all.

You and I are not vaccinated, but we’ve had covid and we’ve had covid antibodies. So we have as many protection as vaccinated people from these viruses, but what have you seen from the data in New York City about who is refusing to get vaccinated?

BUCK: So New York City is, as you all know, the largest city in America, over eight million people. So it’s a pretty good data set to look at for this. It’s also about nine-to-one, by registration, Democrat to Republican. So this is a blue, blue stronghold with a whole lot of folks.

And if you believe the narrative you see on TV, the only problem, the only people who are refusing to get vaccinated — and just this notion also “refusing to get vaccinated,” there’s this judgment implied in this — who have chosen not to get vaccinated are white Trump supporters. This is the story here all the time.

CLAY: Overwhelming.

BUCK: And they’re on MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and they’re really nasty about it. I mean, they’re essentially saying, “You dumb Trump supporters are killing people by not getting vaccinated!” What’s so interesting is that you never hear them say — nor do you have any real criticism level — that some of the other communities out there who are also choosing not to get vaccinated in large numbers.

In fact, the largest — and this was as of July 23rd, so this is recent data. The largest block of unvaccinated New Yorkers across all ages are black Americans living in New York. It’s 31% citywide are vaccinated.

CLAY: So 69%, nearly seven in 10 black people living in New York City not vaccinated.

BUCK: Asians are 70% vaccinated. Hispanic-Latino 41%. White 45%. So, Clay, we could look at this and say, “Why do we even have to break this down? What does this even matter?” Because when people see the way this is being politicized to bludgeon Trump supporters in the media all the time as this sort of out… It’s this catharsis of (mewling) all the rage from the Fauci-ites.

Well, guess what? I mean, they’re clearly not actually look at what the data is indicating in places like New York City. I’m sure it’s similar you go to other major cities you’re gonna see there are substantial minority populations that are not vaccinated either. So it’s at least look at the data for what it is.

CLAY: Not only that — and this is the case in my state of Tennessee. Large black population, right, also large Trump supporting population. Same thing Minneapolis, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Arkansas. All these places with both red state bona fides — if they want to argue it’s a red state issue — but also large black populations. So you are pending with both of those issues conspiring to have lower vaccination rates. By the way, also I think a real high number of natural immunity as well as it pertains in this situation.

BUCK: And you can see from the anxiety among some of the lesser risk vaccinated people that are going on TV, they’re actually concerned that at some point their immunity may be on the decline. They’re worried about themselves.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Because they’re always complaining about Trump. They hate all these Trump supporters. They don’t like them and they’re acting like it’s this national emergency that mistakable minds Trump supporters are not getting vaccinated at high enough levels. Why is that their problem, right? You could see there’s this busybody nagging attitude that comes with all this, and it’s driving… It’s also not rooted in the data in a lot of ways.

CLAY: The data also you hear a lot about is, “Hey, this is why the variants keep emerging?” It’s not really true in the United States. Most of the variants are gonna come around the world where the vaccination rate is minuscule.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Here is Dr. Fauci, who I really do believe is the most destructive public official in my lifetime, certainly the most destructive public health official in living memory, and here he is telling us (impression), “You might need booster shots.”

FAUCI: And the data that’s evolving from Israel and from Pfizer indicates that it looks like there might be some diminution in protection, and when you ever that, the most vulnerable people are the ones that you were talking about a moment ago, namely people who have suppression immune systems.

Those who are transplantations, cancer chemotherapy, autoimmune diseases that are on immunosuppressive regimes, those are the kind of individuals that if there’s going to be a third boost which might likely happen would be among the first the vulnerable. And the ACIP, which met on July 22nd, they discussed that in some detail and continue to look at the data that might push us in that direction.

BUCK: (impression) “Boostuhs, Clay.” Been talked about for a while but they always told us, don’t worry about it. This vaccine’s amazing. It is the silver bullet. Turns out it’s not.

CLAY: It’s not. It’s the flu, and I know people say, “You can’t say it’s the flu!” It is the flu now. We are going to have booster shots I think yearly for years and years to come, because all of the different covid variants are going to be spreading. And they’re going to be guessing like they do with the flu. When they if I have the flu shot, what do they do, Buck?

Every year they guess which flu version is gonna be the most prevalent and they encourage people with compromised immune systems, the elderly, to go get their flu shot. And every year the flu, unfortunately, kills tens of thousands of Americans and people around the world.

BUCK: Mostly seniors.

CLAY: Mostly seniors. Mostly seniors. And when you actually look at where we’re headed, I think it’s impossible to say that we’re going to be doing anything other than that. Right now — and I just want to circle back around — there is a lot of mistrust, I think, because so much of what our health policy experts have told us have ended up being untrue.

And I think, unfortunately, one of the things that’s going to come out of this covid vaccine is they are going to have massively sold the idea that if you get a covid shot it’s a silver bullet, right? Because I think a lot of people think about it in the measles, the mumps, the rubellas, smallpox back in the day that you can effectively eradicate this thing forever, right?

Like smallpox and polio don’t exist for the most part in the world and I think there are a lot of people out there that believed with covid vaccines that’s what was going to happen. I think the chances of that being the case, that covid being like smallpox or it being like the polio is virtually zero. Would you agree with that, based on the data that you’re seeing, that the idea that we’re just going to eradicate this thing is almost impossible?

BUCK: You see how many variants we’ve already had, and they keep talking about it. It looked like the Delta variant is, you know, more transmissible and that a lot of virologists and people that have spent their whole lives studying this have warned that as this rips through populations all over the world, you’re going to get variations of the virus that could also then evade some degree of the mRNA vaccines that are currently out there.

But there were people… Very basic things were said at the start of this by people who just look at stuff for what it is and can come to rational conclusions. People said things if you were… I know you do remember this, but everybody will remember. You would be shouted down, you’d be told you were reckless and you didn’t care if old people die and all these horrible things, guilty of wanting human sacrifice is that you can get a haircut, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: The terrible stuff that was said about anybody who tried to inject some degree of rationality into this debate. At the beginning we would say things like, “Well, we’ve never been able to eliminate colds. There are 200-plus cold viruses in circulation. There are strains of flu that every year the flu circulates all over the world.” This has been something that people looked at and said:

“What is the likelihood that we’ll ever get to Covid Zero, that we’ll effectively cure this,” as you said, like smallpox? That was always highly unlikely. But they sold us all on if everybody has this big push for the vaccine, we’ll be in a place where we don’t have to think about covid anymore. And this is how you get people like Stelter. Not only is he not an expert in medicine.

CLAY: Mr. Potato Head.

BUCK: He’s an expert in nothing.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: He’s good at that. Here is he is essentially espousing the dominant position out there in Democrat-aligned media which is that it’s like we’re living in two different worlds, the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

STELTER: For fully vaccinated Americans, the risk of serious illness is supremely low. But for the unvaccinated it is significant, significant risk. (dramatic pause) People keep saying this is another instance of two Americas, and it is. It’s almost like we need two kinds of newscasts, uh, or two versions of the weather report. The forecast is pretty sunny for the vaccinated, but it’s quite bleak in some states for the unvaccinated. This headline, sadly, says it all: “Nearly all covid deaths in the U.S. are now among the unvaccinated.”

BUCK: There are 330, 340 million people in America, and you’re looking at a couple of hundred deaths a day from covid. Every death is a tragedy of course and we all know it. People are dying every day. At what point are we saying, “This is now just another public health issue, but not a public health crisis,” and a pandemic that requires suspension of constitutional amendments that things like the rightly to worship freely that requires emergency measures and the shutdown of businesses?

I mean, Clay, if our goal here is gonna be Covid Zero, what we’re actually seeing is a massive transformation of society where state bureaucrats have effectively unlimited and unending power over your life. And some people want that.

CLAY: Well, not only that, the number one thing we could do to reduce death in America? Do you know what it is, Buck? Don’t be fat. And I know you’re not supposed to fat shame now. But for every single individual out there, the best thing you can do to prolong your life and live a healthy life is to combat obesity in your own life and in your own family.

That is individual reliance, if health, as it should be, is important to you, the vast, vast, vast majority of America could be the most helped by reducing obesity. I believe right now, we are at covid as the eighth or ninth leading cause of death in America as we sit today.

Heart disease, I think, is number one. I believe cancer is number two. One of the great I think horrible flaws of our response to covid among many is that I think the death rates of all those other diseases and illnesses are going to increase, because so few people were getting treated for that because they were terrified of covid!

BUCK: We saw that with drugs, and we all knew that was gonna be the case —

CLAY: Overdoses, yes.

BUCK: — anybody how was being honest about the data all-time record drug overdid he discuss deaths of despair and I will say this a lot of blue check MDs and certainly blue check media types who were really ruthless about that stuff. “Well, unlike covid that’s on the people.”

CLAY: Ohh, okay.

BUCK: Oh, really? Oh, okay. That was a lot of that out there for people that were working in the New York Times and CNN Newsroom and now it’s over 90,000 people dead from drug overdoses in the past year which also I would point out brings in the border and the open border that we have. And I’ve seen it as it actually happens in real time when they bring over people; a lot of them do have covid.