An Uprising of the Rational Against Covid Fear Porn

BUCK: I just want to say, today it feels like it’s not gonna be as easy for the lockdowners as it was before. Yesterday, there was a lot of anxiety. The markets were in turmoil; the Biden administration came out with another one of his anodyne, boilerplate, America’s grandpa who just says whatever his handlers tell him speeches to calm everybody down ’cause things were supposed to be better.

But it really didn’t, I think, feel like the markets were gonna respond to Biden. So what is going on right now? Why is it we’ve had a pretty big rebound today and we’ve had people willing to come out and say, “Hold on a second, all right… Before we start having the domino effect of mask mandates back in New York City as they’ve been reinstituted in L.A. …

“Before we have to look at booster shots,” and all the other things that they’re pretending have been settled science in an instant, there’s some out there who are saying, “Not so fast.” At the very top of the list, I think, we’d have to put Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida on the government’s hypocrisy with all of this.

DESANTIS: I was a little bit perturbed when I was at the southern border when I started thinking about, if you wanted to fly from Brazil on you wanted to do certain travel, the way you would be treated by the federal government underneath the auspices of covid mitigation. Some people wouldn’t even be allowed to come. A lot of these flights aren’t even allowed.

If you wanted to go on a cruise ship, the federal government doesn’t want you except under extreme circumstances. So they’re very, very rigorous with kind of like lawful commercial activity and travel. But if you just want to hopscotch across that border? They don’t care about covid! They’re letting you straight in, they’re throwing you on a bus, and they’re sending you all over the fruited plain in this country.

So I don’t understand how you square that, if you’re saying that cruises have to go through all these procedures because of covid, wouldn’t you want people coming from a hundred different countries to just not be able to pour into the country, effectively, with very little pushback?

BUCK: Clay, the uprising of the Lululemon mom brigades against masks — something we talked about. I think we’re seeing an uprising of the rational against the absurdity of the regulations around covid, the absurdity of the open border and all rest of it. People can’t take it anymore.

CLAY: I think it’s well said, Buck, and I talked about this when we went down to Mexico on a vacation. My wife and I, in order to get back into the country — and I think this is still the rule. You had to have a negative covid test as an American citizen. We went to a Mexican resort. This was in late February. We had to be tested at the resort. We had to.

The whole thing is cosmetic theater. We had to present our neglect covid test to a random Southwest Airlines gate agent in order to board. What does that gate agent care or have the knowledge to be able to review a covid test form? Moreover, he doesn’t care. I mean, he doesn’t want people stuck in Mexico. But, anyway, we had negative tests; we got back.

At the same time, they were not and continue to not test people who were coming across the border illegally, allowing them to go right in the country without being citizens very many times. So how did that policy make any sense at all? And I think what’s starting to happen is, you’re seeing many of these rules which are being applied make no sense when you start to unpack it, as Ron DeSantis just did, in that same way.

And that leads to the big question that we were asking yesterday and the one that we’ve been debating for the past several weeks: Is there going to be a mass uprising of sorts associated with all these Draconian covid protocols? I think there is, and I think it’s gonna be connected to school. I really do. I think a lot of kids — ’cause remember, under 12-year-olds can’t be vaccinated right now.

There’s no possibility, and now there’s talk that if your 3-year-old has to wear a mask. And I think a lot of parents are looking around and saying all of this is madness. And I think that’s where the uprising is gonna start, with kids and the absurd covid protocols associated with them, and we know they have zero risk from covid. That’s where all this is coming from.

But I give credit to Ron DeSantis for standing up and fighting back associated with cruise ships and other businesses based in Florida. Florida has been an oasis of freedom in a country where many people are still furious they’re locked down and frankly, their second largest after he right now — L.A., where I’m headed tomorrow — you’re not even able to go indoors without wearing a mask again.

BUCK: There’s also the smugness of these experts. There’s the sense that we haven’t seen all the times they’ve been wrong or where they failed, and that we are seeing more pushback for sure. There are more people now than ever before, which makes perfect sense 18 months into this, 80% of seniors vaccinated. People are saying, “Hold on a second. The stupid covid rules are actually really stupid.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They can see this for what this. When you tell them here is NIH’s director Francis Collins making a really just haughty statement about how it’s not like we’re sending the kids to the trenches in a shooting war.

HALLIE JACKSON: It sounds like what you’re saying, though, is you don’t think that the nation’s pediatricians, the AAP, are off base in what they’re telling (crosstalk)?

COLLINS: I do not. I have great respect for the AAP, and, uh, I don’t think they make these recommendations lightly. They will not be popular amongst parents and kids who are sick of masks. But you know what? The virus doesn’t care that we’re sick of masks.

JACKSON: Mmmph.

COLLINS: The virus is having another version of its wonderful party for itself. And to the degree that we can squash that by doing something that maybe is a little uncomfortable, uh, a little inconvenient, it’s not like we’re asking people to go to the trenches with a (snickers) shooting war. We’re just asking you, if it looks like it’s gonna help, put the mask back on for a while.

CLAY: First of all, it doesn’t help. But bigger picture here, the pediatricians, I think this recommendation is ludicrous. But the pediatricians last June, Buck, said all schools need to be open, that there was no way they should stay closed. And the same scientists that now are talking about this mask recommendation, they wouldn’t in any way get on the line and argue in favor of schools being open.

So if you’re going to follow the science, last year’s recommendation by the pediatricians that all schools need to be open should have happened, correct? And I think there are parents willing to make that trade. We made it in my neighborhood, and a lot of schools did. Kids will wear masks in exchange for schools to be open.

But it’s fascinating to me how few people were willing to actually support the call for kids to be back in school last year. As soon as they mention that kids need to wear masks all of a sudden, “Hey, we’ve gotta listen to these authorities. They know exactly what they’re talking about.”

BUCK: It can’t be, “Shut up and do what the CDC said, peasant,” when the Lockdown Left likes it but the moment that the CDC says something that is more on the side of reopen or listening, “Oh, no, we’re gonna ignore that. We’re gonna take the extra precautions even though the CDC…” Remember that one?

When initially the mask mandates were coming to an end there were all these different cities, governors, mayors, who were saying, “Well, hold on. We’re not ready for it yet.” But it used to be, “We’ll do whatever the CDC says.” So it can’t be “experts” when you like what they say and we do our own thing when you don’t. But that has been a defining characteristic of the lockdowners, of the Fauci-ites.

And, really, I think more than ever, Clay, you just see, this is a religious belief now for people. It’s a lifestyle choice. Taking the virus seriously through double masking and masking up your kids at school and continuing on lockdowns. People think they’re like brave warriors against covid for doing stuff that the experts — who they used to say were beyond reproach — are even telling them that’s not really necessary anymore.

CLAY: Well, it is. And that’s why I think for people out there who say, “Oh, covid is over,” I don’t think… They’re not going to give up on covid. There are people who are so desperately committed to the idea of “covid fear porn,” as I call it, that they can’t unleash it.

Now, we should say positive story here ’cause we opened with the stock market tanking yesterday. As we speak, the stock market has bounced back 600 points. And some of the data, Buck — I should also say this — from yesterday, did you see the British scientist changed his answer to the question?

BUCK: Yes. You gave us that breaking news, and then a few hours later, he says (impression), “Oh, I’m sorry. Wrong numbers.” It’s not something —

CLAY: Kind of a big thing to get wrong?

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: So he initially said 60% of the people testing positive for covid right now and hospitalized in Britain were covid-double vaccinated. And then he came back and said actually somewhere around 60% are not, meaning 40% would be. It’s all so confusion — and this guy’s the expert! Like, how do you go in front of the media and screw up something that bad and then try to clean it up? So I do want to mention that ’cause I said it on air yesterday.

BUCK: And I was telling people —

CLAY: I was reporting what the expert said.

BUCK: I was saying, “Don’t drop all your stock, folks,” ’cause I thought it was a panic move on a panic day. So need that I give stock advice here, but I’m just saying I had a feeling… Now, of course in a week maybe the market drops another 800 points or something and then I’ll be eating my words here. But I just feel like Democrats are psychologically in a fragile place right now.

Because covid has been this crush of meaning for them as well, and they’ve had this whole Fauci as America’s kindly old doctor telling them what to do, and they get to Zoom from their couch. And now it’s like the real world is coming back and we’re six months into the Biden administration, and Biden is an ineffectual clown, which we all knew from the beginning.

The policy agenda has run up into a brick wall for the Democrats. It turns out they can’t actually get all the Democrats to even go along with all the insane stuff they want to do. So Clay I think at some point… Yes, obviously the vaccine talk and everything else yesterday was getting people really anxious.

But I also just think that the left is feeling uneasy in general right now because what do they have to do? You and I have freedom, happiness, and a return to America to looking forward to. They’re not done with covid yet. There’s still climate change to tackle.

CLAY: It’s well said, because covid has come to define so many of these people’s lives. Think about this, Buck. I mean, there’s an entire… We asked Alex Berenson about this ’cause he saying, “Look, I never thought that I would spend all this time talking about covid.” There’s an entire collection of scientific experts, in quotation marks, who owe their entire meal ticket to covid still existing as a major issue because once covid goes away, they go away, and they’re not gonna allow that to happen.