CLAY: We said on Friday, if you were listening to the show… The Afghanistan news about us killing an innocent civilian and seven children among 10 people who were killed came out right as we were preparing to finish the Friday show. And what did we say, Buck? We said a lot of times you get even still these news dumps on Friday afternoons headed into a weekend because there’s the hope that they aren’t going to linger by the time you get to Monday.
So in short order we got that news and were able to talk about it on the show. And then you had an announcement of an Australia-and-England partnership designed to help with submarines and stand up to China, and France pulls its ambassador out. I don’t really care what the French ambassador does, Buck. But it does directly fly in the face of the argument of the Biden administration that we’re gonna be the adults.
We’re not gonna have uncomfortable relationships with our top allies. And this an unprecedented move, the likes of which it would lead newscasts forever if France was upset with Trump. So that happens, and then Joe Biden, a couple of weeks ago, made a major statement — you may remember it — about how everybody who got the vaccine was gonna get boosters eight months after their last vaccine.
And every adult, every kid — theoretically everybody — was gonna be getting this thing. And then the FDA actually steps up and shoots down the booster requirement for most adults. And, Buck, they did it by a massive magnitude. I’ve seen two different reports. It was either 16-2 or 16-3 that they voted against a vaccine booster mandate for everyone.
And so, again, we talked about Gottlieb saying the science was effectively made up as it pertains to six feet. You heard the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, acknowledging that she just didn’t feel like wearing her mask ’cause she was having a good time. And it’s amazing. It’s honest, probably, but it’s amazing. And then you have Joe Biden, who has said, “I’m gonna solve covid” and Dr. Fauci. They were telling everybody they need to get boosters — and boom! What happens, Buck? It completely gets shot down.
But the whole time they have been pretending that it is a matter of fact when in fact it is a matter of what they decide, what they want to do. And you see this now with the boosters in a very clear example. My theory — and we can spend a little more time on where this is going, Clay.
CLAY: Yeah, I want to hear your theory.
BUCK: I don’t think boosters are not happening. I think this is gonna be something similar to what we saw with J&J. This is the temporary pause to create the illusion of reasonableness from the apparatus of control before they decide in a month, maybe sixty days, “Oh, just kidding. You actually are all going to need boosters.”
CLAY: I wonder if they’re hoping that the case numbers are gonna go down and people just forget all about the boosters.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BUCK: On CNN right now you have the headline: Pfizer vaccine safe for children 5 to 11 — and well tolerated. I just want everyone to be paying attention close attention here because what you are seeing is, “Oh, the boosters! The FDA is backing off on the boosters being recommended,” which, remember, the recommendation always turns into a mandate, right? They recommend you do the following, and very quickly state —
CLAY: If enough people don’t do it, it turns into a mandate.
BUCK: Right. So it’s “an offer you can’t refuse,” to borrow from Don Corleone. You better do this or else. And they’re gonna do this with boosters I believe in time although Clay’s point I believe is well taken and correct, that if we happen to see, as Fauci would call it, “a diminution of cases,” also in cases “going down…” Fauci loves that word. Listen for it; you’ll hear it.
If there’s “a diminution.” But if the cases go down into the wintertime for whatever reason — I think it’s unlikely, but if that happens — maybe you won’t get boosters. If we get a surge (another Fauci word) we’re gonna be seeing boosters. But right now, Clay, they’re trying to convince everybody that 6- and 7- and 8-year-olds — we did the numbers before —
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: — are needing to get this shot in their arms. Reminder, folks, this is not going to be like the initial days of the vaccine for adults where it was, “We don’t want mandates. No, no.” Once the FDA approves Pfizer for your 6-year-old, it’s gonna be, “You can’t go to day care or…” I don’t know when kids start school because I don’t have any yet. Working on it. But you know —
CLAY: You’re a long way, hopefully, from having kids. (laughing)
BUCK: I gotta get married first. I’m working on it. I’m on the path. So, anyway, point here being, Clay, they’re gonna be telling you if you’re gonna have your kid, your 8-year-old, your 9-year-old in school, the kid’s gotta get the shot and they’re already saying it’s just like MMR. And here’s Fauci just ever remember is on the booster flip-flop.
FAUCI: No, I… (sputtering) What I was saying, my own personal looking at this, again, just because I look at the data and say I would do it this way, that’s the reason why we have qualified groups of people who together as a committee examine all the data and make a decision. So I have no problem at all with their decision. The thing that I’m saying is that data will continue to come in, and I believe you’re gonna see an evolution of this process as we go on in the next several weeks to months.
CLAY: It’s important to note, Buck, this wasn’t like some close decision. Right now, they voted — and again, I’ve seen it reported two different ways — 16-3 or 16-2 against recommending boosters. If I got destroyed like that by a group of my peers after I had gone public like Fauci had and said, “Hey, the data is all clear; everybody has to get a booster,” and then all these other scientists looked at it and voted against me 16-2 or 16-3, I’d feel like I got smacked down pretty significantly.
BUCK: Let’s think about this one for a second though, Clay. How is it even remotely feasible that they can know efficacy and risk profile of booster shots that until a couple of months ago, they were pretending there was no way we were going to need.
CLAY: They were not necessary.
BUCK: It’s just… You don’t have to be… This goes back to knowing people are lying to you, knowing when something smells funky. You and I have smelled that funky smell from the very beginning of covid from people like Fauci. Right? We’ve known that something was up. When they tell you they could know both the need for and safety of booster shots, they were extrapolating. Notice how Fauci also makes a pretty big admission here.
He says, “We’re looking at the different data, all the different numbers and coming to a conclusion.” Rooms full of bureaucrats like the one he’s talking about are making determinations. And then, Clay, they act like it’s the equivalent for a Catholic of the pope speaking ex cathedra, as, “This is the word of God from on high to all of you, and it is forever true and is irrevocable. ” That’s just not accurate at all about these prognostications about boosters, which we know because Biden weeks ago was saying (impression), “You’re getting boosters.”
CLAY: I also want to point out, as I think it’s significant, if only two or three people are supporting the idea of boosters, this also lets you know that Fauci is not a mainstream advocate. He’s far on the side of more treatment, right? If there are almost 20 different “experts” (and we put experts in quotations) looking at this data and making a determination and the vast majority of them are making the opposite recommendation from what Dr. Fauci is saying?
Do we really want an activist in terms of covid policy that’s way in front of where everybody in the country should be, and then when we get lectured by the Blue Checkmark Brigade for not following the science, isn’t Fauci himself not following the science if they’re all repudiating his advice?
BUCK: Well, there’s also an admission here — which you rarely get — that these are judgment calls, that they are balancing out different interests and risk factors and numbers, and there is a lot of unknowns. People used to make fun of the Rumsfeld “known unknowns,” “unknowns unknowns.”
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: It’s actually a pretty good framework for understanding certain problem sets. Because what you don’t know you don’t know can often be the thing that’s the biggest problem — which, by the way, I think we’ve seen with some of the vaccination stuff here. Here, though, is the NIH director — ’cause these guys are starting to feel the heat.
If you are a person who is capable of thinking for yourself, you have, at a minimum, enormous questions about Fauci’s credibility and others around him. The head of the CDC, for example, Walensky. The head of the NIH here stepping out to say so, “Meh, if you want certainty, go to China.” This is what they’re actually saying now.
I’m a little troubled that people are complaining that the process isn’t working for them. The process is to look at the data, have the experts consider it, and then make their best judgment at that point, recognizing that the judgments may change. If people want an absolutely authoritative statement about here’s the right answer, well, that’s not what our country is all about. (snickering) Move to China. You’ll get it there.
BUCK: What a smug jackass, Clay. This guy runs the National Institutes of Health!
CLAY: Also, there isn’t a consensus from science, either. And I understand his argument there; science is messy. But he’s pushing against the idea of science being messy by saying everybody has to make the exact same decision when we tell you to make the decision, right? Science is messy.
If you listen to Dr. Ioannidis, if you listen to Dr. Makary, if you listen to the Great Barrington Declaration individuals — if you listened, frankly, to so many doctors that you and I talk to, Buck, who agree with a lot of what we say but don’t feel like they have the freedom to speak out and say what they believe — there is an authoritarian bent here.
Science has stifled anyone who is a dissenter and not allowed them to speak out, which, frankly, is why I was so surprised that the FDA made recommendations that they did and spoke out against the recommendations of Dr. Fauci so significantly, because they were clearly trying to pressure them to make a choice. That’s what Berenson told us on Friday. So can you imagine if Trump had gotten that far out in front of where the FDA was and basically tried to bully them into making a decision about boosters like this?
BUCK: But I think the initial point that you’ve made, Clay, to me, and that we’ve been talking about on air today whereby they have to keep some in the toolkit.
CLAY: Something in reserve.
BUCK: Because, remember, that’s what got all this started. You had a lot of public health experts who were sitting on these multibillion-dollar budgets who were unwilling to come forward and say, “Honestly, there’s not much we can do. A lot of people are gonna get this. Do your best. Try to stay healthy, stay away from sick people, and Godspeed.”
They could have said that, or they could have done a focused-protection plan by going for the data showing that the elderly 65 and up, 75 and up were particularly vulnerable. It’s really 75-and-up as you see from the death chart that people 75-, 85-plus is where you have a big spike in the mortality rate here so that’s where you should focus to protect from the virus more than anybody else.
But, Clay, Glenn Greenwald — a man firmly of the left. I don’t know if you saw. I just shared this on Twitter. I wanted to share it with everybody else. In response to the 2021 Emmys where everyone’s maskless indoors and it’s all, “Oh, look at us! We’re glitzy and glamorous and fancy — sophisticated, vaccinated, and fancy.”
CLAY: (chuckles) Yes.
BUCK: Greenwald tweeted this. He wrote the following: “You can say it every day and it still won’t be enough: The liberal discourse and policymaking around covid has no relationship whatsoever to science. It has a lot to do with culture, politics, hierarchy, psychology, and control. But science and health are totally absent,” end quote.
That’s like a mantra of this show now for the months that we’ve been on. This is not about health. This is not driven primarily by keeping you safe, folks. This is about controlling you and political power through the lens of covid intervention and mitigation.
But when you actually hear her defending that decision, you are going to finally say, “We’ve reached the point where basically people who are Democrats can just say, ‘Hey, we’ll do whatever we want and not even try and defend the hypocrisy.'” I want you to hear this audio when we come back. But first what you got for us, Buck?
BUCK: Yeah. I think her defense boils down to extending one finger in the direction —
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: — of those of us who don’t like the hypocrisy. That’s really the defense.
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