BUCK: As you know, Clay and I have been talking to you for months about what’s going to actually happen in this winter period. Is it actually going to be a period of rising covid cases rapidly? Will it be much less than we had seen last year? And you’re seeing right now — to borrow from Yogi Berra — in many ways in terms of case count, it feels like deja vu all over again. You have New York…

Just last night I was in a grocery store; everybody masked. I forgot that there’s now a new mask mandate. So they don’t check your vaccine card, I think, in the grocery store. I honestly can’t keep up with it anymore. They don’t check your vaccine card to go in a grocery store, but they now make you mask. So people will be masked in the grocery store but then they’ll go sit in a restaurant for two hours or three hours unmasked because that makes a lot of sense because at least the people are vaccinated in the restaurant.

But we also know you can still get it from vaccinated people, which is why the caseload is getting so high. It’s not just the unvaccinated. I just spoke to a good friend of mine yesterday, Clay, who’s come out of being sick with covid for two weeks. Two weeks with covid, fully vaccinated, right? Now, didn’t go to the hospital, so maybe you can make some kind of a claim there. Can we just…? I want to address that Fauci is basically telling everybody that this is just because the virus is worse and the unvaccinated and we should react to this ’cause it’s California and New York and Philadelphia now have a vaccine mandate in effect in January.

FAUCI: Well, it doesn’t because there are two things that are converging here, Jim. One is we’re dealing with Delta. We didn’t have Delta a year ago. We’re dealing with a much more formidable virus in every respect. Superimposed upon that if we had optimally implemented our vaccine program, those numbers would have been down. Those are… Many of them, not all of them, many of them are unnecessary deaths because we have up to 60 million people in this country who are eligible to be vaccinated who’ve not gotten vaccinated. We’ve gotta be doing better than that if we really want to get this thing over with.

CLAY: These are just lies, okay? They keep talking — and I saw that idiot, Eric Swalwell, tweet out — I’m sure you saw this, Buck — about how, “Oh, we need a mask mandate in order to domestic travel. ” When Fauci says 60 million people are unvaccinated, almost all of those people are young adults because the numbers — I’m looking at them right now, and I don’t know why more people don’t talk about this. The vaccines work in a very limited fashion at best.

They are not even, I don’t believe, accurately described as vaccines. They are a therapeutic. They do, it appears, provide some protection in the event that you get covid. But listen to these numbers, Buck — and I don’t know, when they talk about all the people who are unvaccinated, why people don’t fight back against this because the way they’re defining unvaccinated, they’re counting kids who are under the age of 5 ’cause here are the numbers right now:

Sixty-five and up at least one dose, Buck, 95% according to this most recent number, which has actually come down a little bit at the New York Times; 18 and up — what percentage of people 18 and up have had at least one vaccine shot — 84%; 82% of people who are 12 and it up, Buck. Even ages 5 and up, 77% of people have gotten at least one shot. When they talk about fully vaccinated, they’re counting babies. They’re counting 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds.

The people are most at risk are overwhelmingly vaccinated, tons of them are boostered and still we are setting these new records because the covid vaccine is not a vaccine. It is a therapeutic. So why they won’t just say this is incredibly frustrating. They told us, Buck, that if we ever got to 50 and 60% of people being vaccinated that this would go away. It hasn’t, and right now, 84% of the American public — according to the New York Times data that I’m looking at right at this exact moment, 84% of people — 18 and up have had at least one shot.

BUCK: Does anyone think that we were promised where we are right now based on what they were saying about this six months ago? Would anyone try to make that case? Look at the extremes they have gone to when it comes to mandating vaccines in a variety of fashions, different places all across the country, the Biden administration putting into place a federal mandate.

We know this is all now caught up in the courts, and there’s different ways that this is going to go (from a legal perspective) in the weeks ahead. But, Clay, they’ve gotten more and more authoritarian as the results we’ve seen have been less and less in line with what they told us to justify the authoritarian impulse in the first place. I actually think it’s interesting. I believe it was Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado —

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: — who said, “Look, you had the chance to get… I’m not putting a mask mandate in place.” He’s Democrat, everybody, in case you don’t know — a Democrat, pretty liberal Democrat from what I understand. But he’s also saying — the perspective now he’s saying is — it’s on you if you don’t want to get vaccinated because this really is about personal protection now more than it is about stopping the spread.

You have to be so careful. As the narrative shifts, if you get even a little bit… If you say, “Oh, it doesn’t stop spread,” then they say you’re putting out disinformation. Because for a period of time, it makes infection and spread less likely. They don’t know how long the period is. They don’t know how much less likely. But at a macrolevel, it’s clearly not stopping the entirety of covid spread from the vaccinated to everybody else.

That’s obviously not the case, and so what are we going to do about this? I mean, Clay, we’re descending further and further into the madness of what we’ve done before. I mean, our friend Senator Rand Paul, he’s out there telling everybody, “You know what? This is not gonna stop until they can basically get your newborns the shot before they leave the hospital.”

SEN. PAUL: These people won’t be happy until they get your newborn. I mean, they really want to get your newborn inoculated before they leave the hospital. They’re going to restrict certain things. You know, they’re not gonna dispense schooling, but they’re also going to try to get them before they leave the hospital. I think it’s outrageous and ignores the science. This is a disease of the elderly, not of children. And the thing is is that he’s not observing science. He’s sort of granting his impulse to authoritarianism. His default position is always, “How can I control people? How can I regulate people?”

CLAY: I wish he was president — or at least I wish he had the job that Fauci has right now.

BUCK: I was gonna say, could we have him —

CLAY: Dr. Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul.

BUCK: — as covid emperor the way Fauci is for all of us? Think of it. This little bureaucrat is the most singular and powerful voice on this issue now through two administrations going on two years. Why? It’s because people have attached a tremendous amount of political — I would even argue emotional and psychological — significance to him.

CLAY: I think you’re right on that, Buck, and to your point earlier when you are talking about all the restrictions in New York, Philadelphia, much of the state of California — got a lot of listeners all over the place — I want to ask you this question. Has there ever been a time in most of our lives where where you are in the country makes more difference as to what your life is like?

I want you to think about that. Now, I wasn’t around, I wasn’t alive in the 1950s and the 1960s when you had the separation of the races and different aspects associated with that. I’m talking about for people like you and me who are around 40 or 50 years old. You can’t think of a time where, Buck, for instance, for you, you get on an airplane in New York City and when you fly down to Florida — which you’re gonna do in a couple of weeks.

The amount of difference in what the world is like from New York and the vaccine requirements and the masking and the kids having to sit outside on stools socially distanced and eat versus what’s going on in Florida… I mean, I look at some of the restrictions that are being put in place, and you feel like I live in a different country here in Tennessee than where you live right now in New York City.

BUCK: It feels like that, and it’s gonna feel even more like that as we get deeper into the winter period here because here’s what’s gonna happen. New York and California… California, I believe, has a statewide mask mandate.

CLAY: That’s right, starting like the 15th, I think. December 15th.

BUCK: I wish there was a place — you’re a guy knows a lot about betting — where we could just do this. Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Will the mask mandate bring down the case trends in any discernible fashion in New York or California?

CLAY: No.

BUCK: I would put whatever money I could scrape together on the bet that it wouldn’t. And, by the way, I’m not trying to be flippant about the fact that cases are rising. I’m just saying the other side is wrong. They’re wrong. They were wrong before; they’re gonna be wrong again. It’s not going to do a darn thing, but it is indicative of the anxiety and the craziness. I mean, what’s…?

Right now I’m seeing more and more of people who are being told even if they’re in contact with someone who’s covid positive and they test negative, they’re still expected to quarantine. This is the case now. I mean, it’s been the case in Australia for a while. But some companies now I’m hearing are taking an increasingly aggressive posture on this. Why?

CLAY: Buck, I went out yesterday. I think I’m the first person to say this in regards to the world of sports. The NBA, the NFL, the NHL — for people out there who are paying attention to these organizations that test regularly — they’re about to shut down teams. They’re shutting down teams. They’re all overwhelmingly vaccinated, double vaxxed. A lot of them are boostered up too.

They’re still all testing positive for covid. And I ask the question — I’m the first person that I’ve seen ask this question, ’cause it happened last night for Monday Night Football. Why in the world are young, healthy athletes with no symptoms who test positive for covid not being allowed to play sports? I mean, The Flu Game for Michael Jordan is universally famous.

You can play right now if you have the flu. The guys go and they’re like, “Oh, do you have the flu or do you have covid? Oh, you have the flu. You’re fine to travel. You’re fine to play!” If you have covid, “Oh, my God! You gotta go lock yourself in your house for two weeks.” I mean, this is nonsensical.