BUCK: “The CDC,” this is on CNN right now, Clay, “launches new forecasting center to be like the National Weather Service for infectious disease.” We’re now going to have the CDC harassing us with (Fauci impression), “We think the virus could go up, could go down, could be in the middle. Not too hot, not too warm.”

CLAY: Yeah. This reminds me of, remember — you will certainly remember it, ’cause you were in the CIA — when we were gonna get the color alerts for how dangerous terror attacks were?

BUCK: That was not one of the Bush administration’s better moments, I will say. That was not good.

CLAY: Does that still exist? I don’t even know if —

BUCK: ‘Cause everyone’s walking around like, “It’s an orange day.”

CLAY: Yes. Yes.

BUCK: What am I supposed to do? What do you want me to do, orange day? Because the thing, people say, “Well, it’s for government readiness.” All right. Well, then have it be like a government internal memo. But we don’t need — I don’t need — to be all worried about my orange day. Look at the public hysteria over masks. It’s definitely not helpful to tell everybody.

CLAY: The reason why I bring it up is hopefully this CDC platform is going to go that way, right? I can almost in my head see, like, are people gonna care next year about the CDC’s analysis of viral threats, especially ’cause they get everything wrong anyway? They’re like economists, Buck. They’re good at telling you what’s going to happen after it’s already happened — and even then they’re still kind of making it up. But the data they can use. But they almost never get things right in advance.

BUCK: I will tell you one bit of happy news for everybody. So CNN+ lasted a month. Philadelphia’s mask mandate lasted four days.

CLAY: That’s really funny too. They solved covid. They put the masks on, Buck, and it just went away.

BUCK: Went away immediately.