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CLAY: I want to play this clip, Buck, which is pretty fantastic. And I thought Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, continues to nail a lot of the different angles associated with covid and governmental response, and he’s asking a big question. We’re seeing what’s happening now in Australia where basically there is no freedom, and Ron DeSantis asked the question — and it’s a good one, it’s a provocative one — is Australia freer than China?

DESANTIS: You guys look what’s going on in Australia right now. You know, they’re enforcing — after a year and a half, they’re still enforcing — lockdowns by the military, and that’s not a free country. It’s not a free country at all. In fact, I wonder why we would still have the same diplomatic relations when they’re doing that. I mean, is Australia freer than China, communist China right now? I don’t know. The fact that it’s even a question tells you something has gone dramatically off the rails.

BUCK: Let’s just think about some things that are true about Australia, Clay, right now. You’ve got Sydney and Melbourne in lockdown. They’ve been in lockdown for months. The military’s enforcing it. Police officers will give $3,000-plus fines for people being out of the radius — the allowable radius — from their homes, being outside without a mask on.

Outside without a mask? Mask wearing outside is stupid! Even the CDC has admitted this. There is no reason. But they always leave this like, “Well, what if,” Fauci will say, “you’re in close proximity?” No. Outside mask wearing is dumb. Everyone knows it, and yet they also have a curfew in place, 9 p.m. What, the virus goes to sleep?

It doesn’t make any sense. Or it doesn’t go to sleep; it comes out late at night? It makes no sense at all. And yet Australia also has had more cases in the last 60 days than at any time. It’s only got about 40%, 42% of the population vaccinated. And you know what they’re saying? They’re not gonna go back to normal ’til 80% of the population is vaccinated!

This is a country — let’s just all be very clear — that has only had a few thousand deaths total from covid. And yet they have been willing to live this way because they think the mitigation measures — and not the fact that it’s an island that cut off travel from the rest of the world — is what has saved them. It’s madness.

CLAY: They gambled, Buck, that Covid Zero was possible — and to be fair, this was what Fauci was saying was possible as recently as May, when Fauci came out and said, “Hey, we’re gonna be, I think, able to effectively eradicate this virus in many ways thanks to the vaccine,” and now it’s clear that’s not going to be the case.

And if anything, everybody in Australia and New Zealand and all these countries that strictly locked down? Buck, they’re sitting ducks because they have almost no natural immunity in those countries. And now there’s a more dangerous variant in terms of its ability to spread, the Delta variant. And effectively, I think, they’re just gonna have to throw up their hands and acknowledge in some way that their strategy is flawed.

BUCK: So here’s what I think you’ll see — and note Sweden. You never hear about Sweden anymore, because Sweden is essentially going back to full normalcy. I mean, there’s some things here and there, but Sweden has very low covid deaths.

CLAY: Is it Denmark that announced basically they’re done with all restrictions?

BUCK: Yeah. There are countries in Northern Europe that are making that move. But let’s move to the point about Australia and New Zealand. Even in Australia — this is interesting, I think. Perth, which is like way out west by itself — one of the most remote major cities in the world — is effectively completely open ’cause it has almost no covid and they think it’s because they mask up so hard. It’s like they don’t have access to an atlas or to Google Earth and understand it’s because you guys in Perth are in the middle of nowhere and you shut off all travel.

CLAY: (laughing) you’re a city in an island in the middle of nowhere.

BUCK: Right. So you could have Covid Zero at your substation in Antarctica. And so, yes, you can have it really limited in Perth but the problems for Australians and these other countries is they’re playing… The timeline they’re working with is gonna be a problem because natural immunity, as we know, is more durable and higher in efficacy than the vaccinated kind.

And so they’re gonna have to get boosts. They’re having a hard time rolling out the vaccine in Australia. They’re gonna have get boosters and boosters. Look. Australia is just interesting I think for our purposes because we think of it as England with nicer people and better weather.

And it is East Germany with koalas. This is what I keep saying. It’s gone completely out of its mind. And there are people in this country for whom Australia is what we should have done and what we should do going forward, not just on covid but on climate and on other things.

CLAY: If we didn’t have — and I think it’s important to keep hammering this home. Because as frustrated as many people have been over the last 18 months, if we didn’t have federalism in this country and if we didn’t have Republican governors who had proven… Buck, you have to look at the data now, right? You notice how Florida is starting to completely disappear again from the national media storyline?

That’s because cases in Florida have absolutely plummeted, and that has happened — as we suggested it would — because it tends to be the case that covid goes up in the summer because that’s when people go inside in Florida because it’s super hot, and they’re all sitting around in the air-conditioning, and that’s what’s likely to happen.

I’m looking at the most recent data, and the reason why I say this is significant is, there’s no real place in Australia where they can point out that there was no reason for what they did, right? Because if the whole country does the same thing, there’s no sort of comparison where you can look at it and say, “Okay. Well, this state did that, and their results were this.”

This is why Florida has been such a threat to Democrats and the Biden administration for so long because when they don’t lock down and they have the ability to see already the cases plummeting. This is why Fauci, I think, was so upset with the college football crowds ’cause he said: Oh, covid was gonna feast. And instead, it has come roaring back down because there’s no basis for it whatsoever to support.

BUCK: How much is anyone actually hearing right now from the national corporate news media by the 14-day change in covid cases is down almost 30%. So, hold on a second. Is this because we’re masking up so well now, or because people are talking about social distancing again? And if someone’s gonna say, “Oh, it’s because we have more and more people vaccinated,” oh, okay.

So more people being vaccinated in July and August didn’t have this effect, but now? Now they’re saying it does have the effect, right? They always take the data to fit whatever the preferred narrative is. We’ve known this is seasonal for the last year because we saw what happened last summer. And, as expected, you look at the covid hot spots; it is moving north.

It’s moving toward the places in the country that are more in the temperate band instead of the warmer Sunbelt and southeastern United States. So this is what’s happening. It’s not surprising, but the one that we have to see here is: Who’s right? The people that believe this winter we’re gonna be pretty much okay because of a lot of natural immunity as well as a lot of vaccinations and boosters out there?

Or are we gonna see pretty massive vaccine fairly and the collapse of the entire Fauciite narrative — which they’ll just replace with another one, by the way. They’ll just say you didn’t get the boosters fast enough. But it’s gonna be one or the other.

CLAY: There’s no doubt, and I think that’s where you kind of look at the overly narrative here, and that’s why I think they’re waiting as long as they can to implement all of their restrictions and regulations, ’cause if they put ’em all in place right now, Buck, and we still have a surge in the fall and the winter, it’s a clear indication that their entire strategy has failed.

Now, you and I know that their entire strategy has failed but it makes the narrative more difficult. They’re going to keep creating an opportunity to just lock down harder. That’s what they’re gonna try to convince us all. And again, as bad as it’s been in the United States, it’s amazing to me that a country like Australia has acceded to the authoritarian demands like we have seen them do. And it’s an interesting idea to think about, Buck, but there are all these kids on college campuses now that are protesting, and they’re demanding for the government to do more to them, which is something I’ve never really seen before.

BUCK: A lot of people want to be controlled. A lot of people actually prefer it.

CLAY: Control us more.

BUCK: Yeah. They prefer being told what to do with the false promise of freedom. If you look throughout human history, there are a lot of political movements, a lot of different political organizations and polities where the promise of being kept safe and warm is all that it takes, and people will go along with it and they’ll do whatever and they just don’t care.

That’s been the most disappointing thing for me about the response to covid in this country. I thought we were more of like — when push came to shove — a 70-30, “I actually want freedom and to make my own choices” country. We’re like 52-48 country on that, right? Maybe 50-50. We’re right there. Half the country wants to be controlled.

CLAY: And arguably, the younger people want to be controlled the most, right? Because sometimes people talk about how 2020 is a mirror image of 1968. The difference between, like, 1968 and now is the hippies and the anti-war movement were against most people in positions of power. Kids today are advocating for people in positions of power to be more powerful over them.

BUCK: Oh, yeah!

CLAY: It’s really a strange dynamic.

BUCK: The movement… The left has gone from being against The Man to being The Man. That’s where we are as a society.