FAUCI: But the big caveat is we should not be complacent, since the increased transmissibility of varion (sic) — Omicron — might be overridden by the sheer volume of the number of cases that may be a reduced severity but could still stress our hospital system. Because a certain proportion of a large volume of cases no matter what are going to be severe. So don’t take this as a signal that we can pull back from the recommendations that you just heard from Dr. Walensky about the need for vaccination, for boostering, for wearing masks, and all the other CDC recommendations.

BUCK: (impression) So just to be clear, here’s Fauci telling you, “Okay, yes, Omicron is a whole lot less lethal and dangerous than the previous things. But if you think for one second, everybody, that means you should be allowed to have your droplets freely spread in the air, you should no longer be double masked with a visor — preferably home alone in bed in the shower; six feet good, 60 feet better– do not think for a moment you can start to believe your life will ever return to normal.” I think I got it all. I think I got it.

CLAY: That is well said.

BUCK: (laughing)

CLAY: I will say this too. You know, I was watching the New Year’s Eve celebrations on a bunch of different channels. And I thought it was a stark contrast, for instance, my home city of Nashville had a huge outdoor concert, packed full of people, nobody in masks. Fox News was down on Second Avenue. They did their live broadcast. I thought Will Cain and Pete Hegseth and Rachel Campos-Duffy did a great job hosting that event.

But, Buck, the disconnect between where you are in New York City, where they had the Times Square socially distanced celebration going on — and there was one moment that crystallized for me more than anything else. They had a couple propose live in Times Square. The girl said “yes,” both of them were marked, and they got up and kissed wearing their masks!

Sometimes you can point out the absurdity. I would love for Dr. Fauci to be asked — to your point, Buck, he’s never said this is too much — do you believe if a couple outdoors proposes to each other, the woman says “yes.” She slides the ring on her finger, he does as well, this a joyous moment for both. They’re going to have this moment for the rest of their life. Do you believe they should kiss while wearing masks given that Omicron currently exists and is spreading as it is?

BUCK: I know this is a family show —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — but I just want to point out that there were news stories earlier on the pandemic about how during —

CLAY: Intimacy.

BUCK: — fun-fun time, you were supposed to maintain masked discipline. Now, not masks for the purposes of whatever stuff people were into, you were supposed to wear medical-grade masks while you were in the throes of intimacy, lest your partner infect you with covid. That is a real thing that so-called public health officials at different points in this were pushing. Clay, there is no limit to their absurdity and their stupidity, and we keep coming back to this. Fauci knows. His whole thing, his whole secret sauce is always, “I’m saving lives and that’s all I do and I’ll never tell people that they should live more normal lives.”

CLAY: I would just love… There’s a lot of media that listens to this show. I would love for the media to take a challenge and trying to come up with scenarios that Dr. Fauci says, no, no, that’s going too far. Because when I saw the couple getting engaged and kissing each other while wearing their masks, which, by the way, I don’t even know what that would feel like.

But basically, you’re just like you’re kissing the interior of your own mask. (laughing) It’s totally absurdly ridiculous. And I have to think that if that couple gets married and they stay married for a long time, at some point they will look back at their engagement photos and say, “Boy, we were imbeciles. We got engaged and kissed while wearing or masks to celebrate.”

BUCK: Remember how there were some kids if you went to sleep-away camp or in your opinion grade school occasionally be a kid who had a blanket, like a little blanket that they would want to keep?

CLAY: My kids all had security blankets.

BUCK: Right. Security blankets. Right. Okay. The Facebook mask for covid has turned into effectively an anxiety blanket for adults. This is really what it is. In my building here in New York we have to — I do not, but we are supposed to — mask and will say the nice thing is every time you walk into a gym in New York City and someone is unmasked you got a freedom brother or freedom sister right there.

CLAY: What percentage of people are masked in the gym typically when you go to the gym.

BUCK: Half, I’d say right now.

CLAY: Oh God.

BUCK: We’re in a private gym; it’s half.

CLAY: Yes!

BUCK: The ones that really amaze me are the ones who are on the treadmill, because if the mask doesn’t bother you on the treadmill, you aren’t working out hard enough.

CLAY: Exactly.

BUCK: You might as well just go outside and walk on the street. You’re not actually working out. But I’d say it’s about half, because, Clay, let’s understand this. The reason that they initially put in the vaccine passport system in the gyms — ’cause we have to unpack this for everybody because otherwise they just keeping moving the goalpost and we’re in this dizzying wheel. We’re the gerbils on the Fauci wheel. We’re all just running and running and running. He’s going, “Fastuh! Fastuh!” It’s a horrible nightmare that I have that recurs.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You know, what we have is we were told vaccine passports will make us safe so we don’t need to mask up in gyms. What we have then instituted as vaccine passports, and we find out, guess what? Now we have to mask up anyway in the gym, and they don’t say vaccine passports failed, at which point you say, “Well, hold on a second. Why? Why should we not look at this policy differently considering that the promise of it clearly failed?” They don’t care. It is a post evidence era we are in.

CLAY: It’s a great question and this is another one that I would love to have asked of Dr. Fauci. A million cases a day, the years, basically, into covid. If wearing masks everywhere, if covid vaccine passports all of these things going on, if that is success, what would failure have looked like? No one ever points that out, Buck, where they might say, “Oh, well, it would be so much worse if we hadn’t had the vaccine or if we hadn’t had masks or we hadn’t had…”

No, no. We have now right now a million cases a day happening in the United States. That is almost quadruple the all-time high of last January. If this is success, if this is vaccine success, what would vaccine failure have actually looked like? It’s a great question. Okay. We’re having a million cases, you’re telling me, and this is vaccine success — four times the high we’ve ever had two years in — what would vaccine failure have looked like? There isn’t really an answer. They don’t have their talking points ready to even tell us, Buck, what vaccine failure would have looked like.

BUCK: Here’s just a mind-blowing thing that everyone needs to spend time thinking about. I don’t pretend to have all the answers about this — no one has all the answers about it — but we’ve been pointing out for some time on this show, Clay, that more people have died in this country under Biden than under Trump. Now, that includes about nine months of vaccine distribution under Biden that did not occur under Trump, obviously, ’cause we didn’t have a vaccine, and it also would include a whole lot more natural immunity built up within the system just from more and more people getting infected over time.

No one has really explained that, but let’s take a step back for a second and think about this. If their claim — and this is the claim — is that it would have been much wore without all the mitigation and all the masks and these measures, how is it that right now we are at an all-time national high for caseload with a lot more natural immunity, vaccinated immunity, and a lot of mitigation measures in place relative to where we were in January last year with no vaccinated immunity and less natural immunity in place? I know they’re just gonna say, “Oh, it’s ’cause Omicron is so much more transmissible.” They told us Delta was so much more! (chuckles) How much more transmissible can stuff really get?

CLAY: And also why we think it’s gonna stop with Omicron? If that’s your argument, “Well, it just kept getting more transmissible,” why isn’t there gonna be another variants that’s just as transmissible? Ask your most die-hard vaccine friends. Say, “I understand you’re saying the vaccine is a big success. It’s a million cases a day. What would failure have looked like?” I’d just love to hear the answer ’cause we’re at an all-time, worst-case scenario right now.