CLAY: So how depressed are you, Buck, to be back in New York City right now after being in sunny, free Florida for the new year and the holiday season? I really think there are a lot of people out there who traveled to the free states during the holiday season, and they’re back in whatever place they may be sort of caught in all this ridiculous absurdity, and it has to weigh on you, right, when you walk around in New York City compared to being in Miami?

BUCK: Clay, it’s like being stuck in the Manhattan gulag or something right now.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You got vaccine mandates everywhere. It’s freezing cold outside. Everyone’s depressed. They’re masked up outdoors — and look, I understand. We’re going through a covid surge. But all this stuff that they’re doing in New York, all the mandates, all these restrictions isn’t gonna stop it. I mean, the fact that now there’s a mask mandate in my gym?

It’s just gonna make me lazier and fatter over time ’cause I’m not gonna go to the gym as much ’cause I don’t want to choke on my stupid mask. I probably will just go and not wear the mask. But the point is this is now an emotional disorder for a lot of people. Covid is out there. Omicron, thank heavens, is actually less dangerous than Delta.

CLAY: It could be a positive, which is the way we left it before we left for the holidays. We were looking at the data, and there’s some sign that that’s gonna actually help.

BUCK: I know tons of people personally who have gotten sick and they believe that it’s Omicron. I never know if you get tested if they tell you necessarily if it’s Omicron or not. I haven’t really seen. I’ve been tested a few times. When I was positive, I was just positive. So I’m not sure if they tell you the variant necessarily, but certain people think they’ve had Omicron and they got sick for a few days and then they’re pretty much okay.

Maybe four or five days they feel kind of crappy. Also known as a cold, folks. This has been out there for a long time, that there are respiratory viruses. Those of us who were saying that the flu kills anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 — overwhelmingly it is seniors, but 40,000 to 80,000 people in an average flu year — in this country, those are just the facts. That’s the reality of it. You know, it’s a dangerous world, and we’re all on borrowed time.

Really so much you can really do. But now this has become… It’s like a culture. It’s really like a religious belief for a lot of people that they are “fighting a virus,” kind of like the way they fight climate change by, you know, taking a bicycle once a month instead of a cab. They think firefighting a virus by doubling masking. Oh, whatever happened to double masking, by the way? Remember was a year ago, Fauci was saying (impression), “The new data says that a two-mask regimen,” and I always want say, “Fauch, why you such a wimp? Go triple mask, my man. Triple mask or bust!”

CLAY: I remember when I testified in front of Congress in March about the power of Big Tech. All of the Democrat aides… I remember just thinking, “You sheep disgust me.” They would make a big show before they were going to go talk to their member, whoever it was, the people sitting in the chairs behind the congresspeople. Some of these people had triple masks on, Buck. I remember looking at them.

BUCK: Have you seen a triple mask or just double mask?

CLAY: It felt like it was a triple mask. They made me testify in my freaking mask, right? There’s video of me. I’m sitting there with the mask on, it’s trying to fall down. I’m testifying. There’s nobody close to me. I’m speaking into a microphone, and it’s kind of funny that you watch me, I’m having to deal with it the whole time.

BUCK: ‘Cause I have seen… I wasn’t just bringing up for no reason. Double mask with the Plexiglas visor thing.

CLAY: That’s what the defense secretary did, and he just tested positive for covid. Remember when he showed up and you’re like, “How do you portray a point of strength when you’re double masking with a shield, a mask shield walking in front of the troops?”

BUCK: I’m just wondering you may have been also there was that photo making the rounds over the weekend? It was like a band for one of the football games and they had masks, the band on masks on outside —

CLAY: Michigan’s band, outside in Miami, all had masks on.

BUCK: They had masks on. But, Clay, some of them have holes in the masks so they can play the instruments if you’re playing a woodwind. (laughing) Think about that for a second.

CLAY: It’s so infuriating.

BUCK: So stupid.

CLAY: I was watching the game between Michigan and Georgia, of course, and I tweeted Georgia. It was one of the opening shots. First of all, it’s not like… I guess the band is the anti-AOCs. Nobody wants to sleep with band members, and it’s not like they’re driving sexual desire through the roof anyway. But if you make the band all wear masks outdoors in a football stadium in the state of Florida, by the way, guys and girls? I just felt sorry for ’em.

BUCK: The tuba players in the Clay and Buck audience are gonna send you some angry emails over that one.

CLAY: People come after me all the time.

BUCK: Tuba players get the ladies — or the guys, depending what their preference is. So, yeah.