Shanghai Covid Craziness: “Curb Your Desire for Freedom!”

CLAY: I am reading about all of the craziness that is going on in Shanghai right now, as they have basically locked down Shanghai over covid, and they continue to try to implement a zero-covid, covid-zero policy in China, and they’ve argued that it’s the legitimizing factor for their government.

But the result has been not that many people have gotten covid in terms of natural immunity, and also whatever vaccine they are distributing in China is even less effective than the vaccines that we have in the United States and we have in most Western democracies.

BUCK: That’s not good.

CLAY: That’s not good at all. So I couldn’t believe this. Their lockdown is so stringent, they have, as you said, drones coming around and telling people not to attempt to have any freedom. But also they aren’t allowing people to go outside and walk their dogs. I don’t think most Americans even understand how stringent their lockdowns are.

BUCK: What they’re doing is a real lockdown. We never even did real lockdown in this country. It was disastrous what we did; don’t get me wrong. But in China they were soldering people into their homes, I mean, actually like, you know, soldering the door shut.

CLAY: So you can’t even come outside.

BUCK: You couldn’t come out no matter what, right? Actually, we have… Now, it’s in Chinese, but we just think you should hear the sort of 1984 Orwellian vibe here. Imagine you’re in Shanghai; you’re 30, 40 stories up. You’re trying to either sing out your window or you’re calling out to your neighbors ’cause you haven’t been able to leave your home in, what, a week now?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: And this is what you hear.

BUCK: Okay. You get the idea. Clay, that translates to — these are drones flying in the sky all over Shanghai out people’s windows — “Please comply with covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.” Fauci would be so proud.

CLAY: It’s even worse than that, which is scary to think about. Think about what you would imagine if you were in an American the city and you weren’t allowed to leave. People aren’t allowed to walk their dogs, Buck. They’ve been buying fake grass in advance of the lockdown so they can try to convince their animals to go on the fake grass ’cause they’re used to taking the animals outside.

This is a Chinese official with a megaphone yelling — again, this is in Chinese, but he’s telling them — I will play this clip — “Couples should sleep separately. Don’t kiss. Hugging is not allowed. Eat separately. Thank you for your cooperation.” Listen to this.

CLAY: There are lots of Americans, there are lots of expats, there are lots of people who are not Chinese that live in Shanghai, and they’re losing their minds over this lockdown, which is still going on and cases are still going up because Omicron is so easily spread, and there is no real natural immunity to speak of.

BUCK: Shanghai is a very international city. I spent some time there recently, and there are a lot of Westerners there, a lot of people from all over the world there and so they’re all obviously subject to this as well. But I think, unfortunately, Clay, we see this… I know I’m joking about it with Fauci. But we see this and say, “Look at this madness.” And I think there are people in this country that think, “Maybe we could use some of this.”

How could we deploy this in our own country? I think there are Fauciites who still hold to this idea that, “Yeah, they’re gonna transition the messaging a little bit, they’re gonna shift some of what they want,” but they haven’t given up on this covid apparatus idea. No, not at all. Think of all the people that are now employed in some capacity as these covid bureaucrats.

CLAY: Yeah. Well, what I think is interesting, too, is you’re starting to see some significant rebellion in China. Now, they’re canceling it, because of course you can’t actually say anything publicly that criticizes the Chinese government in any way, but I was reading in I believe this was the Wall Street Journal the other day.

After one official newspaper published a commentary about the government’s persistence in pursuing a zero covid policy, the Weibo, which is basically the Chinese Twitter, had 10,000 comments immediately, and the vast majority of those comments were begging the government to end the strategy — and all the comments immediately disappeared by the next day.

But everybody is finally starting to say, “Wait a minute. This zero-covid policy doesn’t make any sense,” and I wonder whether you’re going to see further rebellion ’cause you know, Buck. I mean, you were in New York, which is one of the most locked down places. People start to go a little bit crazy. Imagine if you’re truly locked down in Shanghai for over a week like what’s going on right now.

BUCK: How far are we…? I should say, and maybe will be again, from this ourselves, though? We said, “Oh, look at Weibo, they would make all those comments disappear.” I’ve been dinged dozens of times at this point on Twitter and on Facebook for speaking the truth about masks and lockdowns. Always ended up being correct, by the way.

You’ve had problems, we’ve always had problems trying to speak out the truth on this, Clay. So, you know, we see China and we said, “Oh, my gosh. This Orwellian dystopia with the drones in the sky.” Okay, we don’t have drones in the sky. We’ve got little Fauci running around, the tyrant Smurf, telling us to get ready for masking again. We’re not that much better in this country.

CLAY: Well, and not only that, I was talking about all of those comments, those 10,000 comments be erased. The Chinese government is doing that in China. Big Tech is doing it in the United States.

BUCK: That’s what I mean.

CLAY: Right? We think, “Oh, we’ve got the First Amendment; we’re protected.” But what we’ve basically allowed is we have default given all that power to Big Tech. It’s not our government, necessarily, doing it, but they’re colluding and doing it in concert.