The New York Times Admits Mask Mandates Don’t Work

CLAY: Buck, we’ve been running on this platform, you and I, for years now, which is kids don’t need to be in masks at school. You don’t need to be wearing masks on airplanes. By the way, what percentage of people would you say, Buck, on your airplane flight over the weekend were wearing masks?

BUCK: I actually tell you for a moment about this? ‘Cause this was fascinating, Clay.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So, I flew from New York to Bermuda and back. Bermuda is a beautiful island, lovely people, can’t say enough good things about the island of Bermuda. Great place. Okay. It is in fact the rule there that you have to mask up on your way to the plane and then you can take your mask off on the plane. Meaning when you are in line and in the airport, you must mask up. You take the mask off when you take your seat inside these airplanes.

CLAY: Aren’t there some New York City rules like that too if you’re at LaGuardia?

BUCK: I think. I will tell you, I just walked through JFK. I was at JFK, I walked through JFK yesterday.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Nobody is enforcing mask wearing inside the terminal, nobody, ’cause I think they realize New Yorkers maybe would finally say, “I got one finger for you, buddy.” That’s what we say here in New York.

CLAY: So on the airplane flight, because everywhere that I fly, nobody basically is wearing masks. I’m curious in New York City is it starting to fade or did a large percentage of people flying to and from Bermuda still have masks on?

BUCK: There was a person on my flight who had on — I’m not kidding — double masks with an N95 and a face shield, triple masked, Clay. Now, I just want to be clear. I was going to take a photo because whenever I talk about this, people say, “You’re lying!” Why would I lie about this, number one, and number two, I don’t want to shame anyone.

CLAY: Yeah, right

BUCK: Clearly this is a person who has been emotionally destroyed by Fauciism where they can’t assess risk and they live in a prison of fear. And now finally because the rest of us are living free lives we can look at them and say, “What are you doing? What is happening with you?” But I’d say about my flight there, 20% of the flight from New York to Bermuda was masked.

CLAY: Okay. So I’m continuing to be fascinated by that and also by how people are going to tiptoe up to the data that has been clear for years now, that kids in schools with masks versus kids not wearing masks. Remember you were labeled a domestic terrorist by the Department of Justice if you showed up — like I did back in August — to argue against kids having to wear masks in schools?

Now that the data is all out there, and it’s impossible… If you truly were the party of science, it’s impossible to argue that mask mandates work. And so the New York Times this morning, Buck, one of the first things I read when I woke up, Tuesday morning, I get an email, the morning edition early kind of breaking down where the stories are going from the New York Times. One of their reporters named David Leonhardt who has actually been probably the most rational and realistic associated with covid relative to New York Times standards.

The entire lede in his email this morning was that masks don’t work. And, by the way, the headline was, “Why Masks Work But Mandates Haven’t.” That’s the headline of the whole piece, which is the way that they’re trying to tiptoe up to it because the conceit of this argument is, masks work, but the way people wear masks doesn’t actually work so that some hypothetical universe where you have a super tight N95. You never have to take a drink; you never have to take a bite to eat. That’s the way they’re trying to tiptoe up to the mask argument. Mandates don’t work, they’re acknowledging, but masks themselves theoretically would.

BUCK: This goes to human usage, actual usage of the product versus what they say in a laboratory study would be the use. There are a couple of problems with the mandates from the very beginning. First of all, you’re really lying to only get one covid variant one time, right? I know there have been people who have been reinfected. But generally speaking, you get covid once, right, the first round of it.

Just like you got the flu, you get that strain of flu, you probably won’t get that again, but you might get the next strain of flu. The point being if you are dealing with let’s say a six-month window of high level of infection for a certain variant, that you’re wearing a mask maybe 5% of your life is moronic beyond words because you’re going to get it in some of the other aspects, in some of the other moments of your life. This is why on planes, for example, Clay, was always mask up between bites.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: It was never a mask policy. It was a mask-up-between-bites policy, which meant that it was absurd. This was a submarine with screen doors, to borrow from the old joke, right? This is, “Well, submarines work!” Not if you have screen doors, right? Not if you actually are going to keep breaking the seal of the mask all the time. It doesn’t actually work for you. And then it would almost be like you had a mandate… Are you an ice cream guy, by the way? ‘Cause I’m trying to cut down on ice cream.

CLAY: I do love ice cream. Not to the extent that Joe Biden does, or even Ali. Did Ali ever admit that she was getting ice cream at 8:30 this morning when she texted us about the show?

BUCK: I think she’s pulling some audio right now because she might be getting some ice cream.

CLAY: She didn’t respond to those texts about it. She had a picture of herself.

BUCK: Getting ice cream at 8 a.m.? That was hero stuff right there.

CLAY: That is like getting it out there. What’s the earliest you’ve ever had ice cream in your life?

BUCK: Oh, man. I don’t know. Probably lunchtime. I’ve probably snuck in a couple of scoops, two scoops at lunchtime.

CLAY: Morning ice cream is like morning alcohol. It just doesn’t happen that often.

BUCK: But just imagine the government… I gotta say there’s a lot of morning drinking going on in Bermuda on the beach around me, but that’s a different thing.

CLAY: There’s a lot of morning drinking in the world of sports, by the way, for tailgating, as you found out.

BUCK: Oh, yeah. That was fun.

CLAY: You could break the seal early in the morning when you got a football game.

BUCK: You did break those very friendly fraternity brothers in Tuscaloosa, the red cup full of that elixir.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I felt kind of funny after I drank it. Anyway, imagine the government had a mandate that everyone had to lose weight so they’re going to ban ice cream eating in public places. But then you go, “Well, hold on a second, no one’s actually losing weight,” like, this isn’t really working, right? ‘Cause you’re only banning it in restaurants.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: You’re not banning it at home, and so in the aggregate people are gonna eat ice cream if they want to eat ice cream. Mask mandates were essentially that. It was when you’re in certain situations you’re going to wear this mask that’s not highly effective anyway. You’re not even gonna wear it if the whole time but there are gonna be all these other situations where you’re not mandated to wear a mask and you’re just gonna get infected. You’re effectively gonna be eating the ice cream behind closed doors and the scale is not gonna budge. You know, this was the mentality all along was this was for show and for compliance. It wasn’t actually rooted in the science.

CLAY: But this was interesting. I’m gonna read to you from the New York Times ’cause I do wonder when people in the New York Times read this, their audience, are they all still unaware of what the data actually says? Because it only took a little bit over two years. And here’s what I’m reading directly from New York Times. “You would think communities where mask wearing has been more common would have had many fewer covid infections, but that hasn’t been the case.

“In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst covid outbreaks. Advocates of mandates sometimes argue they do have a big effect, even if it’s not evident in population-wide data, because of how many other factors are at play, but this argument seems unpersuasive.”

Buck, you got banned, as you well know. Your articles, as you tried to share them, you got banned. If you dared to say what the New York Times is now saying two years after the data had been quite clear for some time on masks. So, mask mandates don’t work, as acknowledged by the New York Times. What is the next step here? Because what they’re trying to say is, as we just talked about, your analogy of the screen door on submarine is a good one, “Oh, well, masks might work but the way that we wear them might work,” which is tiptoeing up to masks don’t work, right?

BUCK: Right. The point is unless you’re going to have a no-facial-hair rule with a fitted N95 that you maintain 100% — you don’t touch it, you don’t move it, you don’t take it off — all bets are off. The moment that you are breathing the air like everybody else, the previous thousand hours of mask wearing that you have does not matter. You only get infected one time. You don’t get infected every day. So if you’re ever exposed, the notion of limiting your exposure over months or at this point even years is absurd.

This makes no sense, and he actually… In the piece he goes to what I was saying about, you know, banning the public eating of ice cream and then wondering why no one is losing weight from the change in the ice cream habits. “Airplane passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Restaurant patrons go maskless as soon as they walk in the door. School children let their masks slide down their faces.

“University of Michigan suggests between 25 and 30% of Americans consistently,” meaning basically always, “wear their masks beneath their nose,” which means they might as well not be wearing a mask at all, which just goes to the whole point: This was always a joke. This was always stupid. People that were relying on this thing were relying on it as an anxiety napkin. (whining) “I’m scared so I wear the mask.” Or a political, as we know, a political sign. “I’m a good, smart person who believes Biden and Build Back Better and wants all of the greatness of the Biden regime to continue on, so I wear my mask.” Actually, two! Actually three of them, as we know sometimes.

CLAY: So, yeah, and I think the question becomes now… So, by the way, we were right. Everybody out there listening to us, we took a lot of slings and arrows over whether or not —

BUCK: Did you get more heat on this issue, did you have more ill will online over this…? I’ve never gotten as many people saying horrifying things to me as I have for the last two years over masks. I’m right-wing, man, crazy.

CLAY: It’s wild because I was arguing, obviously, through the prism of sports for much of this. I mean, think about how stupid this is, Buck. You had guys playing football and basketball, tackling each other, running into each other for the entirety of the game, and then when they were on the sideline, they put a mask on. You had guys running full speed, tackling each other throughout an entire game, and then after the game they told them they couldn’t shake hands.

And when they were on the sideline, they were wearing masks. You still see it. Right now, the NBA Finals are who don’t start, and both head coaches are going to have a mask on on the NBA sideline. Now, they’re gonna it down around their chin for most of the time ’cause in order to be heard, you have to pull it down and yell at your team. But they are still doing this, and so I looked at it through the prism of sports.

Like, hey, explain to me why a linebacker with flatten a running back but they can’t shake hands after the game or why be there has to put a mask on when he’s standing on the sideline but he doesn’t have to wear a mask when he’s on the field. It was always stupid and nonsensical. So, yeah, and people would get mad at me when I pointed this out.

BUCK: Yeah. I wonder who’s gonna do the first in-depth study of the amazing correlation between ostentatious mask wearing, pronouns in bio, and Ukraine flag emojis in your social media. These are three. You wouldn’t think these things all go together, and yet they do.

CLAY: And, by the way, how about pushing Biden on this, ‘cause he’s still wearing masks halftime time?

BUCK: Clay, he wears a mask outside and takes it off. He does what I had to do in Bermuda on the plane: Wears the mask in like the at least important place. Now, to be fair plane other is cleaner than the other air but they had that wrong for so long. But it’s so dumb. The whole thing makes no sense.

CLAY: Did you see him when he landed in South Korea? He put a mask on to walk down the stairs, immediately took it off when he started shaking hands with everybody! But the reason why I bring this up is, this is an easy question, and I know Peter Doocy listens sometimes to the show. I think it’s a straightforward question, if Biden ever took a question. By the way, he almost never takes questions now. But you claim to be representing the party of science. Given that all the data reflects mask mandates don’t work. Why is anyone in the White House still wearing a mask?

BUCK: Look at the Justin Trudeau anti-gun ceremony, all of them standing in the background saying, “We’re wearing masks, eh?” Yeah, give me a break.