UK Lifts Mask Mandate, But What Are We Doing?

BUCK: Let me take this for a moment, Clay, because I don’t know. Maybe in the U.K. they listen to some of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show because here is Boris Johnson. Now, I understand people are gonna say, “Oh, Buck, he’s doing this because of his own problem.” Yeah, okay. Fine. He threw a party, and he’s politically embattled right now, and so he’s trying to shake things up. But the point is, he has announced that they’re getting rid of all government mask mandates in the U.K. and they’re getting rid of it in the next 10 days or so. Listen to this. Play 25.

JOHNSON: Once regulations lapse, the government will no longer mandate the wearing of face masks anywhere. Mr. Speaker, from — from tomorrow we will no longer require face masks in classrooms, and the department…

HOUSE OF COMMONS: (cheers)

JOHNSON: And the department for education will shortly remove national guidance on their use in communal areas. In the country at large, we will continue to suggest the use of face coverings in enclosed or crowded spaces, particularly when you come into contact with people you don’t normally meet. But we will trust the judgment of the British people —

HOUSE OF COMMONS: (cheers)

JOHNSON: — and no longer criminalize anyone who chooses not to wear one.

BUCK: Now, what does the CDC in this country that is now trying to get, remember, masks to be upgraded do? They’re saying, “Cloth masks don’t work that well, everyone needs N95 masks.” Joe Biden is calling for 400 million N95 masks to be distributed to people for free. Clay, Germany did this over a year ago. They said, “Okay, now it’s gotta be N95 masks.” Do you know what the result was? I mean, I know you know what the result was.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I mean that rhetorically. Didn’t do a damn thing!

CLAY: Of course not, and can we, by the way…? Everyone in the media keeps saying, “Oh, everybody can get four free tests! Everybody’s gonna get free N95s!” They’re not free. We pay for them. Everybody out there who pays taxes pays for them. The government did not suddenly come into a great deal of money that it created. It took our money, and it now is using our money to buy tests, which it then is going to send to some people’s homes if you request the tests.

The bigger issue here, other than the fact that it’s not actually free… We all paid off it, at least those of us who pay taxes — which, by the way, federal income taxes are only paid by about half of the United States government, by United States citizens. Most people don’t ever talk about that but only about half of people actually pay federal income tax. The rest are getting redistributed funds from the 50% of us that pay.

But, Buck, this is doubling, tripling, quadrupling down on a failed policy that doesn’t work. I feel like we are in Groundhog Day where we’re coming back into march and April and May of 2020 when everybody is suddenly saying, “Wear masks and test” as if that’s going to lead us out of the covid experience. The vast majority of people out there are not suddenly going to solve their issues in the country by having masks that they have access to, N95s, or by being able to test for whether or not they have covid. By the way, the most anxious among us, four tests? They’re gonna go through in the first day that they get them, and then they’re gonna have to go out and buy another 20 because testing that you don’t have covid on one day, doesn’t mean that you don’t have it on the next day.

BUCK: Speaking to this issue, remember. How is it, Clay, that in June of 2020 people like you and me are going around saying that test-and-trace — which was an official program in New York City — was a joke? I knew it was a joke because they kept saying — and I’m being serious, folks. I want you to think about this. The city health authorities in New York were suggesting that test-and-trace for covid starting in June of 2020. Meaning they’re gonna find everyone you’ve been in contact with for an aerosolized virus, track them down and get them to test, and this is how we’re gonna stop the virus. Their precursor, if you will — or the analogous situation they used — was STD tracing.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: For which a lot of us said, ‘Are you public health authorities a bunch of morons?” and of course the answer to that question was “yes.” But here is Dr. Jonathan Reiner, who is probably some, blah, blah, was part of some, you know, FDA, CDC or something. He’s going on TV, one of these blue check MD types who’s saying that testing is critical for a return to normal. Play 14.

REINER: Going forward, yes, I think tests are a critical tool to help us get back to normal. It’s how we are going to be able to understand whether that tickle in your throat is just a tickle in your throat or whether it’s — it’s, uh, covid, and whether you need to stay home. It’s a tool to allow you to go visit your friends on Saturday night which is what we and our friends did before we met this past weekend. So I think it’s gonna be critical to have tests at — in every home. Uh, it would have been wonderful for us to have had this months ago, but here we are and I’m glad the administration is doing this.

BUCK: Okay. So just, first of all, the kissing up the administration, abject failure on testing and we all know it is a joke. This guy is a CNN medical analyst, professor of surgery at… Oh, Clay, I’m sorry to say, I think it’s GW. Oh, no.

CLAY: GW’s gone off the rails for a while now.

BUCK: So has Amherst. They’re overrun with commies so we got that in common. But here’s the point, man. We gotta be kidding me. They really think this is gonna be return to normal? We’re gonna testing every week?

CLAY: It’s four tests! So even the example he uses… First of all, if you are testing yourself to see whether you can hang out with a friend, you are such a huge loser that you need to actually examine many different aspects of your life, okay? If you feel well enough to hang out with a friend, go hang out with a friend. The idea that you’re showing up and swabbing your nostrils and checking to see whether or not you can hang out with a buddy or not?

I mean, be a bigger loser. I’m not sure that it’s possible. But even if you want to do that, Buck, it’s four tests! So if you and your wife with are going to hang out with somebody else and their wife, your using two tests on that one trip, right? And then if you are a gonna go hang out with somebody else and go watch a movie or go have a beer, that’s another test and then you’re done.

So are you saying that you need to buy hundreds of tests to be able to determine whether you can go out into the public in any kind of way? Because that’s the precedent that he’s setting, which is, “When you do anything social, you need to be testing yourself beforehand.” Are you gonna test daily? Are you gonna have 365 tests stacked up in your house to see whether or not you can go outside? It’s madness. It’s absolute madness that that would be the precedent being put in place for anyone.