Alex Berenson Analyzes Covid Data, Elon Musk and Twitter’s Importance

BUCK: Our buddy, Alex Berenson, in the mix now. You know him as the author of Pandemia, an excellent book on the covid pandemic and the many lies told by the so-called medical establishment during it and also check out his Substack. I am a subscriber. Full disclosure. I think it’s excellent and so is Clay. Mr. Alex Berenson, good to have you back, sir.

BERENSON: Good to be back, guys.

BUCK: So, it feels like now… You know, usually we understand where, if you will, the covid narrative from the Fauciites is going. I feel like I’m not seeing their authoritarian matrix as clearly right now. You have some cases rising a little bit in places like New York City. I’m seeing some masking coming back. Philly’s brought masking back.

But, meanwhile, everyone’s seeing what’s going on in Shanghai where they turned the entire city of 25 million into prisoners and are murdering people’s pets to prevent them from being reservoirs of covid as if that’s going to do anything. I mean, Alex, where are we with this right now? It feels like… You tell us.

BERENSON: It’s very interesting you mentioned Shanghai because I have not written about that. I’ve been a little light on the Substack the last couple weeks in part because I’m putting a book proposal together for books about the origins of covid and how we got to 2020, which is a heck of an interesting story. But I’m working on a Substack today on Shanghai because it is so fascinating what’s happened there.

You know, the Chinese have gone through this insanely intense lockdown the last couple weeks in Shanghai, which they might or might not try to spread to the rest of the country. And, yeah, it’s insane for a couple reasons. First of all, it’s clearly not working. They had 27,000 cases in Shanghai. Shanghai is a big city of 25 million people as you said. But they had 27,000 cases in a day which is the equivalent to more than 300,000 U.S. So, it’s not working, yet they’re doubling down on it, and no one has really offered a great explanation as to why that is.

CLAY: So, Alex, when you look at the numbers out here, we talked I think it was a couple weeks ago about what was going to happen with BA.2 and there’s no doubt that in the East Coast of the United States so far there has been an increase in the BA.2, but it has not been that substantial. What is the data showing you about what we are going to see from BA.2 right now?

BERENSON: So, it’s interesting with BA.2. You’re right. There hasn’t been as big of an increase as I think people expected, and if you look at the U.K. and Northern Europe, those places had a big surge last month. But it wasn’t as big as the original Omicron surge, and it came back down. Now, to me that suggests that there is probably some protection that you have from — if you are infected with Omicron as so many people were from — BA.2.

So that this variant, you know, doesn’t look like it’s gonna cause this massive wave of infection, slash, reinfection that we thought. It may also be it’s just so close to the original Omicron surge that people whether they got a booster, which we know provides some short-term protection, or whether they were infected and recover and have some protection, I don’t think you can read too much into this.

There will be another variant, and it won’t be one that’s on anybody’s radar right now. And we don’t know when that’ll happen, but it will happen in the next couple months. So, you sort of have to think about that, not about what’s happening right now. I’ll tell you one fact that you will not hear anywhere else, which is that right now in the U.S. we’re at the lowest level of covid deaths since last summer when we were as low as we had been since this whole thing started.

In the U.K. and in Northern Europe which are much more highly vaccinated and boosted country than U.S., they are not at those low levels. In fact, the U.K., which is only one-fifth the size of the U.S., has, like, about two-thirds as many covid deaths right now. So, how you get from that to saying vaccinations work in the long run? I don’t know. They’re gonna keep saying it. They’re gonna keep saying, “Go get boosted, go get double boosted, go get triple boosted.” But when you actually look at what’s happening on the ground in the European countries that are highly mRNA vaccinated, you’re not seeing any benefit right now.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Alex Berenson, author of Pandemia, and you can subscribe to his Substack where he handles a whole range of topics including covid. Alex, if I had to make you, we’re gonna force you to sit down in a chair with a crystal ball and tell us what you see this September, October. Around that period of time, are there mask mandates and reinstituted vaccine mandates in major American cities and in blue states in the run-up to the midterm elections?

BERENSON: Wow, you’re gonna make me, huh? I’m gonna say no. That’s not because I think, you know, I think this is gonna continue. I mean, I think we’re gonna live with covid now. We’re gonna live with it, the vaccines have failed, they failed to eradicate it or eliminate it. You know, none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci said that last week. But are we gonna see a political response like we saw two years ago or last year?

I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think anybody has the willpower. I was in Utah earlier this week and the masks were off and, you know, once the masks come off for everybody — not for most people but nor everybody — it’s over. Right? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what’s happening medically on some level. Politically the epidemic ends when the masks come off and I don’t think people in blue states… I mean, there’s these hard-core people that can’t get over this, but I think most people are done at this point — and things would have to get really, really bad for that to change.

CLAY: Alex, you’re in the middle of a lawsuit with Twitter right now. Elon Musk is trying to take over Twitter. It appears that Twitter is doing everything they can to keep that from happening. What is your take there, and what impact, if any, do you think it might have on your situation where you have been suspended and basically kicked off Twitter? With Elon back, I presume you’d have a lot better chance to get back on. I’m curious what your relationship is like with him and how closely you’ve been following this story?

BERENSON: Well, I’ve (garbled) been following it very closely. You know, it’s not a secret that a couple years ago Elon and I, you know, had a discussion actually about founding a website or a news service that would have been sort of an independent, you know, counterweight to places like the New York Times. It didn’t go forward, probably for the best.

I will also say that, you know (laughing), that I threw out the idea to him a couple weeks ago that he should buy Twitter, and at that time, you know, he had — I think he had — a hundred billion dollars instead of 300 billion so the idea of spending 50 billion on Twitter probably wasn’t as interesting to him. But I’m glad to see that he’s decided to do this.

I am certainly rooting for him. I believe. I believe that he believes in free speech. I believe that he — and hope that he — would run Twitter in a hands-off way. You know, look if it becomes something where he takes it over and you’re not allowed to say anything about Elon Musk and Tesla, that would be a disaster. I don’t think that’s what he has in mind.

I would love for him to win, because I believe he would open it back up to me and all the people who’ve been banned unfairly and wrongly. Meanwhile, my lawsuit is going ahead. We have a hearing in federal court in San Francisco two weeks from today. We will hope for the best. I believe that Twitter… I believe we have a strong case, but Section 230 provides a lot of protection for these companies; that’s not a secret.

BUCK: By the way, Musk just said apparently during his TED Talk that he has a Plan B if the initial buyout offer — purchase offer, I should say — is not accepted. I think we all know the board is not going to accept. I’m not even sure… We all assume, whether it’s even official or not, that they’re not gonna accept this. We know what kind of woke lunacy is at the top of the Twitter mic. Alex, do you think…? I mean, you know how these corporations function, how this stuff goes down. Do you think he’s gonna be able to pull this off?

BERENSON: I mean, it’s tricky because he can put a number on the table that it becomes very hard for them to say “no” to. They have a fiduciary duty to shareholders, and Elon comes along — you know, I know he said 54.20 is his best offer. But he makes it 64.20, we know it’s gonna end in 4.20, whatever.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: (laughing)

BERENSON: Whether he makes it 74.20 and he says, “But you know what? You have a week to make up your mind and then I’m gonna start my own competitor,” and so if he does actually do that; the stock goes back to 30 bucks. Well, if you’re a board member, you get sued for that. And so there is a number where I think it becomes very hard for them to say “no.”

I don’t know if it’s this number, but we know that Elon has the money to do this if he wants to force it. Trying to guess how the world’s richest man, you know, what he’s gonna do is probably even harder than trying to figure out what covid’s gonna do. But he has the ability to, you know, in the words of The Godfather, “make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

CLAY: Alex, last question for you quickly here. For people out there who may not know what the impact of Twitter is, a lot of our people aren’t on there.

BERENSON: Sure.

CLAY: Can you crystallize for us what it meant to you to be able to use that platform and make your arguments — and I understand you still have Substack, but — how that has changed with you not being able to speak to the masses on that town square?

BERENSON: Oh, sure. I mean, that’s a great, great point. And I think it’s lost sometimes because Twitter is not as big — you know, it’s not nearly as big as Facebook, it’s not nearly as big as Amazon or Google. You know, in terms of its size and its market cap, it is smaller. But in terms of its reach as a journalism platform — and this is a point we make in our lawsuit — it is by far utmost important platform for journalism in the world.

Twitter is the reason why two years ago at this time — two years and a month ago — people, most people didn’t know who I was. If they did know me, they knew me, Buck (garbled), as you knew me, as a spy novelist who had once worked for the New York Times. I was able to present facts about covid to an audience that was basically unlimited on Twitter, and no one could stop me.

And my audience went from 7,000 to 350,000, but that substantially understated its reach. In August of last year, my tweets were viewed 200 million times. Okay? I didn’t have to pay for that. I didn’t have to set up an infrastructure for that. I was able to be part of a worldwide conversation about, you know, whether the vaccines are working or not, about covid and lockdowns and mitigation measures.

And Twitter made that possible. There’s no other place on earth that could have done that for me. And that’s why it’s such an important platform for free speech — and it’s not just me. It’s everybody. Anybody can do this. Twitter has really changed journalism, probably for the better.

CLAY: Well said, Alex Berenson. We’ll continue to allow you to reach our audience with this platform. Keep up the good work and good luck on that new book proposal.

BERENSON: Thank you, sir.