CLAY: China locking down Shanghai, Buck, which, I mean, the zero-covid strategy in general to me has completely failed. And what’s interesting is two years after — more than two years now after the initial outbreak in Wuhan, we’re talking about China being the only country, I believe, Buck, in the world that is still trying to embrace a zero covid strategy. Australia, New Zealand, island nations have abandoned the zero-covid idea. China now locking down the second biggest city in its country.
BUCK: And there’s a huge problem with this because when places like Australia and New Zealand were pretending like they had figured out some… Here was their covid protection strategy: Be on an island on the other side of the world and don’t let anyone in or out of your country.
CLAY: Yes. (laughing) Yes.
BUCK: That will kind of work for a while as it did, but we couldn’t do that in America. That wasn’t going to work in the Eurasian landmass. It wasn’t going to work in south America. You know, if you have an island nation with a small population relative to, you know, relative to square mile, you can actually do this at some level.
BUCK: But now what we see is what some of us, like you and me and others, Clay, were warning all along is, the moment you open up we are going to have covid. Because we know the vaccines do not stop spread. They may mitigate at some level spread. We have to see the numbers on this. But you’re gonna have a population with no, basically no, very little natural immunity and you’re gonna be entirely dependent on vaccines that do fade — again — according to the CEOs of these companies.
We no longer have to go, “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that.” They fade rapidly. And so this is why Australia has had the huge rise in cases. Austria’s had this huge rise in cases. That’s obviously not an island nation, but another place that thought it had done really well. But in the context of China, Clay, they just were told on Sunday shut down for Monday, and there are fights breaking out at grocery stores, fistfights.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: There’s video of this stuff because people are in a panic, and this what you see is an authoritarian state like China doesn’t care. They don’t sit there and say, “Wow, you know, maybe we were too heavy-handed with this.” Of course not. The Chinese Communist Party is always heavy-handed. But I think we should look at what’s going on in this country where we’ve walked away from some of this stuff on a temporary basis, as we keep saying. They have not abandoned this. They have not gotten ride of even all of the mandates. New York City still has… Although Kyrie is calling for all of them to be lifted.
CLAY: Yeah, Kyrie Irving — and we’ve talked about this, because the mayor last week in New York, Eric Adams, walked back the requirement that all employees have to be vaccinated, allowed celebrities and athletes as Major League Baseball’s opening day will be next week, as it’s getting closer and closer. He allowed everybody to go back to work if you’re a celebrity or you’re an athlete.
By the way, on China, Buck, the thing that China’s going to run into — and I think it’s gonna be significant — is they’ve had almost no natural spread of the virus because of their zero-covid strategy. And so if you look at what happened in Hong Kong and you look also at what has happened in Australia and New Zealand, the rates of covid infection explode in an exponential fashion there because they didn’t have 2020 real substantial spread of the virus in 2021, and all of these different two-year processes by which a huge percentage of people listening to us right now, Buck, are either vaxxed or oftentimes both, have been exposed to the virus. I’ve had it twice. You’ve had it twice. We have a lot of natural immunity out there.
BUCK: And yet there are people that are still — and they proclaim this stuff on Twitter. There was a doctor over the weekend — I mean, again, a blue check, says he’s an MD, I believe. You know, who really knows? And he tweeted out a photo of himself. So these are people that are making this part of the public. One thing for me, Clay, is that I never wanted to take photos of people in public it because I didn’t want to. I hate mask shamers.
CLAY: Yeah. It’s an awkward spot to be in. Yeah.
BUCK: But when people share photos of themselves with masks on say, “Look at me,” this guy over the weekend… I’m trying to find the exact tweet ’cause it went viral; everybody was saying, “My God.” He has a full on like gas mask looking respirator on in a grocery store. The guy looks like he’s maybe a few years older than you and me. And he’s basically calling out everybody who won’t wear one as, “Oh, my gosh, why aren’t you? Don’t you understand? Don’t you take the virus seriously?”
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: Kathy Griffin, who is an unfunny comedian — not as unfunny as Amy Schumer, who was somehow at the Oscars last night making really bad jokes and maybe we’ll make fun of one or two of them, remarkably successful for not being actually good at her job anyway. But she was tweeting out a photo of herself, Clay, what was it, getting her fourth shot and was praising CVS for giving her eight free covid tests, and she thinks this is great.
CLAY: Yes. She was posing like flexing, “Fourth shot, second covid booster, and they also gave me eight free tests when I got my fourth shot.” This is Kathy Griffin, D-list comedian, who posed, remember, memorably, with the severed head appearance of Donald Trump, which basically, even for Hollywood, put her on a different career trajectory than she otherwise would have been. But, yeah, these are the delusional rantings that we’re seeing. Here my fourth shot. Oh, I’m gonna fine! Except I’ve also got eight tests in the event that I still test positive for covid.
BUCK: And I was so happy to see that President Trump not far from — not too far, at least, right next to door state-wise to where I am here. He was at a rally over the weekend. And, Clay, former president Trump called for an end to all covid mandates. Play 15.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Another the top priority when Republicans take back Congress should be to pass a bill immediately terminating every single covid mandate.
CROWD: (cheering)
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No more lockdowns, no more restrictions, no more hysteria, and no more masks, please, finally. We don’t want our children going to school in masks. Now they’re saying the masks don’t work, and they still want the masks.
BUCK: This needs to be what happens because you should get Congress —
CLAY: Amen.
BUCK: People can say, “Oh, but it’s the states” or whatever. All right. Well, let’s get Congress, as soon as there’s a Republican majority, on the record and push with actual legislation for an end to all this stuff, an end to it on planes, an end to it everywhere. Be fascinating. I bet you there will be some places that try within the federal bureaucracy, notably the FAA, that may try to say, “Well, Congress doesn’t… They have to give us more time to figure this out or something.”
I just feel like there are people, Clay, for whom this is a religious belief now. I mean, this is something that they don’t want it to go away. It’s necessary for their psychological safety to be on a plane. Oh, Chris what’s his name from CNN? Is he from CNN, Mr. Cillizza?
I think he tweeted out over the weekend how upset he was on a couple on a plane with him that wouldn’t mask up, a blue check lib-journo type. This is what they actually think about.
CLAY: Absolute losers.
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