CLAY: Unfortunately, headlines all over the country today, we now know the tally from the number of overdose deaths in this country, and they surged over 30% to an all-time record high, drug overdoses in 2020. And my wife, Buck, I want to get your thoughts on this — she said, “Hey, you have to stop saying on your radio program that this was in any way because of covid. Because covid didn’t cause these overdose deaths. Our response to covid in locking down the country caused these overdose deaths.”

And, Buck, when you look at the average age of the people that are dying of drug overdoses, I think there’s a strong argument that deaths of despair, in terms of years lost are going to rival the number of years of life lost by covid, because the average person dying with — I say “with” covid because almost all of them had comorbidities — is over the age of 80.

The people that are dying of drug overdoses are in their twenties, their thirties, their forties, they’ve got decades of life ahead that they are not going to be able to live, and we shut them up in their homes, we didn’t allow them access to counseling. We didn’t allow them access to friends and family, to church. And as a result, it’s not a surprise at all, unfortunately, that these drug overdose deaths skyrocketed 93,000 of them in 2020, the most we’ve ever seen.

BUCK: And this was predicted by people like you and me from the very beginning, Alex Berenson, who we had on recently, people who understood what the results of lockdown which now we talk about as though this is a long-standing policy. We speak of lockdowns almost as if it’s washing hands before surgery. But lockdown, as a concept, had been discarded by the health establishment leading into this pandemic, it had been considered before.

Quarantine, which has existed for a very long time, actually goes back to I think the Renaissance period, Italian sailors was you would spend up to 14 days in — 14 days in isolation if you were sick. Quarantine is for sick people. Lockdown is for all people. And this was a panic reaction to a virus that, as we know, has now turned into something well beyond just a public health issue. We knew there would be a substantial increase in deaths of despair, notably from opioid. So that was true, that prediction, tragically, unfortunately, was correct.

But when we tried to bring that up in the early days, looking at what was a good response, what was a reasonable response to the pandemic and what was excessive, people said, “Shut, peasant. Stay inside. Dr. Fauci knows what he’s talking about.” Those people are not very smart, they are not very wise, and they’ve been wrong about pretty much everything, including the little lab coat tyrant Fauci himself. And now we’re going to also find, Clay, that there are additional — and I mean substantial numbers — in increases of cancers that went undetected, because that all takes time.

To look at that data will be something you see maybe by the end of this year, and so you start to say, “Hold on. The beginnings of this were not about whether we do something for this virus or not,” which was always the false choice that was laid out. It was do we lock everybody in their homes but not actually lock everybody in their homes ’cause you still had front line workers, right?

The way this broke down in a place like New York City was you had upper middle class white liberals whining on social media about how people weren’t masking up enough when they were having — you know, when they walked outside while they had people who are, in New York at least, disproportionately people of color, delivering their food, keeping the grocery stores open, doing those front-line jobs and being nurses, being in the hospital support and acting like, oh, we’re all lockdown. It was a moronic policy.

We never even locked down. That’s the other part of this. We never actually did a full-on, stay at home for a long enough period of time to even see if it would work. And it was always crazy. And yet here we are now, Australia’s gone into, what, its fifth lockdown period now? It’s not gonna stop.

CLAY: It’s pure, unadulterated madness. And the consequences — and do you agree with me, by the way, Buck, that we don’t talk enough about years of life lost? There’s a focus on the number of people who died. Right? And I understand that is a tragedy for anyone who loses a loved one anytime. But I think if you look at the numbers — and this is over a five- or 10-year period, based on covid, you’re not gonna be able to really tell a difference.

And let me explain this, ’cause I don’t think — I’m curious if you’ve thought through this, too — if we see a rise in the short term, which we did in 2020 in the death rate in the United States, based on the age of the people who were dying, over the age of 80 we’re actually going to see a lower death rate in the next several years because people who are going to die tend to be old and unhealthy. And covid pulled those deaths forward. And so the long-range impact of those deaths is not going to be that substantial.

The people who are dying in their twenties and their thirties and their forties are losing 40 and 50 years of life. And so it’s why, f you go to a funeral, a child’s funeral is infinitely more crushing than the funeral of someone who is 80 years old and lived a full life. And I don’t think we’re talking enough about these younger people who are going to suffer the consequences of our response to covid in a way that is going to take decades of life. Nobody is talking about that.

BUCK: And look at what the long-term impact will be on education which is while Randi Weingarten, the chief propagandist of the teachers unions is running around spewing the usual nonsense about how, you know, they were big champions for education during — no, they weren’t. They were doing the bidding of a whole lot of lazy teachers unions who wanted people to be able to stay home and were called upon to mobilize against Trump, the teachers unions in 2020 in the election year.

If you want to talk about the Democrat Party machinery of election and power in general, you gotta look at the teachers unions right away. How many millions of American students now — and again, Democrats always pretend to care about minorities and about people who are low income in general. The people that were hurt the most by the school lockdowns across America and in the major cities particularly were children who were from low-income families and a disproportionate number of them are children from families that are families of color. And who knows what this is going to mean for them, for the rest of their lives?

Losing a developmental year, anybody who actually understands education will tell you, has substantial impact on the trajectory of their education, on the choices they’ll make, on their ability to finish school, to stay away from drugs, to have a productive life.

And this was done because of cowards who are adults. Children were never a substantial enough risk. But Fauci was a little fascist coward who wouldn’t keep the schools open. The teachers unions wanted their workers to be able to stay and just press “play” at home for their Zoom lesson or whatever. It was awful, man. It was awful. We have not had a full accounting of this as a society yet.

CLAY: No. I agree. And, sadly, the consequences of that decision are gonna continue to echo for generations. And also it is profoundly the least equal thing. For a party that is defining itself by saying “everything is racist” and focusing on racism, the single most racially impactful decision that most people will make in their lives who were educators was, will schools be open or not?

And overwhelmingly wealthy parents were able to afford tutors, private schools stayed open, Buck, you were able to find, if you’re really wealthy, you could change your city or your state location to make sure that your kids were able. We saw the biggest inequality of most of our lives when stayed closed for over a year. And, by the way, the insanity is still not ending.