BUCK: We’ve been trying to update you as we go here in recent weeks on how suddenly “the science has changed.” The politics has changed, actually, as we all know, but you have covid restrictions disappearing in places, including places where they’ve had higher levels of covid spread than they did a year ago when many of these restrictions were either extended or strengthened or whatever.

And so you recognize now — we’re seeing now — that the people that were telling you to mask up, the people that were telling you to do everything that they said or else you’re a bad person who wants grandparents to die, suddenly political pressure matters to them a whole lot. And we have a strong actual of this in New York City, which has been among the craziest places for covid mania the whole time. Just saying they went through huge levels of covid spread during the Omicron phase of this, and actually had a lot of — unfortunately a lot of — hospitalizations and deaths, too, despite a very high vaccination rate in New York.

You have these blue check libs who walk around saying, “If only America… If only America had had a vaccination rate like Denmark’s or something, we would have avoided all these deaths.” Well, New York does have a vaccination rate basically over 90% vaccinated and yet still had very, very high cases, a lot of hospitalizations and unfortunately a lot of deaths. And guess what? Now they’re deciding to get rid of the vaccine mandate! The new mayor is saying the vaccine mandate New York City is not gonna be around much longer. Play that clip please.

Mayor Eric Adams forsees making an announcement in the next few weeks about changing COVID vaccine mandate for indoor spaces. Meaning Kyrie Irving could be a full-time player soon. @PIX11News @PIX11Sports #NetsWorld pic.twitter.com/GsT0xgo276

— Justin Walters (@JustinWaltersTV) February 23, 2022

BUCK: In the next day or so, Clay, they’re gonna start changing things up. Mayor Eric Adams also said he can’t wait to get rid of the vaccine mandates. Looks like some people are starting to see the internal polling and they realize it’s one thing to be tired of restrictions that worked, Clay. Vaccine mandates as a policy in New York City — I can speak to this one very directly — failed, failed. So we went through all that crap and tyranny for what?

CLAY: Six days until the State of the Union, Buck. March 1st is when Joe Biden will slowly work his way down the House of Representatives floor and climb up to that rostrum and read slowly off of a teleprompter. I believe that there is going to be, by March 1st, many states… I believe I’m correct in this, now. Only Hawaii — unless Hawaii has removed it recently. I believe Hawaii is the only United States state that still has a mask mandate in place. Others have announced when they’re going to remove it; they’ve already begun to remove it.

And obviously, unfortunately, there are still many kids that are being forced to wear masks. I saw in my hometown of Nashville… I went to kindergarten through 12th grade in public school in Nashville, Tennessee. They said that the kids are finally gonna have their masks off when they come back from spring break. There’s no metric by which they can point to and say, “Oh, this has eliminated all the issues,” because it’s all been total crap from the moment it started. I want to hit you with the data, Buck.

One year ago on February 22nd of ’21, there were 59,456 covid cases in the United States. That’s one year ago, one month or so into the Biden administration. Same date a year later, 123,182 cases. Deaths: 2,726 covid — and I’m putting in quotation marks here, but trust me on this — “covid deaths” versus 1,454 last year.

So these are the kind of questions that demonstrate how failed the vaccine mandates have been, how failed the mask mandates have been. We have over twice as many covid cases today as we had last year at the same time, and we have nearly twice as many covid deaths as we did last year at the same time. Yet miraculously, everybody is coming out and ending the vaccine mandate — and I want to give a shout-out, by the way, to one person here, Buck” Kyrie Irving.

We talked some about the athletes, the Novak Djokovices, the Aaron Rodgers who are willing to stand out there and say, “I’m not gonna get the covid shot, I don’t need it, it makes sense.” Kyrie Irving say Brooklyn Nets player that has not been allowed to play in home basketball games for this entire season, and Eric Adams specifically said we’re doing away with this mandate soon.

We don’t know the exact date yet, but Kyrie Irving is gonna be able to come back and play a hundred percent back to normal. He and many other people like him are effectively going to have won. They will have outlasted this mandate that they tried to drop on everybody all over many parts of the country, but certainly New York City.

BUCK: I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna accept this. You’re gonna hear a lot of this from Democrat politicians. Now, to be fair, Eric Adams was not mayor during covid. He’s only been mayor now. But I don’t like this narrative of, “You get it all back, folks!” If you live in California, if you live in New York — and, remember, even Texas went through some restrictions. There are a lot of places.

There were some red states where they could have done a lot more to protect freedoms and not panic during covid. But Eric Adams said, “I take my hat to New Yorkers. Through masks, vaccines, through social distancing, I’m really proud of how we responded as New Yorkers.” I’m not. I’m not at all, and I’m a New Yorker. I think people were cowards. I think people refused to look at what was really going on around them; they went along like sheep.

And look, I get it. You can only do as much as you can do, right? They forced me to get a shot, a shot that they then admitted later on basically did absolutely nothing for me and I had natural immunity — and what they did to me was appalling. They did it to millions of New Yorkers. It never should have happened. So I am gonna get very agitated here over the, “Oh, we fought so hard. I’m so proud.”

All these politicians, you watch, they’ll say, “We did it together! We were in it together. I’m so proud of you all! You just lined up with your masks on six feet apart and got shot after shot after shot after shot.” No! This was awful. They were idiots. We should not have listened to these people. We should not have been forced to do this. So that’s why… In New York, I know that people think, “Oh, it’s a big party now.” Oh, I’m not done with them. We’re now gonna dive deep into this data.

CLAY: Amen. This is why we are arguing there have to be consequences for getting public policy this wrong. This is why I’m not just… Some people are gonna say, “Oh, you finally got what you want. Masks are all gone; everybody’s going back to normal.” No, no, no, no. Two years, it’s been almost two years since “15 days to stop the spread.” There have to be significant consequences for the politicians who failed and led us down this path. There have to be.