CLAY: Buck, I wanted to hit you with this because I tweeted this out last night and then you also saw it and we were texting about it this morning. And so covid’s not going away. Let me give you an example. I was looking at the Drudge Report this morning and they have kind of the tally of last year’s covid numbers, of this year’s covid numbers and we know people are testing at home, a lot of people are not even getting tested. But right now there are four times as many covid cases in the United States on May the 17th or whatever day they were counting there as there were last year.

And remember last year at this time, Buck, the idea was, “Hey, covid’s over! Everybody go get your covid shot, you’ll never get it, you’ll never spread it. This is the end of covid; it’s never going to be an issue anymore.” Well, this is what’s becoming intriguing. And I want to share the data, and I want to get what your hypothesis could be on this data. Again, the data is real. A lot of people are not talking about this yet. But if you look — and this is from Tyler Carditis, who put this together. He’s the CEO of Blaze Media, according to his bio.

BUCK: Yeah, I know Tyler. I used to work at The Blaze.

CLAY: So, you can vouch for Tyler being a good dude?

BUCK: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

CLAY: All right. So, what he tweeted out was:

Nothing to see here, guys. https://t.co/tg59Pt2Plv

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 17, 2022

It is a bit odd. So we were told for a year now, “Get your covid shot and you are going to be fine.” Now we talked about it yesterday, Buck, the data is starting to reflect that, even if you got the double covid shots you might still die with covid. This is getting difficult to explain how all of the most vaccinated places are now starting to set hospitalization records in the country and how they are setting case records as well.

BUCK: New cases —

CLAY: What do you think’s going on here?

BUCK: New cases topping an average, daily average of a hundred thousand —

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: — in the country right now, up 61%, which is… By the way, also when you look at the data reflecting a particular hot spot of New York and New York City.

CLAY: And in fact they’re talking about bringing back restrictions to New York City ’cause we’ve been texting about that ’cause you obviously do the show along with many other people on the Clay and Buck program from inside of Manhattan, and I’m wondering — I’m gonna be up there next month — whether I’m even gonna be able to come before all is said and done.

BUCK: Yeah. Coronavirus hospitalizations are over 20,000 nationwide, this according to CDC data. I do have to wonder at what point people are gonna start to realize that the whole program — the whole notion of “the science” and “we know what to do” and “we know how to stop this,” when are we gonna have people finally recognize that it — was essentially an abject failure. Put it this way. We have flu season year in and year out. As you know, the flu shot tends to be somewhere in like the 40 to 60% efficacy range.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: Depending on the year, right, because it’s a different flu strain every year. What we see is fast mutation of covid. The same way there’s annual and rapid mutation of influenza viruses, covid is a fast mutating virus too. So it’s different from measles. We kept talking about this. ‘Cause remember, they shouted at everybody, “Well, what about your kids getting the measles shots, measles, mumps, rubella?” Well, that’s a one-time, and it works very well.

CLAY: Yeah, yeah, yep.

BUCK: It’s not a every six few months for the rest of your life shot. Okay? So that was a horrifically stupid comparison that the media used to just club everybody into silence and submission. We know that the approach we had to the flu is seniors who were at greater risk and also people with compromised immune systems, et cetera, are recommended to get the flu shot. And it’s not a guarantee you’re not gonna get really sick and/or die from flu.

But it tends to be helpful depending on the year. That’s all actually. What we’ve seen is that that should have been the approach to covid. I mean, you know, put aside the first few months when everybody was panicking. By the summer of 2020 we should have realized we treat this like the flu, meaning you get shots — older people get the resources, get the help, people who had high risk — but all the rest of this stop. Clay, the program we were put through was stop the spread.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: That became a phrase of people. Didn’t stop the spread at all. I mean, anyone who thinks that is out of their mind. I’ve had covid twice. I’m probably gonna get it a third time.

CLAY: Here’s what I thought was interesting, Buck. Yesterday I’m reading the New York Times. I read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, still get the print thing ’cause I’m an old man. Front-page story in the New York Times yesterday: Covid’s never going away, and everybody’s going to be getting it multiple times.

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: That’s the story. Right? On the front page of the New York Times. If you said that last year, you got barred from Twitter, as our friend Alex Berenson did. Now I think there is a strong argument to be made — again, this is what science does: you look at the data and you try to construct hypotheses for what’s going on — that people who are getting the covid shot are more likely to get covid. That’s what the data is showing us.

Now, maybe it’s spreading more in the Northeast and the Midwest right now and it’s a geographic thing, but the places that are the most vaccinated are posting the highest rates of hospitalization and the highest rates of cases. There are other theories, other hypotheses you could toss out there. You could say, “Hey, people are more fearful in the northeast of covid so they test more so there’s more knowledge of positive tests.” The hospitalization data would cut against that.

You could say right now it’s geographic in nature, that covid tends to be in the Midwest and the Northeast more so this time of year. We’ll see if it surges again in the South as it gets hot and everybody moves inside, which has been one of the trend lines that we have seen. Florida, for instance, in June and July tends to go up and then decline as the temperature declines all over the South. But I think there are arguments to be made now, and I think intelligent media would be asking these questions: What sort of actual protection are we getting from covid shots? And is it making people more susceptible to testing positive for covid?

BUCK: You know, one of the great mistakes of the entire covid pandemic era was that they effectively, “The Science,” trademark, right, “the science” through Fauciism and the politicization of the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party deciding that they embody this notion of the science, they made it impossible to — they would call conspiracy theory, but they made it impossible to hypothesize. And anybody who understands the actual history of science would say, “Well, hold on a second. You should… The only way we find answers and progress to things we don’t know is when people can say, ‘Here’s a possibility.’”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Prove this wrong or prove this right. Here’s a possibility. What do we think? Here’s a possibility officially through government mandate under the Biden administration, through social media censorship, through efforts to cancel, deplatform. Some are even talking about throwing people in jail for covid disinformation about this.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Even if you were putting forward a hypothesis, “I am concerned that this data could mean the following. What do you think?” That was shut down. So they didn’t just go against the science in terms of putting forward the only acceptable narrative. If you put forward not a counternarrative but a question that raised the possibility of a different approach, that became disinformation in the realm of health which, therefore, was an imminent threat to safety and to the lives of people, yada yada yada — shut it down, shut it down — and here we are. What is the explanation? How is it that Fauci is not being asked…? New York is probably the most heavily vaccinated major state in the country.

CLAY: And did Draconian activities. You couldn’t go to McDonald’s unless you had a vaccine card, right? You couldn’t do hardly anything in New York. That’s the number one question that every media member should be asking Dr. Fauci. Explain these numbers that we’re seeing right now.

BUCK: Yeah, because if the answer is it’s because the virus mutates rapidly and we have to get more people boosters, well, then that becomes what some of us have been warning about a for a year now which is: So now it’s chase the virus with boosters ad infinitum, goes on forever. There is no end to this. This is keep getting boosted, keep getting boosted, keep getting boosted. I was always concerned when I got that little vaccine passport. A lot of slots on there, Clay.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: A lot. It wasn’t a one-and-done. It wasn’t like you got this thing stamped and you were finished. There were all these other slots on it. You say, hold on a second. What am I gonna fill in these other slots? Well, we all know now, right? So I do hope that people recognize that the only way to show your displeasure — and that’s a gentle word for it. I mean, I would say your fury. I’m still furious at people over this, the people who pushed this.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: Is to just destroy them in the ballot. You have to take away their power, ’cause they won’t admit that they’re wrong about this covid stuff. They will not admit it.

CLAY: I would just ask you this as we go into the break to think about. Imagine Donald Trump was president, everything else is the exact same with covid and with the covid shots. How would the Washington Post, the New York Times, MSNBC, and CNN be covering covid cases continuing to rise even after all of these covid shots? Would they be asking questions about the efficacy of the vaccine if Trump were still in office?

A hundred percent they would because they would be blaming him for everything. Yet Biden’s in office and you’re seeing almost no one ask these questions. Why are these numbers…? Remember, the pandemic of the unvaccinated is a lie. That’s not true anymore. That was. That was what the narrative was that the Biden administration tried to spin. Remember the winter of death where if you didn’t get your covid shot you were gonna die? Well, congrats if you’re listening to us right now, you survived. What’s their story now? What’s their narrative?

BUCK: At every stage their efforts at censorship and coercion have been wrong, and they follow it up with more censorship and coercion. That is the Democrat mentality in the era of covid. And I think, unfortunately, it’s gonna continue, unless we stop it.