BUCK: Child abuse is mandatory in New York City again. Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. Masking up kids, abusing young children is now a matter of not would you make this choice. Schools have it back in place: 2- to 5-year-olds mask up eight hours a day during a point in their lives where development is absolutely essential. Kids with speech impediments — which is obviously near and dear to my heart because I was one of those kids — they’re suffering.

Learning is suffering, all this. Why? Because Democrats are insane. I don’t actually have a better reason for that right now, and if you’re wondering — if you want some evidence for my claim that they are completely out of their minds, one of the New York City health bureaucrats here, Dr. Michelle Morse, on this issue, Clay, just so you understand what happened, a Staten Island court… Because Staten Island, one of the five boroughs is a little bastion of some political sanity in an otherwise insane five boroughs of New York City, Staten Island court says this is arbitrary and capricious, which it clearly is. Masking up toddlers basically —

CLAY: Just toddlers.

BUCK: I’m sorry?

CLAY: Just toddlers.

BUCK: Just toddlers. That’s what I mean.

CLAY: This is crazy. They were supposed to take this away, Buck, starting today, and then cases have ticked up a little bit ’cause of BA.2 so they decided, “Oh, you know what? Kids are… Toddlers are gonna have to wear masks.” This judge steps in and says, “This is arbitrary and capricious; it makes no sense,” and that is where we are now. New York City fights back against it.

BUCK: Well, an appellate judge came in and put a stay on the order, right?

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So the initial judge says this is arbitrary and capricious, as you said. Now another judge says, “Well, hold on. We have to review this.” So the lower court judge saying it’s arbitrary and capricious, that is kind of in limbo for right now. That’s a stay for everybody. So the city now could have said, “You know what? We’re gonna actually do the right thing here and lift it,” ’cause it’s just a city decision.

America’s largest city, New York City, just a municipal authority — and instead, what you have is stuff like this. The Dr. Michelle Morse writes, “The urgency of this moment is clear. Mortality rates of birthing people are too high, and babies born to black and Puerto Rican mothers in this city are three times more likely to die in their first year of life than babies born to non-Hispanic, white birthing people.” So just to be clear — I know this isn’t specifically about covid — here you have a city health authority who is openly referring to “birthing people,” okay?

CLAY: Otherwise known as “women.”

BUCK: Otherwise known as “women,” and so start with that, and then so you look at the new health commissioner, the top guy, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, he has said, “Cases are rapidly rising. It’s gotten our attention. They’ll continue to rise over the next few weeks, and it’s likely that we will move into a different level of overall risk across the city.” But so why mask kids?

This is part of this that doesn’t… Kids are at the lowest list, the least likely to spread. They are at roughly one-in-a-million risk of fatality from covid, and yet they’re masking up children in schools. Clay, I think it’s just because this is Munchausen by proxy, right? There’s a mental illness among a lot of lib adults and so they then transpose this on the children and act like, “Well, at least we’re protecting the kids.”

CLAY: It’s madness. And, Buck, the worst thing is, over weekend numbers hit a record high, covid cases did, in England. Over five million people now have covid, this new BA.2 primary version, which is a spin-off of Omicron. Covid remix, variants, whatever you want to call them — and so what I think is going to happen is they’re gonna put masks back on all kids, because they just got ’em out of schools.

If they’re making 2- to 5-year-olds wear masks, then I think there is a strong possibility that they are going to bring back masks on kids. And for everybody out there — ’cause we hear from people who say, “Oh, I don’t know why you’re still concerned about masking.” It’s ’cause it’s not going away. It’s not going to go away because there’s always going to be the fear of another variant that is gonna come through and even though masks have been proven not to work in schools in particular the same loser, lunatic, lost-their-mind corona idiots are going to continue to make these decisions and put these restrictions on your kids.

BUCK: There’s virtue signaling behind so much of this. You know, Clay, over the weekend I went to a rock concert in —

CLAY: Yeah, how’d that go?

BUCK: — Brooklyn for the band Bob Moses, named for the municipal builder Robert Moses, most famous because of the book, the biography by Robert Caro, The Power Broker, which I highly recommend if you have about 40 hours to burn on reading.

CLAY: (laughing) Same thing true, by the way, for the Lyndon Johnson, whatever volume he’s on now, but you literally need to give over like six months of your life to read that thing.

BUCK: Caro is the author you want to have in hand for like you’re stuck on a desert island and you’re not sure when the cruise ship is gonna pick you up. You know, six months? A year? But Bob Moses — that’s the name of the band — was out there, and I was in Bushwick, which, for those who don’t know New York City well, just so you understand, is I believe the single most hipster place in the entire country. Like, there may be a few other places that are in that realm.

CLAY: Did you wear your scarf and ride on your scooter?

BUCK: Well, I will have you know that scooters were not allowed in the interior of the facility, Mr. Wise Guy.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Was there a scarf? I can neither confirm nor deny. There was a hoodie, so that helped me out. But I was in this venue, and there was a guy. This is all true. There was a guy standing right next to me and he had mask on. There’s 2,000 people roughly. I don’t know what the number is. But it’s an absolutely huge place. It’s a warehouse, packed shoulder to shoulder with people. I mean, you could not be in a more crowded indoor environment possible.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now, if you’re that worried about covid, if you have comorbidities, all these things that people do to try to rationalize their anxiety disorder over masks, why are you going to a escort with 2,000 in an enclosed space?

CLAY: Excellent question, right?

BUCK: So he’s got the mask on, but they had like $30 margaritas in plastic cups that you could buy there because, of course, concoctions — specialty-crafted cocktails, for those of you unfamiliar with how they do things. When they say “specialty-crafted cocktail,” it means you’re paying five times as much as you’re used to for whatever this beverage is.

CLAY: How long was the line, by the way, to get these specials? That also drives me crazy.

BUCK: The line was not that bad because the whole place was basically turned into a bar where you had to get the specialty-crafted cocktail.

CLAY: That’s good.

BUCK: So, anyway, so this guy, he’s got his drink and I, of course, can’t say anything ’cause then I’m not… Eeveryone’s having a nice time. I’m actually not a psycho-lib; I don’t want to harass people when they’re on their off time, right?

But I’m looking at this guy, I’m just so curious. Another hipster — hipster-on-hipster violence, if you will, going on here. Another hipster says to him, “Why are you wearing a mask sometimes but like not all the time?” This little lady, and he’s like, “Yeah, that’s, like, a good question! Like, I didn’t feel safe coming in here but, like, now I feel safer. So, like, yeah, I guess maybe I shouldn’t wear it.”

I could see the gears processing in his head. This guy wore a mask to enter the venue and then took it off for the duration of like the first two hours or whatever, and this is in between the bands switching over, so people were having conversation. And to his credit, he took the mask off the rest of the time. (laughing) But I’m sitting here like —

CLAY: This is where my argument for women, Buck: Shame men. Like, if you see a man wearing a mask like that… It’s funny you mention a girl came up and asked him about it, but he felt even that probably loser left-wing guy was like, “Yeah, I’m being a total pussy willow. I probably should take off this mask.”

BUCK: It seemed quite strange when he thought about it. We need to keep it going because there is hope for some of the mask maniacs, not all. But in New York City, I mean… Oh, there was finally, Clay, some outrage. There were finally some people that yelled. Eric Adams went a Broadway show and for the photos he took his mask down, of course.

CLAY: I saw this.

BUCK: And some parents were not happy with it.

BUCK: “Unmask our kids!” Clay.

CLAY: I love it.

BUCK: These parents are right. They’re right.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is insane. The fact that still this is happening… Look, I get it, right? If you’re listening to this and you live in Texas or Florida or Tennessee — name a free, red state — the same mentality that is allowing kid’s to be masked is why you have to mask up still on planes.

CLAY: Yeah. It’s all connected.

BUCK: Like, this is… Until we get rid of all the residue here of the lies, we still have a problem.