The Bee Weekly: Lil' Bladder and the Global Failure of Masks
Check out Private Internet Access and get a special deal. Kyle, Adam, and Brandon Toy talk about this week at The Bee and also talk to Ian Miller about his book Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates. Kyle gains a new street name as he sits in the slammer of Twitter Jail and Anthony Fauci has declared that the pandemic is now over to anyone still listening to him. Due to popular demand Sizzler Facts is back and then The Bee analyzes what satire is currently banging and bombing on the site. Bee Radio from Austin Robertson runs straight into your ear canal like smooth honey dripping from a wooden spoon and Adam Yenser brings Weakly News. The Bee dips into the everflowing hate mail and Brandon Toy is subjected to the Ten Questions in the subscriber lounge. This episode is also brought to you by Undertac. Get Undertac today! Get Christian counseling from our friends at Faithful Counseling. Be a flag bearer for freedom today! Support our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom as they fight for your First Amendment rights today and get a free American flag!
But don't worry, CNN says she is not a close contact of President Biden.
The board agreed to Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter, but he's only giving them Federal Reserve currency for it, suckers.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has declared that the United States is out of the pandemic phase, and the United States is glad that he finally got the memo.
All this and more, men.
The B Weekly!
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Hey, everyone, welcome to the B Weekly.
I'm Brandon.
This is Adam, and this is Kyle.
And if you're on audio, that doesn't help because I'm pointing to people.
It was a good visual joke.
It was a great visual.
If you're listening, you should turn off the podcast and watch it on YouTube instead.
Yeah.
It was worth it just for that.
Very much so.
So we're still in Twitter jail, but Elon Musk has bought Twitter, so maybe that's going to change soon.
Yeah.
How long does it take until he actually becomes owner?
Do we have to?
My understanding, I read an article that said months.
Okay.
Like months and months of paperwork and whatnot.
Because all that's happened is basically he went in there and said, I'm going to buy.
And they said, okay.
And they shook hands, you know, virtually.
If this had happened a few weeks ago.
Now that you got to go to the DMV and transfer the title or something.
Yeah, the pink slip has to change hands.
I think Elon would have requested that he transfer it over on 420, but that didn't happen.
Ah, very sad.
Very sad that he missed out on that.
But, you know, that's all good.
So hopefully we'll get out of jail.
Hey, do we want to go watch the testimonial from Twitter Jail?
I filmed a video from Twitter jail, so let's go to that.
Hey there.
I'm Kyle with the Babylon Bee.
Yeah, we're still in Twitter jail.
Sad, not good.
You don't even want to know how I got this recorder in here.
We got thrown in here for a pretty terrible crime.
We gave Rachel Levine our Man of the Year award.
We were just trying to honor such a great man.
Pretty heinous, right?
But we're making do.
You know, we've even been able to continue publishing articles with this laptop that someone left here in Twitter jail.
As you can see, my time in the big house has really hardened me.
I've got tattoos now.
I got this teardrop for owning a lib.
I got a skull on my neck.
And they even made me get the always MaxiPads logo on my arm.
I went ahead and made this shiv out of a Carmen CD.
It's been rough here on the slammer.
But I've been doing what I can to get by.
I started brewing my own corona beer in the toilet.
It's pretty easy.
You just pee and then throw a little lime in there.
The group showers, of course, they're a little scary.
I've been really careful not to drop the sewer.
Hey, no homophobic comments.
Oh, yeah.
I can't say stuff like that in here.
But don't worry.
I've got a plan to get out.
I'm digging a tunnel behind this poster.
As soon as I finish it, I'll be as free as the Taliban, Vladimir Putin, Kathy Griffin, the Chinese government, and all the other wonderful people who are still out on Twitter.
But the suspension hasn't been all bad.
I've had a lot of time to think during my time behind Twitter bars, and I think I even came up with a third joke for the Babylon Bee.
Like, what if there was this hobbit who identified...
Ah, it's the same joke.
Luke, what's that?
I'm Elon Musk.
I'm here to rescue you.
Aren't you a little white for an African-American?
Ah, who cares?
Thanks so much, Elon.
Hey, would you do us a solid and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
Well, that was cool.
That was fun.
That was a lot of fun.
It was fun to build a giant jail cell in this room here.
Yeah, it's moments like these that I'm like, I get to do this for a living.
Build a jail out of PVC and break out.
Brandon's a wizard with that stuff.
He really is.
With Donald J. Trump.
We got him.
We got the actual president.
And to film it with Trump.
Yeah.
He flew in from Mar-a-Lago.
And, yeah.
He didn't say anything while he was here.
He just walked in, sat down on the it's weird that we would get a huge guest like Donald Trump and then just happen to sit there quietly.
No, we don't want to interview you.
Can you just sit here?
He did it.
He was a good sport.
And please don't change your expression except once.
Just a simple thing.
Very still, as still as you can imagine.
You know, I hear most people that do comedy sketches and videos and stuff write a script and then they start producing it, but that's not our process.
No.
We go, hey, we should film something in Twitter jail.
And somebody builds a jail and then we're like, oh, do we have a script?
Yes.
I was sitting over there writing a script while the jail's almost finished.
I think we actually have two sketches.
Trump is just sitting here getting impatient.
We have two sketches that are already scheduled that we don't actually have a script for.
We're like, we have a location and actors and we're like, oh, we should probably write the script.
We do things right here.
We do.
So if Adam gets quiet during this podcast, it's because he's writing the script over here next.
Whatever set we've built next.
Hey, it was really sad to see that CNN Plus died.
Who saw that coming?
Yeah.
It's tragic.
Someone posted a joke in our headline thread about Jake Tapper's book club, and I didn't realize that was a real thing.
Is it really?
Like on CNN Plus, one of the shows was Jake Tapper's Book Club.
That's a real show that was on there.
Really?
I would have subscribed.
If only you had known.
See, the marketing was bad.
That was the only problem.
In solidarity in memorial of CNN Plus, we should all plant a potato in a field.
The only ad I saw for anything on CNN Plus was they were doing like a documentary about the Jesse Smollett hoax.
And it's like CNN was the ones who made it the hoax.
I would have liked it if it was just all repeats of clips that they did on CNN saying it was true for three weeks.
The hoax is coming from inside the building.
It's just the greatest of compilation.
So I didn't see this until I actually read the stinger for it, but Kamal Harris got COVID and CNN's White House correspondent tweeted out that she is, don't worry, not a close contact of President Biden.
That actually happened.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
They don't talk to each other at all.
So that's wonderful.
All right.
Well, at least the pandemic's over.
That's a good thing.
Yep.
Fauci officially declared it over.
And I was waiting for his take on things otherwise.
Yeah.
I've been masked up this entire time.
You were just waiting for Fauci to go to say what you're supposed to do.
So I never followed up on this subscriber, Dare.
I was supposed to come up with a rapper name.
Is it cheating to Google a rapper named rapper?
Is there a generator?
I've got a rapper for you.
You have one for me?
DJ Bathroom Break.
I quite like that.
That's good.
That one works.
How about Lil' Bladder?
Lil' Bladder.
That's it.
That's better.
Lil Bladder.
So now we have it.
Lil Bladder.
And That is my wrapper name.
So thank you, little Riggie Main, for that.
And thank you for subscribing.
We're going to follow up and make sure you actually subscribe.
And if you don't, you're banned forever.
Yeah.
So three weeks ago, we debuted a new feature to massive fanfare.
The feature's called Sizzler Facts.
It's just what it sounds like.
We have facts about Sizzler.
Overwhelmingly positive feedback for this.
Matthew DeWitt on YouTube said, need more Sizzler Facts.
And Wally Stogner, Stony, said, more Sizzler Facts.
So the people have spoken.
There's a consensus.
There's a real consensus here.
And it's time for this week's Sizzler Fact.
Sizzler made a name for itself by offering a sit-down dining experience at a relatively low cost.
For example, in the year 2000, the restaurant claimed that the average check for a diner was $9.46.
Oh, wow.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, that's an interesting.
That seems fairly cheap for that time.
I know there's an inflation and stuff, but I still think $9.46 to dine out is affordable value.
It's affordable and delicious.
This has been Sizzler Facts.
We had a banger of the week this week.
Banger of the week.
Musk's Twitter purchase fails after 138,000 board votes found overnight.
That's excellent.
It's a great reference.
And I think people were clicking on it because they were really worried that it actually failed.
People were sharing it and thinking about it.
That one's ripe for a Snopes factor.
That's ripe for a Sizzler.
It's coming soon.
Tricked all those grounds.
But, you know, at least politicians are coming out in favor of regulating big tech now that Elon Musk is owning Twitter.
Yeah.
And we also had a bomb of the week.
Bomb of the week.
Top-ed.
If I obtain one more toy plastic sword, I shall be satisfied.
There's an opposite.
Is it missing that it was by a three-year-old or a five-year-old?
Five-year-old.
Yeah.
I think it works whomever it's from.
Yeah, it really works.
Yeah, for me, it's those folding knives that you that I'm just saying.
And at 39, I'd still love a new plastic.
A new toy plastic sword.
Yeah.
I just might remove the plastic and just go with sword.
Just the actual sword.
Yeah, that's actually a picture of my son's floor with all those swords on it.
So that's where that came from.
Joel was writing this.
I pitched this article.
Joel was writing it.
And then he said, Can you get a picture of some swords?
And I walked into my son's room and it was basically this.
I added a couple more swords, but I walked in and I'm like, oh, good.
It's already built the set while you wrote this.
Your son actually accidentally purchased like an almost real legit replica sword one time, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, he bought like, you, I want a master sword.
And he like, I don't know, he bought it or he clicked buy on Amazon or something and like a massive metal sword shows up.
So my four-year-old has this like real master sword.
And it was like a replica, but you know, knockoff.
Nice.
Did you sharpen it?
So we did not sharpen it.
I know.
All my Lord of the Ring swords you can sharpen, but I never have.
You know, I just, you know, there's props or whatever.
All right.
It's time for B Radio with Austin Robertson.
Factually inaccurate.
Morally correct.
This is Babylon B Radio.
Our top story.
Vice President Kamala Harris has tested positive for COVID-19.
After only two days with Kamala, however, the virus resigned from its host, citing an unsustainable, harsh work environment.
The COVID infecting the VP's body claimed that conditions were simply too toxic, hostile, and overly critical, forcing the coronavirus to throw in the towel early.
Hey, originally, I thought this should be the perfect gig.
You've seen as how she was triple vaccinated.
She was an easy target.
But once I started working, I realized I'd made a huge mistake.
COVID claimed that it was unable to effectively run its course as it was interrupted by the incessant cackling disrupting its train of thought.
At publishing time, COVID had officially escaped the vice president by soaring through the air right as Kamala cackled uncontrollably when asked a question about starving blind orphan children.
In the first step toward a world blossoming with freedom of speech, Elon Musk, the proud new owner of Twitter, ordered the company's tech team to make all tweets by Bill Gates autocorrected.
Poopy butt, poopy butt, poopy poopy butt, butt.
Odd?
I could have sworn I typed out a hopeful message on the benefits of global forced clandestine sterilization of women.
A confused gates stared at his Windows phone while his tailor fitted him for a custom brassier.
Why does it say, butt, but, butt, poopy, butt, poopy, butt, poopy, poop, poop.
While millions praised Musk's decision as steering the social media company toward much-needed free speech, others have voiced concerns that untethered misinformation could lead to rigged elections and mistrust of giant pharmaceutical companies.
In one example, White House Press Secretary Jen Saki reiterated President Biden's support for government regulation of social media in a tweet.
I smell like sauerkraut and farts.
Eyewitnesses claim a frustrated Bill Gates posted in the secret group chat for members of the Dark Council of Global Dominance, ranting about the dangers granting Elon Musk control over free speech.
But his messages were also autocorrected.
Man boobs, man boobs, booby booby man boobs.
With Elon Musk reaching a deal to purchase Twitter, many on the platform believe former President Donald Trump's account will soon be restored.
Upon hearing the news, Trump announced that he plans to share all 278,000 tweets the world missed while he was kicked off the platform.
I have been writing my tweets, my big, beautiful tweets, in this journal for two long years.
They are the good tweets, the best tweets, really.
Real beauties.
And now you can read all of them, folks.
All, every single one.
Big tech can't hide them from you anymore.
I will share them on Twitter in one long thread.
You're welcome.
Stopes and USA Today have announced they will be hiring hundreds of staff to fact-check Trump's 278,000 tweet thread.
Progressives have announced that men can, in fact, get pregnant, opening the door for men to have opinions on abortion as well.
Across the country, men for the first time ever are now experiencing what it's like to be able to form their own thoughts on abortion.
Pro-life activist Neil Hitchens.
Yesterday, when I pointed out my body, my choice doesn't consider the body or the choice of the baby, I was ridiculed as backward thinking and anti-science.
But today, my opinion is worthy of consideration.
Now I'm crushing every debate, and all this thanks to woke companies like Apple for insisting that men are capable of getting pregnant too.
Way to go, Apple.
Many pro-abortion activists have tried to pivot to say your opinion on abortion is only relevant if you have a uterus, but they've been called out for their sexism and bigotry for trying to reduce womanhood down to anatomy.
At publishing time, men were just finding out about other things they're now allowed to have opinions on, such as makeup, periods, and breastfeeding in public.
Thor's on-again, off-again love interest, Dr. Jane Foster, has been found worthy of mighty Mjolnir, the ancient hammer of Thor.
She's been transformed into one of Earth's mightiest heroes by the hammer while the God of Thunder is away on space business.
However, sources reveal she keeps picking up Thor's wrench by mistake, as she's just a woman and has a hard time telling the difference between the tools in Thor's garage.
Bruce Banner kindly reminded Dr. Foster that she can hold out her hand and call to the mystical hammer and it will come.
She yelled at him to stop mansplating, then proceeded to pick up a pair of needle-nose pliers.
At publishing time, Jane Foster began wielding a rolling pin imbued with the strength of mighty homemakers to fight Gore the God Butcher since she wouldn't listen to all the men telling her what to do.
Sources near Disney World report U.S. Representative Alexandria Elcasio-Cortez was seen crying outside the entrance in an expensive designer dress with the words, groom the kids emblazoned across the fabric.
The congresswoman wept openly and screamed at the sky for several hours.
Leave the theme park employees who want to groom children alone.
All they want is for children to be able to mutilate themselves and make life-altering decisions when they're like two years old.
Hands off our ladies.
While posing for photos from her PR team, AOC stopped weeping several times during the staged appearance just long enough for her staffers to put in more fake teardrops in her eyes.
The congresswoman's boyfriend also appeared in the photos, wailing and gnashing his teeth as he wore his custom-made boys can menstruate micro skirt and tube top.
Though the photographers sadly could not use the pictures as his feet were too big and gross.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also made an appearance to form a counter protest in a beautiful custom princess gown that said, Men are men.
At publishing time, AOC had to be freed by Disney's private army of firefighters when she got her head stuck in the gate because she's stupid.
Now you're up to date on the only news that matters.
Find more fake news you can trust at BabylonB.com.
Until next time, this is Austin Robertson, the voice of the Babylon Bee.
So long.
Well, that was a fantastic rendition of the week's news from Austin Robertson.
Thank you.
He's killing them.
His voice is just like butter.
I'd like for him to read me a bedtime speech.
Yeah, it's like butter on a nice sizzling steak.
I know.
It's like butter spread across too much bread.
Too much bread.
Not enough bread, really.
Unlimited bread.
Unlimited bread, yeah.
Cheesy bread.
Yeah.
So we're going to now do something that's even funnier.
Weekly news with Adam Jenser.
As a Christian, you know that God is always there for you.
But sometimes things in this life can get overwhelming.
It's a crazy time, especially with the pandemic and all that stuff.
It's important to speak to a counselor, but you definitely want to talk to one who shares your faith and values.
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You have Christian counselors who share your faith, who can deal with crisis of faith issues, and just deal with normal stuff that every human deals with, like depression, stress, anxiety, relationships, all that kind of stuff.
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Everything you share is confidential.
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That's faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B.
It's time for the weekly news with Adam Jenser.
Donald Trump said that despite Elon Musk's purchase, he won't return to Twitter and will continue to use his own Truth Social platform.
Truth Social's other user was thrilled to hear the news.
On Wednesday, Dr. Fauci announced that the U.S. is now out of the COVID pandemic phase.
Apparently, as soon as COVID encountered Kamala Harris, it decided to leave.
French President Emmanuel Macron was elected a second term with 58.8% of the vote, beating his challenger, Maureen LePon.
Voters primarily based their decision on which name sounds more French.
Joe Biden attempted to call President Macrone to congratulate him on election night, but Macrone didn't answer the call.
Said Macrone, the only senior citizen I want to celebrate with tonight is my wife.
She's like 70 years old.
Because she is 40.
It's a joke about how his geriatric wife.
New Jersey will now allow off-duty police officers to smoke marijuana, which has already become their favorite way to dispose of evidence.
A stunt sponsored by Red Bull, in which two pilots attempted to switch planes mid-air, went horribly wrong when one pilot missed and the plane crashed.
Thankfully, no one was hurt, but tragically, Red Bull still tastes the same.
Carrie Elwist, the star of the Princess Bride, was bitten by a rattlesnake.
It was almost as painful as watching the Hyperians daily watching.
Thank you, thank you.
That's what I was asking.
A California woman who was stranded alone in the wilderness for almost a week survived by eating yogurt and melted snow, or as California women call it, a cheat day.
Burger King is.
I said it's so dumb.
You can say it into the microphone.
It is so dumb.
I can take it.
Burger King is launching a new loyalty program where customers can get free fries once a week and free diabetes for a lifetime.
Newly published emails reveal that Hunter Biden called his brother's widow and his ex, Hallie Biden, a quote, clueless, middle-aged, over-botox donkey.
Loser.
Said Donald Trump, you know, maybe this Hunter Biden guy isn't so bad after all.
That's it for weekly news.
Catch me at the Looney Bin in Oklahoma City with Cam Bertrand, May 11th to 14th.
Hey, Babylon Bee listeners, Kyle here.
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That's adflegal.org slash B E E. Hey everyone, welcome to the Babylon Bee podcast.
Today we're talking to Ian Miller, who does stuff about masks.
Yeah, he's a mask expert and he's an expert on how they don't work.
Yeah.
He's got a book called Unmasked, The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates, and he's got a Twitter account where he posts a lot of data and interesting science on masks.
So you can follow him and I don't know what his handle is, but it'll be on your screen there.
So check out Ian Miller on Twitter.
Also check out his sub stack, which is called Unmasked and his book, Unmasked.
Let's dive in.
And now for another interview on the Bee Weekly.
All right, well, welcome.
Today we are excited to be joined by noted J.R.R. Tolkien artist, Ian Miller.
Are you aware that you share a name with a noted JRR Tolkien artist in fantasy?
I was not aware of that, actually, but that's very exciting.
I've never googled your name and seen that come up.
Normally what comes up is the My Big Fat Creek wedding character.
There's the lead man named Ian Miller, so I got that.
But not.
don't have any Tolkien art pieces I mean I own the books love the books love the movies but draw your own illustrations in them No, unfortunately, not.
I guarantee it would not be as good as a piece of paper and a pencil.
Would you be able to draw some J.R.R. Tolkien fan art for it?
It would look really close to like stick figures, I think, is what it would turn out like, but I'm happy to do that.
That's how a lot of the Babylon Bee illustrations are.
So that's great.
First of all, do you want a mask?
I'll decline, respectfully, if possible.
Yeah, no, not a huge fan.
Stunning from the book title, but.
Yeah.
Is it okay if we take ours off?
Of course it's okay.
Okay.
Okay.
We were waiting for the.
You guys can all.
We all put these on when you knocked on the door.
I was like, I was not 100% sure.
I was like, we don't normally wear a mask.
I don't know.
Is there some filming rules or something?
As soon as he showed up today, we all put on masks.
I didn't say anything about it.
I know.
I let it go.
Oh, man.
I didn't.
Yeah.
I didn't expect this from the Babylonian.
You got me.
That was good.
Well, so we already lost our Twitter account.
Yeah.
So by agreeing to have you on, we know that we're about to lose our YouTube channel also.
I apologize for that.
We don't want to really beat around the bush.
Why don't you just come on out with the most controversial thing right out of the gate to get us banned?
Well, obviously, I don't want to get you guys banned, but I think it's really pretty obvious at this point.
And I'm hopeful that as we get further away from March 2020, more people are willing to kind of admit that none of this stuff.
What happened on March 2020?
I only know about January 6th.
Yeah, right.
That's all I hear about in the news.
I don't know.
There's this pandemic that's been going on for two years.
No, and I mean, I think that it's a it's.
It's definitely something that I think if you and one of the points with the book was to show early on that all of the evidence Pre-COVID was suggesting the masks wouldn't work and then, for basically no reason at all, all the kind of experts, the Fauci's of the world, turned around and said everybody should wear a mask.
I think it was just, you know, to give people the sense that they were doing something to try to combat COVID.
And it's pretty obvious at this point, two years in, that everywhere that's tried mask mandates, it hasn't worked.
The masks haven't worked, no matter how high quality your masks are, haven't worked.
You guys are wearing very high quality masks, which I appreciate.
It kept me very, thank you.
We really buy the good ones here.
Yeah, very good, very well maintained, obviously to keep them safe from germs yeah, so I think it's pretty clear at this point and I'm hopeful that as we get further away, more people will be willing to admit that and kind of acknowledge reality.
But that was the goal is to try to make a comprehensive case that it didn't work and that you know we need to essentially let people get back to normal.
Now, what was the kind of the accepted science or whatever you know studies on masks before all this?
Because I, I know, like in Asian cultures a lot of times they would wear masks during flu season or you know, you see people like that walking around.
Yeah, like that, you know.
So it was that.
You know.
There's a one section of the book that I thought was really important.
That was in march.
On march 31st uh, dr Fauci was sent an email from one of his employees at the Naiad and NIH.
That said, you know, we reviewed all the high quality randomized, controlled trials on masking and all of them suggested it wouldn't have a significant impact on the general population.
April 3rd, three days later, they all come out and say everybody should wear a mask.
So to me, what that said was all of the you know, they reviewed the evidence, they reviewed all the science and it said it's not going to work.
And three days later, with no new science, there's no new evidence, obviously no new trial that's conducted from march 31st to april 3rd, they say everybody needs to wear a mask.
So I it was pretty clear that all of the the Pre-COVID evidence, and there was the World Health Organization, all these guidance, the organizations that they came up with, CDC, none of it said wearing masks would make a big difference.
So I think it's really important to point that out because they like to say we're following the science, we're following the evidence, following the data.
All of it said it wouldn't work.
So there's not really a great justification for why they flipped.
And I think a lot of what we've seen afterwards is them trying to justify that flip-flop early on that they did without evidence.
Now, one of the things I said very early on when we were still kind of hearing new things about this virus was that masks stop like droplets, like macro droplets from transmitting the virus on the surfaces or to other people.
Was there any, ever any evidence?
Because that's the one part that in the beginning, when I didn't know who to listen to, that sounded somewhat credible.
You know, I didn't think the mask was going to stop a virus floating in the air when we didn't really know how it was transmitted.
But was there any, ever any evidence that masks did anything at all?
Well, one of the best ways to think about that is people like to say, oh, well, they must work because doctors wear them.
But it's surgeons.
It's not every doctor.
It's just surgeons that were wearing them.
And in theory, it was to stop bacterial and kind of droplets from getting into open sources.
Well, they're just chopping people up and bloodshots.
They're just going everywhere.
And to stop blood from hitting them in the face.
When all the research that was done on doctors, it suggested it wasn't doing a great job of stopping droplets and bacteria from getting out during operations.
And there was a study done that said that surgeons that wore masks had a higher rate of post-op infections than those that didn't.
So it's not really justifiable to say that it was even going to stop droplets particularly well.
I mean, if it was going to work, that would have been how it worked.
But obviously, I think the vast majority of transmission is by aerosol transmission.
That became kind of accepted later on.
And masks are completely useless against aerosols.
And that was well established.
It's another part of pre-COVID science.
The UK had done this, their health services agency, and said that masks don't work against aerosols.
So as soon as that became accepted, is like this is how it's mostly being transmitted, there was no hope of it stopping it.
And I think that even with droplets, there's not a lot of great evidence to suggest it does a good job with that either.
So I think it's just, it's a, there's not really something you could point to to say this was the justification.
They put together all these planning documents over years, reviewed journal articles and research, and none of all of that, reviewing all of that, they never said to wear a mask.
So there's just no way that they could in three days learn all this new information that suggested all of their years of planning from pre-COVID should be thrown out.
I think that's kind of one of the more important takeaways, really.
Okay, but what about two masks?
Two masks.
It just makes common sense that if one mask doesn't work, two masks will equally not work, you know, will not work doubly as well.
Yeah, I mean, it's just, again, it's like that to me was, I keep hoping that there will get to a point where they jump the shark with this stuff, where people have just said, that's it.
Yeah.
I've had enough.
Like, it's gone too far.
Double masking, I thought, was one of the times that would happen, and it didn't.
Although I don't think we had nearly as much compliance with double masking over the last year or so that we would have had with single.
But yeah, it's just, it was like the single mask isn't working.
So we'll just make if we wear two, that will be, maybe that will work.
But it was kind of their way of tacitly acknowledging that one wasn't working either.
Now, hear me out.
Three masks.
So you have no guesses or insight into why there was this flip-flop.
I mean, I guess for me, it seems like it's something where they needed to look like they were doing something.
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it.
I think the other part of it is that they, and this has been proposed to me by other people as well, that like when everything was shut down, this was a way of getting people to leave their houses again, that they would feel safer if they were wearing a mask to like get out and start going to work or going to restart the economy in summer of 2020.
And also, I think part of it was that they legitimately saw what was happening in Japan and South Korea.
They thought that they were doing really well because of masking and thought, well, if it's working there, maybe it'll work for us too.
Obviously, that I don't think that's the numbers now in Japan and South Korea have gone way, way, way, way up from where they were back then.
And that's not a real, it's not a real science-based way to make decisions.
But I think that's kind of the best answer we're going to get.
And you can also tell because in February of 2020, Fauci was telling people privately, don't wear masks.
Not like we're trying to protect supply for healthcare workers.
We're not recommending it for the general public yet, but it does provide protection and we'll stop you from spreading it.
It was just, they don't work, don't wear them.
So I think it's pretty clear they were, it's like you said, they were kind of doing something and it's some combination of all those different factors.
It seems like there was a couple of things early on that we thought about COVID that seemed to be wrong later.
I mean, there's a lot of things, but asymptomatic spread was one.
Spreading on surfaces, like you were talking about.
And they still do that.
Like you still go to Walmart and they're like, don't worry, we sanitize all the surfaces every two hours.
Wait down the bananas three times.
We work.
Yeah.
And it's bizarre to me, just that they're still hitting all these points that basically weren't true.
I mean, what was the science?
What is the science on the asymptomatic spread that everybody was?
Yeah, that was a really important one too.
And I think that was part of their justification was like, oh, well, masks might work if we, because people don't know they have it.
But, you know, asymptomatic spread has been a thing for the flu as well.
And we've never worn masks for the flu.
I mean, COVID's more severe than the flu for some populations.
But if it doesn't stop asymptomatic transmission of the flu, which it clearly doesn't because Japan has flu seasons still and a lot of other countries that wear masks in winter have had flu seasons, how is it going to asymptomatically stop COVID spread?
And it's also, I think, that one of the biggest problems with asymptomatic spread is that it's so uncommon that trying to stop it is almost impossible because it's just not very likely to be that's the main contributor.
And it's also that asymptomatic spread is, you know, what are we concerned about?
People getting something they don't know they have.
I mean, yes, you could spread to other people, but now we know COVID is endemic.
It's going, everybody's going to get it at some point, probably multiple times in their life.
What are you doing?
What are you hoping to accomplish by whatever slowing the spread would actually mean?
It's just you're possibly delaying it for a few weeks or a couple months before somebody gets it.
So, you know, all you can do is hope for, is tell people that are at higher risk to try to protect themselves as much as possible, take whatever precautions they want to take.
But for young, healthy people that are going to get an asymptomatic, it's an cancer case, but asymptomatic positive test, really, what are you really actually accomplishing by trying to stop that?
But didn't the mask make people hotter because you could just see their eyes and not their messed up teeth?
I personally don't think so, but no, I mean, I think it gave it has become this kind of safety blanket for a lot of people.
I mean, obviously it's funny to see people still clinging to it now, even as they've lifted the mandates in different places.
You still see people that are out there wearing masks as they walk around alone, wearing masks in their car.
It really seems like it got in people's heads.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's become something that's just going to keep reoccurring, especially in places like California.
It doesn't feel like they're ever really going to be able to move on permanently from this.
It seems like people have just kind of, it's become part of an overarching set of ideologies at this point, where it's like, you belong to the good guys.
You have the correct set of beliefs about all these other political issues.
And so you wear a mask to show that you're a good person and that you care about others.
And it's just, it's hard to see that as somebody who obviously has written a book about this, but it's hard to see it just thinking, you know, what's the end game for you?
When are you going to feel like it's safe to go back to regular life?
I don't have an answer for that.
I don't know when they're ever going to come back.
Yeah, my theory is California will continue to implement mask mandates every winter.
Yeah, I think so.
My prediction right now.
That's to keep people warm when it gets below 60.
It rained yesterday.
This morning it was pretty bad.
What was your background in this stuff before you started writing about the masks?
Yeah, so my background was mostly in some data management, data analysis type stuff.
So I wasn't, I don't have no medical background or science background or anything like that, but data.
And so that's what got me interested in the first place was looking at the data and looking at what was happening.
And obviously, I'm California, and so the restrictions here were so intense and strict that I was going, is it making a difference?
Is there a way to find out?
And I've said this before, but it's like they made it so easy to kind of disprove their own arguments because the data is so easily accessible.
Anybody could go to LA County Public Health and download their Excel spreadsheet or Johns Hopkins or World Health Organization and download the numbers and just put all that's all it is, putting a little line on a graph and showing this is what we did.
Did it make a difference afterwards?
But nobody was really doing that.
And I think the media especially has kind of abdicated a lot of responsibility because they just put up a counter saying there were 50,000 new cases today.
But what's the context of that?
There's no context there.
So it became something that I wanted to try to do consistently when I realized there was a lot of people that were interested in seeing it and they weren't able to get that information from anybody.
So yeah, it's not hard to do it, but it was something I wanted to show over time and across the whole country and then eventually across the rest of the world too, that everybody was trying a lot of these same policies and it wasn't working anywhere.
So there was a lot of debate over whether certain states handled it better, even countries like Florida versus California or like Sweden versus China versus the US.
Did you find anything in your data that one country or state's strategy was better or more effective in any way than others?
Right.
Well, the Sweden thing was interesting.
I put a chapter in the book about Sweden where you can compare them to a lot of other countries in Europe and they've done significantly better.
And especially.
So what do you mean by better, that they had fewer total cases, fewer total deaths, that it peaked at different points?
Like, what's the definition of better?
A lot more fun, for sure.
Hard to quantify that, but it is definitely true.
No, it was, I think it's like lower death rates, lower case rates at certain times.
And, you know, over the course of the pandemic and their total ranking now across the world as far as the total death rate is like 60th or 65th, something like that.
So completely average, basically.
So now as it's all kind of going away, hopefully, or becoming just part of life, they came out 60th in the world.
Yeah.
Completely unexceptional.
And the idea is that if it was so important to do all these things to have, because they never did a lockdown, they know they had some capacity limits and some other small things, but never like, oh, we're closing everything except for Walmart and Target.
But they had IKEA.
But IKEA never closed.
You always hang out at IKEA.
You can get lost in there.
So you can spend some time in IKEA, kill some time.
But no, it was a, I think they're looking at the totality of it, if it was so important to do all these things, Sweden, that shouldn't have been possible.
You know, they should be leading the world in death rate by far and far and away because nobody was wearing a mask.
They never shut everything down.
You know, they kept schools open as much as they could, especially younger kids.
And so it kind of disproves a lot of these arguments that the only way it would have been a disaster, an uncontrolled disaster, if we hadn't done all these things.
And same thing with Florida.
And I kind of compare Florida to California.
And when you adjust for age, because Florida's got a much older population, their numbers are nearly identical to California.
And when you compare excess deaths, which is not just from COVID, it's all causes.
And there has been a higher percentage over the last couple of years, but Florida and California, Florida did better for most of the winter periods of 2020, 21, and then this past winter.
So again, it just kind of goes to show you that if these policies were the most important thing to do, which is what we were told over and over and over again, that shouldn't be possible.
It shouldn't be that you could, if I show you two states that had widely different policies without a label on it, you should be able to point out immediately, this one had the mask mandate, this one did the lockdowns, and this one didn't.
And you can't.
So I think that really shows how much of this has just kind of been theater and political posturing.
One line that Governor Newsom always touted was that it was just a lack of compliance.
In the more rural areas, people were just going out and ignoring the mandates.
Is there any truth to that or is Newsom not being 100% honest with us?
I think that there's probably some truth to it that people in rural areas were not complying as much as they would be in, say, Los Angeles or Manhattan.
But one of the best ways to combat that is Los Angeles County Public Health this past December went out and did a survey of about 1,500 businesses in LA.
A lot of big survey and found that and put it on a press release, which I was thinking about.
Yeah.
No, it's hard to believe.
And you could still go to French Laundry if you were preservation.
They were open with very low mask compliance, though, unfortunately.
But yeah, LA County did this survey and found that 95 plus percent of people were wearing a mask and they literally put in a press release.
And then within two weeks, cases had gone up like 20 or 30 times higher than they were right before they made that press release.
So even when the official public health bureau is going, or bureaucracy is going out there and doing these surveys and measuring it themselves, and they say 95% of people are wearing a mask and it doesn't matter.
So compliance is not, I mean, you know, you have the example right there.
Compliance is really not going to make much of a big difference.
And there is a lot of survey data out there.
And I do show some of that and write about it a lot where you can take survey data from the same survey and you can show that the compliance never moves and the cases go up 30 or 40 times higher and then come right back down.
So it's kind of just irrelevant at certain point how much how many people are actually wearing masks or following the rules.
It just doesn't matter.
Now, so the masks are ineffective.
Did you find anything?
I've heard people claim that there's actual like negative effects of masks, whether it's children in schools not being, you know, when they're young, they can't see body language and facial expressions for development.
That I've heard people claim masks will make you sicker, that they're not good for your health.
Did you find any negative effects of masks?
Did you look into that at all?
I didn't cover it as much in the book, but afterwards I have looked at it.
And there's been more stuff that has come out since I had to finish the book, but it was something like a 37% loss of learning from younger age groups over the last year or so.
I mean, there's been a lot of data.
And can that be attributed to masks or is that because the remote learning over Zoom or is it a kind of a combination of it all?
Yeah, I would say it's probably a combination.
I mean, it's hard to specifically put that out.
I mean, I think there are definitely physical harms.
There was a research done at the University of Florida about how many bacterial and other kind of contaminants were collecting on masks, especially with news by kids.
That can't be good for you.
So I think there's been, there needs to be more research done on it too, because I think, especially early on, a lot of people were not willing to do research on it.
Didn't want to come out and say that masks could have any potential side effects or negative impacts.
There's definitely, I think there's been some research that on breathing and how much you're able to oxygen levels and things like that.
So there's a lot of harms to it.
And that's another point too, is that it's one thing to say it hasn't worked, but every policy has a benefit and a harm.
And even if masks had a marginal benefit, even if it was 3% or 5%, is that worth the trade-off of impeding communication?
I mean, obviously, that's another negative side effect is if people need to see mouse move in order to communicate.
Young children need to see faces to learn how to learn facial expressions.
Is that worth a 3% benefit of reducing COVID cases when, again, everybody's going to get it at some point anyway.
So I would think it's a pretty clear case that the benefits are not worth the harms.
So you want grandma to die.
Yeah, right?
Is what you're saying.
Yeah, that's...
It also felt weird to me with the masks and whether they're good to put on your face or not because early on, I was diligent about using a new mask or cleaning my mask.
And then as these mandates went on and on, I'm just pulling like a ratty mask that's been stuffed in my car that has dust.
And it's just, I'm like, this can't be doing anything for me.
Well, that's a good one.
It's just theater.
Yeah, right.
I would not recommend that.
No, I think that's definitely, that's a great point that it is, if they were ever going to work the way that they said they were going to work, they would have to be used properly and exposed after every use.
And you're supposed to wash your hands before you touch it, only touch the ear loops.
When you guys took them off, you did not handle those properly.
I'm just pointing that out.
I noticed a lot of very poor mask hygiene going on in here.
You've never worn a mask before.
Let's just put them on for you.
But no, I mean, you know, and when doctors use it, theoretically, when they're trained to use it, they're sterilized.
They have gloves on that are washed, they're cleaned, and they only touch it by the earlier.
They discard it after every use.
They put a new one on.
I mean, no one is doing that.
They're hanging from car review mirrors or you go to a restaurant in the theater of putting it on to walk three feet to your table.
Yeah, and then take it off again.
Take it off, put it on your pocket or on the table at the restaurant.
I mean, that's not going to do anything, even if they did work.
So, yeah, a lot of it is just so performative and theatrical, but that's, and that's another good example of that.
Is there any data that you have either in the book or that you know of of the crappy masks versus the good K9?
Because that's another argument you hear.
It's like, well, it's because people aren't using the right masks.
Yeah.
Well, and I think that's another kind of jump to shark moment too, is that they have kind of moved the goalposts further and further of like, oh, well, the reason it didn't work is because everybody was wearing a cloth mask.
We'd all just worn surgical or N95s.
And you can go look at places like Germany and Austria that have had N95 level mandates.
And some German states had N95 mandates and some only had surgical.
Some only, you know, weren't that strict.
And the areas that had the N95 mandates were doing worse than those with the surgical masks.
So I think that kind of goes to show you.
And Austria too, where they shattered all of their previous case records well after they had mandated N95 level masks.
So, you know, if they're, again, if it was going to work at a population level, areas that tried it would see a benefit.
And there isn't a benefit.
If anything, they've done significantly worse than a lot of other areas.
And, you know, we mentioned Sweden a minute ago.
Germany for the last 18 months, 20 months, has recorded a higher death rate than Sweden, where no one's wearing masks.
And in Germany, they have N95 masks and vaccine passports and all the other kind of policies.
So yeah, I think in theory, it sounds good, right?
A better quality mask would make a difference.
But again, a properly fitted N95 used by a healthcare professional is very different than somebody throwing on a KN95 with gaps and loose fitting and going out in public.
So I think in reality, it hasn't really made much of a difference.
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And he or she says, I never really thought before about how much effort y'all put into your costumes, props, and set designs.
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I really miss Adam Ford.
This is from Giovanni Calantonio.
Colantonio.
Sounds like a great hate mail author.
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It'll be the most hustle I ever put into something in my life.
As soon as we're unbanned, we should ban him first.
We should a race.
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The bonus hate mail is for the subscriber lounge.
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All right, well, let's do it in the subscriber lounge.
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And are we going to ask Brandon the 10 questions?
You never answered the 10 questions.
I've never.
That is shocking to me.
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I've written many of the questions and I've never answered them.
That's very sad.
Not the original 10 quest.
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