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March 19, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:01:03

What The Hell Happens Now? | Ep. 975

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	As the entire American economy freezes, the feds open up the spigot, we examine what comes next, and the media won't stop labeling Trump a racist over his use of the term Chinese virus.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Don't like the government spying on you?
	Well, visit expressvpn.com slash pen to stay safely anonymous.
	Alrighty.
	Well, today, I really want to examine in depth what exactly we are going to do from here on out, because that is eminently unclear.
	And let me just make clear at the outset that I'm very much in favor of measures that are designed to flatten the curve.
	I'm very much in favor of the attempt to lower the Threshold of death.
	The goal here is to prevent, as we've said before, the giant curve that exceeds the capacity of the medical system from taking place and to flatten that thing out.
	But let's just be realistic about what is going to work for the American public and what is not going to work for the American public.
	I was talking to my wife this morning about this entire situation.
	And I was suggesting that if you look to the world of dieting, what you know about dieting, what everybody knows about dieting is that dieting doesn't work.
	The reason that dieting generally does not work is because there is no end date.
	It is interminable and it is unrealistic.
	If you actually want to succeed in cutting weight, you either have to have rounds of cutting weight where you say, like, for three weeks, we're just going to cut weight.
	For three weeks, there's going to be no sugar, there's going to be no fat, there's going to be no carbs.
	It's going to be brutal, but you can do it for three weeks.
	And then you'll go back to eating some of the stuff and you'll adjust your lifestyle a little bit.
	essentially, you'll go back to kind of quasi normal.
	If you say that to people, then people can handle it for like three weeks.
	And if you say to people, listen, we're gonna have to adjust your entire diet and it's gonna be permanent, but it's not gonna be like enormous changes.
	It's just gonna be enough changes that it changes the trajectory of your nutritional health.
	If you say to people, okay, we're not gonna cut carbohydrates completely out, but we're gonna cut them down fairly significantly.
	We're not going to cut out your morning cup of coffee, but we're going to take down the size of that cup of coffee.
	That is something people can deal with too.
	If you tell them on a permanent basis, let's be realistic about what we can do, and then we'll implement that on a permanent basis.
	Here's what people cannot do.
	We're going to cut out fat.
	We're going to cut out sugar.
	We're going to cut out carbohydrates.
	We're going to cut out salt.
	We're going to cut out everything that tastes good to you.
	And we're going to do it until I say.
	No one's going to do that.
	It's going to last five minutes.
	Truly five minutes.
	And the reason it's going to last five minutes is because if you believe that there is an indefinite wait time here, at a certain point, you're just going to say, OK, screw it.
	Right?
	Really, like, done.
	And that is the problem with the government's response with regard to coronavirus thus far.
	There have been two major problems.
	One is the resources have not been brought to bear.
	We'll get to that in a moment.
	Because the goal here, as I was saying yesterday on the program, theoretically, should be to shift from sort of the Chinese model, or the Italian model, or the French model, to the South Korean model, and to do that as fast as possible.
	The goal here would be to move away from the model where everybody is in complete lockdown, where you're isolated in your home, where there is tremendous amounts of social distancing.
	And to move toward the South Korean model where there's heavy testing and basically we're segregating off the population that is exposed to the virus from a population that is not exposed to the virus so that over time you develop a herd immunity and also so that you don't shut down the economy.
	That can only happen when you have the resources at your disposal.
	So that should be the goal.
	The problem is if the government doesn't actually lay out a timeline for when that's going to happen, it's going to be unrealistic.
	And when you're talking about millions of Americans losing their job, and that's what's going to happen over the next few weeks, the government can backstop this stuff as much as they want.
	Everyone knows that if this lasts for six months, the government is not going to have the ability to simply keep paying people.
	I mean, look at the bond yields.
	The bond yields are already rising.
	That means the desire to buy American bonds is already down.
	That means buying American debt is down.
	So who's going to finance?
	All of this spending.
	You can do this for a short period of time.
	You can backstop bank loans, for example.
	Tell the banks, don't call in all of your loans right now.
	Tell the credit card companies, don't go and police all of your credit for a month or two.
	You can't do that for six, seven, eight months.
	Not when nobody is working.
	And right now, small businesses that were operating with slim margins, this great lie that was being told by so many folks on the left that small business owners or even major business owners are operating on massive profit margins.
	They just got pools of cash stacked up somewhere and they can pay people.
	Well, right now they're laying off tens of thousands of workers.
	And over the next few weeks, you're going to see them lay off hundreds of thousands of workers.
	And all of the Democrat attempts to create legislation that will force small companies to pay for paid sick leave.
	How many companies do you think are just going to say, okay, not only are we not going to pay for paid sick leave, we are not going to employ you.
	We're just going to furlough you.
	As people have to choose between the risks of coronavirus and the rewards of having a job, as that calculation becomes more and more immediate, which it's going to be over time, The government is going to have to lay out a timeline for how long this thing lasts.
	We're going to have to lay out a plan for what comes next, because it is just not going to be sufficient to tell people, hunker down in your home until further notice.
	Not unless the statistics really start to show such a major uptick that we're not just talking about the curve exceeding the medical community's capacity to deal with coronavirus, but we start talking about mass death and the kinds of numbers that sort of the worst case scenarios have posited.
	And right now, people are looking at the COVID-19 maps, and they're saying to themselves, okay, like really, and this is not, I think, unrealistic.
	Again, none of this is an argument not to stay home right now if you can, not to wash, not to not wash your hands.
	Obviously, you should be doing the social, you should do all of these things.
	The point I'm making is there has to be a midterm or long-term plan, or even the short-term plan is going to fail.
	Again, to go back to the diet analogy, if you want this diet to work, you're gonna have to tell people when they can relax the diet.
	You're gonna have to tell people when we come out of this and what life is gonna look like when you come out the other side of this.
	If instead it's like, okay, we're in an emergency situation until further notice, at a certain point people are gonna be like, no, that's not going to work.
	Sort of like the episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon is on a plane, she's dating Matt Damon's character who's a pilot at the time.
	She's on a plane and the plane isn't taking off for hours at a time.
	Matt Damon keeps getting on the Horn every 45 minutes and saying 45 minutes to take off and eventually Liz Lemon goes to the cockpit and she says, wait a second, it's been three hours.
	Yeah, we just keep telling people 45 minutes and she ends up leading an uprising on the plane against Matt Damon.
	That's what you're going to see.
	You're going to see people basically say screw it.
	Like really, I'm just going to go out.
	I'm going to live my life.
	I'm trapped at home.
	I have no job now.
	What do you expect me to do?
	And that's not completely unrealistic.
	Right now, people are looking at the global pandemic and they're saying there have been, according to Johns Hopkins, 223,000 cases confirmed and about 9,100 deaths confirmed on a planet of 7 billion people.
	And in the United States, we are currently looking at somewhere around 10,000 cases and south of 200 deaths.
	And if those numbers do not spike dramatically, forget about whether this is right or wrong or the incapacity of people to understand exponential thinking and the fact that this thing could multiply pretty quickly, which of course it obviously could.
	If people look at this, and we are at the end of March, and there have been less than 500 deaths in the United States, or less than 1,000 deaths in the United States, and we have started to level off in terms of the number of cases that we are seeing diagnosed each and every day, then there's going to be a real push for people to get back to work.
	Because this is not, and if the government does not set out exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it, and when we can expect this thing to relax, people are going to take matters into their own hands.
	Because these measures are extraordinarily restrictive.
	And you can be extraordinarily restrictive for a short period of time.
	You cannot do it in a free country for a long period of time.
	Not again when you're talking about destroying the economy to the tune of, according to J.P.
	Morgan, a negative 14% growth rate in Q2, which is unprecedented in American history, including during wartime.
	We're going to get to more of this in a second.
	We're going to bring you some of the news surrounding coronavirus and where the spikes are happening and all the rest.
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	Okay, so it's particularly true the government needs to come up with a timeline considering the fact that China is now reporting zero community infections.
	Right, so what that suggests is that we are now looking at the possibility of seriously tamping this thing down.
	Now, it is worthwhile noting here that there are a bunch of other countries that are seeing secondary spikes.
	So Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, all of which looked to have had this thing under control.
	When people are coming back into their country with coronavirus, the thing is spiking again.
	But so far, at least if China's not lying, which who the hell knows, honestly, China's reporting zero local infections, which is a major turning point according to the New York Times.
	For the first time since the coronavirus, Crisis began.
	China on Thursday reported no new local infections for the previous day, a milestone in its costly battle with the outbreak that has since become a pandemic upending daily life economic activity around the world.
	Apple has reopened all of its stores in China.
	Officials said 34 new coronavirus cases had been confirmed, all involving people who had come to China from elsewhere.
	In signaling that an end to China's epidemic might be in sight, the announcement could pave the way for officials to focus more on reviving the country's economy, which nearly ground to a halt after the government imposed travel restrictions and quarantine measures.
	In recent days, economic life has been resuming in fits and starts.
	According to the New York Times, experts say it will need to see at least 14 consecutive days without new infections for the outbreak to be considered truly over.
	It still remains to be seen whether the virus will re-emerge once daily life restarts and travel restrictions are lifted around the country.
	And that's going to be the big question, right?
	I mean, if this thing just re-crops up, if it keeps cropping up continuously, at a certain point people are going to have to go back to work, and we're going to have to live with the results of people going back to work.
	So hopefully what we're doing right now is buying time in the United States to build more ICU beds, to make sure that everybody has their medical masks, We are ensuring that the resources that are necessary to raise the bar on medical care are available.
	That's what we're doing.
	We're buying time.
	We are not actually preventing the spread of the disease beyond a certain point, because when everybody goes back to work, presumably, people are going to start spreading coronavirus again.
	Ben Cowling, professor and head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Hong Kong University School of Public Health.
	He says, it's very clear the actions taken in China have almost brought to an end their first wave of infections.
	The question is, what will happen if there's a second wave?
	Because the kind of measures China has implemented are not necessarily sustainable in the long term.
	Which, of course, is sort of the point that I'm making here.
	The measures we're taking here are not sustainable in the long term, which does raise the question as to what everything looks like on the other side of this.
	And meanwhile, in the United States, obviously, we are seeing spikes in the number of diagnosed cases.
	That makes sense, because we are seeing spikes in the number of tests that are available.
	New York City did something like 7,000 tests yesterday, so it's not a big surprise that you saw a spike in the number of cases identified in New York.
	There's apparently a huge spike in the Brooklyn Hasidic community.
	More than 100 people testing positive in two neighborhoods, all at two urgent care centers, crammed with worried families, according to the New York Times.
	Health officials expressed growing alarm on Wednesday that the coronavirus is spreading quickly in tightly-knit Hasidic Jewish communities in Brooklyn, saying they're investigating a spike in confirmed cases in recent days, which is one of the reasons... Guys, listen.
	I'm an Orthodox Jew, too.
	Like, don't go to mass weddings, you idiots.
	Stop it.
	Okay?
	Anybody who's doing that sort of stuff?
	Of any religion.
	Like, stop.
	Stop!
	Okay, now is the time when you actually want to allow the government to increase the number of beds available, allow the private sector to increase the number of masks available, right?
	All we are doing is buying time, so let the time be bought.
	Don't ignore the warnings and go out and party it up at a wedding in somebody's backyard.
	I saw tape of that yesterday floating around.
	Like, just don't do that.
	Okay, it is one thing to go overboard, like some people are doing, saying, don't go to a park, even if you're doing social, like, go out to a park, socially distance, all that's good.
	Do not interact in exactly all the normal ways of a park.
	Forum was last week.
	Okay, there was a party down the block.
	And this is before sort of everybody had decided that we were all gonna go into quarantine, effectively.
	And I turned to my wife and my parents, and I said, I think that's a bad idea.
	And we ended up not going.
	Instead, we just did something in our house.
	Like, just do that.
	Okay, just do that.
	More than 100 people have recently tested positive for coronavirus in Borough Park and Williamsburg, two Brooklyn neighborhoods with sizable Hasidic Jewish populations.
	All of them tested at two urgent care centers that have been crowded with anxious patients, according to an urgent care center employee.
	On Tuesday, Bill de Blasio said that the city would begin to increase its testing capacity from the current level of several hundred tests a day.
	The increase would start on Thursday, with the expectation of reaching the goal of 5,000 tests a day after several days.
	De Blasio said that there were no known clusters of coronavirus in the city, but there are certainly clusters in certain areas of Brooklyn, apparently.
	Meanwhile, there's also breaking news.
	That a number of people who have come up with coronavirus and are now being hospitalized are under the age of 54.
	They're saying that 40% of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54.
	But for all of the talk about the serious consequences to young people, and there are some serious consequences.
	You've seen decreased lung capacity in some young people, for example.
	The fact is this remains still a disease that is basically killing off older people.
	The proof coming, not courtesy of the United States, but coming courtesy Instead of Italy, where there are studies demonstrating that literally 99% of people dying from the virus had other illnesses, according to the Italian government.
	Bloomberg reported this yesterday.
	More than 99% of Italy's coronavirus fatalities were people who suffered from previous medical conditions, according to a study by the country's national health authority.
	After deaths from the virus reached more than 2,500, with a 150% increase in the past week, health authorities have been combing through data to provide clues to help combat the spread of the disease.
	Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's government is evaluating whether to extend a nationwide lockdown beginning the beginning of April.
	Apparently, they're going to do this.
	Italy has more than 31,500 confirmed cases of the illness.
	More than 75% of the people who have died in Italy had high blood pressure, 35% had diabetes, a third suffered from heart disease.
	The median age of those infected was 63.
	The median age of death was 80.5.
	That's the median age of death.
	The average age is 79.5.
	So this is still a disease that is almost entirely killing old people and people with pre-existing conditions.
	That does not mean we shouldn't take it seriously if we're young.
	I mean, you can be a carrier of this thing, of course.
	But the fact remains that if we have done all we can do in terms of increasing our medical capacity, Then, and that has not happened yet, as we're about to discuss.
	If we get to the point where we have maxed out our medical capacity, at that point, people are gonna start going to work and sort of the chips are gonna fall where they may.
	That's just the realistic nature of this thing.
	Now with that said, we are still running way behind with regard to testing.
	We are still running way behind with regard to beds.
	We're still running way behind with regard to face masks.
	We're gonna get to all of that in one second.
	We're gonna talk about how the federal government did indeed screw this thing up.
	And how the fact is the private industry is now having to fill the gap.
	We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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	Alrighty, well, as I say, the medical shortages are continuing.
	The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Are now attempting to give people information about what they can do to replace face masks if they are short on face masks.
	They have contingency and crisis strategies.
	Their contingency capacity strategies include extended use of face masks, so wearing the same face mask for repeated close contact encounters with several different parties without removing the face mask between patient encounters.
	The face mask should be removed and discarded if soiled, damaged, or hard to breathe through, according to the CDC.
	Also, restrict face masks to use by health care professionals rather than patients for source control.
	And finally, they are suggesting that not only should you possibly implement limited reuse of face masks, which apparently is being done at hospitals, they're suggesting other different options, including using a face shield that covers the entire front that extends to the chin or below and the sides of the face with no face mask, considering the use of ventilated headboards, or using homemade masks.
	They say in settings where face masks are not available, healthcare professionals might use homemade masks like bandanas or scarves For care of patients with COVID-19 is a last resort.
	Homemade masks are not considered patient safe since their capability to protect is unknown.
	Caution should be exercised when considering this option.
	Homemade masks should ideally be used in combination with a face shield that covers the entire front and sides of the face.
	Obviously, the fact that the CDC is issuing such guidance tells you something about exactly how far behind we are on all of this.
	Meanwhile, there are serious questions to be asked about why the tests were not available.
	As I say, South Korea, on a per capita basis, the United States is testing far less than nearly any industrialized country.
	And that is due to failures by the CDC and the federal government.
	The CDC turned down testing kits from the WHO.
	They said they'd develop their own, and then it turns out that they were giving all sorts of false positives and maybe even some false negatives.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, when cases of the new coronavirus began emerging several weeks ago in California, Washington, and other pockets of the country, U.S.
	public health officials worried this might be the big one, according to emails and interviews.
	The testing program they rolled out to combat it, though, was a small one.
	Limited testing has blinded Americans to the scale of the outbreak so far, impeding the nation's ability to fight the virus through isolating the sick and their contacts, according to public health officials.
	As of early on Wednesday, about 6,500 people in the United States had tested positive.
	By the way, it is now Thursday, obviously, and we're talking about north of 10,000.
	The CDC and prevention had reported only about 32,000 tests conducted at its facilities and other public health labs.
	Limited testing was keeping patients in the dark despite recent improvements.
	People are coming in with the symptoms of coronavirus and they are being told that they actually should not be tested unless they know they were in contact with someone with coronavirus.
	But the problem is that nobody's been tested for coronavirus, so how the hell do you know if you're in contact with somebody who has coronavirus?
	While the virus was quietly spreading within the United States, the CDC had told state and local officials its testing capacity is more than adequate to meet current testing demands, according to a February 26th agency email viewed by the Wall Street Journal.
	The agency's data show it tested fewer than 100 patients that day.
	Some people are going to be fired for this, and should be fired for this.
	When the CDC first dispersed test kits in early February, it shipped them to a network of state and local government labs and restricted testing to people with virus symptoms who had recently traveled to China, but it was already weeks too late for that.
	Federal officials hope the virus could be contained, even as they disputed alarms from those on the front lines that CDC's guidelines weren't keeping up with the outbreak's spread, according to emails between the U.S.
	agency and local officials.
	And there are people who are going to blame the Trump administration for this, but it just demonstrates that when you have a very thick bureaucracy, that people tend to cover their own asses, which is something that, obviously, we already knew.
	The narrow effort is a failing, said Anthony Fauci.
	Government doctors become the de facto face of the Trump administration coronavirus response.
	While problems clearly still persist, more labs are beginning to do tests.
	Manufacturers are ramping up production.
	CDC officials botched an initial test kit developed in an agency lab, retracting many tests.
	They resisted calls from state officials and medical providers to broaden testing.
	Health officials failed to coordinate with outside companies to ensure needed test kit supplies, like nasal swabs and chemical reagents, would be available, according to suppliers and health officials.
	When the FDA finally opened testing to more outside labs, a run on limited stocks of some supplies needed for the CDC-developed tests quickly depleted stores, according to lab operators and suppliers.
	Hospital and commercial lab operators said the government didn't reach out to enlist their help until it was too late.
	So, obviously, this continues to be a giant failing.
	Now, we are ramping up the testing, and that is a good thing.
	If we do wish to move, as I've said at the outset, from the sort of Chinese model of lock everything down to the South Korean model of we've got to test as many people as humanly possible, and then lock down the people who have this thing, then the testing regimen is going to have to be a lot larger.
	And we're late on this, but we are getting the tests out.
	Now, with that said, there are serious questions to be asked about whether even the South Korean response is going to be sufficient, considering the fact that South Korea may be experiencing a secondary spike.
	As soon as people are entering South Korea again, it's possible that South Korea sees a secondary spike.
	As I mentioned earlier, we are seeing second waves of the virus that are breaking out All across Asia.
	Experts are warning of second waves all across Asia.
	So if that happens, the question is going to be whether testing is going to be sufficient.
	Which really means that in the end, what we're gonna have to deal with is the sad reality that maybe the best we can do is just mitigate the effects of this thing, meaning we develop better treatments.
	There's some people who've been saying that anti-malarial treatments might work.
	There was some hope that anti-HIV treatments would work.
	Those apparently have failed.
	Anti-malarial treatments are now being tested.
	There's gonna be a lot of talk about ICU beds and ventilators.
	All of that is perfectly appropriate.
	It is possible that testing is not going to be the cure-all that a lot of people seem to think that it is.
	Again, the reason for that, we'll explain in just one minute.
	First, let's talk for a second about staying at home all day.
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	All it took was a giant global pandemic to make all that happen.
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	Rules and restrictions do apply.
	Okay, so as I say, one of the reasons that mitigation Might in the end be the only thing that is available to us is because even an additional testing regimen has its downsides.
	There's a good piece by my friend Sean Trend over at RealClearPolitics all about the perils of mass coronavirus testing.
	He says, test kit availability aside, there are crucial issues to consider.
	For example, so long as the background level of infection is low, there are real downsides to mass testing and good reasons to limit testing to individuals who show symptoms or have been in contact with people who have shown symptoms.
	The problem is that when the overall level of infection is low, the overwhelming majority of your positive test results from mass testing will be false positives.
	So maybe the regimen that was put in place in the United States actually would be preferable once we have the beds in place rather than the mass testing and then the mass quarantine of people who show up positive.
	Here is the reason.
	Because let's say, for example, that you have a test in which there is a false positive rate of 1 in 10.
	There's a thread from Dr. Sterling Herring at Vanderbilt University talking about this.
	So what happens if everybody is tested?
	If tests were perfect, that would be great.
	But nearly all tests come with errors.
	The quick test used in South Korean drive-thrus generates an error roughly 1 in 10 times.
	So let's assume that we tested everyone with a 90% accurate test.
	So you'd end up with a set of results in which, let's say that you tested 100,000 people who actually have coronavirus.
	Okay, you know that they have coronavirus.
	What you'd end up with is 90,000 positive tests and 10,000 negative tests.
	Okay, now, let's say that you test a million people, right?
	Or 10 million people.
	If you test 10 million people, a huge number of people, like you test everybody, the number of false positives actually is going to vastly outweigh the number of true positives.
	Because again, most of the people who have the virus are going to get a positive reading, but the people who don't have illness, 10% of those people are going to get a positive reading too.
	Since there are far more people that don't have the virus than do have it, a 10% error group for that rate overwhelms the 90% accuracy rate for the group that does have it.
	So you end up with a scenario where literally 93% of the people who test positive for a disease do not in fact have the disease.
	So this can certainly skew your data because you could see the relatively low mortality rate and assume that that's real.
	Because the problem with widespread testing, a lot of people who test positive won't actually have had the disease in the first place.
	Second, it gives people a false sense of confidence because that low death rate means, okay, fine, maybe I'll just go out and play.
	And finally, you're gonna end up with a situation in which a lot of people are kept home who are actually healthy.
	So maybe mass testing is not in fact a panacea, depending on whether or not these tests are supremely accurate.
	And if there's a second wave, then even the South Korean sort of solution may not work, which means in the end, the lockdown policies are bound to do not, they cannot be long term.
	There is no lockdown policy that is long term, and it's possible that even a mass testing regimen Statistically speaking, cannot be a long-term solution.
	And this is certainly the case when you're talking about locking down the economy to the extent that we have.
	So let's talk about the federal government's response to all of this.
	Let's talk about the federal government, which is now intervening on an unprecedented scale in the financial community, in the economy.
	Now, there are a lot of people who have been saying, I've been getting a lot of emails, you're a libertarian, why aren't you protesting at the government getting this solved in the economy?
	Because what we have here is essentially a regulatory taking.
	So under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, you cannot seize private property for public use without just compensation when you effectively shut down every business in the country by executive fiat.
	Through mayors, or through states, or through the federal government.
	You are preventing people from using their property.
	You're effectively taking their property from them and the ability to use their property from them without any sort of just compensation.
	This is not the situation when there's sort of just a normal economic downturn, or when the market just collapses for no externality-driven reason.
	In this particular case, it's not even the disease that's shutting down the economy, per se.
	The disease would have an impact on the economy.
	But if we were all going to work right now, the stock market wouldn't have dropped 33%.
	The stock market wouldn't have dropped from $30,000 down below $20,000.
	One of the reasons all this is happening is specifically because governments around the world have forcibly stepped in and shut down businesses from operating.
	So, the government's shoring things up, or at least freezing things in place, until such time as people can get back to work makes some sense.
	Again, they can't seize your property without just compensation.
	Just compensation, presumably, would include ensuring the economy continues to work and your business doesn't fail while the government forces you to close.
	So, President Trump put out a message yesterday.
	He said, we will prevail together.
	Again, that's a good message to be putting out there.
	Here's what we need.
	A timeline, as I'm going to continue to discuss in just a moment.
	You've heard it a thousand times.
	Wash your hands.
	Good hygiene.
	All of that.
	But social distancing.
	Keep away.
	It's going to have no place to go.
	And I just want to thank you.
	As president, I want to thank you for the incredible job you're all doing.
	There's spirit in our country like never before.
	We are really, we've pulled together as a unit.
	We've pulled together as a country.
	We will prevail together.
	We love the USA.
	Okay, well, I'm sure we all do.
	The president also says we're unleashing the full power of the federal government, which of course is true.
	The question is, for how long?
	Because the bottom line is this, if you are at all concerned about government power, which I'm a conservative, I am, This stuff better be temporary.
	There's a long history in the United States of crises being used to massively grow government, then the government never goes back to its original boundaries, which is why we have to be pretty careful about the sort of measures we implement, and we have to be pretty clear that these measures are designed to sunset as soon as the lockdown is over.
	Here's President Trump talking about the extent of the federal government's response.
	We're using the full power of government in response to the Chinese virus.
	I declare the state of national emergency that we'll make up to $50 billion in disaster relief funds available, which we can use to assist hospitals, which, as you know, we need.
	Okay, all of that is true.
	So what exactly is in the relief bills that have been signed so far?
	So yesterday, President Trump signed a bill providing paid sick leave, free testing, and other benefits.
	According to the New York Times, a relief package to provide sick leave, unemployment benefits, free coronavirus testing, and food and medical aid to people affected by the pandemic was signed into law by President Trump on Wednesday evening after the Senate passed it by a wide margin.
	It was approved in the House last week.
	The Senate vote was 90-8 after the Majority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, urged conservatives who disliked the bill to gag and vote for it anyway.
	He says we have to do something.
	This is one of the dangers of politics is that the urgent often defeats the good, meaning that those who are calling for immediate action, they're not wrong.
	We do need immediate action right now to shore up the economy, make sure that people aren't going to go hungry, make sure that people continue to be able to live in their homes.
	All that has to happen.
	The problem is that when you have an emergency situation, that is also a fantastic time.
	As Rahm Emanuel once put it, never let a good crisis go to waste.
	It's also a great time to load up bills with enormous levels of pork and then hope that everybody just goes along with it because the political cost of not going along with it is a lot higher than just signing the check for the moment.
	Lawmakers are already drafting another economic stabilization package that would send direct payments to taxpayers and provide loans to businesses.
	McConnell said we're moving rapidly because the situation demands it.
	There's an outline of the new package.
	It calls for a total of $1 trillion in spending.
	That would include $50 billion for secured loans for the airline industry, not grants, right?
	Loans to the airline industry, which presumably they will have to pay back.
	another $150 billion for secured loans or loan guarantees for other parts of the economy.
	It would allow the Exchange Stabilization Fund, an emergency reserve account, usually used for currency market interventions, to be tapped to cover the costs.
	It would also temporarily guarantee money market mutual funds.
	The Treasury Department proposal calls for two rounds of checks sent directly to American taxpayers April 6th and May 18th.
	Payments would depend on the recipient's income and family size.
	According to the summary, each round would disperse $250 billion.
	Now, again, these big bailouts are basically designed to keep everybody afloat for the moment.
	But the temptation is going to be from the government, keep these things permanent.
	This is why you're seeing so many people suggest that a $2,000 one-time payout is equivalent to Andrew Yang's $1,000 a month payment to everybody forever.
	These two things are different and everybody should make very clear in their minds that these two things are different.
	These are not the same.
	You cannot claim that a permanent program is the same as a temporary program, nor should conservatives be sucked into thinking that a permanent program is the same as a temporary program.
	Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.
	That was not a permanent feature of American life.
	FDR violated nearly every rule of American civil liberties during World War II.
	That was not a permanent feature of American life.
	None of this should become a permanent feature of American life in times of good economic health because it does provide disincentive to work.
	Now, the problem right now is that there is no work to be had because the federal government has shut everything down, and so have the state and local governments.
	It is one thing for the state and local governments to rectify their breach by preventing the entire economy from collapsing when they're the ones who are causing this in the first place.
	It is another thing for the federal governments and the state governments to simply create a whole new set of incentives during a non-time of crisis, which is, I think, what people want.
	It's why Republicans, I think correctly, are bucking against the Democratic attempts to force small businesses forever to pay for paid sick leave.
	The reason being, who's not going to take the paid sick leave if you can take the paid sick leave every year?
	Of course, you just raise the cost on businesses.
	Now, in a time like this, I still think it's not great policy.
	I think that if the government wants to pay for that, the government can pay for that, and they can borrow on that basis, and we'll pay for it later.
	Forcing small businesses to pay paid sick leave when they barely, I mean, they can't even cover their employees.
	I mean, people are getting furloughed right now.
	You're actually causing people to get fired.
	But even if you were to be in favor of it right now, that doesn't mean that you should be in favor of it permanently.
	Again, the sort of libertarian conservative case here is when the federal government shuts down businesses, they need to compensate businesses for shutting them down.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second, what these policies look like.
	And then we will ask, again, how long is this gonna last?
	What do the policies look like in the future?
	And we'll get to the media's laser-like focus on the real issue here, which is why are we calling it the Chinese virus?
	Oh my God, because we have to focus on the dumbest possible stuff.
	Okay, well, in the meantime.
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	Okay, we're going to get to more of the proposals being put forward by the federal government.
	Are they permanent or are they temporary?
	That makes a very large difference.
	First, if you haven't had a chance to, check out some of our new content that we started this week called All Access Live.
	You should head over to dailywire.com and check it out.
	Jeremy Boring and I kicked it off Monday evening.
	Jeremy and Michael Moles followed up on Tuesday night.
	Matt Walsh was last night.
	We're doing episodes the rest of the week at 8 p.m.
	Eastern, 5 p.m.
	Pacific.
	I'll be doing another episode on Friday as well.
	If you're wondering what All Access Live is about, well, it's really relaxed.
	I mean, it's basically just us hanging out.
	I remember, I will take credit for this, it was sort of my idea in the sense that I remember being back in law school and being stuck in a dorm during the winter and being like, God, this is annoying and lonely.
	And I wish that I had somebody to hang out with.
	So I got married.
	In any case.
	Right now, since everybody's locked down, it's a great time to hang out with us.
	These shows are less focused on bringing you news and information, more about just hanging out with you at the end of a long day.
	We're all kind of stuck in isolation right now.
	It's more important than ever we come together as a community and hang out together.
	I think these live streams with our audience help us bring this together, even though it's through a computer.
	The show is intended for our All Access members, but during the national emergency and this time of isolation and social annoyance, we've opened it up to all of our members.
	In doing so, we've accelerated the launch, so please let us know what you think of it.
	If you're around at 8 p.m.
	Eastern, 5 p.m.
	Pacific tonight, join us on the All Access live show over at dailywire.com.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So according to the New York Times, entire sectors of the American economy are shutting down, threatening to crush businesses, put millions of people out of work, forcing lawmakers to consider a vast financial bailout that would dwarf the federal government's response to the 2008 crisis again. forcing lawmakers to consider a vast financial bailout that would One of the reasons this is appropriate is because it's the government that is causing this.
	Now, I'm not saying that it's unjustified what the government is doing.
	As I've suggested, it's justified so long as there is a plan after the next two weeks, next three weeks.
	If there's no plan, then it is unjustified.
	If the government has no plan, if we have not upped our resources, if all we've done is destroy the world economy to buy us no time and to not fix anything and to not increase our capacity, then this was a complete waste.
	But if we've actually bought some time, if we have flattened the curve in some way, if we have increased our medical capacity, well then maybe this all will have been worth it, at least to a large extent.
	But that doesn't mean that the government gets to shut down your business and then not compensate you for shutting down your business when you haven't violated the law in any way.
	Economists fear that by the time the coronavirus pandemic subsides and economic activity resumes, entire industries could be wiped out.
	Proprietors across the country could lose their businesses.
	Millions of workers could find themselves jobless.
	That, of course, is true.
	And it's one of the reasons why we should carefully consider exactly the measures that we're taking with an eye toward what's going to happen in a month.
	If we're doing this by the seat of our pants, day by day, that is not going to cut it.
	There had better be a plan.
	If you're talking about wrecking the world economy, there'd better be a plan.
	It's funny, there are people out there, particularly in Twitter world, who say, if you even mention the economy at this time, you're not taking human lives seriously enough.
	Would you care more about dollars and GDP or human life?
	Let's be clear about this.
	People losing their jobs, that actually affects human life.
	People losing the businesses they've invested their life savings in, that kind of affects human life.
	Millions and millions of people losing their jobs all at once in a massive shock to the economy?
	That's going to have some real-life ramifications for all the people who lose their jobs, and their children, and their spouses, and the people they care about.
	So let's not pretend there are no costs on the other side.
	And let's not pretend that there are no cost calculations when it comes to calibrating strategy properly.
	One of the things that is always bad policy is when you say, if only it would save one life.
	Yeah, if it would only save one life, then we'd cut out all cars.
	Again, none of this is to argue.
	That we shouldn't be taking the measures we're taking right now.
	Maybe we should.
	But there had better... I keep saying it over and over.
	I'm going to keep saying it.
	There better be a plan on the other side.
	That plan had better involve vastly increased capacity to deal with this.
	It better involve some mitigating technologies.
	It better involve better testing facilities.
	And it better involve people getting back to work as soon as possible.
	Because this cannot, this cannot maintain.
	And there's been some talk from doctors about what's going to happen over the next 12 to 18 months.
	Are we going to go through periodic rounds of sort of area shutdowns if there's an outbreak?
	Maybe that has to happen, but the question is the broad overarching consequences of all of this.
	And so, Washington can take on debt, but it can't take on debt forever, and it does demonstrate, by the way, that we are idiots to take on $22 trillion of debt for no reason over the past 40 years.
	Geniuses all.
	Now we actually need to max out the credit card, and we've been busy maxing it out on garbage that we bought on eBay.
	To blunt the fallout, Washington is weighing proposals that could easily top $2 trillion, a staggering jump from the initial $8.3 billion virus responsibility lawmakers approved this month.
	That does include that $1 trillion request that President Trump was making.
	The Republicans are also weighing a separate proposal that would extend a trillion dollars in assistance to small businesses to keep them afloat during the outbreak and keep workers on their payrolls.
	I don't truly like the idea of the federal government giving direct loans to small businesses, honestly, because the federal government has an interest then in making sure that nobody pays all that back.
	Who's going to be the person who enforces that?
	Instead, the federal government should be giving loans to the banks that underwrite all these small businesses and floating them loans at basically 0% interest and telling them they only get those loans if they don't call in the loans right now.
	And that would be the best way to calibrate all of this.
	So, that is sort of the situation where we stand.
	All of this needs to be temporary.
	We do need to get back to normal.
	And back to normal is a thing that has to happen.
	There's got to be a plan for this.
	I'm not the only person asking this question.
	I think everybody is asking this question at this point.
	The Associated Press has a piece today called, How Long Will Americans Be Fighting the Coronavirus?
	Scientists say there isn't a simple answer.
	Stephen Morse, disease researcher at Columbia says, In many ways, the situation is unprecedented.
	We're trying to take some actions to curb the spread and timing of the pandemic.
	He says there have been past disease outbreaks scientists can draw lessons from, but in those cases the disease was largely allowed to run its course so the models don't precisely apply.
	This is correct, obviously.
	I mean, the fact is that if we didn't care about human life, which of course we do, then we would allow the disease to run its course, it would wipe out whoever it wipes out, and people would just continue to operate as normal.
	The whole point of this is presumably that we are going to prevent the loss of life.
	But the question is how you best minimize loss of life without also destroying an economy that sustains life.
	What do you think happens in impoverished countries that are reliant on the world economy in order to feed people?
	People in the United States will still get fed for a 12 to 18 month period of time.
	That is not true in countries that are in the developing world or in the undeveloped world.
	On Monday, President Trump said the U.S.
	may be managing the outbreak through July or August.
	New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state's number of coronavirus cases may peak, not end, in 45 days.
	Each model of how the disease could spread relies on data and assumptions about population dynamics, demographics, healthcare capacity, and other factors, according to Rebecca Katz, public health expert at Georgetown.
	The challenge for designing models of what will happen next is that limited testing for COVID-19 means researchers don't even know what the starting point is, how many people are already infected.
	So how long is this thing actually going to last?
	Well, Mark Jitt, disease researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says the point of the restrictions we have is actually to stretch this out even longer.
	We don't want a big peak to come very quickly.
	So how does this end?
	Most scientists believe that the fight against COVID-19 won't be over until there's an effective vaccine, but that could take more than a year.
	The best case scenario, according to JIT, is that we have a vaccine in 12 or 18 months, our lives go back to normal.
	The worst case scenario is it takes a long time for a vaccine to be developed.
	The world has really changed.
	Our lives aren't the same again, ever.
	But nobody thinks that we're going to be shut-ins forever.
	Nobody thinks that's going to happen.
	Michael Levy, University of Pennsylvania disease researcher, he says, I don't think we can maintain social distancing as it is right now for the duration of the epidemic.
	That obviously is true.
	I mean, you have idiots in Florida who are out partying on the beaches, like, right now.
	You think they're gonna last another... another... year?
	I mean, like, really.
	They're not gonna last another five minutes.
	Well, maybe more feasible is intermittent restrictions and enhanced monitoring to control the disease.
	Once the number of new cases falls below a certain threshold, schools, offices, restaurants could reopen.
	If the number of infections spikes again, restrictions would be reinstated.
	It's going to be very difficult to reinstate restrictions after the restrictions come off, is part of the problem here.
	Bouncing around between restricted and non-restrictive is going to be very difficult.
	And this is particularly true when you look at the data.
	Holman Jenkins over at the Wall Street Journal has a piece today talking specifically about the statistics on coronavirus and what exactly are the costs that we are willing to undergo as an economy in order to minimize an unspecified number of deaths.
	We actually don't know the answers to how many deaths are actually being prevented right now.
	Holman Jenkins says some number of respiratory deaths will be avoided, really delayed, but we'll be spending a lot more than we've ever been willing to spend before to avoid flu deaths.
	83% of our economy will be suppressed to relieve pressure on the 17% represented by healthcare.
	This will have to last months, not weeks, to modulate the rate at which a critical mass of 330 million get infected and acquire natural immunity.
	Will people put up with it once they realize they're still expected to get the virus?
	Right again, this is why it really is about increasing ICU capacity.
	Because if we don't increase ICU capacity and people are like, I can either get it now or I can wait and not have a job and get it later.
	People can be like, I'll get it now.
	Seriously, I can't tell you how many people who are in their 20s and 30s I've talked to over the past few days who have been like, if I could just get this thing right now and then be done with it, I would do it.
	If I knew I wasn't going to carry it to grandma.
	And that's going to be an increasing attitude as people lose their jobs.
	So the questions become, if we can't actually increase capacity, if things are what they are, at that point you just have to let this thing go.
	That is sort of the logic that is happening right now.
	Understandably, says Holman Jenkins, politicians believe faith in government requires avoiding Italy-like scenes, but turned on its head here is the 50-year-old QALY revolution, the idea of measuring the burden of disease and benefit of healthcare based on quality-adjusted life year, typically valued at $50,000 to $150,000.
	In the present instance, the cost isn't just medical intervention, like ventilator use, but the cost of an economy-wide shutdown to limit the number of candidates for ventilation at any one time.
	He says, I don't know what the figure is, but the QALY value we're placing on avoiding Italy-like deaths is surely a high multiple of any figure previously considered realistic.
	America's shutdown strategy is interesting because it was not a choice that any one person or authority made.
	Everybody sort of jumped on board overnight.
	But this can't last indefinitely is the point that Holman Jenkins is making.
	And that's right, we are operating in the absence of data.
	So here's the bottom line.
	In several weeks, we will have data.
	Once those data are there, we are going to have to make a choice about what we can do from here.
	Because this just isn't sustainable.
	Everybody knows it's not sustainable and the government needs to lay out.
	We need to know and we need to debate openly.
	What are the conditions under which we go back to normal?
	What are the virus vectors under which we go back to normal?
	What can we expect over the next 12 to 18 months until a vaccine is developed?
	Because a permanent shutdown is not in the cards.
	It is just not a thing.
	It is just not a thing.
	Okay, meanwhile, the media continue to carry water.
	Many in the media continue to carry water for China, which is unbelievable because China is indeed responsible for the growth of this virus, for the release of this virus, not by the military or anything.
	But as I mentioned yesterday, to apparently some ballyhoo online, China's refusal to shut down wet markets, which by the way are animal rights abuses.
	It's amazing how many people on the left are very much against animal rights abuse.
	By the way, so am I.
	I saw some people like, why don't you talk about factory farming and conditions?
	I have before.
	Have you not listened to the show?
	I've talked about how vegetarianism might actually be more moral in the end.
	I mean, I have talked about this.
	The wet markets in China are a disaster area.
	They've been responsible for several outbreaks of different types, ranging from the so-called Asian flu of the 1950s to what we are watching right now.
	The fact that China, to SARS, I mean, the fact that China has allowed this stuff to militate And then has allowed it to spread among the populations of the world is entirely China's fault.
	Axios compiled an actual timeline of what the Chinese government did.
	They say that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did, the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95%.
	They put together this entire timeline.
	And it demonstrates that the Chinese government knew, they silenced it, they refused to allow the information to spread, They lied to the WHO and said that it did not have human-to-human transmission.
	They allowed tens of thousands of people to gather for events.
	They allowed some 5 million people apparently to travel out of Wuhan.
	China is responsible for all of this.
	This hasn't stopped the media from, in their desperate hatred of Trump, trying to pretend that Trump is a racist for pointing out that China is responsible for all of this.
	Here's yesterday, President Trump going at it with a reporter.
	He was asked this question like four separate times.
	Seriously, in all of this, your biggest concern is that we are labeling China the bad actor when, you know, China is the bad actor?
	Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus?
	There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country.
	Your own aide, Secretary Azar, says he does not use this term.
	He says ethnicity does not cause the virus.
	Why do you keep using this?
	Because it comes from China?
	A lot of people say it's racist.
	It's not racist at all, no.
	Not at all.
	It comes from China.
	That's why.
	It comes from China.
	I want to be accurate.
	I have great love for all of the people from our country, but as you know, China tried to say at one point, maybe they stopped now, that it was caused by American soldiers.
	That can't happen.
	It's not going to happen.
	Not as long as I'm president.
	It comes from China.
	He is right about all of this.
	Everything he says here is true.
	It is not racist.
	It is not culturally insensitive to point out that eating pangolins and bats has externalities and is a bad idea for anyone.
	I don't think Americans... By the way, there are lots of things that I think are yucky.
	The question is whether they cause externalities in terms of whether they should be shut down.
	I think that it's gross to eat a raccoon.
	I'm an Orthodox Jew.
	I think most things that people eat are gross.
	I keep kosher.
	The reality is that China's refusal to shut down these wet markets, which are an animal rights violation, beyond which they're now a human rights violation considering how many people are going to die from this thing.
	$10 trillion is going to be lost from the world economy over this whole thing.
	And you got the media defending them.
	NBC's Richard Engel yesterday pretending that China has nothing to do with this and that it really is just a rogue bat.
	You know, it's those rogue bats going around infecting people.
	I guess people were just sitting around and the bat flew in their mouth.
	Weird.
	There was lots and lots of scapegoating against an ethnic group or a religious group whenever there were pandemics that affected the society and frightened a lot of people.
	And China certainly feels that is what is happening now with people calling it the Wuhan flu or the Wuhan virus or the China virus.
	This is a virus that came from the territory of China, but came from bats.
	This is a bat virus, not a China virus.
	It doesn't speak Chinese.
	It doesn't target Chinese people.
	It targets human beings who happen to touch their eyes, nose, or mouth.
	Really?
	You're doing propaganda work on behalf of a Chinese government that is actively attempting to blame the West for the spread of a virus that started under its communist garbage government.
	Jimmy Kimmel doing the same routine.
	Dunking on Trump is more important than actually pointing out that the Chinese government is a horrific dictatorship.
	Here's Jimmy Kimmel trying to blame Trump for being mean to China or something.
	Trump, meanwhile, has a catchy little nickname for the coronavirus.
	He now calls it the Chinese virus every chance he gets.
	You know, they say a great way to prevent a virus from spreading is to name it something racist.
	That way people keep it on the down low.
	I don't know why he does this.
	Actually, I do know why he does this.
	It's to deflect blame away from him.
	It's like when he started calling Eric and Don Jr.
	the Ivana kids.
	Ridiculous.
	I'm sorry.
	Ridiculous.
	This is not about deflecting blame toward the Chinese government.
	The Chinese government deserves the blame.
	How are you guys all defending China here?
	How?
	How is that possible?
	What the hell is wrong with you people?
	Whoopi Goldberg does the same thing.
	Mother Nature did this to us, not China.
	Weird, because it seems like the Chinese government knew about this for like a month.
	Actively censored and threatened people who ended up dying from coronavirus, released 5 million people from the Wuhan province all over the world, and knew about this the whole time.
	It seems like that might have something to do with the Chinese government.
	According to Whoopi Goldberg, it's just Mother Nature.
	Weird how they're willing to blame Mother Nature when it comes to malaction by the Chinese government, malfeasance by the Chinese government, corruption and evil by the Chinese government.
	But when it comes to climate change, that's Trump's fault.
	It's the fault of human beings when it comes to climate change and lack of action, which may or may not be true.
	OK, but when it comes to something that is obviously the result of Chinese governmental failures and evil, then all of a sudden, well, I guess it's just nature.
	Nature just took its own course here.
	Unbelievable stuff.
	We keep talking about how we don't want to politicize this, which we shouldn't.
	Right now it's a time to listen to doctors, look at information, look at facts, look at data.
	I think by calling it the Chinese virus, that's politicizing it by title.
	So I think we need to stay on calling it what it is, it's the coronavirus or COVID-19, and stay with fact.
	And, you know, people, as we've seen, people start punching people, Asian folks out.
	Yeah.
	You know, will attack.
	So we need to stop calling it or labeling it like it's they did it to us.
	Mother Nature really did this to us.
	OK, first of all, anybody who's going like, you know, an ignorant, stupid ass, you have to be to go around punching Asian people because you think that this is the because this thing originated in China.
	Like there is no.
	You're a full-scale moron if you do that sort of thing, obviously, and you should go to jail for a significant period of time.
	That's called assault.
	It's illegal.
	But that does not change the fact that the Chinese government is— You want to call it the commie virus, I'm fine with that, too.
	That's fine.
	By the way, Senator Ed Markey, who is no Republican, a Democrat from Massachusetts, he says, yeah, we should hold China accountable.
	Correct.
	Correct.
	China has imposed a temporary ban on these markets, but I think that China has to be held accountable.
	I think that the World Health Organization, the entire world, has to just say to China, what China did in keeping this a secret, even though they knew it was happening, is a disgrace.
	It's causing panic around the world, and that is just absolutely something that the Chinese must be called to account.
	Okay, that is right.
	That's right.
	How is it that so many people on the left are blaming this on the right when Ed Markey, who is the right-winger, is saying it's obviously true?
	Okay, time for some things I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	As I've been mentioning all show long, When a crisis hits, sometimes you have to take crisis measures.
	But those crisis measures should not become permanent.
	There's a great book about this by a guy named Robert Higgs.
	It's called Crisis and Leviathan, Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government.
	He makes the point that there have been a series of crises over the course of American history.
	They've constantly been used to maximize the size and scope of American government.
	That doesn't mean the temporary measures aren't necessary.
	It does mean that the temporary measures very often are not temporary.
	And we should keep that in mind when it comes to the crafting of bills, when it comes to the crafting of legislation.
	Do not There's no reason that we should have to sign into law at the behest of people who want to make permanent a complete relational break between the government and its citizens.
	There's no reason we have to cave to that.
	Instead, how about this?
	How about we work on what we have to do for the next two, three months, and then we figure out what to do the two, three months after that?
	Because I'll tell you what the Democrats are going to push for right now.
	They're going to push for making permanent all of these changes to the American economy that are fantastic in scope and fantastical in impact.
	And it's going to be a disaster area, unless we keep in mind that it is only government crackdowns that have caused what is going on right now in the economy.
	Again, not unjustified, but that is the reason we are doing all this, not because we require a permanent change to the most powerful economy in the history of the world.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Okay, so, as y'all know, the song Imagine is the worst song ever written.
	It is a horrible, horrible, evil song.
	And it's not just evil because it's pretentious and ridiculous and the piano chords and all of that.
	It's an evil song because the actual ethos that is promulgated by Imagine is completely idiotic.
	Imagine, there's no countries, it's easy if you try, right?
	Okay, so let's just be a little frank about this.
	Right now, it's pretty obvious there are countries because every single country on planet Earth is closing its borders to all of the other countries.
	And they talk about, the lyrics include, imagine there's no heaven, imagine there's no hell, right?
	All we care about is what happens here on earth, which of course would lead pretty quickly to a moral breakdown of society.
	The song is just tremendously horrible.
	It's a horrible song with a horrible, immoral communist message.
	I've talked about it on the show extensively before.
	So naturally, because celebrities are idiots, they decide that what would be a great idea is to, in the middle of this pandemic, cut a self-glorifying video in which they each sing a line From Imagine.
	Because nothing says solidarity quite like singing a no-borders, idiotic, communist song in the middle of a pandemic in order to show that you care.
	Also, can anyone in Hollywood, like, please, come up with a different idea for a video than everybody singing a line from a song?
	I'm not sure which is more irritating, this or the version of Fight Song they did in 2016 for Hillary.
	I think it's this.
	I think it's this.
	Here's a little bit of a variety of celebrities demonstrating how emotionally deep they are by singing the dumbest song ever penned.
	Imagine there's no heaven.
	That's Gal Gadot.
	It's easy if you try.
	Kristen Wiig.
	No hell below us.
	Is that Richard Morrison?
	Above us only skies.
	I'm not sure I know all these celebs.
	James Marsden.
	Sarah Silverman.
	Oh God.
	Imagine no countries?
	Everyone would be dead.
	Jimmy Fallon.
	Natalie Portman.
	Imagine no countries, everyone would be dead.
	Jimmy Fallon.
	Natalie Portman.
	Zoe Kravitz.
	God, is this obnoxious garbage.
	Oh, God.
	Okay, just stop it.
	Just stop it.
	This is the dumbest, this is the dumbest song ever.
	Imagine no religion in a time where people are dying en masse.
	Imagine, by the way, again, imagine no countries is a really weird take when every border is shut.
	It's a very weird take.
	This is the song that you choose?
	At least We Are The World had like a solidarity message that didn't include the destruction of things that actually prevent people from dying.
	Celebrities.
	These are the people, our moral betters.
	We should listen to Will Ferrell on this stuff.
	If this is the height of your ethos, Mark Ruffalo singing Imagine, if the height of your ethos is the song Imagine, it's because you're doing morality wrong.
	Also policy, only dumb celebrities could come up with the dumbest song ever and then sing the dumbest song ever in order to promote the dumbest agenda ever in the face of a global pandemic that requires concerted individual government action.
	And again, significant restrictions on our way of life.
	Unbelievable.
	All right, well, but perfectly believable because celebrities are celebrities.
	All right, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow for all of your latest updates.
	Stay safe out there.
	And again, as I say every day, we'll get through this together.
	There is an expiration date to the lockdown, and there's an expiration date to the effect of the virus.
	It may be sooner, it may be later, but we can all hope and pray that the government is taking the measures necessary to at least get in place treatments and resources necessary to deal with the pandemic so that when the restrictions come off, we can get back to work.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
	Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.
	Technical producer Austin Stevens.
	Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.
	Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.
	Edited by Adam Sajovic.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	The market continues to plummet as the Chinese coronavirus locks people idle in their homes for weeks at a time and the global economy grinds to a halt.
	We will compare the pandemic to the left-wing policy agenda and see if we can tell the difference.
	Then a new study suggests the spread of the virus could have been reduced by as much as 95% if the Chinese government had acted to stop it rather than to cover it up.
	But of course, instead of reporting on that study, the U.S.
	mainstream media is simply parroting the communist regime's propaganda.
	Finally, the mailbag.

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