Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

April 3, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:06:42

How Bad Will This Get? | Ep. 986

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Experts call into question the White House models on coronavirus deaths.
	Hole appear in the government's financial response.
	And Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump go at it via open letter.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Don't let others track what you do.
	Keep yourself safe at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Alrighty, so, as always, we begin with our coronavirus numbers update, because that's, of course, what everybody needs to know.
	Right now, the United States stands at just over 6,000 deaths from coronavirus.
	Yesterday was a day in which we lost, according to worldometers.info, which is the same as the Johns Hopkins map.
	All these stats are basically the same.
	A little bit under 1,000 people yesterday.
	That was a little bit fewer than the day before.
	The day before was like 1,039.
	So hopefully we are going to start to see this flatten out rather than escalate, although the model suggests that this thing is going to escalate rather wildly up until mid-April.
	Particularly the University of Washington model suggests that April 15th, and they've now related to April 16th, we'll see upwards of 2,260 deaths in the United States from coronavirus.
	But it is these models that are exactly the question.
	We don't know how accurate the models are.
	We don't know what sort of data goes into them.
	We're not sure exactly why the data that comes out of them comes out of them.
	Are they based on bad information from China?
	Are they based on Italy?
	Are they based on the expectation of continuation of strong social measures?
	Are they based on the expectation that there will be no increase in ICU beds or ventilators?
	All of this stuff is variable.
	There are just so many variables in these equations.
	And that's not the fault of the people who do the modeling.
	The biggest problem here, of course, is that we have to rely on models that have extraordinary play in the joints in order to determine whether we ought to shut down the entire world economy for an undetermined period of time.
	And also, these models have yet to recommend what exactly happens at the end of the model.
	So, for example, the University of Washington model.
	This is my biggest question.
	The University of Washington model that everybody is citing, that model ends at approximately August.
	So right now, that University of Washington model, that one is suggesting that we are going to be at about 93,000 deaths by the end of August, somewhere in that neighborhood.
	And it ends there.
	Like, that's the end of it.
	So it's not as though we know what happens after that.
	And that's one of the really big questions here, is how exactly do you determine Where this ends, is there a second wave?
	Does the summer kill it off?
	It seems like everybody is sort of not answering the really hard questions, which is, where is this a year from now, two years from now?
	If we hold it down now, are the resources such that we actually are able to ramp up to expect a second wave?
	What happens when we release everybody from their self-contained quarantines?
	What happens here?
	So right now, if you look at that model, and this is the one that has been the most cited, this health model from the University of Washington.
	The organization is called the Institute for – I want to make sure I get this right – the Institute for Health Metricton Evaluation, the IHME, which is an independent population health research center at University of Washington, right?
	Right now, they are suggesting that the peak will happen on April 15th.
	They say that's peak resource use.
	And they are suggesting that on that day, there will be 263,000 beds needed in the United States.
	There will be a bed shortage across the United States of some 88,000 beds.
	They're suggesting there will be some 39,727 ICU beds needed on that day as opposed to About 20,000 available, and therefore there will be a shortage of nearly 20,000 beds, and they say there will be 31,782 ventilators needed.
	Now, those numbers, when it sounds like a very odd number, that's the sort of exactitude that no model can actually predict.
	It could be off by 100, it could be off by 200, it could be off by a ton.
	And in fact, if you look at their charts, what you see is these huge ranges of possibilities.
	There's a low wave possibility, there's a high range possibility.
	Right now, they are suggesting that the number of deaths per day, like, if we look at the stats, their stats have basically been, I would say, close to reality so far, although not exactly on.
	They're constantly readjusting their models.
	So, they suggested that yesterday, which was April 2nd, that there would be 1,036 deaths.
	We saw that there were 968 deaths, right?
	They're off, but how much they're off?
	They're off by, what, 10% there?
	Something like that?
	Somewhere between 7% and 10%?
	They're projecting that today there will be about 1,200 deaths.
	The following day, 1,400 deaths.
	All the way up to about 2,600 deaths on April 16th, which would be the peak, right?
	April 15th, April 16th, that would be the peak, and then it would start to decline.
	They're predicting that by June, basically June 1st, you'll see about 200 deaths per day.
	And that will go all the way down to approximately 30, 20 at the end of June.
	So the end of June is when they're really predicting that this thing is going to stop.
	They believe that even by May 1st, we are still going to be having northwards of 1,500 deaths per day.
	But there are serious questions as to exactly how well these models are going to predict things.
	Because they're really using New York as sort of the basis for everything.
	They're suggesting that the New York model, that's going to be the model for a lot of the big cities around the country.
	And we've actually not seen those sorts of numbers coming out of Los Angeles.
	Now, the model does adjust for differences in area.
	So if you look at California, for example, the IMHE model suggests a lot less death in California than in New York, right?
	They think that because California acted early and because it's been spreading here slower and because we're not all on top of each other the way people are on New York, that, for example, by April 26, they think the peak resource use in California is gonna be a little delayed.
	By April 26, there'll be 12,421 beds needed, but there will be beds available and there will be no bed shortage.
	They suggest that in California there will be 1,866 ICU beds needed and zero bed shortage, and that there will be a total of 1,493 ventilators needed.
	Right?
	That's a big difference from New York City.
	So where exactly we stand at this point is not super clear.
	I would say the models so far have been predictive.
	I mean, they have.
	I mean, I'm not going to say they're wildly off, but there's so much play in the joints and so much that we don't even know about the virus yet.
	I mean, we're still finding out whether the virus is airborne or whether it actually requires droplets in order to spread.
	So because of all of that uncertainty, This does raise the question of how are we going to know if what we did was successful or not?
	In strict statistical terms, how are we going to know if what we did was successful?
	Because there are countervailing concerns.
	Now, normally, in a medical setting, it is easy to tell what was successful and what was not, right?
	If somebody dies, you were unsuccessful.
	If somebody lives, then you were successful.
	But in terms of what if the countervailing policy requires the destruction of 20 million jobs, which is now what economists are suggesting, that we're going to see 20 million lost jobs by April 12th, which is about the time when the United States is going to peak here.
	How many deaths, forestalled, and not even prevented, forestalled, right?
	Because we don't know what happens in the second wave.
	Again, this model only goes till August.
	How many deaths forestalled is worth losing 20 million jobs?
	Because there will be attendant poverty and death and depression and mental health issues and all sorts of problems on the other end.
	That's not to suggest that what we're doing right now is wrong.
	It's to suggest that we have yet to hear any of the public health experts actually weigh in on how many deaths are likely to be prevented by the policy over the course of a year.
	We kind of know how many deaths might be prevented over the course of the next three, four months if we do this right.
	Because if we don't do it right, then you end up with 500,000 deaths as opposed to 100,000 deaths.
	You end up with a million deaths as opposed to 100,000 deaths.
	But I've yet to hear any of the public health officials suggest that they have any idea what's going to come in September.
	And the answer is they don't really know what's going to come in September.
	They don't know whether this thing is going to die off in the summer.
	There's just too much we don't know at this point.
	So one of the questions becomes, When you have this level of uncertainty, what is the best policy?
	In case of uncertainty, do you lock everything down indefinitely?
	And when does indefinitely come to an end?
	Because if you lock everything down indefinitely, then the costs are being made manifest every single day.
	But the benefits are unprovable.
	And when I say unprovable, what I mean is that there is no way to verify how many lives are actually being saved because you can't see the countervailing statistic, right?
	I mean, it doesn't exist.
	It exists in a counterfactual.
	If we all went out and we did moderate social distancing, for example, all the young people went back to everybody over the age of 60 stayed home.
	Everybody under the age of 60 was wearing a mask and social distancing.
	We don't actually know what that looks like because it's not happening.
	We know what's happening now and we know what that looks like, but we don't know what would happen if we did the other thing, right?
	This is one of the problems with trying to project this stuff into the future.
	And so with all these variables, what would be nice is if somebody from the public health profession would suggest We have a general idea of how many deaths are going to be saved or prevented over the course of the next year, including with the second wave, including with people going back out and engaging in moderate social distancing over the course of the next year, because you know for sure that the levels of death are going to lower if you lock everybody in their house for the next three months.
	For the next three months, they will lower, but you just don't know what's going to happen after that.
	The reason I bring all of this up is because there are serious questions that have to be asked right now, and especially for the next couple of weeks.
	I think everybody's on board for the next two weeks, probably, with the massive sort of lockdown that's taking place across the country.
	But as time progresses, as we are seeing from Europe, things get worse.
	Permanent changes happen.
	People lose their jobs permanently.
	And holes are already appearing in the government's response, financially speaking.
	So we're gonna have to take a lot more seriously how we get out of this thing.
	What does this look like?
	And I need to hear from the public health experts what that looks like.
	It's not just enough for them to say, we're saving lives in the here and now.
	I know, that's normally your job.
	I don't blame you that that's normally your job.
	But I need to hear what exactly this looks like on the other end, if the economy tanks.
	I need to hear a mixture of policy prescriptions from people who are on the economic side and people who are on the public health side.
	I'm fully with you on prioritizing public health.
	But I've not even heard a metric of success yet.
	What if the countervailing stat is that 200,000 people would die if we did the moderate social distancing, but 120,000 people would die over the course of the next year if we didn't do, if we locked everybody up?
	Then the question becomes, okay, 80,000 lives lost in order to save 20 million jobs and, you know, maybe on the other end, another 20,000, 30,000 suicides, maybe people falling into depression, right?
	These sort of stats.
	I'm not saying I know the stats.
	I don't know the stats.
	That's the point.
	I'm saying that if we're supposed to hear from the experts, then it would be nice to hear from the experts.
	Instead, we're sort of getting a black box here in terms of all of the countervailing concerns.
	I'm not the only one asking this question.
	The Washington Post is asking this question today, and we're going to get to that in just one second.
	First, Let's talk about the fact that you're spending an awful lot of time on the internet right now.
	You're not going to run out of TV shows, and you're going to not run out of time in the next month because you're going to be locked up in your house.
	So, you're going to be using the internet an awful lot, and that means that this is like a hacker's paradise.
	If you're a hacker, right now is like your dream time.
	You just get to steal everybody's credit card number unless they are using ExpressVPN.
	ExpressVPN protects your privacy and security.
	Here is something that you might not know.
	You can also use ExpressVPN to even unlock movies and shows that are only available in other countries.
	This is not committing fraud or committing a crime or anything.
	It's just that if you don't know, if the sites don't know where you are, then they can't actually lock you down by location.
	You could use this whole week to use ExpressVPN to binge Doctor Who on UK Netflix if you actually want to do.
	It's actually pretty easy to do so.
	You can fire up your ExpressVPN app, you can change your location, and then you can watch whatever is available over there.
	Don't do anything illegal, guys.
	ExpressVPN hides your IP address, lets you control where you want sites to think you are located.
	If you love anime, then you can use ExpressVPN to access Japanese Netflix and be spirited away.
	It's not just Netflix.
	ExpressVPN works with any streaming service, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, you name it.
	There are hundreds of VPNs out there.
	The reason I use ExpressVPN to watch shows is it is indeed ridiculously fast.
	There's never any buffering or lag.
	You can stream in HD.
	No problem.
	ExpressVPN is also compatible with all of your devices, phones, media consoles, smart TVs, and more.
	So you can watch what you want on a personal device or on the big screen wherever you are.
	If you visit my special link right now at expressvpn.com slash Ben, you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free.
	Support the show, watch what you want, protect yourself with ExpressVPN at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Obviously the protection of yourself is the thing I'm most worried about.
	Expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	So as I say, The problem with the modeling is that modeling is inherently uncertain.
	And you heard this from Dr. Fauci, you heard this from Dr. Birx, but if modeling is all that we have to base our response on, then the question is going to be at what point do the models suggest that we can go back to work?
	At what point do the models suggest that the amounts of death that are going to be prevented over the course of the next year, not the next three months, over the course of the next year are worthy of shutting down the entire world economy and shutting down the American economy to the tune of tens of millions of lost jobs and millions of lives wrecked?
	Okay, let's be frank about this.
	When people lose a job, the assumption is they're going to get another job.
	That may very well be true.
	But it also may very well be true that if you are a small business owner who piled all your savings into starting a restaurant and that restaurant just went away forever, okay, that is a life that has been wrecked.
	If you are a person who had some savings, and now you've lost your job, and the stock market has been hit, and you're forced to liquidate your stock in order to pay your bills, and the government response ain't coming for months.
	That is a life that has been wrecked.
	And to pretend that quality of life doesn't matter, that the only thing that matters Are these sorts of projections is wrong.
	Again, for the fourth time, I'm not calling for people to stop social distancing.
	I'm the one who's been pushing hardest for social distancing.
	I've been calling for social distancing since early March, just like everybody else when it became apparent that this crisis was actually a crisis.
	But I have not yet heard from experts sufficient to tell me what the metrics of success look like.
	If you were running a business, you wouldn't accept this sort of Compromise.
	If you were running a business, you wouldn't accept people coming in and saying, we can forestall you hundreds of millions of dollars worth of savings.
	And you say, how?
	And they say, we don't know.
	Right?
	We know that we'll save you some money in the short term, but we have no idea what that looks like six months from now.
	Also, we need you to shut down your business for the next three months.
	It is going to be very difficult for anyone to explain based on this modeling that has been provided so far, what anything looks like.
	And you're hearing this from the people who are in the epidemiology fields, right?
	They're all speculating.
	You hear from some people this will be over by June 1st.
	You hear from some people this will be over by May 1st.
	And maybe this is me railing against the sky because nobody actually has the data.
	Maybe this is we just have to take our best guess and wing it.
	And again, I'm willing to do that for a set period of time.
	I'm not willing to do that indefinitely.
	And I don't think anyone is willing to do that indefinitely.
	I do not think that anyone is willing to lock themselves in their house until June 1st based on models that do not even tell us what happens after August 1st.
	Again, the IMHG model can be completely right, and it still tells us nothing about what happened September 1, which I find that hard to believe, but it is true.
	Where are the second wave models?
	Maybe, again, we don't have information about what happens after that.
	What happens when there is no herd immunity and there is no vaccine?
	There's just not enough information out there, which is why every day that people are looking for a vaccine becomes more and more vital, because bottom line is, without any sort of mitigating effects, without any sort of drugs that can mitigate the effects of this, without a buildup in ICU capacity or ventilator capacity, what exactly are we gaining here?
	Right?
	This is the point that I've been making all along.
	All we are doing is buying time for you not to get the virus.
	We are not buying time for you to never get the virus.
	We are buying time for you to not get the virus.
	So the question is, what happens on the other side when you do get the virus?
	Because the chances are very strong that in the fall, everybody is going to get the virus because we're going to be out and about and doing the things that we like to do.
	And even with the masks, the chances are pretty strong that I just can't imagine the American people walking around in October, seven months from now, wearing masks in public.
	I just don't think that the United States is not built for that.
	It's not the same thing as other cultures.
	That may be for good and it may be for bad.
	And I'm not the only person asking this question.
	The Washington Post has a piece today That says, experts and Trump's advisors doubt White House's 240,000 coronavirus deaths estimate.
	According to William Wan, Josh Dowsey, Ashley Parker, and Joel Akenbach, leading disease forecasters, whose research the White House used to conclude 100,000 to 240,000 people will die nationwide from the coronavirus, were mystified when they saw the administration's projection this week.
	The experts said they don't challenge the number's validity, but they have no idea how the White House arrived at them.
	I'm confused.
	How do you not challenge the validity, but you have no idea how they arrived at them?
	That's basically them saying we don't know what the hell anybody's talking about.
	White House officials have refused to explain how they generated the figure.
	They have not provided the underlying data so others can assess its reliability or provided long-term strategies to lower the death count.
	Some of President Trump's advisors have expressed doubts about the estimate, according to three White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
	There have been fierce debates inside the White House about its accuracy.
	At a task force meeting this week, Anthony Fauci told others there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable.
	He said, I've looked at all the models.
	I've spent a lot of time on the models.
	They don't tell you anything.
	You can't really rely upon models.
	Then what the hell are we talking about?
	I mean, seriously.
	You may as well just say, we have no idea how many people are gonna die.
	We think it's a lot.
	Shut down the entire economy.
	And the reason they're not doing this, the reason they're not doing this, is because they want you to rely on the quote-unquote experts.
	Now, I'm fine with relying on people who know more about epidemiology than I do.
	I'm not challenging the inputs on the models.
	I'm not even challenging the models themselves.
	I'm saying the people who make the models are challenging the models.
	I'm saying the people who are creating the models understand that there's play in the joints.
	If you can't really rely upon the models, then again, just a question.
	How are you creating a metric of success?
	What's the metric of success?
	And the metric of success cannot be, you know, Governor Andrew Cuomo going out there and saying things like, the metric of success is have we saved one life?
	Okay, that's just ridiculous.
	That's not a public policy proposal.
	Lots of things would save one life.
	You know, banning cars would save one life.
	No one's talking about doing that.
	Keeping everybody home will certainly save some lives.
	The question is for how long?
	Who the people are who are going to get it?
	Does it buy us time to increase capacity?
	Is that time going to be useful?
	None of these questions have really been asked.
	Robert Redfield, the director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the VP's office, have all similarly voiced doubts about the projection's accuracy.
	Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist whose models were cited by the White House, said his own work on the pandemic doesn't go far enough into the future to make predictions akin to the White House fatality forecast.
	So the models are only for the next few months.
	He says, we don't have a sense of what's going on in the here and now.
	We don't know what people will do in the future.
	We don't know if the virus is seasonal.
	The estimate apparently was a rushed affair according to Mark Lipsitch, a leading epidemiologist and director for the Harvard University Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.
	He said they contacted us on Tuesday.
	They asked for answers and feedback by Thursday.
	So they gave us 24 hours and so we gave them a number.
	Other experts noted the White House didn't even explain the time period the death estimate supposedly captures.
	Is that just the few months or the year plus it will take to deploy a vaccine?
	Everything was presented on basically a single slide.
	Among epidemiologists, the estimates raise more questions than an answer, not just about methodology and accuracy, but also about purpose.
	The primary goal of such models usually is to allow authorities to game out scenarios, foresee challenges, create coherent long-term strategy.
	Shaman said, I wish there were more of a concerted national plan.
	I wish it had started a month and a half ago, maybe two months ago.
	Natalie Dean, by the way, worth noting, back as of mid-February, Dr. Fauci was out there publicly saying that he didn't think that the risk of mass infection in the United States was high.
	Natalie Dean, a biostatistician who is not involved in the White House effort, but is working on coronavirus vaccine evaluation with the WHO, says the whole reason you create models is to help you make decisions, but you have to actually act on those projections and answers.
	Otherwise, the models are useless.
	Yes, but we are acting and we still don't know what the hell's in the models.
	I mean, like, we have no idea what exactly these models look like.
	Deborah Burke said the projection was based on five or six modelers, including from Imperial College in Britain, Harvard, Columbia, and Northeastern Universities.
	But two models appear to have been particularly influential.
	One was the Imperial College model that we've talked about before, which now suggests south of 20,000 deaths in the UK thanks to strict social distancing.
	And even that, it's unclear from that model, do they mean like social distancing and staying at home for a year?
	Because then it's not 20,000, then it's higher than 20,000.
	In the United States, the one that we've been using is that IMHE model that I was talking about.
	Apparently, Burke said that her task force initially reviewed the work of 12 models, then went back to the drawing board for a week or two, and worked from the ground up utilizing actual reporting of cases.
	It's the way we built HIV models, TB models, malaria models.
	When we finished, the other group that was working in parallel, which we didn't know about, the IMHE model, gave its own estimate.
	They initially estimated deaths throughout the summer would total 38,000 to 162,000, which is a lower projection than many others and actually beneath the White House's own estimate.
	But because of the lower figures, experts believe it was a main source for the White House's best case scenario of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths.
	Meanwhile, the White House was appearing to rely on Imperial College for its worst case scenario, which estimated as many as 2.2 million U.S.
	deaths if no action were taken, 1.1 million deaths if moderate mitigation strategies were adopted, and an unspecified number if drastic measures were taken.
	Well, unspecified number would be the big question right now.
	Like, that is the big question, is it not?
	Again, we don't know the time period.
	The IMHE models assumes that every single state is going to impose stay-at-home orders.
	Some states, including Alabama and Missouri, have not done that yet.
	It also assumes the entire country will maintain the restrictions until summer.
	Trump has extended the White House's restrictions until April 30th.
	He's made clear he wants to open this as soon as possible.
	Also, nobody knows exactly how far this extends.
	Again, the Washington Post making the same point that I'm making.
	You can look at the IMHE models yourself.
	They're online.
	You can see how far they extend.
	The answer is August.
	If the White House's projection covers only the next few months, like the IMHE model does, the true death toll will almost certainly be larger because the U.S.
	will probably see additional waves of COVID-19 until a vaccine is deployed.
	The IMHE was not based on what is usually called the Susceptible Infectious Recovered Model, which is a mathematical way to represent three different populations in an outbreak.
	People vulnerable to infection, people who are infectious, and people who are gradually removed either by death or recovery.
	But the IMHE took a different model.
	It's a statistical model that takes the trending curves of death from China, for example, and fits that curve to emerging death data from cities and counties to predict what comes next.
	It's a valuable tool, but it's inherently optimistic because it assumes all states respond as swiftly as China, says a biostatistician at University of Florida.
	In an earlier interview this month, the head of the IMHE group, Christopher Murray, said his model was created for a different purpose from Imperial College.
	He said, we created our model to help hospitals plan how many beds they would need.
	The purpose of Imperial's model is to make people realize that government intervention is crucial, and what would happen without that?
	Okay, so, bottom line is, nobody knows a damn thing.
	I mean, really.
	Like, we know things are bad.
	We know things will be worse if we leave our houses for the next three months.
	That's it.
	That's all we know.
	I've said all the things we know.
	We don't know what happens after that.
	We don't know what happens when you go back to work.
	We don't know if there's a second wave.
	We don't know if the summer kills this thing off.
	We don't know what the infection rate is.
	That's still a variable.
	We don't know what the case fatality rate is.
	That is still variable.
	We don't know anything.
	Okay, so the question is going to be, when do we know enough to say people have to start getting back to work?
	When do we start to say that the least vulnerable members of our population should be going to work right now with the social distancing and with the masks?
	When do we know all of this?
	Because there are real-time costs being incurred right now, and it ain't just money.
	There are real-time costs being incurred right now.
	And I'd love to hear the public health experts explain A more wholesome view of what exactly success looks like.
	I understand what success looks like in the first wave.
	I'm with you.
	That's why I'm not saying get out and do things right now.
	I understand what success looks like.
	Stay home.
	Follow the orders.
	Give this a chance to work.
	But I want to know what the second wave looks like.
	Because if they are predicting that everybody is gonna get this by the end of the year, basically, And they're not making that prediction available to the public because they know that if they tell us we're all going to get infected by the end of the year, we're going to go out right now.
	And if, in fact, there is such a thing as herd immunity, and if, in fact, what we're doing is lowering the curve but not lowering the number of deaths over time because, for example, we actually don't have ICU capacity or ventilator capacity and we're not going to ramp those up strongly enough, Then we have to consider what exactly are the costs and rewards of particular policies.
	What happens if we start going back to work?
	Not all go back to work.
	What happens if we start going back to work May 1st?
	What happens if we start going back to work June 1st?
	What happens if we start going back to work July 1st?
	What if there is no work July 1st?
	What if we start seeing riots and breakdowns like we're starting to see in Europe right now?
	These are actual concerns, people.
	We're living in a real-time, real-world scenario.
	This is not all modeling in labs.
	And so, what would be great is if we could see some epidemiologists discuss, you know, like a realistic scenario where we're not locked in our houses for the next year, and where time doesn't end on August 1st.
	I would like to know these things, because one of two things is true.
	Either the deaths end August 1st, in which case we're doing all the right things here, we're locking it down, everything's great, or the deaths do not end on August 1st, and there is a massive second wave, in which case, what are we doing now?
	And also, there's a third case scenario where we've locked it down to the point where there's a mild wave, a second wave.
	But have you heard anything about a second wave?
	Have you heard anything about what happens when we go back to work?
	Have you heard anything about what happens when we reopen the economy?
	Have you heard anything about the cost of this thing?
	Epidemiologists are going to need to do better.
	As time goes on, people are going to demand answers, and they deserve those answers.
	We're gonna get to more of this in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the fact that government is using its power to do basically whatever it wants right now.
	And the fact is that sometimes that is justified, but there are certain areas where it is completely unjustified.
	We've seen people with tyrannical instincts doing ridiculous things in certain areas of the country.
	In L.A., the L.A.
	County Sheriff actually tried to shut down all gun shops in the county, calling them non-essential businesses, at a time when they were releasing criminals from jail.
	Literally releasing criminals from jail.
	Okay, well this might be a reason why you should have a weapon.
	Okay, one of the reasons why you have a gun is to protect yourself, to protect your family, to protect your property from the predations of others.
	And sometimes the government wants to stop you from doing that.
	Now would be an excellent time to shop at Bravo Company Manufacturing.
	They build a professional-grade product which is built to combat standards.
	That's because BCM believes the same level of protection should be provided to every American regardless if they're a private citizen or a professional.
	The people at BCM assume that when a rifle leaves their shop, it will be used in a life-or-death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
	Every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested to a life-saving standard.
	The people at BCM feel it is their moral responsibility as Americans to provide tools that will not fail when it's not just a paper target.
	BCM works with leading instructors of marksmanship from top levels of America's Special Ops Forces, from Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance to U.S.
	Special Army Operations Forces, teaching you the skills necessary to defend yourself, your family, or others.
	I own firearms because I want to protect my own property and because I have a right to do so and because They're bad people out there, and I'm not going to rely on the government to save me from those bad people, not when they're letting people out of prison.
	Learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing.
	Head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com.
	You can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.
	That is BravoCompanyMFG.com.
	You should check out their awesome videos.
	Meet the people who make their products at YouTube.com slash BravoCompanyUSA.
	Again, that's YouTube.com slash BravoCompanyUSA.
	Okay, so going back to those models.
	And I'm not talking about the models, I'm talking about the actual statistics now.
	Let's look at the actual statistics, country by country.
	So right now, the industrialized countries that are obviously having the hardest time are countries like Spain and Italy, right?
	Spain and Italy are just having a brutal time of it.
	If you look at the statistics yesterday, Italy had 961 deaths, almost as many deaths as the United States.
	The total population of Spain is 46.7 million, as opposed to the United States.
	They had about as many deaths as we did, but they have Let's see, 36 divided by four, they have nine times fewer people than we do.
	So they're getting just shellacked.
	Italy had 760 deaths yesterday, which actually is the beginning of their down curve, we can absolutely hope.
	France got walloped yesterday.
	France had 1,355 deaths.
	The real question is deaths per 1 million population.
	That's a statistic that is constantly rising.
	The United States right now has 18 deaths per million population.
	Italy and Spain have well over 200.
	They're like 230 for Italy and 221 for Spain.
	And they're further along in their curve than we are.
	So you'd expect the United States to rise.
	So the question is going to be what those stats actually look like if we took that as the model.
	So let's assume that when those stats are done, that you end up in the neighborhood of 300 deaths per million for Italy or Spain, right?
	300 deaths per million.
	So that's when you end up with like 90,000 deaths in the United States.
	Right, if we're on the same model, and we end up with 300 deaths per million of the population in Italy or in Spain, and we are on the same curve, then we would be looking at 300 deaths per million, so 300 times 330, and you end up with 99,000 deaths, so 100,000 deaths.
	And you end up with 99,000 deaths.
	It's about 100,000 deaths.
	If we are not Italy or Spain, if we contain this better than Italy and Spain, and if Italy and Spain don't experience a second wave and it's too early to determine whether they will experience a second wave when they let people out of lockdown, then we are not going to end up with anywhere near those kinds of deaths.
	Right, if we end up in the neighborhood of a France, which right now has 83 and maybe ends up at 100 or 120 deaths per million population, then you're looking at one third of that.
	Right, so all of this depends on what we do now, which is why we should lock down for now.
	But again, we need to know where this is going in the future because the costs that are being incurred in real time are grave, they are serious, and people who are taking them lightly and suggesting that you can't even ask questions like this because otherwise you're undermining the credibility of the program, Like, I don't know what world they are living in.
	People are losing their livelihoods.
	People are being forced to go to food banks.
	We are going to have an unemployment rate that is higher than the Great Depression here.
	I mean, the Great Depression, lest we forget, was the shaping event for an entire generation of Americans.
	My grandparents were shaped by the Great Depression.
	They lived the rest of their lives in the shadow of the Great Depression.
	This is what happens when major events occur.
	This is the biggest event any of us have ever seen in our lifetime, and it is not particularly close.
	I was there for 9-11.
	This dwarfed 9-11 in terms of the size and impact on the American population, Right, 9-11 was an attack on America.
	And then, we took measures to protect ourselves.
	And those measures, at the time, were considered extraordinarily restrictive.
	Right, we had FISA warrants, and we had data gathering, and we had some new surveillance, electronically.
	And we had the TSA patting us down.
	And I remember all the controversy over these things.
	Oh my God, the TSA is patting us down.
	Now imagine a world where the government had said, you're going to stay in your house for the next three months.
	Okay?
	That's what we have right now.
	So, to pretend that we can't take into account the costs of this program, It's ridiculous.
	We ought to be taking into account the cost of the program.
	I'm not pretending I know the answers.
	But the problem is I'm not sure anybody else knows the answers either.
	And I want to hear some honest accounting from the people in power, in the Trump administration, in the epidemiological models.
	I want to hear what they have to say.
	I keep hitting the same point here.
	We don't have enough data.
	And some people are saying that's an excuse for us never to take any action but to stay at home.
	What I'm saying is when the costs are being racked up in real time, you better damn well come up with the data fast or people are just going to start ignoring you.
	Seriously.
	Like, either the estimates roll in, and they happen to be particularly accurate, and there are new estimates made as to what happens after we all go back to work, or people are just gonna go back to work.
	Because that is the way that human beings operate.
	Right now, according to Reuters, the economic crisis spawned by the coronavirus pandemic has produced a wave of grim U.S.
	data, with likely more to come as millions lose jobs, businesses shutter, and spending stops.
	At some point, the bottom will be reached.
	Given how fast the situation has developed, judging when that happens in real time will prove challenging for economists, who usually depend on monthly, quarterly, or yearly trends in data to judge the state of the business cycle.
	A coronavirus outbreak is not a business cycle event.
	Perhaps it's a once-in-a-century health crisis, where normal choices about where to go and what to spend are influenced.
	By a combination of fear and government edict.
	But it's unclear exactly how bad this is going to get.
	Apparently, the estimates are now suggesting that we are going to end up with like 20 million lost jobs by April 12th.
	Okay, in a second, we are going to get to the White House recommendations, where we go from here.
	And again, it seems like everybody is focused on what we do today, and that's fine.
	We should focus on what we do today.
	I've been giving advice to people on what to do today.
	I've been very stringently recommending that everybody follow the law, and not only follow the law, but take extra measures.
	I've been recommending masks since probably a week ago.
	A week and a half ago.
	But, they had, honest to God, they had better start setting some actual estimates as to how many people are going to die a year out before we have the vaccine developed.
	If we stay in, if we do not stay in, we need to start making some serious data-driven choices here.
	Not simply, things are bad, stay home.
	That's not going to be enough.
	Not when you're looking at... In Europe, they're looking to break apart of the EU.
	Like, you may not like the EU.
	That's fine.
	But that is a pretty massive change.
	They're talking about the entire European Union splitting right now.
	Why?
	Because every country is now shutting its borders.
	They're talking about total government control of economies in Europe.
	There's massive rioting in southern Italy right now because supply chains have been broken and because the government has locked everything down.
	This is not sustainable.
	It is not sustainable.
	Everyone knows it's not sustainable, by the way.
	Ask Fauci, ask Burst, everyone knows this is unsustainable.
	The only question is how long we can sustain it.
	And the other question is how long we should sustain it.
	And nobody has yet said how long we should sustain it.
	If you ask public health experts, when do we get to go back to work?
	And I've asked, if you listen to my radio show, I've asked like two a day for the last three weeks, basically.
	When do we all get to go back to work?
	Some people will say May 1st.
	What does that look like?
	Well, we don't know.
	We'll tranche it out.
	When do we all get to go back to work?
	Are there going to be ballgames in September?
	Are there going to be ballgames in August?
	What happens with the second wave?
	We have no idea.
	Okay, operating on the basis of incomplete data with real-time costs, that is a thing we are doing right now, and let's not pretend they're not real-time costs or that it's bad to recommend the real-time costs, okay?
	In just a second, we're gonna get to what the White House is recommending at this time, and we're gonna talk about a couple of just botched media hits.
	I mean, really, botched media hits on the Trump administration.
	We'll get to all of that in a second.
	By the way, one of the reasons that I'm sounding the alarm with regard to the economy is because, despite all the talk of the government response being just wonderful and tremendous, there's a report out today that some people could wait 20 weeks to receive checks.
	20 weeks until August.
	We've been told the model doesn't even extend past August.
	So if you don't have a check coming until August, how the hell do you expect people are going to survive?
	You think people are just going to sit home and not go to a job that they've been furloughed from?
	That they are not going to go back and reopen their business when there's no check in the mail?
	Is that what you would expect here?
	The small business lending program is chaos.
	Nobody knows exactly what the standards are.
	Banks are not lending same day.
	They're not.
	I'm talking to small business owners.
	They were told by the administration and by Congress that this thing was going to be open and ready to go.
	It is not open.
	It is not ready to go.
	Okay, as government proves itself incompetent on virtually every level except punishing you when you go outside, there's going to be a lot of blowback from this.
	Again, good for people for paying attention to the orders right now.
	Do I think that this is going to maintain till May with no money in the mail and the food banks running out of food?
	And nobody having the money to give enough charity to sustain the food banks as the government forcibly shuts down an entire economy?
	I do not think that is the case.
	Something is going to have to change.
	Okay, we're going to get to more of this in just one second.
	First, you ought to head over right now to dailywire.com.
	Why?
	Well, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
	Today, it is Atlas Dynamics on Instagram who appreciates perfection when they see it and sets the record straight on Norway.
	In this picture, Atlas has the world's greatest beverage vessel sitting next to their computer displaying the blueprints of what appears to be a knife design they're working on.
	The post caption reads, can't deny the awesomeness of this legendary Tumblr.
	Enjoying homeschool office with my brand spanking new ultimate drinking vessel and working through my exam day by day.
	Thank you so much Real Daily Wire and official Ben Shapiro for keeping my day awesome in not socialist Norway.
	Hashtag legendary coffee.
	Hashtag never socialist.
	Hashtag leftist tears.
	Hashtag home office.
	Hashtag leftist tears Tumblr.
	Awesome.
	Hopefully Bernie Sanders is watching and will take note while he's eating his pudding.
	Also, if you have not yet had a chance to see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com and check it out.
	Jeremy Boring and I kicked it off a few weeks ago.
	All of our other hosts have done live streams over at dailywire.com.
	We'll continue all this week at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific.
	All Access Live is a lot more relaxed than our normal programming.
	It's less focused on bringing you news and information, more about hanging out with you at the end of a long day since we're all isolated anyway.
	The show is intended for All Access members long term, but for now, we're opening up to all of our members because you're part of the community.
	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.
	Now, when I say that this is unsustainable, one of the reasons is unsustainable is because the experts have to actually be experts in order for the experts to have legitimacy for us to take their expertise seriously.
	Is that fair?
	And if the experts don't know all that much, it's very difficult to take all the experts super seriously.
	And I understand.
	Information is variable.
	And it arrives in real time.
	I'm not saying don't pay attention to the experts.
	I'm saying we need better information from the experts.
	Five seconds ago, they were telling us that masks don't work.
	Now Dr. Oz is on TV telling us that we ought to wear masks over our face.
	Not just like N95 masks, which are unavailable generally.
	Not just surgical masks, which at least prevent you from breathing out.
	He's telling you should wear bandanas.
	Okay, five seconds ago, they were telling us that it is a waste of time for you to actually wear, like, a full-on N95 face mask to the grocery store, and now they're telling us, by the way, slap a bandana over your face, and maybe that'll protect you.
	Do you feel protected?
	Do you feel in control?
	Like, really?
	Here's Dr. Oz explaining that we should wear bandanas.
	Well, a scarf's not gonna be as good as a surgical mask, and that won't be as good as a N95 mask.
	But there's a rethinking around masks, in part because we realize that the virus doesn't go deep in your lungs.
	It probably inserts itself right at the very tip of your nose.
	Imagine little doors there, which are where the cells can, receptors can accept the virus.
	The virus is a key and it unlocks those doors and goes in.
	Older people have more of those doors than younger people.
	That's why they get more of the infection, we believe.
	And wearing any kind of facial covering could block the larger droplets from getting into your nose.
	So net-net, it's better than nothing, but not a ton better than nothing.
	Okay, it's better than nothing, but not a ton better than nothing, right?
	Great.
	I feel much safer now.
	Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci is on TV.
	He's saying all the states should have stay-at-home orders.
	Again, that's fine.
	As I say, I'm all on board with the let's-get-this-thing-locked-down.
	But could you give us an expectation of when we are not going to be locked down?
	You know, an expectation that's realistic, where we're not all locked in our houses till August, waiting on checks that are not going to arrive from debt that we cannot actually sell?
	How about that?
	How about something realistic here?
	That'd be good.
	Here's Fauci saying all states should have stay-at-home orders.
	It's his next quote that really is sort of disturbing.
	Here's Fauci.
	Some states are still not issuing stay-at-home orders.
	I mean, whether there should be a federally mandated directive for that or not, I guess that's more of a political question, but just scientifically, doesn't everybody have to be on the same page with this stuff?
	Yeah, I think so, Anderson.
	I don't understand why that's not happening.
	As you said, you know, the tension between federally mandated versus states' rights to do what they want is something I don't want to get into.
	But if you look at what's going on in this country, I just don't understand why we're not doing that.
	OK, totally agree.
	Again, I agree with him that we should lock everything down right now.
	I mean, you can't look at the images coming out of New York and the stories coming out of New York and not freak out.
	And we should be freaked out.
	But The but here is not a but that suggests don't pay any attention to what the experts are saying on what you do right now.
	How about, like, in the future?
	Here's Dr. Fauci.
	Again, he's an epidemiologist, right?
	His job is to stop disease.
	I understand.
	That's his job.
	His job is not to heal the economy.
	But here was Fauci being asked about the job losses, and here was his answer.
	I mean, I know it's difficult, but we're having a lot of suffering, a lot of death.
	This is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.
	That is our major weapon against this virus right now.
	We don't have a vaccine that's deployable.
	This is the only thing we have.
	It's inconvenient?
	Okay, it's a little more than inconvenient if you lose your business and you lose your job.
	Like, can we at least not Dismiss the concerns of people who are losing their entire livelihoods and are going to food banks for the first time in their lives, and we hope will be the only time in their lives.
	Can we at least not dismiss that?
	And can we hear somebody, why will no one in the media ask, I swear to God, no one in the media will ask simple questions of the epidemiologist, like what happens in a second wave?
	Have you even gamed for this?
	How many deaths are going to be prevented in the second wave?
	Are we ramping up our ICU and ventilator capacity such that when there is a second wave in the fall, which literally everybody expects because we're seeing it in Asia, when that happens, do you expect that there will be a number of deaths prevented?
	How many deaths will actually be prevented?
	Not over the course of the next three months, which you've modeled, and I get, and I agree with.
	Over the course of the next year, because that's what we're talking about until a vaccine is developed, right?
	That is the actual stop point.
	Once a vaccine is developed, that's as good as it's gonna get.
	There is no better than it gets at that point.
	They're saying that's 12 to 18 months.
	So, the question is, what happens between August of this year and August of next year?
	Because they're talking 12 to 18 months.
	Let's take the longer end of that.
	Let's say it takes 18 months to fully develop, test, and distribute a vaccine.
	So you're talking about from March, which is when this started, to September of next year.
	So don't give me models only that stop at August.
	I want to know what happens after that.
	And I want to know how many lives are saved by all of us staying home and wrecking the economy over the course of 18 months.
	Not over the course of three months.
	I get over the course of three months.
	I'm with you over the course of three months.
	Okay, again, the information that's coming out, even from people I trust and like, is so vague and conflicting.
	So Dr. Birx, she says lots of people are asymptomatic, and so we have to follow the guidelines.
	Okay, and they're gonna be asymptomatic when we all go back to work also.
	They're not going to stop being asymptomatic.
	What's the plan, guys?
	What's the plan?
	We all believe that there's a greater proportion of people who are asymptomatic than recognized.
	And again, that may correspond with age, with greater number of asymptomatic cases in people under 40.
	And so both severity of disease increases with age, but asymptomatic potential may also decrease with age so that it's more in the younger age groups.
	And so we believe that there could be significant transmission from asymptomatic individuals.
	All of that's true, and it's going to remain true when we all go back to work, presumably.
	I'll tell you what's unsustainable is some of these recommendations.
	The New Jersey governor, Murphy, he came out yesterday.
	He suggests that you're supposed to socially distance inside your own house.
	Like, I'm sorry, that's, not only is that not sustainable, that's not anything anyone is going to do now.
	Okay, it's not going to happen now.
	I have three children.
	What the hell am I supposed to do with them?
	Am I supposed to take my month-old baby, shove her in the other room and be like, sorry kid, I'm social distancing right now.
	Am I supposed to take my six-year-old, who came down with the flu, and be like, you know what, I'm gonna be over here, you take care of yourself, here's a barf bucket and some Tylenol, enjoy.
	What are you even talking about?
	This is not realistic advice.
	You can't socially distance from people who are in your own house.
	No.
	The answer is no.
	There's going to come a point where human beings just say no.
	And I'm willing to put that point off as far as possible if you show me what the models say about how many deaths we are preventing one year from now, not three months from now, not four months from now, not six months from now, a year from now.
	I'm willing to do it now while you develop those models.
	Just tell me you're developing the freaking models.
	Just tell me that you're going to know sometime in the future how many lives we're saving here.
	Because the costs are happening now.
	The costs are happening right now in real time.
	And we all know this.
	And anybody who just says, don't worry about tomorrow, is not worrying about the people who are suffering now.
	I'm worried about the people who are dying now, and I'm worried about the people who are losing their jobs now, and losing their businesses now, and losing their livelihoods, and watching their dreams destroyed right now.
	I'm worried about all of those people.
	We should all be worried about all of those people.
	By the way, all of those people are still going to work.
	Okay, let's just be real about this.
	There are a lot of people out there, like, for people who pretend that the, that everybody has the luxury of staying home during this thing.
	They don't.
	There are a lot of people, particularly people who are working low-wage jobs, right?
	The people who the left says that people on the right don't care about.
	Those people are still going to work because they do not have a choice.
	Are they supposed to stay home and receive no check from the government until August?
	Is that the plan?
	Let me show you a picture.
	This is a picture yesterday from New York.
	Okay, New York is the epicenter of this thing.
	Okay, so this was put out yesterday, this tweet, by Yashar Ali.
	Okay, this is put out by ABC7 New York.
	Quote, this is the number two train at about 6 p.m., Thursday evening, in a photo provided to Eyewitness News by Progressive's Action Twitter account.
	The MTA says it's running as many trains as it can, but has been hobbled because of crews that are out sick or quarantined.
	Public health officials have said social distancing is the key to slowing the spread of the deadly COVID-19.
	New York remains the hardest hit place in the nation.
	This is the number two train, April 2nd, 6 p.m., Um, that ain't social distancing, gang.
	That is mostly young minority people who I assume are coming back from their jobs at 6pm.
	Who are working, I assume.
	Who are going to their jobs.
	Because they don't have the luxury of being members of the media, who get to sit at home and broadcast.
	Those are people who have to work jobs.
	Like, we're just not being realistic about any of this stuff.
	We're not.
	I want the social distancing as much as you.
	I want this over as fast as possible.
	I want everybody to lock down as fast as possible.
	So it is over as fast as possible.
	All I want you to tell me is that it will be over when it's over.
	And no one can tell me it's going to be over when it's over.
	Like nobody will.
	And you're again, we're seeing real time, real time costs to this.
	In Europe, the entire European Union may break apart over this thing.
	Now you may not like the European Union, but that's a pretty major thing, is it not?
	That's a pretty significant countervailing concern, is it not?
	Meanwhile, the media doing yeoman's work and misinforming people.
	So the New York Times has a piece today titled, the 1,000 bed comfort was supposed to aid New York.
	It has 20 patients.
	It's a joke said a top hospital executive whose facilities are packed with coronavirus patients.
	Note to the media, the comfort was never supposed to house people with coronavirus.
	Why?
	Because, well, let's see, what happens when you have a ship?
	Let's call it a Diamond Princess cruise ship.
	And you put people with coronavirus on a contained area within a ship.
	What happens on that cruise ship?
	Well, it turns out everybody gets coronavirus, you idiot.
	The entire thing was designed to provide additional hospital beds, not ICU beds, not coronavirus beds.
	It was designed to increase the number of hospital beds available.
	Do you think the hotels in New York are being made over for ICUs and for ventilators?
	That's not what's happening.
	Nonetheless, the New York Times reports, Michael Schwartz reporting, such were the expectations for the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort.
	And when it chugged into New York Harbor this week, throngs of people momentarily forgetting the strictures of social distancing crammed together along Manhattan's west side to catch a glimpse.
	On Thursday, the huge white vessel, which officials had promised would bring sucker to a city on the brink, sat mostly empty, infuriating executives at local hospitals.
	The ship's 1,000 beds are largely unused, Its 1,200-member crew mostly idle.
	Only 20 patients had been transferred to the ship.
	If I'm blunt about it, it's a joke, said Michael Dowling, the head of Northwell Health, New York's largest hospital system.
	Everyone can say thank you for putting up these wonderful places and opening up these cavernous halls, but we're in a crisis here.
	We're on a battlefield.
	Okay, well, the Javits Center is open.
	The Samaritan's Purse Hospital in Central Park is open.
	And so is the USS Mercy.
	And it wasn't meant for people with coronavirus.
	That's not what it was designed to do.
	So, excellent media coverage there.
	Also, in other excellent media coverage, the media are going nuts over this story of a commander of an aircraft carrier who was removed for a poor judgment because he publicly suggested that the entire aircraft carrier should be taken out of commission.
	The commanding officer was Captain Brett Crozier.
	He was relieved of command by Carrier Strike Group Commander Rear Admiral Stuart Baker.
	This was announced during a Pentagon press briefing.
	Why?
	Because he showed poor judgment because he wrote a public memo warning Navy leadership that decisive action was needed to save the lives of the ship's crew.
	He suggested that Crozier was not removed because of any evidence suggesting he leaked the memo to the press, but rather for allowing the complexity of his challenge with the COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally when acting professionally is what was needed most of the time.
	He said, this is the spokesperson for the Pentagon, I have no information nor am I trying to suggest he leaked the information.
	It was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.
	It all came as a big surprise to all of us that it was in the paper, and that's the first time I had seen it.
	There was a memo that was written by Crozier earlier this week to the Navy's Pacific Fleet.
	Modly called Crozier's note a blast-out email to everyone he knows.
	Okay, so the guy wasn't fired for saying that bad things are happening on the ship and we need to do something about it.
	He was fired because he broke chain of command by emailing apparently literal quote everyone he knows saying that a full-on battle carrier should be taken out of commission.
	If you think the military should be allowing its commanding officers to blast out full-on emails to everyone they know about taking 1 11th of America's chief naval capacity off the table I've spoken to military officers.
	I don't know how many military officers are in favor of commanding officers blasting out emails suggesting that aircraft carriers be taken out of commission.
	The email said, We are not at war.
	Sailors do not need to die.
	If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset, our sailors.
	Mildly said Crozio was relieved because he went outside the chain of command and sent his memo over an unsecured system, adding to the chances it could be leaked.
	Of course, top Democrats slammed the move in a statement on Thursday.
	They said, this is a destabilizing move that will put our service members at greater risk.
	Oh, really?
	More destabilizing than taking an entire battle carrier out of commission?
	Well done, media, for completely ignoring how militaries are supposed to work.
	Wow, so it is chaotic out there.
	We need answers as fast as possible from the epidemiologists.
	Let's listen to the experts, guys.
	And experts do better.
	Give us some more information.
	Tell us how this is going to go.
	Okay, time for a thing I like and then we'll get to a thing that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	So, like all the rest of you, I'm trapped in my house with my children.
	And this means that it is time to watch some children's movies.
	All limits on screen time have been banished until further notice.
	Not totally true.
	I'm trying to keep my kids' screen time limited, but it is not going successfully.
	In any case, one of the movies that I've introduced my children to, and they just love, is the Lego Batman movie.
	So if you're a Batman fan, as I am, then you'll recognize that the Lego Batman movie is indeed hilarious.
	The entire thing is basically sending up Batman.
	And it's Will Arnett plays Batman in this and it is it's very clever.
	It's very funny and it is worthy of the watch.
	So here is a little bit of the trailer for Lego Batman.
	Again, keep your kids entertained today.
	What?
	It's the Batcave!
	Oh my gosh!
	Oh my gosh!
	Look, it's the Batsop!
	Don't touch that!
	It's the Batsapling!
	Don't touch that either!
	It's the Batkayak!
	Do I get a costume?
	I love it!
	But his pants are just a little tight.
	I got an idea.
	It's better?
	I can only look you in the eyes right now.
	Hi, Batman!
	No way!
	Come catch my greatest enemy.
	Superman is my greatest enemy.
	Superman's not a bad guy!
	Then I'd say that I don't currently have a bad guy.
	I am fighting a few different people.
	I like to fight around.
	Hi, Barbara Gordon, new police commissioner.
	It's really funny, and really, most of the jokes are written for adults, so it's entertaining.
	See, this is the challenge when you have kids at home.
	You have to watch movies that you can handle, right?
	That are not going to drive you completely up a wall while you're watching them with your kids, and this is one of those movies, the Lego Batman movie, worthy of the watch.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	All righty, so there was a big fight that broke out between President Trump and Chuck Schumer yesterday.
	President Trump was railing against what he calls a partisan witch hunt.
	Democrats are already looking to investigate the Trump administration for their response to coronavirus, because it's not like we're in the middle of the thing right now and trying to scramble to get this thing together.
	What we really need is a partisan attack on the administration without looking back, you know, as I did yesterday on the program, at length, the last 15, 20 years of the shortages and the inability to To develop ventilators and develop mass capacity and the failures at every level inside the government to develop any sort of models that actually worked here and the failures of the CDC and the FDA.
	No, it was going to be all about Trump.
	So yesterday, President Trump went off on the partisan investigations.
	He is not wrong about this.
	He is correct about this.
	Now is not the time to be announcing partisan investigations.
	And by the way, when an investigation is done, as I say, unless it looks a lot like the 9-11 Commission, which basically says government sucks at everything and they suck here too.
	Then it's not being honest.
	Anyway, here's Trump going off on the Democrats for politicizing this stuff right now.
	I want to remind everyone here in our nation's capital, especially in Congress, that this is not the time for politics.
	Endless partisan investigations, here we go again, have already done extraordinary damage to our country in recent years.
	You see what happens?
	It's witch hunt after witch hunt after witch hunt.
	And in the end, the people doing the witch hunt have been losing, and they've been losing by a lot.
	And it's not any time for witch hunts.
	It's time to get this enemy defeated.
	Okay, he is correct about all of this.
	That did not stop Chuck Schumer from issuing an open letter to President Trump yesterday.
	Said, Dear Mr. President, As the coronavirus spreads rapidly into every corner of our nation and its terrible, grim toll grows more severe with each passing day, the tardiness and inadequacy of this administration's response to the crisis becomes more painfully evident.
	This is not a letter designed to get anything done.
	It's an open letter.
	It was released.
	I'm looking at it right now.
	Well-documented shortages of protective equipment, tests, medical supplies are now beyond acute in my home state of New York and other hard-hit areas, and similar shortages are expected soon in many other parts of the country.
	While companies that volunteer to produce ventilators and PPE are to be commended and are appreciated, America cannot rely on a patchwork of uncoordinated voluntary efforts to combat the awful magnitude of this pandemic.
	It's long past time for your administration to designate a senior military official to fix this urgent problem.
	That officer should be given the full authority under the Defense Production Act.
	The existing federal leadership void has left America with an ugly spectacle in which states and cities are literally fending for themselves, often in conflict and competition with each other when trying to procure precious medical supplies and equipment.
	The only way we will fix our PPE and ventilator shortage is with a data-driven, organized, robust plan from the federal government.
	Anything short of that will inevitably mean the problem will remain unsolved and prolong this crisis.
	Again, this is Chuck Schumer writing an open letter to Trump that is designed for partisan political purposes.
	Obviously.
	As it stands today, we have charged Dr. Peter Navarro, an academic economist, to be leader of this effort.
	With all due respect, Dr. Navarro, whose expertise is in other areas, is woefully unqualified for this task.
	The existence of a separate shadow effort elsewhere in the White House has made the administration's response even more confused and uncoordinated.
	As you know, there are many logistics professionals in the United States.
	Military.
	It must be pointed out that while you continue to dismiss the Defense Production Act as not being needed, it is clear the capacity of American interest has not yet been fully harnessed, either in prioritizing and allocating urgently needed medical supplies and equipment, in rapidly expanding domestic manufacturing efforts to produce them, or in providing certainty to manufacturers through purchase orders, purchase guarantees, or other mechanisms, Yes, I'm sure it's very sincere.
	use and distribute all of the medical equipment and supplies that they can produce.
	It's a matter of the utmost urgency for the health of every American.
	Regrettably, our national response is far behind where it should be.
	But by acting now, there's still time to help protect our medical professionals, reduce suffering and save lives.
	Sincerely, Charles Schumer.
	Yes, I'm sure it's very sincere.
	So President Trump gets this letter and he responds.
	And.
	And President Trump's response is absolutely vicious.
	That's the only way to put it.
	And well-deserved.
	Totally well-deserved.
	Because, I'm sorry, that sort of grandstanding, is that useful?
	Really, is that useful right now?
	Like, we're all fairly well aware, given the media reports and what governors are saying, Cuomo's doing a presser on this every day and being lauded by the media for it.
	And do you really think that the federal government is sitting there going, oh, well, I guess, you know, I guess people are just going to have to die.
	I mean, we're just not going to try here.
	Everyone's doing their best.
	Everyone is obviously doing their best.
	The government sucks at things.
	Welcome to the nature of government.
	Welcome to government.
	Okay, so President Trump writes back an open letter to Schumer.
	And you can tell when Trump writes the letter himself, he wrote this one himself.
	Right?
	He had like one aide in the room and he basically dictated and the person spell-checked it.
	Here is what Trump wrote.
	He wrote, Dear Senator Schumer, Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect soundbites, which are wrong in every way.
	One, as you are aware, Vice President Pence is in charge of the task force.
	By almost all accounts, he has done a spectacular job.
	Two, the Defense Production Act has been consistently used by my team and me for the purchase of billions of dollars worth of equipment, medical supplies, ventilators, and other related items.
	It has been powerful leverage, so powerful that companies generally do whatever we are asking without even a formal notice.
	They know something is coming, and that's all they need to know.
	3.
	A senior military officer is in charge of purchasing, distributing, etc.
	His name is Rear Admiral John Polowitz.
	He is working 24 hours a day, is highly respected by everyone.
	If you remember, my team gave you this information, but for public relations purposes, you chose to ignore it.
	4.
	We have given New York many things, including hospitals, medical centers, medical supplies, record numbers of ventilators, and more.
	You should have had New York much better prepared than you did.
	As Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx said yesterday, New York was very late in its fight against the virus.
	As you are aware, the federal government is merely a backup for state governments.
	Unfortunately, your state needed far more of a backup than most others.
	And then Trump really gets going.
	He says, If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere except increasing my poll numbers, and instead focusing on helping the people of New York, New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the invisible enemy.
	No wonder AOC and others are thinking about running against you in the primary.
	If they did, They would likely win.
	Fortunately, we have been working with your state and city governments, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, to get the job done.
	You have been missing in action, except when it comes to the press.
	While you have stated that you don't like Andrew Cuomo, you ought to start working alongside him for the good of all New Yorkers.
	I've known you for many years, but I never knew how bad a senator you are for the state of New York until I became president.
	If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call, or in the alternative call, Rear Admiral Polowitz.
	Sincerely, Donald J. Trump.
	So, I have a question.
	Is any of this, like, useful right now?
	Like, any of it?
	I will admit that Trump's letter is super funny.
	And well-deserved.
	Because Schumer is in- My favorite thing was Schumer's response to this.
	So Schumer responds to this, I'm appalled.
	Appalled!
	President Trump sending this very- You started it, dude!
	You sent an open letter saying that the federal response is inadequate and blah- Accomplishing nothing.
	Except grandstanding.
	And I was like, I can't believe the president wrote me a mean letter.
	Oh!
	Oh!
	The pearl clutching.
	Honestly, honest to God, just shut up.
	Just ridiculous.
	Is any of this doing anything?
	Like, people are dying.
	20 million people are going to lose their jobs by the end of next week, probably.
	You want to shut up about your little partisan petty feud right now and like, you know, get crap done?
	You know, not like green initiatives, which Chuck Schumer recommended yesterday, by the way.
	Chuck Schumer was like, oh, you know what we should do?
	We should build windmills.
	You want these people in charge of your life?
	Seriously.
	Like, I understand we need government right now to do things.
	They're doing it, but they suck at it.
	They're not even getting the checks out till September.
	They're trying to shove windmills and diversity quotas into $2 trillion packages.
	You want these people in charge of your life when all this is over?
	I keep hearing that this is a movement we're getting.
	Now America is going to come out of this ready for more big government.
	If you come out of this ready for more big government, you have lost your damn mind.
	You have lost your mind.
	When you come out of this, the first thing you should be saying is, get the government the hell away from me for as long as possible and as fast as possible, and get their asses in gear when it comes to preparing for Black Swan events, and that's their main job.
	Yeah, but here's Chuck Schumer pretending to be very appalled about President Trump being mean to him after he sends an open letter calling Trump an incompetent buffoon.
	I spoke to the president late this afternoon and explained it, and the result is this letter.
	And so I'm just appalled.
	You know, I'd say to the president, just stop the pettiness.
	People are dying.
	And so, President Trump, we need leadership.
	We need to get the job done.
	Stop the pettiness.
	Let's get it done.
	Let's roll up our sleeves.
	I sent the letter with the best of intentions, trying to improve a very bad situation.
	Oh, that was it?
	With the best of intentions, you sent a public letter.
	A public letter.
	You know what you could do?
	Pick up the phone.
	You said you talked to Trump yesterday.
	Weird.
	Did you do it by open letter?
	Or did you call him up on the phone?
	You know, this device that we've had for well over a century at this point.
	You know, this device that you pick up your phone and you talk to the person and then there's no written record of it?
	And also, you can talk to the person directly without, you know, releasing it to millions of people at the same time?
	Unbelievable.
	Unbelievable.
	Okay, so one other thing that I hate that I'd be remiss in not mentioning today.
	So we were told very early on that this, and I have abided by the opinion of the experts all along the way here, we've been told very early on that this was not in any way developed, this coronavirus was not developed in any way by a Chinese laboratory.
	And now, now there's a piece by David Ignatius in the Washington Post talking about the possibility that, um, by the way, maybe this leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
	Whoops.
	Whoops.
	David Ignatius.
	Again, not me.
	David Ignatius.
	The Washington Post.
	He says, The story of how the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China has produced a nasty propaganda battle between the U.S.
	and China.
	The two sides have traded some of the sharpest charges made between two nations since the Soviet Union in 1985 falsely accused the CIA of manufacturing AIDS.
	U.S.
	intelligence officials don't think the pandemic was caused by deliberate wrongdoing.
	The outbreak that has now swept the world instead began with a simpler story, albeit one with tragic consequences.
	The prime suspect is natural transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets.
	But scientists don't rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.
	Okay, now I'm old enough to remember when Tom Cotton was ripped for suggesting that there might be information that maybe this is what happened.
	He said, I can't confirm this is what happened.
	I'm not saying I know this is what happened.
	I'm not saying the data support this is what happened, but there've been some pretty strong rumors coming out of China that this may have been something that happened.
	Good science, bad safety is how Senator Tom Cotton put his theory in a February 16th tweet.
	He ranked such a breach, or natural transmission, as more likely than the two extreme possibilities, an accidental leak of an engineered bioweapon or a deliberate release.
	Cotton's earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor back when it first raised it in late January and called the outbreak worse than Chernobyl.
	Trump and Pompeo added to the bio last month, describing the coronavirus as the Chinese virus and the Wuhan virus, of course.
	That was not a problem.
	This was developed.
	I mean, not developed, but obviously allowed to disseminate by the Chinese government, lied about by the Chinese government, lied to the WHO.
	The Chinese government is solely responsible for this.
	If we're all going to be forced to wear face masks, by the way, like if we all have to wear face masks, I really want to put out one at Daily Wire that just says on the face mask, F communism, because this is the communist virus.
	China dished wild, irresponsible allegations of its own, says David Ignatius.
	On March 12th, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Li Jianzhao charged it might be the U.S.
	Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.
	He retweeted an article that claimed that the U.S.
	troops might have spread the virus when they attended the World Military Games in Wuhan in October of 2019.
	China retreated on March 22nd, when Ambassador to the U.S.
	Kui Tiankai told Axios that such rumors were crazy on both sides.
	To be clear, U.S.
	intelligence officials think there's no evidence that the coronavirus was created in the laboratory as a potential bioweapon.
	Solid scientific research shows it wasn't engineered by humans and that it originated in bats, but it is unclear how the outbreak occurred in the first place.
	What's increasingly clear is that the initial origin story that the virus was spread by people who ate the bats at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan is shaky.
	Hmm.
	Scientists have now identified the culprit as a bat coronavirus through genetic sequencing.
	Bats were not sold at the seafood market, although that market could have sold animals that had contact with bats.
	The Lancet noted in a January study, the first COVID-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market at all.
	There's a competing theory that scientists have been puzzling about for weeks, says David Ignatius.
	Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
	Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China for study to prevent future illnesses.
	Did one of those samples lead or was hazardous leak or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?
	Richard Ebright, Rutgers microbiologist, said the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident.
	But Ebright cautioned it could also have occurred as a lab accident, with an accidental infection of a laboratory worker.
	So this doesn't mean they militarized the virus.
	But there was a Chinese study that was curiously withdrawn in ResearchGate.
	It was a brief article by Botao Zhao and Li Zhao from Guangzhou's South China University of Technology.
	I apologize for the mispronunciations.
	In addition to the origins of natural recombination and intermediate hosts, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a lab in Wuhan.
	Safety level may need to be reinforced in high-risk biohazardous laboratories.
	So, then it is a complete government failure, right?
	Then it is not even the government didn't lock it down in Wuhan.
	The labs are run by the Chinese government in Wuhan.
	There are no private labs in China, as far as I'm aware.
	Okay, so that means that it's a communist country.
	That means this is purely and simply Chernobyl.
	They didn't mean for it to happen, and it did happen.
	And people were punished, basically publicly, for talking about it.
	Pretty well done.
	Democracy dies in darkness.
	Tom Cotton's bad for even mentioning this possibility.
	And oh, by the way, it's also maybe the most likely possibility now, since the original suggestion that somebody just ate a bat at the Wuhan market now appears to be less plausible than the alternative explanation, which is that apparently the bat that this came from was like 600 miles away from Wuhan.
	And the only way it gets there is presumably if somebody takes the virus and brings it to the laboratory there.
	Well done, everybody.
	Well done.
	Alrighty.
	Well, we will be back here later today.
	We'll be taking your questions at 855-236-3228.
	Hang in there.
	Again, pay attention to all of the strictures.
	The administration is right.
	The scientists are right.
	Pay attention to all the structures right now.
	And also, scientists, get your asses in gear.
	Give us some information on what this is gonna look like six months from now, a year from now.
	Your three month studies are not sufficient to keep people locked up for months on end.
	It's just not going to work.
	It's not going to work.
	If you want us to pay attention to the strictures, we have to know what the rules are going to do and what they are not going to do.
	And we have to know what the projection of this virus looks like, not for the next week, not for the next two weeks, not for the next month, but what happens when we all leave our houses because we are not staying in our houses for a year.
	It's not happening.
	Okay.
	We'll be back here later today or next week.
	Have yourself a safe weekend.
	Spend time with family and try to enjoy yourselves.
	Take a vacation to, you know, like your kitchen.
	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 Siovitz.
	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.
	You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.
	I think there are enough of those already out there.
	We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.
	So my main focuses are life, family, faith.
	Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

▲