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April 20, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:04

Testing, Testing | Ep. 993

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	All focus turns to testing capacity, but how effective will testing be and how practical are our testing plans?
	Plus, local officials get authoritarian and protests start to roil the country.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Your data is your business protected at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	That's expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Well, I hope that you had a somewhat relaxing weekend as we all continue to undergo this incredibly Painful and difficult process.
	Obviously, some people in the United States are suffering gravely, not just in terms of health, but tons and tons of people have lost their jobs.
	I mean, this is a crisis that is roiling.
	And in the middle of a roiling crisis, the last thing you need are people taking political advantage of the roiling crisis in order to enact their agenda.
	And this is why it's really important to look to Europe and see how they are reopening and look to the various strategies on reopening.
	It's why it's really important to use critical thinking when we talk about exactly what sort of steps need to be taken for reopening, because there is a data-based idea That we can reopen if we hit certain milestones.
	And then there are certain data-free ideas like we can never reopen at any point.
	Or we should reopen immediately.
	No holds barred, no masks, no social distancing.
	And none of this is useful.
	So what we should first do is look at the data.
	And then what we're going to see is that American politics, it's amazing how fast people retreat to their priors.
	It's amazing how fast people use crisis as an opportunity to push their preferred political agenda.
	And how in response, people immediately say, well, you know what?
	Then I'm not going to buy any of what you are saying.
	We've seen this with regard to climate change, for example.
	So the left wasn't content to simply just say, listen, climate change is happening and it's mostly human caused.
	Then it became, this is a global crisis.
	It's a crisis of unprecedented proportion.
	And it also means they're going to have to completely restructure the world economy and the American economy.
	And at that point, a lot of people began to think, wait a second, wait a second.
	I'm with you on the science.
	I'm okay with that.
	I'm even willing to go along with you on maybe this is a serious problem over the course of the next century that is gradually building, but I'm not willing to go along with something that seems as though it is a pretext for you to do all the things you have already wanted to do.
	And that is what it is starting to feel like in the United States as politicians lock down beyond what is necessary, as they take more and more petty authoritarian stances, as you see people attempting to shut down protests, not on the basis of public health alone.
	By the way, if you are protesting, if you're out there protesting today or yesterday, Okay, I made this recommendation last week.
	If you want to protest to reopen the government, I'm actually fine with that.
	I don't have any problem with that.
	That is a first amendment exercise.
	Not only that, I sort of agree with you that we need to be taking more exped... Not sort of, I largely agree with you.
	We need to be taking more expedited steps to reopen America's economy because I believe that the American people are responsible.
	I believe the American people are capable of wearing a mask when they are going to be within six feet of others.
	That the American people are capable of social distancing.
	That we are a free people who are responsible and don't want to infect our neighbors.
	That being said, if you're gonna go out and protest, why don't you do that?
	Wear a mask, socially distance, takes a bullet away from the media that wish to paint you as a bunch of kooks.
	Now there are some kooks out there protesting, but there are plenty of kooks on the other side suggesting that we must shelter in place until kingdom come, no matter what the economic consequences are.
	Okay, so we're gonna get into all of this.
	Let's begin with what is happening over in Europe.
	So in Europe, they are beginning to slowly re-emerge.
	From their lockdown, according to the Wall Street Journal Bookstores, almost nothing else among again, open again along desolate canals of Venice, restaurants and hotels remain shut, cafes once packed with tourists sit empty.
	But for two days a week, customers can browse for books so long as they wear a mask, disinfect their hands before shopping and stay more than six feet apart.
	To comply, the city's Marco Polo bookstore has asked customers to answer one at a time in the morning or schedule a half hour appointment for the afternoon.
	For a look at how hard it is to press play on a Western economy still battling coronavirus, turn to Europe and to Italy, which is painstakingly freeing its shops and small businesses in stages, easing a continent-wide lockdown that has kept nearly half a billion people at home.
	Nation by nation, and in some cases storefront by storefront, health authorities in the European Union are selecting when and where commercial life can breathe again in tiny gasps.
	Each new category of retail allowed to function presents a real-time experiment for what coming weeks could look like as parts of the U.S.
	attempt to follow.
	Most Italian regions have let children's clothing stores open.
	The Czech Republic has greenlit hardware stores.
	In central Vienna, face masks to Austrians now line up around city blocks to visit sewing shops and chocolatiers.
	This week, Germany and Poland both said they would loosen rules that have suffocated retail.
	The openings are piecemeal and provisional.
	There's no swift or substantial relief.
	A lot of people are still staying home.
	But stores are beginning to reopen.
	It's going to be hard to get back online, but countries are taking sort of different tacks on this sort of thing.
	Germany is reopening its stores, according to Bloomberg News.
	Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is now allowing smaller stores to reopen after a shutdown that deprived German retailers about 33 billion bucks in sales and pushed many shops to the brink of bankruptcy.
	Germany is among the first nations in Europe taking cautious steps toward normalcy as the pandemic continues to shutter factories, restaurants and shops from Madrid to Prague.
	Retail spaces of less than 800 square meters, which is less than about 8,500 square feet, will be reopening along with car dealerships, bike shops, bookstores, bar restaurants, gyms, larger stores are going to remain closed.
	The government is urgently recommending that everyone continue to wear face masks.
	So Germany is already beginning to reopen.
	And Sweden, which never really shut, they're now saying that they've been successful in their attempts to flatten the curve.
	Now remember, The whole situation with Sweden, and people on the left really love to hate Sweden, which is weird because the government there is actually a center-left government, but the bizarre notion that Sweden has blown this thing because they had a spiking death rate over the last couple of weeks and then flattened out again?
	This is like saying that if you are overweight and then you go to exercise and then you're vomiting into a trash can because you exercised really hard and then someone points you say look look at what that guy did to himself he's vomiting in the trash can right the point for Sweden is that you're supposed to take the long the you're supposed to trade the short-term hit of vomiting in the trash can for the long-term gain of getting back in shape if you just sit on your couch all day you're actually not doing yourself any favors because you will be out of shape forever
	Okay, so Sweden sort of took a different tack, which is, we'll take the early hit, we'll make sure that our systems aren't overrun, and now Sweden is beginning to say, listen, our strategy is working, and we'll see how all you all are doing when you reemerge and you embrace our strategy anyway, and then presumably have to reinfect each other, because that is something that is going to happen.
	People completely misinterpreted what flatten the curve meant.
	Okay, I explained it 1,000 times on the show, so it ain't my fault, but flatten the curve simply meant that we were going to spread out the rate of infection over time, Such that we would not overwhelm our medical system.
	People took it to mean that if we somehow flatten the curve that you would never get COVID.
	That is not right, okay?
	You probably will get COVID at some point in the future, barring some exigent circumstance.
	Our only hope is that the treatments are better and that a vaccine is developed sooner rather than later.
	But flattening the curve never meant that a huge percentage of the population was going to avoid COVID.
	It just meant that there were going to be medical resources at your disposal when you actually did get COVID.
	In any case, we'll get to Sweden in just one second.
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	So as I say, Sweden was much more accurate in how they have been informing the public that this thing is going to go forward.
	So they never shut down all of their restaurants or their gyms or their bars or anything.
	They basically just said to their citizenry, guys be responsible, right?
	If you're old, if you have a preexisting condition, stay home, don't go out and socialize, but otherwise you'll go out there, wear a mask, socially distance, don't congregate in large throngs, and that's about it.
	Anders Tegnell is the architect behind Sweden's relatively relaxed response to COVID.
	He told local media the latest figures on infection rates and fatalities indicate that the situation is starting to stabilize.
	Tegnell told Swedish News we're around sort of a plateau.
	Sweden has left its schools, gyms, cafes, bars, and restaurants open throughout the spread of the pandemic.
	The government has urged citizens to act responsibly and follow social distancing guidelines.
	So there are high levels of trust, social trust, in places like Sweden, and that makes it a lot easier for people to rely on their neighbors to obey the rules.
	With that said, I believe that the American citizen is generally a responsible human being who is capable of going back to work and wearing a mask and staying six feet away from people and not breathing all over each other.
	And frankly, I am bewildered and somewhat terrified by the response of local authorities who are doing the dumbest crap I've ever seen on the local level in order to prevent people from supposedly reinfecting each other.
	I mean, it totally is wild.
	It totally is.
	And we're going to get to that in just one second.
	But I want to talk about one of the things that people keep talking about for reopening.
	So they keep talking about the necessity of testing.
	They keep saying that if we test, if we ramp up tests, we need tests that are ramped up, really ramped up, in order to reopen society.
	So we need to be reasonable about what we expect.
	When people go back, there will be an increased number of people who are infected.
	When people go back, there will be an increased number of people who do die.
	And that is a thing that is going to happen.
	And there is no world, none, in which people go back to work and don't shelter in place and the rates don't go up.
	The rates will go up.
	This is expected.
	This is part of the plan.
	Unless there is some new treatment that miraculously appears.
	People will get sick.
	People will die.
	The hope is that when they go to the hospital, a ventilator will be available, an ICU bed will be available.
	Hopefully you'll have some of the new drugs available.
	And that over time, as we hit September, we get back into the school year, the treatments, the toolkit, as Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, put it to me on the Sunday special, the toolkit will have improved such that the care for you will be better by September.
	The vaccine ain't coming until next year.
	So, acknowledge the baseline risk in American society has gone up.
	COVID has raised the baseline risk, and depending on your age and your pre-existing condition, it has raised your baseline risk rather substantially, for sure.
	When people compare this to the flu, this is not like the flu.
	It is much more transmissible than the flu, and it is significantly more deadly than the flu for every age range except for kids who are under the age of maybe 15 years old.
	Okay, with all of that said, we have to know the limits of testing.
	What is the testing actually designed to do?
	Because we've heard these sort of magic words that get bandied about in the media and then completely reinterpreted.
	So as I say, flatten the curve was taken by many Americans to mean that since we flattened the curve, you're going to go back to work and you're not going to get it.
	Not true.
	Okay, testing does not mean you are not going to get it.
	Okay, what testing is designed to do, presumably, testing and contact tracing, right?
	These buzzwords that you hear.
	That testing is designed to identify people after they already have it, and then to lock down the levels of contacts, sort of web of contacts that they have, and tell those people to self-quarantine, to kind of kill out hotspots before they spread exponentially.
	That is the goal of the testing.
	Now, is that actually accomplishable?
	Probably.
	It's probably accomplishable if you have a baseline level of testing that is somewhat higher than the level of testing we have now.
	Doesn't mean that we are going to stamp out the virus, that the only way for us to get back to work is to run tens of millions of tests every day.
	That's not realistic.
	It's just not realistic.
	And part of the reason it's not realistic is because tons of people, presumably, particularly in metro hotspots, have already had this thing.
	So I've been talking about the fact that while this is a lot more deadly than the flu and a lot more transmissible than the flu, it is a lot less deadly than the WHO rate that's been put out there for the case fatality rate.
	The infection fatality rate is the rate you actually need to know.
	The infection fatality rate is what I'm always talking about.
	That is the number of people who have actually obtained this virus.
	is much higher than the number of people who have been tested for the virus.
	The denominator is much, much higher.
	And we keep seeing this, which means it's kind of difficult to lock down.
	It's kind of difficult to lock down other than with just stay-at-home measures.
	Now, again, if there's a big hotspot, a huge spike in one area, then maybe you can contact trace if you do it soon enough.
	Right?
	That would be the goal.
	But that's the only goal of the testing.
	Okay?
	The goal of the testing is not to prevent everyone in the population from getting it or to prevent a low level of baseline people infecting each other from continuing.
	That will continue.
	That is going to happen.
	Okay, so let's be realistic about what we can accomplish and what we can't.
	I think people are being utterly, completely unrealistic about this.
	And I think some people are doing that for political purposes.
	One, because they want to imply that the Trump administration is capable of doing a thing it can't do.
	And the government is capable of doing a thing it can't do.
	And they want to suggest that people need to stay home indefinitely.
	And this is where I think that Americans are right to begin getting suspicious.
	There are some people in positions of authority who are obviously enjoying the shutdown a little too much, who are going out of their way to shut down activities that seriously have no relation to data or reality.
	And there's some people in positions of authority who are seeing this opportunity as an opportunity to restructure all of American society.
	And I'm not implying, I'm not making an accusation without evidence.
	Bernie Sanders wrote that directly in the New York Times today.
	So we'll get to that in just one second.
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	So as I say, this thing is very widespread.
	It's very widespread, right?
	And in metro areas, particularly widespread.
	We mentioned a study last week, very late last week, on the radio show.
	It broke like after the podcast.
	And that study showed that the baseline level of infection in Santa Clara County could be 50 to 85 times as high as the number of actual tested cases.
	We've seen that in Denmark, for example.
	The percentage, or the Netherlands rather, the percentage of people in the Netherlands who had this antibody, who had the antibody, this thing is like 3% of the population, which means that their infection fatality rate is off by at least an order of magnitude, probably by a factor of 20.
	Okay, well now we are seeing there's a study in Massachusetts in which they tested people literally off the street.
	The Massachusetts General Study took samples from 200 residents on the streets in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
	64 of the participants tested positive.
	So like one third of the people just on the street tested positive for the antibody, which means two things.
	One, it's a lot more widespread than possible, which means testing for it's going to be very difficult.
	But two, it also means the thing is a lot less deadly than you have been led to believe, even if it is significantly more deadly than the flu.
	What all of this is doing is it means that there is a lot of uncertainty in the modeling.
	It means that people have less faith in the scientists.
	I will tell you another thing that is going to lead people to have less faith in the scientists is all the conflicting messages.
	So let's talk about testing because this is what you keep hearing now, right?
	You keep hearing from the politicians, everything is about testing.
	Why isn't Trump testing?
	Where are all the tests?
	And it's true.
	We need more testing.
	We do need more testing.
	Okay, but the level of testing that some people are calling for is just utterly unrealistic.
	It's not realistic.
	It's not a thing that is going to happen.
	I give you an example.
	Today, ABC News reports that there is a report titled, Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience, released on Monday morning.
	A blue ribbon panel of thought leaders across the political spectrum called COVID-19 a profound threat to our democracy comparable to the Great Depression and World War II.
	Danielle Allen, lead author of the report, a professor at Harvard University's Edmund J. Safra Center on Ethics, told ABC News, it's a moment for a can-to America to really show up and put itself to work.
	We need a massively scale of testing, tracing, and supported isolation system that is the alternative.
	They say test producers will need to deliver 5 million tests per day by early June to safely open even parts of the economy by late July.
	To fully remobilize the economy, the country will need to see testing grow to 20 million a day.
	And we acknowledge that even this number may not be high enough.
	Paul Romer, the Nobel laureate economist, who didn't assist in the report, but has a similar approach according to ABC News, says the country may need more than 30 million tests per day.
	30 million tests per day.
	Guess what is not happening?
	Any of that.
	Okay, that is not a thing that is happening.
	So let's be realistic about this.
	And let's also be realistic about what these tests do.
	Okay, we have to be realistic about the risks here.
	Okay, people are going to go back to work and there is going to be additional risk.
	So let's be honest about it.
	No one's being honest with you.
	The politicians are not being honest.
	They make it sound like you're gonna be safe when you go back to work.
	It's not true.
	Commentators are not being honest when they suggest that with a massive regime of testing, you will be completely free of risk.
	That's not true.
	There are several different types of tests that people have talked about.
	And all of them have flaws.
	First of all, let's just put this on the table.
	People keep saying, we'll wait for the vaccine, we'll wait for the vaccine.
	There's no guarantee there even will be a vaccine.
	According to David Nabarro, Professor of Global Health at Imperial College and an envoy for the WHO, he says that there's no guarantee a vaccine can even be successfully developed.
	So everybody is sitting around going, oh, there'll be a vaccine in 12 to 18 months.
	How do you know?
	So that may not happen.
	It also turns out that even if you test negative for COVID-19, you may have it.
	Why?
	Because it turns out that a lot of these tests are flawed.
	So you can test as much as you want.
	If the tests have a really high rate of false positive or false negative, not super helpful.
	According to Live Science, and this is just a few, a couple of weeks ago, conventional diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus may give a false negative result about 30% of the time.
	30% of the time.
	So, those sorts of tests, they're not gonna be good enough.
	Okay, they're just not.
	And these are the RT-PCR tests everybody is talking about, right?
	These are the ones that take a bit of RNA from a viral swab from your nose, from your mouth, and they replicate the RNA, and they match it up to the genetic sequencing of the virus to see if you have the virus in the first place.
	Those things are significantly inadequate in many cases.
	If the tests come back positive, it's almost certain you have the infection, but if the tests give a negative, then it is not certain that you're actually negative.
	So they're giving a false negative a lot of the time.
	Because that means that we would have to repeat test you.
	And how many times do you have to repeat test before you determine that somebody is actually clean?
	Also, is everybody going to have an RNA test, like, on the premises?
	What's the delay between the time you take the PCR test and the time you receive the result?
	Because it might be three days.
	In which case, you're still going out because you feel okay, right?
	You're not symptomatic.
	One of the big problems here is that you only take the test when you're symptomatic.
	Unless you are taking it preventatively, in which case you still have to wait for two to three days, in which case you're still infecting everybody.
	So, depending on the level of infection in society at large, I don't know what level of contact tracing you think is going to be available for 330 million people, but it's going to have to be pretty extraordinary.
	There are flaws in this approach.
	Okay, then there's the antibody test.
	First of all, there are serious problems with the antibody test right now.
	According to the New York Times today, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, but for all their promise, the tests are already raising alarms.
	Officials fear the effort may prove as problematic as the earlier launch of diagnostic tests that failed to monitor which Americans and how many had been infected or developed the disease the virus causes.
	The FDA has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting, saying the pandemic warrants an urgent response.
	The agency has since warned that some of these businesses are making false claims about their product.
	And so many of the tests going around don't have any level of validity at all.
	They have like 20% validity.
	So there are flaws in the antibody test.
	And again, the antibodies only develop after a week.
	So you could have it walk around for a week, be infecting everybody.
	So here's what tests are good for.
	They're good for if you and a bunch of your friends start to get sick, then we can contact trace you after two or three days of you being sick and try and back trace you for like nine days.
	But it'd have to be you and a bunch of your friends to justify the contact tracing that would take place in that hotspot.
	Right?
	So that that means that a low level of infection is probably going to maintain throughout society.
	Now, one of the things that is happening is because people are focusing so much on the testing and the things that we have to get done before we can supposedly go back to work.
	One of the things that is happening is that people are sort of waiting for somebody to give them the all clear.
	And I don't know that the all clear is going to be all clear.
	Because again, I think politicians are lying to you.
	I think right now the testing has turned into a bit of a political football.
	So we'll get to the political football of the testing in just one second.
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	Okay, so...
	To get back on the testing.
	There's been a lot of talk about what people need to do in order to have a testing level sufficient that you can go back to work.
	I talked last week about the fact that temperature tests at the front door, that's kind of like a third priority because you're only gonna get a temperature a week after you have this thing.
	Antibody tests are only gonna give you the antibodies a week after you have this thing.
	You're probably only gonna take a PCR test depending on how many Tests are available two, three days after you have this thing, and then the results may not come back for two or three days.
	And all of these tests have fairly significant high false negative rates.
	So, in other words, we can't wait for this thing to be perfect, is what I'm telling you.
	And all of the focus on this thing has to be perfect before anybody goes back to work is not accurate, and it's just a way, politically, for people to blame the federal government for failures here.
	And you see this with Nancy Pelosi.
	So Nancy Pelosi, over the weekend, she says, President Trump gets an F on testing, an F on testing.
	It has to be testing.
	It has to be tracing, contact tracing.
	It has to be treatment.
	And it has to be quarantine.
	It's part of something bigger as well to be done properly.
	But we're way late on it.
	And that is the failure.
	The president gets an F of failure on the testing.
	But Dr. Fauci is right.
	If it is done properly, it hasn't been.
	And I think when he puts it in the if it's done is an admission that it hasn't been done.
	I would love to ask her what she thinks is proper and how she presumes to roll those out and fund it and what American life looks like.
	Nobody ever asked the follow-up question, which is, okay, you keep saying things like testing and contact tracing.
	What do you mean?
	How many people are you going to hire?
	You have people at the DMV doing contact tracing, millions of people doing contact tracing.
	How many people are you going to have actually doing the test?
	How many tests do you propose to roll out?
	Is it 20 million a day?
	Seriously, 20 million a day?
	Is that your plan?
	Because that ain't happening.
	It's not happening in May.
	It's not happening in June.
	It's not happening in July.
	It's never happening.
	There will not be 20 million tests a day in the United States.
	Let's be realistic about this.
	It's a country of 330 million people.
	And by the way, I'm still confused as to why 20 million tests a day would be sufficient.
	There are 330 million people in the population.
	By the way, every day that goes by, millions of people are losing their livelihoods, their jobs, populating the food banks.
	Mike Pence is saying, listen, we've made as much testing available as we're going to be making available to the states.
	There's enough testing for people to start to think about getting back to work.
	Here's the vice president.
	We believe the testing that we have today, Chris, across the country, once we activate all of the labs that can do coronavirus testing, is sufficient for any state in America to move into phase one.
	We're doing about 150,000 tests a day, and you remember a month ago we had done 80,000 tests total.
	Now we've cleared 4 million overall.
	Okay, 150,000 tests a day is good.
	It's going to need to be a little bit better.
	Scott Gottlieb told me on the Sunday special, 300,000 tests a day would probably be sufficient to at least do the hotspot tracing.
	And that's pretty much all you can do.
	Again, have realistic expectations about what the testing is going to do.
	Now, Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland, who's also been a guest on the radio show, he says it's not true.
	We don't have the testing.
	So, you know, when the federal government says that we are ready to go back, that's not accurate.
	The administration, I think, is trying to ramp up testing.
	They are doing some things with respect to private labs, but to try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren't doing our job, is just absolutely false.
	Every governor in America has been pushing And fighting and clawing to get more tests, not only from the federal government, but from every private lab in America and from all across the world.
	And we continue to do so.
	All of that is fine.
	And all of that is good.
	Like maybe the feds can do more.
	Maybe the states can do more.
	But all I'm saying is that testing is not the cure-all.
	Everybody is acting.
	First, the cure-all was flattening the curve.
	So we flattened the curve.
	Wasn't a cure-all.
	Then the cure-all is going to be lots and lots of tests, except that it's not going to be a cure-all.
	It turns out that unless the real cure-all is people Making responsible decisions, truthfully.
	The real cure-all is going to, aside from any vaccine, which again is perspective, the real cure-all is going to be if you are at risk, if you are elderly, if you have a pre-existing condition, seeing if there is a way for you to distance yourself from other human beings, and if you are not, then making sure that you are responsible in the way that you deal with other human beings.
	Responsibility.
	Now, All of this has led to a belief by most Americans that they can't lift the stay-at-home orders.
	But that is because even the conditions laid out by the White House are now being politicized to the extent that what was a fairly broad and easy criteria to meet, meaning that you've had 14 days on a consistent level of downslope in terms of diagnosed cases or diagnosed cases as a percentage of cases taken, and they can start to reopen the economy.
	Even that's being politicized now.
	They said testing has to be sufficient.
	And so, of course, Everybody on both sides of the political aisle has honed in on, okay, what level of testing is sufficient?
	And nobody has a great answer for this.
	Naturally, Americans are worried about going back to work because they've been told that if they go back to work, they're going to die.
	And this is why I've been very upset about, frankly, how the media have covered this thing.
	Because if you are young and healthy, the chances that you're going to die if you go back to work are extraordinarily low.
	Like, really, really, really low.
	The full number of Americans who have died under the age of 45, with or without pre-existing conditions in the United States from this thing, exceedingly low.
	So everybody's going to end up in Sweden.
	Everybody's going to end up doing the Swedish thing.
	The only question is how long you wait to do the Swedish thing.
	Right now, this is turning into a partisan issue as well.
	If you see how it breaks down.
	And people are wondering, like, why is this partisan?
	It shouldn't be partisan, right?
	I mean, like, we all have the same risk to life as general rule, right?
	Some of us have pre-existing conditions.
	Some of us are older.
	Some of us are more vulnerable.
	But overall, everybody's at risk.
	The virus can take anybody out.
	So why is there a partisan breakdown?
	The reason there's a partisan breakdown is because there is a backlash that is currently brewing.
	And the backlash is brewing to a hardcore political left that feels as though they are entitled to politicize this thing.
	And turn it into a referendum on the entire American system and seem to frankly be enjoying their power a little bit too much.
	I've been saying for weeks that Tarkin, the tighter you grip, the more galaxies will slip through your fingers.
	And that's exactly what's happening.
	And wait until I show you what's been happening in some of these states.
	Americans are not going to stand for it.
	They are not.
	Americans are not going to be okay with the idea that they can't go outside to a park.
	I mean, this is insanity.
	And it's especially insanity when you tell us we can't go out to a park.
	Maybe you'll get a check in the mail.
	Maybe.
	We'll see about it.
	We're kind of holding up this small business fund.
	So maybe you'll get a check in the mail.
	Maybe you won't.
	You're going to stay home.
	We'll make sure the states get bailed out.
	So all the debt that we've been taking on for years, we'll make sure that the states get a bailout.
	That's what Democrats are focused on today.
	And also, you can't send your kids to school.
	And also, maybe at some point there will be testing sufficient that you can go outside.
	But We're gonna have to fundamentally restructure American society in the meantime.
	You think that might make people suspicious?
	You think it might make people suspicious?
	When you see that Facebook has been told by local governments to remove notices of protests?
	Listen, I think a lot of protesters are doing dumb things.
	Like, don't go to a rally and call your governor a Nazi.
	Don't go to a rally and yell at Dr. Fauci.
	Don't go to a rally and take off a mask and spit at people.
	Don't do dumb things.
	But the notion that governments should be pressured to reopen because we are a responsible people capable of taking risks?
	I'm with you there.
	I am.
	And the media's attempt to paint everybody who's in favor of reopening as a threat to human life is frankly disgusting.
	I mean, truly gross.
	We'll get to this in just one second.
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	Okay, we're going to get into the petty tyranny of local officials and the burgeoning sense that some politicians are using this crisis as an opportunity.
	Americans are not going to stand for that bullcrap and they shouldn't stand for that bullcrap.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, This Wednesday, April 22nd, we're going to be having a socially distanced backstage live.
	So Andrew Klavan is going to be at home.
	I think we're all going to be doing it from home, but that's because we are being responsible at this thing.
	We are responsible citizens here at DailyWire, so we'll be hanging out with you in DailyWire backstage.
	Plus, our all-access live continues each and every day.
	If you are a member of any level right now, then you are able to access our all-access live and ask me questions, ask Klavan questions, and Noel's questions, and Jeremy Boren questions.
	You can go check that out right now.
	I believe I'm going tonight for the All Access Live, so my rule is I wear a t-shirt.
	What t-shirt will I wear?
	I know.
	What a pitch.
	What a pitch.
	Anyway, go over to dailywire.com, subscribe right now, any level of member gets access to that.
	So that we are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	Okay, so the dichotomy that's been set up because of the testing regimen and the contact tracing, I want all this stuff in place too.
	I have the same interest you do.
	I don't want hotspots.
	I live in LA.
	You think I want a hotspot out here?
	I'm not interested in that.
	I have a sister in New Jersey, which is a hotspot right now.
	I would love all these things in place, but if you think that we can wait until we have 20 million tests a day, As these non-epidemiologists, by the way, are recommending, you're out of your mind.
	But what the media are now setting up is a political binary wherein if you suggest that we need to consciously, cautiously, responsibly get people back to work, particularly in the least vulnerable populations, then you are a bad person who is risking human life.
	And I'm sorry, that's a bunch of crap.
	Thomas Friedman has a column today along these lines, says, Trump is asking us to play Russian roulette with our lives.
	This is what Trump was saying with his liberate Virginia, liberate Minnesota, liberate Michigan tweets, right?
	Trump tweeted all this last week without any sort of clarifying message.
	He said, everybody just go back to work.
	From now on, each of us individually and our society collectively is going to play Russian roulettes, says Thomas Friedman.
	We're going to bet we can spin through our daily lives, work, shopping, school, travel, without coronavirus landing on us.
	And if it does, we'll also bet it won't kill us.
	More specifically, as a society, we'll be betting that as large numbers of people stop sheltering in place, the number of people who will get infected with COVID-19 and require hospitalization will be less than the number of hospital beds, ICU respirators, doctors, nurses, and protective gear needed to take care of them.
	Because it's clear that millions of Americans are going to stop sheltering in place before we have proper testing, tracking, and tracing system let up.
	Until we have a vaccine, that kind of system is the only path to dramatically lowering the risk of infection while partially opening society, as Germany has demonstrated.
	As individuals, every person will be playing Russian Roulette every minute of the day.
	What will be so cruel about this American version of Russian Roulette is how unfair it will be.
	And then he turns it into class warfare.
	If you're more poor, then you're going to be forced to make choices.
	Listen, I think that everybody is going to be forced to make choices in their daily life.
	And those risks are going to change, obviously, based on where you live and what sort of job you have.
	But what is the alternative?
	Like, seriously, is Thomas Friedman suggesting that we're all supposed to shelter in place till July?
	Thomas Friedman has his cush salary paid by the New York Times while he gets to sit in his apartment and write garbage for the pages of the op-ed.
	Like, it's pretty easy for him to say this stuff.
	I know people who are losing small businesses.
	22 million people have lost their job in the last three weeks.
	So Thomas Friedman suggests it may work out for some places and people.
	It may not.
	I don't know.
	Every choice in dealing with this virus is fraught with huge trade-offs.
	I just know three things.
	First, this is the bet Trump is urging you to make in his liberate tweets when he should be ordering the National Guard and mobilizing American industry to get testing everywhere.
	Second, this bet will fall very unfairly and unevenly in our society when so little testing and tracing is in place.
	By the way, Wouldn't matter.
	Even if the testing and tracing were available, every death is going to be blamed on Trump because the media have an interest in blaming the deaths on Trump.
	I'm amazed at how the media have been able, so have Democrats, been able to turn this into a referendum on Trump.
	Well, let's be real about this.
	America has responded in the middle of the pack in Europe better than a lot of countries in Europe.
	And I'm not seeing this sort of criticism levied against the Italian government or the Spanish government by many of the same people.
	It's all about Trump, Trump all the time.
	And then, Friedman says, By the way, I have a question.
	Isn't that what it means to be a free human being?
	That you're on your own to make certain decisions?
	Like, isn't that one of the things that makes you a member of a free society?
	I'm not saying that there aren't government mandates that are necessary.
	I'm not saying that there aren't shutdown orders that are going to sometimes be necessary.
	Or that there are quarantines that aren't going to be necessary.
	But, once we have established whatever is the lowest risk we can establish, practically speaking, in forthright, timely manner, yes, that's called living a free life.
	It's called understanding what the risks are and being responsible.
	Again, being responsible.
	I'm not saying everybody rush out and go to the beaches and start making out.
	I'm saying be responsible.
	And by the way, the media's coverage of this stuff is irresponsible.
	I saw a picture of a Florida beach yesterday and people going nuts over it.
	Oh my God, look at all the people on the Florida beach.
	The picture was a lot of people on the beach, all of them six feet away from each other.
	That's not dangerous, folks.
	Okay, it isn't.
	The number of people who have actually obtained this in China from being in outdoor spaces, according to one study, was two.
	And it's two people who were standing right next to each other and talking for like 20 minutes.
	Okay, that's...
	We're seeing the sort of petty tyranny being crammed down on Americans at an increasingly rapid rate.
	So Bill de Blasio is a perfect example of this, the idiot mayor of New York.
	Who, by the way, I love that he was ripping the federal government and Trump while he was telling people they should go out and celebrate their lives in New York.
	Didn't order a shutdown order in New York until nearly the end of March.
	And then says we shouldn't look backward.
	Now Bill de Blasio is telling you to inform on your parents, Stasi style, if they are not socially distancing.
	I don't even know what this means.
	Like you see two people and they walk three feet apart and you're supposed to send a picture to Bill de Blasio?
	If you're talking about people who are violating shutdown orders, how about Bill de Blasio hiking in the park with his wife?
	Which is apparently a thing he's been doing.
	Here's the mayor of New York going full Stalin.
	We still know there's some people who need to get the message.
	And that means sometimes making sure the enforcement is there to educate people and make clear we gotta have social distancing.
	So, now it is easier than ever.
	When you see a crowd, when you see a line that's not distanced, when you see a supermarket that's too crowded, anything, you can report it right away so we can get help there to fix the problem.
	And now it's as simple as taking a photo.
	All you gotta do is take the photo, and put the location with it, and bang!
	Send a photo like this, and we will make sure that enforcement comes right away.
	Is he high?
	Like, are these people high?
	Wha- Really?
	How's that going to be effective?
	How's that going to be effective?
	You think the stores have an interest in people not socially distancing?
	And if you see somebody who's talking with somebody and you call the cops on them, you think that the cop, like how many cops are there in New York City?
	Half the force is out because they've got coronavirus.
	What the hell is he talking about?
	Okay, that wasn't even the worst example of local idiocy over the weekend.
	There was a bunch of it in LA.
	So I was driving around as I want to do with my children because as a normal human being, I like to put my children in the car and show them there is a broader world than just the roof of our house.
	So we get in our car and we drive over to a city that's not insane, Burbank.
	Okay, Burbank is a city that does not have the L.A.
	city government.
	This is why the Valley should have seceded from the city long ago in L.A.
	Okay, Burbank has a... They have signs up at their parks that said, play responsibly, be responsible.
	So you drove past some Burbank parks.
	There were people outside.
	There were people playing catch with their kids.
	Guess what they all were doing?
	Socially distancing.
	Most of them were wearing masks.
	Most people are responsible enough to handle freedom.
	By the way, if you don't believe people are responsible enough to generally, in situations where freedom can be exercised, exercise freedom.
	I don't know why you're living in a free country.
	I really don't.
	Okay, so Burbank is doing it right.
	LA is doing it totally wrong.
	They've shut down every park in the city, every single one, to the extent That we drove along Mulholland Drive yesterday.
	The city of L.A.
	had deployed workers to go to the turnoffs on Mulholland Drive, which are no bigger than this studio.
	Okay, the turnoffs on Mulholland Drive are like seven square feet.
	They had deployed people there to put yellow ribbon across the turnouts as though there were going to be masses of people gathering at these little turnouts on Mulholland Drive to spit on each other and give each other COVID.
	OK, that wasn't even the dumbest thing.
	Venice Beach.
	Venice Beach.
	They brought bulldozers to pile sand into the skate parks of Venice Beach.
	Now, as you can see, this tape is taken during the day, right?
	This is early morning, pretty obviously.
	And they're piling giant piles of sand into the middle of the skate park, which presumably we're then going to have... It's great.
	It's a great government employment program.
	We dig holes and then we pay people to create the holes.
	And then we are going to pay these people to clean up the holes in five minutes.
	So they're piling sand there so that people will not be congregating and gathering there.
	When, of course, people... Is there, like, great evidence that there are lots of people... Are you seeing tons of people there?
	Like you can see in the video, there's no one there.
	It's like six in the morning.
	By the way, when people say, well, that's six in the morning, there aren't that many people on Venice Beach at six in the morning.
	If you ever go to Venice Beach, there are lots of people who are walking the walkway at virtually every time during a non-pandemic time.
	They filled in a freaking skate park with dirt because they don't trust you that much.
	This is wild.
	Okay, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan is doing some of the same sort of stuff.
	She's prevented you from going to your second house.
	So if you have a house, like a lake house that's away from the city, she won't let you go from one house to the other.
	She's preventing you from buying gardening supplies, Gretchen Whitmer.
	And then Gretchen Whitmer suggested, no, I'm standing by these state lockdown policies.
	They're good.
	She's got it pretty easy.
	She's apparently got a T-shirt maker who helps make T-shirts for her so that when she appears on Stephen Colbert, she can have her customized T-shirt just for Stephen Colbert.
	But she's willing to shut down everybody's life over in Michigan.
	Here she was on Meet the Press defending her policies.
	Do you have any regrets on any of the restrictions that you have put into place?
	I don't, and here's why.
	You know, Michigan right now has the third highest number of deaths from COVID-19, and yet we're the 10th largest state.
	We have a disproportionate problem in the state of Michigan, and so we could take the same kinds of actions other states have, but it doesn't rise to the challenge we're confronting, and that's precisely why we have to take a more aggressive stand.
	It's working.
	We are seeing the curve start to flatten.
	By the way, there is not tremendous evidence, by the way, that states that have locked down are doing significantly better than states that have not locked down, because there are different states in the country.
	There are people who are tweeting out statistics on the rise in COVID diagnoses in states like Texas and Florida.
	Texas and Florida have basically flattened the curve, and neither one of them did a statewide lockdown the way that Gretchen Whitmer is doing a statewide lockdown.
	Certainly, they're not preventing people from being in their gardens and gardening and buying seeds, or buying car seats, the way that Gretchen Whitmer was.
	And then Gretchen Whitmer, she's just awful.
	Gretchen Whitmer told Rachel Maddow there's a protest at Michigan's Capitol.
	She said that that is the kind of irresponsible action that puts us in a situation where we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they are protesting.
	So, in other words, if you protest, little kids, we are going to force you to stay in your houses even longer.
	Do you get the feeling that some of these local officials are enjoying this power a little bit too much?
	The petty authoritarians like to be petty authoritarians.
	Getting that feeling?
	So that is a problem because if you want people to trust the experts who stay home, you have to have the feeling they don't have an ulterior motive, which is to run for vice president in the case of Gretchen Whitmer and become a political hot button.
	You also have to have the belief that the government is not maximizing its own presence in American lives because this is what government does and there are people who want to make it permanent.
	And unfortunately, that suspicion is being justified each and every day by folks on the radical left as well.
	Now, the new narrative is that government is everywhere now and we're all used to it.
	Dan Balz has a piece over at the Washington Post.
	He says Americans are experiencing the biggest expansion of government authority in generations as elected leaders take unprecedented action to fight the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
	The role of government has changed overnight.
	Despite a broad consensus behind this emergency surge in government spending and power, a huge debate over what government does and should do lies ahead.
	That battle will be waged on terms that could be far different from those that existed before the pandemic, terms that have held sway since President Reagan arrived in Washington four decades ago, determined to put advocates of a vigorous government on the defensive for the first time since the New Deal.
	The pandemic, says Dan Balz, has exposed crippling weaknesses in the federal government, Troubling vulnerabilities in society that will be more difficult to ignore when the crisis begins to ease.
	For the first time, many Americans are looking to government for their very economic survival.
	In time, that could make them look at government differently.
	Well, I mean, can you hear Dan Balz praying for this to happen?
	Can you?
	Because this is where people start to lose it.
	Where people start to lose it.
	I've said this before.
	I've been willing to go along with the measures that I think are scientifically justified.
	I am not going to go along with the lockdown mentality that suggests that we need to fundamentally restructure American society because a virus hit us.
	That this is now an excuse to fundamentally remake everything.
	And Dan Balz is calling for that.
	He says, The effects of hollowed out federal agencies, persistent underinvestment in public health, enormous gaps in coverage, disparities in care have been on daily display as the coronavirus spread rapidly this winter and spring.
	So too have the effects of an economy whose benefits are distributed unequally.
	There it is.
	Leaving the richest Americans secure, while millions upon millions of middle and lower class families struggle, even in the best of times.
	So, this is now an excuse for redistributionism.
	It's an excuse for a complete remaking of American society.
	And then you wonder why people are protesting?
	And the media are condemning these people.
	As idiots and fools, they're condemning these people as racist and bigots.
	The Huffington Post was comparing them to the Charlottesville protesters.
	If there are protesters out there who are white supremacists, I can guarantee you they are not nearly the majority.
	This is not a white supremacist march.
	If you see a white supremacist at one of these marches, first of all, the person's a scumbag.
	Second of all, From what I've seen, those people are outliers, okay?
	I've not been seeing huge swaths of white supremacists on these lawns.
	I'm seeing a lot of citizens who own small businesses and want to go back to work.
	And to compare them to the Charlottesville protesters, as the Huffington Post did today, is truly a radical move.
	And then you wonder why people are like, okay, so I feel like you are using this here.
	I feel like you're using this politically.
	It's quite gross.
	Now, in a second, I'm gonna talk about just how gross this is when we get to things I hate, because there's plenty to hate today.
	Quick, a thing I like.
	So I mentioned earlier, reading with your kids.
	So one book that I've been reading with my kids, and it's kind of astonishing, my three-year-old even likes it, is Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
	Basically, if you want to learn how to build a house out of logs, this is the way to do it.
	It has detailed descriptions of essentially how you build a house in the middle of nowhere.
	Little House on the Prairie.
	It's enjoyable.
	It has now been labeled wrong-think by the politically correct, because there are descriptions of Native Americans that are not entirely flattering, because it was written from the perspective of a settler in Indian territory.
	You can explain all that stuff to your kids.
	There's a way to explain to your kids that there was legitimate conflict over this land.
	I did this actually with my kids as we were talking about this.
	The book itself is really enjoyable.
	It's great.
	And they have some illustrated versions if the kids like pictures that are really good.
	So go check out Little House on the Prairie, plus the series.
	My kids started watching the series.
	I never watched it growing up.
	The series is pretty great as well.
	And my kids are really, really into it.
	So go check out Little House on the Prairie.
	Good, clean, fun.
	Other things that I like.
	So Bill Maher, there were two clips of Bill Maher that were going around over the weekend.
	One clip of Bill Maher.
	was a clip of him having a conversation with Representative Dan Crenshaw, my friend Dan Crenshaw.
	And he is basically questioning Trump's coronavirus response, suggesting that it was really late and really bad.
	And Dan really sort of re-educates him on the timeline and points out that you can certainly criticize President Trump, but let's be real about this.
	Bill de Blasio was walking around in early March saying everything was fine.
	Eric Garcetti in L.A.
	was holding the L.A.
	Marathon and saying he was right to do so on March 8th.
	Foreign countries, many of them didn't lock down until mid-March.
	So that clip has gone viral for good reason.
	Dan does an excellent job of explaining all of this to Bill Markle.
	I think when it comes to his coverage of the Trump administration has been taken in by the media narrative, which is that everything Trump does is wrong and everything his opponents do is right.
	Now, Trump can do things wrong and his opponents can also suck.
	Many of these things can be true.
	It can be true that everyone is incompetent.
	Government is awful at everything.
	This is one of the most bizarre things about the call for radical revision of the nature of American government and its relationship with the citizens.
	One of the things that's so bizarre and weird about it, frankly, is that the government has really blown this.
	I mean, in massive, massive ways.
	And your response is that in non-crisis times, that the government should run everything.
	Anyway, so Bill Maher and Dan Crenshaw, that's a clip worth watching.
	But the one I want to focus on is Bill Maher actually doing something right.
	So Bill Maher, He went after the media over the weekend and he said that the members of the media are really enjoying this sort of panic porn.
	And he is correct about this.
	He is correct about this.
	They are enjoying the panic porn.
	Because many of them are sitting comfortably with their jobs.
	Many of them don't have to get on the subway and go to work.
	Many of them don't have to go to a job.
	None of them are small business owners.
	Here's Bill Maher pointing out, you know guys, we are going to have to reopen at some point and your panic porn is not helping.
	You know, the problem with nonstop gloom and doom is it gives Trump the chance to play the optimist.
	And optimists tend to win American elections.
	FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
	You know, as full of shit as he is, I could see Trump riding that into a second term.
	And then there will be no hope left for you to shame.
	So, look, if this insanity happens again, News sources have to rein it in.
	Everyone knows Corona is no walk in the park, because you literally can't walk in the park.
	But at some point, the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn.
	He is exactly right about this, and good for Bill Maher for pointing this out.
	He got all sorts of flack for this.
	It's not panic porn.
	We're being responsible in our coverage.
	The media have been utterly irresponsible in their coverage from day one on all this.
	This is not to alleviate.
	Any member of government for irresponsibility, Republican or Democrat, but the media's coverage of this stuff has been sheerly bad.
	Really, really bad.
	I mean, I don't consider myself world's best interviewer.
	I've asked better questions on public policy to every major official involved in the decision-making process than nearly anybody who's at these press conferences at the White House because they are so busy focusing on, Mr. President, you tweeted this today and wasn't that very bad of you?
	How about your actions back in February?
	Were those really bad, Mr. President?
	All the focus has been on Trump, because Trump is this black hole of attention that sucks in the media, and Trump enjoys it, because he likes the back and forth with the media.
	He did a press conference yesterday where he was just going back and forth with NPR and CNN and the New York Times, and the American people are sitting there going, okay, so I'm not really fond of how Trump is treating the members of the media, but do I care?
	Am I spending my days worrying about that?
	But the members of the media are spending their days doing two things, talking up how dangerous this thing is, And not leading with the facts, not leading with the stats, not leading with the responsible coverage of what Americans can and cannot do.
	I mean, if you read the media and all you read were the headlines, you would think that if you go outside, you will get this thing.
	And that if you get this thing, you will die.
	Right?
	That both of those things are true.
	If you go outside, if you touch a thing, anything, doesn't matter what it is, you will die.
	If you walk outside your house without a mask, You're going to die.
	It doesn't matter if there's a person for a hundred miles around, you will die.
	That is the nature of the media coverage that has been pushed to this point.
	And Maher's right, that is going to benefit Trump.
	Because if it turns out that all of the insane overwrought coverage by the media, if that overwrought coverage results in Trump saying, listen, it's going to be bad, we're going to make it through this thing, and then we make it through this thing, they're going to be hard pressed to explain why.
	Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
	Alrighty, so you can see the narrative starting to change.
	The narrative is starting to change for the left.
	And the narrative is going to be that President Trump didn't just blow this thing.
	President Trump blew this thing because he is a racist.
	That is the way that this is going to move.
	And the reason that it's going to move this way for the left is because this is always the way it moves for Republicans.
	So during Hurricane Katrina, the initial rip on President Bush was that President Bush handled it incompetently.
	The federal government, FEMA, should have been there.
	That heck of a job, Brownie.
	It was not a heck of a job.
	Then it quickly moved into the reason, the reason that George W. Bush mishandled Katrina is because it affected And because George W. Bush didn't like black people.
	So I predicted a couple of weeks ago, this was the direction the narrative was going to move.
	Was that the Trump administration blew the response, and the reason they blew the response is because they didn't care enough about minorities.
	So the New York Times has been running with headlines nearly every day that are almost exactly the parodic headline once suggested about the New York Times.
	There's a very famous joke back in the 60s and 70s, the New York Times is going to run a headline saying, Asteroid to Destroy Earth Tomorrow, Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.
	And that's basically the coverage they're running now.
	The coverage they are running is coronavirus to destroy all of America and world society, women and minorities hardest hit.
	Although in this case, it would be men and minorities because women are actually being less hard hit than men are.
	Well, here is the problem with that.
	Coronavirus is a threat to everyone right now.
	And if you're looking at sort of the cross-cutting currents in terms of threat, race is not the best corollary.
	Race does not correlate the best.
	Race does not correlate the best.
	Okay, what correlates the best is pre-existing health conditions and age.
	Those are the things that correlate.
	Because it's not like the virus is killing black people versus white people.
	The virus is killing people who have diabetes versus people who don't have diabetes.
	The virus does not prey on people as a matter of race.
	It preys on people as a matter of pre-existing health condition and as a matter of age.
	Scientifically speaking, your melanin level has nothing to do whatsoever with how the virus affects you.
	Now, there may be a higher correlation of pre-existing health conditions and age, and poverty which leads to pre-existing health conditions, with particular races.
	But that does not mean that the virus is racist, and it also does not mean that if you are black, and if you are overweight, and if you have diabetes, that the reason that you are dying of coronavirus is because American society is racist.
	There are a lot of decisions, a whole chain of decisions that go into how people eat, how people live.
	Maybe it's partially the legacy of racism.
	Maybe it's partially the legacy of what you do on a daily basis.
	But what we are starting to see is a shift in the media and in the coverage toward America is racist and that's why more black people are dying.
	Right, which is the same as America is racist and that's why more black people are poor.
	Okay, not America was racist and therefore there are lingering effects of racism in American society.
	America continues to be racist and that's why we have to fundamentally restructure American society now.
	It's inarguable that there are always aftereffects of history for everyone at every time.
	There are after effects of history.
	And then the question is whether the stuff that is happening right now is the impact of systems that are in place right now.
	And the left suggestion is that America Is that the racial inequalities that we see right now are a reflection of a current inequity in America that must be rectified by completely remaking the American system.
	That is the direction we are moving.
	So Ilhan Omar, of course, who puts this in the most bumper sticker fashion.
	She says the other day that the virus isn't racist.
	It's the systems we have in place that are racist.
	The medical system, for example, is racist.
	Now, what is the what is the evidence she has that the medical system of America is racist?
	She doesn't really present any.
	But the idea is that on a plain level, if more black people as a percentage are dying than white people, that means that the system itself is racist.
	Not that the system was racist 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
	That segregation was a bad thing that has impact in terms of wealth ownership and that may have impact in terms of your ability to buy care because you don't have as much historic wealth.
	Okay, that's an argument.
	But that's not the argument she's making.
	She's making the argument that today all of our systems are racist because of that inequality.
	All inequality is inequity in today's system.
	So here's Ilhan Omar making that argument.
	The virus isn't racist, but the systems we have in place are racist.
	If we do not ...holistically address the kind of injustices that have existed within our systems, then we will not be able to fight this virus in the way that we need to, and we will not be prepared for other pandemics to come.
	So, socialism is the solution to the virus.
	Complete redistribution.
	Slavery reparations.
	These are the answers to the virus.
	Which, of course, is absolute nonsense.
	Because this refuses to even do the analysis necessary to demonstrate that higher rates of obesity in the black community are due to segregation in 1964.
	You actually have to show the relationship.
	And, more than that, you have to show that if you sign everybody a check, that's going to fix everything.
	Which, of course, it is not going to fix.
	Okay?
	It ain't.
	That's not going to fix it.
	We've been trying to sign checks to people who are impoverished in this country for going on 40, 50 years, really since the New Deal, but certainly since the Great Society.
	It has not alleviated the inequalities among communities of color.
	Signing a check ain't going to do it.
	Okay, so Bernie Sanders is trying the same thing.
	Bernie Sanders has a piece in the New York Times today.
	It's called, The Foundations of American Society Are Failing Us.
	You wonder why people are protesting?
	The reason people are protesting is because they are deeply suspicious, and correctly so, that people like Bernie Sanders are reveling in this crisis as an opportunity to fundamentally reshape American society, divide us along racial lines, and then claim that if we want to go back to work, or if we disagree with his restructuring of American society, it's because we hate black people.
	Right?
	That is the next step in the media's narrative, is that if you want to go back to work, if you think that we have to Acknowledge the risks to American society and also acknowledge that, by the way, the people who are losing their jobs are disproportionately black and Hispanic and low income.
	And those people do need jobs.
	I mean, they're going to need to work.
	Now, I want them to work.
	They want to work.
	Everybody wants to work.
	But the idea is that if you acknowledge this sort of stuff and you don't call instead for a government top-down reparations program that levels all of America's economic wealth, it's because you're a racist.
	This is the direction they're moving.
	So Bernie Sanders has this piece in the New York Times.
	He says, we are the richest country in the history of the world, but at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, that reality means little to half of our people who live paycheck to paycheck, the 40 million living in poverty, the 87 million who are uninsured or underinsured, the half million who are homeless.
	In the midst of the twin crises that we face, coronavirus pandemic, and the meltdown of our economy, it is imperative we re-examine some of the foundations of American society, understand why they are failing us, and fight for a fairer and more just nation.
	And then he talks about Medicare for all.
	And then he suggests that we have a Byzantine network of medical institutions dominated by profit-making interests of insurance and drug companies.
	By the way, the hospitals are all losing money during this.
	And the hospitals are having to shut down because they're not doing surgery on demand.
	Right, but then Bernie gets to his main point.
	He tries to tie this to racism.
	He says it's true that poor and working class people are suffering higher rates of sickness, are dying at much higher rates than wealthy people, which by the way has been true for all of human history, is that poor people are less healthy generally than wealthy people, and have less access to resources than wealthy people because they're not wealthy.
	This is just a reality.
	And that does not mean that the system is racist, but he says it is because the system is racist.
	He talks about how we should, while doctors and governors and mayors tell us we should isolate ourselves and stay at home, and rich people head to their second homes in less populated states, working class people don't have these options.
	So what we really need is, he says, many in our country are now beginning to rethink the basic assumptions underlying the American value system.
	He says, should we really continue along the path of greed and unfettered capitalism?
	Or should we go forward in a very new direction?
	He says we should follow the path of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who knew that economic rights must be considered human rights.
	So we're going to use the back of this pandemic in order to completely reshift how Americans interact with their government and what government is supposed to do.
	He says, the new America must fight to end starvation, wages, and guarantee a decent paying job to those who are able to work.
	By the way, you know what just happened?
	22 million people lost their decent paying jobs, thanks to the government.
	He says that we have to undertake massive construction programs that end homelessness.
	Okay, they've tried this in Seattle.
	Turns out a lot of people would prefer to live on the streets.
	Some people are, it's very difficult to keep them in housing because many of them are drug addicts and schizophrenics.
	Like this is a, it's a deeper thing than you just build a house and a homeless person has a house now.
	That's not the way, I wish it were that easy.
	If it were that easy, we'd all be on board.
	He says, I get very tired of the politicians and pundits who tell us how difficult it is to bring about fundamental changes in our society.
	It always seems impossible until it is done.
	Nelson Mandela is widely reported to have said, let's get to work and get it done.
	Yeah, quoting Nelson Mandela definitely is going to fill in for a plan you don't have.
	But this is the next move.
	And this is why people are protesting.
	People are saying, We can see you using this for your political point-making, for your political point-scoring.
	The New York Times has a piece today titled, How the Coronavirus Became a New Frontier in the Fight for Civil Rights.
	Collectively, the goals are targeted legislation, financial investment, government and corporate accountability.
	Jesse Jackson is calling for the creation of a new Kerner Commission to document the racism and discrimination built into public policies that make the pandemic measurably worse for some African Americans.
	So we're going to divide the country in a time when it needs to be unified in order to score political points.
	And then when people protest and say, listen, I think that you're using this for ancillary purposes.
	I think that you are using this crisis for ancillary purposes.
	For many politicians like Gavin Newsom to fill in your state budget with federal dollars.
	For politicians like Bernie Sanders to fundamentally reshift the nature of American free markets.
	For race-baiting politicians to divide us along the lines of race and suggest that America continues to be, not was, continues to be fundamentally racist at its core.
	The Beto O'Rourke view of America and its history.
	And then Americans say, well, you know what?
	I'm kind of suspicious of you guys.
	I'm kind of suspicious.
	How about this?
	How about we're responsible and we'd like to reopen?
	And then the Huffington Post labels you a protester from Charlottesville.
	Seriously.
	The Huffington Post has a piece today Says the president's enabling response of right-wing protesters echoed his handling of the 2017 violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
	I have a question.
	And Trump said you're allowed to protest.
	I watched a protest.
	They were all six feet apart.
	I mean, it was a very orderly group of people.
	Some of the things that happened are not so appropriate.
	But in the end, it's not going to matter because we're starting to open up our state.
	To equate everybody who's protesting to go back to work with people who hate black people is just insane.
	I'm sorry, it's nuts.
	But this is the way, this is the narrative.
	This is the narrative.
	Everyone who's protesting is bad-hearted.
	Everyone who wants to reopen society is a racist.
	Everyone who doesn't want to remake the American system on the back of a pandemic is denying the realities of fundamental American evil.
	You want to divide everybody and make people, you know, basically ignore government orders and go back to work?
	This is pretty much how you do it.
	You want people to pay attention to the experts?
	They have to be disinterested.
	Disinterested experts have to be disinterested.
	It can't be Bernie.
	It can't be Kamala Harris.
	It can't be Ilhan Omar.
	It can't be Gavin Newsom pushing the progressive policies on the back of the worst crisis in modern American history.
	You can't do that.
	And you can't do that while making excuses about, like, how we need 20 million tests a day.
	That's just not realistic.
	Alrighty.
	Well, we'll be back here today with two additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
	Also tonight, I'm on all access.
	We'll be hanging out at like 5 p.m.
	Pacific, 8 p.m.
	Eastern.
	So join us then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
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	Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
	Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
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	Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.
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	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	Thousands take to the streets around the country to protest draconian lockdowns.
	The liberals and the squishes are furious, but President Trump is cheering them on.
	And believe it or not, the anti-lockdown protesters are getting some encouragement from one of the world's leading public health experts.
	Then, Congressman Dan Crenshaw destroys Bill Maher's anti-Trump talking points.
	Harvard tries to ban homeschooling, and Brian Stelter cries.

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