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Nov. 29, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:59
The Omicron Crisis | Ep. 1384
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Time Text
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 spooks the globe.
Anthony Fauci announces he is the voice of science, again.
And Joe Biden struggles to respond.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Alrighty, so.
Omicron.
So, we have a new variant of COVID-19.
You may be sensing already that I'm taking this rather lightly.
And I am.
And the reason that I'm taking this rather lightly at this point is because I have no evidence that we should be taking this super seriously.
When I say that, what I mean is, since Delta, I have been of the opinion that you are going to get immunity one of two ways.
Either naturally, or via the vaccine.
That's the whole story.
And it's your choice.
I'm not under the weird assumption that some people seem to be under that you're never going to get COVID.
I think that you will.
I think that even if you get vaccinated, at some point you are likely to get COVID.
And because you're vaccinated, it's likely to be very mild.
And we have great therapeutics that are coming online.
We should have the new Pfizer therapeutic that is going to be widely available in the next couple of weeks.
And so the only thing that would freak me out at this point is if there was a variant that emerged that was more deadly.
That's the only thing.
And I'm not that freaked out by a new variant that is more transmissible.
Again, the reason being, there is no evidence whatsoever that the T-cell and B-cell immunity that has been created by the vaccine and by previous natural immunity Is completely ineffective against the new variant.
If it were, it would be more deadly.
If I'm just worried about people getting infected by a new variant, I'm not that worried because that's been true since Delta.
So there's been a lot of data out there about the fact that, for example, the Biden administration, under Joe Biden, more people have died in the United States of COVID than died under Trump.
And using Joe Biden's stupid math, which is the president is always responsible for anything bad that happens, that means that Joe Biden really is solely responsible.
But here's the thing.
I don't think Trump was responsible for the deaths last year because no one did great against COVID unless you were a tiny island nation that literally sealed your borders like New Zealand or like Taiwan or something.
Or Unless you basically... There is no or.
There's no or.
That was it.
If you're a tiny island nation, you did great.
If you're not a tiny island nation, you eventually got hit.
End of story.
And it moved through your population.
And if you vaccinated, fewer people died.
And if you didn't vaccinate, more people died.
That's the whole thing.
So this year, A lot of people died, not because, again, not because of Joe Biden.
OK, I'm just going to put it out there.
A lot of people this year did not die because of Joe Biden.
A lot of people died this year because Delta was very transmissible and a lot of people were not vaccinated.
I can say that Joe Biden's language with regard to science was super counterproductive with regard to the vaccines, because it was.
I can say that he sent mixed messages throughout the pandemic, which he did.
But in the end, every person has to make their own decision as to whether they get vaccinated or not.
And Delta changed the game as far as the number of people who actually got the disease.
So, I've said since the vaccines were available, effectively speaking, from a public policy perspective, the pandemic is now over.
The reason that I've been saying that is not because the pandemic is over, okay?
The pandemic is not over, people are still dying of COVID.
The question is, from a public policy perspective, what can government do and what can government not do?
Now that you've had the choice to get vaccinated and the vaccines, again, they remain durable, not against infection, they're not, but they remain very durable.
against hospitalization and death by all available data so far. And I only care about hospitalizations and death because my kids all have colds this week. I do not care about how many people in the United States get a cold this year. I don't care. No one knows. No one cares. Why? Because my kids are going to be fine. COVID is the only disease I've ever heard of in my entire life, but we care deeply about how many people get it and don't get hospitalized and die.
I don't know why. The only thing I can think is that there are a lot of people who have gotten in the headspace of We Have to Panic.
And if the stats on hospitalizations and deaths are not sufficient to cause panic, well, then we'll just go to the number of people who are infected.
Even the Biden administration has said we shouldn't be paying attention to the infection numbers.
We should only be paying attention to the hospitalization and death numbers.
Okay, so I'm not particularly freaked out by Omicron at this point because there is no evidence, none, zero, zip, zilch, that it is deadlier and more likely to affect hospitalization than Delta or than the original.
Delta was much more transmissible, not more deadly.
Delta was more transmissible, not more likely to get you hospitalized if you got it.
It's just more likely to give it to you.
As far as Omicron, so far as I'm aware, there is no data whatsoever That it is more that is more deadly or that you're more likely to go to the hospital if you get it than if you get Delta or if you get the original variant.
And yet everybody is going nuts about this, which leads me to suggest that I think the entire world has gone crazy and people are now mentally and emotionally fragile and something in the in the human psyche has cracked over the amount of media attention and governmental attention that has been placed on a disease that at this point Thanks to therapeutics is rather treatable and thanks to vaccines is not nearly as deadly as we thought it was going to be at the beginning.
Remember at the beginning they were saying that this thing was going to kill 3-4% of the people who got it.
Unless you're over the age of 75 and have a pre-existing condition, it ain't.
We'll get to more on Omicron and what we know and what we don't in just one second.
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Okay.
Everybody is going crazy over Omicron, according to the Associated Press, quote.
The new, potentially more contagious Omicron variants of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries on Saturday, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread.
Question.
What do you think you're going to do?
Seriously, you tried lockdowns with Delta.
Did it work?
How'd that work out for you?
Not well.
I've noticed that Delta is still going around in New York.
It's still going around in Vermont.
High rates of vaccination was still going around in Israel where nearly everyone was vaccinated.
How about this?
How about recognizing that stopping the spread is not chiefly the mechanism by which you defeat the disease?
Stopping the hospitalization and the death is the mechanism by which you chiefly stop the disease.
Every single scientist knows this.
Everyone.
Everyone.
Unless this thing is more deadly, in which case, unless this is like super deadly, in which case, You have to ramp up the mRNA vaccines because they can, right?
They're actually talking about doing that right now.
Now that they know that these mRNA vaccines are highly effective, if this thing affects the cells in a different way, if it has different spike proteins, for example, they can actually tailor a new vaccine and have that thing rolling off the lines in the next couple of months.
They've already talked about this.
But stopping the spread, 15 days to slow the spread has now become nearly two years to slow the spread, gang.
And guess what?
The spread was not slowed.
It was not.
Delta completely overcame.
All the talk about cloth masks are going to save us all.
You know what you noticed?
Every place where people went indoors, in large numbers, whether it was masked or unmasked, there was high spread.
Germany, high spread today.
Huge parts of Europe, high spread today.
Okay, so all of this crap about how you're going to slow the spread, slow the spread.
Okay, let me just explain something to you.
Ain't happening.
It ain't happening.
You can slow it temporarily for a small period of time, and then all you're going to have done is destroyed your economy, prevented people from living free lives, and that's it.
Those are all the things you have accomplished.
Because it will eventually wash through the population as it has every single place.
Every place.
Delta was transmissible.
This is more transmissible.
New Zealand tried this routine where they shut all their borders, and it turns out it got in there anyway, and then they tried to do lockdowns, and then eventually they're like, oh yeah, we probably should vaccinate everybody.
I'm bewildered by the fact that we're now a year and a half into this thing, more than a year and a half, and we know what we are going to know about COVID.
There is no mystery left when it comes to COVID, really.
This is not a mysterious disease.
We know that if you're in close contact with other people in indoor spaces, you are likely going to get it.
We also know it does not have to be deadly for you if you get vaccinated.
We also know that if you are young and healthy, it's not going to be deadly for you if you are young and healthy.
When I say it's not going to be, I mean like the number of people who are healthy and 30 years old who have died from COVID is vanishingly small.
So what are you talking about?
Has Omicron changed the game?
And if so, why?
Explain.
Delta was already super transmissible, so now it's super duper transmissible under Omicron.
Okay.
And?
Really, and?
The UK on Saturday tightened its rules on mask-wearing.
Well, that'll fix it, probably.
And on testing of international arrivals after finding two cases.
New cases were confirmed Saturday in Germany and Italy with Belgium, Israel, and Hong Kong also reporting that the variant has been found in travelers.
Okay, so are we just gonna do this forever?
I assume yes.
I assume there will be, oh, meh, crot.
And then, we'll move on to whatever the next letter of the Greek alphabet is.
And we'll just keep going.
We'll just keep going.
Five years from now, there'll be a new variant.
People will be like, wow, this one's even more transmissible than the last one.
We'll be like, yeah, but nobody's dying.
And all of our leaders will be like, yes, but it's more transmissible.
Like, but no one's dying.
Nope, more transmissible.
This is insanity.
Okay, now the reason, again, that I'm focused in on the deadliness is because who cares if it's more transmissible if there aren't more people getting hospitalized and dying?
Okay, right now.
And it's amazing.
The authorities we are supposed to listen to are the people who know the least.
Okay, so I'm going to give you the person who knows the most.
Okay, this is the South African doctor, Angelique Coetzee.
She identified Omicron in South Africa.
Here she is explaining what Omicron is and what it is not.
The overall patients that was recorded yesterday was around about 3,700.
So our positivity rate is 9.2%.
Yes, it is more than we would have loved it to be.
But looking at the mildness of the symptoms that we are seeing, currently there's no reason for panicking.
As we don't see severely ill patients.
So then what the... What in the hell are we talking about?
We're shutting down the globe again.
The stock markets are dumping because they're afraid that all these morons who run our governments are just gonna shut everything down.
And the doctor who discovered the variants in South Africa is like, yeah, we're seeing mild disease.
No increase in hospitalizations, no increase in deaths.
Are you all insane?
Have you all lost your damn- The answer is, they love the control.
They love it so much.
And they know, again, that the political arena is stacked in favor of control.
You want your politicians to- And you know what?
It's our fault.
It's our fault.
We, as individual human beings living in democracies, we want our leaders to do something!
Do something!
Save us!
Protect us!
Here's the thing.
They can't.
They cannot.
The only thing that our leadership was capable of doing during this entire pandemic was throwing money at the big pharma companies.
And big pharma companies came up with an answer.
So, that's it.
Those are all the things.
That is what government has been able to do.
But you out there, you somehow think that if your leader tells you to stay home, your leader has done you a favor.
Your leader has not done you a favor.
Your leader's an idiot.
Your leader knows less than this doctor.
Yeah, I'm listening to the science.
She's a doctor.
Is she not the science?
But no, we're supposed to listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who again has pretzeled himself into a human Ouroboros by shoving his head so far up his ass it's coming out his head again.
We're supposed to listen to him, who's been wrong every single step of the pandemic, but not the lady who discovered Omicron.
Not that lady.
You can't listen to her because she's saying it's a mild disease.
Over in the UK, they're going to boost mask wearing.
They said that anyone arriving in England must take a PCR test for COVID-19 on the second day after the arrival and self-isolate until they provide a negative test.
If someone tests positive for the Omicron variant, he said their close contacts will also have to self-isolate for 10 days regardless of vaccination status.
Okay, regardless of vaccination status.
So before, if somebody was a close contact, got COVID, and you were vaccinated, you didn't have to isolate.
Now, because of Omicron, they have to isolate.
Okay, meanwhile, many countries have slapped restrictions on various Southern African countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the EU, Iran, Japan, New Zealand, Thailand, and the United States.
Also, I should note here that Israel actually shut its borders to all travelers again.
Again, so that was great.
They were open for like 12 hours.
And then the Israeli government, because again, all politics is stacked in favor of lockdown fanatics.
The Israeli government was like, no one comes in again.
And by the way, if you do come in and you get a special dispensation, the way that it works in Israel, you have to take a PCR test.
You have to stay in a quarantine hotel until you take the PCR and get the results.
Then even if you come up negative, you have to quarantine for a week.
Wherever you're going.
Until you take a second negative PCR test.
Everyone has lost their minds.
You wonder why the markets are dumping?
It is not because of Omicron.
The markets are dumping because the markets recognize that a bunch of political leaders who are stupider than your typical kitchen sink are running the place.
By the way, how dumb are our political leaders?
How politically motivated are our political leaders?
All you have to do to understand the answer to that question is notice That the reason that we named this thing Omicron is because of politics.
I'll explain in just one second.
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Okay, so.
How much is politics infusing how we do public health these days?
You know why this thing is called Omicron?
You know why?
The reason why is because they didn't want to name it new.
Okay, new was the next one in the Greek alphabet.
And they were afraid that people are stupid enough to think that if it was called the new variant, they'd be like, oh, you mean the new variant, like N-E-W.
So even if they had, who cares?
But the real reason is because the one after that is Xi, okay?
Xi, which is the Greek letter Xi, it is spelled X-I.
And you know what else is spelled X-I?
The name of China's leader, Xi Jinping.
And so even though they are not hourly different, right?
A-U-R-A-L-L-Y, they're not, they sound different to the ear.
When you spell them, they look the same, right?
The Greek letter psi is spelled X-I, and so is Xi Jinping.
And so who was like, well, we don't want to, we don't want to make that, we don't want to remind people that this thing came from China.
That would cause racism.
You people.
A spokesperson, Tarek Jasarevic, said, quote, New is too easily confounded with new.
And Xi was not used because it is a common last name.
Oh, really?
Is that what this is?
You know, Delta is kind of a common name, too.
Like, we have an entire airline called Delta here in the United States.
I noticed.
Also, Alpha is a pretty commonly used term.
So is Beta.
Says Gamma.
I'm noticing that your sudden shyness about using the Greek alphabet started right about the time that your Chinese paymasters got uptight.
Maybe we should call it the Winnie-the-Pooh variant in order to make sure that we are not targeting Xi Jinping, who definitely, definitely does not look like Winnie-the-Pooh.
100% does not look like Winnie-the-Pooh.
So we don't know anything about this virus.
The only thing that we know about Omicron is that it has more spike proteins, which means that it is more transmissible and may evade whatever vaccine immunity was provided for that spike protein.
By the way, what the studies tend to show is that natural immunity has a broader spectrum of disease prevention than does vaccine immunity, according to the Israeli studies, specifically because the vaccines really target only one spike protein, whereas natural immunity can cover more than one.
It covers sort of a gamut.
OK, so here is Dr. Anthony Fauci, the greatest of all doctors.
And he says, well, you know, the big risk here is that it appears more transmissible.
Yes, we know.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I assumed every I already once I assume 100 percent of people are either going to get immunity through natural immunity or vaccines.
There's no more than 100 percent.
There's not 101 percent of humans.
It doesn't work that way.
So once I've already made that assumption, you can't scare me by telling me that more people are going to get it.
I know everybody's going to get it.
I'm aware.
And, by the way, Pfizer has already come out and they said, oh yeah, by the way, we can rework the vaccines pretty quickly.
So if it turns out that this does evade immunity in some severe way, within 100 days, we can rework the Pfizer vaccine in order to generate new immunity.
Anyway, here is Anthony Fauci trying to freak you out about the transmissibility of this disease.
It has the molecular characteristics that would strongly suggest that it would be more transmissible.
It has a bunch of mutations, a disturbingly large number of mutations in the spike protein, which is the business end of the virus, which really binds, particularly in one particular component of that spike that binds to the receptors in your body, in your nose, in your nasopharynx and in your lung.
The mutations would strongly suggest That it would be more transmissible and that it might evade some of the protection of monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma and perhaps even antibodies that are induced by vaccine.
Okay, but here is the thing.
If you evade the antibodies that are induced by the vaccine, that doesn't mean that you don't have T-cell and B-cell memory that can still help you, your body, know how to fight this thing.
Also, again, we have therapeutics coming online.
We have... So here's the question for Anthony Fauci.
There he is scaring the crap out of everybody, scaring the pants out of everybody, right?
Wow, you know, they might evade the vaccines.
One, what are we talking about?
Are we talking about evading the vaccines so far as infection?
Or are we talking about evading the vaccines so far as the hospitalization and death rate?
Again, the only person I have heard who knows anything about the hospitalizations and deaths is the South African doctor who discovered this thing, who said it's causing mild disease, why is everyone freaking out?
But I'm going to listen to Anthony Fauci.
Okay, so, then Anthony Fauci is asked, does this cause more severe disease?
He's like, I don't know.
I don't know is not good enough for you to lock down the entire society again, especially because it didn't work the first time.
Even, by the way, if it did cause higher rates of hospitalization and death, you would have to explain why lockdowns are the solution to that.
Because they weren't the first time.
Sweden didn't lock down, and Sweden now has the 56th highest death per million rate.
Everyone's ripping on Sweden.
Sweden did better than most of y'all, all y'all.
Here's Anthony Fauci again, admitting he doesn't know if this causes more death.
Do we know if it causes more severe disease?
Great question, George, and we don't know that.
In fact, we were on the phone with our South African colleagues who have been incredibly good about being so transparent about what's going on there on Friday, and we're meeting with them again today, a little bit later on in a couple of hours, to try and find out if the cases that they've identified that clearly are caused by this variant, what is the level of severity in that?
Hopefully it will be light, but you know, South Africa has a relatively small proportion of the population That's vaccinated.
So you got to take that into the equation when you're trying to figure out where this virus is really going and what its impact is going to be.
Okay, so in other words, you have given us like the wrong information.
You just want to scare the living daylights out of us.
In a second, we'll get to more of this because it's the markets are reacting.
You are reacting.
Everybody is reacting, not to the virus.
They're reacting to the insanity and stupidity of our public health officials.
We'll get to more on this in one second.
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Okay, so all of our public health officials right now should be focused on one question and one question alone.
And that is, is this thing more deadly?
And yet that seems to be the thing that people are worried about the least.
Okay, so there is no evidence at this point that Omicron is more deadly.
And in fact, it would sort of belie the history of viral transmissibility that there would be a new variant.
of an old virus that somehow has become more deadly.
Usually, the virus has become more transmissible, but not as deadly.
That's typically the way that these viruses work.
The reason being, viruses want hosts that replicate.
They don't want to kill off the hosts.
They typically want to be able to breed and then move on to the next person.
And if you kill the host, the person doesn't seed it in as many people.
But our public health officials are operating from the abundance of caution model.
Here's the abundance of caution model.
Here's the problem.
There is literally no limit to the abundance of caution model.
If the idea is that every time there's a variant, you shut down all of society, I'm just wondering when you don't shut down society.
For what?
I mean, there could be a new... The cold is a virus.
In fact, the cold is a coronavirus.
Next year, there's going to be a new form of the cold.
A common cold.
There's actually a bundle of coronaviruses.
And next year, there will be a new form of the flu.
Should we, as a society, lock down every year during flu season?
Because after all, you don't know.
This could be the year when there is a more deadly version of the flu.
Where are the limits, the abundance of caution principle here?
And the answer is, there are none.
What you normally do with a disease is you wait until the disease demonstrates signs of deadliness before you start to treat people with radioactivity.
If you went to the doctor and the doctor was like, listen, we've got some cells over here.
We're not sure what they are, but you know, like they could be benign.
They could be, they could be not benign.
They could be cancerous.
They could be malignant.
We just don't know.
So we have decided that we are going to zap you.
We're going to, we're going to give you, we're going to give you All of the chemotherapy you could possibly want.
We're just going to fill your body with the chemo.
You'd be like, um, no, I'm going to go get a second opinion because before you do all this damage to my body, I would like to know what it is that I am looking at.
Because it's possible that the treatment is worse than the disease.
And when it comes to how we as a society have dealt with with COVID, I think it is fair to say at this point that the treatment has been worse than the disease because the treatment didn't even stop the disease.
The treatment, in many cases, facilitated the disease.
So you got the worst of all of it.
Got countries locked down that were not islands, major countries that were locked down after the virus was widely seeded, everyone went home and infected family members, many of those people died, and you destroyed the economy, and you made people dependent on the government, and you prepared a western population for the possibility of authoritarian rule from above.
And so now, all those same authoritarians are like, well, you know what, maybe we should just continue doing this forever.
After all, abundance of caution.
Listen, if you're 75 years old and immunocompromised, maybe you should live your life under the abundance of caution rule because pretty much anything can kill you.
If you're 80 years old and you are suffering from some sort of lymphatic cancer, probably you should be super careful no matter what you do.
But if you're 30 years old and you're healthy, you cannot live under the abundance of caution regime.
And by the way, neither can any whole economy.
You cannot.
There's no way that entire economies can live under the abundance of caution regime.
Because in the end, somebody's gonna have to pay for all this crap.
We've spent more money over the last two years than any time in human history.
You think we can just keep doing that while shutting down the economy simultaneously?
I know Randi Weingarten today is celebrating Omicron because it means that many of her teachers will never have to go back to school.
But guess what?
Parents will continue schooling their kids.
All that's going to happen is you're going to facilitate the vast flow of people from blue states to red states in the United States and the flow from public schools to private schools.
And you're going to see people just start to dismiss the regime entirely.
It'll break.
America's already breaking down into two groups of people, the compliance and the noncompliance.
Now, when I say noncompliance, I don't mean people who are refusing to get vaxxed.
I mean people who just don't believe that the government ought to have the authority to shut down your entire life because they feel like abundance of caution is their duty.
Versus people who are like, well, if the government tells me so, then it's almost in a religious, pagan obsession with the idea that these jackasses wearing white robes know more than anyone else, including the people who discovered the disease.
So the stock market has been tanking over the last couple of days.
According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
companies responded to the new COVID-19 variant with a mix of both concern and confusion.
Some executives scheduled calls with internal teams to assess the threat or peppered health advisors with questions, while many cautioned they would hold off on making changes to operations until more is known.
The fast-spreading Omicron variant is pushing companies in a range of industries to consider how safety measures and new workflows created during the peak of the pandemic could be reinstated.
It also served as a reminder executives say that navigating through unknowns of COVID-19 is a new reality of corporate management.
Okay, um... Or, alternatively, they're just waiting to see what the government forces them to do.
Brian Fialco, chief executive of Jetco Delivery, a Houston trucking and logistics company, said, Fialco said he would watch for guidance from U.S.
of just jump to the worst. You have to take it as a real threat. It's a risk. How severe is the risk? We don't know. Fialco said he would watch for guidance from U.S. health authorities.
Okay, well, here is the problem.
Our authorities suck.
They suck.
So Anthony Fauci, he came out, he said, it's too early to say if we need more lockdowns, but we have to prepare for the worst.
Well, thank you, sir.
That is that is excellent guidance.
Wow.
Without that, what would I have done today without that?
That godlike guidance from Tusayan's, from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the greatest of all doctors, except for Dr. Jill Biden and Dr. J.
I mean, what would I have done without the wisdom of a man who tells me that he doesn't know anything, but we should prepare for the worst?
Okay, that's it.
I guess I have to build a bomb basement.
I'm gonna build a bomb shelter today.
Gotta prepare for the worst, guys.
Next thing you know, there might be a nuclear attack.
Here's Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Should we expect to be seeing more lockdowns, again, new lockdowns, more mandates?
You know, I don't know, George.
It's really too early to say.
We just really need to, as I've said so often, prepare for the worst.
And it may not be that we're going to have to go the route that people are saying.
We don't know a lot about this virus, so we want to prepare as best as we can.
But it may turn out that this preparation, although important, may not necessarily push us to the next level.
Okay, so thanks.
That's super helpful, Dr. Fauci.
It may not push us to the next level, but you gotta prepare for the worst.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden was asked about this, and by the way, he stumbles out to the media to talk.
I'm noticing something that's not on his face right here while he's very close to the media.
Weird.
I've been told that masks are the all-purpose solution to everything on Earth.
In fact, if we were all smart, what we would do is we'd go get those costumes from Squid Game.
Those guys look safe from COVID.
I know the markets have dropped significantly today.
What's your response to that?
Expect it.
And they have like the big mask with like the triangle on their face and they're wearing like radioactive suits and everything.
Here is here is Joe Biden wearing nothing in Nantucket, right?
Belying his own his own.
We've got a mask.
Masking is the solution to all things.
Now, saying he's not concerned about the stock market sell offs.
The markets have dropped significantly today.
What's your response to that?
I expect it.
They always do.
I think it's a good thing.
Does it worry you at all?
They always do.
Because it worries you at all?
Not at all.
Mr. President, why are we waiting until Monday, sir?
Okay, so then he's asked, okay, so he was asked about the travel ban.
Did they put in place a travel ban from South Africa?
Now, here's the thing about the travel ban.
We learned that the original travel ban really was not particularly effective, right?
Trump put in place a travel ban in late January, and it was called by Joe Biden, xenophobic.
And most of the media is xenophobic.
When Trump does a thing, as we all know, it is xenophobic.
When Joe Biden does it, it's just a kindly old gentleman who's doing exactly the same thing as the last guy, but he's nice.
So it's good now, right?
When he separates families at the border, it's good.
When he has ICE out there rounding people up and keeping them under bridges, that's good, because he's a nice guy, because he's Joe Biden, because he's old and stupid.
Donald Trump is a malevolent evil force in the universe.
And so when Donald Trump does it, it's xenophobic.
When Joe Biden does it, it's just wonder and joy.
So Joe Biden announced that there would be a travel ban put in place on some of these African countries.
Now, here's the reality.
If it's in these countries already, it's already here.
It's already in Hong Kong, it's already in Israel, it's already in Britain, it's everywhere.
So all these travel bans are going to be for naught and we kind of know that already.
So it's basically just pasting a band-aid on what is already a wound underneath that's infected.
It's not going to help particularly a lot.
But here is Joe Biden.
He was asked about the travel ban.
He said Monday.
And people are like, why are you doing it Monday?
Why not immediately?
Have you noticed there's a weird tendency in this administration to declare things emergency and then sort of amble on down, taking their time to do them?
And we need a vaccine mandate today, vaccine mandate now, today, four months from now.
We need a travel ban.
That travel ban has to kick into place because it is urgent, man.
We got to stop this Omicron.
We have to stop it.
We have to stop it today, Monday.
Isn't it Friday, sir?
Here's Joe Biden trying to explain.
Mr. President, why are we waiting until Monday, sir?
Why not an immediate ban?
It's going into effect on Monday, but why not do it now, like other countries have done?
Well, because that was a recommendation coming from my medical school.
Oh, well, you know, he doesn't have a good reason, but that's okay.
By the way, again, Joe Biden, in order to explain Omicron, it was very important for him to take off that mask.
I'm just going to point out, here he is.
He literally, right before this, he literally walks down the street.
He's wearing a mask away from people.
He walks up to the media, takes off the mask to talk to the media, coughs into his hand, and you get the impression these folks aren't actually taking this as seriously as they want you to take it.
You must obey them, but they must obey no one.
There he is, walking down the street.
Carefully, because it's wet outside.
Takes off that mask.
Announces the travel ban, and he's about to hack directly into his hand.
Solved the problem, guys.
Disease solved.
Yep, by the way, he was also shopping maskless.
So literally, he was in Nantucket, staying with a donor friend, by the way, because he's super not corrupt in any way.
He literally is in a store, there's a giant sign on the front of the store that says, required face covering, and you can see him through the window with no mask on.
All your leaders are taking Omicron super seriously.
They should set the standards for which businesses should be open.
They should mandate that businesses force their customers to mask.
Or Vax, except for Joe Biden, who is apparently immune to the disease.
That's amazing.
Joe Biden is the only person on Earth who is completely safe.
That's, you know, good, good.
I mean, good for America.
He's the only person on Earth who is completely safe from the virus.
Okay, in one second, we will get to the ineffectiveness of the travel ban, because at this point, it's kind of a little late, is the truth, once it's already seeded places.
It's not going to make all that much of a difference, but we'll get to that in a moment.
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All righty, more of this in just one moment.
First, if you're a fan of my colleague Matt Walsh, you're going to want to hear this.
The Daily Wire host and former Virginia resident has just written his first children's book.
I've read it more than once.
I can tell you it's a very important piece of literature you're going to want on your kid's shelf.
Matt will be launching his book tonight on Tucker Carlson's show.
You're not going to want to miss it.
It is a vital read for all small children.
Tune in tonight to Fox News at 8 p.m.
Eastern, 7 p.m.
for a very special announcement from our very own Matt Walsh.
Also, remember today, TODAY, the last day to get 50% off your Dailyware membership by using code DW50.
We need your support here at Dailyware because we are fighting, and we need you to join the fight with us.
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Use code DW50 for 50% Okay, so Joe Biden's big move is to do exactly what Donald Trump did, but not xenophobically.
He's going to do a travel ban.
And that's supposed to fix everything.
Here is the problem.
It's not going to work.
And the reason it's not going to work is because it's already seeded here.
So the Biden administration is trying to double down on boosters at this point.
Again, the data on Omicron is not sufficient to say that a 30-year-old needs a booster shot at this point.
Fauci said it is conceivable, if not likely, that booster shots will provide at least a partial shield of protection against the new variant.
He did not cite any data to explain why he said that that is the case.
Also, the experts are saying, yeah, by the way, these travel Bans are not really going to do anything.
Fauci has said it is highly unlikely the vaccines offer no protection against the new variant.
The WHO says it's working with a large number of researchers around the world to understand the impact Omicron would have on existing vaccines and antivirals.
So they don't even know what this thing does to the vaccine at this point.
And they're like, well, what if we just keep shooting you full of more vaccine?
How about we find out what it does first?
I know it's kind of crazy to suggest that maybe we should be guided by data as opposed to just like randomly jabbing people at this point.
Again, I'm very pro vaccine, but I like data also, and you've provided me no data, sir.
So this is unhelpful as far as the travel bans.
So Joe Biden, remember, not a xenophobe.
He's not.
He's a different old white guy than the last old white guy.
He is not xenophobic.
So Fauci comes out.
He's like, yeah, maybe it's already here, which is awkward for us a little.
Is it possible it's already in the U.S.?
You know, of course, anything is possible.
We don't know that.
There's no indication that it is right now.
It seemed to have been restricted.
There were some cases that originated in South Africa and that went to Botswana and people who traveled And found out they were infected, and one that had gone actually to Hong Kong.
So there's a lot of travel, you never know exactly where it are, and that's the reason why we're getting together to them to try and get the precise molecular makeup of it, so you could actually test for it.
Okay, meanwhile, Fauci is trying to- so he's saying it's probably already here?
And then he's like, oh yeah, but maybe the- maybe the travel bans will buy us some time.
Uh, will they?
Explain.
You know, it will slow things down, George.
Travel bans, when you have a highly transmissible virus, never completely would get the virus to prevent it from coming into the country.
No way that's going to happen.
But what you can do is you can delay it enough to get us better prepared.
And that's the thing that people need to understand.
If you're going to do the travel ban the way we've done now and that we're implementing right now, utilize the time that you're buying to fill in the gaps.
Okay, so maybe that's true and maybe it's not.
I will say that a travel ban that is geared towards South Africa alone and not toward anybody who has traveled to South Africa or from South Africa and people who have been with those people, like once it's already widely seeded, it's a little bit late for that.
But again, it's not xenophobia unless Donald Trump does it, is the rule.
Fauci, by the way, again, he just keeps throwing out all of these maybes.
And the maybes are designed to scare the crap out of you.
So now he's saying, well, maybe we'll do a VAX mandate to just travel, to get on a plane.
Now, again, this is insane.
The reason it's insane is because the planes have been like one of the safest places this entire pandemic.
They've got the HEPA filters.
Planes have not been a central vehicle for transmission of the virus throughout the entire pandemic, which was counter to what a lot of people thought.
No evidence was ever provided that if you were on a plane with a lot of other people, that you were more likely to get this than if you were at a crowded grocery store, for example.
But Anthony Fauci is now saying maybe we'll force you to get the vax so that you will get on a plane.
Come on!
Right now, we hope that people who get vaccinated and who follow the appropriate recommendations, that air travel will continue to be safe.
And right now, air travel is.
When you say travel in general causes a risk of increased transmission, it's the whole process of traveling, going to the airport, being in an airport in congregate setting, people taking their masks off.
That's the issue that we've got to make sure that we adhere to more closely and more firmly.
Okay, so in other words, it's not the planes.
But we might force you to vax anyway to get on a plane.
Because, you know, it's the whole process of travel.
Oh, you mean like life?
Oh, yeah, it's true.
Like, life is a process in which travel is a part.
He's like, well, it's not just the travel.
It's, you know, you're at the airport and then you're in the car before you go to the airport and then go to Marshall's to pick up a suitcase in order so you can go to the airport.
And then when you get off the plane at the airport, you might be hungry.
So you go to a restaurant, you pick up some chop suey.
Like, what are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
Why would you let these Jackasses run your life.
Why?
What evidence have they provided to you that they are good at this?
Any?
Okay, so Fauci was then asked about representing science because he was saying, look, why are you attacked?
Why are you attacked, Dr. Fauci?
These are always the questions he's asked by our legacy media.
Instead of being asked, why do you shift your opinion every five seconds?
Why do you seem to do the bidding of the Biden administration while rolling your eyes during Trump press conferences?
Why is it that you're willing to trot out whatever propagandistic line Joe Biden is trotting out today?
And why is it that we should listen to you after you've gotten every element of this wrong at some point during the pandemic?
You've provided no forecasting ability whatsoever.
You haven't even provided diagnostic ability throughout this pandemic.
The data you've provided have been counterproductive.
You've lost the trust of the American people.
Instead of asking actual tough questions, the legacy media are like, why are people so mean to you, Dr. Fauci?
Can we make another fawning documentary that shows a picture of you in your home on your computer with a giant poster of you next to you?
By the way, that is one I'm never gonna understand.
Dead giveaway that somebody is a douchebag is if there is a picture of them in their house with a giant picture of them right next to them.
Dead giveaway you're a douchebag.
We're not talking about a family picture with you and the rest of the members of your family.
We're talking about a portrait of you next to you.
That is the douchebag giveaway.
Go check out his documentary.
It is there.
Anyway, here is Dr. Anthony Fauci being asked about why he's criticized.
And his answer is, of course, because he is science.
He is.
Like Emperor Palpatine is the Senate.
He is the science.
If they get up and criticize science, nobody's gonna know what they're talking about.
But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could recognize there's a person there, so it's easy to criticize.
But they're really criticizing science, because I represent science.
That's dangerous.
To me, that's more dangerous than the slings and the arrows they get thrown at me.
Okay, so I have a question.
When you criticize Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, when you criticize Marty Makary from Johns Hopkins University, when you criticize Scott Atlas from Stanford, when you criticize all those people, are you attacking the science?
Or are you just attacking a particular scientific perspective on the data?
Why is it that only Anthony Fauci is the science?
Why is he the voice of science?
He's bad at this.
He's just bad at this.
Okay, and then he's asked specifically about the idea of being prosecutor.
Okay, so there have been a lot of Republicans, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, who've suggested that Anthony Fauci lied to them about gain-of-function research in Wuhan, which he kind of did.
The way that he has avoided the actual perjury question is by redefining gain-of-function.
Okay, gain-of-function typically means, according to Anthony Fauci, that you increase the transmissibility of a virus within a species.
It doesn't mean that you make a virus transmissible across species.
And that is a really formal definition of gain-of-function research.
That does not meet the smell test.
But that's what Anthony Fauci's been relying upon.
So Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have been going after him.
And Anthony Fauci is asked about this.
And he gets super pissed and then cackles like a Bond villain here.
Senator Cruz told the Attorney General you should be prosecuted.
Yeah.
I have to laugh at that.
I should be prosecuted.
What happened on January 6th, Senator?
Do you think that this is about making you a scapegoat to deflect from President Trump?
Of course.
You have to be asleep not to figure that one out.
Well, there are a lot of Republican senators taking aim at this.
That's OK.
I'm just going to do my job and I'm going to be saving lives and they're going to be lying.
I'm going to be saving, OK, how many lives has Anthony Fauci saved?
Really?
How many?
Also, my favorite is humorless laughs.
Humorless laughs are some of my favorites.
So when you're asked a question, and you don't like the question, and so you just sort of laugh, but there's no laughter in the eyes, that's my favorite kind of political laughter.
Kamala Harris is really good at it.
That's the one where you like laugh, and it's like this.
this. Love that from Anthony Fauci. What about January?
What about January 6th?
The hell are you talking about?
We're talking about whether you lied about gain-of-function research in Wuhan and whether you suck at your job.
That's what we're talking about right now.
What the hell does that have to do with Trump?
What a political hack he is.
Remember that time when he was not a political hack or was supposed to not be?
Yeah, he's a political hack.
But we should always listen to these people.
They're the experts.
Remember, they've provided you no data that Omicron is more deadly or that it will lead to your hospitalization.
They've provided no data.
The vaccines don't stand up to Omicron.
They've provided no data whatsoever that natural immunity doesn't provide any protection against hospitalization or death from Omicron.
But listen to them, because they will laugh at you if not, and they are the science.
If you fall for this one, honestly, we're a civilization that gets what we deserve if we have decided to worship at the altar of idols like Anthony Fauci rather than looking at actual hard data that they refuse to provide.
All right.
We'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon.
The Matt Walsh Show airs 1.30 p.m.
Eastern.
Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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