Ep. 481 - The Cost Of The Government's Failure To Protect Nursing Homes
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a huge portion of COVID deaths across the world have been in nursing homes. So why didn’t the government focus especially on protecting those vulnerable groups rather than shutting down all of society? And why did New York actually force nursing homes to take coronavirus patients? We’ll talk about that today. Also Five Headlines including a heroic salon owner who now faces jail time for refusing to close her business.
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, a huge portion of COVID-19 deaths across the world have been in nursing homes.
So why didn't the government focus especially on protecting those vulnerable groups in those homes rather than shutting down all of society?
And why did New York actually force nursing homes to take coronavirus patients, which is a huge scandal, by the way.
We'll talk about that.
Five headlines, including a heroic salon owner who now faces jail time for refusing to close her business, and she had some words for the judge during her sentencing that you have to hear, so we'll play that for you.
But first, on this issue of nursing homes, it was obvious very early on that nursing homes were especially and uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19.
I remember back in March when the virus was running roughshod through nursing homes in
Washington state, killing hundreds of elderly people.
And this was after it had already been made known based on data in China and Italy and
other places that this is a virus that particularly affects the elderly.
And that's not a fact that anyone, especially anybody in government, can claim to be surprised
In fact, that's maybe the one fact about COVID that everyone knew early on and that hasn't changed.
There are a lot of things about COVID-19 that have changed.
There are a lot of things we thought we knew that turned out not to be correct.
This is the one thing that has remained a constant, is that it is something that inflicts especially the elderly and especially those who are in nursing homes.
This is an important point because when you look around the country and around the world, after many weeks of this, months of this, nursing homes still stand out as hotspots for the disease.
So here are some facts to put this all in context.
The Guardian reported back in April that, quote, about half of all COVID-19 deaths appear to be happening in care homes in some European countries, according to early figures gathered by UK-based academics who are warning that the same effort must be put into fighting the virus in care homes as in the NHS.
A snapshot data from varying official sources show that in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland, and Belgium, between 42% and 57% of deaths from the virus have happened in homes, according to the London School of Economics.
Half of all deaths.
What about in the United States?
A report in Business Insider on April 18th says that up to that point, one in every five deaths, 20% of deaths from COVID in the United States have been in nursing homes.
When you break this down and look at individual states, it becomes even clearer.
Okay?
As I said, it's not like this is getting better either.
In Connecticut, Last week, nearly 90% of all deaths in Connecticut from COVID were in nursing homes.
In Pennsylvania, overall, 80% of deaths have been in nursing homes.
In New Hampshire, 75% of deaths have been in nursing homes.
In Maryland, it's 50%.
In Texas, it's 40%, okay?
The data is very, very clear.
If you are in a nursing home, your chance of dying from this disease are astronomically higher than almost anywhere else.
And the advantage to that...
The good thing about that should be that nursing homes are contained and isolated, and they are small areas.
They aren't cities.
They aren't metropolises.
They don't have populations of millions of people.
What that means is that it should be very possible to clamp down, take whatever measures are necessary.
This is already a controlled environment in a nursing home.
It's already at least a semi-medical environment.
And so you should be able to clamp down, take necessary measures, protect these vulnerable populations.
It's not like these people that are in nursing homes are going out into society that often anyway.
So you would think it should be very possible to do that.
But the bad thing, the very bad thing, the tragic thing, the terrible thing, the outrageous thing, is that the government, state governments around the country, failed to do that.
They failed.
They could have.
In some cases, cut their fatalities in half, or cut them by 70%, or 80%, or 90%, just by focusing obsessively on protecting the nursing homes.
Whatever means necessary.
Okay?
They didn't do that.
They were too busy arresting salon owners and sending SWAT teams to take down peaceful protesters outside of bars in Texas.
And it's worse than that, actually.
Okay?
It's worse than a mere failure to protect.
It's a lot worse than that.
I want to play something for you, but before I do, some context on this.
The AP reports.
New York State reported more than 1,700 previously undisclosed deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities in a tally that included, for the first time, people believed to have been killed by the coronavirus before their diagnoses could be confirmed.
The tally released late Monday emerged as state officials faced scrutiny over how they protected vulnerable residents from the coronavirus.
At least 4,800 people have died from COVID-19 in the state's nursing homes since March 1, according to the new totals.
Okay, now, that's almost 5,000 deaths in nursing homes in New York that we know of, which means at least 25% of their deaths, as far as we know, could be a lot higher, have been in nursing homes.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, a piece of garbage, was asked about all of this, and here's what he had to say.
As you look at going forward now and you say improving conditions for seniors in nursing homes, would it be a good idea to no longer send elderly patients who've tested positive for coronavirus or are suspected to have coronavirus, would it be a good idea to not send them back into their nursing homes where they then expose other vulnerable people?
Well, again, if the better care in that individual case is a hospital, of course that should be the go-to option.
But there's going to be times where the nursing home is the place that can better care if it's set up that way.
Remember, a lot of these are for-profit organizations.
I think there's going to be a lot of questions about whether they Just look at that smarmy doofus.
I absolutely can't stand him.
profit first. But I don't like what's happening in the nursing homes. I want to see change.
But I think in terms of each individual, it's a case by case. You've got to figure out what's
right for each senior.
Just look at that smarmy doofus. I absolutely can't stand him. But listen to what the smarmy
doofus is saying. He's trying to blame the fact that some said that this is happening.
They're trying to, he's trying to blame it on for-profit organizations because he knows, you know, as a, as a, as a leftist, all he has to do is say the word brother profit.
This is a for profit capitalists.
That's what this all is.
Well, it's interesting because a report in The City, which is a local news site in New York, says that a state-run nursing home in Queens, just as one example, run by the health department, failed to follow coronavirus protocols, failed to isolate the infected, even kept coronavirus patients in rooms with roommates who didn't have coronavirus, but then many of them, I'm sure, quickly got coronavirus.
That's in a state-run facility, not a for-profit facility.
But it's worse even than that.
Nursing homes in New York were forced by the state to take coronavirus patients.
The state sent coronavirus-infected people into nursing homes intentionally.
And do you know what they sent alongside, along with those coronavirus patients?
Body bags.
I'm not kidding.
Let me read.
This is from the New York Post.
This is from a few weeks ago.
But this should be all over.
I mean, this should be the biggest story, I think, in the country right now.
It says, the first coronavirus patients admitted to a Queens nursing home under a controversial state mandate arrived along with some grim accessories, a supply of body bags, the post has learned.
An executive at the facility, which was previously free of the deadly disease, said the bags were in the shipment of personal protective equipment received the same day the home was forced to begin treating two people to discharge from hospitals with COVID-19.
The exec told the Post Thursday, my colleague noticed that one of the boxes was extremely heavy.
Curious as to what could possibly be making that particular box so heavy, he opened it.
The first two coronavirus patients were accompanied by five body bags.
Within days, three of the bags were filled with the first of 30 residents who would die there after Governor Andrew Cuomo's health department handed down its March 25th directive that bars nursing homes from refusing to admit medically stable coronavirus patients, according to the executive.
Like clockwork, the nursing home has received five body bags a week, every week, from city officials.
Cuomo has blood on his hands.
He really does.
There's no way to sugarcoat this, the health executive added.
And then later on it says, the Queen's story is painfully repeating at a Manhattan nursing home.
Administrators there told the Post they'd also received body bags and weekly shipments of supplies, which City Hall confirmed the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was distributing to nursing homes.
One of the Manhattan administrators said that the state's admission mandate came with no warning or even time to prepare facilities for an influx of coronavirus patients, who the state says must be quarantined inside nursing homes and treated by separate staffers.
This administrator said, by the time I even got to work the next day, I had phone calls, emails from just about every hospital in the area.
Previously, the person added the facility had required two negative test results before we'd even consider taking somebody into the building.
And then it goes on from there.
This is a shocking scandal.
Not only did New York fail to protect its nursing homes, but it sent the virus.
Literally, directly sent the virus into these homes with extra body bags in a direct admission that they knew what the deadly impact would be of this decision.
These politicians, these bureaucrats, these incompetent, lying, murderous bastards, pardon my French, are trying to blame everyone and everything else.
For-profit organizations, the American people, small businesses, freedom.
You know, they're pointing the finger at everything.
All over the place.
Meanwhile, it was their job, their job, to protect the most vulnerable people, and they could have done it, and they didn't.
Now, reverse the clock, okay?
Go back in time.
Imagine things going differently.
Imagine our governments across the country, state governments.
Imagine that they're not populated and staffed and run by nitwits.
And narcissists and petty tyrants and morons.
And imagine instead that they do the smart thing, and they fully lock down nursing homes.
They go into, I'm talking DEFCON 1 to protect the nursing homes, while encouraging for everybody else social distancing, masks for the general public, keeping schools open, Because all the data says that kids are all but immune from this.
I mean, not completely, but the chance of a child dying from this is vanishingly low.
And the chance of them spreading it is vanishingly low.
And again, by the way, that's not new information.
We knew this from almost the beginning.
There are two things we knew about this all along.
The elderly are dying from it and kids are not.
In fact, young, not just kids, young and healthy people are generally not dying, but the elderly are dropping like flies.
We've known that from the beginning.
So they can't claim we didn't know.
And when I say we knew, I meant idiots like me, okay?
And just normal peons, like the rest of us.
We knew, out in the general public, this stuff about the virus.
We have to assume that the government knew everything we knew, and probably some additional stuff too.
So what if they had done that?
Shut down the nursing homes.
Totally shut them down.
Anybody has coronavirus, you get them out of there.
Okay?
You certainly don't send coronavirus patients into them.
You don't let anybody in from the outside, so on and so on and so forth.
What if they had done that, keep the economy going, tell people, encourage people to wear masks where appropriate, you know, isolate the infected, keep the schools open?
What does a death toll look like if they had done that?
Is it worse?
I mean, could you possibly argue that it would be worse than it is now?
No way it's worse.
What about the economy?
The jobless rate, the suicide rate, the overdose rate, domestic violence?
All of that.
All of that which is tied to the economic collapse.
What about all that stuff?
This is something they could have done and didn't.
We should be way angrier at the government than we currently are.
Most of us, anyway.
Because there are a lot of people in America who are still looking at Americans who are, you know, at the beach Or sitting outside in a park in New York or something.
They're still pointing at them.
All of their anger is pointed and directed at those kinds of people.
Or, like we'll talk about in just a second here, business owners who dare to open up their business so that they can make a living and feed their families.
There are a lot of Americans, all of their ire and anger and outrage is directed at those people.
What about the bureaucrats and politicians Who could have prevented so much of this and failed to do it.
That's what we should be looking at.
And this thing about the nursing homes, them sending patients into nursing homes.
Like I said, this is a scandal that should be the front pages everywhere.
But not only is it not front page news, Governor Cuomo, who came up with this mandate, He's still hailed as the hero of the coronavirus.
Why?
Even before I knew this stuff about the nursing home, I never understood why everybody is kissing Cuomo's butt.
What has he done that's so great?
He's got the worst death toll of any state in the country.
I'm not saying that's all his fault, but where's the evidence that Governor Cuomo has been some sort of brilliant coronavirus fighter?
I don't see it.
You have these morons who are so smitten with- They see him in press conferences.
He's so great in the press confer- Who cares what he does in the press conferences?
Yeah, he's great in the press conferences, and then, on the other hand, he's sending coronavirus patients into nursing homes.
All right, let's move on to news.
As referenced just a moment ago, a salon owner in Dallas, Shelly Luther, was sentenced to jail time, a week in jail for operating her salon.
For the crime of being a salon owner, for the crime of cutting people's hair, for the crime of doing her job, for the crime of feeding her kids in America, she's now going to jail.
But Shelly Luther, and I don't say this lightly, she is a hero.
I don't mean it ironically.
She is actually a hero, standing up to tyranny, standing up for her rights, standing up for her right to feed her kids.
And I want you to listen to her.
She's talking to, she's in court at sentencing, and she's told that if she simply apologizes and admits that she's wrong and promises not to do it again, okay, admits that she's wrong like a bad little girl and says she'll never do it again, she won't have to go to jail.
But she refuses, and her refusal must be heard.
Listen to this.
Judge, I would like to say that I have much respect for this court and laws.
And that I've never been in this position before, and it's not someplace that I want to be.
But I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I'm selfish, because feeding my kids is not selfish.
I have hairstylists that are going hungry because they'd rather feed their kids.
So, sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, Then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.
That woman is a badass.
And every word of what she said is true, and right, and moral, and good.
Her defiance is moral and good.
So I think that's great.
Number two, New York City is very proud of itself because for the first time in 115 years, it shut down overnight service to do a thorough cleaning of the trains.
So here they are cleaning, you can see the footage.
Now, speaking of for-profit organizations versus government-run organizations, for-profit institutions clean on a daily basis.
Sometimes on an hourly basis, depending on the establishment.
But the New York City subway system is doing a good thorough cleaning for the first time since the Wright Brothers took their first flight.
And they're so proud of it that, you know, they're putting a propaganda video out so they can show, look what we're doing!
I mean, there's another simple thing.
Speaking of simple things that New York could have done.
How about clean your... How about clean?
How about that for an idea?
Or even, why not shut down the subway system?
I mean, the subway system is still operating.
It's been a vector for this disease this entire time.
And they keep it going.
You know, they get mad at people for going to the park, and meanwhile they've got these cramped Poorly ventilated capsules where they're cramming people in.
Number three, here's a headline in New York Magazine that I love.
It says, Joe Biden is at his best when he's neither speaking nor appearing in public.
Will his campaign have to abandon its most effective strategy?
This reminds me of what I said to my high school principal when I got in trouble for skipping class.
I said, you know, I'm at my best when I'm neither completing assignments nor attending school at all.
Are you really going to force me to abandon my most effective strategy?
Of course, that tactic didn't work for me, and I don't think it worked for Biden either.
Number four, put your conspiracy hats on.
The Daily Wire reports a well-respected scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who was on the verge of making, quote, very significant findings in the fight against the coronavirus, was murdered over the weekend inside his home.
Dr. Bing Liu, 37, who's from China, was shot multiple times around noon Saturday inside his home in the 200 block of Elm Court.
Says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Police believe that Mr. Liu was shot by another man, identified later by the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office as Hao Gu, 46, of Pittsburgh, who then got into his car, parked about 100 yards away, and killed himself.
Now, police are saying that he was home by himself, the two men knew each other, Law enforcement says there's an investigation still going.
Murder, suicide, they knew each other.
I don't think there's...
Reason for conspiracy theories, but you know they're gonna definitely be coming on strong with something like this.
Number five, and finally, Science Times tells us, it says, researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St.
Louis have successfully disabled a gene in specific mouse cells preventing mice from becoming obese, even after being fed a high-fat diet.
And then it gets into a lot of science-y stuff with words that I can't pronounce.
So basically what they're saying is that scientists may soon be able to disable the obesity gene, curing obesity for good.
But you know, I hate to be that guy, but there is another way to disable the obesity gene and cure obesity.
That's called going for a jog, skipping the Cinnabon stand at the mall when the mall's open again.
I mean, things like that.
Eating a few salads.
Stuff like that, I think, can cure obesity.
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Okay, we're gonna do some emails and you can always email the show if you become a DailyWire member.
It's another Even if you're just a regular Daily Wire member or peon, you know, not even at all access to your person, you could still have access to the mailbag.
So, this is from Seth, says, Matt, I very much enjoyed your coronavirus music reviews and would like to suggest that you review music every week on your show as a weekly segment.
But I'm also very much disappointed that you neglected to review the new Drake coronavirus video that just came out.
Here's the link.
I think you'll enjoy it.
Okay.
Let's, um, I did neglect.
We did, we did some coronavirus music reviews last night.
Cause a lot of bands have put out coronavirus songs.
And so we went through some of them and, uh, you know, I was, I was largely disappointed as I am with most things in life, but, um, there were a few, a few, uh, a few bright spots and I got several emails actually saying that Drake had a music video and how could I not include that?
This is Drake we're talking about.
So let's take a listen to that.
Let's go.
Peace.
Buckles on the jacket, it's elite sh**.
Nike crossbody, got a piece in it.
Gotta dance, but it's really on some street sh**.
I'ma show you how to get it.
It go right foot up, left foot slide.
Left foot up, right foot slide.
Basically I'm saying either way, we bout to slide.
Can't let this one slide.
Don't you wanna dance with me?
No.
I could dance like Michael Jackson.
I could give you the passion.
It's a thriller in a trap.
Where we from?
Baby, don't you wanna dance with me?
No.
I could dance like Michael Jackson.
I could give you satisfaction.
Okay, stop it right there.
Let's stop right there.
What does this have to do with coronavirus?
He's in his mansion, dancing.
Basically I'm saying either way we about to slide, can't let this one slide.
Okay stop it right there.
Let's stop right there.
What does this have to do with coronavirus?
He's in his mansion dancing.
I understand he has a mask on.
That's how Drake addresses the pandemic.
By dancing in a mask?
I thought this guy was supposed to be some sort of lyrical genius.
This is what he comes up with?
The cha-cha slide, essentially?
That's his coronavirus?
That's it?
And the dance itself is the most pitiful, lazy thing I've ever seen.
Let me tell you.
Here's a general rule for dances.
If you're coming up with a dance.
If it's one that I could easily do, then it's a bad dance.
You need to add some more bells and whistles to it.
I can't even do the Hokey Pokey without twisting my ankle, alright?
I tried to do the electric slide at a wedding, and people thought I was having a seizure.
They called 911.
So, I'm the most uncoordinated person on planet Earth, bar none.
I could do that dance.
So what is he teaching?
Preschool?
That's like a dance that a preschool teacher comes up with.
Before nap time, so that all the preschoolers get all their energy out.
Then they can go take a nap on the alphabet rug.
In fact, I skipped the daily cancellation today, I realize.
So, this is it, right here.
We'll do it.
Drake is cancelled for that.
I'm cancelling Drake.
He's my cancellation today.
I mean, if you're gonna... That's totally unacceptable.
I would expect much more from him.
Let's go to Hannah, says Matt, I just watched a video by Breaking In The Habit on YouTube about why protesting during the lockdown is anti-Catholic and selfish.
I think his heart is in the right place, but he has a distorted view of freedom.
I was just wondering if you could take a look at this and offer your opinion on this view.
Thanks for all you do.
Your human perspective has been a great relief for my husband and me during this situation.
Okay, so Hannah, thanks for passing this along, Hannah.
We'll take a look at this video.
I hadn't seen it before.
Until you had passed it along, but I'm always interested in engaging with the other side of this and with their arguments And so here's an in seems like an intelligent person making an argument about why you shouldn't be protesting the lockdown and Why you should just you know, stay home and listen to the government and I can't play the whole thing because it's like eight minutes long But here's here are some of the relevant portions of it right here This has got to be the most reckless, dangerous, selfish thing I've ever seen in my life.
Thinking about all those hospital workers and public servants, putting their lives at risk, and seeing this… it really just makes me sick.
But it goes deeper than that.
I hope that none of them are Catholic, because what's causing people to protest in this way, the core ideology that they're expressing, is a sense of freedom that is far more individualistic, even anarchist, than it is Christian.
And so I think it's worth addressing for the rest of us.
What does it mean to be free?
To get at that, let me pose a hypothetical scenario.
Two people are dying of thirst.
Without a drink in the next few minutes, they're going to pass out and ultimately die.
The first person can choose between drinking motor oil, hydrochloric acid, the liquid inside of a lava lamp, a bottle of Windex, and a leaky battery.
Five options.
The second person has clean water and that's it.
Just one choice, take it or leave it.
Based on your definition of freedom, which of the two people is more free?
Most people are willing to give up some freedoms to live in society, agreeing to laws like not to murder each other or steal each other's property, but there's only so much one can take.
Which is why some people are protesting today.
They are being told that they have to wear masks, that they can't go to church, that they must stay six feet apart in small groups.
And that's just too much for them.
Their choices are too limited and so they don't feel free.
They're like the person given only one choice of a glass of water.
But given the scenario, isn't that actually the better choice?
At that moment, we would want the water, even if it is our only choice, right?
The point of the hypothetical scenario is to show that the quantity of choices is not the only thing that matters to freedom.
The quality of choices is equally, if not more, important.
If you're thirsty, having five toxic liquids doesn't make you free.
Heck, having a hundred toxic liquids doesn't make you free.
When all of the choices are bad, against the thing that you actually want and need, it doesn't matter how many choices you have, you are not free to make the right one.
As odd as it may sound, the person given only one choice of water is infinitely more free than the other because that person has the ability to choose what is good.
Okay, a lot of problems here.
Where to begin?
First, the example he gives of the water and poisonous liquids has nothing to do with freedom in either case.
The people are dying of thirst, right?
So you give them water.
Yeah, they could decline it, I guess, but really their body will compel them to drink.
So there's not much of a choice there at all.
And also in the case of the poison, telling someone they can choose which poison to drink is not freedom.
And yes, that was his point, of course, but my point is that the whole example misses the point because it has little to do with freedom in either case.
In both cases, the choice of what to drink was made really by the person offering the drink.
The choice was made for the thirsty person.
They can simply decline or accept.
That's the only choice they have.
There's some freedom in that, but not a whole lot.
And then he relates that to the coronavirus, and in this analogy, the people protesting and wanting to open the economy are drinking poison.
And the people who listen to the government very obediently and stay home are drinking nice, fresh, Life-preserving water.
And he says that the people protesting are only protesting because they don't want to socially distance and they don't want to wear masks.
And that alone destroys his entire point.
Destroys it.
And this is the part where many of the arguments against the protests and against ending the lockdowns.
This is where many of those arguments fall apart.
Just explode in a blaze of glory.
Because The people making these arguments, invariably, like this person here, refuse to engage with the actual reason people are protesting.
The main thing people want to do, you heard it from the salon owner just a minute ago.
What did she say?
She didn't say, Your Honor, I'm upset I have to wear a mask.
I don't want to wear a mask.
Or I don't want to have to stay six feet from people.
No, she said, I want to feed my kids.
And I've got employees and they need to feed their kids.
So I want to take care of my kids and I want to take care of my employees.
That's the main reason people are protesting.
And so if you're trying to engage with the argument and you don't even acknowledge that, and you pretend that all of this is just about people not wanting to wear masks, Well then it's just, it's a straw man.
There's no argument there.
What's really at stake here is economic collapse and the protesters want to stave off economic collapse, both their own personal financial collapse and the financial collapse of the entire society.
This video, again, doesn't engage with that concern at all or even acknowledge it.
To him, these are idiots who are mad that they have to stay six feet apart from other strangers.
And I assure you, that is not what protesters are mad about.
In fact, personally, that's the only part of this I like.
I prefer my personal space.
So the six feet apart from other people, I'm fine with that.
I could do that forever.
It's everything else that I don't like, and I think that's the case for most of the protesters.
But the real issue is that in this analogy, again, the people who want to open the economy are choosing poison, and the people who don't are sipping nice, clean, refreshing water, which is saving their lives.
But the whole point here is that the people who want to open the economy are arguing that opening the economy is not poison.
That in fact, the poisonous path ultimately is to remain shut.
So making the protesters into poison drinkers begs the question.
This is what begging the question is.
Begging the question, by the way, doesn't mean raising a question.
That's a pet peeve I have.
When people say beg the question, but what they really mean is that something raises it.
Anyway, this begs the question.
And it begs the question because it only works, the argument only works, if we accept the premise that opening the economy is bad.
So this is an argument, trying to make an argument by embedding the premise into the argument itself.
But that's the very premise that the guy in the video has to defend.
You can't just have us assume, for the sake of your argument, that opening the economy is poisonous.
That's exactly the thing we're arguing about.
I'm saying it's not, and I've given many reasons for that.
So here's an analogy that gets a little closer to reality.
Let's say a guy is thirsty.
Stumbles upon a... Let's say he's dying of thirst, even.
And he stumbles upon a somewhat shadowy figure on the road.
And the figure says, here, drink this.
And puts a glass of liquid.
Not even a glass.
Let's say it's a container.
So you can't even tell really what the liquid looks like.
Puts a container of liquid in front of the guy's face.
It might be water.
It might be life-saving, life-preserving.
But let's say that the guy has reason to believe, plausible reasons, maybe even good reasons to believe, that the shadowy figure might be trying to poison him.
That the liquid being offered might actually do more harm than good.
So the choice that this person's dying of thirst has is to take the mystery liquid or to decline it and forge on ahead, hoping for a better, more reliable source out there in the great beyond.
Okay?
That's an analogy that gets closer to the situation.
Because yeah, there's a risk.
Maybe you die of thirst in the meantime.
Maybe you don't.
Maybe you find what you're looking for.
You know?
And maybe the people who accept the liquid end up worse off than you.
That's the choice.
That's the freedom.
The protesters are saying their whole point here is that the stuff we're being told that we're being told is life-saving and life-preserving, this stuff we're being told is life-sustaining water, it's not actually that.
It's an imposter.
It's poison that merely looks like water.
The shutdown is an imposter.
It purports to be saving our lives, but actually, for reasons that I have presented and many others have presented many times, it is doing more harm than good.
That's the argument.
So he's right.
A choice between different kinds of poison is not freedom.
But when two paths are presented and it's not entirely clear which is best, and you're able to choose whichever one you think is best, you're able to weigh the risks, make a calculation, decide which way you want to go, and then take the risk, now that is freedom by any definition.
Or really, you know, as I'm thinking about it, maybe an even better analogy.
Because with the shutdowns, right, there's actually no denying.
I mean, nobody, no rational person can deny that the shutdowns are having catastrophic effects in many aspects, in many facets of our society.
No one can deny that.
The argument, though, and I think it's a bad argument, is that those catastrophic effects are worth it.
That those are really bad side effects, crashing the economy, really terrible side effect, but it's worth it for the benefit.
So, in this case, what the government is offering us is, in fact, poison.
It's poisoning the economy.
It's poisoning our civil liberties.
There's no question about that.
Well, what the government says is, yes, it's poison, but in the end, it will do more good than harm.
So you just have to choke it down and deal with it.
Yeah, it's going to kill 30 million jobs.
Yes, this, that, and the other thing.
But it's also going to have this positive effect.
And so freedom would be a choice between, am I going to take that poison?
Am I going to trust the government?
Am I going to trust that it's doing more good than harm?
Or am I going to decline and choose a different path?
That's freedom.
Okay?
And so yes, this is a matter of freedom.
Absolutely.
Telling somebody that they can't go to work, And feed their families.
Telling Americans that they cannot worship publicly and go to church.
Telling pastors that they cannot hold worship services.
Even outside.
Even when people are in their cars.
That is absolutely a matter of freedom.
And you are absolutely taking people's freedoms away.
Not just their freedoms.
Not like privileged freedoms, okay?
But taking away their essential human liberties.
All right.
Thanks for passing that along.
Interesting argument, but a bad one for reasons I've explained.
We'll wrap it up there.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Have a great day.
Godspeed.
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Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Donald Trump says we have to be warriors to reopen our economy.
The media says we have to be cowardly wimps and hide in our homes forever.
