Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstein dissect Texas's draconian heartbeat abortion law, which deputizes private citizens to sue doctors, arguing it violates the non-aggression principle. They contrast this with CDC data suggesting 80% population immunity, implying lower actual fatality rates than reported. The hosts critique the moral outrage against comedian Robbie the Fire for joking about unvaccinated deaths, defending his skepticism of the "COVID regime" and early ivermectin use while highlighting corporate media hypocrisy regarding Trump's illness. Ultimately, the episode challenges mainstream narratives on reproductive rights and pandemic management through legal analysis and cultural commentary. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Abortion and Government Overreach00:15:26
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am the most consistent motherfucker you know, Dave Smith, libertarian Tupac.
He is the king of the caulks, Robbie the Fire Bernstein, alive and well, despite popular rumors.
But yeah, here we go.
I've done, we haven't done an episode since Rochester.
Well, we had to regroup after being protested.
That's it.
We got out of there.
I'm trying to work on being...
Yeah, I'm trying to be less of a Nazi.
I'm really trying to work on it.
I feel like it's good for personal development.
Yeah, that's true.
Can you imagine if a protest like that ever just changed someone?
You're like, wow, I was listening to what this person said on the bullhorn, and I was like, my mind was blown.
And I was like, I shouldn't be a Nazi.
Never thought about it like that before.
But yeah, you're right.
So for all you guys, don't come protest us next time.
We're done.
You're right.
I'm just going to, I'm going to be a libertarian from now on.
So no more of this Nazi stuff.
I still have to work on it.
I'm not 100% yet, but I'm trying to grow.
Well, speaking of Nazis, Texas has gone full Nazi because if you know anything about the Nazis, they were always obsessed with protecting life.
And now Texas, in classic Nazi fashion, has passed a new law prohibiting abortion after fetal heartbeats are detected.
Although it's a little bit strange, it's a very different approach to one of these laws than I've ever seen before.
And I think intentionally, it was devised this way intentionally to avoid being struck down by courts.
So we could get into a little bit of the details on this.
I'm sure, Rob, you've seen it.
I'm sure everybody listening who is on social media has seen.
People are flipping out about this Texas, this new law that just went into effect.
So, of course, for my entire life, your entire life, abortion has been one of these hot-button issues.
And it's one of the things that really exercises the left, broadly speaking, the left.
I mean, the left half of America.
It's one of the things that's always used to kind of, you know, get out the vote around election time.
Oh, my God, they're going to take the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade and all of this.
And it's something that has been, you know, fairly, you know, well protected in America, the women's legal ability to have abortions.
And this is different.
I mean, there have been other laws that have been passed in a handful of other states that have banned abortion.
They never, interestingly enough, even in all of these deep red states, they never attempt to ban abortion completely.
It's always like after a fetal heartbeat has been detected or something like that, you know, six to eight weeks or right in that time period.
But this one is different.
And the major thing that happened is that the Supreme Court refused to strike it down.
They refused to hear it.
And anyway, we could get into all of that in a second.
But one of the things that I thought was so interesting, so Tucker Carlson made this point the other night, and I hadn't even put this together.
So I appreciated him making this point.
But he was playing all of these clips from CNN and MSNBC and them going off on how terrible this is, you know, their insane hyperbolic takes, you know, the American Taliban and Texas and all of this stuff.
Even though, you know, the Taliban are now in negotiations with the White House.
And anyway, all that aside.
But he pointed out that he goes, look, there's one phrase that has been completely absent.
None of them are saying it.
And it's the mantra of the, you know, the pro-choice crowd.
You know what that is, right?
Everyone knows.
I don't even have to say it.
What is the thing that has always been said by those who advocate for legal abortions?
My body, my choice.
There you go.
But they're not saying that this time.
Because, you know, how could they?
How could they possibly, under in 2021, under with, you know, everything that's going on, possibly even pretend, even to their own viewers, to pretend that with any degree of seriousness, they believe this my body, my choice nonsense, which was always, you know, complete BS.
Like none of them ever really believe in people making choices with their own bodies.
It's only when it comes to killing the baby growing inside of you.
That's the only time you can make a choice with your body.
But anyway, so I thought that was really interesting in itself.
And as Jack Posebiak, I might be mispronouncing his name, but he pointed out on Twitter is just kind of a silly point, but making fun of the kind of more deranged leftists that he's like, well, you know, all that thing about how men, you know, if men can get pregnant now, you know, then you can't really say, oh, men have no, you know, position to rule on pregnancy, which is only something that affects a woman.
So they've really kind of, you know, hilariously boxed themselves into a corner where they can't use their go-to, you know, lines.
But it would be pretty funny while they're, you know, instituting mask mandates and, you know, vaccine passports and all of this.
I mean, just try to say my body, my choice.
Say the words.
Please say those words out loud and let us all ridicule you forever.
Although I will say some of the activists are still using that term.
But anyway.
I got a question for you.
As a Christian conservative, you don't like these abortions.
You say, hey, you're killing good old-fashioned babies and we shouldn't be killing babies.
Is your opinion on that even prior to six weeks?
Like, what is the six-week distinction that some people would point to that is the marker of death or non-death?
Well, the distinction that's being used in this Texas law and that was used in a bunch of the other laws which have been struck down by courts.
The distinction is the heartbeat.
So that's that once they say once you can detect a heartbeat, you can't kill the baby anymore.
But you still, would you go with the six weeks is okay or you go conception?
I go conception.
I mean, is plan B okay for you?
Well, plan B, actually, double check me on this, but from what I understand, plan B or the morning after pill will is pre-conception.
So it will get, you know, wash everything out before there is conception.
And that basically it's just like a, it's a birth control pill.
It's like a very strong birth control pill.
So, yeah, no, that to me would be completely fine.
Like, I have no moral issues.
But five-week abortion, you would have to do that.
I think, yeah, I mean, I think, I think that aside from conception, all of these other starting points are completely arbitrary.
I mean, like a heartbeat, you know, okay, that's the, I mean, you know, again, it's, I think, better than nothing, but it, you know, one of the things that's really interesting is that of all of this, this generates so much outrage amongst liberals and leftists when you even talk about, you know, abortion being illegal and immoral for that matter.
And, you know, I watched so many of them kind of talk about this and they, you know, they'll talk about kind of like, you know, the just the insulting of Texans and anyone who supports this, you know, American Taliban and all of that.
They will, you know, talk about the, you know, the desperate women and women's rights and all of these things and that it disproportionately affects people of color.
All of a sudden, we're fine to talk about how, you know, the majority of these abortions are not happening to, you know, like anyway, whatever.
So all of a sudden that'll get brought up.
But what you almost never hear, and then the other big thing is the extremely rare cases, you know, like the, you hear incest and rape brought up all the time.
You'll hear of, you know, for the woman's health to save the life of the mother type stuff.
Although there is an exemption for that in the Texas law.
But what you'll almost never hear ever is them actually taking on the argument of why it's acceptable to have an abortion.
Like in the vast, vast, vast majority of cases where abortions are conducted, which is just like someone just doesn't want to have the baby.
Like, why is that okay?
I mean, so one of the things that's interesting, right, is that you, these extreme examples will be invoked when discussing the Texas law.
However, in New York, the law is that you can have an abortion up to 24 weeks pregnant, no questions asked for any reason you want to.
Now, this whole thing about like, you know, a clump of cells, which was always kind of a stupid argument because that's, you know, it's all any of us are on some level.
But the idea, I mean, like, people are very removed from what a 21-week old, you know, 22-week-old fetus is.
And as became my tagline when I used to talk about it, that is a baby.
That's what you're looking at, a baby.
Now, I suppose it's not quite, we're not quite at the point in terms of medical advancements that a 21-week-old, 22-week-old, yeah, is probably not going to be able to survive if the baby was born that day.
But we're probably only a matter of years away from where it will be.
I mean, it's pretty incredible how much advancement we've made in that department.
So, yeah, I mean, anyway, what you will see, at least amongst like, say, the kind of typical right-wingers who oppose abortion, they will take on the argument head-on.
They'll be like, here's why I think abortion is immoral and here's why it shouldn't be legal.
Like, they'll take it right on.
But with the people who advocate for it, you very rarely hear them really take on like, why is it okay?
Give me what is the common case of abortion overwhelmingly, the vast, vast majority of them.
It's like someone gets pregnant and just doesn't want to have the baby.
But don't they consider it, I mean, isn't there an argument just that that's not a person?
Essentially, I suppose that might be it, but you very rarely hear them just come out and say that.
It's very rare.
And it's a pretty tough argument to make because, you know, for, you know, we all, when it is a baby that's wanted, right?
You know, like my wife's two pregnancies or most people who have babies, we all refer to it as a baby.
Everyone acknowledges that.
You know, like, did you find out the sex of the baby?
Are you having a baby shower?
That's what they call it, right?
Like everyone refers to it as a baby.
However, all of a sudden, if it's not wanted, then we're just supposed to regard it as, oh, all of a sudden, it's not a baby anymore.
Right.
No one's like, hey, how's that fetus coming?
Yeah, like, right, exactly.
It seems very subjective that all of a sudden you would decide.
I mean, if you, if you, you know, get drunk and go get into a car accident and kill a pregnant woman, you'll be charged with two counts of, you know, whatever, vehicular manslaughter.
Because, and rightfully so, you know, like that's, so it's just, it's very bizarre to think why, you know, and so many of the arguments that they would use, there's no reason why it should, why they should magically stop once the baby's, you know, come out of the birth canal.
Like, why does that change anything, morally speaking?
I mean, like, if we just had, you know, it's like if we just had the norm or the law be like, oh, for the first year of the baby's life, you could kill the baby if you don't want it, you know?
And like, almost all of the arguments that they make would still apply.
You know, these like pro-choice arguments are like, oh, women don't make these decisions lightly, and it's a very difficult decision for you.
I mean, if you think it's not a life, then it should be a light decision.
Well, that's one or the other.
Before my wife got pregnant, which is when I was really converted to being pro-life, this is what used to, these things used to be thorns in my side.
Like, I'd be like, I just hate contradictions and logical inconsistencies.
So, yeah, it's like they'd say these things where like, look, no woman makes this decision lightly.
And this is a very difficult segment.
Why not?
It's a vacuum.
Right.
Like, so then why is this even a difficult thing if you're saying that no woman makes it lightly?
Like, why?
I just, why is this a difficult thing if there's no moral component to this?
And so once you acknowledge there is a moral component to this, then you start pulling at that thread.
You're like, why?
What's the moral component?
Oh, yeah, here's the moral component.
It's a baby growing inside of you.
Now, obviously, libertarians are split on this issue.
There's a lot of libertarians who are in the pro-choice camp, a lot of libertarians in the pro-life camp.
I'm in the, can I just not hear about a camp?
Yeah, well, not for this episode.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to violate your right to not hear about this for at least a little bit during this episode.
But so, you know, to me, the question there is the central question to libertarians is, is it a violation of the non-aggression principle?
And I just, I don't see any way around saying yes, it is.
And that it was, you know, parents brought this baby into the world.
It was their actions that brought the baby into the world.
And the baby just appears and is there and is the most innocent form of life in the galaxy.
And to me, it's pretty easy what side of that you come down on of who has the responsibility and who has the right to not be aggressed upon.
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Lawsuit Risks for Clinics00:14:26
All right, let's get back into the show.
Can I ask a logistical question of you?
And this is, you know, I never had health class growing up.
And usually if I'm lucky...
The vagina is right around where your penis is.
A little bit south.
Well, yeah, I mean, my logistical question was like, usually I'm more of a dump a load and leave kind of person if I'm lucky enough to fornicate.
So I'm not really there for whatever the rest of the process might be.
But if you can detect pregnancy up until like as soon as I think three weeks after having sex or within a month, couldn't women just be peeing on a stick once a month and then deciding that they like, I'm just saying from a logistical standpoint, if six weeks going to be the cutoff, can't you just self-administer the test every three weeks and just go, oh shit, I better go get this thing sucked out?
Jeez.
Yeah, in theory, sure.
So they measure pregnancy usually the starting date is from the date of your last period.
So if you and usually home pregnancy tests can detect a little bit before your first missed period.
So they can detect under, you know, under four weeks of when you're pregnant.
So theoretically, if you have six weeks, yeah, you'd have to be like really on it.
But you, I guess theoretically, I'm actually not sure about this, but you could probably go to a doctor's and know for absolute certain a little bit earlier than a home pregnancy test would be able to tell you.
Now, the logistics of that are tricky for sure.
And you would have to, you know, set up your abortion pretty damn quickly to be able to pull this off.
This is a market issue.
Speedy abortion.
Someone can open that up.
We'll get you scheduled and cleaned out within three days.
I think here's how I look at it.
And I think that, I mean, number one, I think that I think that abortion by any objective standard is murdering a baby.
And that obviously carries with it a whole lot of moral weight, that murdering a baby is a pretty horrific thing to do.
But I think that in the broader picture, and this is partly why I think a lot of kind of the, what are considered right-wingers and left-wingers, or even right-libertarians and left-libertarians, get divided over this, is that one of the things,
and I've noticed this, if you talk to, if you talk to pro-choice people long enough, this often comes out, that there is this almost allergy to the responsibility that it would inevitably burden people with if you lived in a system where abortion was not allowed.
And there's no question about that.
I mean, it radically changes things.
That all of the sudden, every time you have, you know, unprotected sex and a guy finishes in you, that, ooh, you are really risking something.
You are really rolling the dice that this could now, you know, impose this very drastic responsibility on your life.
And the easy way to get around that is to have easy on-demand abortions.
But to me, it's like that's not, you know, not only is that not a justification for something, I think it's, you know, liberty, and I've said this for a while, but I think that one of the things that libertarians don't do nearly well enough is talk about the responsibility end of liberty, which is from my perspective, just two sides of the same coin.
That what liberty really means is that you have, you know, this degree of freedom, but what it carries with it is you have to take responsibility for your decisions with that freedom.
And that, you know, if you notice in our current society, they always talk about rights.
Everyone's always talking about rights.
I mean, they bastardize the term and use it in all these types of different ways, you know, the right to healthcare and education.
And, you know, it's always like women's rights and trans rights and all these different types of rights.
And 90% of the time when they say this, they don't mean rights in the negative sense of the word and the way that libertarians think about rights.
But everybody wants rights, more and more freedom, you know, more and more rights.
Always get more of them.
But very seldom do people, you know, push responsibility.
And that really is a very important, like I said, two sides of the same coin.
If you're talking about true liberty, that it's like, okay, yeah, you do have the freedom to not get insurance, right?
But then you have the responsibility of taking care of yourself.
And or then asking for help, essentially begging if you don't, which is the way to be free, you know, that you can make your own decisions, but you have to live with the outcomes.
And so I think that what you notice right away is that it's like, yeah, what this would do in effect is put a lot more force in a sense, a lot more of the deserved responsibility onto people.
And to think that like, yeah, if you have, you know, if you're not ready to get pregnant and you're not ready to have a kid, then you got to kind of think twice about just being promiscuous and having unprotected sex.
And if you do have unprotected sex, you better be right on top of finding out whether or not you got pregnant, you know?
And so I understand where people don't like that burden because they just want to live in a more fun, responsibility-free way.
But to me, that doesn't justify killing babies.
I mean, I just don't, I don't even understand how you could make the argument that it does.
It's like, to me, outrageously immature and narcissistic and, you know, selfish to think that an inconvenience on your, you know, lifestyle justifies something like that.
Or maybe we'll incentivize young dudes to get vasectomies, and then that could be like your pitch on a first day.
like lady i gutted these balls we're good to go that's it All done.
Perhaps.
See, Rob, this is your sales mentality, always looking for an angle.
So now, now, in terms of how I feel about this actual law, there are some things about it that are kind of eyebrow raising that I would certainly say are room for concern.
So the way they got around this law is basically it's not a criminal ban on abortions.
No one's going to go to jail over this.
But what they do is they allow people to sue if abortions are committed after the fetal heartbeat can be detected.
So that, now, it seems to be pretty broad who can be sued.
I'm trying to state that that's really, really difficult to prove because if you've gotten rid of the evidence and performed the abortion, why would a doctor testify against himself that he was able to detect a heartbeat?
Right.
It seems like to me, I don't understand how the enforcement of this would work.
And that's where the devil's.
And it's not even the state.
It's not even the state that would be enforcing it.
They're leaving it to essentially bounty hunters.
So you would have to hack computers to create evidence of the fact that they actually registered a heartbeat.
And then if I was a doctor who was performing abortions, I wouldn't do that test.
On the sonogram, you can just turn the volume off.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I just, that's like if you're doing a crime, you don't put up cameras in your office to record yourself doing a crime.
You would just do the blood test, go, there's a baby in here.
Oh, was there a heartbeat?
I don't know.
We didn't do a sonogram.
Seems pretty easy.
Hire me, ladies.
Look at these lawyer skills.
It's the first I'm hearing of this.
So, okay, so just to read from this article here, the Texas law bars state officials from actually enforcing it.
So this is a weird aspect to a law.
They wrote a law, but then barred state officials from enforcing it.
And it's a design intended to make it difficult to challenge in courts.
Usually, a lawsuit aiming to block such a law as unconstitutional names the state officials as defendants.
Instead, the Texas law deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortion or aids and abets a procedure.
Plaintiffs who have no connection to the patient or the clinic may sue and recover legal fees as well as $10,000 if they win.
So this now to me seems kind of nutty.
And the enforcement of this could end up being pretty draconian and tyrannical and counterproductive.
So if you're saying like, now I'm not exactly sure how broad they're going to define aids and abets.
I saw some people saying online that they could actually sue Uber drivers who drive you to a clinic.
Now, I haven't actually seen that anywhere in the law, but just for example, like that would be fucking insane.
Like, I think you have to know.
Yeah, like you couldn't possibly.
So I'm not sure if that's actually, it would be how the law would be applied.
But if so, that is outrageous.
And it does seem like the idea that someone who has no connection to the patient or the clinic suing rubs me the wrong way.
It just doesn't seem like the way that you would want to go about this.
Well, that one's actually interesting because you're potentially taking enforcement powers away from the state.
Yeah.
So there is an interesting angle there.
If I had to just forecast how it might play out, because we're asking how can you possibly enforce this, it would be large Christian groups kind of forging together and getting themselves expensive lawyers and I guess bringing suits against the actual abortion clinics going, it's very clear that we've seen women walk in here that are beyond the point of heartbeats, and then it would just become too costly to run clinics in the state.
I think that's probably what they're going for, but this is, I'm thinking out loud of the only way I could see that playing out.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I suppose.
I mean, look, I would just push back against the idea that it doesn't really take enforcement out of the state because this is still, it's a state law and it's going to be the state courts that end up enforcing law anyway.
So it's, you know, you're kind of like deputizing, you know, citizens against others.
This, I don't know, it seems like a messy way to do it.
And I'm really kind of, and I've been reading through about this, but I'm just very confused about how in the real world, this is all going to be applied.
And the Supreme Court thing was weird because they keep doing this.
They basically said we can't rule on it until it's actually enforced.
At least that's what I understood is that, yes, this might be a bad ruling.
This might be a bad law that they made.
And it might be that once it's actually put into practice, we would strike it down.
But until it's actually put into practice, we can't strike it down.
But that just shows, that to me is what we were commenting with the governors when they overstretched their overreach on their authority and then there's no penalty for doing so.
It seems like a very broken system where you can pass a law that's against the law, but you're allowed to put it into practice.
And then there's some sort of a gap in time until it gets to the Supreme Court.
And then they can say that, no, you're not allowed to do this.
Why not just rule now that this is not something that would be okay?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's that's a fair point.
Um, or that it would be okay, but let's take a stand one way or the other on it.
I do, one of the things that I think is interesting too is that you hear so many of, and I guess this is just one more example of how the word democracy just in practice means anything we like and is good and fascism means anything we don't like and is bad.
You know, like they don't really think about what these words mean.
But if you think about how much we've heard, particularly from liberals about, you know, undermining our democracy and our democratic, you know, system and all of this, that, you know, Roe v. Wade is incredibly undemocratic.
I mean, it was literally imposed on the nation by a bunch of unelected judges.
It's, you know, a place like Texas, clearly, if they had a vote, would probably be very likely to have restrictions on abortion.
And it's interesting that, you know, democracy is all good and well, unless it's a red state, you know, who are like their elected officials are supporting some red state shit.
You know what I mean?
So it's kind of interesting that like, oh, all of a sudden that's, you know, I actually heard one lady on MSNBC say that this is an attack on democracy.
And you're like, all right, I don't know how you square that circle in your head, but no, this is, you know, for better or worse, oftentimes for worse, this is the democratic process.
This is like, you know, elected officials that were elected in a state that believes this.
Now, I will say, personally, I don't know.
It's very complicated to legislate a problem as huge as, you know, from my perspective, a problem that abortion has become so culturally accepted in our society.
It's very tough to legislate these things.
That doesn't mean I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, or you know, but it's just like you almost have to like, if you really want to, you almost have to attack this culturally if you really want to persuade people that like this is a horrific practice that has been completely accepted in our society, or at least in large swaths of our society.
And I understand, as I just said, I have a lot of questions about how the hell this law would be enforced and what exactly this would mean.
You do also have to think about unintended consequences of laws like this and how horrific that could be.
And the fact that, you know, look, infanticide is something that's been happening from the beginning of human history.
And as horrific as it is, you know, when people really don't want to raise a baby, they can do some pretty ugly and awful things.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
I guess what's just not being grappled with that I've seen from the pro-abortion crowd is that, look, this is like this is a real moral outrage.
And a lot of pro-life people like myself just have a major problem with this.
The idea that there's all that we've just like legally codified and morally codified on a cultural level, the idea that just like somebody can just say, eh, changed my mind, don't want to have this baby, so I'm going to kill it.
And as I said before, it's almost like, you know, no matter what scenario you throw at someone, morally speaking, I really don't see the significant difference between, you know, saying if we just extended this to one year of life and said, okay, for the first year, you know, it's your call.
You can feel that being a parent.
Tell me if this doesn't really work for you.
Go ahead, just kill it.
Return it.
You know?
Yeah.
Just, well, by the way, return it.
We have already set up systems where you can do that.
You can give up your baby.
No questions asked.
No one's going to prosecute you.
No one's going to do anything.
If you don't want to have your baby anymore, they will take it from you.
And very intelligently, the reason we've designed systems like that is because as an incentive to like, don't do anything.
Don't do anything awful to the kid.
Just like give it up and somebody will take care of this baby.
So, you know, and then there's all types of systems like that for if you just have the kid.
Just like, okay.
You got mail slots at fire departments.
Literally.
I mean, there are places where you can dump babies and like they will come.
They will not prosecute you.
No one's going to like, you know?
And so anyway, I just think that it is, there's a much, from my perspective, a much stronger argument, even from the libertarian perspective, from all moral perspectives, there's a much stronger argument for being pro-life than there is for being pro-choice.
That's just how I feel.
And I've had these debates with people before, and it's one of those things.
It reminds me of a lot of, you know, becoming pro-life was in many ways, just in terms of like arguments.
A very similar experience to me to becoming a libertarian, where you started, I kind of was introduced to these ideas, and then I was like, oh my God, these are like totally, you know, I'm totally convinced, both morally and just logically.
And then when you put them out there against other people, you realize how astoundingly weak some of the arguments are that come back at you.
And you're just like, wow, that's, I mean, there's like no moral or logical basis for these counter arguments.
So anyway, I don't know.
It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out and the kind of cultural impact that all of this will have.
But, you know, I also got to say there's something to, like, from my perspective, it's like, you know, when you see all the crazy shit that some of these blue states are doing with the whole like COVID regime, and you're like, yeah, it's kind of nice to see one red state just kind of being like, yeah, well, then you know what?
Abortion's not legal here.
Because that's what we all want.
So if you can cram your will, you know, individual liberty be damned down everyone's throat, then here, we can, we're going to do this here, which is like has public support.
So anyway, all of it is interesting to me, but the devil is going to be in the enforcement in this, and we'll see what they're doing.
I don't want to see just like a whole bunch of people getting sued over bullshit.
Or it's like, what do you mean?
You're calling me an accomplice to an abortion?
Like, I don't know.
I was fucking just like helping a woman get on the bus, you know?
Like, so we'll see.
We'll see how this all turns out.
But anyway, okay, so moving on.
There's a couple other things that I wanted to talk about.
One of them was this study that was released yesterday from the CDC, which I thought was kind of interesting.
I sent you an article about this, Rob.
And so I'm going to, hold on.
Sorry, one second.
So evidently the CDC has been, and they've been doing this for some time, but they're doing these surveys where they basically examined people's blood.
This one, the CDC worked with 17 blood collection organizations.
This is across all 50 states plus DC and Puerto Rico to test blood.
And they tested about 1.4 million samples.
So this is a big survey study.
And they've found, now this was done throughout 2020 and I believe into early 2021.
And so they found that more than 80% of Americans have some immunity to COVID, which is a very interesting number to hear.
Now, this is also, keep in mind, this is pre-Delta variant.
But so we were a while ago already up to the number of 80% having some type of immunity.
And if you gathered 80% of the country together, could you call that a herd?
Yeah, you sure could.
Yeah, sure.
So this herd of people have immunity.
They have, you know, if you pointed at them, let's say you had different herds and you had to name this herd, you might call them herd immunity for just for the sake of naming the teams.
And then that would be like heard COVID, you know, herd people who don't leave their house and oh, herd immunities.
And then I bet if we took the herd that we called immunity and then we mixed it in with the other 20%, the other 20% might even be protected because they'd be so intertwined with the ones that couldn't get sick.
Yeah.
Yeah, that would be interesting.
Now, one of the thing that I thought was the most like the thing that jumped at, well, first off, I should just say before I get into that, on the 80% number, you also have to take into account that they are, you know, the claim is, which I think is true, that the Delta variant is not insignificantly more contagious.
I think that's because the vaccine doesn't work for it.
And on that 80% number, it was because a lot of people were vaccinated.
So it's a great study that has irrelevant figures, most likely.
Well, yes, but I'm just saying that if you were going to say that there's 80% of people had some immunity to this.
Now, by the way, keep in mind also this doesn't.
The word sum doesn't, I just got to point out the word some doesn't mean a whole lot.
Yes.
100% of the country has some immunity.
It might not be enough.
Like natural immunity.
Sure, but I'm just saying that, well, natural immunity in the sense that they have had COVID and fought it off or have had the vaccine or something along those lines.
I'm just making the point that if 80% have some immunity and then you've said there's a more contagious variant that's come out since then, the number would have to be not significantly higher than that, whatever that means.
Your point, well noted, whatever that means, that does not mean you are guaranteed to not get sick or die.
But it's something.
It's better than having nothing.
So that's the first thing that we were already at that number.
But the thing that really jumps out here is that this now, they're saying based on this survey, that the number that they believe of total cases has doubled, that they think twice as many people actually had COVID at some point as they previously assumed.
Now, nowhere in this CDC study does it say this.
But if that's true, then the only conclusion from that is that the case fatality rate has now been chopped in half.
And that's a big deal.
Like that's a very, very big deal.
That would take it down to, I think, something in the neighborhood of 0.8% or, you know, eight tenths of 1%, which is now putting it at under what the flu is generally estimated to be.
Even though I think that number is a little bit shaky.
But regardless, that's a big deal if the case fatality rate has been cut in half.
And that should be like the lead on every news outlet.
Like that's huge news in COVID that is the biggest thing in the world.
That's what we're talking about nonstop for the last 16 months.
If the case fatality rate gets cut in half, I think that should make your headlines.
To speak to your point, I think in the article they were saying it was assumed previously in COVID that it was actually a three to one ratio and that it's only more recent that it's two to one.
The other thing to keep in awareness, so basically what you're saying is that since the total case numbers are up, the actual death rate is much lower than reported.
The other thing that's worth noting, and if you want to hear more on this, go check out Run Your Mouth.
I did a whole thing with a molecular biologist named Steven.
But if you look at the actual death categories, right, and like you actually look at what people die on, you can very clearly see that COVID borrowed some flu deaths.
It borrowed some heart disease deaths.
There's a lot of deaths that have been reported as COVID that were not actually COVID.
That's not to say that nobody's died of COVID, but it is very clear that as flu deaths were down last year, heart disease deaths were down last year, some of the deaths were people that were going to die anyways, at least within the next three to six months.
So if you put those two things together, that one, we know that more people were infected that were possibly reported.
So even if every death that was reported as a COVID death was a COVID death, you'd still say, hey, there's not a high death rate here.
But then if you also start accounting for the fact that not all COVID deaths are really COVID deaths, what kind of a pandemic do we really even have?
Right.
Now, by the way, this was a point that me and you were making way back at the very beginning.
I mean, I remember talking about this with you in April and in May of 2020, that they'd give these very high case fatality rates.
And we'd be like, well, wait a minute.
Hold on.
Back then, tests were somewhat limited.
And the only people who were being tested were the ones who were very sick.
So to start measuring from them is obviously not going to give you an accurate number when you yourselves are telling us that there's a whole lot of asymptomatic people who are out there or people with very mild symptoms.
So obviously, those people are going to be less likely to die of the thing than the people who have already been hospitalized.
One of the other major factors, and I know there was a study in the UK that really dealt with this, and I haven't seen anything in America.
But, you know, when they talk about these people who are hospitalized with COVID, they don't usually distinguish between the people who got it in the hospital.
So if you're in the hospital and you catch COVID, now you're someone hospitalized with COVID.
It was more flagrant than that.
You technically are, but you were hospitalized for something completely unrelated and would have been hospitalized, obviously, anyway, because you didn't have COVID when you went in there.
So it's very just like misleading and you're not getting to the real information.
From what I understand, it was even more flagrant than that, that you had kids in hospitals for broken legs and they test people in the hospital.
So you could have COVID zero symptoms, but that's being reported as a COVID hospitalization.
Yeah.
So like, right.
So there's stuff like that, which is really, you know, pretty wacky.
And then the other thing that should be pointed out that I meant to point out earlier is that with these blood tests that they're doing here, this is not testing for T cell immunity, which a lot of epidemiologists believe is like the strongest immunity to COVID.
And that this is why they believe that kids do, at least some epidemiologists believe that this is why kids do so well with COVID, because your T cell immunity basically gets weakened as you get older.
It's why it's one of the reasons why, like as every parent knows, like when like a cold goes through the house or like a stomach bug or something like that, usually like the kid is sick for like a day or two, the mom and dad get it and they're laid up for like five days because it's just, you know, you bounce back quicker when you're younger from all types of different things.
But so that's not being counted either.
And I'll tell you, there is like, there are these really positive trends that seem to not be getting any coverage for obvious reasons.
But like, so Florida had this surge in hospitalization when the Delta variant was first coming out.
As they have the surge, everybody's like, look at Florida, Florida, look at all of this.
This is because DeSantis is so terrible.
It's because they didn't do all these lockdowns.
Even though New York and New Jersey have had way more deaths, that doesn't matter.
Everyone knows this is because Florida is free.
Hidden Immunity Levels Revealed00:02:02
This is the problem.
But then very quickly, they recovered and the hospitalization started declining.
And then nobody talks about it in the corporate press anymore because it doesn't suit their political narrative.
But if you really were interested in getting some information, you'd be like, oh, that's a really like, that's a really good sign that, okay, this actually wasn't that bad of a wave and they were able to bounce back very quickly.
Well, why are they bouncing back quicker than, say, big waves of COVID when it first came out?
And the answer seems to be that there's just a lot more immunity out there and that people are better, are more capable of fighting this off.
And perhaps a portion of that is the vaccines.
In fact, a significant portion of that might be the vaccines.
But that's not it alone.
You know, it's also the fact that there's just a lot of immunity out there.
So anyway, I thought this was a very interesting study.
And to me, the biggest takeaway from this is the number being doubled.
Now, again, this is not, you know, this isn't just like a guess or a projection.
These are blood tests.
And they're testing that people have, you know, immunity, that they have antibodies.
So this is confirmed that way more people had COVID than they think had it.
And that is, even though I guess on some level it's counterintuitive, that is really good news.
It's very good news that a lot more people had this than we thought because that means like, oh, wow, there's a whole lot more people who had this and were, you know, not hospitalized, didn't die, didn't have any of that.
We're just able to fight it off.
But of course, as you kind of indicated before, this would be a very strong argument to say, oh, okay, so we can just live our lives now.
And every time there's something, you know, like that, which we've had quite a bit of over the last 16 months or 17 months, that just, we just pretend that that doesn't exist.
But it does.
So there, we just told her.
Rogan's Health Choices Debunked00:15:17
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It is, you know, there were two things that I was thinking about.
So one is I literally just saw right before we were going to podcast today, I saw you tweeted out that video that somebody made, which was really funny.
But wait, yeah, you could just tell them the video.
Oh, so I at Porkfest, I mean, probably two or three weeks I was working on some vaccine jokes and a bunch of them were pretty good, anti-vaccine jokes.
One of them, which more of a thoroughly...
Did you put this material out there?
Yeah, I put a whole four-minute thing out.
This is just one of the jokes.
Brian has the video.
So we'll...
And go check out the whole series.
Robbie the Fire, all one word on YouTube.
There you go here.
Let's get.
How about getting back?
Well, sisters do it.
Here we go.
I'm having guys.
People get real bad at me for it.
They're like, you're an idiot.
Or like, they just get a little pissed.
And it's like, dude, if you really believe in this thing, you should be thanking me for volunteering to be in the control group.
That's right.
I'm making a contribution.
Three weeks later, Robbie the Fire Bernstein is a little under the weather.
A little bit of the COVID.
Great editing.
Excellent.
It's excellent.
All right.
So that's the video.
By the way, that whole chunk is fucking hilarious.
Just a great, great whole bit in Rob's stand-up about the vaccines.
But so, anyways, this is a funny video, right?
But then if you look at the, and it's got like 20,000 views on it already.
Nothing I ever post gets that many views.
Well, there you go.
All you got to do is die from.
But if you look at the comments, it's really astounding that it's first off.
It's like 95% of the people don't get the joke.
And they just think that you are a comedian who was joking about not getting vaccinated and then died of COVID.
Now, the first thing that jumps out, which is really fascinating, is that none of them even like are bothered by the fact that this is a highly unlikely scenario.
So they wouldn't even think to like, hey, should I like, you know, should I double check this?
Because the idea that just this young guy who's up there joking around looks completely healthy would die of COVID very soon is very unlikely.
But all of these people, look, he asked for it.
He got it.
Imagine all the people he endangered, family and friends.
Maybe Mr. Comedy Man isn't laughing.
COVID did its job and smart people appreciate it.
Thank you for being in the control group, buddy.
Rest peacefully.
So I'm just saying, from what these people think, there's a lot that's fascinating here, right?
Number one, that they wouldn't just stop to go like, really?
Did this guy die?
I mean, you, just by looking at you with not knowing anything else, you'd be it's like a 99.9% chance that that wouldn't happen.
So if someone just had a video where they told me something that's like 99.9% unlikely to happen happened, I'd probably ask some questions before just assuming.
Well, of course.
But they're so propagandized that it's just like, yeah, you die from COVID.
That's what happens.
You die from COVID, of course.
So, but then, of course, the bigger takeaway from this is just how like, whoa, like morally appalling these people are.
And these are the people who claim to care so much about public health.
These are the ones that's like, because I have so much empathy, I just want to save people's lives and all of this.
But here they think a comedian who made the crime of joking around about not getting the vaccine, they're going to dance on his grave in their mind.
Like, what type of fucking sick people are you?
Like, I don't even, you know.
That's what makes it so funny.
That's what makes it such a good troll is it just shows these people for what and who they are.
Yes, it is a brilliant troll.
But that's the thing.
And of course, the thing that has been on my mind the last couple of days, as I'm sure a lot of people have seen, and I've been tweeting about it a lot, was that, you know, Rogan announced that he had had COVID.
And oh my God, I mean, the amount of people who are like rooting for him to get very sick and or die because it would suit their own political interests.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, because it's like, oh, it would kind of validate what I've been saying.
So I will wish ill, literally, on this person.
You're like, this is just like sickening, man.
Like, what type of human beings are you?
My God, I'm glad I don't, I'm not like related to you or work with you or like, Jesus, you don't want to be around people like this.
And they're like taking this opportunity to dunk on Rogan because really, I think what his ultimate crime was is that he's, number one, he's been skeptical of the whole COVID regime and had a lot of people on his podcast, myself included, who have really been.
you know, completely advocating that we just end all of these restrictions immediately.
He has questioned the vaccine and whether it's necessary for everyone to take the vaccine before.
Not that he's ever come out strongly against it or anything, but he's been willing to entertain these ideas.
He's been willing to entertain, you know, he's had Alex Berenson on and like people like that.
And he's been willing to hear other sides of this, you know, very important issue.
And he came out and announced that he had taken something that rhymes with shivermectin or shivermectin.
I just call it the ivory.
The ivory.
He's popping that ivory.
And this is what everybody is really furious about.
And so they're all sitting there kind of dunking on it.
It's funny.
It reminds me of when Trump got COVID.
And for like, it's almost like they just can't help themselves.
So for like three days, the entire, you know, press would be just dunking on Trump.
Oh, ha ha, you got COVID.
You weren't taking it seriously enough.
Oh, you don't want to wear your mask.
Oh, you don't want to wear a yes.
Well, look at you now.
Look at you now in Walter Reed Hospital, you know?
And I remember us talking about it on the podcast.
And we were like, guys, even though Trump is over 70 and fat, we're still looking at like, what are the 99, 98% chance that he survives this and is just fine, right?
Like it's really, really high.
And you would think that the blue checks and the corporate press would be like, all right, let's just, just in case this thing that is like 98% likely to happen happens, let's not make ourselves look really bad, but they just can't.
They can't help themselves.
Trump eats Mayo for breakfast.
No disease is taking him down.
Well, so, but you know, you know, and then of course he's fine.
And he's absolutely fine.
And then they all look like idiots.
But like with Rogan, even in his announcement video, he said, he just goes, I was sick for like a day.
He goes, he's like, I think he was like, ah, Sunday night, woof, sucked, had a fever.
Really wasn't fun.
He goes, Monday felt a lot better.
Tuesday felt way better.
And today I'm just like, fine, feel absolutely fine.
And like, it's like, I texted with him briefly.
He's feeling fine.
He's doing great.
And so it's so funny they're all dunking on him.
Oh, you took the, you took the ivory.
Oh, yeah.
You know, and it's the, what is it?
The, oh, you took the horse tapeworm or horse dewormer.
Oh, yeah.
Which, by the way, if you say that, if you repeat that line, it's almost like, just like you said, this troll was excellent.
This is what's so nice about this, the current state of the world that we live in is like, thank you for just like marking yourself as an NPC that you literally just repeat without any critical thought what you are told to by the establishment.
They're like, what?
Yeah, okay.
Like, yes, there is part of that drug is used in something that they give horses for like for a dewormer, but that doesn't mean anything.
There's lots of medications that animals and people both take.
There's lots of people medicines that animals take.
Like, this is all just so stupid.
And there have been, look, I don't even know what level of like how good that is to take.
There's been several studies that have indicated that if you take it early, it has to be early.
Can't like wait till you're very sick with COVID.
But if you take it early or even before you get COVID, it can help your body fight it off.
Then there's been other studies that have contradicted that.
So I don't freaking know, but he was clearly prescribed this by a doctor.
It's like, what do you know?
And then you're sitting here dunking on this guy and you're like, he got better after a day, you idiot.
Do you not realize how stupid this makes you look?
But whether, look, he said he was on like a ZPAC and on a vitamin drip and all these other stuff.
And I appreciate it.
I thought it was cool that he mentioned what he was taking.
But let me just say, and then I'll let you do it in here.
But to me, the most likely thing is that the reason why Rogan recovered so quickly and is going to be absolutely fine is because Rogan is in excellent shape.
The guy fucking really takes care of his nutrition.
He's really obsessed with being healthy.
He is a black belt in multiple disciplines of martial arts and he works out like a maniac.
And yeah, it turns out that like eating right and exercising is really important in maintaining your immune system.
Anyway, go ahead.
No, I was just, it's also, I think for the people who are pointing to what Rogan took and getting upset about the fact that he took the ivory, for one, he took the monocol antibodies, which is kind of standard care.
That's what Trump took when he got sick.
That's the thing that people, they've said before the first cough, if you take it, it's fairly effective.
I think it's the Regeneron is the major company that makes that.
So the fact that he got better after.
It's a great name for a medicine.
Yes.
So the fact that he got better, like you can't look at what he did and said, hey, look, the ivory works.
What people are getting upset about and what's weird about the ivory is that if there's reason to believe that this thing might be helpful and we know how much it's been prescribed and we know how little harmful or side effects exist, it's one of the most prescribed medications in human history and it may work.
Why aren't we studying it?
Why isn't the FDA studying it?
And why is it that if we like, let's just go from their point of view, which is, hey, we've got this incredibly dangerous pandemic and it's the worst thing that ever happened in human history.
So if you get sick and you've got a thing that might help that has no dangers, why wouldn't you take it?
But they seem to be pretending that there's some sort of a gray area where it is dangerous or that people are only taking the horse paste and that they're taking it in high doses and that there's an increase in what's going on in poison alert centers.
They don't tell you how many true cases.
They just tell you that there's an increase.
Nobody's recommending that you take horse paste.
There's no doctor out there that say, hey, if you get sick, go get yourself some horse paste.
There's a pill version.
There's doctors that you can call that will prescribe it and it might help you.
It might not.
I can't tell you, but it's very weird that they're trying to completely demonize it.
And so they don't want even Rogan saying that he took it because they want to pretend like it could potentially be harmful, which I don't think there's any evidence or case to be made.
Yeah, I agree.
And I also think that, you know, when I think, so I tweeted a couple things about this because it was just, oh, it was driving me crazy.
And particularly that it's like, I mean, I guess one of the reasons why this video in the comments on there and the stuff I was seeing, you know, the comments about Rogan is that it's just, when it's somebody who you're friends with, it's a little bit more particularly like appalling to see people like rooting for someone's death or cheering their death.
Like what, you know, like, I don't know.
It's just like really, it hits home a little bit more.
I'm like, me and you are closer than me and Rogan are.
Like, I, you know, you're like one of my closest friends.
But like, I've known, yeah, there you go.
Put it back, Rogan.
That's my friend.
Unless he asks.
Like, if he asks or anything like that.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I'll punch Rob right in the face if you ask me to.
No, but I've known Joe for years at this point.
And I was a big fan of his before I ever met him.
And like now, I know him pretty well.
And it's like to see people like publicly, like just clearly rooting for him to die.
It's like the guy's got a family.
And like, it's just, it's appalling.
So anyway, yeah, I was, I was pissed off about it.
But I did, I tweeted this, and I think I really stand by this.
Well, okay, here's two tweets that I said.
I said, it's amazing watching all of these people who stuff their faces with garbage and sit on their fat asses confidently criticizing Joe Rogan's health choices.
Nice.
Which I, you know, really stand by.
I mean, it's like these guys who are like all like mocking him.
He beat this thing in a day.
Like here's whatever.
But I said this one I was more proud of.
I said, while the corporate press was telling you to stay indoors, mask up outdoors and wipe down your groceries, Joe Rogan was telling you to be healthy, eat right, exercise, and get vitamin D.
These are facts.
And that is the thing that's so hilarious about all of these people in the corporate press being like, you know, Joe Rogan isn't a doctor.
Joe Rogan is no scientist.
Now, let's, you know, let's bring on the guy who created Microsoft to tell us all about why we need to be vaccinated.
Mocking Joe Rogan's Advice00:01:00
Like, anyway.
But it's like, yeah, okay, well, while you guys were telling people to wipe down groceries with Lysol, he was telling them to get more vitamin D. That's just what was happening.
And so actually, people would have been way better off if they were listening to him than listening to you.
I was breathing in the Lysol.
I was following Trump's advice.
But you know what?
It worked out.
It worked out.
For a while.
Until I got it.
But that's because I laid back.
I ran out of Lysol.
I was good for the whole time I was sucking out Lysol cancer.
Rob was injecting bleach into his veins, all that, you know?
Anyway.
Helps with AIDS too.
Yeah, sure does.
All right.
There you go.
All right.
On that note, let's wrap up this show.
All right.
Anything you want to plug?
Anything you got coming up?
Oh, Boston back on the schedule, 9-11.
So hit me up.
There you go.
Nice.
September 11th.
Smoke out bug out comedy show, live music, gonna be a party.
Hell yeah.
Have fun up there, brother.
And go check out Run Your Mouth podcast, as Rob said before.