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April 15, 2020 - American Countdown - Barnes
01:47:03
20200415_Wed_Barnes
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You are about to be part-time on the race today.
And one small brand.
America first.
Yeah, we're not.
What's your country?
Welcome to a special edition of American Countdown on this, usually the tax day, April 15th.
That tax day has been postponed several months due to the response, the policy response to the pandemic.
Tonight resolved whether the president should continue to shut down or is it time to reopen America?
This will be a special edition of American Countdown as we have a special guest who's willing to debate both sides of that issue this evening, Will Chamberlain, the editor and publisher of Human Events, a lawyer and well-regarded and well-respected intellectual and conservative and other political circles from Washington, D.C.
He takes the position that we should continue to consider the pandemic a unique threat, and he will explain what his position is this evening.
My position remains that we need to reopen America sooner rather than later, because freedom should always be chosen over security, particularly in a situation where it is not clear we're getting security or freedom at the expense of our economy.
In further updates today, we have more information that not only is this pandemic more panic than plague, but that in fact the models continue to be wrong about estimating the potential damages.
And in fact, also the contagion rate, the degree to which it's going to infect people, the degree to which if it does, where and how it will spread, the degree to which the infection rate will translate into illness, the degree to which that illness will then translate into hospitalization, or the need for ventilators, or the need for intensive care, and the degree to which it results in mortality.
It's lethality rate.
Well, a study came out that studied homeless shelters, which were a unique, potentially vulnerable place for the spread and the transmission of this disease.
And what did they find?
They found that 36% of the people that they tested, tested positive for COVID-19.
However, almost all of them were asymptomatic.
This means that the infection never translated into an illness, never translated into a disease, and definitely never translated for this population into a debilitating or disabling disease or into death.
Indeed, 92% of the people that were tested positive did not even have a cough, almost 99% had no shortness of breath, and more than 99% had no fever.
So this is further evidence that in fact this virus, when it impacts people, that its contagion rate, even when the contagion rate is high within the close confined quarters and continuous contact that occurs in a homeless shelter, where there isn't necessarily the best sanitation or the people involved may not have the healthiest habits, even in that Petri dish of potential pandemic spread.
It does not lead, at least in that context for that survey, to the kind of debilitating, disabling or death rate that would warrant or justify even considering the shutdown of our economy and so much of our civil society.
Another survey found similar and comparable data to what we've been talking about now for weeks and weeks and weeks.
In fact, it's almost going on two months.
In fact, actually, it's more than two months, dating back to March 13th.
We were talking about the fact that if you looked at this virus, what an Israeli Nobel laureate had figured out and discovered, Was that this virus was very voracious in its original impact on any community, and then it would sort of run into a wall, would flatten out, and then drop precipitously, regardless of what mitigation efforts were taken.
Countries and regions and locations that took extreme mitigation efforts saw very little different outcome than places that took very little or negligible mitigation efforts.
Those mitigation efforts range from light forms of social distancing and mask wearing, all the way to the complete shutdown that we saw in places like Wuhan, and we now see in large parts of the Western world.
Well, what did they find?
They tried to isolate the data.
They described the data as noisy data in trying to separate cause and effect from all of the available data so far.
And what they determined was that the log rate starts slowly, increases quickly, and then flattens out just as fast.
And so what we were talking about was that once the infection hits and starts getting into the illness and the mortality rate, it then starts to take off when it reaches the most vulnerable and susceptible part of a population, but then it very quickly flattens out and starts to drop off the way almost all viruses have over the last century.
The idea that this was going to infect 50, 60, 70, 80 percent, 100 percent of a country or any region within 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days and that it would then have a 15 to 20 percent hospitalization rate, a 5 to 10 percent intensive care rate, and then a mortality rate between 3 and 5 percent is simply not borne out by the data because it never impacts, it never has symptomatic illness
For even a majority of the population, in fact, hasn't even in most places reached higher than 10 to 15 percent in any specific location where there was massive impact.
In the few small samples they have where it gets as high as 30 or 35 percent, most of the people end up asymptomatic.
Most of the people, like in the homeless shelter study and survey, do not end up with debilitating, disabling illness, do not end up dying, do not end up overfilling the morgues or anything like the doomsday predictions and forecasts that justified this massive power grab by politicians across the Western world and this complete suppression and shutdown of economic activity in civil society.
So it's just one more survey, one more study, documenting the same thing that has been increasingly evident now for two months.
Equally what they're finding is does social distancing really work?
What kind of social distancing works?
We'll be discussing tonight with Will Chamberlain where we'll likely agree on the legal standards that are supposed to apply when we're looking at the constitutionality of the course of conduct of any particular governor or mayor or other politician in the United States.
But it's also simply sound and sage public policy when considering sacrificing freedom for the perception or hope of security or safety.
What there should be is a compelling public interest And that compelling public interest must justify and warrant these specific remedies taken.
And those remedies taken by the state, by the politicians, by the power brokers, must be narrowly tailored to meet that compelling public interest.
So if there's alternative options available, they have to be looked at in consideration before simply taking the broadest stroke option available.
And in that context, the question is, and the question remains, to what extent does social distancing achieve the purported outcome of reducing the lethality rate of this disease?
To what degree does social distancing of the kind that's being instituted in the West, which is a kind that has never been instituted before this virus, which is a complete quarantine of the entire civil society, quarantining the healthy as well as the sick, Quarantining those who are known to be healthy and known to have cleared the test and not be infected, as well as those who may be infected or at high risk of exposure or vulnerability if they do get the disease.
Putting them all in the same basket and the assumption being mass house arrest being so critical, so essential, so necessary to achieve this dramatic reduction in this purported threat of massive lethality that it justified the kind of actions cities and states and counties have taken all across the country.
Well, the counter to that all the way through has been that historically these kind of flu-like, influenza-like viruses tend to most spread in close, confined quarters, with close continuous contact in confined quarters where the air is recirculated, where the people are next to each other in very close proximity on a constant daily basis for days and days at a time.
And that often that has been the only means of effective transmission of these kind of viruses.
And that thus being outside is simply not a high-risk activity.
Being even in very big public restaurants or stores or bars is not a high-risk activity.
That outside of true mass gatherings where there's close continuous contact in confined quarters, that as a whole that this virus simply does not present a meaningful high risk to warrant the complete suppression and shutdown of people's civil liberties and economic activities.
That has been the big question.
What kind of social distancing is necessary or required?
Those on the side saying, you know what, we really should only worry about the vulnerable, Those who are more susceptible to get the virus.
Those who, if they get the virus, are more susceptible to suffer debilitating or disabling illness.
Those who are most likely to need hospitalization.
Those most likely to need intensive care.
Those who are most at risk of mortality and death, premature death, excess death.
Because of this particular virus, that's who should be protected.
And the means of protection should focus heavily on reducing their close continuous contact in confined quarters with potential transmitters of the disease.
That has been the long argument of those asserting that the shutdown is excessive to the remedy, is not narrowly tailored to the public interest of reducing mortality and reducing hospitalization over capacity.
The counter argument has been that only mass shutdown would work, that in fact this disease could easily be transmitted in the air as much as it could be within close confined quarters, that public spaces present a comparable risk of exposure as close confined quarters do, that the random stranger interaction presents as much risk as days and days of close continuous contact does, and that asymptomatic people carry it and transmit it at a rate that has been unheard of in comparable diseases.
This has been sort of the argument that has been made to advance the shutdown.
Well, there is more data today that goes along the lines of what happened with the Diamond Princess, where 83% of the people, despite being on a disease-carrying ship, with disease-carrying chefs, with disease-carrying cleaners, in recycled, infected air, with a particularly vulnerable, susceptible population,
83% despite being in that environment, in that petri dish of pandemic spread, 83% never got infected even though they were there for three weeks in that setting.
Additionally, there's been not a lot of evidence that any of these kind of influenzas spread.
In fact, Fauci himself said, asymptomatic people rarely make a meaningful impact, as the other surveys and studies have said, for influenza-like viruses in spreading it and transmitting it to others.
That open-air public spaces generally are not at all high-risk places.
But we all of a sudden reversed all of that for this particular virus.
Well, today another study coming out of Rhode Island that most Rhode Island coronavirus deaths are related to nursing homes.
In fact, we're seeing this in more and more places.
Here we had a particularly vulnerable, susceptible population, elderly, many of whom have comorbid conditions, whether it's respiratory disease, kidney disease, heart disease, other forms of illness, diabetes, that presented them as a unique risk of this particular virus.
They were in a nursing home where they were expected to have close, continuous contact in confined quarters.
And instead of focusing on ways to avoid that risk, they locked people into the nursing home, didn't allow them to go outside the nursing home frequently, didn't allow them to go into the public in the ways they used to, didn't allow them to exercise publicly in the ways that they were originally allowed to, and in many cases not even allowing family to visit them across the window from outside when they're not even sharing the same air.
But it turns out that has been a counterproductive strategy as those people have disproportionately been the sources of COVID-19 deaths.
Similarly, there was a study out of Germany that looked at the issues, and what did it find?
It found that home outbreaks were the dominant category.
More than 80% of the COVID-19 deaths, that's how they were transmitted, at home, in close confined quarters where we are requiring everybody be.
Most home outbreaks involve three to five cases.
They could only find a single outbreak in an outdoor environment.
Almost all of the identified outbreaks, in fact all of the identified outbreaks of three or more cases, occurred in an indoor environment, which confirms that sharing indoor space Is the major COVID-19 infection risk.
Sharing indoor space.
Not being outdoors.
Not traveling in your car.
Not going to church services in your car.
Not exercising in the park.
Not playing t-ball with your kids.
None of those things.
All things that have led to people being arrested, or charged, or cited, or fined.
People that went to the church, went to Easter services in their own car issued fines, threats and warnings.
People that were weightlifting in their front yard issued warnings and threats.
People that were playing t-ball in the backyard with their daughter issued warnings and threats.
The various, as the meme goes, the various Karens of the world ratting out anybody who is simply walking down the street or going to the public park.
As we saw people that were paddleboarding being arrested in Malibu on the ocean, though they were doing it by themselves.
People running along the beach being chased after by police officers.
All of the evidence increasingly shows that like every other influenza virus, this virus's greatest infection risk is to people in close continuous contact in confined quarters.
Which is precisely what our shutdown is forcing everyone to do.
While at the same time not allowing them to do the things where they are at least at risk.
Which is running on the beach, which is walking in the park, which is playing with your kids in the backyard, which is doing whatever you want to do in the public activities and exercise in public space, which has always been good for both mental and physical health.
And yet right now it is being discouraged, deterred, and disallowed.
We see similar data on this coming from Canada.
What they looked at the Canadian data, they found there had been zero deaths in those 30 and younger throughout the entire province of Montreal, where Montreal is located, Quebec.
Just a handful of deaths between 30 and 60.
And only 230 intensive care units in a population of over 8 million.
And only 700 in regular hospital care in a population of over 8 million.
Once again, the hospitalization over capacity simply has not occurred.
Indeed, what did they find?
They found a huge percentage of deaths in serious cases are confined.
To nursing homes and long term care facilities.
And it was the very places we should have focused on.
Let's worry about protecting people that could be in close continuous contact in confined quarters that are elderly and vulnerable and susceptible both to getting this infection and to suffering debilitating.
Disabling and potential death in response to getting this infection.
We didn't focus anything on them.
There was no special protocols for them.
In fact, we said you're gonna have to stay inside.
You're gonna have to stay in those closed confined quarters.
You're gonna have to stay in continuous contact with the individuals you're connected to in there because you're interdependent upon them.
And we're not going to let you outside.
We're not going to let you with your family.
We're not going to let you do your regular physical activities.
We're not going to take any special protective precautionary actions because we're going to spend all of our resources shutting down all of civil society and shutting down the entire economy and worried about whether people are running on the beach, walking in the park, or trying to go to church on Easter Sunday in their own car.
Similar data, another study that came out today that goes into the same background questions and looked at what happened in China and elsewhere.
And once again, they found that home outbreaks were the dominant category.
That in fact, and then followed by transport.
Otherwise, the people that were out in the open, in restaurants and markets and cafes and factory floors, interacting with one on the street, shopping and other activities, they found very low to negligible to non-existent risk.
Whether they're looking at China, whether they're looking at Germany, whether they're looking at other countries around the world, whether they're looking at the United States and the data available to it, or whether they're looking to our northern neighbor in Canada.
Meanwhile, let's continue to look at what the economic consequences are.
And those consequences include the extraordinary pretext this has offered to provide a massive power grab by the Federal Reserve in ways that people are not fully monitoring and watching.
So while these various petty tyrants, who were once called sheriffs or mayors or governors, have asserted extraordinary king-like powers and monarchical authority across the country from Nevada to Michigan, What's happening in those local governments?
They're going broke.
Indeed, as this headline from The Hill says, far worse to come, COVID-19 collapse of state and local governments.
They're talking about how wages won't be paid, services won't be delivered, institutions will shut down abruptly.
Many state colleges may completely fold.
People have lost jobs, homes, savings, retirement incomes that may never return.
Owners of rental property can't pay.
Owners of other property can't pay property tax.
Sales tax is down.
Property tax is down.
State income tax is down.
All the means of revenue to support the everyday functioning of local government is disappearing and vanishing.
So what are they having to do?
They have two choices.
One is to slash budgets.
The other is to increase their municipal lending.
But who's going to lend money to someone that has even less ability to pay off that debt?
Well, that's why the Fed has announced that it is going into the municipal bond market.
And it's going to start buying municipal bonds.
What does that mean?
It means the Federal Reserve may own your town, may own your city, may own your county.
Heck, may even own your state when this is all said and done.
That means the Federal Reserve will get to dictate what policies your city, your county, your state will get to follow.
Not you, the voters.
Not you, the citizens.
Not you, the property taxpayers.
Instead, they'll decide what you should spend on schools, what you should spend on parks, what you should spend on roads, what you should spend on safety and security.
Look at what the IMF and the International Monetary Fund has done around the world to governments that default or go into debt there.
And what you'll see is elite driven banker driven governments that lead to things like what happened to Greece over the past half decade or so.
So that's the danger that we face as we have our electoral processes undermined by these petty tyrants ultimately in service of the big bankers and the financial elites and Wall Street and the Federal Reserve having more and more and more concentrated monopolized power.
Well, at the same time, because places like in cities like Detroit, supposed to be having an epidemic, supposed to be a next epicenter of the epidemic.
It's the excuse and the pretext for why it is that the Michigan is under their extreme shutdown order, which doesn't allow you to travel between residences, doesn't allow you to invite people outside of your household into your own home.
Doesn't allow you to go to a home of a friend or family member unless they're part of the same household.
Doesn't allow you to buy seeds at the local grocery store.
Doesn't allow you to buy an American flag at your local store.
Doesn't allow you to do a wide range of activities unless the governor unilaterally declares them essential activities.
Even activities that are declared essential as critical infrastructure, either under federal law or comparable state law, is not being considered essential in the state of Michigan.
Well, what's happening because of this economic shutdown, because of this cash crunch for local, city, county and state governments?
Well, the Detroit Medical Center, in the middle of this pandemic, supposed to be an epicenter, supposed to be making that they're supposed to have this hospital overcapacity problem.
But what's the Detroit Medical Center do?
It's furloughing people.
It's laying people off.
In fact, the Detroit Medical Center announced Wednesday, today, it will furlough at least 480 employees.
It announced that the stay-at-home orders forced multiple operations to either be temporarily closed or completely ramped down.
So, our medical care services are going to become less and less and less available in the name of protecting the health of the community?
Is this wise, sound policy to continue any further?
Was it ever?
Well, in the same context, we have what's going on in the federal markets and in the global markets.
In an article popularly entitled, Down the Rabbit Hole, the euro-dollar market is the matrix behind it all that you can find either at Rabobank or at Zero Hedge.
It goes into the huge structural pressures and the profound paradigm shift that is occurring reflected in swap lines for foreign currencies and in repo facilities.
Now the euro-dollar, what that is, is that's the U.S.
dollar.
outside of the United States.
That's all that really means.
And what it is, is you have a bunch of foreign companies, a bunch of foreign countries, a bunch of foreign banks that do all of their transactions, that have a lot of their debt, that have a lot of their trade denominated in the dollar.
And often they're putting massive pressure on the dollar.
And the problem is that a lot of these, there's not enough dollars in circulation to meet the demand and need for these economic transactions or debt.
If somebody calls it, it's like a classic bank run scenario.
If all of a sudden, all these foreign countries or all these foreign governments or all these foreign businesses or foreign banks suddenly had the need or in fear that they needed the dollars now in order to pay a debt or satisfy a trade obligation, there simply isn't enough dollars to meet it.
And they could completely crash the global economy due to the U.S. dollar being the reserve currency of the world.
So what is the Fed doing to deal with this?
The Fed is putting trillions and trillions of dollars into the swaps where basically a foreign bank can exchange its currency for the U.S.
dollar on favorable terms to help these foreign countries, foreign businesses, foreign corporations, and foreign banks get bailed out.
So you're going to have the Federal Reserve bailing out foreign countries and foreign banks and foreign businesses including potentially trillions of dollars to China and Chinese businesses and Chinese banks.
Does that make sense politically?
We're going to spend trillions and trillions of dollars to bail out the Chinese?
Well there's big talk.
From aspects of the conservative movement against China.
I don't think many of them recognize or realize what is happening behind the scenes and how the more consequential economic policy decision-making is happening at the Federal Reserve right now.
That's why I highly recommend this article.
It gives you information that's both accessible and actionable in terms of being able to understand what's happening.
You don't have to be an economics or currency expert to understand and get the basic core of what's taking place.
Ultimately, what could the net effect of all this be?
Well, let me give you some descriptions that are from the article.
Every import, bond, loan, credit guarantee, or derivative often needs to be settled in U.S.
dollars by banks and corporations around the world.
What could be the net effect of this?
The Federal Reserve could take over the entire global financial system by controlling the means by which everybody has their debt satisfied and their trade dealt with.
They could effectively, by printing more dollars, control not only your local government in the United States, but increasingly control foreign governments and foreign corporations around the world.
Basically, this could be the biggest power grabber of all.
Might not be the mayor of Los Angeles or the governor of Michigan.
It may instead be the Federal Reserve, which may have a degree of power and control unheard of.
This is happening while the Fed is buying up United States equities.
What are equities?
It's a fancy phrase for the stock in U.S.
corporations.
There also could be buying up mortgage-backed securities.
What does that mean?
That's the way your mortgage ends up being bought and sold under a legal principle called holder in due course to the Wall Street markets that led and precipitated the first crash in 2008.
So what we have is a situation where the Fed may own your home, at least the mortgage on your home.
The Fed may own every major U.S.
business and control your employment, control what products get produced.
The Fed may control your local city, county, and state government.
The Fed may control the entire foreign economic and banking structure if this keeps going unabated, unmitigated, unquestioned, and uncontested as it is currently.
Well, there's been some resistance and some pushback.
Today, there were protests in Michigan.
There's more protests planned in Pennsylvania.
Protests planned in Texas.
Protests planned across the country in resistance.
In fact, more and more people are forming groups called against excessive quarantine.
They could really just call it against quarantine period because the quarantine that's happening is not a quarantine.
It is mass house arrest.
But they're phrasing it in different ways for different groups, whether it's called Reopen Pennsylvania or Get Our Jobs Back or Against Excessive Quarantine in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Mass protests are forming all across the country.
Enough so that the four sheriffs in Pennsylvania, I'm sorry, four sheriffs in Michigan, decided that they were not going to enforce the unconstitutional orders being imposed By the petty tyrant, petty dictator, monarchical governor of Michigan, and who also imagines that she's going to be the next vice presidential nominee for either Biden or Cuomo, depending on who it ends up really being, depending on political circumstances.
Well, these four sheriffs issued a press release, and that press release said that the current framework of emergency laws are vague, obscure, and contradictory, and quote, only confuse Michigan citizens.
As a result, these four sheriffs committed that they will not have strict enforcement of these orders.
Indeed, these four sheriffs stood up to the constitutional oath that each of them took and said they would remain the, quote, the last line of defense in protecting your civil liberties, unquote.
They said their focus will be, and they believe the focus of the governors and the mayors and including the president, need to be on reopening our country, reopening our county, reopening our economy to promote jobs and civil society.
The anti-shutdown protest that is planned to take place in front of the state capitol building that did take place in Michigan today.
There's plans of it in Austin, in Texas potentially, depending on what the governor does this week.
There's also now an anti-shutdown protest planned to take place in front of the state capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Where Pennsylvanians against excessive quarantine have been adding thousands and thousands and thousands of members, just like the Michigans against excessive quarantine have been adding thousands and thousands and thousands of members.
And you're seeing cities, counties, states form their own organization against excessive quarantine to take a lead in that capacity across the country.
Just as you're seeing more lawyers bring more suits, more civil rights cases, more challenges to these constitutionally questionable and constitutionally dubious orders.
And in this context, people have evaluated what we're going to be talking about in the bottom half of the hour, which is what should be the next objective of the President of the United States?
Should it be to encourage, incentivize, and reward those governors, mayors that reopen their economies and civil societies?
Or should it be to continue down a path of shutdown?
We'll be debating that with Will Chamberlain.
As one article today from Angela Kudvilla pointed out, the integrity of the numbers regarding infections and deaths remain in doubt and in question, so we should always be skeptical of those who wish to us to surrender our goods and freedoms in exchange for salvation by the state.
There's a long and notorious and dubious history of the state when it makes that challenge that it gives to us.
And then increasingly, as he points out, many of the decisions made, many of the policies enacted, many of the proposals propounded simply appear to be those who hold positions of power Exercising their purported authority in excess of that explicit authority, express authority, to please themselves or to act out their dreams of power.
And who is particularly happy about his dream of power right now?
Well, in the next hour, we'll talk about him in greater detail.
But that would be, meet the world's most powerful doctor.
According to Politico Europe, that man is Bill Gates, who has neither a college degree nor a medical degree.
It goes into detail about how Gates' priorities have become the World Health Organization's priorities.
Is it any surprise then that Bill Gates was critical of President Trump today for attempting to defund the World Health Organization?
That increasingly people have noted that you have to be allied with Bill Gates in order to get any public health policy done.
Should Bill Gates really be dictating and determining the future of our policies?
Well, we'll be debating that and more with Will Chamberlain, the publisher of Human Events, when we come back in the next bottom half of the hour.
So come back and join us then to listen to the debate, the dialogue, and the discussion about what next the president should do.
British are coming.
The British are coming.
You are about to be marked down on the great debate.
And one, all, that's where.
America first.
And the top, what's your country?
A surreal sight here in Lansing, Michigan right now, our capital city.
We are right outside the Capitol building where the governor's office is located.
These folks out here are wanting to express their displeasure.
They're disdain with the governor's stay-at-home orders that have shuttered businesses all across the state and put a number of people, a lot of people, out of work.
Ma'am, can you tell me, why did you come out here today?
I'm a state representative from the 102nd District, and I'm just here to support my people.
I have a lot of constituents down here right now.
And what are your constituents telling you?
Pardon?
What are your constituents telling you?
They want to go back to work.
If they can't access the website to get the benefits, then they want to go back to work.
And when nobody's suggesting we just go willy-nilly, go back to work, we're recommending we adopt the size of the federal guidelines and do it safely.
My name is Joseph Dixon and I came out here to support the Michigan businesses and stand up for the rights of our fellow Michiganders and we believe that the governor has overreached and overstepped her rights with our freedoms.
Are you concerned about this virus?
I was in the beginning until I've done my research and found out the realities and the media's overreach on it, and that it's not as serious as they made it out to be.
And that's why I am here, because I feel that they are overreaching, overreacting, and crushing our small businesses, crushing our economy.
But that's going too far.
That is close to totalitarian kind of stuff.
I hope Whitmer understands that she's not just going to be able to rule Michigan like other politicians rule, you know, China or something like that.
You know, we're going to take our liberties and we're going to keep them and we're going to fight for them.
And what brought me out here is I'm a small business owner and she's putting me out of business.
What type of business do you own?
I own a painting company.
What would be your message if the governor is listening?
To listen to the people.
We have common sense.
We're not children.
But until this virus runs its course, it's going to stay here.
And all we're doing is hiding from it.
Operation Gridlock is underway and we are in the middle of it.
Take a look.
We've got three lanes of traffic right now on Capitol.
In front of the Capitol, people have lined up in their cars.
They've come from all over the state.
With the governor and the stay-at-home order, they say that they're ready for this order to be lifted.
They want to get back to work.
They want to get back to doing things that they love, like fishing and golfing.
We saw a couple people who had boats.
And take a look, the number of people goes down the block.
People have been honking and gathering since about 9 o'clock this morning.
The official protest just getting underway here.
The Capitol steps, the scene of a protest.
The whole idea here was that folks would stay in their car and participate in this gridlock, but We've seen a lot of folks who are saying they're not doing that.
They're here.
They're on the Capitol steps staging a more traditional protest here in front of the Capitol building in Lansing.
I want to show you one of the larger displays here.
A huge sign that is out in the Capitol lawn.
It says security without liberty is called prison.
And a crowd of hundreds of people who are gathered here on the Capitol steps.
A number of them have signs.
One here in the foreground says, Recall Whitmer Now.
We see a number of American flags.
A lot of those red Make America Great Again hats.
Folks certainly having a political feeling that goes associated with this situation.
It's quite the sight here on the Capitol steps.
It's cold.
It has been snowy.
But it's not tempered down the spirit and the feeling that these folks have about letting their voices be heard.
Welcome back to American Countdown.
Privileged to have with us tonight to debate the issue of what the President's next steps should be, what the steps of various governors and mayors as well should be, in terms of whether we should continue the shutdown, continue something in between what we have now and a completely reopening of civil society and the economy, or just reopen America.
Tonight to debate these issues with us is Will Chamberlain.
Will Chamberlain is a very well-regarded and highly intelligent and very skilled lawyer who left the practice of law to do things like start republishing and revitalize publications like Human Events, which was one an old, established, iconoclastic, independent, intellectual, conservative publication from often a populist nationalist perspective that challenged conventional wisdom of the National Review kind.
Will has continued that while being the publisher of National Review, publishing some of the best articles and some of the most independent, thoughtful articles out there.
Not simply sort of clickbait pop art articles, but articles with depth, articles that are well edited, articles that are well substantiated and well evidenced.
You can follow Will, you can either go to the, you can join, there's a 1776 club effectively, which Will will describe later, that you can join at humanevents.com.
Thanks for having me, Robert.
Hello, Will, at Will Chamberlain, that's C-H-A-M-B-E-R-L-A-I-N on Twitter, where he has a very popular Twitter feed.
And he's also often on Periscope and Periscopes Daily.
Now, this is a particular issue where Will and I have been a little bit on different sides of the perspective.
We have issues where we agree, areas where we don't agree.
And so that's what I wanted to discuss and debate it tonight.
And he was willing and game to do so.
So, Will, glad you could be on.
Thanks for having me, Robert.
Always a pleasure.
Now, Will, I was going to give you like just sort of a five-minute sort of opening statement.
If you were sitting in the Oval Office, you're talking to President Trump, what would be your pitch to him as to what he should do sort of near short term and maybe over the next several months in terms of what public policy should he encourage and support?
Where should his focus be?
All right.
So in short, his focus should be on beating the virus.
There's a kind of misconception that's going around in conservative media that there's this tradeoff between public health interventions and the economy.
In reality, public health interventions are actually good for the economy.
It's a pandemic that hurts the economy.
And I think There's one particular piece of evidence I'll highlight that you retweeted today.
You retweeted an article from Fox News about a staffing shortage at a Delaware chicken plant that's forcing chicken growers, or chicken growers I guess that's right, to dispose of millions of chickens unnecessarily.
That's not a product of a policy that's saying that these plants need to close.
Those are essential plants.
They're part of the food supply.
But rather, they're having to dispose of all these chickens because people aren't showing up to work, because they're scared.
Pandemics are very, very bad for the economy because they hurt the ability, they reduce the likelihood that people want to go to work because they're scared of getting the disease.
They massively reduce demand.
Uh, because people don't want to go to bars and restaurants.
And so the way to get the economy back is to beat the pandemic.
Um, and so that's where I think the president's focus should be, right?
Like rather than saying we got to get the economy back, we got to get the economy back.
You say we have to get the economy back safely.
We must beat the pandemic because if we do not, the economy will come down with it.
The economy is not an Aztec blood god.
We don't sacrifice lives to it and make it run better.
People won't go to work and people won't consume.
So that's point one.
Point two, I think, that I would make to the president is that this is still a very, very serious disease.
There's been a lot of talk about statistics and models, but let's just start with what's happened in the past six weeks.
25,000 Americans have died in the last six weeks, basically, of coronavirus.
And that is greater than some flu seasons generally, and that is despite one of the most massive collective public health measures taken by the American people since 1918.
This is a very, very serious disease that causes serious pneumonia in people all the way down to their 40s.
Just because it is primarily fatal among people above 65 doesn't mean it doesn't cause serious damage among people in their 40s.
You might know David Latt, the head of Above the Law, a prominent legal blog, a guy with asthma in his 40s in New York, and a prominent Twitter commentator who was on a ventilator for about a week.
It still has serious, serious damage.
This is a very, very serious, very contagious virus that if we don't make sure that it is contained, if we don't make sure that we are able to open safely, could very quickly overload healthcare systems if there is another outbreak.
And third, I kind of want to hit on, I guess this isn't so much for the President, but I do want to hit on this constitutional point because it came up a lot in your earlier presentation.
The idea that this is an area where state governments have to tread lightly, like it were First Amendment law, where you have to have a compelling governmental interest that's narrowly tailored.
That's just not actually the constitutional framework for public health interventions.
That's set by a case called Jacobson, Massachusetts, which instead is much, much more permissive, allows for state governments to act so long as what they're doing has a reasonable relation to public health problems.
And is not just appalling and beyond the pale and an unreasonable violation of rights.
And that's the justification for why just recently the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Texas's decision to ban certain abortion procedures in the state of Texas in order to preserve I mean, under current constitutional law, there's obviously a right to an abortion, but the federal government said because it's a public health emergency, the state of Texas is allowed to ban these procedures to preserve equipment.
So is it your understanding that under current constitutional law, the courts could affirm and approve, mayors and governors, whatever they're doing, as long as they're doing it in the name of public health and it has a reasonable relationship to that public health need?
Do I understand you correctly?
I'll pull up the quote from the case that I think is actually pretty right on.
This is essentially when the Supreme Court said in Jacobson, and this is still good law, that the courts can intervene.
If a statute purporting to have been enacted to protect the public health, the public morals, the public safety has no real or substantial relation to those objects or is beyond all question a plain palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.
And I mean, that's like those are the situations in which you they can overturn public health interventions.
And that's why I mean, the Supreme Court affirmed quarantines in a case called Company Frances.
They affirmed in this case, Jacobson, they affirm mandatory vaccination laws.
We haven't had a lot of quarantine cases in the last hundred years because we haven't had anything resembling what happened in the Spanish flu.
But that doesn't mean that the case law isn't pretty clear on this question.
Do you think that should be the case law?
In other words, if the Supreme Court is reevaluating this in the modern environment and looking at it in the context in which a lot of this sort of recent strict scrutiny analysis that we're talking about, compelling public interest, things being narrowly tailored if it's a core constitutional freedom at risk, is really within the last 50 to 60 years.
That a lot of that wasn't really there as much in the 19th century or even early part of the 20th century.
Do you think that's the right law?
In other words, if you're on the Supreme Court, do you think, yes, I like that?
Or do you think the standards should be higher?
No, I mean, I think that's right.
I think in a public health emergency, the court's intervening is really dicey for a few reasons.
One is the speed at which these actions have to be taken.
Right.
I mean, think about something like coronavirus.
I mean, this is three months ago.
There were no deaths in the United States.
Now there are 20,000.
These things move very quickly and require a sort of rapid response that courts are ill-equipped to handle.
Courts are also not well-staffed.
I mean, if you've worked for a federal judge or you've done any clerking, you know they've got four employees, basically.
I mean, they're supposed to evaluate the decision-making of executive branch officials and entire agencies in the very, very short amount of time when the consequences of those decisions can be dramatic in terms of, you know, the contagiousness or spread of an epidemic disease.
So I think the reason that the standard is there is both in terms of the general idea that, you know, government should have more leniency in an emergency and also the real, I guess, the way to think about it, the impotence of courts in the context of an emergency to effectively figure out what policies the government should put in place.
And so it says, like, unless things are completely unrelated to public health, Or, you know, beyond question a ridiculous violation of rights, then they're going to be allowed in a public health emergency.
Now, and it sounds like a lot of that criticism is more directed at the capacity of the judicial branch to effectively handle these kind of issues.
So let's say you were advising a mayor or governor.
Should they look in that same light?
Should they say, hey, as long as it's reasonably related, if public health requires it in my view, I should be able to do it, even if it isn't necessarily the most narrowly tailored remedy, and even if I don't have a compelling interest behind doing it.
Well, so, I mean, there's what's legal and what's wise, or what's constitutional is what's wise.
As Scalia said, you know, he wanted to have the stamp that said stupid but constitutional for so many laws.
So, when we're getting to the question of what, you know, what states and local governments should do, I think, you know, the answer there is going to depend on the location and the severity of the epidemic.
I think there was a framework that leaked at the Washington Post today that was actually pretty reasonable that said if you really don't have many cases in your area and your hospitals aren't even close to the capacity and there's not really evidence that you're anywhere near an outbreak, then you can open things up a little bit and get people back to work.
I think they should be doing that with things like mandatory mask laws.
They should be doing that with, you know, making sure that they've got enough testing to make sure that they have an outbreak.
They should be doing that alongside measures to make sure that you're continuing to increase hospital capacity just as insurance against a potential outbreak.
Um, but that it does it does make sense that on May 1st or even slightly before in certain places, I mean, I'm thinking very rural like places you could have an open up economy, but in major urban centers, especially like especially places like where you're sort of not seeing declines in cases yet.
Obviously, New York cannot open up.
New York has to get control of its epidemic.
But even places like, I don't know, Chicago, Miami, other urban centers, they have to be really careful.
They need to focus on beating the pandemic.
Because if you don't beat the pandemic, you not only have a massive crunch on your hospital system, you also have the economic problems that you are nominally trying to solve by releasing these social distancing measures.
Now what would you say to those people that the idea that there is effectively a public health or virus exception to the Bill of Rights, they find that more frightening than they find the pandemic?
What would be your response to them?
It's not that frightening.
I think that when it comes to a quarantine, most people understand that sometimes really traumatic measures are needed to solve public health.
That's why we have a whole framework of emergency laws in the first place that allow the executive branch in many states to do more than they would otherwise do.
in a public health emergency.
And I think, you know, across the world, and it's not just in authoritarian countries, across the world in all sorts of democratic countries, you know, Hungary, I mean, you name it, there is a larger array of powers available to the executive.
And again, you want them to be able to do things because of the speed at which actions need to be taken to be relevant, you know, assuming Let's put aside the question of whether or not this is super contagious and would lead to an outbreak, but just assume for this question that it is very contagious.
Do you want a court just randomly sitting to be able to stop a quarantine order for, you know, because it's not narrowly tailored, and then have, you know, put an injunction on it for a week when that week might be the crucial week that prevents the thing from kind of hitting escape velocity?
Like, that's the kind of thing where I think, you know, as long as we understand that we have, we are still operating under the rule of law, that these things only are available in the times of actual public health emergency, not just broadly, but a public health emergency, Um, then I think, you know, that's, that's how law can kind of sort of constrain to at least some degree the use of emergency powers.
Now, and what about the, do you think there still should be some restraint or that some governors or mayors have exceeded their powers or exceeded the necessity, the public health necessity for some of their conduct so far?
Yeah, I mean, I think the obvious example of that is the Greenville, Mississippi mayor who banned drive-in church services.
That's clearly, I mean, one, church services were marked as an essential business or essential industry under Mississippi's executive order.
But also, I mean, there's just no relationship.
I mean, if they're following CDC guidelines and maintaining social distancing, there's no reason to do that.
And at that point, then you're just treating a religious institution differently than you're treating all other institutions, which, you know, means that's really very, very clearly unconstitutional.
And that's why, if you read the Department of Justice, the Department of Justice intervened in that Mississippi case.
They filed a statement of interest.
And what they said was, look, Jacobson is good law.
I mean, you generally, states have a lot of flexibility to enact public health measures.
But if it has no reasonable relationship to public health and it's discriminatory towards religion, then it's not kosher.
Now, and do you think, like my argument has been that any exercise of constitutional activity should be seen as essential activity.
Now, you may have to engage in that essential activity within the social distancing protocols, but what do you think about that?
Do you think that we would be better off if the governors and mayors would be saying, if you're exercising constitutional rights, we're going to call that essential activities, while still imposing social distancing requirements and how that's done?
I mean, I think it's just generally a bad look and unwise to arrest people who are protesting the public health measures for public health reasons, right?
That seems like you don't want to have to do that.
You should politely encourage people to spread out if they're gathering at a protest, right?
Like rather than ban protesters.
We don't do that.
This is the United States of America.
But that said, I think Generally, the point of Jacobson in its line of cases is that things that are obviously legal and the government could not stop or could not interfere with in normal periods, it can interfere with a public health emergency, right?
Like under normal circumstances, the government can't force you to stay in your home.
You know, it can't.
But in a public health emergency, when the public health and safety depends on it, I mean, they don't want to be intervening in those decisions.
And I think that that's the right answer.
We want our government to have the capability to address public health crises so long as that power is constrained in terms of duration within the time for the emergency and by some court check at the end to prevent against truly unreasonable or truly aggressively appalling actions.
Now what about those who look back at cases like Korematsu and say that when we have granted the executive branch carte blanche in the field of whether it's wartime powers or emergency powers, there's just been too much of a natural inclination for them to misuse that power, often prey on the fear of the public in ways that lead to actions that at least later the legal system regrets ever occurred.
What would be your answer to those people worried about that?
And do you think Korematsu was a wrongly decided decision?
I think Korematsu was wrongly decided, although I haven't really thought about it in the context of emergency laws more generally.
I think that, you know, in the context of quarantines and public health, there's already some guardrails against things like racially discriminatory health policies.
For example, there's a case, I don't remember the name, Wong Wai, I forget exactly, but it's a case where the city of San Francisco put in place a law that said Chinese residents have to get tested for the bubonic plague.
And the Supreme Court said, or some courts said, no, no, no, no, no, that's racially discriminatory.
And that's back 100 years ago.
This is this is not a new case.
This was a bubonic plague.
Right.
That's not a not a new disease.
And so I think that especially in the context of public health, there's this limitation.
And also, there is this fundamental constraint on the executive that is popular will, popular uprising.
This is a country with 200 million guns.
It's a country of very independent-minded people.
Even to the extent the executive is not constrained by the legislature or the courts that much in a public health emergency, they're constrained by public opinion.
And I think there's a reason that you've basically seen a nearly uniform response, maybe like one or two countries accepted like Sweden, across the Western world to this disease is because the publics in almost every country are demanding aggressive measures.
I mean, if you look at the polling in the United States, just a poll that came out in Morning Consult today, something like 81% of the public says, you know, Trump should be focusing on keeping social distancing measures to prevent the spread, and only 10% of the American public thinks we should open up the economy if it risks spreading the virus more.
I'm not sure if I'm framing that exactly right, but it's something close to that, and that's pretty consistent.
The Economist YouGov poll is similarly dramatic.
So what you're seeing here is, you know, the public's generally going to want to see these quarantine measures.
And that also is relevant when it comes to the economy, because if 80% of the public wants social distancing and Trump lifts those social distancing measures, the public's still going to social distance on their own, and it's not going to bring the economy back.
And we can go to that sort of question as a separate issue because I see that as sort of a mindset question as opposed to a policy or constitutional law question.
But looking at it from that framework, the degree to which it seems to me that during it that I get nervous when I see a lot of people in power make uniform decisions rashly and quickly.
Without the sort of methodologies of either tricameral governmental interaction in a meaningful manner, we're not really having legislation here for the most part.
We're not having much judicial branch involvement for the most part.
We're not having much public consent in elections for the most part.
What we're having is just executive officials asserting power very quickly, coming to quick decisions, often summarily reversing themselves within weeks, days or months.
As is the case with masks.
Once we're not supposed to get them.
Now we have to get them.
To me, why shouldn't I?
Why should we be concerned that when there's that kind of collective rush to judgment by elite people in positions of power and moral hysteria and moral panic in the public?
I don't see that as evidence to have more confidence in the decisions.
I see that as more evidence and more reason to be skeptical and demand further investigation and cross-examination, if you will, of those ideas.
I mean, to me, that's the cost of having the energetic executive that Hamilton put in the Constitution and explained why he put it in there in the Federalist Papers, right?
Sometimes they will get things wrong, but when it comes to crises, you need speed and speed has its own value.
I think that even whether make mistakes, we live in maybe the most democratic administration that's ever existed because the Trump administration pays attention to what we say on social media.
And as a result, we're able to influence the president and change his mind.
When we come back, we'll wrap up with Will with a few other questions and other issues and debate as this discussion goes on.
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Welcome back to American Countdown.
As we continue our discussion with Will Chamberlain, you can find the publication that he helped revitalize at www.humanevents.com.
They have people who join, who are monthly members, who can be part of Discord conversations to discuss issues like this and others.
In addition, you can find him on Twitter at Will Chamberlain, C-H-A-M-B-E-R-L-A-I-N.
Where you can have him, see him engage in this debate and discussion with Candace Owens and a few others of lately on these questions and issues.
So let me ask you, Will, if the standard was narrowly tailored, presumably, let's just assume that for whatever reason happens, the court says that or that just is the case.
Do you think the measurements that have been taken would meet that constitutional standard?
No, I don't think that, but that's because, I mean, narrowly tailored is part of what's called strict scrutiny and almost no measure survives strict scrutiny, right?
So, I mean, I would assume that if you applied the narrowly tailored standard, the strict scrutiny standard to these quarantines, Obviously, they're not narrowly tailored, but to make a quarantine narrowly tailored in the manner you would need to to pass normal First Amendment muster, you'd have to basically spend two weeks formulating the policy to target it super, super precisely, because that's what the government generally demands when you're discriminating on the basis of race or infringing on someone's content-based speech right.
It's really hard to get past strict scrutiny, so quarantines wouldn't pass muster.
And in terms of moving forward, what do you think the president is likely to actually do over not only the near short term, but sort of between now and election time?
I mean, I think he's going to try and open the economy safely.
I think that he's, in a sense, bound by public opinion and how quickly the results of what you do with this policy end up manifesting themselves.
And basically, like, there were so many countries thinking about doing different things in the context of coronavirus maybe a month ago, right?
Britain was going to do herd immunity.
Other countries were doing full lockdowns.
And now a month later, everyone's doing lockdowns except Sweden, and we'll see how they do, right?
But the point being that this is one of those cases where the right answer seems to be everybody sort of seems to agree on the right answer, at least in the short term.
And I think ultimately, the president will be very reluctant to go against the advice of his public health advisors, especially with state governors being able to say, like, no, it's a bad idea for us to reopen the economy.
I'm going to stand up to the president and protect the public health of my citizens.
Like, he doesn't want to be in that battle.
It's bad optics for him.
So, you know, he will want to reopen the economy, but safely.
I think that he'll basically continue following the advice of the public health experts.
Do you think at this point, given the data and information we now have, that at least some parts of the country reopening make sense from a policy perspective?
I mean, a very small number.
I mean, very rural states, places like North Dakota, Montana.
I don't think they have a huge amount to worry about if they reopened, whatever that meant.
But I think I think ultimately, in terms of the economic benefit, again, whether or not you have government policy officially reopen or not, the question is whether or not there is a pandemic spreading in your state and whether you've effectively dealt with it.
And so long as there's a pandemic spreading, you will have economic problems regardless of what the government is doing or what rules the government's putting in place about social interaction.
Uh, because people will be scared and they won't go to work and they won't go out and buy things.
So, you know, for President Trump and for every local and state governor, the answer to making the economy work is solve the pandemic, beat the virus.
Now what about the contrarian counter example of Sweden?
That people seem to still be, there's not, I mean there's some social distancing but they're not shutting down their economy.
Most people are still participating in their society and their economy out publicly.
They have not had the dramatic rise in deaths or other, whether it's ICU or hospitalization rates that some skeptics were concerned they would have because they chose not to shut down.
What is your explanation for the Sweden example?
Do you think it's unique to Sweden?
Or do you think there's lessons we could learn there in terms of our own policies?
I mean, if you actually look at, there's an interesting stat that I saw today about movie theater receipts in Sweden.
I mean, they're down like 95% or almost 99%.
And that's despite no rule saying that they can't be open.
What I think Sweden suggests is that in Sweden, they can expect their population to social distance without social distancing laws or directives.
I don't think it necessarily demonstrates that.
The ideas of shelter-in-place orders broadly are a bad idea.
We'll see how it goes, but if you end up in Sweden seeing both a lot of economic activity, well disproportionate to what we're seeing in areas where we're banning things, And no spread, then you might say, OK, maybe we got this wrong.
But it's not a gamble, I think, that we should be taking ex ante.
I think that, again, this is an asymmetrical situation.
Think about how much Americans have cared about health care access and health care costs over the past decade.
It's driven our politics.
And now think about how Americans would react if they couldn't even access health care.
And that happened in Northern Italy.
And we stopped it from happening here, in my judgment, because we put in place these measures.
But the consequences of that would be dramatic, both for our politics, for President Trump in the election in November, and for our economy broadly.
I think President Trump is right to get out in front of this thing and make sure that it doesn't blow up.
What about those that are concerned that the consequences from these policies, in terms of the economic shutdown, it's now starting to impact hospitals and private practices and the medical care industry, as well as other places, that, you know, depression tends to rise, people that are too socially isolated, various mental health problems can arise.
What about the concern that there hasn't been as much focus on the sort of metrics, if you will, of harm to the quality of life and even to the quantity of life for those people from the consequences of broad shutdown policies?
Okay, so I guess two parts to that answer.
I think first, you're right that there needs to be more of a focus on things like mental health, especially with quarantines and shelter-in-place orders.
I think we need to be thinking hard about how to make sure that we're accounting for that, especially in places where people can't leave their houses, can't get outside.
That's a big problem and also a reason to be a little more lax when it comes to things like going to parks.
and going exercise.
Apparently, obesity is a really big comorbidity with COVID-19, so we should be thinking exercise is probably okay.
We should be stimulating that.
But when it comes to broadly saying the economic measures and whether or not those are trading off with, or public health measures are trading off with the economy, again, I think the big thing to keep in mind is that it's the pandemic that hurts the economy, not the public health measures.
And there's a good study by the NBER done about what happened in the Spanish flu pandemic.
We don't have the same statistics we have back then, we have now, rather, in terms of great unemployment metrics.
But in general, it looked like the states that put in place measures first had less economic damage from Spanish flu.
They had more employment, more productivity, And I mean, that's just intuitive.
I mean, the Spanish flu was devastating.
It killed people's willingness to go to work.
It scared the hell out of people.
And it killed people that would have been in jobs.
And that's, you know, ending a pandemic is the best way to bring back the confidence necessary to get the economy back moving.
But what if the response to the pandemic is more public panic than it is an actual health emergency?
What if that turns out to be the case?
Does that mean, wouldn't that then the shutdown or the continued focus on the dangers of the pandemic actually highlight the problem rather than create a solution?
So I think that the, you know, when we actually see statistics that just turn, make it into a nothing burger, then you're like, okay, well, fine.
It is a nothing burger, but that's just, that's not COVID-19.
I mean, the numbers are real.
25,000 Americans are dead.
650,000 have the disease here.
And again, remember, I mean, when, you know, a month ago, those numbers were trivial.
I mean, all you have to do is look at the stats.
I mean, we're talking a month ago is what, March 14th?
You know, we had 2,600 confirmed cases.
And how many deaths did we have a month ago? 57.
I mean, and now we have 25,000 and 650,000.
This was a real pandemic.
It's a real problem.
This isn't the flu.
It's a lot more serious than H1N1, which everybody was comparing it to.
We already have, in six weeks, doubled the number of deaths in America that we had from H1N1.
And that's despite, again, these immense social distancing measures.
So, you know, if it were fake, then yes, the economic measures would be more costly than they are worth.
But ex ante, you know, the people who said we needed to get these measures in place were right, given the disease's severity.
And since it is severe, the right answer is to focus first on beating the virus.
Now do you have any concern about how the numbers are being counted?
In other words there appears to be incentive and effectively for hospitals and hospital administrators to identify something as COVID-19 even if otherwise in another context they would not.
And it seems to me that I mean one of the stats that you put out was the increase in the excess death rate mortality rate in New York City.
It seems to me that's a better metric.
Than the COVID-19 attributed deaths, given the controversy over how they're being attributed currently.
And that's on both sides.
There are people who think there's more COVID-19 deaths that are being reported, recorded.
There's studies out of Italy in that regard.
Studies now in the United States in that regard.
I'm on the other side of the aisle.
I think they're being inflated.
But either way, I think, shouldn't the best metric be, how much do we have more mortality and a higher excess death rate than we otherwise normally would expect?
I think, generally speaking, where you have an out, it's like there's going to be different, there's going to be noise on both sides, right?
I think all-cause mortality is really valuable, especially in places where you've had an outbreak, right?
Like, obviously in a place like Bergamo, which has seen, has saw dramatically more deaths in a short time period than they did in previous equivalent years, or New York City, you're going to see that.
In other places, you might say, well, there hasn't been that much of an outbreak, and we're actually seeing a decline, and you should expect a decline, right?
In Hong Kong, for example, when they put in place these social distancing measures, they didn't just crush the coronavirus, they crushed the flu, too, right?
All the work we're doing to reduce the R0, the spread rate of coronavirus, is really also reducing the spread of other respiratory diseases, too.
So you're seeing declines in mortality that are coming from other things as well.
But I think in general, like, all-cause mortality does avoid the problem of figuring out which deaths were coronavirus and which deaths weren't.
And so it can be helpful in that regard.
I think you just have to kind of like take a nuanced look at all these statistics, understand that there are incentives going both ways.
They may have an incentive to call somebody a COVID-19 death, but then they may not be counting it because if somebody died at home, they might never had enough of a test.
I mean, when you I think I generally like I'm not a model guy as much as people, you know, want to assert that I am in predicting millions of deaths.
I just my basic way of approaching this was.
Very, you know, rooted in sort of Nassim Taleb's asymmetry.
We know that this can cause unacceptable outcomes.
We saw an unacceptable outcome in Northern Italy where, you know, military trucks are taking away the corpses of the elderly, and there are 20 pages of obituaries.
Like, that's not okay.
That shouldn't happen in America.
And, you know, my view is we take the precautions necessary to prevent that outcome, and doing so ultimately is the right answer for the economy too, because unless we rule that out, the economy ain't coming back, regardless of what the government does.
But what if the asymmetric risk in this context is the political loss of constitutional liberties that haven't happened in two centuries and the collapse of the economy because those presuming it's going to bounce back turn out to be incorrect?
What if that's really the black swan?
The black swan is our policy response to the pandemic rather than the pandemic itself.
Well, I mean, the loss of liberties, if you want to call it that, I mean, that's been good constitutional law since 1905, and arguably since 1824 in Gibbons v. Ogden, when Justice Marshall affirmed that state quarantines were obviously constitutional.
I think that I don't believe that there's a permanent loss of liberties entailed in allowing the government to take aggressive public health measures.
They took many of these measures, state and local governments took many of these measures in the 1918 Spanish flu, closing businesses, stopping gatherings.
And when you have pandemics, it's the kind of once in a generation exception to the normal way things work and the normal operation of our Bill of Rights.
But when it comes to the economy, I take the point of those who say an 18-month shutdown would be so dramatically bad for the economy that it would itself have these things that you should say, these outcomes that are totally unacceptable.
And I think that's right.
But I haven't seen people explain a clear Causal link or explain how a six-week to eight-week shutdown could lead to the kind of economic damage that would be, you know, that would resemble a Great Depression or that, you know, people wouldn't come back.
And I mean, remember, like, the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu was followed by the Roaring Twenties, despite, you know, the very serious economic costs that obviously that pandemic that killed a huge number of Americans, 30 million worldwide, entailed.
I think that this is not, you know, a massive poor allocation within the economy of resources the way, you know, the 2009 housing crisis was or, you know, a massive stock market bubble and complete government ineptness from the Great Depression.
I think we're looking at something that's more temporary and really event focused on defeating this pandemic.
So as I see it, your position sort of has three empirical assumptions behind it.
One is that the pandemic is real, though the risk is uncertain.
But it has an asymmetric risk that means we have to pay particular attention to it.
The other is that the economy is likely to rebound.
Or in a meaningful manner and not have sort of like an L recovery, which basically is a non-recovery like the post-2008 where we're sort of flat almost for five or six years.
And third, that the suspension of liberties is temporary and necessary and won't pose a long-term institutional risk to the Constitutional Republic.
Is that a fair description of the predicated assumptions of your position?
Well, I mean, there's also part four, which is as long as there is a pandemic, you don't get economic demand generally.
The basic core, the way I look at this is that there is not a trade-off between public health interventions and the economy if there is an actual pandemic, right?
The pandemic is causing the economic downturn.
Public health interventions to stop the pandemic are economically good.
Right, the assumption is now, what about for those that say you could take the Chinese model, which is to say the pandemic's over, whether they're lying about it or not to their own population or not, but you could get the economy restored rather quickly, because I think they're up to about 90-95% capacity currently in terms of what's happening at their ports, what's happening in their exports.
What about that counter to the argument that this is necessary reaction to the public panic to the pandemic?
That there's ways to fix that without adopting these shutdown policies.
Right.
Well, so, I mean, understand, like, China's shutdown, it's, I mean, you know, I don't know if you've read that piece or familiar with the sort of phrase, the hammer and the dance, the idea that you have this dramatic lockdown for a short period and then you sort of try and manage it with a little more gracefully.
The first point is that it's pretty clear China's hammer, China's lockdown was much more aggressive than ours.
They had rules that said only one person is allowed to leave the house.
You had to present a paper at the grocery store that you were the assigned person.
You could only go to the grocery store.
You know, there wasn't any of this running exception.
And there are those videos of them barring people in their houses.
And also, there was mandatory mask wearing for much longer, etc.
Assuming that the Chinese statistics are true, one would assume that that could be attributed to their much more aggressive public health measures, given that they have much less respect for individual liberties than we do.
And then second, that's saying that we do take into account the Chinese statistics and think they're accurate.
I don't really know.
I don't have a strong view.
I've had smart people in my mentions saying that the Chinese statistics are BS and the Chinese statistics are right.
And I don't feel equipped to say which side of that is right.
But I think that in either case, we can't rely on the Chinese model because our lockdown was not nearly as aggressive.
And we've seen, despite so much more of our social distancing, that it hasn't had the same impact as the Chinese claim to have had.
And there are reasons to think that that's because we couldn't do anything nearly as aggressive because we respect people.
In the bottom half of the hour, we're going to take your call so people can call in.
We're going to wrap up with Will here in a few minutes.
But you can call in at 877-789-2539.
That's 877-789-2539.
Or call internationally.
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That's 877-789-2539.
Or call internationally, one, your country code, 512-646-1776. 1-512-646-1776.
So aside from sort of the empirical assumptions and certain values, it seems like there are also different value judgments in play in these controversies.
In other words, that for some people, that particularly if a lot of people are going to socially distance anyway, that why have the government take away individual choice for that 5%, 10%, 20% that wants to either stay open economically Participate in civil society, engage in religious services the way they want to.
Why should we take away their choice if it's not even medically necessary to really do so?
I mean, there's there's a few reasons.
One is precaution.
You want to make sure that you're stopping the virus and you don't want to, you know, especially if that's like if you want to suppress it.
So you think that that can reopen it without anybody getting it and really do test and trace, then you want to eliminate that 5% that's spreading it to.
Two, there's a sort of free rider issue there where it's like, you know, the there's people free riding off of those who are social distancing and making sacrifices to stay indoors when they don't have to.
You know, there's I think You know, that's that's part of it.
And three, we already know that, you know, a shutdown isn't a full shutdown.
I mean, we talk about like reopening the economy and shutting down the whole economy.
I mean, well, a large portion of the economy is still operating, you know, either through because it's an essential business or because it can be done remotely.
So we're talking about those businesses that are not essential and cannot be done remotely that have been mostly shut down.
But because we have to keep all those other businesses open and that those people are putting themselves at risk of getting the disease, not to even talk, not even start talking about the health care workers who are
Most on the front lines and you know in some places have suffered very very greatly that you kind of want to have a law that says that we there's a collective interest in making sure that we're supporting our health care workers in the same way that you know I mean you couldn't put in place rationing laws during peacetime but in World War II we had rationing laws and that I don't know that people would say that those were wrong or ridiculous like we needed resources because we needed to beat the Nazis.
Now what about like, let's say they come out with a vaccine.
Do you think that the country should be able to, do you think governors should be able to force people to have those vaccines as a condition of either exercising other constitutional rights they would otherwise have or engaged in the economy?
I mean, honestly, I just haven't thought about that question hard enough, and I need to, like, I need to, one, look at the law and kind of read about, like, you know, what mandatory vaccine laws currently exist.
I'm just, I'm not confident.
My instinct is generally to say that, like, I don't, I would want the governments to be encouraging getting a vaccine that was actually demonstrated to be effective.
I think that's a good public health measure.
I don't know.
I don't want to answer that question because I don't have a strong opinion either way and I don't want to go off loose.
You notice I've tried to give researched opinions so far, so I don't want to go off loose lift on something I haven't thought hard about.
Sure.
In general, because I think there's some nervousness and concern that ultimately part of the objective is we're going to get a replication of what happened in 1976.
Where there was a breakout of a version of a kind of swine flu.
It turned out to be, in that case, way exaggerated the risk.
But they thought it was, it started out at Fort Dix.
They thought it was going to get bad.
And they developed, they sort of rushed development of a vaccine.
President Ford started requiring people to take it.
And because there were immediate bad side effects and impacts, that led people, that led to the President Ford to retract, forcing other people to get it.
But I think that's part of the concern.
It goes back to sort of the bigger core question of choice versus control, freedom versus security, which value we end up weighing more.
Because here we're sort of making assumptions about what empirical facts are true, how people would behave or not behave with or without a public policy response to the pandemic of the kind that we've seen, whether or not the pandemic is a high risk, medium risk, low risk.
We have a lot of assumptions because we simply don't know at this point.
And the question is, can we wait 18 months before people are allowed back out?
And in the vaccine context, would you yourself take a vaccine if they said, hey, this is what would work.
You can participate in the economy.
You can go back out in civil society.
Would you feel comfortable taking it yourself if you didn't have that same level of assurance in terms of its safety or security?
Um, well, so I guess on the first point, uh, would, you know, can we wait 18 months?
I don't think we can.
I mean, I don't think that's a meaningful answer.
And, and I know people have said that about me that, you know, I've, I've got all these weird views attributed to me.
Like I think millions of people are going to die.
I don't like, I think we have to stay shut down for 18 months.
I don't, I think we, we need to get to a point where we can do test and trace, uh, and contain the virus.
I don't, I don't think just letting it run wild as an option either in the same way that I don't think shutting down for 18 months, I don't think letting this Virus run wild is an option either.
So we need to get daily case numbers down to the point where you can effectively test and trace and contain the virus by doing what other countries did at the beginning when there were small numbers of cases.
As for would I take a vaccine, I think the answer depends on the safety and what we can think about how safe it is and how effective it is.
If it's something like the small box vaccine, which didn't Smallpox is gone, eradicated.
It is nowhere in the world.
That is a massive public health achievement.
And I think, you know, looking back, saying that people had to take smallpox vaccines so that we would never have smallpox again, that was a perfectly justifiable and good public health policy.
And that's also the very policy that was affirmed in the Jacobson case, which set the framework for all these interventions in the first place.
So, you know, if you have a vaccine that's proven effective, you know, I don't think a federal requirement probably falls afoul of separation of powers issues and federalism issues, because this is ultimately, you know, that seems like a police power that's reserved to the states.
But I'm not implicitly opposed to the idea of if we truly have a very effective, safe vaccine that we would require people to take it, at least to get access to certain rights.
Do you understand where some of the concern comes from, from the broader populace, when you have people like Bill Gates, who has a very particular political viewpoint that he thinks is important.
He spent decades plus lobbying related to it.
There's been concern expressed by other people within the public health community to the degree he has disparate influence that's not exactly democratically rooted and oriented.
It's more backed because he's a very wealthy man.
That his policy agenda may not be the publicly approved agenda given that he's not an elected official and seems to have certain parochial focus.
What's your reaction to those people that have concern about the disparate role that Bill Gates may be having in this public health discussion and debate in the country and in the Western world?
So I actually, I'm not compelled by these arguments against Gates for the most part.
I guess in terms of saying that he has disparate influence, well, I mean, it's not particularly democratic for the WHO to be obeying the dictates of Xi Jinping either.
They're an international institution with their own interests and with their own money.
I mean, I think Trump is personally, I think he's right to pull funding from the WHO because I think they're a puppet of China, not anything to do with Gates.
Um, as for Gates's perspective, I mean, I think he's a very, very smart man who's, you know, invested and worked a lot in public health and is, I mean, honestly trying to do laudable things.
I think the theory is about, you know, one, it doesn't make sense to say that Gates is trying to make a profit.
It just doesn't.
The man's worth a hundred billion dollars.
You know, if he, if he made the best vaccine that sold everywhere and even assuming he could sell it for a profit, which is very unlikely because governments probably wouldn't let him.
That would not be nearly as good for his portfolio and for his wealth as it would be for the economy to just come back 20% because he's like every other multibillionaire.
He's diversified.
If the economy comes back, he makes $20 billion.
He probably wouldn't make that much of a vaccine.
Others are saying he wants worldwide surveillance.
I don't see the evidence of this.
The stuff that people have talked about, the ID2020, is about refugees, people who are in very, very poor areas, unable to prove who they are with any sort of identification, and therefore not able to get access to government benefits, things like that.
putting things on the blockchain to allow yourself to prove who you are at the end that you still own it in the same way that you own Bitcoin, right?
That's what that's about.
And then the quantum dot tattoos, I read about that.
That's not even, I'm not sure that's fully developed yet, but that's designed so that it's not like a chip in the sense that you can read it from remotely.
It's like if you have a light at a yard away, you can read whether somebody's been vaccinated.
It's designed, from what I'm reading, so that people who are in very, again, very poor places and they're trying not to get repeat vaccines, they're trying to figure out what vaccinations have you had, you can get one of these like essentially a temporary tiny tattoo.
That reveals whether or not you've had a certain vaccination in order to make sure that they aren't doubling and tripling down in these very, very poor areas.
And that's that's like the use case that I see for it.
Now, if it turns out we go back and we look for let's say we're 18 months, two years down the road, we get to look back, we have all the data.
If it turns out that the economy doesn't rebound, it turns out that some of these civil liberties never really come back because they find more emergencies to declare for whatever reason or cause.
And that we've established sort of a custom and practice and precedent in practice, independent of the law, that has sort of greenlit the loss of certain core liberties.
And or the pandemic turned out not to be the degree of risk that was originally assumed, that it wasn't on the asymmetric side.
It was more of a something twice or double the flu, triple the flu.
Do you think then the policies that we have done were the right policies?
Or should we re-examine whether we should do those kind of policies in the future without more evidence or information for our basis of action?
I mean, I think you have to judge it based on what was known at the time of the decision, right?
Obviously, with any sort of decision, you know, you can't say, well, it turned out that it wasn't quite as bad as we thought.
You have to say, OK, based on the data available at the time, was this the right calculation?
And I think it is right.
I think based on and you don't have to use the models which are have all sorts of problems because they have all these assumptions built into them and they're only as good as the assumptions.
You just have to look at like the data based on what's already happened in various places like what happened in Italy is in my judgment an outcome that we should not accept as Americans.
you know, elderly people dying alone, gasping for air and being trucked out by military trucks to cemeteries an hour away because they're filled.
They're full.
Like, that's not OK.
We need to make sure that doesn't happen here.
We need to keep our health care system from breaking down.
And there is a reasonable.
Thanks, Will, for joining us for the debate and the discussion and the dialogue.
Come back for the last bottom half of the hour.
these social distancing measures.
I think even, I think that's the way to think about it.
It is the correct decision.
And given the data we have available, it will still look like the correct decision in two years, even if the economy has gone down.
Well, that's what we'll find out.
Thanks, Will, for joining us for the debate and the discussion, the dialogue.
Come back for the last bottom half of the hour.
We'll take your calls as you, the jury, get to weigh in on what you think.
Welcome back to American Countdown.
We're going to be taking your calls and answering you as part of the jury of the discussion debate we had with Will Chamberlain.
I disagree with Will on several different premises.
The main premise is I don't have the same degree of trust and confidence in elite public health officials that many of my friends and colleagues on the conservative side do.
Secondly, I don't believe this pandemic is an asymmetric risk.
I don't believe it is the next plague or ever presented the capability to be the next plague.
One of my main disagreements with Will is simply empirically about what we assume will happen with this pandemic.
I see this pandemic as something that's twice or triple what the flu usually is.
Not just a severe flu season, but something much worse than it, but only in the initial stages of its growth.
And like every other virus that historically has simply not infected a very large part of the population in any compressed time period in the last century, that that was not going to happen here.
In the studies and surveys and evidence I saw, I didn't see any reason to challenge what the Nobel laureate Israeli scientist discovered.
Which is that this virus followed the same pattern as every other virus for the most part in the last century plus, which is that it's very aggressive early, voracious in its attack on those who are vulnerable and susceptible to it, but then it flatlines after it runs into a wall of
People who are either will be asymptomatic or simply will never get infected or never get it, even those in close continuous contact with those who have it, as was the case in 83% of the people on the Diamond Princess, as was the case with over 90% of the people that they followed in Wuhan in China.
There's a reason why Wuhan and China suddenly reopened and then reopened across the board.
They went from an extreme shutdown, as Will discussed, to all of a sudden being wide open.
The port activity that's being recorded and traced by various satellites and various economic activity that's being recorded by international banks and other import-export businesses has China at 90 to 95 percent of capacity now.
How is that possible?
Why did China feel confident that they could both induce their population to go back to work safely and that they could in fact go back to work safely?
It's because they figured out there was something about this virus they may not have shared with the rest of the world Which was that this virus is very effective and aggressive early, and then drops off precipitously, regardless of the mitigation measurement taken.
That's what the Nobel laureate figured out, and that's how he was able to forecast and project with extraordinary accuracy what would happen in China, while even the Chinese authorities didn't know that was going to happen.
His model, his methodology, would ultimately forecast accurately what's happened in Sweden now, what happened in Iran, what happened in South Korea, what happened in Japan, what happened in Taiwan.
Many of these places are places that did not impose any economic shutdown or the suppression of civil society in their countries.
In addition, we now have Sweden.
We have a live example.
And now there's been more than 21 days since its neighbors in Denmark and Finland shut down.
More than 21 days for the mortality rate to see what happens between two different places right next to one another.
Compare Sweden to the rest of continental Europe.
Compare Sweden to the United Kingdom.
And Sweden was more at risk.
It had a bigger outburst initially.
So it was more exposed to the spread of the infection.
And yet what happened?
Since that of the 11-day period for hospitalizations to occur, for the 21-day period for mortality to occur, Sweden is seeing lower growth in the death rate, lower growth in the hospitalization rate, lower growth in the ICU rate than its neighbors in other parts of Europe and the United States.
So how is it that Sweden could experience that degree of decline if a shutdown was at any degree necessary to achieve the outcome?
And as to the question of whether social distancing is occurring in mass levels and those maybe all the Swedish are just staying in their homes anyway, it's true they're avoiding mass gatherings like movie theaters where a lot of people are next to strangers in a close confined quarters and with continuous contact with these people for hours.
That has precipitously declined in Sweden.
But what has not declined is everyday economic life.
What has not declined is everyday restaurants and cafes and stores and businesses and factories and the rest.
Instead, those have stayed very active as monitored by Google and others who are monitoring people's habits and physical behavior, as is also reflected in their economic data and information.
They are not experiencing a collapse of hospital capacity or availability.
Unlike large parts of the United States, including rural America, which is starting to have that happen right now, not because of the pandemic, but because of the panic response and reaction to the pandemic.
So the data from the Israeli scientists, which forecast and foreshadowed what happened around the world, which we're seeing in live time in Sweden, which we're seeing in live time in Iran and South Korea and Singapore, and to a large extent in Taiwan, and right now in various states that have not shut down, eight states in the Union, Not shut down.
Neighbors to other states, they are experiencing better results than states that did shut down.
Florida, one of the last states to shut down, experienced similar or better declines in the growth rate during a time period, from a time period of people infected when they were not shut down.
Their growth rate is better than it is in New York or California that were two of the earliest states to shut down.
In fact, when they monitor the countries, the degree to which they shut down earlier and their social distancing became more extreme were the countries that so far the states and regions and countries and nations that have had some of the worst outcomes in response to this.
So, so far, we have not seen the data and information to support that these policies were even medically necessary or medically required or even necessarily medically beneficial to the desired outcome of protecting lives.
While coming at the expense of people's mental health, while coming at the expense of rising domestic violence and child abuse, while coming at the because they're locking in kids with their abusers, locking in partners with their abusers.
That's what we've done with this shutdown.
We created a petri dish for that kind of violence to explode.
And that's what's happening.
We've also taken people's purpose away by depriving them of their economic opportunity and by their everyday employment.
And while doing so, we're imposing mental health costs of an extraordinary degree and severity.
Many Americans and many people around the world are not psychologically designed for extreme social isolation of a continuous kind.
Particularly in confined quarters where you can't even exercise in public, you can't even go to the park, you can't even enjoy the everyday aesthetic benefits of a walk along the beach without being chased by a security guard.
So in that environment, we have not seen the benefits that were reported.
We've seen countries, regions, and states and nations that did not follow these shutdown policies enjoy comparable or even better outcomes.
We have not seen an explosion of this pandemic.
It has gone the course of a quick rise, flatline, and then a drop like almost every other pandemic.
So it turned out that this was more panic than plague.
And in that context, that even if you presumed the legal standard should be what we'll believe it should be, which is simply medical necessity and medical reasonableness, even by that standard, we have not met it in terms of what we've done to the economy and civil society.
There is not adequate independent evidence.
If we were in a courtroom of law, To be tested by a jury of one's peers or the public community, that in fact this was in any way requisite or necessary to achieve the objective sought, which is to limit the amount of peoples who died, to protect the quantity of life and the quality of life.
We ended up sacrificing, without doubt, the quality of life.
We chose 78 years of a Cuban lifestyle instead of 77 years of American freedom.
But in the same context, it appears we also may have sacrificed quantity of life.
There is less and less evidence that we really truly achieved any meaningful reduction in the number of deaths that would have occurred and may have in fact caused events to be put into motion that increase the numbers of deaths and other forms of mental health and other health weaknesses that will be occurring.
People who need a hospital or other elective care are not getting it.
Because they're afraid to go to the hospital.
They believe they're not supposed to go to the hospital.
So they're not going.
So consequently, they're not getting the procedures they need and that's ultimately going to show up in deaths down the road.
Inevitably and inescapably.
People are developing alcoholism and other traits that are going to increase as a psychological adaptive mechanism that is going to shorten their life expectancy over time.
Stress is not a good thing for life expectancy.
Maladaptive habits, like alcoholism, is not a good habit to acquire for purposes of life expectancy.
So in the end, the true Black Swan, under Nassim Taleb's theory, may be Nassim Taleb himself.
The Black Swan was fear of the Black Swan, leading to policies that were themselves the Black Swan.
And that is how we could go to a situation and circumstance where we have sacrificed two centuries of constitutional freedom and liberty within two weeks in the name of public health officials in white lab coats telling us to sacrifice it as being medically necessary when it turns out they weren't even right about the medicine or the science either.
Just as they weren't right about constitutional liberty or the public economy.
So that is why I disagree.
I disagree because I favor choice over control.
I disagree because I favor freedom over security.
I disagree because I choose 77 years of American liberty over 78 years of Cuban Soviet-style statism.
That is why I disagree fundamentally.
But I also disagree because empirically, I don't believe this pandemic was more plague than panic.
I disagree also empirically because I don't believe the public economy can easily rebound when we're in a system that the Fed has disparate and disproportionate control and a degree of control that can threaten and will threaten economic and political futures for the people around the world with the pretext of power they've been able to assert in the past decade and particularly in just the past several weeks.
They've asserted power within two weeks that they did not have in almost a hundred years.
So that is the risk we face.
We face the potential precipice of constitutional liberty being ended.
We sit at a minute to midnight on the American experiment of constitutional liberty and a free economy, and it should not have been sacrificed, and it should not be sacrificed for the purposes of a pandemic that is more panic than play.
But let's go to you and hear your questions and discuss and debate what you thought and what you think.
First, let's go to Ken in South Carolina.
Hi, Robert.
I'm with you as a former Battalion Chief in the Fire Service and a Fire Academy Certified Instructor.
In an emergency where seconds mean lives, no action is better than quick but improper action.
Will clearly has no clue how food production and distribution works in America.
And I want to point out one glaring thing is I want to give you more evidence for your growing argument against all this.
As I have experience as a safety manager, because I served in the fire service and I actually was a fire academy instructor and trained in hazmat classes and to teach certain hazmat classes, and I taught blood-borne pathogens for OSHA safety as well, there's a blatant and obvious issue here that a lot of emergency trainers, emergency first responders, medical professionals, and biologists and research biologists see that most people aren't aware of.
This social distancing and surgical mask sounds great and Will was heavily about this, this cure, but the problem is that's not proper according to OSHA standard and it's not proper according to HAZMAT standards.
The kit that you're seeing the doctors and medical professionals use in most of the pictures I've seen tonight on your show and they're seen in general in public are the standard blood-borne pathogens kit.
That is to prevent you from getting spattered by blood or body fluids that could give you the disease.
It's not what you would use against an epidemic or a biological agent such as this.
I believe everybody agrees this is supposed to be an aerosolized or airborne particle that can even through contact and body fluids or mucus or sputum or whatever airborne water vapor from your coughing and sneezing gets on your skin to give you the disease.
And in either case, what is required is a hazmat level C system at minimum.
Now Robert, that's a Tyvek suit, sealed to your other gear, and the other gear required is gloves and boots, but most of all, a full-face respirator with HEPA filtration, NBC, that's nuclear biological chemical filters, or a supplied air system with proper filtration that'll eliminate viruses.
And that requires spit testing, and you and I don't pass because we have beards.
So you're talking about There's no way to give everyone in the country a full face respirator.
And if you walk through the store with that, talk about the panic when it reality sets in.
This thing had a contagion rate over 20% and was as lethal as they're wanting to say.
We are grossly leaving.
I mean, these are OSHA violations.
We are leaving our medical professionals unprotected.
Against infection and I see that there's a new report about more medical professionals getting sick.
Well, I guess I guess so if you're not going to give them proper PPE or proper personal protective equipment.
And it's like they're recommending everything possible that would increase the spread of this disease.
They're depressing the public immunity, they're increasing public stress, they're preventing natural health, as well as vitamin uptake, or natural production of vitamins and substances in the body, like vitamin D3, and general exercise.
They're forcing the people to stay in close contact with other infected people, and they're putting at risk and decreasing the necessary food productions and vitamin and supplement production in America.
I'm floored by it, and I'm upset.
It's like you said, in South Carolina our numbers are flatlining, and DHEC is turning around and saying, oh no no, next week, next week, the check's in the mail, next week we're going to have this mass epidemic and everybody's going to die, there'll be bodies everywhere and blood everywhere, and it's not here.
Our hospitals are empty.
Our local hospitals, this is the one time I want to go to my local hospital if I need to because for once they've sanitized the entire hospital, and no one's there, I don't have the risk of catching anything.
And I'm not at all concerned about COVID-19 because if COVID-19 was as dangerous as they say, those guys would be wearing a proper level C hazmat suit.
They would be walking around with fit-tested respirators on, not saying, put a surgical mask, which is not OSHA approved for anything.
Sorry, guys.
It's not OSHA approved for anything.
And an N95 is a respirator that you use for particulates mostly to protect you in dusty environments or from breathing in cement, pouring in mixers and such, where you could get black lung from coal work or other particulates.
Not biological.
It's not It's not certified for a biological outbreak like this.
Plus, the eye protection has to be sealed.
That's the other problem.
You can't wear safety glasses.
You have to have sealed eye protection.
So none of this makes any difference.
When another country came to us and said, hey guys, can you help us get emergency preparedness gear?
We tried to help, which is not available in this country now.
We had to tell them, I said, listen, I have to tell you that what you're asking for on your list of surgical masks and safety glasses is not sufficient to protect you from COVID-19 outbreaks.
But I will try to help you find a supply if we can.
But this is a glaring issue, Robert, that no one wants to address, and Will kind of glosses over it.
The vaccines that were given to us for the stupid H1N1 that were forced on our children in South Carolina by DHEC contained the H1N1 virus, and some of them contained H1N5 virus.
As well as mercury.
Then they lied to the parents and said there was no mercury.
They didn't get obtained unformed consent.
They made mandatory vaccines.
And now Will wants me to trust that agency that I did not elect and a governor that's not a doctor but is a decent lawyer to make my health choices for me and then come around and force vaccinate me with a live virus of probably one of the more lethal strains of COVID-19?
No thank you, sir.
I'm with you.
I'd rather die free And keep our oath to the Constitution and take our chances than to risk everything and die a slave.
I mean, no doubt about it.
I mean, you look at, you raise a lot of excellent and fantastic points.
And in that same context, one of my favorite quotes is from Pancho Villa, of course, the famous Mexican revolutionary who said he'd rather die on his feet than live on his knees.
And we're being asked to live on our knees in deference to the white lab coat public health aristocracy in favor of these governors and mayors who decided that they are now the new monarchs in our system and believe they found that somewhere in the Constitution.
So the something that our constitutional history does not support and whatever variant and deviant decisions may exist from various court cases over the past two centuries those are cases to be ashamed of and afraid of not proud of and not reciting or citing as relevant pertinent precedent that should govern and guide our public policy today.
You're right.
The masks is a perfect example.
What would constitute protective personal equipment, which became the acronym PPE to such a degree that people were able to talk about it in that vernacular on Facebook or Twitter without having prior familiarity with it.
You're right.
A lot of these would not meet.
I would look at three different examples.
One, if you look at what Putin wore when he was walking around the hospitals in Russia to deal with the COVID-19, he was in an outfit like you're describing, in terms of respirators and all of these degrees of safety and control.
That showed what was really necessary to protect any degree of infection to the degree that this infection posed that kind of risk of exposure.
The second is the rush for immunity.
Clearly there wouldn't be a bunch of people demanding immunity as a precondition of distribution and production of these masks if in fact there was no risk that outweighed the reward of these masks.
Because I can tell you as a plaintiff's lawyer, as someone who's done those kind of civil complex cases in the personal injury context, in the product liability context, in that environment and in that atmosphere, If your product creates more good than harm, it is very unlikely that a jury will ever punish you with any punitive damages, and in all likelihood won't even issue any other damages to you, because they know that's part of the process that risk is absorbed.
So you don't need immunity unless...
The risk way outweighs the reward.
So the fact that they were demanding immunity as a precondition for production and distribution of masks was an indicia to me that they themselves don't have confidence in this product actually being a safe product that will create more safety than problems.
And then you go to the third level.
Aside from what Putin is wearing, aside from companies requiring immunity as a precondition of it, You have all the past studies and the Surgeon General himself.
You have all these people who just several weeks ago told us not to buy masks because masks weren't safe.
One of the head people involved...
Infections in the United States up at the University of Minnesota who appeared on Joe Rogan some about a month or so ago.
He was saying that these masks did not prevent you from getting precisely a virus like this for some of the reasons that you just articulated.
And now they're going to mandate it as a condition of the exercise of your constitutional liberty.
Now they're going to mandate it as a condition of you engaging in public economy.
Now they're going to mandate it as a condition of you simply feeding yourself or providing for your children, providing for your families.
So something that they told us just weeks ago, we shouldn't even be doing at all?
And we're supposed to defer to these white lab coats?
As if they are the ones with all knowledge and are only out for our best interest?
Is that something we're supposed to really trust?
There's just not a lot of good history of public health officials getting things like this wrong, as we went through yesterday.
They got the various pandemics wrong in 1999, in 2000, 2001, 2009, 2010, 2012.
These same institutions have repeatedly been crying wolf in order to induce a pandemic potential response, a policy response, as if it's the next plague.
And they've been wrong repeatedly and routinely.
And that goes back to some of the issues.
If we look at some of the charts, these charts that predicted, you know, from New York, they said these horrible things were going to happen.
They never happened.
They had to say that in order to get people to adopt and accept this panic reaction.
In Ohio, it was all these red lines that were supposed to be going up and up and up and up and up.
And instead, the actual lines have basically been flatlined.
They have been consistently wrong.
Stanford professor was on Tucker Carlson talking about it.
And as the headline is, Stanford professor claims coronavirus death rate likely orders of magnitude lower than first thought.
So we live in an environment where people are basically offering a various forms of, you know, the blue pill or the red pill.
And what they want you to do is take the blue pill of safety and security because there's some nice little white lab coat person there promoting it.
We do recommend that if you're in this environment where the shutdown may continue for who knows how long, where food supply is already being endangered, as Will was talking about, in some cases being endangered because people aren't going to the work, in other cases being endangered because there isn't enough economic support for it to occur, In other cases, it's being endangered because they're in shutdown parts of the country where they haven't been identified as essential industry.
This is a constant, continuous risk for all of us.
So in this environment, that's why you should go to InfoWardStore.com and get the food that you can get.
They have the storable food.
It's back after it's sold out.
It's back and you should get it while you still can.
Get it while it's still available.
Get it while you still have the opportunity to do so.
Because this is one of the few places where you can still get a red pill of independent information, separate from the blue pill the white lab coats want you to take, swallow, and smile about.
Let's go to one more question.
If we can go to Patrick in Kansas.
Hey, Robert.
How are you?
Oh, good, good.
Well, you know, given the circumstances.
I wanted to say I very much appreciate InfoWars always giving both sides of the argument.
Even though I don't agree with the other side often, it shows your honesty, it shows your integrity, and I really appreciate that.
I also want to say, I hope you are a regular, permanent addition to InfoWars.
The Constitution is something that I've been trying to learn, trying to read every day, because I have kids, and the Constitution is Is God's law, to me, liberty?
My question is about the blue states.
I live in a blue state, a blue city, in the middle of the country, and we don't have many, I'm not sure on the numbers, but it's not, everybody's not going crazy here.
So my question is, the governor in my state, after the May 1st deadline, if the governor decides to prolong The stay-at-home order, social distancing.
What can we anticipate the repercussions for the governors to be?
Well, hopefully, we're starting to see political resistance across the country.
The fountainhead of that is in Michigan.
There's talk of protest in Pennsylvania.
There's talk of protest in Texas.
In addition, I'm looking at, along with other lawyers, have started to file suits across the country.
I am looking at filing suits across the country.
We have to contest and challenge this.
And even though we're going to run into a wall of judicial opposition, potentially, due to this history of deference to the executive, just by using the magic words virus or crisis or war, the ugly history of Korematsu, the ugly history of approving sterilization and eugenics that our courts were complicit in, should be a counter check to that.
And we have to resist.
We have to resist by every means possible.
We may wake up like Neo and discover the Matrix is something ugly and unseemly, but in the end we should and will choose the red pill of freedom, the red pill of liberty, the red pill of independence, the red pill of Americana, rather than the blue pill of state social control over our minds, our bodies, our freedom, and our liberty.
So thanks for being with us tonight.
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