On today's episode of Conspiracy Theories, host Alex Blumberg takes a look at the growing threat posed by the CDC's new anti-vaccination campaign, COVID-1919, and why we should all be worried about it.
00:01:00.000Increasingly, our government is doing really dumb stuff with its regulatory and police power,
00:01:05.000and we aren't doing nearly enough of the work necessary to make our people healthier
00:01:10.000and more resilient against this virus.
00:01:13.000It's obvious it's not necessarily about health, but control.
00:01:17.000And so we start today's episode in our nation's capital city.
00:01:21.000Now, Washington, D.C.'s city government has always been a bit outside of mainstream America,
00:01:26.000but usually on the side of making stuff more legal, like euthanasia or recreational marijuana.
00:01:33.000But now we have the city government of the capital city embracing the most draconian liberty-restricting COVID mandates.
00:01:43.000I mean, even Starbucks just announced that they're no longer mandating vaccines for their employees.
00:01:49.000I guess we've got a lot to disagree about in America today, but I think we should all be able to agree that no government should be more woke than Starbucks.
00:01:59.000Euthanasia and marijuana are more legal in D.C. than ordering tacos without your vax passport today.
00:02:06.000Meanwhile, COVID is becoming less deadly, more endemic.
00:02:51.000The virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else.
00:02:55.000In fact, if you even questioned this, you were called a conspiracy theorist and banned from social media.
00:03:03.000Well, as it turns out, the conspiracy theorists were right again.
00:03:08.000Anyone with a room temperature IQ now knows that while the vaccine may help with symptoms for some, it absolutely does not stop the spread or contraction of this virus.
00:03:20.000Vaccinated people who do have a breakthrough infection are clearly capable of transmitting the infection to an uninfected person.
00:03:30.000Here's Pfizer's CEO admitting that the shots don't have the safety profile they'd once hoped for.
00:03:42.000We believe that was very carefully selected.
00:03:44.000We believe that has very high probabilities of delivering a solution to an unmet need, not because the current Zoster vaccines are not effective, but they are don't have the safety profile that we hope we can achieve with this technology.
00:04:01.000Civil liberty arguments aside, if the vaccine doesn't stop the spread, and it absolutely doesn't, then there's no justification or rationale for this mandate.
00:04:16.000To punish those who don't bend the knee to the regime.
00:04:21.000So we have an untamed and perhaps untameable virus, an ineffective and potentially harmful vaccine, a regime that will torture us into taking it.
00:04:35.000COVID is not something that you should be afraid of to the extent that you can't live your life.
00:04:41.000The fear porn director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, who once told us that she had a feeling of impending doom regarding the virus, now is happy to explain that over 75% of COVID deaths occurred in people with at least four comorbidities.
00:05:00.000The overwhelming number of deaths over 75% occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities.
00:05:07.000So really, these are people who were unwell to begin with.
00:05:11.000Basically, if you're at risk, it's good to take precautions, of course.
00:05:15.000COVID can be serious for those who are ill, elderly, morbidly obese, people with four comorbidities.
00:05:22.000Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams, maybe, should get boosted weekly.
00:05:26.000But remember, even Chris Christie and the late, great Bobby Bowden survived a deadlier version of COVID in the same week.
00:05:37.000Your medical decisions and your body are your business alone, and you should not be punished for the decisions you make.
00:05:44.000It's awfully convenient that the powers that be are now being a little more honest about what we've known all along.
00:05:50.000The disappointing efficacy of the vaccine and the low risk of COVID to the average American, especially in this latest strain.
00:05:59.000So after they weaponized fear mongering to try to oust Trump, they're having a tough time putting that genie back in the bottle under the Biden administration.
00:06:10.000Even the clowns that said that you shouldn't celebrate Christmas are now irritated at teachers unions for refusing to do their jobs and show up at work.
00:06:19.000In Chicago today, Dr. Wen, the teachers union is going to vote on a possible walkout starting this week.
00:06:25.000The teachers union believes it's too risky to bring kids and teachers back into the classroom.
00:06:33.000That teachers union is wrong, and all the teachers unions that are saying that we have to delay kids going back to school are wrong.
00:06:41.000But their feigned honesty might be a little too late.
00:06:46.000Despite these new developments, the vaccine mandate that has made its way to D.C. has existed for some time in New York City and all over the world.
00:06:56.000Its effects on the average person and the economy that we all live in have been dystopic.
00:08:27.000Executive Order 2181 provides that businesses in Florida are prohibited from requiring patrons or customers to provide any documentation certifying COVID-19 vaccination or post transmission recovery to gain access to entry upon or service from the business.
00:08:46.000Same applies to Florida government entities who may not issue vaccine passports or other documentation identifying an individual's COVID-19 or VAX status.
00:08:56.000Florida serves as a model for other states, other governors who could be more courageous and actually utilize a dose of freedom and a booster of economic recovery.
00:09:08.000Now, Joe Biden's mandate is instructing OSHA to issue an emergency rule requiring employers with more than 100 employees to mandate that their workers get vaccinated or tested weekly.
00:09:19.000If that would be the law, it would adversely affect roughly 80 million private sector workers.
00:09:24.000Moreover, it's a sudden disruption in the labor supply.
00:09:28.000It would disrupt food chains, perpetuate inflation.
00:09:31.000All of the problems that Joe Biden has created would be made worse by the policies that he was pushing.
00:09:37.000Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck this down.
00:09:42.000Unfortunately, that prohibition didn't protect our health care workers.
00:09:48.000Our frontline health care workers are heroes.
00:09:51.000They worked unvaccinated through the entire pandemic and now they're being fired for their troubles.
00:09:56.000Our woke neighbor to the north, Canada, just decided to mandate that its truck drivers get vaxxed.
00:10:04.000Well, should they wear a mask, too, while they're driving alone down the highways?
00:10:09.000I can't imagine a bigger recipe for supply chain shortages and literal starvation than to cripple the trucking industry.
00:10:17.000These people have been socially distancing for quite some time in their employment.
00:10:21.000It's almost as if they're causing problems on purpose.
00:12:14.000How can Republicans tell our fellow Americans to resist and sacrifice when we ourselves are too afraid to do so?
00:12:22.000That's why I just canceled my membership at the Capitol Hill Club.
00:12:26.000I'm not going to ask anyone to make a sacrifice that I wouldn't make myself.
00:12:30.000And I've just learned that Senator Rand Paul, a brave firebrand indeed, has also canceled his membership and we welcome him to the movement.
00:12:41.000We need leaders who lead from the front.
00:12:43.000By example, men and women of action, not excuses.
00:12:47.000I hope that Senator Paul and my actions will inspire others to fight the good fight.
00:12:52.000In a rare victory for the American people and, you know, with a healthy amount of dismay for the court's most liberal judges who spouted all kind of disinformation about COVID during oral arguments,
00:13:05.000the Supreme Court did strike down the unconstitutional Biden vaccine mandate that he was trying to implement through OSHA.
00:13:13.000Justice Sotomayor seemed to be so confused with Con Law 101 as she referred to OSHA's regulatory as a police power, which, by the way, is a power reserved to the states.
00:13:24.000Not to mention her stating that 100,000 kids are in critical care on ventilators or that Omicron is deadlier than Delta.
00:13:31.000And not to be outdone in foolishness, Justice Kagan claimed that vaccines stopped the transmission of the virus.
00:13:38.000I mean, this is the Supreme Court, for goodness sakes.
00:13:41.000They sound like a COVID-phobic group of law students who wear their masks outside when playing Frisbee golf with each other.
00:13:48.000When will they be censored for disinformation like our good friend Marjorie Taylor Greene?
00:13:55.000The court ruled on the grounds that OSHA did not have any congressionally delegated authority to issue public health orders.
00:14:03.000And in the second case, Roberts and Kavanaugh sided with the liberals to uphold the HHS mandate on health care workers that take with organizations that take federal funds.
00:14:14.000So essentially every health care worker in the U.S. has to be subjected to these bad decisions.
00:14:19.000And, you know, they're the ones that we ought to be celebrating the most.
00:14:23.000Just to think, if it weren't for four years of President Trump and three new Supreme Court justices appointed, there's a good chance that the United States would look a lot like Australia today.
00:14:38.000The fight continues, but don't for a second think that this is just a blue state problem or just a Washington, D.C. problem.
00:14:45.000I'm going to have an interview coming up in this episode with a Washington, D.C. bar owner.
00:14:51.000And you're going to see how businesses lives can be disrupted and how likely those bad policies could come to a town near you if we don't stand up and fight.
00:15:04.000And stateless corporations and big hospital companies, these folks that answer to big pharma, they're everywhere and they want you to suffer.
00:16:06.000What's it been like these last two years?
00:16:08.000You know, we all as Americans took for granted the ability to come to a place like this, blow off some steam, have some fun, watch some sports.
00:16:16.000And it just seems like, overall, life's gotten a lot less fun since 2020.
00:16:59.000We come back and everybody's got to sit at tables.
00:17:02.000You know, it's just like, what is this?
00:17:07.000What do you think is the part about being a bar owner dealing with the new kind of COVID world that people wouldn't know if they were just a customer that's going on kind of behind the scenes for you?
00:17:19.000I'm literally yelling at people to sit at a bar.
00:17:23.000They're having drinking beer and vodka sodas and whatever.
00:17:52.000So we're a bar that people are trying to be social and you had to sit.
00:17:56.000Like in your seat and enforcement, which is Abra in D.C.
00:18:00.000I mean, I counted in that in that during that phase two, which went from right around Memorial Day of 2020 to God, I got to get my dates right.
00:18:10.000Let's just call it eight or nine months.
00:18:17.000It would seem like they would be your best customer if you could get them to buy a drink.
00:18:20.00028 times they came in here to try to write us a fine.
00:18:22.000And they wrote us one fine because three people were on the rooftop outside standing at a table with their drink as opposed to sitting their butt in the seat.
00:18:31.000What do you think most small business owners think about these government regulations?
00:18:36.000Do you believe that we're doing it for your benefit?
00:18:57.000We follow the rules because we have to because I have to maintain this place.
00:19:01.000So even if I'd like to sit here and say, like, you know, I want to fight back, I can't.
00:19:07.000And so I just sort of wonder whether or not people resent rules that seem to only exist so that politicians can talk about them and not to really help anybody.
00:19:18.000When I was asking for cards Saturday afternoon, I said it to a couple of people that didn't just pull it out.
00:19:25.000I kind of asked them in like an apologetic way.
00:22:18.000What's, what is the best thing that government could do proactively looking forward just to make it easier for folks like you to be able to make a fair buck,
00:22:26.000earn a fair living when risking your own money to do so?
00:22:30.000So this is a point that needs to be made.
00:23:32.000Like that is something that bars and restaurants do daily.
00:23:35.000And the fact that out of nowhere, we're told to be what health is in a bar.
00:23:44.000It's a bit laughable because it's like, this is what we do, not you, us.
00:23:49.000So let us do our thing would be my answer to that because we're the ones that do it all the time anyway.
00:23:55.000Do you think the trend going forward is going to be more letting you do your thing or less?
00:24:00.000I got it. I hope so. I don't know. I don't, I, I, again, I'm wishful thinking.
00:24:04.000I'm thinking on that calendar. I mentioned, I'm hoping that things are, are in a place to where the powers that be can, can lift these restrictions and just let us do our thing.
00:24:15.000So I'm going to say, yes, I think it's going to happen because I'm a positive thinker.
00:24:18.000And I just think that's, it's going to get better.
00:24:39.000So if government is doing a bunch of dumb stuff that it should stop, what should we actually be working on to make people perhaps healthier, more resilient, more capable in their own bodies and their own lives of being able to fight off and resist this virus to ensure that it's less deadly.
00:24:58.000We saw at the beginning of the pandemic that more COVID lockdowns helped the legal cannabis industry quite a bit.
00:25:08.000Now, full disclosure, I'm an advocate for cannabis modernization.
00:25:11.000I wrote the marijuana laws in Florida, and I'm the only Republican co-sponsor of the MORE Act, a bill to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act.
00:25:20.000I come from the pro-freedom wing of the Republican Party.
00:25:27.000So pre-COVID, illegal marijuana had been a real threat to the legal marijuana industry, undercutting prices, avoiding taxes and regulation.
00:25:36.000But the cartels and traffickers had major supply chain issues as a result of COVID, less so for legal growers who are often cultivating and processing much closer to the actual user than the Sinaloa Mountains in northwest Mexico.
00:25:53.000Fewer Americans wanted to deal with the uncertainty of street-level dealers or even dealers in their friend groups.
00:26:00.000Drug dealers don't always have the best masking policies, after all.
00:26:04.000People were at home getting their marijuana legally delivered in states like Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Alaska.
00:26:12.000These states saw three-year highs in legal marijuana sales during the summer of 2020.
00:26:19.000But like many highs brought by marijuana, this didn't last.
00:26:24.000A 2021 year-end piece by Chris Roberts in Forbes declared the COVID cannabis stimulus over.
00:26:32.000When the stimulus checks dried up, the consumer became more price conscious.
00:26:40.000Exciting information for many, actually.
00:26:42.000The National Institutes of Health have released a pre-print version of research showing that cannabidiol from CBD could prevent the spread of COVID SARS in the body.
00:27:31.000But if cannabis, cannabidiol, can reduce the likelihood of spread in the lung cells, it will undoubtedly make us more resilient against coronavirus.
00:27:41.000I remember when the boomers learned that a glass of red wine at night could benefit the cardiovascular system.
00:28:28.000You can't even blame the Washington gridlock.
00:28:31.000Democrats are so focused on pushing their socialist ambitions and spending packages, changing the Senate rules to create their own personal legislative chamber, hijacking democracy, enforcing vaccine mandates, increasing their grip on power, demolishing liberty.
00:28:47.000Many forget that the movement to legalize marijuana is not solely for enabling people to sit on their couch and smoke or alleviate the fear of having people around.
00:28:58.000Marijuana has verifiable medical applications.
00:29:03.000We've known about this potential for decades.
00:29:05.000The federal government even has the IP on marijuana in their own bundle of things that they own.
00:29:12.000But we have suffered from federal roadblocks as usual.
00:29:17.000If you suffer from cancer treatment-related nausea, PTSD, epilepsy-caused seizures, if you don't want to count on street weed knowing what the THC content might be or what CBD ratios exist or what strain is best for you or what contaminants might be out there,
00:29:35.000a legal system would certainly be beneficial.
00:29:39.000Would you buy steak and milk and Sudafed from your cousin's friend's step-uncle on a street corner?
00:29:48.000So why would we force people to purchase marijuana that way?
00:29:51.000In fact, there have been reports of street marijuana being laced with really harmful substances like heroin, meth, PCP, increasingly and most recently even fentanyl.
00:30:02.000Maybe the government is too busy bankrolling these toothless fentanyl programs to actually have awareness as to what might work.
00:30:11.000Federal government establishment and big pharma would rather you take the inescapable risk of what might be out there in the illegal market than present a real market alternative that is viable.
00:30:23.000They want you to fund the cartels and risk jail time rather than move forward with the rest of the world.
00:30:30.000Medical research is needed to treat patients in professional settings like any other drug.
00:30:35.000For over 50 years, all federal research ran through Ole Miss.
00:30:40.000Since 1968, Ole Miss was the sole academic entity granted the ability to create, cultivate cannabis for federal research and study.
00:30:49.000So while there have been some changes in the NIDA program, there is so much more that needs to be done to democratize access to research and to ensure that we are on the side of our people.
00:31:01.000I hope this research is actually steered toward the efficacy of marijuana and helping people.
00:31:07.000But for far too many years, federal policy mandated that any studies of marijuana had to focus on the negative effects of weed, not medical utility.
00:31:18.000So they do the research by deciding the outcome first and then trying to reverse engineer into it.
00:31:24.000In fact, between 2000 and 2018, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom spent a whopping $780 million trying to prove marijuana's negative side effects.
00:31:38.000My bill, the Medical Cannabis Research Act, would increase the number of manufacturers registered under the Control Substances Act to produce cannabis for legitimate research purposes.
00:31:52.000Moreover, this would authorize healthcare providers and the VA to provide recommendations to veterans about participating in approved clinical trials.
00:32:00.000I wish Joe Biden was half as permissive on marijuana as he is tyrannical on vaccines.
00:32:10.000Now, our advocacy for marijuana reform is not an excuse for America to sit home fat and high.
00:32:17.000Matter of fact, we need to be leaner, meaner, healthier.
00:32:23.000So Congress is often consumed with healthcare policy, but unfortunately, it actually ignores matters of true health and fitness.
00:32:33.000Why do we subsidize the consumption of food that actually kills people, especially the poor, people on government-subsidized food programs?
00:32:41.000Why don't we embrace the policies at the federal and state level that actually lower our national obesity rate?
00:32:47.000Obamacare was more about health insurance than actually making people healthier.
00:32:55.000The Republican response to Obamacare was more about lawsuits and tort reform than healthy living.
00:33:05.000I know personally how challenging issues of weight can be.
00:33:08.000I'm frequently way behind in my own goals.
00:33:11.000But society has now gotten to the point where it's considered verboten to consider that a daily salad might make you more resilient to all kinds of disease than the vax of the month pushed by big pharma.
00:33:24.000Where's Michelle Obama when you need her?
00:33:27.000When her husband was in office, the first lady encouraged American youth to participate in a healthy diet with video campaigns like this.