The Ben Shapiro Show - How Bad Will This Get? | Ep. 986

00:00:00.000 Experts call into question the White House models on coronavirus deaths.

00:00:03.000 Hole appear in the government's financial response.

00:00:06.000 And Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump go at it via open letter.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:23.000 Alrighty, so, as always, we begin with our coronavirus numbers update, because that's, of course, what everybody needs to know.

00:00:31.000 Right now, the United States stands at just over 6,000 deaths from coronavirus.

00:00:34.000 Yesterday was a day in which we lost, according to worldometers.info, which is the same as the Johns Hopkins map.

00:00:39.000 All these stats are basically the same.

00:00:41.000 A little bit under 1,000 people yesterday.

00:00:44.000 That was a little bit fewer than the day before.

00:00:46.000 The day before was like 1,039.

00:00:48.000 So hopefully we are going to start to see this flatten out rather than escalate, although the model suggests that this thing is going to escalate rather wildly up until mid-April.

00:00:57.000 Particularly the University of Washington model suggests that April 15th, and they've now related to April 16th, we'll see upwards of 2,260 deaths in the United States from coronavirus.

00:01:08.000 But it is these models that are exactly the question.

00:01:10.000 We don't know how accurate the models are.

00:01:12.000 We don't know what sort of data goes into them.

00:01:14.000 We're not sure exactly why the data that comes out of them comes out of them.

00:01:18.000 Are they based on bad information from China?

00:01:20.000 Are they based on Italy?

00:01:22.000 Are they based on the expectation of continuation of strong social measures?

00:01:27.000 Are they based on the expectation that there will be no increase in ICU beds or ventilators?

00:01:31.000 All of this stuff is variable.

00:01:32.000 There are just so many variables in these equations.

00:01:34.000 And that's not the fault of the people who do the modeling.

00:01:36.000 The biggest problem here, of course, is that we have to rely on models that have extraordinary play in the joints in order to determine whether we ought to shut down the entire world economy for an undetermined period of time.

00:01:47.000 And also, these models have yet to recommend what exactly happens at the end of the model.

00:01:51.000 So, for example, the University of Washington model.

00:01:53.000 This is my biggest question.

00:01:54.000 The University of Washington model that everybody is citing, that model ends at approximately August.

00:01:59.000 So right now, that University of Washington model, that one is suggesting that we are going to be at about 93,000 deaths by the end of August, somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:02:12.000 And it ends there.

00:02:14.000 Like, that's the end of it.

00:02:15.000 So it's not as though we know what happens after that.

00:02:17.000 And that's one of the really big questions here, is how exactly do you determine Where this ends, is there a second wave?

00:02:26.000 Does the summer kill it off?

00:02:27.000 It seems like everybody is sort of not answering the really hard questions, which is, where is this a year from now, two years from now?

00:02:33.000 If we hold it down now, are the resources such that we actually are able to ramp up to expect a second wave?

00:02:40.000 What happens when we release everybody from their self-contained quarantines?

00:02:43.000 What happens here?

00:02:44.000 So right now, if you look at that model, and this is the one that has been the most cited, this health model from the University of Washington.

00:02:51.000 The organization is called the Institute for – I want to make sure I get this right – the Institute for Health Metricton Evaluation, the IHME, which is an independent population health research center at University of Washington, right?

00:03:09.000 Right now, they are suggesting that the peak will happen on April 15th.

00:03:13.000 They say that's peak resource use.

00:03:15.000 And they are suggesting that on that day, there will be 263,000 beds needed in the United States.

00:03:20.000 There will be a bed shortage across the United States of some 88,000 beds.

00:03:23.000 They're suggesting there will be some 39,727 ICU beds needed on that day as opposed to About 20,000 available, and therefore there will be a shortage of nearly 20,000 beds, and they say there will be 31,782 ventilators needed.

00:03:37.000 Now, those numbers, when it sounds like a very odd number, that's the sort of exactitude that no model can actually predict.

00:03:43.000 It could be off by 100, it could be off by 200, it could be off by a ton.

00:03:47.000 And in fact, if you look at their charts, what you see is these huge ranges of possibilities.

00:03:52.000 There's a low wave possibility, there's a high range possibility.

00:03:55.000 Right now, they are suggesting that the number of deaths per day, like, if we look at the stats, their stats have basically been, I would say, close to reality so far, although not exactly on.

00:04:10.000 They're constantly readjusting their models.

00:04:11.000 So, they suggested that yesterday, which was April 2nd, that there would be 1,036 deaths.

00:04:17.000 We saw that there were 968 deaths, right?

00:04:21.000 They're off, but how much they're off?

00:04:22.000 They're off by, what, 10% there?

00:04:24.000 Something like that?

00:04:26.000 Somewhere between 7% and 10%?

00:04:27.000 They're projecting that today there will be about 1,200 deaths.

00:04:30.000 The following day, 1,400 deaths.

00:04:32.000 All the way up to about 2,600 deaths on April 16th, which would be the peak, right?

00:04:37.000 April 15th, April 16th, that would be the peak, and then it would start to decline.

00:04:40.000 They're predicting that by June, basically June 1st, you'll see about 200 deaths per day.

00:04:45.000 And that will go all the way down to approximately 30, 20 at the end of June.

00:04:50.000 So the end of June is when they're really predicting that this thing is going to stop.

00:04:53.000 They believe that even by May 1st, we are still going to be having northwards of 1,500 deaths per day.

00:05:01.000 But there are serious questions as to exactly how well these models are going to predict things.

00:05:06.000 Because they're really using New York as sort of the basis for everything.

00:05:09.000 They're suggesting that the New York model, that's going to be the model for a lot of the big cities around the country.

00:05:14.000 And we've actually not seen those sorts of numbers coming out of Los Angeles.

00:05:17.000 Now, the model does adjust for differences in area.

00:05:21.000 So if you look at California, for example, the IMHE model suggests a lot less death in California than in New York, right?

00:05:30.000 They think that because California acted early and because it's been spreading here slower and because we're not all on top of each other the way people are on New York, that, for example, by April 26, they think the peak resource use in California is gonna be a little delayed.

00:05:41.000 By April 26, there'll be 12,421 beds needed, but there will be beds available and there will be no bed shortage.

00:05:48.000 They suggest that in California there will be 1,866 ICU beds needed and zero bed shortage, and that there will be a total of 1,493 ventilators needed.

00:05:57.000 That's a big difference from New York City.

00:05:57.000 Right?

00:06:00.000 So where exactly we stand at this point is not super clear.

00:06:04.000 I would say the models so far have been predictive.

00:06:08.000 I mean, they have.

00:06:09.000 I mean, I'm not going to say they're wildly off, but there's so much play in the joints and so much that we don't even know about the virus yet.

00:06:14.000 I mean, we're still finding out whether the virus is airborne or whether it actually requires droplets in order to spread.

00:06:19.000 So because of all of that uncertainty, This does raise the question of how are we going to know if what we did was successful or not?

00:06:25.000 In strict statistical terms, how are we going to know if what we did was successful?

00:06:29.000 Because there are countervailing concerns.

00:06:31.000 Now, normally, in a medical setting, it is easy to tell what was successful and what was not, right?

00:06:35.000 If somebody dies, you were unsuccessful.

00:06:36.000 If somebody lives, then you were successful.

00:06:38.000 But in terms of what if the countervailing policy requires the destruction of 20 million jobs, which is now what economists are suggesting, that we're going to see 20 million lost jobs by April 12th, which is about the time when the United States is going to peak here.

00:06:51.000 How many deaths, forestalled, and not even prevented, forestalled, right?

00:06:55.000 Because we don't know what happens in the second wave.

00:06:56.000 Again, this model only goes till August.

00:06:59.000 How many deaths forestalled is worth losing 20 million jobs?

00:07:03.000 Because there will be attendant poverty and death and depression and mental health issues and all sorts of problems on the other end.

00:07:10.000 That's not to suggest that what we're doing right now is wrong.

00:07:13.000 It's to suggest that we have yet to hear any of the public health experts actually weigh in on how many deaths are likely to be prevented by the policy over the course of a year.

00:07:22.000 We kind of know how many deaths might be prevented over the course of the next three, four months if we do this right.

00:07:27.000 Because if we don't do it right, then you end up with 500,000 deaths as opposed to 100,000 deaths.

00:07:31.000 You end up with a million deaths as opposed to 100,000 deaths.

00:07:33.000 But I've yet to hear any of the public health officials suggest that they have any idea what's going to come in September.

00:07:38.000 And the answer is they don't really know what's going to come in September.

00:07:40.000 They don't know whether this thing is going to die off in the summer.

00:07:42.000 There's just too much we don't know at this point.

00:07:44.000 So one of the questions becomes, When you have this level of uncertainty, what is the best policy?

00:07:50.000 In case of uncertainty, do you lock everything down indefinitely?

00:07:53.000 And when does indefinitely come to an end?

00:07:55.000 Because if you lock everything down indefinitely, then the costs are being made manifest every single day.

00:08:00.000 But the benefits are unprovable.

00:08:02.000 And when I say unprovable, what I mean is that there is no way to verify how many lives are actually being saved because you can't see the countervailing statistic, right?

00:08:10.000 I mean, it doesn't exist.

00:08:11.000 It exists in a counterfactual.

00:08:13.000 If we all went out and we did moderate social distancing, for example, all the young people went back to everybody over the age of 60 stayed home.

00:08:18.000 Everybody under the age of 60 was wearing a mask and social distancing.

00:08:21.000 We don't actually know what that looks like because it's not happening.

00:08:23.000 We know what's happening now and we know what that looks like, but we don't know what would happen if we did the other thing, right?

00:08:28.000 This is one of the problems with trying to project this stuff into the future.

00:08:30.000 And so with all these variables, what would be nice is if somebody from the public health profession would suggest We have a general idea of how many deaths are going to be saved or prevented over the course of the next year, including with the second wave, including with people going back out and engaging in moderate social distancing over the course of the next year, because you know for sure that the levels of death are going to lower if you lock everybody in their house for the next three months.

00:08:54.000 For the next three months, they will lower, but you just don't know what's going to happen after that.

00:08:56.000 The reason I bring all of this up is because there are serious questions that have to be asked right now, and especially for the next couple of weeks.

00:09:02.000 I think everybody's on board for the next two weeks, probably, with the massive sort of lockdown that's taking place across the country.

00:09:10.000 But as time progresses, as we are seeing from Europe, things get worse. 0.85

00:09:14.000 Permanent changes happen.

00:09:15.000 People lose their jobs permanently.

00:09:17.000 And holes are already appearing in the government's response, financially speaking.

00:09:20.000 So we're gonna have to take a lot more seriously how we get out of this thing.

00:09:23.000 What does this look like?

00:09:24.000 And I need to hear from the public health experts what that looks like.

00:09:27.000 It's not just enough for them to say, we're saving lives in the here and now.

00:09:29.000 I know, that's normally your job.

00:09:31.000 I don't blame you that that's normally your job.

00:09:33.000 But I need to hear what exactly this looks like on the other end, if the economy tanks.

00:09:37.000 I need to hear a mixture of policy prescriptions from people who are on the economic side and people who are on the public health side.

00:09:44.000 I'm fully with you on prioritizing public health.

00:09:47.000 But I've not even heard a metric of success yet.

00:09:50.000 What if the countervailing stat is that 200,000 people would die if we did the moderate social distancing, but 120,000 people would die over the course of the next year if we didn't do, if we locked everybody up?

00:10:03.000 Then the question becomes, okay, 80,000 lives lost in order to save 20 million jobs and, you know, maybe on the other end, another 20,000, 30,000 suicides, maybe people falling into depression, right?

00:10:15.000 These sort of stats.

00:10:16.000 I'm not saying I know the stats.

00:10:17.000 That's the point.

00:10:17.000 I don't know the stats.

00:10:18.000 I'm saying that if we're supposed to hear from the experts, then it would be nice to hear from the experts.

00:10:21.000 Instead, we're sort of getting a black box here in terms of all of the countervailing concerns.

00:10:26.000 I'm not the only one asking this question.

00:10:27.000 The Washington Post is asking this question today, and we're going to get to that in just one second.

00:10:31.000 First, Let's talk about the fact that you're spending an awful lot of time on the internet right now.

00:10:36.000 You're not going to run out of TV shows, and you're going to not run out of time in the next month because you're going to be locked up in your house.

00:10:42.000 So, you're going to be using the internet an awful lot, and that means that this is like a hacker's paradise.

00:10:46.000 If you're a hacker, right now is like your dream time.

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00:12:04.000 Obviously the protection of yourself is the thing I'm most worried about.

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00:12:08.000 So as I say, The problem with the modeling is that modeling is inherently uncertain.

00:12:12.000 And you heard this from Dr. Fauci, you heard this from Dr. Birx, but if modeling is all that we have to base our response on, then the question is going to be at what point do the models suggest that we can go back to work?

00:12:21.000 At what point do the models suggest that the amounts of death that are going to be prevented over the course of the next year, not the next three months, over the course of the next year are worthy of shutting down the entire world economy and shutting down the American economy to the tune of tens of millions of lost jobs and millions of lives wrecked?

00:12:36.000 Okay, let's be frank about this.

00:12:37.000 When people lose a job, the assumption is they're going to get another job.

00:12:39.000 That may very well be true.

00:12:40.000 But it also may very well be true that if you are a small business owner who piled all your savings into starting a restaurant and that restaurant just went away forever, okay, that is a life that has been wrecked.

00:12:51.000 If you are a person who had some savings, and now you've lost your job, and the stock market has been hit, and you're forced to liquidate your stock in order to pay your bills, and the government response ain't coming for months.

00:13:01.000 That is a life that has been wrecked.

00:13:02.000 And to pretend that quality of life doesn't matter, that the only thing that matters Are these sorts of projections is wrong.

00:13:08.000 Again, for the fourth time, I'm not calling for people to stop social distancing.

00:13:12.000 I'm the one who's been pushing hardest for social distancing.

00:13:15.000 I've been calling for social distancing since early March, just like everybody else when it became apparent that this crisis was actually a crisis.

00:13:20.000 But I have not yet heard from experts sufficient to tell me what the metrics of success look like.

00:13:28.000 If you were running a business, you wouldn't accept this sort of Compromise.

00:13:32.000 If you were running a business, you wouldn't accept people coming in and saying, we can forestall you hundreds of millions of dollars worth of savings.

00:13:38.000 And you say, how?

00:13:38.000 And they say, we don't know.

00:13:40.000 We know that we'll save you some money in the short term, but we have no idea what that looks like six months from now.

00:13:40.000 Right?

00:13:44.000 Also, we need you to shut down your business for the next three months.

00:13:47.000 It is going to be very difficult for anyone to explain based on this modeling that has been provided so far, what anything looks like.

00:13:54.000 And you're hearing this from the people who are in the epidemiology fields, right?

00:13:57.000 They're all speculating.

00:13:58.000 You hear from some people this will be over by June 1st.

00:13:59.000 You hear from some people this will be over by May 1st.

00:14:01.000 And maybe this is me railing against the sky because nobody actually has the data.

00:14:04.000 Maybe this is we just have to take our best guess and wing it.

00:14:07.000 And again, I'm willing to do that for a set period of time.

00:14:10.000 I'm not willing to do that indefinitely.

00:14:11.000 And I don't think anyone is willing to do that indefinitely.

00:14:14.000 I do not think that anyone is willing to lock themselves in their house until June 1st based on models that do not even tell us what happens after August 1st.

00:14:23.000 Again, the IMHG model can be completely right, and it still tells us nothing about what happened September 1, which I find that hard to believe, but it is true.

00:14:33.000 Where are the second wave models?

00:14:35.000 Maybe, again, we don't have information about what happens after that.

00:14:37.000 What happens when there is no herd immunity and there is no vaccine?

00:14:42.000 There's just not enough information out there, which is why every day that people are looking for a vaccine becomes more and more vital, because bottom line is, without any sort of mitigating effects, without any sort of drugs that can mitigate the effects of this, without a buildup in ICU capacity or ventilator capacity, what exactly are we gaining here?

00:14:56.000 This is the point that I've been making all along.

00:14:56.000 Right?

00:14:58.000 All we are doing is buying time for you not to get the virus.

00:15:01.000 We are not buying time for you to never get the virus.

00:15:03.000 We are buying time for you to not get the virus.

00:15:04.000 So the question is, what happens on the other side when you do get the virus?

00:15:07.000 Because the chances are very strong that in the fall, everybody is going to get the virus because we're going to be out and about and doing the things that we like to do.

00:15:14.000 And even with the masks, the chances are pretty strong that I just can't imagine the American people walking around in October, seven months from now, wearing masks in public.

00:15:22.000 I just don't think that the United States is not built for that.

00:15:25.000 It's not the same thing as other cultures. 1.00

00:15:27.000 That may be for good and it may be for bad.

00:15:29.000 And I'm not the only person asking this question.

00:15:30.000 The Washington Post has a piece today That says, experts and Trump's advisors doubt White House's 240,000 coronavirus deaths estimate.

00:15:38.000 According to William Wan, Josh Dowsey, Ashley Parker, and Joel Akenbach, leading disease forecasters, whose research the White House used to conclude 100,000 to 240,000 people will die nationwide from the coronavirus, were mystified when they saw the administration's projection this week.

00:15:52.000 The experts said they don't challenge the number's validity, but they have no idea how the White House arrived at them.

00:15:56.000 I'm confused.

00:15:57.000 How do you not challenge the validity, but you have no idea how they arrived at them?

00:16:00.000 That's basically them saying we don't know what the hell anybody's talking about.

00:16:03.000 White House officials have refused to explain how they generated the figure.

00:16:06.000 They have not provided the underlying data so others can assess its reliability or provided long-term strategies to lower the death count.

00:16:12.000 Some of President Trump's advisors have expressed doubts about the estimate, according to three White House officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

00:16:18.000 There have been fierce debates inside the White House about its accuracy.

00:16:21.000 At a task force meeting this week, Anthony Fauci told others there are too many variables at play in the pandemic to make the models reliable.

00:16:28.000 He said, I've looked at all the models.

00:16:29.000 I've spent a lot of time on the models.

00:16:31.000 They don't tell you anything.

00:16:32.000 You can't really rely upon models.

00:16:34.000 Then what the hell are we talking about?

00:16:36.000 I mean, seriously.

00:16:37.000 You may as well just say, we have no idea how many people are gonna die.

00:16:40.000 We think it's a lot.

00:16:41.000 Shut down the entire economy.

00:16:43.000 And the reason they're not doing this, the reason they're not doing this, is because they want you to rely on the quote-unquote experts.

00:16:48.000 Now, I'm fine with relying on people who know more about epidemiology than I do.

00:16:51.000 I'm not challenging the inputs on the models.

00:16:54.000 I'm not even challenging the models themselves.

00:16:55.000 I'm saying the people who make the models are challenging the models.

00:16:57.000 I'm saying the people who are creating the models understand that there's play in the joints.

00:17:01.000 If you can't really rely upon the models, then again, just a question.

00:17:06.000 How are you creating a metric of success?

00:17:09.000 What's the metric of success?

00:17:10.000 And the metric of success cannot be, you know, Governor Andrew Cuomo going out there and saying things like, the metric of success is have we saved one life? 0.91

00:17:16.000 Okay, that's just ridiculous.

00:17:17.000 That's not a public policy proposal. 0.89

00:17:19.000 Lots of things would save one life.

00:17:21.000 You know, banning cars would save one life.

00:17:23.000 No one's talking about doing that.

00:17:25.000 Keeping everybody home will certainly save some lives.

00:17:27.000 The question is for how long?

00:17:29.000 Who the people are who are going to get it?

00:17:31.000 Does it buy us time to increase capacity?

00:17:34.000 Is that time going to be useful?

00:17:36.000 None of these questions have really been asked.

00:17:39.000 Robert Redfield, the director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the VP's office, have all similarly voiced doubts about the projection's accuracy.

00:17:46.000 Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist whose models were cited by the White House, said his own work on the pandemic doesn't go far enough into the future to make predictions akin to the White House fatality forecast.

00:17:55.000 So the models are only for the next few months.

00:17:57.000 He says, we don't have a sense of what's going on in the here and now.

00:17:59.000 We don't know what people will do in the future.

00:18:00.000 We don't know if the virus is seasonal.

00:18:03.000 The estimate apparently was a rushed affair according to Mark Lipsitch, a leading epidemiologist and director for the Harvard University Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.

00:18:11.000 He said they contacted us on Tuesday.

00:18:12.000 They asked for answers and feedback by Thursday.

00:18:14.000 So they gave us 24 hours and so we gave them a number.

00:18:17.000 Other experts noted the White House didn't even explain the time period the death estimate supposedly captures.

00:18:22.000 Is that just the few months or the year plus it will take to deploy a vaccine?

00:18:26.000 Everything was presented on basically a single slide.

00:18:29.000 Among epidemiologists, the estimates raise more questions than an answer, not just about methodology and accuracy, but also about purpose.

00:18:35.000 The primary goal of such models usually is to allow authorities to game out scenarios, foresee challenges, create coherent long-term strategy.

00:18:42.000 Shaman said, I wish there were more of a concerted national plan.

00:18:44.000 I wish it had started a month and a half ago, maybe two months ago.

00:18:47.000 Natalie Dean, by the way, worth noting, back as of mid-February, Dr. Fauci was out there publicly saying that he didn't think that the risk of mass infection in the United States was high.

00:18:56.000 Natalie Dean, a biostatistician who is not involved in the White House effort, but is working on coronavirus vaccine evaluation with the WHO, says the whole reason you create models is to help you make decisions, but you have to actually act on those projections and answers.

00:19:07.000 Otherwise, the models are useless.

00:19:09.000 Yes, but we are acting and we still don't know what the hell's in the models.

00:19:12.000 I mean, like, we have no idea what exactly these models look like.

00:19:15.000 Deborah Burke said the projection was based on five or six modelers, including from Imperial College in Britain, Harvard, Columbia, and Northeastern Universities.

00:19:22.000 But two models appear to have been particularly influential.

00:19:24.000 One was the Imperial College model that we've talked about before, which now suggests south of 20,000 deaths in the UK thanks to strict social distancing.

00:19:31.000 And even that, it's unclear from that model, do they mean like social distancing and staying at home for a year?

00:19:36.000 Because then it's not 20,000, then it's higher than 20,000.

00:19:39.000 In the United States, the one that we've been using is that IMHE model that I was talking about.

00:19:43.000 Apparently, Burke said that her task force initially reviewed the work of 12 models, then went back to the drawing board for a week or two, and worked from the ground up utilizing actual reporting of cases.

00:19:52.000 It's the way we built HIV models, TB models, malaria models.

00:19:54.000 When we finished, the other group that was working in parallel, which we didn't know about, the IMHE model, gave its own estimate.

00:20:00.000 They initially estimated deaths throughout the summer would total 38,000 to 162,000, which is a lower projection than many others and actually beneath the White House's own estimate.

00:20:09.000 But because of the lower figures, experts believe it was a main source for the White House's best case scenario of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths.

00:20:16.000 Meanwhile, the White House was appearing to rely on Imperial College for its worst case scenario, which estimated as many as 2.2 million U.S.

00:20:22.000 deaths if no action were taken, 1.1 million deaths if moderate mitigation strategies were adopted, and an unspecified number if drastic measures were taken.

00:20:30.000 Well, unspecified number would be the big question right now.

00:20:32.000 Like, that is the big question, is it not?

00:20:36.000 Again, we don't know the time period.

00:20:38.000 The IMHE models assumes that every single state is going to impose stay-at-home orders.

00:20:42.000 Some states, including Alabama and Missouri, have not done that yet.

00:20:45.000 It also assumes the entire country will maintain the restrictions until summer.

00:20:48.000 Trump has extended the White House's restrictions until April 30th.

00:20:51.000 He's made clear he wants to open this as soon as possible.

00:20:54.000 Also, nobody knows exactly how far this extends.

00:20:57.000 Again, the Washington Post making the same point that I'm making.

00:20:59.000 You can look at the IMHE models yourself.

00:21:00.000 They're online.

00:21:01.000 You can see how far they extend.

00:21:03.000 The answer is August.

00:21:05.000 If the White House's projection covers only the next few months, like the IMHE model does, the true death toll will almost certainly be larger because the U.S.

00:21:11.000 will probably see additional waves of COVID-19 until a vaccine is deployed.

00:21:17.000 The IMHE was not based on what is usually called the Susceptible Infectious Recovered Model, which is a mathematical way to represent three different populations in an outbreak.

00:21:24.000 People vulnerable to infection, people who are infectious, and people who are gradually removed either by death or recovery.

00:21:29.000 But the IMHE took a different model.

00:21:31.000 It's a statistical model that takes the trending curves of death from China, for example, and fits that curve to emerging death data from cities and counties to predict what comes next.

00:21:39.000 It's a valuable tool, but it's inherently optimistic because it assumes all states respond as swiftly as China, says a biostatistician at University of Florida.

00:21:47.000 In an earlier interview this month, the head of the IMHE group, Christopher Murray, said his model was created for a different purpose from Imperial College.

00:21:52.000 He said, we created our model to help hospitals plan how many beds they would need.

00:21:56.000 The purpose of Imperial's model is to make people realize that government intervention is crucial, and what would happen without that?

00:22:01.000 Okay, so, bottom line is, nobody knows a damn thing.

00:22:05.000 I mean, really. 0.71

00:22:05.000 Like, we know things are bad. 0.71

00:22:07.000 We know things will be worse if we leave our houses for the next three months.

00:22:10.000 That's it.

00:22:11.000 That's all we know.

00:22:12.000 I've said all the things we know.

00:22:13.000 We don't know what happens after that.

00:22:14.000 We don't know what happens when you go back to work.

00:22:16.000 We don't know if there's a second wave.

00:22:18.000 We don't know if the summer kills this thing off.

00:22:19.000 We don't know what the infection rate is.

00:22:21.000 That's still a variable.

00:22:22.000 We don't know what the case fatality rate is.

00:22:24.000 That is still variable.

00:22:26.000 We don't know anything.

00:22:27.000 Okay, so the question is going to be, when do we know enough to say people have to start getting back to work?

00:22:32.000 When do we start to say that the least vulnerable members of our population should be going to work right now with the social distancing and with the masks?

00:22:40.000 When do we know all of this?

00:22:41.000 Because there are real-time costs being incurred right now, and it ain't just money.

00:22:45.000 There are real-time costs being incurred right now.

00:22:48.000 And I'd love to hear the public health experts explain A more wholesome view of what exactly success looks like.

00:22:54.000 I understand what success looks like in the first wave.

00:22:56.000 I'm with you.

00:22:57.000 That's why I'm not saying get out and do things right now.

00:22:59.000 I understand what success looks like.

00:23:01.000 Stay home.

00:23:02.000 Follow the orders.

00:23:03.000 Give this a chance to work.

00:23:04.000 But I want to know what the second wave looks like.

00:23:06.000 Because if they are predicting that everybody is gonna get this by the end of the year, basically, And they're not making that prediction available to the public because they know that if they tell us we're all going to get infected by the end of the year, we're going to go out right now.

00:23:19.000 And if, in fact, there is such a thing as herd immunity, and if, in fact, what we're doing is lowering the curve but not lowering the number of deaths over time because, for example, we actually don't have ICU capacity or ventilator capacity and we're not going to ramp those up strongly enough, Then we have to consider what exactly are the costs and rewards of particular policies.

00:23:36.000 What happens if we start going back to work?

00:23:38.000 Not all go back to work.

00:23:39.000 What happens if we start going back to work May 1st?

00:23:41.000 What happens if we start going back to work June 1st?

00:23:43.000 What happens if we start going back to work July 1st?

00:23:45.000 What if there is no work July 1st?

00:23:47.000 What if we start seeing riots and breakdowns like we're starting to see in Europe right now?

00:23:54.000 These are actual concerns, people.

00:23:56.000 We're living in a real-time, real-world scenario.

00:23:59.000 This is not all modeling in labs.

00:24:01.000 And so, what would be great is if we could see some epidemiologists discuss, you know, like a realistic scenario where we're not locked in our houses for the next year, and where time doesn't end on August 1st.

00:24:12.000 I would like to know these things, because one of two things is true.

00:24:15.000 Either the deaths end August 1st, in which case we're doing all the right things here, we're locking it down, everything's great, or the deaths do not end on August 1st, and there is a massive second wave, in which case, what are we doing now?

00:24:28.000 And also, there's a third case scenario where we've locked it down to the point where there's a mild wave, a second wave.

00:24:32.000 But have you heard anything about a second wave?

00:24:35.000 Have you heard anything about what happens when we go back to work?

00:24:37.000 Have you heard anything about what happens when we reopen the economy?

00:24:40.000 Have you heard anything about the cost of this thing?

00:24:43.000 Epidemiologists are going to need to do better.

00:24:45.000 As time goes on, people are going to demand answers, and they deserve those answers.

00:24:48.000 We're gonna get to more of this in just one second.

00:24:50.000 First, let's talk about the fact that government is using its power to do basically whatever it wants right now.

00:24:58.000 And the fact is that sometimes that is justified, but there are certain areas where it is completely unjustified.

00:25:03.000 We've seen people with tyrannical instincts doing ridiculous things in certain areas of the country.

00:25:08.000 In L.A., the L.A.

00:25:09.000 County Sheriff actually tried to shut down all gun shops in the county, calling them non-essential businesses, at a time when they were releasing criminals from jail.

00:25:16.000 Literally releasing criminals from jail.

00:25:18.000 Okay, well this might be a reason why you should have a weapon.

00:25:21.000 Okay, one of the reasons why you have a gun is to protect yourself, to protect your family, to protect your property from the predations of others.

00:25:26.000 And sometimes the government wants to stop you from doing that.

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00:26:39.000 Okay, so going back to those models.

00:26:42.000 And I'm not talking about the models, I'm talking about the actual statistics now.

00:26:44.000 Let's look at the actual statistics, country by country.

00:26:47.000 So right now, the industrialized countries that are obviously having the hardest time are countries like Spain and Italy, right?

00:26:53.000 Spain and Italy are just having a brutal time of it.

00:26:56.000 If you look at the statistics yesterday, Italy had 961 deaths, almost as many deaths as the United States.

00:27:01.000 The total population of Spain is 46.7 million, as opposed to the United States.

00:27:07.000 They had about as many deaths as we did, but they have Let's see, 36 divided by four, they have nine times fewer people than we do.

00:27:16.000 So they're getting just shellacked.

00:27:19.000 Italy had 760 deaths yesterday, which actually is the beginning of their down curve, we can absolutely hope. 1.00

00:27:23.000 France got walloped yesterday.

00:27:25.000 France had 1,355 deaths.

00:27:28.000 The real question is deaths per 1 million population.

00:27:30.000 That's a statistic that is constantly rising.

00:27:32.000 The United States right now has 18 deaths per million population.

00:27:35.000 Italy and Spain have well over 200.

00:27:37.000 They're like 230 for Italy and 221 for Spain.

00:27:42.000 And they're further along in their curve than we are.

00:27:45.000 So you'd expect the United States to rise.

00:27:47.000 So the question is going to be what those stats actually look like if we took that as the model.

00:27:53.000 So let's assume that when those stats are done, that you end up in the neighborhood of 300 deaths per million for Italy or Spain, right?

00:28:01.000 300 deaths per million.

00:28:02.000 So that's when you end up with like 90,000 deaths in the United States.

00:28:05.000 Right, if we're on the same model, and we end up with 300 deaths per million of the population in Italy or in Spain, and we are on the same curve, then we would be looking at 300 deaths per million, so 300 times 330, and you end up with 99,000 deaths, so 100,000 deaths.

00:28:17.000 And you end up with 99,000 deaths.

00:28:21.000 It's about 100,000 deaths.

00:28:21.000 If we are not Italy or Spain, if we contain this better than Italy and Spain, and if Italy and Spain don't experience a second wave and it's too early to determine whether they will experience a second wave when they let people out of lockdown, then we are not going to end up with anywhere near those kinds of deaths.

00:28:36.000 Right, if we end up in the neighborhood of a France, which right now has 83 and maybe ends up at 100 or 120 deaths per million population, then you're looking at one third of that.

00:28:48.000 Right, so all of this depends on what we do now, which is why we should lock down for now.

00:28:52.000 But again, we need to know where this is going in the future because the costs that are being incurred in real time are grave, they are serious, and people who are taking them lightly and suggesting that you can't even ask questions like this because otherwise you're undermining the credibility of the program, Like, I don't know what world they are living in.

00:29:08.000 People are losing their livelihoods.

00:29:10.000 People are being forced to go to food banks.

00:29:12.000 We are going to have an unemployment rate that is higher than the Great Depression here.

00:29:15.000 I mean, the Great Depression, lest we forget, was the shaping event for an entire generation of Americans.

00:29:19.000 My grandparents were shaped by the Great Depression.

00:29:21.000 They lived the rest of their lives in the shadow of the Great Depression.

00:29:24.000 This is what happens when major events occur.

00:29:26.000 This is the biggest event any of us have ever seen in our lifetime, and it is not particularly close.

00:29:29.000 I was there for 9-11.

00:29:30.000 This dwarfed 9-11 in terms of the size and impact on the American population, Right, 9-11 was an attack on America.

00:29:38.000 And then, we took measures to protect ourselves.

00:29:41.000 And those measures, at the time, were considered extraordinarily restrictive.

00:29:43.000 Right, we had FISA warrants, and we had data gathering, and we had some new surveillance, electronically.

00:29:48.000 And we had the TSA patting us down.

00:29:49.000 And I remember all the controversy over these things.

00:29:51.000 Oh my God, the TSA is patting us down.

00:29:53.000 Now imagine a world where the government had said, you're going to stay in your house for the next three months.

00:29:58.000 Okay?

00:29:59.000 That's what we have right now. 0.72

00:30:00.000 So, to pretend that we can't take into account the costs of this program, It's ridiculous.

00:30:06.000 We ought to be taking into account the cost of the program.

00:30:08.000 I'm not pretending I know the answers.

00:30:10.000 But the problem is I'm not sure anybody else knows the answers either.

00:30:12.000 And I want to hear some honest accounting from the people in power, in the Trump administration, in the epidemiological models.

00:30:18.000 I want to hear what they have to say.

00:30:20.000 I keep hitting the same point here.

00:30:21.000 We don't have enough data.

00:30:23.000 And some people are saying that's an excuse for us never to take any action but to stay at home.

00:30:27.000 What I'm saying is when the costs are being racked up in real time, you better damn well come up with the data fast or people are just going to start ignoring you.

00:30:33.000 Seriously.

00:30:34.000 Like, either the estimates roll in, and they happen to be particularly accurate, and there are new estimates made as to what happens after we all go back to work, or people are just gonna go back to work.

00:30:44.000 Because that is the way that human beings operate.

00:30:47.000 Right now, according to Reuters, the economic crisis spawned by the coronavirus pandemic has produced a wave of grim U.S.

00:30:52.000 data, with likely more to come as millions lose jobs, businesses shutter, and spending stops.

00:30:57.000 At some point, the bottom will be reached.

00:30:58.000 Given how fast the situation has developed, judging when that happens in real time will prove challenging for economists, who usually depend on monthly, quarterly, or yearly trends in data to judge the state of the business cycle.

00:31:07.000 A coronavirus outbreak is not a business cycle event.

00:31:10.000 Perhaps it's a once-in-a-century health crisis, where normal choices about where to go and what to spend are influenced.

00:31:15.000 By a combination of fear and government edict.

00:31:18.000 But it's unclear exactly how bad this is going to get.

00:31:21.000 Apparently, the estimates are now suggesting that we are going to end up with like 20 million lost jobs by April 12th.

00:31:28.000 Okay, in a second, we are going to get to the White House recommendations, where we go from here.

00:31:34.000 And again, it seems like everybody is focused on what we do today, and that's fine.

00:31:36.000 We should focus on what we do today.

00:31:38.000 I've been giving advice to people on what to do today.

00:31:40.000 I've been very stringently recommending that everybody follow the law, and not only follow the law, but take extra measures.

00:31:45.000 I've been recommending masks since probably a week ago.

00:31:48.000 A week and a half ago.

00:31:50.000 But, they had, honest to God, they had better start setting some actual estimates as to how many people are going to die a year out before we have the vaccine developed.

00:32:00.000 If we stay in, if we do not stay in, we need to start making some serious data-driven choices here.

00:32:07.000 Not simply, things are bad, stay home.

00:32:09.000 That's not going to be enough.

00:32:11.000 Not when you're looking at... In Europe, they're looking to break apart of the EU.

00:32:14.000 Like, you may not like the EU.

00:32:15.000 That's fine.

00:32:16.000 But that is a pretty massive change.

00:32:17.000 They're talking about the entire European Union splitting right now.

00:32:20.000 Because every country is now shutting its borders.

00:32:20.000 Why?

00:32:23.000 They're talking about total government control of economies in Europe.

00:32:27.000 There's massive rioting in southern Italy right now because supply chains have been broken and because the government has locked everything down.

00:32:34.000 This is not sustainable.

00:32:35.000 It is not sustainable.

00:32:36.000 Everyone knows it's not sustainable, by the way.

00:32:37.000 Ask Fauci, ask Burst, everyone knows this is unsustainable.

00:32:40.000 The only question is how long we can sustain it.

00:32:42.000 And the other question is how long we should sustain it.

00:32:45.000 And nobody has yet said how long we should sustain it.

00:32:47.000 If you ask public health experts, when do we get to go back to work?

00:32:51.000 And I've asked, if you listen to my radio show, I've asked like two a day for the last three weeks, basically.

00:32:56.000 When do we all get to go back to work?

00:32:58.000 Some people will say May 1st.

00:32:59.000 What does that look like?

00:33:00.000 We'll tranche it out.

00:33:00.000 Well, we don't know.

00:33:02.000 When do we all get to go back to work?

00:33:03.000 Are there going to be ballgames in September?

00:33:05.000 Are there going to be ballgames in August?

00:33:06.000 What happens with the second wave?

00:33:07.000 We have no idea.

00:33:10.000 Okay, operating on the basis of incomplete data with real-time costs, that is a thing we are doing right now, and let's not pretend they're not real-time costs or that it's bad to recommend the real-time costs, okay?

00:33:18.000 In just a second, we're gonna get to what the White House is recommending at this time, and we're gonna talk about a couple of just botched media hits.

00:33:26.000 I mean, really, botched media hits on the Trump administration.

00:33:29.000 We'll get to all of that in a second.

00:33:30.000 By the way, one of the reasons that I'm sounding the alarm with regard to the economy is because, despite all the talk of the government response being just wonderful and tremendous, there's a report out today that some people could wait 20 weeks to receive checks.

00:33:45.000 20 weeks until August.

00:33:47.000 We've been told the model doesn't even extend past August.

00:33:51.000 So if you don't have a check coming until August, how the hell do you expect people are going to survive?

00:33:55.000 You think people are just going to sit home and not go to a job that they've been furloughed from?

00:33:59.000 That they are not going to go back and reopen their business when there's no check in the mail?

00:34:02.000 Is that what you would expect here?

00:34:04.000 The small business lending program is chaos.

00:34:06.000 Nobody knows exactly what the standards are.

00:34:08.000 Banks are not lending same day.

00:34:10.000 They're not.

00:34:10.000 I'm talking to small business owners.

00:34:12.000 They were told by the administration and by Congress that this thing was going to be open and ready to go.

00:34:15.000 It is not open.

00:34:16.000 It is not ready to go.

00:34:18.000 Okay, as government proves itself incompetent on virtually every level except punishing you when you go outside, there's going to be a lot of blowback from this.

00:34:25.000 Again, good for people for paying attention to the orders right now.

00:34:29.000 Do I think that this is going to maintain till May with no money in the mail and the food banks running out of food?

00:34:34.000 And nobody having the money to give enough charity to sustain the food banks as the government forcibly shuts down an entire economy?

00:34:40.000 I do not think that is the case.

00:34:41.000 Something is going to have to change.

00:34:42.000 Okay, we're going to get to more of this in just one second.

00:34:45.000 First, you ought to head over right now to dailywire.com.

00:34:49.000 Why?

00:34:49.000 Well, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:34:52.000 Today, it is Atlas Dynamics on Instagram who appreciates perfection when they see it and sets the record straight on Norway.

00:34:57.000 In this picture, Atlas has the world's greatest beverage vessel sitting next to their computer displaying the blueprints of what appears to be a knife design they're working on.

00:35:04.000 The post caption reads, can't deny the awesomeness of this legendary Tumblr.

00:35:09.000 Enjoying homeschool office with my brand spanking new ultimate drinking vessel and working through my exam day by day.

00:35:14.000 Thank you so much Real Daily Wire and official Ben Shapiro for keeping my day awesome in not socialist Norway.

00:35:19.000 Hashtag legendary coffee.

00:35:21.000 Hashtag never socialist.

00:35:22.000 Hashtag leftist tears.

00:35:23.000 Hashtag home office.

00:35:23.000 Hashtag leftist tears Tumblr.

00:35:26.000 Hopefully Bernie Sanders is watching and will take note while he's eating his pudding.

00:35:26.000 Awesome.

00:35:29.000 Also, if you have not yet had a chance to see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com and check it out.

00:35:35.000 Jeremy Boring and I kicked it off a few weeks ago.

00:35:37.000 All of our other hosts have done live streams over at dailywire.com.

00:35:40.000 We'll continue all this week at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific.

00:35:44.000 All Access Live is a lot more relaxed than our normal programming.

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00:36:02.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:36:06.000 Now, when I say that this is unsustainable, one of the reasons is unsustainable is because the experts have to actually be experts in order for the experts to have legitimacy for us to take their expertise seriously.

00:36:22.000 Is that fair?

00:36:23.000 And if the experts don't know all that much, it's very difficult to take all the experts super seriously.

00:36:28.000 And I understand.

00:36:29.000 Information is variable.

00:36:30.000 And it arrives in real time.

00:36:32.000 I'm not saying don't pay attention to the experts.

00:36:34.000 I'm saying we need better information from the experts.

00:36:36.000 Five seconds ago, they were telling us that masks don't work.

00:36:38.000 Now Dr. Oz is on TV telling us that we ought to wear masks over our face.

00:36:42.000 Not just like N95 masks, which are unavailable generally.

00:36:45.000 Not just surgical masks, which at least prevent you from breathing out.

00:36:49.000 He's telling you should wear bandanas.

00:36:50.000 Okay, five seconds ago, they were telling us that it is a waste of time for you to actually wear, like, a full-on N95 face mask to the grocery store, and now they're telling us, by the way, slap a bandana over your face, and maybe that'll protect you.

00:37:01.000 Do you feel protected?

00:37:02.000 Do you feel in control?

00:37:03.000 Like, really?

00:37:05.000 Here's Dr. Oz explaining that we should wear bandanas.

00:37:07.000 Well, a scarf's not gonna be as good as a surgical mask, and that won't be as good as a N95 mask.

00:37:12.000 But there's a rethinking around masks, in part because we realize that the virus doesn't go deep in your lungs.

00:37:18.000 It probably inserts itself right at the very tip of your nose.

00:37:21.000 Imagine little doors there, which are where the cells can, receptors can accept the virus.

00:37:26.000 The virus is a key and it unlocks those doors and goes in.

00:37:29.000 Older people have more of those doors than younger people.

00:37:31.000 That's why they get more of the infection, we believe.

00:37:33.000 And wearing any kind of facial covering could block the larger droplets from getting into your nose.

00:37:40.000 So net-net, it's better than nothing, but not a ton better than nothing.

00:37:43.000 Okay, it's better than nothing, but not a ton better than nothing, right?

00:37:46.000 Great.

00:37:47.000 I feel much safer now.

00:37:48.000 Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci is on TV.

00:37:50.000 He's saying all the states should have stay-at-home orders.

00:37:52.000 Again, that's fine.

00:37:53.000 As I say, I'm all on board with the let's-get-this-thing-locked-down.

00:37:56.000 But could you give us an expectation of when we are not going to be locked down?

00:38:00.000 You know, an expectation that's realistic, where we're not all locked in our houses till August, waiting on checks that are not going to arrive from debt that we cannot actually sell?

00:38:07.000 How about that?

00:38:08.000 How about something realistic here?

00:38:10.000 That'd be good.

00:38:11.000 Here's Fauci saying all states should have stay-at-home orders.

00:38:14.000 It's his next quote that really is sort of disturbing.

00:38:16.000 Here's Fauci.

00:38:17.000 Some states are still not issuing stay-at-home orders.

00:38:20.000 I mean, whether there should be a federally mandated directive for that or not, I guess that's more of a political question, but just scientifically, doesn't everybody have to be on the same page with this stuff?

00:38:33.000 Yeah, I think so, Anderson.

00:38:36.000 I don't understand why that's not happening.

00:38:38.000 As you said, you know, the tension between federally mandated versus states' rights to do what they want is something I don't want to get into.

00:38:45.000 But if you look at what's going on in this country, I just don't understand why we're not doing that.

00:38:50.000 OK, totally agree.

00:38:51.000 Again, I agree with him that we should lock everything down right now.

00:38:55.000 I mean, you can't look at the images coming out of New York and the stories coming out of New York and not freak out.

00:38:59.000 And we should be freaked out.

00:39:01.000 But The but here is not a but that suggests don't pay any attention to what the experts are saying on what you do right now.

00:39:09.000 How about, like, in the future?

00:39:10.000 Here's Dr. Fauci.

00:39:11.000 Again, he's an epidemiologist, right?

00:39:13.000 His job is to stop disease.

00:39:14.000 That's his job.

00:39:14.000 I understand.

00:39:15.000 His job is not to heal the economy.

00:39:16.000 But here was Fauci being asked about the job losses, and here was his answer.

00:39:20.000 I mean, I know it's difficult, but we're having a lot of suffering, a lot of death.

00:39:25.000 This is inconvenient from an economic and a personal standpoint, but we just have to do it.

00:39:30.000 That is our major weapon against this virus right now.

00:39:35.000 We don't have a vaccine that's deployable.

00:39:38.000 This is the only thing we have.

00:39:40.000 It's inconvenient?

00:39:42.000 Okay, it's a little more than inconvenient if you lose your business and you lose your job.

00:39:46.000 Like, can we at least not Dismiss the concerns of people who are losing their entire livelihoods and are going to food banks for the first time in their lives, and we hope will be the only time in their lives.

00:39:55.000 Can we at least not dismiss that?

00:39:57.000 And can we hear somebody, why will no one in the media ask, I swear to God, no one in the media will ask simple questions of the epidemiologist, like what happens in a second wave?

00:40:06.000 Have you even gamed for this?

00:40:07.000 How many deaths are going to be prevented in the second wave?

00:40:10.000 Are we ramping up our ICU and ventilator capacity such that when there is a second wave in the fall, which literally everybody expects because we're seeing it in Asia, when that happens, do you expect that there will be a number of deaths prevented?

00:40:21.000 How many deaths will actually be prevented?

00:40:23.000 Not over the course of the next three months, which you've modeled, and I get, and I agree with. 0.58

00:40:26.000 Over the course of the next year, because that's what we're talking about until a vaccine is developed, right?

00:40:29.000 That is the actual stop point.

00:40:31.000 Once a vaccine is developed, that's as good as it's gonna get.

00:40:33.000 There is no better than it gets at that point.

00:40:34.000 They're saying that's 12 to 18 months.

00:40:36.000 So, the question is, what happens between August of this year and August of next year?

00:40:40.000 Because they're talking 12 to 18 months.

00:40:42.000 Let's take the longer end of that.

00:40:43.000 Let's say it takes 18 months to fully develop, test, and distribute a vaccine.

00:40:47.000 So you're talking about from March, which is when this started, to September of next year.

00:40:52.000 So don't give me models only that stop at August.

00:40:54.000 I want to know what happens after that.

00:40:56.000 And I want to know how many lives are saved by all of us staying home and wrecking the economy over the course of 18 months.

00:41:01.000 Not over the course of three months.

00:41:02.000 I get over the course of three months.

00:41:03.000 I'm with you over the course of three months.

00:41:06.000 Okay, again, the information that's coming out, even from people I trust and like, is so vague and conflicting.

00:41:13.000 So Dr. Birx, she says lots of people are asymptomatic, and so we have to follow the guidelines.

00:41:18.000 Okay, and they're gonna be asymptomatic when we all go back to work also.

00:41:22.000 They're not going to stop being asymptomatic.

00:41:25.000 What's the plan, guys?

00:41:26.000 What's the plan?

00:41:27.000 We all believe that there's a greater proportion of people who are asymptomatic than recognized.

00:41:33.000 And again, that may correspond with age, with greater number of asymptomatic cases in people under 40.

00:41:40.000 And so both severity of disease increases with age, but asymptomatic potential may also decrease with age so that it's more in the younger age groups.

00:41:50.000 And so we believe that there could be significant transmission from asymptomatic individuals.

00:41:57.000 All of that's true, and it's going to remain true when we all go back to work, presumably.

00:42:01.000 I'll tell you what's unsustainable is some of these recommendations.

00:42:03.000 The New Jersey governor, Murphy, he came out yesterday.

00:42:08.000 He suggests that you're supposed to socially distance inside your own house.

00:42:12.000 Like, I'm sorry, that's, not only is that not sustainable, that's not anything anyone is going to do now.

00:42:17.000 Okay, it's not going to happen now.

00:42:18.000 I have three children.

00:42:20.000 What the hell am I supposed to do with them?

00:42:21.000 Am I supposed to take my month-old baby, shove her in the other room and be like, sorry kid, I'm social distancing right now.

00:42:25.000 Am I supposed to take my six-year-old, who came down with the flu, and be like, you know what, I'm gonna be over here, you take care of yourself, here's a barf bucket and some Tylenol, enjoy.

00:42:36.000 What are you even talking about?

00:42:38.000 This is not realistic advice.

00:42:40.000 You can't socially distance from people who are in your own house.

00:42:45.000 No.

00:42:45.000 The answer is no.

00:42:46.000 There's going to come a point where human beings just say no.

00:42:49.000 And I'm willing to put that point off as far as possible if you show me what the models say about how many deaths we are preventing one year from now, not three months from now, not four months from now, not six months from now, a year from now.

00:42:59.000 I'm willing to do it now while you develop those models. 0.81

00:43:02.000 Just tell me you're developing the freaking models.

00:43:04.000 Just tell me that you're going to know sometime in the future how many lives we're saving here. 0.82

00:43:08.000 Because the costs are happening now.

00:43:10.000 The costs are happening right now in real time.

00:43:13.000 And we all know this.

00:43:14.000 And anybody who just says, don't worry about tomorrow, is not worrying about the people who are suffering now.

00:43:20.000 I'm worried about the people who are dying now, and I'm worried about the people who are losing their jobs now, and losing their businesses now, and losing their livelihoods, and watching their dreams destroyed right now.

00:43:28.000 I'm worried about all of those people.

00:43:29.000 We should all be worried about all of those people.

00:43:31.000 By the way, all of those people are still going to work.

00:43:35.000 Okay, let's just be real about this.

00:43:36.000 There are a lot of people out there, like, for people who pretend that the, that everybody has the luxury of staying home during this thing.

00:43:43.000 They don't.

00:43:44.000 There are a lot of people, particularly people who are working low-wage jobs, right?

00:43:47.000 The people who the left says that people on the right don't care about.

00:43:49.000 Those people are still going to work because they do not have a choice.

00:43:53.000 Are they supposed to stay home and receive no check from the government until August?

00:43:55.000 Is that the plan?

00:43:56.000 Let me show you a picture.

00:43:58.000 This is a picture yesterday from New York.

00:44:00.000 Okay, New York is the epicenter of this thing.

00:44:02.000 Okay, so this was put out yesterday, this tweet, by Yashar Ali.

00:44:07.000 Okay, this is put out by ABC7 New York.

00:44:09.000 Quote, this is the number two train at about 6 p.m., Thursday evening, in a photo provided to Eyewitness News by Progressive's Action Twitter account.

00:44:15.000 The MTA says it's running as many trains as it can, but has been hobbled because of crews that are out sick or quarantined.

00:44:20.000 Public health officials have said social distancing is the key to slowing the spread of the deadly COVID-19.

00:44:25.000 New York remains the hardest hit place in the nation.

00:44:27.000 This is the number two train, April 2nd, 6 p.m., Um, that ain't social distancing, gang.

00:44:34.000 That is mostly young minority people who I assume are coming back from their jobs at 6pm.

00:44:39.000 Who are working, I assume.

00:44:41.000 Who are going to their jobs.

00:44:41.000 Because they don't have the luxury of being members of the media, who get to sit at home and broadcast.

00:44:47.000 Those are people who have to work jobs.

00:44:50.000 Like, we're just not being realistic about any of this stuff.

00:44:52.000 We're not.

00:44:54.000 I want the social distancing as much as you.

00:44:55.000 I want this over as fast as possible.

00:44:57.000 I want everybody to lock down as fast as possible.

00:44:58.000 So it is over as fast as possible.

00:45:00.000 All I want you to tell me is that it will be over when it's over.

00:45:03.000 And no one can tell me it's going to be over when it's over.

00:45:06.000 Like nobody will.

00:45:06.000 And you're again, we're seeing real time, real time costs to this.

00:45:11.000 In Europe, the entire European Union may break apart over this thing.

00:45:15.000 Now you may not like the European Union, but that's a pretty major thing, is it not?

00:45:20.000 That's a pretty significant countervailing concern, is it not?

00:45:23.000 Meanwhile, the media doing yeoman's work and misinforming people.

00:45:27.000 So the New York Times has a piece today titled, the 1,000 bed comfort was supposed to aid New York.

00:45:31.000 It has 20 patients.

00:45:32.000 It's a joke said a top hospital executive whose facilities are packed with coronavirus patients.

00:45:37.000 Note to the media, the comfort was never supposed to house people with coronavirus.

00:45:41.000 Why?

00:45:42.000 Because, well, let's see, what happens when you have a ship?

00:45:45.000 Let's call it a Diamond Princess cruise ship.

00:45:47.000 And you put people with coronavirus on a contained area within a ship.

00:45:50.000 What happens on that cruise ship? 1.00

00:45:53.000 Well, it turns out everybody gets coronavirus, you idiot. 1.00

00:45:56.000 The entire thing was designed to provide additional hospital beds, not ICU beds, not coronavirus beds. 1.00

00:46:01.000 It was designed to increase the number of hospital beds available.

00:46:03.000 Do you think the hotels in New York are being made over for ICUs and for ventilators?

00:46:07.000 That's not what's happening.

00:46:09.000 Nonetheless, the New York Times reports, Michael Schwartz reporting, such were the expectations for the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort.

00:46:15.000 And when it chugged into New York Harbor this week, throngs of people momentarily forgetting the strictures of social distancing crammed together along Manhattan's west side to catch a glimpse.

00:46:22.000 On Thursday, the huge white vessel, which officials had promised would bring sucker to a city on the brink, sat mostly empty, infuriating executives at local hospitals.

00:46:30.000 The ship's 1,000 beds are largely unused, Its 1,200-member crew mostly idle.

00:46:35.000 Only 20 patients had been transferred to the ship.

00:46:37.000 If I'm blunt about it, it's a joke, said Michael Dowling, the head of Northwell Health, New York's largest hospital system.

00:46:42.000 Everyone can say thank you for putting up these wonderful places and opening up these cavernous halls, but we're in a crisis here.

00:46:47.000 We're on a battlefield.

00:46:49.000 Okay, well, the Javits Center is open.

00:46:51.000 The Samaritan's Purse Hospital in Central Park is open.

00:46:54.000 And so is the USS Mercy.

00:46:55.000 And it wasn't meant for people with coronavirus.

00:46:57.000 That's not what it was designed to do.

00:46:59.000 So, excellent media coverage there.

00:47:00.000 Also, in other excellent media coverage, the media are going nuts over this story of a commander of an aircraft carrier who was removed for a poor judgment because he publicly suggested that the entire aircraft carrier should be taken out of commission.

00:47:13.000 The commanding officer was Captain Brett Crozier.

00:47:17.000 He was relieved of command by Carrier Strike Group Commander Rear Admiral Stuart Baker.

00:47:21.000 This was announced during a Pentagon press briefing.

00:47:24.000 Why?

00:47:24.000 Because he showed poor judgment because he wrote a public memo warning Navy leadership that decisive action was needed to save the lives of the ship's crew.

00:47:32.000 He suggested that Crozier was not removed because of any evidence suggesting he leaked the memo to the press, but rather for allowing the complexity of his challenge with the COVID breakout on the ship to overwhelm his ability to act professionally when acting professionally is what was needed most of the time.

00:47:44.000 He said, this is the spokesperson for the Pentagon, I have no information nor am I trying to suggest he leaked the information.

00:47:50.000 It was published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

00:47:52.000 It all came as a big surprise to all of us that it was in the paper, and that's the first time I had seen it.

00:47:56.000 There was a memo that was written by Crozier earlier this week to the Navy's Pacific Fleet.

00:48:01.000 Modly called Crozier's note a blast-out email to everyone he knows.

00:48:05.000 Okay, so the guy wasn't fired for saying that bad things are happening on the ship and we need to do something about it.

00:48:10.000 He was fired because he broke chain of command by emailing apparently literal quote everyone he knows saying that a full-on battle carrier should be taken out of commission.

00:48:19.000 If you think the military should be allowing its commanding officers to blast out full-on emails to everyone they know about taking 1 11th of America's chief naval capacity off the table I've spoken to military officers.

00:48:32.000 I don't know how many military officers are in favor of commanding officers blasting out emails suggesting that aircraft carriers be taken out of commission.

00:48:40.000 The email said, We are not at war.

00:48:41.000 Sailors do not need to die.

00:48:42.000 If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset, our sailors.

00:48:46.000 Mildly said Crozio was relieved because he went outside the chain of command and sent his memo over an unsecured system, adding to the chances it could be leaked.

00:48:53.000 Of course, top Democrats slammed the move in a statement on Thursday.

00:48:57.000 They said, this is a destabilizing move that will put our service members at greater risk.

00:49:01.000 Oh, really?

00:49:01.000 More destabilizing than taking an entire battle carrier out of commission?

00:49:05.000 Well done, media, for completely ignoring how militaries are supposed to work.

00:49:09.000 Wow, so it is chaotic out there.

00:49:12.000 We need answers as fast as possible from the epidemiologists.

00:49:15.000 Let's listen to the experts, guys.

00:49:16.000 And experts do better.

00:49:18.000 Give us some more information.

00:49:20.000 Tell us how this is going to go.

00:49:21.000 Okay, time for a thing I like and then we'll get to a thing that I hate.

00:49:25.000 So, things that I like.

00:49:26.000 So, like all the rest of you, I'm trapped in my house with my children.

00:49:30.000 And this means that it is time to watch some children's movies.

00:49:32.000 All limits on screen time have been banished until further notice.

00:49:36.000 Not totally true.

00:49:36.000 I'm trying to keep my kids' screen time limited, but it is not going successfully.

00:49:40.000 In any case, one of the movies that I've introduced my children to, and they just love, is the Lego Batman movie.

00:49:46.000 So if you're a Batman fan, as I am, then you'll recognize that the Lego Batman movie is indeed hilarious.

00:49:50.000 The entire thing is basically sending up Batman.

00:49:55.000 And it's Will Arnett plays Batman in this and it is it's very clever.

00:49:58.000 It's very funny and it is worthy of the watch.

00:50:02.000 So here is a little bit of the trailer for Lego Batman.

00:50:04.000 Again, keep your kids entertained today.

00:50:07.000 What?

00:50:08.000 It's the Batcave!

00:50:10.000 Oh my gosh!

00:50:11.000 Look, it's the Batsop!

00:50:12.000 Don't touch that!

00:50:13.000 It's the Batsapling!

00:50:14.000 Don't touch that either!

00:50:14.000 It's the Batkayak!

00:50:16.000 Do I get a costume?

00:50:17.000 I love it!

00:50:18.000 But his pants are just a little tight.

00:50:20.000 I got an idea.

00:50:22.000 It's better?

00:50:22.000 I can only look you in the eyes right now.

00:50:25.000 Hi, Batman!

00:50:26.000 No way!

00:50:27.000 Come catch my greatest enemy.

00:50:29.000 Superman is my greatest enemy.

00:50:31.000 Superman's not a bad guy!

00:50:32.000 Then I'd say that I don't currently have a bad guy.

00:50:35.000 I am fighting a few different people.

00:50:40.000 I like to fight around.

00:50:42.000 Hi, Barbara Gordon, new police commissioner.

00:50:44.000 It's really funny, and really, most of the jokes are written for adults, so it's entertaining.

00:50:49.000 See, this is the challenge when you have kids at home.

00:50:50.000 You have to watch movies that you can handle, right?

00:50:53.000 That are not going to drive you completely up a wall while you're watching them with your kids, and this is one of those movies, the Lego Batman movie, worthy of the watch.

00:51:00.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:51:03.000 All righty, so there was a big fight that broke out between President Trump and Chuck Schumer yesterday.

00:51:13.000 President Trump was railing against what he calls a partisan witch hunt.

00:51:17.000 Democrats are already looking to investigate the Trump administration for their response to coronavirus, because it's not like we're in the middle of the thing right now and trying to scramble to get this thing together.

00:51:24.000 What we really need is a partisan attack on the administration without looking back, you know, as I did yesterday on the program, at length, the last 15, 20 years of the shortages and the inability to To develop ventilators and develop mass capacity and the failures at every level inside the government to develop any sort of models that actually worked here and the failures of the CDC and the FDA.

00:51:46.000 No, it was going to be all about Trump.

00:51:47.000 So yesterday, President Trump went off on the partisan investigations.

00:51:50.000 He is not wrong about this.

00:51:51.000 He is correct about this.

00:51:52.000 Now is not the time to be announcing partisan investigations. 0.96

00:51:55.000 And by the way, when an investigation is done, as I say, unless it looks a lot like the 9-11 Commission, which basically says government sucks at everything and they suck here too. 0.74

00:52:03.000 Then it's not being honest.

00:52:05.000 Anyway, here's Trump going off on the Democrats for politicizing this stuff right now.

00:52:10.000 I want to remind everyone here in our nation's capital, especially in Congress, that this is not the time for politics.

00:52:18.000 Endless partisan investigations, here we go again, have already done extraordinary damage to our country in recent years.

00:52:27.000 You see what happens?

00:52:29.000 It's witch hunt after witch hunt after witch hunt.

00:52:33.000 And in the end, the people doing the witch hunt have been losing, and they've been losing by a lot.

00:52:38.000 And it's not any time for witch hunts.

00:52:40.000 It's time to get this enemy defeated.

00:52:43.000 Okay, he is correct about all of this.

00:52:45.000 That did not stop Chuck Schumer from issuing an open letter to President Trump yesterday.

00:52:50.000 Said, Dear Mr. President, As the coronavirus spreads rapidly into every corner of our nation and its terrible, grim toll grows more severe with each passing day, the tardiness and inadequacy of this administration's response to the crisis becomes more painfully evident.

00:53:02.000 This is not a letter designed to get anything done.

00:53:03.000 It's an open letter.

00:53:04.000 It was released.

00:53:05.000 I'm looking at it right now.

00:53:07.000 Well-documented shortages of protective equipment, tests, medical supplies are now beyond acute in my home state of New York and other hard-hit areas, and similar shortages are expected soon in many other parts of the country.

00:53:16.000 While companies that volunteer to produce ventilators and PPE are to be commended and are appreciated, America cannot rely on a patchwork of uncoordinated voluntary efforts to combat the awful magnitude of this pandemic.

00:53:26.000 It's long past time for your administration to designate a senior military official to fix this urgent problem.

00:53:32.000 That officer should be given the full authority under the Defense Production Act.

00:53:35.000 The existing federal leadership void has left America with an ugly spectacle in which states and cities are literally fending for themselves, often in conflict and competition with each other when trying to procure precious medical supplies and equipment.

00:53:46.000 The only way we will fix our PPE and ventilator shortage is with a data-driven, organized, robust plan from the federal government.

00:53:51.000 Anything short of that will inevitably mean the problem will remain unsolved and prolong this crisis.

00:53:55.000 Again, this is Chuck Schumer writing an open letter to Trump that is designed for partisan political purposes.

00:53:59.000 Obviously.

00:54:00.000 As it stands today, we have charged Dr. Peter Navarro, an academic economist, to be leader of this effort.

00:54:05.000 With all due respect, Dr. Navarro, whose expertise is in other areas, is woefully unqualified for this task.

00:54:10.000 The existence of a separate shadow effort elsewhere in the White House has made the administration's response even more confused and uncoordinated.

00:54:15.000 As you know, there are many logistics professionals in the United States.

00:54:18.000 Military.

00:54:19.000 It must be pointed out that while you continue to dismiss the Defense Production Act as not being needed, it is clear the capacity of American interest has not yet been fully harnessed, either in prioritizing and allocating urgently needed medical supplies and equipment, in rapidly expanding domestic manufacturing efforts to produce them, or in providing certainty to manufacturers through purchase orders, purchase guarantees, or other mechanisms, Yes, I'm sure it's very sincere.

00:54:37.000 use and distribute all of the medical equipment and supplies that they can produce.

00:54:40.000 It's a matter of the utmost urgency for the health of every American.

00:54:43.000 Regrettably, our national response is far behind where it should be.

00:54:46.000 But by acting now, there's still time to help protect our medical professionals, reduce suffering and save lives.

00:54:50.000 Sincerely, Charles Schumer.

00:54:51.000 Yes, I'm sure it's very sincere.

00:54:53.000 So President Trump gets this letter and he responds.

00:54:56.000 And.

00:54:57.000 And President Trump's response is absolutely vicious.

00:55:01.000 That's the only way to put it.

00:55:02.000 And well-deserved.

00:55:03.000 Totally well-deserved.

00:55:04.000 Because, I'm sorry, that sort of grandstanding, is that useful?

00:55:07.000 Really, is that useful right now?

00:55:08.000 Like, we're all fairly well aware, given the media reports and what governors are saying, Cuomo's doing a presser on this every day and being lauded by the media for it.

00:55:15.000 And do you really think that the federal government is sitting there going, oh, well, I guess, you know, I guess people are just going to have to die.

00:55:21.000 I mean, we're just not going to try here.

00:55:23.000 Everyone's doing their best.

00:55:25.000 Everyone is obviously doing their best. 0.98

00:55:27.000 The government sucks at things. 0.75

00:55:28.000 Welcome to the nature of government. 0.99

00:55:30.000 Welcome to government.

00:55:31.000 Okay, so President Trump writes back an open letter to Schumer.

00:55:35.000 And you can tell when Trump writes the letter himself, he wrote this one himself.

00:55:38.000 Right?

00:55:38.000 He had like one aide in the room and he basically dictated and the person spell-checked it.

00:55:41.000 Here is what Trump wrote.

00:55:42.000 He wrote, Dear Senator Schumer, Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect soundbites, which are wrong in every way.

00:55:49.000 One, as you are aware, Vice President Pence is in charge of the task force.

00:55:52.000 By almost all accounts, he has done a spectacular job.

00:55:55.000 Two, the Defense Production Act has been consistently used by my team and me for the purchase of billions of dollars worth of equipment, medical supplies, ventilators, and other related items.

00:56:02.000 It has been powerful leverage, so powerful that companies generally do whatever we are asking without even a formal notice.

00:56:07.000 They know something is coming, and that's all they need to know.

00:56:10.000 A senior military officer is in charge of purchasing, distributing, etc.

00:56:10.000 3.

00:56:14.000 His name is Rear Admiral John Polowitz.

00:56:16.000 He is working 24 hours a day, is highly respected by everyone.

00:56:19.000 If you remember, my team gave you this information, but for public relations purposes, you chose to ignore it.

00:56:24.000 4.

00:56:25.000 We have given New York many things, including hospitals, medical centers, medical supplies, record numbers of ventilators, and more.

00:56:30.000 You should have had New York much better prepared than you did.

00:56:32.000 As Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx said yesterday, New York was very late in its fight against the virus.

00:56:37.000 As you are aware, the federal government is merely a backup for state governments.

00:56:40.000 Unfortunately, your state needed far more of a backup than most others.

00:56:43.000 And then Trump really gets going.

00:56:44.000 He says, If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere except increasing my poll numbers, and instead focusing on helping the people of New York, New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the invisible enemy.

00:56:56.000 No wonder AOC and others are thinking about running against you in the primary.

00:56:59.000 If they did, They would likely win.

00:57:01.000 Fortunately, we have been working with your state and city governments, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, to get the job done.

00:57:06.000 You have been missing in action, except when it comes to the press.

00:57:09.000 While you have stated that you don't like Andrew Cuomo, you ought to start working alongside him for the good of all New Yorkers.

00:57:13.000 I've known you for many years, but I never knew how bad a senator you are for the state of New York until I became president.

00:57:18.000 If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call, or in the alternative call, Rear Admiral Polowitz.

00:57:23.000 Sincerely, Donald J. Trump.

00:57:26.000 So, I have a question.

00:57:27.000 Is any of this, like, useful right now?

00:57:29.000 Like, any of it?

00:57:30.000 I will admit that Trump's letter is super funny.

00:57:32.000 And well-deserved.

00:57:33.000 Because Schumer is in- My favorite thing was Schumer's response to this.

00:57:36.000 So Schumer responds to this, I'm appalled.

00:57:39.000 Appalled!

00:57:40.000 President Trump sending this very- You started it, dude!

00:57:43.000 You sent an open letter saying that the federal response is inadequate and blah- Accomplishing nothing.

00:57:48.000 Except grandstanding.

00:57:49.000 And I was like, I can't believe the president wrote me a mean letter.

00:57:51.000 Oh! 0.60

00:57:52.000 Oh! 0.60

00:57:52.000 The pearl clutching. 0.60

00:57:54.000 Honestly, honest to God, just shut up. 1.00

00:57:56.000 Just ridiculous. 1.00

00:57:58.000 Is any of this doing anything? 0.97

00:57:59.000 Like, people are dying.

00:58:00.000 20 million people are going to lose their jobs by the end of next week, probably. 0.97

00:58:04.000 You want to shut up about your little partisan petty feud right now and like, you know, get crap done?

00:58:08.000 You know, not like green initiatives, which Chuck Schumer recommended yesterday, by the way. 0.80

00:58:11.000 Chuck Schumer was like, oh, you know what we should do?

00:58:13.000 We should build windmills.

00:58:16.000 You want these people in charge of your life?

00:58:18.000 Seriously.

00:58:19.000 Like, I understand we need government right now to do things. 0.98

00:58:23.000 They're doing it, but they suck at it.

00:58:24.000 They're not even getting the checks out till September.

00:58:25.000 They're trying to shove windmills and diversity quotas into $2 trillion packages. 0.62

00:58:32.000 You want these people in charge of your life when all this is over?

00:58:34.000 I keep hearing that this is a movement we're getting.

00:58:36.000 Now America is going to come out of this ready for more big government. 1.00

00:58:38.000 If you come out of this ready for more big government, you have lost your damn mind. 1.00

00:58:41.000 You have lost your mind. 0.99

00:58:43.000 When you come out of this, the first thing you should be saying is, get the government the hell away from me for as long as possible and as fast as possible, and get their asses in gear when it comes to preparing for Black Swan events, and that's their main job. 1.00

00:58:52.000 Yeah, but here's Chuck Schumer pretending to be very appalled about President Trump being mean to him after he sends an open letter calling Trump an incompetent buffoon. 0.97

00:58:59.000 I spoke to the president late this afternoon and explained it, and the result is this letter. 0.95

00:59:04.000 And so I'm just appalled.

00:59:06.000 You know, I'd say to the president, just stop the pettiness.

00:59:11.000 People are dying.

00:59:14.000 And so, President Trump, we need leadership.

00:59:17.000 We need to get the job done.

00:59:19.000 Stop the pettiness.

00:59:20.000 Let's get it done.

00:59:21.000 Let's roll up our sleeves.

00:59:22.000 I sent the letter with the best of intentions, trying to improve a very bad situation.

00:59:29.000 Oh, that was it?

00:59:30.000 With the best of intentions, you sent a public letter.

00:59:33.000 A public letter.

00:59:35.000 You know what you could do?

00:59:35.000 Pick up the phone.

00:59:37.000 You said you talked to Trump yesterday.

00:59:38.000 Weird.

00:59:38.000 Did you do it by open letter?

00:59:40.000 Or did you call him up on the phone?

00:59:41.000 You know, this device that we've had for well over a century at this point.

00:59:44.000 You know, this device that you pick up your phone and you talk to the person and then there's no written record of it?

00:59:48.000 And also, you can talk to the person directly without, you know, releasing it to millions of people at the same time?

00:59:54.000 Unbelievable.

00:59:55.000 Unbelievable.

00:59:56.000 Okay, so one other thing that I hate that I'd be remiss in not mentioning today.

01:00:01.000 So we were told very early on that this, and I have abided by the opinion of the experts all along the way here, we've been told very early on that this was not in any way developed, this coronavirus was not developed in any way by a Chinese laboratory.

01:00:15.000 And now, now there's a piece by David Ignatius in the Washington Post talking about the possibility that, um, by the way, maybe this leaked from a Chinese laboratory.

01:00:24.000 Whoops.

01:00:25.000 Whoops.

01:00:26.000 David Ignatius.

01:00:26.000 Again, not me.

01:00:27.000 David Ignatius.

01:00:28.000 The Washington Post.

01:00:28.000 He says, The story of how the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China has produced a nasty propaganda battle between the U.S.

01:00:34.000 and China.

01:00:34.000 The two sides have traded some of the sharpest charges made between two nations since the Soviet Union in 1985 falsely accused the CIA of manufacturing AIDS.

01:00:42.000 U.S.

01:00:42.000 intelligence officials don't think the pandemic was caused by deliberate wrongdoing.

01:00:46.000 The outbreak that has now swept the world instead began with a simpler story, albeit one with tragic consequences.

01:00:51.000 The prime suspect is natural transmission from bats to humans, perhaps through unsanitary markets.

01:00:56.000 But scientists don't rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.

01:01:05.000 Okay, now I'm old enough to remember when Tom Cotton was ripped for suggesting that there might be information that maybe this is what happened.

01:01:13.000 He said, I can't confirm this is what happened.

01:01:14.000 I'm not saying I know this is what happened.

01:01:16.000 I'm not saying the data support this is what happened, but there've been some pretty strong rumors coming out of China that this may have been something that happened.

01:01:22.000 Good science, bad safety is how Senator Tom Cotton put his theory in a February 16th tweet.

01:01:27.000 He ranked such a breach, or natural transmission, as more likely than the two extreme possibilities, an accidental leak of an engineered bioweapon or a deliberate release.

01:01:34.000 Cotton's earlier loose talk about bioweapons set off a furor back when it first raised it in late January and called the outbreak worse than Chernobyl.

01:01:40.000 Trump and Pompeo added to the bio last month, describing the coronavirus as the Chinese virus and the Wuhan virus, of course.

01:01:45.000 That was not a problem.

01:01:47.000 This was developed.

01:01:48.000 I mean, not developed, but obviously allowed to disseminate by the Chinese government, lied about by the Chinese government, lied to the WHO.

01:01:55.000 The Chinese government is solely responsible for this. 0.97

01:01:57.000 If we're all going to be forced to wear face masks, by the way, like if we all have to wear face masks, I really want to put out one at Daily Wire that just says on the face mask, F communism, because this is the communist virus.

01:02:08.000 China dished wild, irresponsible allegations of its own, says David Ignatius.

01:02:11.000 On March 12th, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Li Jianzhao charged it might be the U.S.

01:02:14.000 Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.

01:02:17.000 He retweeted an article that claimed that the U.S.

01:02:19.000 troops might have spread the virus when they attended the World Military Games in Wuhan in October of 2019.

01:02:23.000 China retreated on March 22nd, when Ambassador to the U.S.

01:02:26.000 Kui Tiankai told Axios that such rumors were crazy on both sides.

01:02:31.000 To be clear, U.S.

01:02:32.000 intelligence officials think there's no evidence that the coronavirus was created in the laboratory as a potential bioweapon.

01:02:37.000 Solid scientific research shows it wasn't engineered by humans and that it originated in bats, but it is unclear how the outbreak occurred in the first place.

01:02:44.000 What's increasingly clear is that the initial origin story that the virus was spread by people who ate the bats at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan is shaky.

01:02:53.000 Hmm.

01:02:54.000 Scientists have now identified the culprit as a bat coronavirus through genetic sequencing.

01:02:58.000 Bats were not sold at the seafood market, although that market could have sold animals that had contact with bats.

01:03:03.000 The Lancet noted in a January study, the first COVID-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market at all.

01:03:09.000 There's a competing theory that scientists have been puzzling about for weeks, says David Ignatius.

01:03:13.000 Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

01:03:18.000 Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China for study to prevent future illnesses.

01:03:26.000 Did one of those samples lead or was hazardous leak or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?

01:03:33.000 Richard Ebright, Rutgers microbiologist, said the first human infection could have occurred as a natural accident.

01:03:38.000 But Ebright cautioned it could also have occurred as a lab accident, with an accidental infection of a laboratory worker.

01:03:44.000 So this doesn't mean they militarized the virus.

01:03:46.000 But there was a Chinese study that was curiously withdrawn in ResearchGate.

01:03:51.000 It was a brief article by Botao Zhao and Li Zhao from Guangzhou's South China University of Technology.

01:03:57.000 I apologize for the mispronunciations.

01:03:59.000 In addition to the origins of natural recombination and intermediate hosts, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a lab in Wuhan. 0.85

01:04:06.000 Safety level may need to be reinforced in high-risk biohazardous laboratories.

01:04:10.000 So, then it is a complete government failure, right?

01:04:12.000 Then it is not even the government didn't lock it down in Wuhan.

01:04:14.000 The labs are run by the Chinese government in Wuhan.

01:04:16.000 There are no private labs in China, as far as I'm aware.

01:04:20.000 Okay, so that means that it's a communist country.

01:04:23.000 That means this is purely and simply Chernobyl.

01:04:26.000 They didn't mean for it to happen, and it did happen.

01:04:28.000 And people were punished, basically publicly, for talking about it.

01:04:32.000 Pretty well done.

01:04:33.000 Democracy dies in darkness.

01:04:34.000 Tom Cotton's bad for even mentioning this possibility.

01:04:36.000 And oh, by the way, it's also maybe the most likely possibility now, since the original suggestion that somebody just ate a bat at the Wuhan market now appears to be less plausible than the alternative explanation, which is that apparently the bat that this came from was like 600 miles away from Wuhan.

01:04:54.000 And the only way it gets there is presumably if somebody takes the virus and brings it to the laboratory there.

01:04:58.000 Well done, everybody.

01:04:59.000 Well done.

01:05:00.000 Alrighty.

01:05:00.000 Well, we will be back here later today.

01:05:01.000 We'll be taking your questions at 855-236-3228.

01:05:05.000 Hang in there.

01:05:06.000 Again, pay attention to all of the strictures.

01:05:08.000 The administration is right.

01:05:09.000 The scientists are right.

01:05:10.000 Pay attention to all the structures right now. 0.97

01:05:12.000 And also, scientists, get your asses in gear.

01:05:14.000 Give us some information on what this is gonna look like six months from now, a year from now. 0.94

01:05:19.000 Your three month studies are not sufficient to keep people locked up for months on end.

01:05:24.000 It's just not going to work.

01:05:25.000 It's not going to work.

01:05:27.000 If you want us to pay attention to the strictures, we have to know what the rules are going to do and what they are not going to do.

01:05:32.000 And we have to know what the projection of this virus looks like, not for the next week, not for the next two weeks, not for the next month, but what happens when we all leave our houses because we are not staying in our houses for a year.

01:05:41.000 It's not happening.

01:05:42.000 Okay.

01:05:43.000 We'll be back here later today or next week.

01:05:46.000 Have yourself a safe weekend.

01:05:47.000 Spend time with family and try to enjoy yourselves.

01:05:50.000 Take a vacation to, you know, like your kitchen.

01:05:53.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:05:54.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

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01:06:03.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

01:06:04.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

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01:06:09.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

01:06:11.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

01:06:13.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

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01:06:24.000 You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.

01:06:28.000 I think there are enough of those already out there.

01:06:30.000 We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.

01:06:35.000 So my main focuses are life, family, faith.

01:06:39.000 Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 03, 2020

How Bad Will This Get? | Ep. 986

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