The Ben Shapiro Show - The Weeks The Earth Stood Still | Ep. 972

00:00:00.000 The world battles coronavirus as the United States enters near total lockdown.

00:00:04.000 The Trump administration lays out what the future holds, and Bernie and Biden hit each other with their walkers.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:11.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN Podcasts.

00:00:18.000 Protect your data from prying eyes at expressvpn.com.

00:00:23.000 Well, we're all still here.

00:00:24.000 Guys, it's going to be okay.

00:00:25.000 As I said last Friday, it's going to be okay.

00:00:27.000 We just have to do what we have to do, and that mainly means stay at home, make sure that your family is taken care of.

00:00:33.000 Here's a few things for you to do today.

00:00:35.000 Here's what I'm going to try and do today anyway, if I'm a good person.

00:00:38.000 What I'm going to try and do today, a few things.

00:00:39.000 First, call five friends, find out how they're doing.

00:00:41.000 Social distancing means that we are not allowed as human beings to do all the things that we actually Usually do in times of crisis.

00:00:48.000 Usually when there's a time of crisis you get together with friends.

00:00:50.000 Usually get together with your religious community.

00:00:52.000 Now we have this very odd circumstance where we're being encouraged to stay away from all of our friends and family and from our local community.

00:00:58.000 This does increase loneliness.

00:01:00.000 It does increase feelings of angst.

00:01:02.000 Obviously everybody's very nervous.

00:01:03.000 This is obviously at the back of everybody's mind.

00:01:05.000 But here are a few things that we can do.

00:01:06.000 First, call five friends.

00:01:07.000 You got a phone.

00:01:08.000 Call a friend.

00:01:09.000 Use... use...

00:01:10.000 FaceTime.

00:01:11.000 Do something to reach out to five people.

00:01:12.000 Just find out how they're doing today.

00:01:14.000 Find out if an elderly neighbor or relative needs any grocery or pharmacy goods and bring them over.

00:01:18.000 Have you got somebody in your family who's over the age of 65?

00:01:21.000 Make sure that they're actually stocked up.

00:01:22.000 If they're not stocked up and you are young, go buy the groceries for them.

00:01:26.000 Bring them to them.

00:01:27.000 The supply lines are still in place.

00:01:28.000 There may be some temporary shortages of some goods that will alleviate as time goes on.

00:01:32.000 Also, Go out to a local store or call a local store would be even better.

00:01:36.000 Call a local store and buy a gift card.

00:01:38.000 You know that you're going to use that gift card later and right now everybody's in a cash crunch.

00:01:42.000 So many stores are shutting down.

00:01:44.000 I personally know people who run small businesses and they are seeing their business basically be destroyed by coronavirus because they're operating on slim margins.

00:01:52.000 They're trying to keep people paid. 0.93

00:01:53.000 Well, if you know you're going to buy from the store later, And you just can't go to the store right now because the store is closed.

00:01:57.000 Instead, buy a gift card.

00:01:58.000 Give gift cards to your friends if you've got the expendable cash to do so.

00:02:02.000 And just make clear to those businesses that you are going to keep patronizing the business and give them the temporary float of basically paying them up front.

00:02:08.000 Buy a gift card from a local store for later use.

00:02:10.000 It'll help tie them over.

00:02:11.000 And finally, go for a walk.

00:02:12.000 Like, seriously, turn off the news.

00:02:14.000 Turn off Twitter.

00:02:15.000 Go for a walk.

00:02:16.000 Don't hang out with people who are walking with you.

00:02:17.000 You know, social distancing and all that.

00:02:19.000 But get outside.

00:02:20.000 Look at the sky.

00:02:21.000 It still exists.

00:02:21.000 Look at the sun.

00:02:22.000 It still exists.

00:02:23.000 The temptation is, obviously, to be sort of stuck in your house.

00:02:26.000 Just because we are supposed to self-isolate, sort of, does not mean that we can't engage with the world around us.

00:02:32.000 And there is something inherently optimistic about going outside for a walk.

00:02:35.000 Here are a few tips for today.

00:02:36.000 Now, I want to start off today by giving some actual information on coronavirus.

00:02:40.000 We're all going to always, we do this on the show always anyway.

00:02:42.000 We start off with information and then we get to the opinion of it all.

00:02:46.000 Some useful information for you about coronavirus.

00:02:49.000 So right now, one of the biggest problems with coronavirus is we actually don't know all that much about it.

00:02:54.000 Most people don't know the symptoms.

00:02:55.000 They feel like, okay, if my nose starts to run, if I have a dry cough, does this mean that I have coronavirus?

00:03:00.000 The answer is, in all likelihood, no.

00:03:01.000 You probably just have allergies, right?

00:03:02.000 It's the middle of March.

00:03:03.000 The chances are very high that you just have a normal cold or you have allergies.

00:03:06.000 So there's a good article in the New York Times today by a woman named Nouval Shaikh.

00:03:11.000 Talking about the differences between coronavirus and allergies and what you should be looking for.

00:03:15.000 And this is good to know, because honestly, it's hard not to go to the most paranoid place.

00:03:19.000 You start feeling a little bit ill, and you're like, oh my god, I've got coronavirus, and now I've infected the entire planet.

00:03:23.000 My entire family is at risk.

00:03:25.000 Here are the symptoms that you should be looking for.

00:03:27.000 You have to consider the time of year.

00:03:29.000 According to the New York Times, allergies and influenza tend to be seasonal.

00:03:32.000 If you have a runny nose in the spring, and this happens every year, allergies are the likeliest culprit.

00:03:36.000 You may have noticed last week that I had a bit of a cough.

00:03:38.000 I know it wasn't coronavirus because I get a cough literally this time every single year, plus I had fasted, plus I'm not sleeping because of the new baby.

00:03:44.000 If it's winter and flu is raging in your community, then that is the probable explanation.

00:03:48.000 The flu is far more widespread than coronavirus.

00:03:51.000 If you have flu-like symptoms in warming weather, in a place with documented coronavirus transmission, then maybe it's not.

00:03:56.000 The flu influenza does tend to tie back in the summer.

00:03:58.000 We don't know yet whether coronavirus is going to do the same thing, especially because, as The Times points out, there have been coronavirus infections spreading in places like Singapore and in the Southern Hemisphere, which are currently experiencing summer temperatures.

00:04:10.000 Also, consider where the symptoms first started appearing According to one doctor, it's usually your nose and eyes where you develop symptoms of seasonal allergies.

00:04:17.000 The seasonal flu is more likely to affect your whole body, as is the case for many other respiratory viruses, including coronavirus.

00:04:23.000 So, if you have a fever, headache, muscle aches, then you should be considering whether it's flu or coronavirus.

00:04:28.000 If, instead, you're just getting, you know, runny nose, itchy eyes, then in all likelihood, you just have allergies or maybe you just have a cold.

00:04:36.000 It's hard to tell the difference between flu and coronavirus, but the difference between a cold and a flu, we all know.

00:04:41.000 And so if it feels more like a cold than it feels like the flu, the chances that you actually have coronavirus, really, really slim.

00:04:46.000 So, there's a little bit of information for you.

00:04:49.000 Also, not very many people are experiencing nausea or vomiting.

00:04:52.000 About 5% of patients with coronavirus, only 4% are developing diarrhea.

00:04:57.000 Those are symptoms of sort of more typical flu.

00:04:59.000 So fever would be the first one, right?

00:05:01.000 This is why everybody is being tested for fever, body aches, fever, chills, right?

00:05:05.000 That would be the stuff where you start to worry.

00:05:07.000 Even then, only if it starts to get bad enough that you're starting to have shortness of breath should you really consider going in for a test.

00:05:14.000 According to the New York Times, Pay close attention to whether your symptoms worsen over time.

00:05:18.000 Discomfort due to allergy remains consistent until you treat it or the allergen goes away.

00:05:22.000 Symptoms of the flu tend to resolve in about a week, but the new coronavirus seems to cause more severe symptoms than the average seasonal flu.

00:05:28.000 Seems to have a higher fatality rate if you're elderly, you have other health conditions, then obviously you gotta be quicker to get a test.

00:05:34.000 If you are younger and you're experiencing this sort of stuff, then you're probably supposed to stay home unless it gets a little bit more severe.

00:05:40.000 Mild cases of the flu resolve by themselves within a few days.

00:05:43.000 Coronavirus tends to last a little bit longer, but most people with mild cases tend to get better in about two weeks.

00:05:48.000 So there's a little bit of information for you.

00:05:50.000 If you're not feeling great today, then think about that description of symptoms and see sort of which one it fits.

00:05:54.000 Okay, in just a second.

00:05:55.000 I'm going to give you some information on where we currently stand in terms of the total number of case counts, and it's kind of fascinating to see how this thing has leveled off in China while it continues to grow fairly exponentially in Italy.

00:06:06.000 Also, we're going to talk about the different strategies the countries have been using to deal with coronavirus because there's a sort of fascinating, from a data perspective, social experiment currently taking place between the United States and the UK.

00:06:15.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:07:28.000 Okay, so here are the total number of coronavirus cases by country right now.

00:07:32.000 This is according to the Johns Hopkins study.

00:07:34.000 Now, Johns Hopkins has a really good chart of all of this.

00:07:38.000 China's basically leveled off.

00:07:39.000 They've 81,000 cases in China.

00:07:40.000 They've had 81,000 cases in China for the last several weeks.

00:07:43.000 That is because they locked down basically 700 million people.

00:07:47.000 One of the benefits of being an authoritarian country is you can do that sort of thing.

00:07:50.000 One of the downsides of being an authoritarian country is you wait two months to do it and then try to shoot everybody who talks about it.

00:07:55.000 So that's the downside.

00:07:56.000 The upside is that eventually you go full authoritarian and lock the thing down.

00:08:00.000 Italy is the country that is experiencing significant problems.

00:08:03.000 Italy obviously now has 24,747 documented cases with 1,809 documented deaths.

00:08:10.000 Now again, it's very difficult to tell what the actual death rates here are because it is all reliant on who exactly is getting tested.

00:08:16.000 And if only the most severe people are getting tested because you have a shortage of tests, right?

00:08:21.000 Only the most severe are encouraged to go get tested.

00:08:23.000 Obviously, that's going to be elevated death rates. 0.92

00:08:25.000 So there have only been 25,000 actual confirmed cases in Italy.

00:08:28.000 The chances are very high that a lot more people than that have actually obtained coronavirus in Italy.

00:08:34.000 But they had 368 people die of coronavirus just yesterday.

00:08:37.000 So obviously, they have exponential growth in Italy.

00:08:40.000 Iran, we have no idea what the actual numbers are.

00:08:42.000 They're not going to be They're saying 15,000 infected in Iran with nearly a thousand deaths, 853 total deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.

00:08:48.000 But the numbers are likely to be much higher because, again, repressive dictatorships have an incentive to lie about their actual numbers.

00:08:54.000 Spain is seeing exponential death.

00:08:56.000 Spain has 9,407 documented cases with 335 total deaths.

00:08:58.000 There are 530 people recovered.

00:09:02.000 Now, as time goes on, the numbers of recovered are going to increase pretty radically too because the number of people in hospitals who are finally being released, it takes a little while for people who even enter a hospital to be released.

00:09:15.000 South Korea has really leveled this thing off.

00:09:17.000 They've only had 75 total deaths in South Korea, and the total number of documented cases is 8,236.

00:09:22.000 That is because South Korea took significant social distancing measures.

00:09:26.000 They really cracked down.

00:09:26.000 They shut down large places of business very early on.

00:09:30.000 Germany is seeing a rapid increase in the number of actual cases, but very few actual deaths.

00:09:35.000 So Germany has 6,672 actual cases, only 14 deaths.

00:09:39.000 So far, which is kind of fascinating.

00:09:41.000 There have been some theories as to why things are going so wrong in Italy, but so right in Germany.

00:09:45.000 And one of the theories is that there is a lot of cross-generational pollination in Italy.

00:09:49.000 People tend to hang out with older relatives in Italy a lot more often than they do in Germany.

00:09:52.000 And this does lead to some serious questions about the measures that are being taken in the West right now.

00:09:59.000 By the way, France has about 5,400 cases, 127 total deaths.

00:10:02.000 The United States right now has 69 total deaths and 3,800 documented cases.

00:10:06.000 So that is where things stand on a country-by-country level.

00:10:10.000 The fascinating thing is seeing how different countries respond to all of this.

00:10:15.000 So obviously Italy has locked everything down, but they did it late.

00:10:18.000 The United States is currently locking everything down.

00:10:21.000 In my home city of Los Angeles, everything has basically been locked down.

00:10:25.000 Mayor Eric Garcetti, who couldn't lock down 65,000 homeless people in the city.

00:10:29.000 So presumably those people who are wandering around and are absolutely risk factors for coronavirus.

00:10:33.000 You have a bunch of people who are living on the streets, who are in no sense clean.

00:10:39.000 I mean, Homeless people are not famous for showering very often or upkeeping with the sort of personal... How are they washing their hands? 0.99

00:10:45.000 A lot of hand-washing going on in the homeless community here in Los Angeles, living in areas that are extremely dirty.

00:10:50.000 You have 65,000 homeless people in L.A.

00:10:52.000 County alone.

00:10:53.000 That has not been locked down for years and was basically facilitated by the L.A.

00:10:56.000 City government.

00:10:57.000 People were being told their stuff couldn't be moved.

00:10:59.000 People were being told it was fine for them to sleep on the street.

00:11:00.000 So all of that is fine, but Mayor Eric Garcetti is locking down the entire city of Los Angeles.

00:11:04.000 He announced this last night.

00:11:05.000 I've signed an order tonight that will do the following.

00:11:09.000 It prevents people from gathering in close proximity by banning and closing our bars and nightclubs.

00:11:16.000 Second, restaurants and retail facilities, we will now have prohibited on-site food but permitted for delivery, takeout, and drive-through.

00:11:26.000 Groceries, pharmacies, and food banks are, of course, exempt from this order of closure.

00:11:31.000 Movie theaters, though, performance venues, bowling alleys, arcades, gyms, and fitness centers will be closed to the public.

00:11:39.000 Okay, so there is no end date on all of this as far as Garcetti is concerned.

00:11:43.000 In reality, I can't see this thing lasting for weeks on end.

00:11:47.000 And the idea that you're going to shut down the entire American economy, and this is happening in New York too, they're going to see a shutdown of the entire American economy for months on end.

00:11:55.000 I mean, I honestly don't know how people of the West are going to respond to that sort of thing, particularly if the data coming out from the UK is wildly different.

00:12:04.000 First of all, I'm not sure how any of this is enforceable.

00:12:06.000 I mean, what are you going to station a cop at every bowling alley in the United States?

00:12:09.000 You're going to station a cop at every restaurant?

00:12:11.000 Okay, the fact is that right now people are going to deal with it because these restaurants will still have heavy levels of takeout orders, and my family is still going to get takeout for sure, but How exactly do you police that?

00:12:22.000 I mean, if the local restaurant has people who are coming in and picking up food, how are you gonna stop somebody from sitting down at a table and eating?

00:12:27.000 Is there gonna be a cop there who's just gonna haul everybody off to jail?

00:12:30.000 How exactly is that going to work? 1.00

00:12:31.000 We've seen something similar happen in New York City, where Bill de Blasio went to the gym this morning, went to the YMCA this morning, because the man is a moron. 0.99

00:12:39.000 He's shutting down all of these restaurants in the same way that Garcetti is. 0.97

00:12:43.000 By the way, people in the United States, some are taking this seriously, some people really are not.

00:12:47.000 There were pictures from Disney World last night where it was completely packed.

00:12:49.000 Now Disneyland and Disney World, I believe, are shutting down, but completely packed.

00:12:53.000 Bourbon Street, there were cops out in the streets last night having to remind people, guys, like, there's a pandemic on.

00:12:58.000 Go home.

00:12:59.000 What is the police authority in this sort of situation?

00:13:01.000 Are they actually going to start arresting people en masse who don't have coronavirus?

00:13:05.000 We have not yet seen the consequences of that.

00:13:07.000 The truth is that voluntary civil society has done a fairly good job of locking this down so far.

00:13:13.000 Putting the prospect of government compulsion on the table in a way where the government can't actually enforce, that may carry some of its own consequences.

00:13:20.000 It's unclear exactly how Garcetti plans to enforce any of this at all.

00:13:24.000 Nonetheless, as we see, the measures that are being taken are wildly, wildly different across countries.

00:13:31.000 In the United States, the CDC is now recommending no gatherings of 50 people or more for eight weeks, for eight weeks, which Wow.

00:13:40.000 Wow.

00:13:40.000 I mean, I fail to see, honestly, how they don't start putting restrictions on air travel.

00:13:44.000 If that is the actual risk, if what we are being told is that gatherings of 50 people or more are basically verboten in the United States and that people should not gather in numbers.

00:13:54.000 And why 50?

00:13:55.000 Why not 15 or 20?

00:13:56.000 I mean, basically they're saying it shouldn't even be 15 or 20.

00:13:58.000 They're basically saying stay in your home.

00:14:00.000 How do you say to people, stay in your home for two months For two months.

00:14:05.000 I mean, based on the risk factors that we have seen thus far.

00:14:09.000 I understand exponential growth.

00:14:10.000 I explained it last week on the show.

00:14:12.000 I understand geometric growth, right?

00:14:13.000 We explained it last week on the show.

00:14:14.000 We understand the risk factors.

00:14:16.000 The question is, how long can a society afford to be in complete lockdown?

00:14:20.000 And how long can the U.S.

00:14:22.000 government take on debt without eventually people saying this is the new normal and the economy completely collapsing?

00:14:27.000 Right now, everybody is sort of assuming that this thing comes to an end in eight weeks or six weeks or 12 weeks or whenever it is.

00:14:32.000 As long as we know what the actual end time is, like when this thing actually comes to a stop, then we know when the recovery begins.

00:14:39.000 But if this becomes an indefinite suspension and we're all just supposed to stay home, how long can the government just continue to keep paying people based on what?

00:14:46.000 Based on the prospect of future growth, if there is no prospect of future growth.

00:14:49.000 That's why you said the markets tanked this morning.

00:14:51.000 We'll get to that in just a little while.

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00:16:14.000 So as I say, the CDC has now recommended that no gatherings with 50 people or more be held in the United States for the next eight weeks, which basically means the end of all sporting events, all movies, all entertainment industry events.

00:16:25.000 It means the end of going to church in any sort of large numbers or synagogue in any sort of large numbers.

00:16:31.000 The CDC does not apply this to the day-to-day operation of organizations like schools, institutes of higher learning, or businesses, and added it was not intended to supersede the advice of local health officials.

00:16:42.000 It's hard to see how the schools remain open under those circumstances.

00:16:45.000 I mean, schools everywhere are closing.

00:16:47.000 My kids were let off at the end of last week.

00:16:50.000 LAUSD was let off at the end of last week.

00:16:52.000 The New York school districts have now all been let off.

00:16:54.000 Schools across the country are being closed for this thing.

00:16:57.000 And that is, I would assume, all the way until the summer at this point.

00:17:00.000 It is March.

00:17:01.000 If you're assuming eight weeks, that takes you to the middle of May.

00:17:03.000 So at that point, there's no point, right?

00:17:04.000 I mean, now summer has happened.

00:17:06.000 So there's no reason to go back to school.

00:17:08.000 The CDC says the recommendation is made in an attempt to reduce introduction of the virus into new communities and to slow the spread of infection in communities already affected by the virus.

00:17:17.000 The CDC urged people to take care with even small gatherings.

00:17:20.000 They said events of any size should be continued only if they can be carried out with adherence to guidelines for protecting vulnerable populations, hand hygiene, and social distancing.

00:17:29.000 When feasible, organizers should modify events to be virtual as well.

00:17:33.000 So basically, the end of social life in America.

00:17:35.000 As we know, in California, the state has already told residents 65 and older to stay home completely.

00:17:40.000 They're now calling for everybody above the age of 65 to shelter in their homes.

00:17:45.000 Massachusetts is already moving to ban dining in bars and restaurants, beginning on Tuesday, effectively closing Boston's bars for St.

00:17:51.000 Patrick's Day.

00:17:52.000 Puerto Rico is setting some strict measures in the United States, imposing a 9 p.m.

00:17:55.000 to 5 a.m.

00:17:56.000 curfew and closing non-essential businesses.

00:17:59.000 Gavin Newsom said, we're calling for the home isolation of all seniors in California.

00:18:04.000 So really strict steps being taken.

00:18:06.000 Meanwhile, as I say, the fascinating sort of counterexample is what the UK is doing.

00:18:12.000 That's the fascinating counterexample.

00:18:14.000 And this is really the way that we're going to be able to tell whether all of this is an overreaction in terms of what we are doing about it, or whether the UK has just blatantly screwed this thing up and a lot of people are going to die because the UK is screwing this thing up.

00:18:24.000 According to the Financial Times, the UK is basically asking everybody over 70 to self-isolate for up to four months.

00:18:31.000 And then they're saying everybody else, go out and do what you want.

00:18:34.000 And the reason they're saying that is they're saying, listen, there is a vast difference in the vulnerability of older populations, people with pre-existing conditions, and people who are younger.

00:18:41.000 And it's actually not good to have people who are younger destroying the economy of your country by staying home in order to protect people who you can protect by simply having them basically self-quarantine, right?

00:18:52.000 Have everybody who's in the vulnerable population stay home, have everybody else go to work, And then, if all those people infect each other, and then if all those people experience mild symptoms, and then if they spend two weeks being a little bit sick, and they're saying, by the way, if you have a cough, or you have a fever, then go home and self-quarantine for a week, and you do all of that sort of stuff, then in a few months, there'll be herd immunity.

00:19:10.000 That's sort of the theory that is ongoing in the UK, and it'll be fascinating.

00:19:14.000 I mean, if they have the same death rates as the United States, or South Korea, or China, or even Italy, Then the question is going to be, did we just destroy the entire world economy for several months on end in order to protect a vulnerable population when the vulnerable population could have been protected simply by having them shelter in place?

00:19:32.000 According to the Financial Times, the UK government will ask everyone aged over 70 to self-isolate for up to four months, has called on manufacturers to increase production of ventilators.

00:19:40.000 Matt Hancock is the health secretary and said the elderly would be asked to take measures to protect themselves from the virus in the coming weeks.

00:19:46.000 He said that the coronavirus would disrupt the lives of almost everybody in the UK.

00:19:50.000 The question, and you're seeing kind of panicked messages coming out of companies and coming out of Public health officials.

00:19:55.000 The question is whether that is based on data or whether that is based on the sheer sense that if we don't do something and do something right now, that this thing could rage out of control.

00:20:03.000 So how much of that is realistic?

00:20:04.000 Again, we're now in the forecasting business because here's the thing.

00:20:08.000 If you take these really heavy measures and things don't get really bad, then you get to say it was the heavy measures that prevented things from getting really bad.

00:20:13.000 If you don't take the heavy measures and things get really bad, people go, why the hell didn't you take the heavy measures?

00:20:17.000 If you don't take the heavy measures and things end up being pretty good, then everybody says, why the hell did you take the really heavy measures in the first place?

00:20:24.000 So the sort of safest thing to do as a public leader, I've been saying this about President Trump for a while, the safest thing to do as a public leader is to overreact.

00:20:30.000 What's the worst that happens?

00:20:31.000 That you overreact, and then there's less death, and then you say, right, there was less death because I overreacted?

00:20:36.000 There's no counterfactual.

00:20:37.000 UK right now is providing a counterfactual, so it'll be fascinating to see whether that counterfactual actually results in the same sort of death rates as in the United States.

00:20:45.000 The number of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in the UK has now reached 1,372.

00:20:49.000 The number of deaths is at 35.

00:20:51.000 All of the deaths have been among those with underlying health conditions or aged over 60.

00:20:56.000 Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, Hancock said the government would introduce emergency legislation through the House of Commons next week to give the authorities the powers they need to force people to self-isolate.

00:21:05.000 Hancock also said he could not rule out closing non-essential businesses like restaurants and bars.

00:21:10.000 He said, we haven't ruled that out.

00:21:11.000 We'll do whatever is necessary.

00:21:13.000 But the sort of differentiation between the age groups here, again, it provides a fascinating counterfactual to the U.S.

00:21:21.000 reaction, which has basically been on the order of South Korea or China.

00:21:25.000 And yes, we are reacting faster than the Chinese did. 1.00

00:21:27.000 We are reacting much faster than the Italians did. 1.00

00:21:30.000 The Italians only started closing things down at day 15 since when this stuff started appearing in their country.

00:21:35.000 We've closed everything down day 10, day 11.

00:21:38.000 Now this is going to have significant ramifications for the economy, of course.

00:21:45.000 And that is why the Fed is now moving to lower the interest rates.

00:21:49.000 We'll get to the financial ramifications of this for just a second, but first, a note of optimism.

00:21:57.000 Everybody's kind of looking at the empty shelves right now and freaking out, but the supply chains will remain strong.

00:22:01.000 What's happening right now is that you're seeing the first wave of sort of panic buying, people going out there and trying to stock up.

00:22:05.000 Listen, I get it.

00:22:06.000 I've got a family.

00:22:07.000 I want to make sure...

00:22:08.000 I'll be honest with you.

00:22:09.000 I told my wife two weeks ago to go and stock up as soon as this stuff started hitting the United States.

00:22:13.000 I said, listen, I think this is going to be a problem.

00:22:14.000 Go and stock up.

00:22:15.000 So our fridge is full.

00:22:17.000 For people who are not, they're panic buying right now.

00:22:18.000 But don't worry, that stuff will be restocked. 1.00

00:22:21.000 All the idiots out there who are saying things like, this is what a capitalist economy looks like in times of crisis. 1.00

00:22:26.000 Yeah, and this is what a socialist economy looks like all the time. 1.00

00:22:29.000 The difference is that there's going to be milk on the shelves tomorrow morning thanks to capitalism.

00:22:32.000 There will be Purell back on the shelves this week, thanks to capitalism.

00:22:37.000 Thank God for capitalism.

00:22:38.000 Thank God for supply chains. 0.92

00:22:39.000 Thank God for free markets.

00:22:41.000 The New York Times is reporting the aisles and aisles of empty store shelves give the appearance the United States is running out of food, but the nation's biggest retailers, dairy farmers and meat producers say that isn't so.

00:22:49.000 The food supply chain they say remains intact, has been ramping up to meet the unprecedented stockpiling brought on by the coronavirus epidemic.

00:22:56.000 Even so, shoppers can most likely expect to see some empty shelves intermittently as the nation's networks of food producers, distributors, and retailers are stretched as never before.

00:23:04.000 Industries calibrated to supply consumers with just enough of what they need on a given day cannot keep up with a nationwide surge of relentless shoppers.

00:23:10.000 Basically, there's a rush on goods.

00:23:12.000 But folks, don't freak out.

00:23:14.000 Again, as long as you have enough food, Or enough resources to go get takeout for the next three, four days, then you will be fine, right?

00:23:21.000 You don't actually need to stock up as much as everybody.

00:23:24.000 People who are buying, like, water bottles and freaking out about, okay, the water supply's not getting shut off. 0.82

00:23:28.000 Guys, if you have to rely on your stock of water bottles, we are so screwed. 0.86

00:23:31.000 You ain't gonna live, right?

00:23:32.000 I mean, if they shut off the electricity and the water, that is a whole different sort of thing, and no one's talking about any of that.

00:23:38.000 If you're talking about stocking up, really you should be stocking up on meat, right?

00:23:42.000 Maybe some dairy products, like the stuff that has a shelf life.

00:23:45.000 But the sort of panic buying of things like water, like water is the number three panic buying item. 1.00

00:23:53.000 Don't be an idiot. 0.99

00:23:54.000 Water is not running out, guys. 1.00

00:23:54.000 Okay? 1.00

00:23:56.000 It comes right from your tap.

00:23:57.000 It's free!

00:23:58.000 Right?

00:23:58.000 Worst comes to worst, you're gonna be able to have water.

00:24:00.000 I understand buying rice and dried beans.

00:24:02.000 That makes some sense.

00:24:02.000 Right?

00:24:04.000 Buying pasta.

00:24:05.000 Right?

00:24:05.000 That makes some sense.

00:24:06.000 Although, again, that stuff is gonna last on the shelves for a long time.

00:24:10.000 But it's fascinating to watch as this sort of stuff happens.

00:24:14.000 It'll be okay, right?

00:24:14.000 All that's going to happen is going to be okay.

00:24:16.000 Now, it's not the grocery stores that are going to be in trouble.

00:24:19.000 We're going to get to the financial ramifications to all of this in just one second because the Dow Jones Industrial Average had to pause again this morning after the market dropped a thousand points.

00:24:28.000 So we're going to get to that momentarily.

00:24:30.000 But first, let's talk about keeping your home safe and secure.

00:24:34.000 So there are a few ramifications, obviously, to coronavirus.

00:24:36.000 One of those ramifications is there are a lot of people who are home.

00:24:40.000 And that means there are a lot of people who don't have anything better to do.

00:24:42.000 And there are a lot of people who may be criminals who are looking around for things to do during this time of doing nothing.

00:24:48.000 And that means that you probably want your neighborhood to be safe.

00:24:50.000 What better time than now to know exactly what is going on at your property?

00:24:53.000 And this is why you need Ring devices.

00:24:55.000 I have been in favor of Ring devices for years.

00:24:58.000 I'm very paranoid about my own security.

00:24:59.000 But paranoia is just the first step in caution.

00:25:02.000 So go check out Ring.com right now.

00:25:05.000 Ring gives you protection at every corner, helps you create custom affordable security for your home.

00:25:09.000 rings video doorbells.

00:25:10.000 Let you answer the door and check in on your home anytime from anywhere Ring's full home security systems give you everything you need to protect your family, pets, and property.

00:25:18.000 With Ring's outdoor security cameras, you can check in on every part of your house.

00:25:21.000 Ring will detect motion when people come onto your property, and then you'll receive notifications on your phone, tablet, PC.

00:25:26.000 You can see here, speak to visitors in real time, from anywhere.

00:25:29.000 This has happened to me many times where I know that somebody is now at the front door, I know that somebody is approaching the property, and that gives me peace of mind, especially when I'm not at home.

00:25:37.000 Get a special offer on the Ring Welcome Kit when you go to ring.com slash ben.

00:25:41.000 Right now, the Ring Welcome Kit includes the Ring Video Doorbell 2 and Chime Pro.

00:25:45.000 It's all you need to start building custom security for your home today.

00:25:47.000 Just go to ring.com slash ben.

00:25:49.000 That is ring.com slash ben.

00:25:51.000 Go check them out right now.

00:25:52.000 Okay, so as I say, obviously this is having significant financial ramifications for everybody, and you're going to see the entertainment industry hit really hard.

00:26:00.000 You're going to see the restaurant industry hit really hard right now.

00:26:04.000 That means jobs.

00:26:05.000 There are some economists who believe that we could lose hundreds of thousands of jobs in the month of March and in the month of April as people stop going out, as people stop purchasing, as people stop borrowing to start new businesses.

00:26:17.000 Basically, the only things that are open right now in a lot of major cities are banks, as well as groceries and pharmacies.

00:26:24.000 The domestic box office just saw a shellacking.

00:26:27.000 The domestic box office posted its worst weekend in nearly two decades amid calls to practice social distancing to slow the coronavirus pandemic.

00:26:34.000 The box office experienced its first weekend fully in the throes of the virus outbreak.

00:26:37.000 Grosses in the U.S.

00:26:38.000 and Canada totaled just $55.3 million, plus all the theaters in China are shut down.

00:26:43.000 And that is a major source of wealth for Hollywood, so Hollywood is just getting crushed Right now, Hollywood had anticipated weak ticket sales, but they had not really anticipated that all of the theaters would be shut down in major cities, which is what is currently happening.

00:26:57.000 So the dramatic reduction in ticket sales is obviously going to hurt Hollywood.

00:27:04.000 The question for sports is what's going to happen?

00:27:07.000 Will sports really ever recover from this hiatus?

00:27:10.000 We've already seen the NBA has basically suspended the season.

00:27:13.000 March Madness has been canceled.

00:27:15.000 The MLB is not even going to start its season.

00:27:18.000 The question is going to be, how do you even recover from this?

00:27:20.000 Because six months from now, is coronavirus really gone?

00:27:23.000 Is it still hanging around the fringes?

00:27:25.000 Are we going to want to get together in large crowds ever again?

00:27:28.000 Are the sports that are most likely to succeed going to be those that are basically made for TV?

00:27:34.000 All of the economic costs are going to be billions and billions of dollars.

00:27:37.000 And we had on my friend Clay Travis last week, sports broadcaster.

00:27:41.000 That dude has a three hour sports radio show to fill today.

00:27:44.000 Like I don't even know what he's going to talk about.

00:27:46.000 How much can you talk about who's the best center fielder of all time?

00:27:48.000 Can you do that for like three hours a day forever?

00:27:52.000 How exactly is that going to work?

00:27:54.000 So at some point, sports are going to return, but it's going to be a long road.

00:27:58.000 So in attempting to stop all of this, the Fed slashed its rates to near zero and unveiled a new sweeping program to aid the economy.

00:28:05.000 The central bank cut rates by a full percentage points and announced a giant bond buying campaign to insulate the economy against coronavirus.

00:28:11.000 Basically, the Federal Reserve is now saying they're going to buy up some debt.

00:28:15.000 They're going to buy up mortgage debt.

00:28:16.000 They're going to buy up student loan debt.

00:28:17.000 They're going to buy up a bunch of debt in order to prevent people from having those debts called in on them and prevent, for example, a real estate meltdown as banks losing money from businesses closing down start calling in mortgage debt.

00:28:28.000 Instead, the government's saying, listen, we'll back the mortgage debt.

00:28:30.000 You don't have to worry about it.

00:28:32.000 Let people, you know, let people survive right now.

00:28:34.000 Put everything on pause.

00:28:35.000 That makes some sense, right?

00:28:36.000 I mean, this is a global pandemic.

00:28:38.000 It will come to an end at some point.

00:28:39.000 People will go back to work.

00:28:40.000 There will be a recovery.

00:28:42.000 What doesn't make a ton of sense to me is the Fed dramatically lowering its rates as though this is going to solve the problem.

00:28:47.000 Like, they've now run out of bullets.

00:28:48.000 There are no more bullets.

00:28:50.000 The reason people aren't buying and borrowing right now has nothing, like literally nothing to do with the rates of borrowing.

00:28:56.000 It's not as though if you lower... There's the typical theory behind the Fed lowering interest rates.

00:29:01.000 Is that you want people to borrow, you want to jog the economy, so you lower the interest rates to get people to borrow.

00:29:06.000 But this is a misperception of why people are not borrowing right now.

00:29:10.000 Nobody is borrowing right now because who the hell is going to borrow into this economy?

00:29:13.000 You're going to borrow to start a business right now?

00:29:16.000 Nobody is going to do that.

00:29:17.000 You're going to borrow to buy a new house right now?

00:29:18.000 You can barely pay the mortgage on the house that you got.

00:29:22.000 Lowering the interest rate, now's a good time to refi your mortgage, but lowering your interest rate is not actually going to radically change the status of the economy because, again, there's an underlying issue here, and the underlying issue is fairly obvious.

00:29:33.000 It's called a global pandemic and nobody going to work ever again.

00:29:36.000 That would be the global underlying issue.

00:29:38.000 There's a big difference between that and, for example, the stock market crash of 1929.

00:29:41.000 That was not brought on by an actual real-world event that jogged everything to a complete and utter halt.

00:29:48.000 This is not even like 2007-2008 where the banks had basically bet big on the real estate market and then people started being unable to pay back their subprime mortgages and the real estate market collapsed in on itself.

00:30:01.000 That was just banks making bad bets and they should have been forced to eat the bad bets.

00:30:04.000 That's not what's happening right now.

00:30:05.000 What's happening right now is an external event.

00:30:08.000 And that external shock is destroying the capacity of businesses to operate.

00:30:12.000 So backing the capacity of businesses to operate, or at least not lose their shirt right now, that makes some sense.

00:30:17.000 But lowering the interest rates generally is not gonna cause an uptick in the economy.

00:30:21.000 It's not gonna cause people to borrow.

00:30:22.000 And that's why you're seeing the markets actually, it's got a major hit this morning.

00:30:26.000 The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down at an early hour, about 1,700 points, down over 7%.

00:30:32.000 The market opened and immediately had to shut for 15 minutes because of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

00:30:38.000 We're just going to be going up and down for a while here, guys.

00:30:40.000 Okay, bottom line is this is a yo-yo.

00:30:41.000 Nobody knows where to price the market.

00:30:42.000 Nobody even knows how bad this thing is going to get.

00:30:44.000 And so in the absence of knowing how bad this thing is going to get, it is very difficult to tell where the bottom is.

00:30:49.000 So I've been saying for a while, if you can afford to buy and hold for a long period of time, now is not a bad time to buy.

00:30:54.000 I'm not saying this is the bottom of the market.

00:30:56.000 I don't know where the bottom of the market is.

00:30:57.000 I know that in 10 years, this is not where the bottom of the market is going to be, even in five years, even in three years, even in two years, I think.

00:31:03.000 But with that said, I can't say that this is the very best time to buy.

00:31:06.000 Mohamed El-Erian, a friend of the program and the head of Allianz, he has suggested encouraging people to buy right now in this sort of volatility is probably a mistake.

00:31:15.000 Again, that's if you have to sell.

00:31:17.000 If you have extra for liquidity.

00:31:18.000 Now is actually a fairly good time to buy because if you can buy and hold, then you're never going to lose money on the market over broad periods of time.

00:31:24.000 In addition to cutting its benchmark interest rate by a full percentage point, returning it to a range of zero to 0.25%, the Fed said it would inject huge sums into the economy by snapping up at least $500 billion of treasury securities and at least $200 billion of mortgage-backed debt over the coming months.

00:31:38.000 That, again, makes perfect sense because if you're backing the debt of people so that the banks don't have to call in that debt and remove people from their homes, for example, foreclosure rates and people's house value dropping, that's a good thing for a short-term shock just to sort of insulate against that.

00:31:52.000 That's not bailing out the banks.

00:31:53.000 That is bailing out everybody.

00:31:56.000 If you're talking about spiking the economy by somehow lowering the interest rate, that doesn't make any sense.

00:32:01.000 President Trump praised the central bank move, sought to assure worried Americans that food supplies would not be disrupted.

00:32:06.000 President Trump has been stumping for a very long time about the lowering of the interest rates, but that is sort of a bizarre, again, a sort of bizarre reaction.

00:32:15.000 The problem here is not the interest rates.

00:32:17.000 People are not borrowing because they're not borrowing, and spiking interest rates to zero is not actually going to cause people, like, again, who's going to go out and take a loan in this economy?

00:32:24.000 Like anyone?

00:32:25.000 Okay, and lowering the interest rates to zero ain't gonna change a thing.

00:32:28.000 That does not solve the underlying economic problem, but here was President Trump praising the Fed for cutting interest rates to zero.

00:32:33.000 He's been calling, like, if Trump had had his way, by the way, worth noting, if Trump had had his way a year ago, this would have been at zero, the federal interest rate, and then we would have no bullets left in the chamber.

00:32:41.000 Now, we're out of bullets.

00:32:42.000 So, didn't really help very much.

00:32:44.000 By the way, worth noting, We are so irresponsible as a people.

00:32:47.000 We just are, in terms of our government.

00:32:49.000 We spend a trillion dollars a year more than we take in.

00:32:52.000 We spend trillions, we spend ourselves into insane debt.

00:32:54.000 What do you think happens when a crisis hits?

00:32:56.000 And now you actually have to take out debt. 0.98

00:32:58.000 We're like the morons who went out and bought a boat every single year. 0.99

00:33:01.000 And now, the wage earner in the family died. 1.00

00:33:04.000 And they're like, oh, you know what would have been smart?

00:33:06.000 Not buying a boat every single year.

00:33:08.000 Because now we actually have to take out some debt.

00:33:10.000 Anyway, here's President Trump praising the Fed for cutting rates to zero. 1.00

00:33:10.000 Idiotic. 1.00

00:33:15.000 I want to congratulate the Federal Reserve. 1.00

00:33:18.000 For starters, they've lowered the Fed rate from what it was, which was 1 to 1.25.

00:33:25.000 And it's been lowered down to 0 to 0.25.

00:33:27.000 That's really good news.

00:33:32.000 It's really great for our country.

00:33:34.000 It's something that we're very happy.

00:33:37.000 I have to say this.

00:33:38.000 I'm very happy.

00:33:39.000 And they did it in one step.

00:33:41.000 They didn't do it in four steps over a long period of time.

00:33:44.000 They did it in one step.

00:33:45.000 And I think that people in the market should be very thrilled.

00:33:50.000 I will say this.

00:33:50.000 President Trump's read on the market?

00:33:51.000 Not accurate, my friends.

00:33:53.000 Not accurate.

00:33:53.000 Over the last two weeks, he was like, the market's gonna be fine.

00:33:55.000 And now he's like, yeah, people in the market will be thrilled.

00:33:57.000 He said this yesterday.

00:33:58.000 There's only one problem.

00:33:59.000 The market immediately opened down 8%, had to shut for 15 minutes, and it's currently down almost 2,000 points.

00:34:03.000 So, yeah, no on that.

00:34:05.000 No on that.

00:34:06.000 It turns out that the president's read on the Fed is not an accurate read on the Fed.

00:34:09.000 Okay, we're gonna get to More on the global economy and the economic recovery that may follow after all of this, we can hope.

00:34:16.000 And then we'll get to more of President Trump's administration's policy.

00:34:19.000 We'll get to the debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders that no one cares about last night, but two oldies demonstrating that they should not be anywhere near the levers of power.

00:34:26.000 We'll get to all that in just a second.

00:34:27.000 First, Let's talk about people at your company who you may not need anymore.

00:34:31.000 Now, right now is an excellent time to make sure that your employees keep getting paid, frankly, right?

00:34:35.000 I mean, this is a great time to hunker down, make sure that the people who you love, the people who you need are still making a living, right?

00:34:41.000 If you can do that, that's great.

00:34:43.000 But if you are looking for somebody better than, say, a person who comes back to the office having been exposed to coronavirus and then just blithely waltzes into the office and just proceeds to take off his shirt, you know, like really enjoy himself, like a Michael Moles type, Well, then maybe you need to look at ZipRecruiter.com.

00:34:59.000 If you need to find the best candidates for your growing business, ZipRecruiter is your smart, efficient hiring solution.

00:35:03.000 ZipRecruiter makes hiring great people faster and easier.

00:35:06.000 Today, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire.

00:35:10.000 When you head over to ZipRecruiter with one click, you send your job to ZipRecruiter's network of over 100 leading job sites.

00:35:15.000 What happens next?

00:35:16.000 Well, ZipRecruiter finds the best matches for your job and invites them to apply.

00:35:20.000 It's so effective that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter do get a quality candidate within the very first day.

00:35:25.000 So if you're looking to replace that employee who's been bugging you for a while, now is a good time to do it over at ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire.

00:35:32.000 That is ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E, ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire.

00:35:37.000 ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. 0.73

00:35:39.000 Go check them out right now.

00:35:41.000 Okay, other news.

00:35:42.000 While so many of us are driven to isolation right now, it is really important, more important than ever, I think, that we come together as a community, particularly online.

00:35:49.000 The good news is, we are an intranet company.

00:35:51.000 At The Daily Wire, we want to do everything we can to help our members through this difficult time.

00:35:55.000 We can hang out together.

00:35:56.000 In our reporting, we're making sure we bring you facts, and we always do so, so you can understand the situation, you can properly prepare.

00:36:02.000 In addition to keeping you informed, we also want to help our members take their minds off the stress of the situation.

00:36:07.000 And so we're launching something new.

00:36:08.000 We're accelerating the launch of a new show called All Access Live.

00:36:11.000 Jeremy Boring and I, we're going to host the first live episode tonight at 5 p.m.

00:36:14.000 Pacific, 8 p.m.

00:36:15.000 Don't worry, we're safe, both of us.

00:36:15.000 Eastern.

00:36:17.000 He's not going to give me corona.

00:36:18.000 I'm not going to give him corona.

00:36:19.000 We are neither of us experiencing symptoms.

00:36:21.000 We are working on additional programming for this week.

00:36:23.000 As I speak, we want to hang out with you.

00:36:25.000 I understand.

00:36:26.000 Listen, I remember being in law school at Harvard Law, and I remember It's been one of the long winters being alone in my dorm.

00:36:32.000 Basically, we are now all me in law school hanging out alone in our dorm and nothing is comforting as quite as being part of a community online.

00:36:39.000 We want this show to give you all a chance to hang out with us and each other.

00:36:41.000 We're going to discuss things outside of the current news.

00:36:43.000 We're going to talk like religion and movies.

00:36:46.000 And yes, we'll do the best center fielders ever every day.

00:36:48.000 We're just going to hang out because I know like now is a great time for us all that we can't hang out in person, but we can hang out online as we do anyway.

00:36:54.000 So why not expand that so that you can actually You know, get off the schneid a little bit and just spend some time with us.

00:37:00.000 The show is intended for all AXS members.

00:37:03.000 During the national emergency in time of isolation, we're opening up to all of our members.

00:37:06.000 We're going to get through this.

00:37:07.000 We're going to be stronger as a nation and as a community.

00:37:10.000 When we do, I really think that, you know, we have to socially, we have to physically distance, but we don't have to socially distance.

00:37:15.000 I hope that you can join me this evening at 5 p.m.

00:37:17.000 Eastern.

00:37:17.000 Pacific, 8 p.m.

00:37:18.000 Remember, all of our members are able to watch the live stream and join live chat.

00:37:22.000 We are a community.

00:37:23.000 We want to hang out with you.

00:37:24.000 It was actually my personal suggestion.

00:37:26.000 I think it's really important we all hang out together.

00:37:28.000 So let's do this thing tonight, 5 p.m.

00:37:30.000 Eastern.

00:37:30.000 Pacific, 8 p.m.

00:37:31.000 We'll see you then.

00:37:32.000 Go check us out at dailywire.com.

00:37:33.000 Remember, you don't have to be an All Access member right now.

00:37:33.000 Become a member.

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00:37:42.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:37:45.000 So again, the Fed is a band-aid on a gaping wound.

00:37:53.000 The New York Times reports investors were confronted with weak economic readings out of China and the United States.

00:37:57.000 Chinese officials reported that retail sales, manufacturing activity, and investment in the first two months of the year had slumped even more than economists expected.

00:38:04.000 A gauge of manufacturing activity in New York State collapsed by the most ever in history in a month.

00:38:09.000 Economic analyst with the investment bank Jefferies in New York said, Unfortunately, this is the new reality.

00:38:13.000 This report is a harbinger of what is to come.

00:38:15.000 European markets also tanked on Monday, falling more than 6%.

00:38:18.000 France's main stock index fell briefly by 10%.

00:38:21.000 The moves were intended to ensure that credit flows freely, spurring businesses and households to continue borrowing and spending. 0.99

00:38:27.000 But again, that's idiotic. 0.98

00:38:28.000 Nobody's actually going to borrow and spend in this economy. 0.99

00:38:31.000 The notion that the Fed was going to solve this thing.

00:38:33.000 The Fed is firing bullets at a miasma. 0.66

00:38:37.000 That's not going to work.

00:38:38.000 That's not the way any of this works.

00:38:39.000 Meanwhile, the House has passed a sweeping coronavirus response package.

00:38:42.000 It's got some good stuff and some bad stuff, as per usual with our government, that included a bipartisan vote to expand access to free testing, which of course is good, providing a billion dollars in food aid, and extending sick leave benefits to vulnerable Americans.

00:38:55.000 One of the big problems with extending sick leave benefits to vulnerable Americans without government backing is that it's a pretty good way to bankrupt small businesses that are operating right at the margins.

00:39:03.000 It's easy to say that small businesses should basically keep taking the hit when they're not getting any income.

00:39:08.000 But what happens when all those small businesses have to declare bankruptcy?

00:39:12.000 I literally talked to a friend of mine who runs a business yesterday.

00:39:15.000 He does a major catering and event business.

00:39:17.000 And he said to me, like, I may have to declare bankruptcy.

00:39:20.000 I said to him, okay, well, if you do, and then everything gets back on track, I'm always here to give you a loan.

00:39:25.000 Like, really, I think that people should help each other out if they have the resources to do so.

00:39:29.000 But the, you know, legislation that forces small businesses to cover paid sick leave, that's all fun and games until it turns out that you're talking about small businesses that have like 75 employees, like more than 50, have 75 employees, and now they're expected to pay indefinite sick leave for people for, what, weeks at a time?

00:39:46.000 Even if the business has to shut down?

00:39:49.000 And by the way, I don't believe there's any time limit on that.

00:39:51.000 I think that the Democrats were able to pass this thing without a sunset provision, which means that even if coronavirus ends, that would still be the case.

00:39:58.000 Alongside Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he expected the House committees to be working through next week's recess on a new bill meant to address the economic damage wrought by coronavirus, which has devastated the airline hospitality and entertainment industries.

00:40:11.000 Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, I think this is a very good sign of bipartisanship and working together that we can overcome the virus.

00:40:17.000 And President Trump's approval of the bill was forthcoming via Twitter.

00:40:21.000 Key Republicans cautioned there are still lingering issues related to a tax credit for paid family sick leave.

00:40:26.000 McCarthy wants small businesses to have a little bit more flexibility, because right now there is no flexibility in the rules.

00:40:33.000 One of the major obstacles involved the president's personal demand for a payroll tax cut in the package.

00:40:38.000 Democrats were not willing to go along with that.

00:40:40.000 Further actions are likely to be taken in the near future.

00:40:43.000 The legislation helps provide free food for children whose schools are closed during the crisis, as well as other initiatives to make sure that seniors and food banks get help as well.

00:40:51.000 One of the problems with the free school lunch program, of course, is that You might be better off just giving the families food directly, right?

00:40:58.000 Instead of extending the free school lunch programs, which, by the way, have been a fairly large-scale failure across the United States in terms of the amount of food that's been thrown away.

00:41:05.000 Maybe you'd be better off just giving the Andrew Yang $1,000 tax credit, right?

00:41:10.000 Just give everybody $1,000 for the moment in order to get through this crisis.

00:41:14.000 I mean, you're effectively doing that with businesses anyway.

00:41:17.000 The legislation included 14 paid sick days for employees, as well as three months of paid emergency leave.

00:41:22.000 Three months of paid emergency leave.

00:41:24.000 Like, I don't know how they expect Three months of paid emergency leave?

00:41:28.000 Who's gonna pay for that?

00:41:33.000 Okay, good luck with that.

00:41:35.000 At the GOP insistence, the emergency leave provision expires in a year.

00:41:37.000 The paid sick days do not expire in a year.

00:41:41.000 Very small businesses are being exempted from the requirements.

00:41:44.000 But if you've got 75 employees, that's not a massive business.

00:41:46.000 You're not being exempted from any of this.

00:41:48.000 So again, not a very good bill, but this is the way that we do legislation in the United States.

00:41:52.000 We don't actually tailor the remedy to the actual problem.

00:41:56.000 Meanwhile, the White House is praising the bill.

00:42:00.000 Mike Pence said this bipartisan deal is going to help take care of those who need it.

00:42:03.000 Here's the Vice President yesterday.

00:42:05.000 The deal that passed the House last night will head to the Senate early next week.

00:42:09.000 Next week delivers on the President's plan for strong health and economic support, particularly focused on those most impacted, including hard-working blue-collar Americans who may not currently have paid family leave today.

00:42:25.000 It provides free coronavirus testing for uninsured Americans, and it builds on the decisions that President Trump made expanding coverage For Medicare, Medicaid, and also getting a commitment from private health insurance companies to join with us to waive all copays on coronavirus testing.

00:42:47.000 Okay, so everybody's very happy about the bill.

00:42:49.000 We will see, you know, what the cost is.

00:42:50.000 But again, we could afford to be irresponsible with a bill like this if we had not spent the last, I don't know, 40 years building up a $22 trillion debt.

00:42:57.000 And meanwhile, Scott Gottlieb, who's been one of the kind of darker voices of doom, and that's not to say he's inaccurate.

00:43:03.000 It just means that he's got a pretty dark vision of what's going to happen here with coronavirus.

00:43:06.000 The former FDA head under President Trump, he says, the White House is on top of this.

00:43:10.000 The federal response is now appropriate to the situation.

00:43:13.000 I've been fortunate to have the opportunity to talk to officials in the White House all through this.

00:43:17.000 Some of the calls that I was making to them, the conversations I was having go back to January.

00:43:21.000 They've been on top of this.

00:43:22.000 I mean, they've been concerned about this.

00:43:23.000 I've been talking to White House staff, and the staff's been concerned about this.

00:43:27.000 Okay, Deborah Birx is saying something similar, although she is saying that the cases are going to spike.

00:43:32.000 Now notice, when we follow the numbers, of course the cases are going to spike.

00:43:35.000 Part of the reason the cases are going to spike, some of that is going to have to do with, presumably, the exponential growth of a virus.

00:43:41.000 But part of that is going to have to do with increased testing.

00:43:43.000 So do not be alarmed by the mere spike in growth.

00:43:46.000 Note that the testing is lagging, it has been lagging.

00:43:49.000 So as the testing becomes more common, the feds are now saying there should be up to 4,000 tests a day.

00:43:54.000 It's going to quickly escalate from there.

00:43:56.000 With more tests come more positives.

00:43:58.000 And that means that you're going to see a spike in the number of cases in the United States.

00:44:00.000 Do not be surprised by that.

00:44:01.000 Do not necessarily be alarmed by that.

00:44:04.000 If it continues to be exponential after we've taken all of these measures, then we can start being like supremely alarmed.

00:44:09.000 But Deborah Burke says, yeah, there will be spikes in cases.

00:44:12.000 So you will notice as these tests roll out over this next week, we will have a spike in our curve.

00:44:18.000 For those of you who watched China and China reporting, remember when they changed their definition and all of a sudden there was a blip in their curve?

00:44:26.000 We are going to see that.

00:44:28.000 We are going to see a spike as more and more people have access.

00:44:33.000 Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci, he says, listen, possible hundreds of thousands or millions of people could die of coronavirus.

00:44:39.000 That sort of information is not supremely useful.

00:44:43.000 I mean, sure, that's possible.

00:44:44.000 What are the chances?

00:44:45.000 Can we get like a, can we get like some sort of bell curve on what are the chances of that?

00:44:49.000 Is that like an outlying estimate?

00:44:51.000 Is that an in-lying estimate?

00:44:52.000 What's the data based on?

00:44:53.000 I understand he's on TV and he's getting sound bites, and I understand he wants us all to take this seriously, but more information would be good, more transparency would be good.

00:45:00.000 Here's Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

00:45:04.000 There have been estimates of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.

00:45:07.000 who could die, or in the worst-case scenario, millions.

00:45:11.000 Can you tell the American people that that is possible?

00:45:15.000 You know, it's possible because when you do a model, you have a worst-case scenario, the best-case scenario, and the reality is how you react to that will depend where you're going to be on that curve.

00:45:27.000 So obviously, we are clearly going to have more infections.

00:45:31.000 There's going to be more problems with regard to morbidity and mortality.

00:45:35.000 Okay, so we really don't have the full information, but the point that Fauci is making is he's saying, listen, do everything that you can.

00:45:42.000 He says dramatic reduction in interactions would be what is called for here.

00:45:46.000 Basically, stop interacting with people for the foreseeable future.

00:45:49.000 Here's Fauci yesterday on the State of the Union.

00:45:51.000 Would you like to see a national lockdown?

00:45:54.000 Basically people, you can't go out to restaurants, bars, you need to stay home?

00:45:58.000 Well, I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars.

00:46:06.000 Whatever it takes to do that, that's what I'd like to see.

00:46:10.000 Okay, he continues along these lines and he says that the travel bans were a good idea despite the media's hatred for the travel bans.

00:46:16.000 Here's Dr. Fauci again.

00:46:18.000 The president's decision to essentially have a major blocking of travel from China, that already had an effect Of not seeding the way in Europe.

00:46:30.000 Italy didn't do that, and I feel so badly because I have so many friends there.

00:46:35.000 They're getting hit hard.

00:46:37.000 What we're doing now with the other travel restrictions, so you block infections from coming in, and then within is when you have containment and mitigation.

00:46:46.000 And that's the reason why the kinds of things we're doing that may seem like an overreaction will keep us away from that worst case scenario.

00:46:54.000 Yeah, well, none of this has stopped all of this from becoming political.

00:46:57.000 Obviously, it was going to become political.

00:47:00.000 With Congress finally passing some bills, maybe they'll shut up for the moment.

00:47:03.000 But the continuation of the Democratic presidential race means that this is going to continue being quite political.

00:47:09.000 The Democrat debate last night took place basically in an empty room between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

00:47:14.000 I'm sure the ratings were abysmal.

00:47:15.000 Nobody wants to watch a Democratic debate in the middle of this.

00:47:18.000 Watch two octogenarians going at it, clubbing each other with their walkers.

00:47:22.000 Honestly, Bernie Sanders has no more opportunity to win in this race.

00:47:26.000 They're canceling primaries as we speak, by the way.

00:47:27.000 So it's not even as though Bernie has the... Maybe Bernie gets lucky and, you know, Biden retires because he's obviously not fully functional.

00:47:35.000 But that is highly unlikely at this point.

00:47:37.000 Suffice it to say, it is not a great thing that all of the candidates for president of the United States are in the coronavirus' sweet spot.

00:47:44.000 Joe Biden is old with underlying health conditions.

00:47:46.000 Bernie Sanders is old with underlying health conditions.

00:47:48.000 Donald Trump is old with underlying None of this is a recipe for greatness here.

00:47:54.000 The Democratic debate last night began with elbow bumping and coughing, which is always a great sign to America. 1.00

00:48:00.000 Here are the two Democratic candidates last night.

00:48:02.000 Do they keep this social isolation thing?

00:48:05.000 There we go.

00:48:07.000 Was that an elbow thrown at the jaw of Bernie Sanders by Joe Biden?

00:48:10.000 What do you say to the American people who are confronting this new reality?

00:48:15.000 First of all, my heart goes out to those who have already lost someone or those who are suffering from the virus.

00:48:22.000 Okay, so that's always good news.

00:48:23.000 Joe Biden was coughing a fair bit last night.

00:48:25.000 Neither Bernie nor Biden, by the way, looked like they were fully functional mentally.

00:48:29.000 They're each making the kinds of mistakes you make when you're 80 years old. 0.95

00:48:32.000 I mean, that's not because they're dumb or anything, but that's just the way that it works.

00:48:35.000 With all that said, the politicization here is not going to stop. 0.71

00:48:39.000 The Trump Surgeon General, he told reporters yesterday, guys, like, for the moment, can we cut it with, like, the retrospective criticism?

00:48:46.000 Like, just for a moment.

00:48:47.000 You can always do this later.

00:48:48.000 Like, just wait two weeks.

00:48:49.000 If you're trying to solve a problem, like, in the here and now, that's one thing.

00:48:51.000 But if you're just bitching about something that happened seven weeks ago that Trump said, maybe you ought to put that aside for, like, the next five minutes while we try and get a response together.

00:48:58.000 I want you all to understand some straight talk from the nation's doctor.

00:49:03.000 We really need you all to lean into and prioritize the health and safety of the American people.

00:49:09.000 No more bickering.

00:49:11.000 No more partisanship.

00:49:12.000 No more criticism or finger pointing.

00:49:14.000 There'll be plenty of time for that.

00:49:16.000 But we all need to hit the reset button and lean into moving forward the health and safety of the American people as their top priority.

00:49:22.000 More stories on how people can protect themselves.

00:49:25.000 More people on how people can get the resources that they need that we've unleashed from the federal government and state and local governments.

00:49:32.000 Less stories looking at what happened in the past.

00:49:34.000 Again, there'll be time for that.

00:49:35.000 OK, that is Dr. Jerome Adams, and he is being ripped up and down by the media who are saying, well, we're going to cover this.

00:49:41.000 Of course, you're going to cover this any way you want.

00:49:43.000 The question is, are you keeping your eye on the ball, which is making the coverage, making the response better?

00:49:48.000 Or is this really more about political posturing?

00:49:51.000 And that remains an I would say it remains to be seen, except I think that the last few weeks have proved that it doesn't remain to be seen.

00:49:55.000 I think it's pretty obvious that the media do have a rooting interest in the screw-ups of the Trump administration.

00:50:01.000 That's not saying that they want to see something bad happen to the Americans, it's just saying they are not unhappy when Trump messes things up.

00:50:07.000 Alrighty, we're gonna get to some things that I like and some things that I hate.

00:50:11.000 So things that I like.

00:50:12.000 So, you're gonna have some time on your hands.

00:50:14.000 If you like sports, but all the sports are off the TV, let me just recommend the greatest baseball book ever in history.

00:50:20.000 It is the new Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.

00:50:22.000 It hasn't been updated for quite a while, but it is just fantastic.

00:50:26.000 Basically, he ranks every player pretty much ever.

00:50:29.000 He ranks like the top 100 players on each position.

00:50:32.000 So if you're a baseball fan, this thing is like the ultimate bathroom book.

00:50:35.000 It is just fantastic on every level.

00:50:38.000 Bill James, of course, revolutionized the game of baseball by focusing so much on statistics and looking for new statistical ways to measure exactly who was good and who was not.

00:50:47.000 It was Bill James who came up with a lot of the key statistics that we now use as opposed to the old-fashioned statistics.

00:50:51.000 Like we used to focus a lot on batting average.

00:50:53.000 Now everybody, of course, focuses on base percentage.

00:50:55.000 We used to focus a lot on batting average.

00:50:58.000 Now people focus on slugging percentage, right?

00:51:02.000 On base plus slugging is a better gauge of how good a player is than simple batting average because if you get a lot of hits but you don't walk ever, that may not actually be the best.

00:51:10.000 The new Bill James historical baseball abstract is just something you can get lost in for hours and you're gonna have some hours on your hands.

00:51:15.000 Unless you have kids.

00:51:17.000 Unless you have kids. 0.99

00:51:17.000 In which case, you're basically screwed. 0.99

00:51:19.000 Now let me just point out that all of my heart, my heart goes out to people who are single and stuck at home for this whole thing. 0.83

00:51:25.000 My heart also goes out as a parent.

00:51:26.000 My heart goes out to all the people who were just told that they now have to homeschool their kids for the next two months and suddenly have become teachers who cannot set up play dates with their kids and other kids, can't take their kids to play gyms, can't take their kids to the park because of all the equipment over there, and basically have now been relegated to a little house on the prairie style parenting for the foreseeable future.

00:51:48.000 So shout out to my wife, who is now dealing with this at home as we speak. 1.00

00:51:52.000 And good for all of you for doing what you can to make sure that your kids have a fulfilling experience during this time.

00:51:58.000 People have been asking me what I say to my kids in the middle of all of this.

00:52:03.000 And what I say to my kids is, listen, everything is going to be fine and basically you get early summer vacation.

00:52:07.000 The big problem, you just have to hang out with us.

00:52:10.000 So yeah, I think it'll be...

00:52:11.000 Honestly, my kids are kind of excited about it.

00:52:13.000 They're more excited about it than I think any parents are at this point.

00:52:16.000 But don't worry, we're all hanging in together.

00:52:17.000 Now, quick reminder, tonight we are going to be doing some extra programming just for our members over at dailywire.com.

00:52:23.000 Normally this would be all access kind of stuff, but any of our members now get access to it.

00:52:26.000 We're going to be broadcasting live at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern.

00:52:30.000 So that we can all get through this together.

00:52:31.000 We're going to try and do a little bit of extra programming in the evenings so you have something to do and a community to gather with online.

00:52:37.000 So go check us out over at Daily Wire.

00:52:38.000 Now, it's a great time to become a member.

00:52:40.000 Go check us out right now over at Daily Wire.

00:52:42.000 Otherwise, we'll be here for two hours later today and we'll be back here tomorrow to recap everything as it's going on.

00:52:47.000 Stay safe out there.

00:52:48.000 Take care of your family.

00:52:49.000 Go for a walk.

00:52:50.000 Make a call to a friend.

00:52:51.000 Make sure everybody's doing okay.

00:52:53.000 We're going to get through it together.

00:52:54.000 We're here with you every single day.

00:52:55.000 See you in a little bit.

00:52:56.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:57.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:53:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:53:05.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:53:06.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:53:07.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:53:10.000 Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.

00:53:12.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

00:53:14.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

00:53:16.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

00:53:18.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:53:20.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:53:21.000 Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

00:53:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:53:25.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:53:28.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:53:31.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:53:37.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 16, 2020

The Weeks The Earth Stood Still | Ep. 972

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