The Ben Shapiro Show - They’re Going To Tell You To Mask Again. No. | Ep. 1302

00:00:00.000 The Biden administration considers a new mask push even for the vaccinated.

00:00:04.000 My answer is no.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:06.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:01:30.000 Alrighty, so we are seeing a new push in the media among the intelligentsia for remasking.

00:01:37.000 Remasking is the thing right now for the vaccinated and for the unvaccinated.

00:01:41.000 And this, frankly, is unsupportable.

00:01:44.000 It is not supportable by the evidence.

00:01:46.000 The reason that it is unsupportable by the evidence is because the reality is that we do have a pandemic that continues to harm people if you are unvaccinated.

00:01:54.000 If you are vaccinated, however, then this thing really is no longer of serious concern to you.

00:02:00.000 It is not particularly dangerous to you.

00:02:03.000 And we are seeing this in the statistics.

00:02:05.000 So, for example, here is a chart from the United Kingdom.

00:02:07.000 Okay, this chart from the United Kingdom.

00:02:10.000 Shows a large-scale difference between the second wave and the third wave.

00:02:15.000 What it shows is cases versus deaths over days 1 through 50 of the UK's second and third COVID waves.

00:02:20.000 Now typically what happens with regard to these COVID waves is that you have a wave of diagnoses and then about two weeks later you have a wave of death because it takes people a little while to die from COVID.

00:02:29.000 So during the second wave, for example, you can see cases versus deaths over days 1 through 50 of the of the second wave, you saw that on day one, there were 3.3 cases per 100,000 population, and then there was 1.5 deaths per 10 million population. By day 50, about 33 cases per 100,000 population in Britain, and 36 deaths per 10 million population. So you see that the cases and the deaths start to mirror each other fairly quickly.

00:02:59.000 And now take a look at these stats from the third wave, meaning after there's been mass vaccination in the United Kingdom.

00:03:04.000 And what you see is that at the beginning, it looks kind of similar.

00:03:07.000 You have 3.4 cases per 100,000 population and 1.3 deaths per 10 million population.

00:03:12.000 And then as the cases exponentially increase, the deaths continue to be extremely low.

00:03:18.000 So by the end, when you get to day 50, Reminder, in the second wave, Day 50, you had 33 cases per 100,000 population and 36 deaths per 10 million population.

00:03:28.000 In the third wave, you have 33 cases, same thing, 33.6 cases per 100,000 population and 2.1 deaths per 10 million population.

00:03:37.000 In other words, we have cut down on the death rate in Great Britain by about 12-fold.

00:03:43.000 Which takes this thing down below the rate of death from the flu.

00:03:46.000 And the reason for that is because the people who now are getting this tend to be younger, tend to be healthier.

00:03:51.000 People who are older have gotten mass vaccinated.

00:03:53.000 This is true in every industrialized country in which vaccination has taken place.

00:03:57.000 People who are older and more vulnerable have taken the vaccine.

00:04:00.000 We have people in our office who have not taken the vaccine.

00:04:02.000 The reason they usually give is because one, they think that they already had COVID, or they were tested and they already had COVID, and so they think they have natural immunity.

00:04:08.000 Or two, and usually both, two, they're very young.

00:04:12.000 And so they tend to look around and say, okay, I'm 21 years old.

00:04:15.000 My chances of dying from this thing are not particularly high.

00:04:17.000 Okay, so even if they get it, they're really not dying from it.

00:04:20.000 Not nearly in the same numbers that people were dying before.

00:04:22.000 Now, in absolute numbers, could you see a lot of death among people who are young?

00:04:26.000 Sure, because the Delta variant is significantly more transmissible than the original variant.

00:04:30.000 The wild type variant.

00:04:32.000 The wild type variant was transmissible, the R was something like 2 or 3.

00:04:37.000 The R, meaning the reproduction rate on this thing, is like six.

00:04:40.000 Meaning that, basically, if you're a human being, you have two choices right now.

00:04:44.000 Any human being, you have two choices.

00:04:46.000 One, you can get the vaccine.

00:04:47.000 Or two, you can get COVID.

00:04:49.000 You are going to get immunity one way or the other.

00:04:51.000 Okay, so that is up to you because you're a free, independent human being.

00:04:56.000 And again, we've done a pretty tremendous job in the West of making sure that people who are the most vulnerable have already had the vaccine.

00:05:02.000 There are people now who are thinking about vaccinating or weren't vaccinating before because people react rationally to risk reward calculations.

00:05:10.000 And this is what the data show.

00:05:11.000 Okay, so there's an article today in ABC News about a large-scale increase of cases, hospitalizations being seen in, for example, Northeastern Florida.

00:05:21.000 According to ABC News, UF Health Jacksonville, in Florida's most populous city, has seen an exponential rise in the number of COVID-19 patients admitted in recent weeks, according to Chad Nielsen, Director of Infection Prevention at the hospital.

00:05:32.000 The previous record for the highest number of daily COVID-19 patients across both of its campuses, 125, was set in January. The hospital currently has 136 people who are hospitalized, about 40 people in the ICU. Last week there were 75 COVID patients in the hospital, 45 the week before and 20 the week before that. According to Nielsen, we knew it was most likely due to the Delta variant taking a bigger footprint here in the northeastern Florida region because it was so rapid of an increase everyone in town is suffering the same fate that we are.

00:06:00.000 At the Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville Hospital, there's been a significant increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the past three weeks, approaching our previous peak number, says Dr. Ken Thielen, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida.

00:06:10.000 He said this is a five-fold increase in COVID hospitalizations and follows many weeks when we only had a handful of hospitalized COVID patients.

00:06:17.000 But here are the stats that matter.

00:06:19.000 You ready?

00:06:20.000 Among UF Health's Jacksonville's COVID-19 patients, 90% are unvaccinated.

00:06:26.000 90% are unvaccinated.

00:06:28.000 In other words, the number of people who are getting the vaccines and then they're having a breakthrough infection is very low.

00:06:33.000 And the number of people who are getting hospitalized is really, really, really low.

00:06:37.000 And the number of people who are dying after being vaccinated is super duper duper low.

00:06:41.000 However, if you're unvaccinated, the disease treats you the same way that it would have treated you back in January or back in November or back in the prior March.

00:06:48.000 We have better ways of treating you now.

00:06:50.000 We figured out, for example, that we're not going to vet you.

00:06:52.000 We figured out that we're not going to put you on your back.

00:06:54.000 But you are still facing a very similar level of risk to what you were facing in January.

00:07:00.000 Even though it is now July, you're facing a very similar level of risk if you are unvaccinated the same way you were in January.

00:07:05.000 The virus has changed a little bit, but it hasn't changed in its deadliness.

00:07:08.000 It's only changed in its transmissibility.

00:07:11.000 According to Tom Van Astel, the president and CEO of Ascension Florida and Gulf Coast, which operates a hospital in Jacksonville, over 96% of its COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated.

00:07:21.000 He says, our median age of hospitalized patients is 49.

00:07:24.000 It was in the mid 60s in prior waves of the pandemic.

00:07:27.000 It's a younger demographic who are not getting vaccinated.

00:07:29.000 Unfortunately, they're contracting COVID.

00:07:30.000 These cases are requiring hospitalization for treatment.

00:07:33.000 Now, also the rates of death after hospitalization are way down from what they were at the beginning of the pandemic.

00:07:38.000 At the beginning of the pandemic, if you went to the hospital, there was a pretty decent shot that you were going to die.

00:07:42.000 Now, if you go to the hospital, less of a shot that you're going to die.

00:07:46.000 The movement from hospitalization to ICU to death is a lot more attenuated.

00:07:52.000 At Baptist Health in Jacksonville, the COVID-19 patients are younger, sicker, and getting sicker quickly, said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Timothy Groover.

00:07:59.000 In the past month, 44% of COVID-19 patients at the hospital were in their 40s or younger.

00:08:04.000 Most were previously healthy.

00:08:07.000 So, what this means is that people are sort of ramping up vaccinations.

00:08:10.000 They're thinking more seriously about vaccinations.

00:08:12.000 But again, what the stats show is that we have basically disconnected the case rate from the death rate.

00:08:18.000 Meaning that we're seeing lots and lots and lots of cases and not an awful lot of death.

00:08:22.000 There's another chart from the UK that demonstrates this full scale.

00:08:26.000 You can see it right here on this chart.

00:08:29.000 This chart right here shows that you can see the waves follow each other.

00:08:33.000 You can see the wave of death and you can see the wave of COVID.

00:08:37.000 The COVID wave comes very quickly thereafter.

00:08:40.000 The deaths come and they chart each other really, really smoothly.

00:08:43.000 And then now you see a massive increase in the number of COVID cases.

00:08:49.000 And you don't see the death.

00:08:49.000 The death just isn't happening in the same way.

00:08:51.000 Again, because we have done a very good job in the West of vaccinating the elderly.

00:08:56.000 And so younger people are getting this thing, not older people.

00:08:59.000 People who are less vulnerable, not people who are more vulnerable.

00:09:03.000 And so it's important also to take a look at some of the stats that are being bandied about with regard to hospitalization rates, for example.

00:09:09.000 So in Florida, you're seeing an increase in hospitalization into the Jacksonville area that is on par with what we saw in January, but among younger people who are less likely to die even after being hospitalized than older people like 65 year olds who are being hospitalized in January.

00:09:24.000 Sometimes the headlines are just completely disconnected from reality.

00:09:27.000 The Los Angeles Times says, quote, You have to dig down until paragraph four before you get to this.

00:09:37.000 Even with the recent increase, though, the state's health care system is nowhere near as swamped as it was during the fall and winter surge.

00:09:43.000 Many health experts are confident California will never see numbers on that scale again, given how many residents are vaccinated.

00:09:50.000 With the continued spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, which officials fear could mushroom in communities with lower inoculation rates, the next few weeks are key in determining how potent the pandemic's latest punch may be.

00:09:59.000 Okay, so bottom line is, once again, we're not seeing the same level of hospitalization as we saw, broadly speaking, over the course of countries.

00:10:05.000 We're seeing huge numbers of cases, fewer hospitalizations, many, many, many fewer deaths, because you are seeing, again, a disconnect between the people who are getting this thing and the people who tend to die of this thing.

00:10:15.000 Which means that, realistically speaking, many nations are learning to let it go and live with COVID, which, of course, was always going to happen.

00:10:23.000 Now, there was a case to be made, by the way, that even before the advent of the vaccine, places needed to learn to live with COVID.

00:10:29.000 Namely, you shield the most vulnerable and you allow everybody else to go out and work.

00:10:33.000 And there's something that Sweden did, for example, and Sweden was ripped up and down.

00:10:36.000 Sweden's excess death rate, when you actually chart it to their age, right, you have to actually adjust for age, because if you have a population that's entirely 20 years old versus a population that's entirely 70 years old, they're not gonna have the same death rates.

00:10:49.000 If you actually chart their excess mortality rates, there have been some studies done on this.

00:10:53.000 What it suggests is that Sweden's excess mortality rates during the pandemic, over the course of 2020, was an increase of about 1.5%.

00:11:02.000 It was actually significantly higher in Germany, which locked down very wide.

00:11:08.000 In fact, Sweden, which was ripped up and down for its COVID policy, now ranks somewhere around 40th in the world in terms of death per million from COVID, and that's not population adjusted for age.

00:11:18.000 So there is a case to be made pretty early on that shield the elderly, let everybody else go out and do what they're going to do. 0.92

00:11:24.000 And if you want to mask, mask, and if you don't want to mask, don't mask.

00:11:27.000 That was not actually a terrible policy idea, especially because what we are finding out right now is that natural immunity in some of these cases may be stronger than vaccine-created immunity.

00:11:35.000 That's what some of the statistics out of Israel are tending to show.

00:11:37.000 So if you're 21 years old, everybody was treating it as a giant problem and tragedy if you were 21 in January and getting COVID.

00:11:44.000 But if you weren't dying from COVID, this just meant you were immune from COVID in the natural way before you could get a vaccine.

00:11:48.000 So it took one person off the board in terms of reproducing the virus and pushing it out to others.

00:11:53.000 But now that the vaccines are available, there's no question that we should be moving back to a regular life.

00:11:58.000 There really is none.

00:11:59.000 Because anything else has no limiting principle.

00:12:02.000 It's the point I keep making over and over and over.

00:12:04.000 Once every adult has had the opportunity to get the vaccine, it is now up to them.

00:12:08.000 The original goal of the lockdowns, the original goal of masking policy, was to prevent people from overwhelming the hospital system.

00:12:15.000 Right?

00:12:15.000 That was the entire goal.

00:12:17.000 Don't let the hospital systems be overwhelmed with COVID patients so that people don't die needlessly.

00:12:21.000 And so if you flatten the curve, the area under the curve is going to be the same over the course of time, but it's going to be beneath medical capacity.

00:12:28.000 So that means that no one dies without at least having the treatment that could possibly save their life.

00:12:32.000 Right?

00:12:33.000 That was the original goal.

00:12:34.000 We did that.

00:12:35.000 We prevented COVID from swamping the hospitals and overwhelming the system.

00:12:39.000 And that's what the lockdowns were for.

00:12:41.000 Then the goal changed to, okay, well, you know, we do have these vaccines on the way.

00:12:44.000 If we can just delay this thing, then maybe if we have lowered the curve, we can actually stop the curve before it rises again.

00:12:51.000 Right, we can actually stop the death through the vaccine.

00:12:53.000 So it's a delay tactic, right?

00:12:55.000 We're going to lock down a little bit more.

00:12:56.000 We'll mask a little bit more and this will delay.

00:12:58.000 Because that's really all the lockdowns and masking do.

00:12:59.000 They delay the inevitable.

00:13:01.000 Because eventually, you assume, people are going to take off the masks and stop the lockdowns and go out of their homes.

00:13:05.000 So, the idea now was, delay until the vaccines are available.

00:13:08.000 Then, vaccines became widely available.

00:13:11.000 Now, as I keep saying over and over, there's no end goal.

00:13:15.000 There's no end goal.

00:13:16.000 Right?

00:13:17.000 The notion that we are all supposed to continue masking forever, even though the vaccines are now available. 0.99

00:13:22.000 That is asinine. 0.94

00:13:24.000 We are going to have to learn to live with the reality that adults are adults. 0.93

00:13:27.000 We're going to have to learn to live with the reality that if you're vaccinated, you're pretty much safe from the virus, statistically speaking.

00:13:32.000 If you're unvaccinated, you're just as unprotected from the virus as you were six months ago.

00:13:38.000 And so that is up to you.

00:13:40.000 That's now on you.

00:13:41.000 That is your decision.

00:13:42.000 And we can't lock down all of society or ask vaccinated people to mask on the basis that they might infect somebody asymptomatically who refuses to either mask or to get the vaccine.

00:13:54.000 You can't restrict people because other people refuse to do the thing that would protect them.

00:13:58.000 We don't do this with any other form of disease.

00:14:01.000 And especially when you're talking about a vaccine that takes the rates of death of this thing all the way down to below the flu. 0.61

00:14:08.000 Again, if people choose not to make that decision, I think it's a foolish decision.

00:14:11.000 I've said over and over and over on the program, I think that people should vaccinate.

00:14:14.000 It's funny, there are a bunch of articles.

00:14:16.000 The media are intent on trying to blame the right for the failure of vaccinations in certain parts of the country.

00:14:23.000 And some of these media pieces are saying that I, like me specifically, that I have not backed vaccines. 0.99

00:14:29.000 That's of course idiotic. 0.97

00:14:30.000 I've backed vaccines since literally the first day. 0.98

00:14:33.000 I continue to maintain that getting a vaccine is a good idea, that these mRNA vaccines, by all available scientific evidence, are safe.

00:14:41.000 I'm not going to say that they're safe for children because we have no longitudinal effect with regard to that, but what I will say is that the statistics tend to show that yes, sure, there could be risks from the vaccine, but those risks are below the risk of dying from COVID or getting seriously ill from COVID with long-lasting COVID effect, particularly for adults.

00:15:00.000 But that's your choice.

00:15:01.000 You're a free and independent human being.

00:15:03.000 That is your choice right now.

00:15:04.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:16:27.000 So as I speak, I'm looking at the COVID death statistics in the United States.

00:16:32.000 This is via the New York Times last update about 13 hours ago.

00:16:34.000 The seven-day average of deaths from COVID in the United States, despite this massive increase in cases in the United States, remains at 249.

00:16:42.000 As I mentioned, this means that COVID is now not among the top causes of death in the United States on a daily basis.

00:16:50.000 Heart disease, cancer, Even diabetes and Alzheimer's, like, diabetes is on par with the number of deaths that we are suffering per day from COVID.

00:16:59.000 Now, COVID is a transmissible disease, obviously.

00:17:01.000 You could have an uptick in death, but we are seeing a pretty vast disconnect between the amount of death and the number of cases that are being diagnosed, just as we have seen in Britain.

00:17:11.000 If you go all the way back to March, right?

00:17:13.000 February, we were having about 60,000 new cases a day in the United States.

00:17:17.000 Yesterday, we had about 60,000 cases, so we are back to those levels of caseload.

00:17:22.000 But it's different people who are getting them, thanks to the widespread vaccination of the elderly.

00:17:27.000 So, the New York Times has a piece about this.

00:17:29.000 England has removed nearly all coronavirus restrictions.

00:17:31.000 Germany is allowing vaccinated people to travel without quarantines.

00:17:34.000 Outdoor mask mandates are mostly gone in Italy.

00:17:36.000 Shopping malls remain open in Singapore.

00:17:38.000 18 months after the first coronavirus emerged, governments in Asia, Europe, and the Americas are encouraging people to return to their daily rhythms and transition to a new normal in which subways, offices, restaurants, and airports are once again full.

00:17:49.000 Increasingly, the mantra is the same.

00:17:50.000 We have to learn to live with the virus.

00:17:52.000 Now remember, when I said this last year, That we might have to learn to live with the virus?

00:17:56.000 I was ripped up and down for this.

00:17:57.000 How?

00:17:57.000 No.

00:17:58.000 No.

00:17:58.000 Zero COVID is the goal.

00:17:59.000 Zero COVID was never a realistic goal.

00:18:02.000 Ever.

00:18:03.000 There was nobody who was a medical expert last year except for Anthony Fauci who was idiotically out there suggesting that we were going to crush the curve to the point where basically the virus was no longer in circulation.

00:18:13.000 This is a highly transmissible coronavirus that is literally present in nearly every nation on the globe.

00:18:19.000 The notion that you're going to cut this thing down to zero was always a pipe dream.

00:18:22.000 It was never going to happen.

00:18:24.000 That is not an argument against vaccination.

00:18:26.000 It's an argument in favor of reality.

00:18:28.000 According to the New York Times, however, scientists warn that pandemic exit strategies may be premature. The emergence of more transmissible variants means even wealthy nations with abundant vaccines remain vulnerable. Places like Australia, which shut down its borders, are learning they cannot keep the virus out. Well, if that's the case, then why exactly are we arguing about continuing shutdowns and lockdowns and remasking?

00:18:46.000 Officials are beginning to accept that rolling lockdowns and restrictions are a necessary part of recovery.

00:18:52.000 People are being encouraged to shift their pandemic perspective and focus on avoiding severe illness and death instead of infections.

00:18:58.000 Correct.

00:18:58.000 That's right.

00:18:59.000 That's why people should vaccinate.

00:19:01.000 Not to avoid getting infected in the first place.

00:19:03.000 To avoid dying.

00:19:04.000 To avoid going to the hospital.

00:19:06.000 But honestly, there's no other disease where we care about case rate.

00:19:06.000 Of course.

00:19:10.000 None.

00:19:10.000 You don't care how many people get the flu every year, you care how many people die from the flu every year.

00:19:15.000 Millions and millions of people get the common cold every year.

00:19:17.000 Have you ever heard that as a public health crisis requiring masking?

00:19:20.000 Of course not, because people don't die of the cold, right?

00:19:22.000 So the question is, death rates from COVID, which have been brought down radically.

00:19:26.000 Now again, that's because on average they've been brought down, meaning that there are people who die, it's pretty binary, there are people who die and people who don't, and the people who die tend to be unvaccinated and the people who don't tend to be vaccinated or have already had this thing with a level of natural immunity.

00:19:40.000 Dale Fisher, Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, who heads the National Infection Prevention and Control Committee of Singapore's Health Ministry, says, you need to tell people we're going to get a lot of cases.

00:19:49.000 And that's part of the plan.

00:19:50.000 We have to let it go.

00:19:51.000 So we're all now we're doing World Sweden, right?

00:19:53.000 Last year, it was Sweden is the worst country on planet Earth.

00:19:56.000 And Rhonda Sampson in Florida, who pursued a similar strategy, worst person on Earth. 1.00

00:20:00.000 Now it's like, well, I guess, you know, we're just going to have to do exactly what they did.

00:20:04.000 Yeah, we know.

00:20:06.000 We know.

00:20:07.000 And that's fine.

00:20:08.000 Thank God we have a vaccine now that has radically reduced the death rate.

00:20:11.000 That is a gift from science.

00:20:13.000 It's a gift from God.

00:20:15.000 Like it is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

00:20:17.000 And also you now need to let people live free because otherwise there are no limiting principles to anything that you're talking about. 0.61

00:20:23.000 This notion that we are supposed to continue masking forever and do shutdowns forever is just ridiculous.

00:20:29.000 I'm sorry.

00:20:29.000 There is no logical principle that can be held consistently that would not also you to require up for pneumonia.

00:20:37.000 Or tuberculosis?

00:20:38.000 Or the flu?

00:20:40.000 And so, the same logic that is currently being used for arguments about remasking particularly vaccinated people, those arguments, masking kids, right?

00:20:48.000 Those arguments are equally applicable to a wide variety of diseases, which really says the government should have control until the end of time.

00:20:55.000 So right now, the White House, naturally, is debating whether to walk back its view on masking.

00:21:00.000 According to the Washington Post, top White House aides and Biden administration officials are debating whether they should urge vaccinated Americans to wear masks in more settings, as the Delta variant causes spikes in COVID infections across the country, according to six people familiar with the discussions.

00:21:14.000 Vaccinated Americans, not unvaccinated Americans.

00:21:17.000 Again, I understand the argument for unvaccinated Americans to wear a mask. 0.99

00:21:20.000 If you don't want to transmit it and you don't want to get it, then presumably get an N95.

00:21:24.000 Right?

00:21:24.000 N95s are pretty widely available at this point.

00:21:26.000 But vaccinated Americans?

00:21:28.000 So I'm supposed to mask up?

00:21:30.000 Despite the fact that I can't, even though you have had the ability to protect yourself, I'm supposed to mask up and mask my kid so you don't get it?

00:21:37.000 Even though you're a free individual human being with the capacity to make a decision?

00:21:42.000 According to the Washington Post, the talks are in a preliminary phase.

00:21:45.000 The result could be as simple as new messaging from top White House officials, but some of the talks include officials at the CDC.

00:21:51.000 Ah, the vaunted CDC, which has blown this every step of the way, who are separately examining whether to update their masking guidance, according to a Biden administration aide and a federal health official.

00:21:59.000 Officials cautioned any new formal guidance would have to come from the CDC.

00:22:02.000 They say the White House has taken a hands-off approach, which, of course, is not true at all.

00:22:06.000 You'll remember that the CDC originally set masking standards in coordination with the White House and only later said, oh yeah, by the way, you can unmask if you're vaccinated.

00:22:14.000 The high-level discussions reflect rising concerns about the threat of the Delta variant.

00:22:18.000 One idea batted around by administration officials would be to ask all Americans to wear masks when vaccinated and unvaccinated people mix at public places or indoors.

00:22:28.000 No.

00:22:29.000 No.

00:22:30.000 The answer is no.

00:22:31.000 I'm not doing that.

00:22:32.000 I also don't think my kids should be masked.

00:22:34.000 No.

00:22:35.000 If you're an adult and you choose not to get masked, it's on you now.

00:22:38.000 End of story.

00:22:39.000 Truly end of story, because otherwise, there's no end to this.

00:22:41.000 Otherwise, they can do this at any time, for the rest of time, for any reason, or no reason.

00:22:46.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:22:47.000 First, I am a pretty busy dude hosting my show, raising three kids.

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00:22:57.000 I'm sure you do too.

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00:23:51.000 Alrighty, so last night, Joe Biden was on CNN where he engaged in his usual battles with the teleprompter.

00:23:57.000 Again, it is a source of constant bemusement that the president of the United States does not appear to have firing synapses at this point.

00:24:04.000 Here's the President of the United States and Don Lemon trying to bail him out over and over and the President basically just wandering into the cornfield.

00:24:13.000 The question is whether or not we should be in a position where you are, why can't the experts say, we know that this virus is in fact, it's going to be, or excuse me, we know why all the drugs approved are not temporarily approved, but permanently approved.

00:24:37.000 That's underway too, I expect that to occur quickly.

00:24:39.000 Well that means, you mean for the FDA?

00:24:41.000 For the FDA.

00:24:44.000 I don't know what any of that was supposed to mean.

00:24:47.000 Was that in English?

00:24:49.000 It is, I mean, it's an amazing country where literally anyone can be president.

00:24:52.000 I mean, they say that America, English is the, there's an argument about whether English ought to be the official language.

00:24:58.000 No, I mean, we elect presidents routinely in this country who don't speak English.

00:25:02.000 Anyway, the president of the United States then added, I don't tell the scientists what to do, which is overtly untrue.

00:25:06.000 I mean, the reality is the White House coordinates with the CDC.

00:25:10.000 They coordinate with all of the quote-unquote health officials.

00:25:13.000 And then they issue guidance that very much reflects the political priorities of the administration.

00:25:17.000 But here's Biden trying to separate off from the mandates that are to come.

00:25:22.000 When will children under 12 be able to get vaccinated?

00:25:25.000 Soon, I believe.

00:25:26.000 Now look, one of the things that I committed to do when I got elected, I said- How soon is soon, Mr. President?

00:25:32.000 Let me finish the question.

00:25:36.000 The answer.

00:25:38.000 Soon in the sense that I do not tell any scientists what they should do.

00:25:45.000 Okay, so now he says he's not going to tell any of the scientists what to do.

00:25:51.000 Yeah, I don't believe you.

00:25:53.000 But this is Biden's way of disconnecting from the fact that he said we were all going to be free and easy as of July 4th, and we are no longer free and easy.

00:25:59.000 He's now going to say, oh, well, the scientists told me.

00:26:01.000 The scientists told me.

00:26:02.000 Except these are political decisions.

00:26:03.000 I've said from the very beginning of this pandemic, this is not up to Fauci.

00:26:07.000 It's not up to the scientists.

00:26:08.000 We elect people.

00:26:10.000 To balance all of the competing considerations.

00:26:12.000 And at the beginning, this was considered cruel and terrible.

00:26:15.000 If you pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, literally tens of millions of people actually, lost their jobs during the pandemic.

00:26:22.000 And you were accused of making light of death.

00:26:25.000 If you pointed out there were very, very differential death rates by age group, and this meant that we should have 20-year-olds working but not 60-year-olds working, then this was considered cruel and inhumane.

00:26:36.000 But that is the stuff we elect people to do.

00:26:37.000 We elect people to take into account all of those priorities.

00:26:40.000 If you're a public health official, your goal is always going to be zero deaths.

00:26:44.000 And the easiest way to prevent death is to lock you in your home forever.

00:26:47.000 So it is up to the President of the United States to stop all of that.

00:26:50.000 But the President is not going to stop all of that.

00:26:52.000 The President of the United States, apparently, is just going to allow the scientists to make public policy.

00:26:58.000 That is not correct.

00:26:59.000 They ought to have input into public policy, but it is at the political level when people who are supposed to weigh all the competing factors make the policy.

00:27:05.000 That's what's supposed to matter.

00:27:06.000 Here's Biden just abdicating full responsibility and suggesting that the CDC is going to tell kids to wear masks in school.

00:27:13.000 Remember, the CDC said like a week ago that kids don't really need to wear masks in school and kids should be back in school full time.

00:27:19.000 Then the American Academy of Pediatrics put out a notice In coordination, by the way, with the teachers' unions, they overtly say that they are doing this in coordination with the teachers' unions, telling you you need to mask up your 3-year-old. 0.96

00:27:29.000 That's asinine. 0.96

00:27:30.000 You don't need to mask up your 3-year-old. 0.99

00:27:32.000 I have a 7, a 5, and a 1.

00:27:33.000 I don't need to mask my 5-year-old or my 7-year-old.

00:27:36.000 The reason I don't need to mask them is because I'm not afraid of them getting COVID.

00:27:40.000 And I'm not afraid of their classmates getting COVID.

00:27:41.000 And the reason I'm not particularly afraid of them or their classmates getting COVID is because the rates of death for people under the age of 18 in the United States from COVID are so low they boggle- they beggar the imagination and boggle the mind.

00:27:53.000 The total number of people under the age of 18 in the United States is a cohort of 75 million human beings in the United States, in which we've had millions of diagnosed cases of COVID.

00:28:04.000 The total number of deaths from COVID in the United States for people under the age of 18 is below 350 out of 75 million people. Okay, that does not bespeak the necessity of masking.

00:28:18.000 Unless what you're afraid of is that the kids are going to infect the adults.

00:28:21.000 But if you're afraid the kids are going to infect the adults, we go back to our original logic.

00:28:24.000 Have the adults had the opportunity to get the vaccine?

00:28:26.000 If the answer is yes, and they haven't done it, That is now their problem.

00:28:31.000 And if they have peculiar vulnerabilities that prevent them from getting the vaccine, then we should get them an N95. 0.79

00:28:37.000 We should have them teach from home.

00:28:38.000 But that's true regardless of what kind of diseases are circulating.

00:28:41.000 There's always stuff out there that can kill people who have peculiar vulnerabilities health-wise.

00:28:46.000 Once you've had the opportunity to have a vaccine, it's on you. 0.99

00:28:49.000 And masking up my 5-year-old to protect your 40-year-old ass when you won't get a vaccine is absurd. 1.00

00:28:56.000 It's absurd. 1.00

00:28:57.000 There's no reason we should be doing it.

00:28:59.000 And if you're worried that those kids are going to come home and take it to an adult, then the adults ought to get vaccinated.

00:29:03.000 There's a very obvious solution here.

00:29:05.000 Get vaccinated if you don't want somebody else infecting you, period.

00:29:09.000 And if you don't care about getting infected, and you don't care about getting COVID, well then, that's on you.

00:29:14.000 Good on you.

00:29:14.000 I mean, that's your decision.

00:29:15.000 You're a rational human being.

00:29:16.000 Back here is Joe Biden.

00:29:17.000 Again, the level of top-down control, the level of scorn your politicians have for you in your decision-making is truly an amazing thing.

00:29:24.000 Did it ever occur to them that there are a lot of people out there who might have reasons that I disagree with on not getting the vaccine, but reasons that are not just simply, I watched Tucker Carlson or I love Trump and I'm not getting it.

00:29:35.000 There are a lot of people who have rationales that they think are at least a risk reward calculation, and they are allowed to make those risk reward calculations.

00:29:44.000 Let's say that you are 25 years old, and your chances of dying from this virus are something like 6 in 10,000.

00:29:49.000 And you say to yourself, okay, well, we haven't had full FDA clearance, right?

00:29:53.000 We're still working under emergency use authorization.

00:29:55.000 We haven't had full FDA clearance of the vaccines that say that they are fully safe.

00:30:00.000 There's been no longitudinal testing.

00:30:03.000 Maybe I had COVID already, and I'm relying on my own natural immunity.

00:30:07.000 Okay, well, Fine.

00:30:10.000 I mean, seriously, fine.

00:30:10.000 Like, I differ from your assessment.

00:30:13.000 Again, I got the vaccine.

00:30:14.000 My wife got the vaccine.

00:30:15.000 My parents got the vaccine.

00:30:17.000 But, you are allowed to make that decision in a free country.

00:30:21.000 But to say that you are allowed to make that decision in a free country, but that I have to mask because you make the wrong decision, is totally nuts.

00:30:28.000 Or that my kid has to mask.

00:30:31.000 By the way, it doesn't have a great impact on kids.

00:30:32.000 I got my kids running around in 90 degree heat with a mask on.

00:30:35.000 For no reason that I can see.

00:30:38.000 Here is Joe Biden, however, abdicating his duty to actually be a leader.

00:30:43.000 The CDC is going to say that what we should do is everyone under the age of 12 should probably be wearing a mask in school.

00:30:52.000 That's probably what's going to happen.

00:30:54.000 Secondly, those over the age of 12 who are able to get vaccinated, if you're vaccinated, you shouldn't wear a mask.

00:31:00.000 If you aren't vaccinated, you should be wearing a mask.

00:31:04.000 So it's going to get a little bit tight in terms of, well, our mom or dad being honest that, you know, Johnny did or did not get vaccinated.

00:31:12.000 That's going to raise questions.

00:31:15.000 Okay, well, um, what if we don't care whether Johnny did or did not get a vaccine when he's 15 years old?

00:31:21.000 What if that's none of your business?

00:31:23.000 Really?

00:31:24.000 Because, after all, he's 15.

00:31:26.000 And the number of people who are dying aged 15 from the vaccine, really, really, really low.

00:31:32.000 Really low.

00:31:34.000 So it's, you know, all of this is kind of madness.

00:31:36.000 Jerome Adams, who's the Surgeon General under Donald Trump, he said, Based on what?

00:31:40.000 vax it or mask it, emerging data suggests CDC should be advising to vax it and mask it in areas with high case numbers and positivity until we see numbers going back down again.

00:31:48.000 CDC was well intended, but the message was misinterpreted, premature and wrong.

00:31:51.000 Let's fix it. Based on what? Based on what? Again, the whole purpose of masking was to prevent overwhelming of the hospitals in the absence of a solution.

00:32:01.000 We have a solution.

00:32:02.000 If you choose not to access the solution, I don't understand why I'm supposed to lead my life, the rest of my life apparently, masking up and covering my face.

00:32:09.000 Like, as you all know, if you've watched or listened to the show, I was actually a masking advocate until you get the vaccines.

00:32:16.000 I said the best available science shows that it prevents you from spreading the disease.

00:32:20.000 And if you have an N95, it prevents you from getting the disease.

00:32:23.000 I wasn't anti-masking.

00:32:25.000 Now I'm anti-masking for the vaccinated. 0.74

00:32:27.000 Because what the hell?

00:32:29.000 What is the point of getting the vaccine if I'm going to have to live the rest of my life in a mask anyway?

00:32:34.000 You're actually creating a perverse incentive.

00:32:36.000 It's amazing.

00:32:36.000 All the public health officials who say that it's right-wing misinformation that is leading to lower vaccination rates.

00:32:41.000 There are charts.

00:32:42.000 They demonstrate explicitly that the rates of vaccination in the United States were rising fairly precipitously and then leveling off at a high level.

00:32:49.000 And then you had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause, which was a moronic idea by the federal government in which they paused the distribution of J&J after 7 million doses had gone out because there were six, count them, six cases of people with a rare blood clotting disorder And then people started to get pretty hesitant about the vaccines right quick.

00:33:08.000 And now you're telling people that even if they vaccinate, they are still going to have to mask up until the end of time because there might be some person down the road who didn't feel like vaccinating.

00:33:16.000 So you got to protect them.

00:33:18.000 No.

00:33:19.000 The answer is no.

00:33:20.000 Own your decisions.

00:33:21.000 Here's the thing.

00:33:21.000 People who are not vaccinated, by and large, they are willing to own those decisions.

00:33:26.000 So if they're willing to own the decisions and I'm willing to own my decision, what business is this of the federal government in the first place?

00:33:33.000 And why are you putting on kids?

00:33:34.000 That's the part that's totally wild.

00:33:36.000 Yet that is the new going notion.

00:33:38.000 Here's Dr. Jonathan Reamer on CNN saying every kid should be going to school masked.

00:33:42.000 Every child from your three-year-old to your 17-year-old should be going to school masked.

00:33:47.000 Every kid going to school should be masked.

00:33:50.000 Vaccinated or not.

00:33:51.000 And I know this angers people who have been vaccinated, but we need to protect everyone and we really can't tell who's been vaccinated and who hasn't.

00:34:00.000 I think every kid going to school should have a mask on to protect those who just have chosen not to be vaccinated and those who can't be. 0.98

00:34:11.000 Really?

00:34:12.000 So this is where we're going?

00:34:13.000 This is where we're going?

00:34:16.000 Wonderful.

00:34:18.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:34:20.000 The Biden administration continues to maintain that the big problem here is not its own failures of public health messaging.

00:34:26.000 It is not its own failures to set some sort of consistent guidelines or end goals.

00:34:30.000 It's funny, they've done a lot of social science study about what encourages people to do things.

00:34:36.000 And what encourages people to do things is the notion there's an end line.

00:34:39.000 If there's an end line, then you tend to do better.

00:34:41.000 So for example, when you're exercising, if you are running toward the one mile mark, You will tend to pick up your pace as you get near the one mile mark because you know that at the end of the one mile mark, that's the one mile mark.

00:34:51.000 If, however, somebody tells you run indefinitely, you'll run slower because you are trying to conserve energy, because you are because you don't know when the end line is going to be.

00:35:00.000 And so it's actually very important to set goalposts.

00:35:03.000 And then once those goalposts are hit, to move on with your life.

00:35:07.000 The federal government refuses to meet the goalposts or if they have goalposts, they keep moving the goalposts.

00:35:11.000 Now, I don't even know where they go.

00:35:13.000 They disappeared all the goalposts.

00:35:15.000 Again, there was a case to be made for goalposts that suggested don't overwhelm the hospitals.

00:35:19.000 Then there was a case to be made that put the goalposts at everybody has the opportunity to get vaccinated.

00:35:23.000 Now the goalposts have just disappeared.

00:35:25.000 And this is just your centralized government bosses telling you what you ought to do with your life.

00:35:30.000 And my answer is no.

00:35:32.000 My answer is absolutely not.

00:35:33.000 And you're not going to tell me what to do with my kid either.

00:35:35.000 Because now there is no externality to consider.

00:35:39.000 When you're talking about collective action problems, externalities are the thing.

00:35:43.000 If you can protect yourself, and I can protect myself, the externality question goes away.

00:35:48.000 So I don't see what the role of government is here.

00:35:49.000 Okay, we'll get into more of this and the Biden administration side agenda, which is to quash social media.

00:35:55.000 We'll get to that in a second.

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00:37:26.000 Alrighty, well, we'll get back to the news in a second.

00:37:29.000 First, reminder, I have a new book.

00:37:30.000 It is coming out next week.

00:37:32.000 It is a really important book, The Authoritarian Moment.

00:37:34.000 I think it may be the most important book that I've ever written.

00:37:36.000 It is all about the takeover of the institutions.

00:37:38.000 You can feel it all around you.

00:37:40.000 All of the institutions, from science, to education, to Hollywood, to corporate America, all of them are coming for you.

00:37:46.000 They're coming for your freedoms.

00:37:47.000 You feel it, I feel it.

00:37:48.000 But here's the thing, we can fix that.

00:37:50.000 We can stop that in its tracks.

00:37:52.000 I talk about all of this in my brand new book, The Authoritarian Moment.

00:37:55.000 Some people collect trophies, some collect bobbleheads, some collect things of actual value, like signed books that have resale value.

00:38:00.000 Specifically, signed books by moi.

00:38:02.000 Lucky for you, I am signing copies of my brand new book, The Authoritarian Moment, Tuesday, July 27th.

00:38:08.000 As you will read, there's a ton happening right now that I predicted in the book, so you're gonna wanna pick up your copy of The Authoritarian Moment to get a sense of what's to come and how we can stop it.

00:38:16.000 So, go to dailywire.com slash ben right now, order your signed copy before Tuesday's live signing.

00:38:22.000 And when you do, you'll be asked to type in a question at checkout.

00:38:24.000 Then, catch Tuesday's live signing to see if I answer your question and watch me sign your book.

00:38:29.000 So, what are you waiting for?

00:38:30.000 Become a part of this exciting event and get your copy at dailywired.com slash ben right this moment.

00:38:37.000 Also, in a world that never stops spinning, there's no doubt your time is of the utmost importance and should never be wasted on anything but the facts.

00:38:43.000 That's why The Daily Wire created Morning Wired.

00:38:46.000 It's the morning podcast that values your time and the truth.

00:38:49.000 We're extremely happy to see that our listeners already understand this because the podcast just launched this week.

00:38:54.000 It is already the number two podcast on Apple overall, number 11 on Spotify.

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00:39:44.000 Now, as we've been talking about, the public health establishment has completely failed on every messaging level with regard to the vaccination.

00:39:57.000 The reality is you didn't really have to message this thing very hard.

00:40:00.000 You know how I know?

00:40:01.000 Because everybody who's old got the vaccine. 0.99

00:40:03.000 Because they saw that if they didn't get it, there was a good shot they were going to die.

00:40:07.000 And so they were like, okay, I'm getting the vaccine.

00:40:10.000 This is a really easy sell.

00:40:11.000 People take a look at the risk factors and then they determine for themselves what is going on.

00:40:15.000 But the Biden administration, because they wanted us to be all done by now and they really don't care about whether individual human beings choose one way or the other, they have decided that the real reason that there is vaccine hesitancy is of course because of right-wing misinformation and because social media refused to quash This is right-wing misinformation.

00:40:32.000 This is part of a broader media narrative that has been out there for a while in which the media push social media to quash all dissenting information from a bunch of different sources, right?

00:40:40.000 This is why NPR had an article earlier this week openly saying that Daily Wire should basically lose its traffic because Daily Wire is conservative.

00:40:47.000 Not because we lie.

00:40:48.000 Not because we're anti-vax.

00:40:49.000 Not because of any of that.

00:40:50.000 Just because they don't like us.

00:40:52.000 So normally you might expect the media, right, you know, a First Amendment outfit, you might expect them to say to the Biden administration, guys, why is it your job to tell social media what can and cannot be distributed on social media?

00:41:05.000 I mean, this is just excellent evidence that our media are just the Praetorian guard for the Democratic Party.

00:41:11.000 They now just mirror whatever is the narrative that the White House wishes to purvey.

00:41:14.000 So if the White House says it's social media's fault, instead of the media going, wait, social media is a platform, why is the government trying to pressure platforms to remove information?

00:41:22.000 Instead, the media is like, yeah, social media, why don't you remove misinformation?

00:41:27.000 Here was NBC Nightly News just doing the same thing that the White House would do, except indirectly.

00:41:32.000 How does social media influence people's relationship with facts?

00:41:38.000 So in our research, you know, across different countries, including the United States, what we find is that when people receive most of their information about COVID-19 and vaccination from social media, they're more likely to be misinformed and they're less likely to get vaccinated versus when they get their information from official sources like the WHO or the CDC.

00:42:01.000 So we actually can identify a clear link between getting your information from social media and having a greater amount of misconceptions about this issue, which in turn is linked to lower willingness to get vaccinated.

00:42:15.000 Don't you see that you should be getting all your information only from official sources?

00:42:18.000 Does this sound a little bit fascistic to you?

00:42:20.000 The only places you should be able to get information about COVID, maybe for anything, is the WHO and the CDC.

00:42:27.000 Except for how the WHO and CDC have flipped 1,000 ways since the beginning of this pandemic.

00:42:31.000 And if you'd listened to the WHO at the very beginning, you wouldn't have masked up.

00:42:34.000 Or the CDC, you wouldn't have masked up.

00:42:36.000 And if you listened to the WHO up through about five minutes ago, the COVID lab leak theory was totally crazy.

00:42:42.000 And if you listen to the WHO, at the very beginning of this pandemic, it wasn't even an airborne virus, COVID.

00:42:47.000 Except for that, you know, it's really only government, only trust the government, is a hell of a take from the press.

00:42:53.000 From the press, these people who are like, I'm going to hold power to account.

00:42:57.000 We're going to force accountability from the powerful.

00:43:00.000 Make life uncomfortable for the comfortable.

00:43:03.000 Except if they're of my political party, in which case I will say they ought to be the only informational source from which you derive information.

00:43:08.000 That was NBC Nightly News, not the White House.

00:43:10.000 Amazing.

00:43:11.000 You see the same thing from a columnist named Will Aremus over at the Washington Post.

00:43:14.000 He has a piece titled, Facebook and YouTube's vaccine misinformation problem is simpler than it seems.

00:43:20.000 His analysis, in the end, is not that YouTube and Facebook ought to just ban information outright.

00:43:26.000 Instead, he says they should basically just shadow ban it.

00:43:28.000 Much better.

00:43:29.000 They should just change all of their algorithms so the only things you can see are the things that Joe Biden wants you to see.

00:43:34.000 Which, of course, is a restriction on free dissemination of information.

00:43:38.000 Obviously.

00:43:39.000 That's what it is.

00:43:40.000 Now, again, when we get to misinformation from the federal government, let me just point out at this point that Dr. Anthony Fauci is misleading you right now.

00:43:49.000 Okay, so, Dr. Anthony Fauci oversaw the NIAID, which is part of the NIH.

00:43:54.000 The NIH did give grants to a place called EcoHealth Alliance.

00:43:58.000 EcoHealth Alliance did give those grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:44:01.000 The Wuhan Institute of Virology performed what is in effect gain of function research on COVID-19, or at least on, on, it appears on COVID-19, right? We don't know if it was from the wet market. Now China's saying no.

00:44:15.000 It is highly unlikely that this was produced anywhere but the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:44:20.000 And since COVID-19 does not exist in bats, but now it does exist in humans, it is highly likely that it was created through gain-of-function research.

00:44:27.000 Now, that doesn't mean that the EcoHealth Alliance grant was specifically used to produce COVID-19.

00:44:31.000 It does mean that the EcoHealth Alliance grant from the NIH was used for gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

00:44:36.000 Now, the slippery way out of this little conundrum for Fauci and the NIH is to claim that technically they weren't funding gain of function research.

00:44:44.000 Technically, the kind of research they were funding was just about making animal viruses transmissible in humans, not about making it more deadly in humans.

00:44:52.000 That's a very technical distinction that really makes no difference for purposes of the conversation.

00:44:56.000 The reality is that Dr. Fauci has been a wide and deep supporter of gain of function research for years and years and years because he likes the idea that gain of function research helps us fight future viruses.

00:45:09.000 There's a case to be made for gain-of-function research, by the way.

00:45:12.000 There is no case to be made that gain-of-function research being done under the authority of a totalitarian regime with no incentive for actual health structures ought to be funded by the United States.

00:45:21.000 You want to say fun gain-of-function research at Harvard?

00:45:24.000 Go for it, man.

00:45:25.000 You want to say fun gain-of-function research in China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

00:45:29.000 That's nuts.

00:45:31.000 Okay, now Fauci was called on the carpet by Rand Paul for this.

00:45:34.000 And Fauci basically said, we're not funding gain-of-function research.

00:45:36.000 We had nothing to do with COVID-19.

00:45:37.000 You don't know whether you had anything to do with COVID-19.

00:45:40.000 I don't know whether you had anything to do with COVID-19.

00:45:42.000 What is pretty clear is that you were not cutting off funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was performing exactly the kind of research that would have led to a lab leak, if indeed this was a lab leak.

00:45:53.000 Nonetheless, here is Anthony Fauci slamming Rand Paul for quote-unquote slanderous commentary.

00:45:58.000 I don't take any great pleasure, Ari, in clashing with the senator.

00:46:02.000 I have a great deal of respect for the institution of the Senate of the United States.

00:46:06.000 But he was completely out of line.

00:46:08.000 He totally distorted reality.

00:46:11.000 And he made some inflammatory, and I believe slanderous, remarks.

00:46:15.000 about lying under oath, which is completely nonsense.

00:46:19.000 I mean, and some of the things that he says is so distorted and out of tune with reality, I had to call him on that.

00:46:26.000 I didn't enjoy it, but I had to do that because he was completely out of line.

00:46:31.000 Totally inappropriate.

00:46:34.000 Now, you may notice that Dr. Fauci never actually explains what Rand Paul said that was overtly false.

00:46:40.000 He may not like the implications that Rand Paul is drawing.

00:46:42.000 He may rely on this distinction between technical gain-of-function research and gain-of-function research on, like, a broad philosophical level.

00:46:50.000 But nothing that Rand Paul said was actually wrong here.

00:46:53.000 The NIH director does the same thing.

00:46:54.000 Again, remember, these are your governmental sources.

00:46:55.000 Do you trust them?

00:46:57.000 Well, we're told these are the only people you should trust.

00:46:59.000 Here's the NIH director defending Fauci.

00:47:02.000 I'm very concerned when I see probably the most highly respected infectious disease doctor on the planet being treated this way, having these accusations without any basis thrown at him, stirring up all kinds of nasty outreaches to him that require him now to have 24-7 security detail to protect him and his family.

00:47:25.000 What has happened to us that somebody who's trying to help the public by telling them the truth is turned into this kind of demonized character for political purposes?

00:47:34.000 It is unacceptable.

00:47:37.000 Okay, I have a question.

00:47:38.000 What if Dr. Fauci is not telling us the truth?

00:47:41.000 That's the question.

00:47:42.000 Here's Rand Paul asking precisely that question yesterday.

00:47:46.000 Well, I think it's important to know that Dr. Fauci has a self-interest in obscuring any relationship or responsibility for anything done in the Wuhan lab.

00:47:55.000 Without question, the evidence we presented in committee yesterday shows that the NIH was funding research in Wuhan.

00:48:02.000 We showed the exact numerical series of numbers that goes with the grant number.

00:48:08.000 So yes, they were funding the Wuhan lab.

00:48:10.000 But you have to realize that Dr. Fauci is not disinterested.

00:48:13.000 If this virus came from the lab and it becomes clear that he was funding dangerous research, moral culpability, responsibility attaches to him and he does not want that.

00:48:24.000 Okay, but the bottom line is this.

00:48:26.000 This really isn't about Fauci, generally.

00:48:27.000 It's about why should we have endless trust in a public health establishment that has failed us six ways from Sunday?

00:48:32.000 It is private industry developing the vaccines that did not fail us.

00:48:35.000 The public health experts failed us.

00:48:37.000 They give us bad information at every turn.

00:48:39.000 In some cases, they overtly lied to us.

00:48:40.000 But the Biden administration idea is that only those people ought to be listened to, and we have to just submit our own personal judgment to the tender mercies of these exact people.

00:48:52.000 The answer for most Americans is no.

00:48:54.000 And that means it's time to get back to something approaching regular life.

00:49:00.000 All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.

00:49:02.000 Coming up soon is the Matt Walsh Show.

00:49:04.000 It airs at 1.30 p.m.

00:49:05.000 Eastern.

00:49:05.000 Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.

00:49:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:49:08.000 Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:49:17.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

00:49:19.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:49:21.000 Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky.

00:49:23.000 Associate Producer Bradford Carrington.

00:49:25.000 Post-Producer Justin Barber.

00:49:27.000 The show is edited by Adam Sievitz.

00:49:29.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:49:31.000 Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.

00:49:32.000 Production Assistant Jessica Kranz.

00:49:34.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:49:37.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2021.

00:49:40.000 John Bickley here, Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Wire.

00:49:43.000 Wake up every morning with our new show, Morning Wire.

00:49:46.000 On today's episode, Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci spar over gain-of-function research, teachers groups gather to discuss race and social justice, and negotiations over the infrastructure bill appear to be wrapping up.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 22, 2021

They’re Going To Tell You To Mask Again. No. | Ep. 1302

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