The ＂We Had COVID＂ Episode
Episode Stats
Words per minute
188.8966
Harmful content
Misogyny
8
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Toxicity
80
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Hate speech
22
sentences flagged
Summary
It's been a while since we've recorded a regular episode of Trigonometry, and that's because we've been a little off the rails. In this episode, we talk about how we got sick, and how we dealt with it, and why it happened.
Transcript
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I took a test, a lateral flow, and it was positive.
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And then I took my temperature, it was slightly raised, it was a temperature of 100.
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But I thought, you know what, I'm fine, I'll be alright.
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Went to bed, woke up the next day, I was not fucking fine, mate.
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Hello and welcome to a special episode of Trigonometry.
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Yes, indeed. Welcome back. It's been a while since we recorded one of these
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and we are going to get into the reason why that was,
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which is, of course, that we just both had COVID, didn't we, Francis?
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It wasn't great times. But let's start with how we got it, we think.
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Yeah, which was great, but that's nothing to do with COVID.
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No, but seriously, we did our brilliant live show,
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And then we hugged and kissed and fucking took pictures.
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Mate, you specifying that makes that even worse.
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We're not left-wing comedians, so it's different.
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literally maybe five or six other people, and had a bit of a party to celebrate our last live show
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of the year, which is where I think we got COVID. Indeed. So what happened, and I'll do my timeline
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and then you do yours. So I was, I remember in the evening feeling a little bit, starting to feel a
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bit ropey, but all right. Woke up the next day, felt okay, went to a few places, did a few things,
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and by the evening, I was starting to feel really rough, really bad.
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that I just felt a little bit under the weather and a little bit tired.
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It would not be unusual for you to be a bit run down.
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and then I went to see the comedy show came back made me feel worse which is what comedy does to
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me now and then I went back to my girlfriend's house and then I took I took a test a lateral
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flow and it was positive and then I did I took my temperature it was slightly raised it was a
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temperature of 100 and then but I thought you know what I'm fine I'll be all right went to bed
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And then I remember we were messaging on our group, on the WhatsApp.
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And you saying, right, well, we've got to have a contingency plan, obviously.
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And I felt terrible because I was just in no way able to join in any type of meeting.
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so it took us over three weeks to recover and we'll maybe talk once once you've given the
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timeline about what it was like as well yeah so the first second day i was really ill really
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really really sick um and i i just could i couldn't i i just couldn't move i couldn't move
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the only thing i could do was go to loo come back drink water i didn't have anything to eat
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nothing. Wednesday, again, pretty much the same. And then I came back here. And from then on in,
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it was a gradual process of getting better, but it took a long time. And one thing that
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I was quite shocked about is that I didn't have a desire to eat for about two weeks.
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I remember I bought a lovely dishewn for me and Anton. Anton very much enjoyed it. I picked out
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the prawns out my prawn curry and that was it and what were some of your your symptoms i mean
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what we i mean here we go so we had a temperature of 104 my digestive system was completely done in
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i think that's as far as we need to take that i was i had a really bad cough that at one point i
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was coughing up blood and i called up 111 and they assuaged my fears by going just so you know mr
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Foster, one of the very rare symptoms of COVID is blood clots on the lungs. So you coughing up
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blood might be a sign that you've got a blood clot on the lungs. So you're going to have to go
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to A&E. I actually do think that's unlikely because a blood clot would be in a blood vessel.
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Yeah. So I'm not sure that that makes sense. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not a medical expert, but
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I mean, coughing up blood is not a good thing to have. No, it's not even the fact that you do it.
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It's just that you look down at the seat, you go,
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Mate, if it was me, I'd put you in the fucking boot.
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and I was in the back of the van getting knocked about like that.
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By the way, Anton was at the same party, didn't catch COVID.
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And then they were like, okay, I said I'm COVID positive.
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I was wearing a proper mask, you know, that my friend had given me.
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you need to go to this particular part of the hospital.
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I registered and I went, oh, where am I going to wait?
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So like for 40 minutes, I was outside in a bleakly cold December,
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who when I went to see him and he went to examine me,
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I mean, I think the protocol would have been slimed.
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He signed up to treat people who have disease.
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Do you think he's going to get a bunch of fucking catwalk models
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turn up in bikinis perfectly healthy just to entertain him?
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And you came back and you gradually kept recovering, basically.
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But yeah, but gradually and then until we are where we are.
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and I'll talk about this when I'm talking about me,
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and actually Dr. John Wyre, who we had on the show,
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that causes you to lose your sense of smell or taste
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Everybody knows that one of the symptoms about COVID
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is that you lose your sense of smell and taste.
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Is it possible that it's actually going to have an impact
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There are other examples of infections, of virus infections,
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which only showed neurological symptoms 20 years later, 30, 40 years later.
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Is it possible we're going to have an epidemic of some weird neurological conditions,
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even dementia or motor neurone disease or multiple sclerosis,
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which was actually triggered by minor infections, which people didn't even notice?
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which to be fair you're naturally you lean that way it's not a thing that i have i'm more
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sort of irritable and impatient uh which amplified massively for me uh but for you anxiety was a
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thing that i had a panic attack there was one particular day where like i was just i remember
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just going into the just going into my bathroom and just feeling a cold sweat come over me
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just a cold sweat there's a lot about sweating in this episode guys no but but the reason i bring it
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up is i think people might well you know people have panic attacks yeah irrespective of covid or
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whatever but i think my experience and having observed other people around me and you and
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others in terms of how covid affects people mentally yeah is it seems to amplify at least
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for some people their pre-existing issues what i'm trying to get at is you would not have had
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a panic attack if this had been a cold probably so it wasn't like you were scared about covid
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because you'd read something in the newspaper it was more like physically it was making you anxious
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it was by fucking with your brain it was making me anxious by fucking with brain and this is the
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thing that people don't talk enough about it's the isolationary aspect of it that really gets you
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that does you in yeah after about six or seven days and you're starting to feel better but you
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can't see anyone you can't talk to anyone you can't socialize it's really tough really really
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really tough well I and this is another thing so I caught uh I caught it probably at the same time
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as you and I did the lateral flow when you did yours but I had no symptoms at this point and
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mine was negative and I was like okay so I probably would have been around the virus blah blah blah
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so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do all the right things I'm gonna you know drink my tea with
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lemon and honey and go to bed early and get some rest and drink plenty of fluids. And I went to bed
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and I wake up the next day and I felt absolutely fine. So I was like, okay, cool. I've beaten this
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COVID that I may or may not have had. Great. Time to, you know, get, because I'm an active person.
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I like to do things. So I went out and I did lots of stuff. I did some shopping for Christmas. I
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went and got a Christmas tree. I did a bunch of different things. And that was not a good idea
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because I did have the sense that I should just rest.
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And then by the evening, I had a bit of a fever
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and instead of like taking more fluids and going to bed,
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I was just like, oh, you know, I've got stuff to do.
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And I didn't have a fever quite as high as yours, but basically for the next three days,
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I had a fever and the only thing that I could do is be in bed and drink liquids and that was it.
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And after three days, I started feeling better. I still had a bit of a fever, but I was much
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better. I was able to get up and walk around. So idiot that I am, I started doing stuff again.
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I started, you know, getting up, playing games. I wasn't doing that much work, but I was doing a
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little bit. And that was a big mistake because trying to work through having this disease
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really didn't go well for me. And I know anecdotally of many other people who did the
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same. There are MMA fighters who are super fit, but because they tried to fight through it instead
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of getting rest, they had it much worse. And that's what happened to me. So I had it quite
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badly, but not particularly badly for a few days. Then I started to recover and I started doing
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stuff and then after about two or three days of oh I can just carry on with my life I then felt
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really bad again and I started to notice a lot of physical and mental symptoms that I was just
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observing that were quite weird so I am normally someone who likes the space to be quite warm like
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we joke about in the studio I'm always hanging out by the radiator I actually couldn't really
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feel cold that much at all in a way that was not normal for me, but I physically could not stand to
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be in any space where there was a draft. So obviously I was trying to keep the space ventilated
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and whatever, but the moment my wife opened the window somewhere in the flat, I would literally
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feel like I'm about to die. Just a horrible physical feeling. Another thing, obviously my
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wife being pregnant, I said to her from day one, you've got to stay away from me. I know you'll
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you'll be bringing me stuff and you're worried about me, whatever, but you got to stay away from
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me. And because of that, that isolation aspect that you talk about, I remember one time she
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could see that I was really not having a good time. And she just like came and sort of threw
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a semi-closed door, like touched me on the back. And I nearly burst out crying, which is very
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unusual for me because of that lack of physical contact. But I don't think it's just the lack of
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physical contact i think mentally there's something about this disease that makes you feel very alone
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and i don't know what it is it could be that you know we've we've whipped up a frenzy around how
00:14:36.040
you mustn't be around people and whatever uh or it could be just that that's what it does
00:14:40.540
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00:14:46.760
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but mentally as well see i've still got a little bit of a lingering cough
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i noticed that i've done a lot of personal development stuff i've really learned to
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understand my own mind inside out and one of the things that people always teach you about how to
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manage your own mental well-being is that you've got to learn to understand that your mind is not
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you so when you experience an emotion you you've got to realize that there's someone else that's
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observing that experience happening and so when I see myself reacting in ways that are unnatural
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I don't go this is me I am scared I go oh that's interesting I'm I'm there's the feeling of fear
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or the feeling of whatever and I started to notice that um my emotions were very different
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to my normal self so in addition to amplifying my irritability and the fact that I can get angry
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about stuff that's not worth getting angry about and stuff like that I also noticed that I felt
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very emotional you know I was drawn to watching movies that were very sad yeah like all of that
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stuff which is very unusual for me I normally really don't care about it so mentally it was
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having an effect as well i find that very interesting that you said that that it exacerbates
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the parts of your you the part of the parts of your mental condition which are not as strong
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i know people who have depression covid exacerbated their depression with me it's anxiety
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it absolutely exacerbated it and and and like we said before the fact that you are on your own
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all the time i've got no problem with being on my own you know a day on my own great you get to do
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stuff you get to whatever you get to sort your life out but 10 days on your own after about the
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fifth or sixth day it starts to become wearing well if you think about it i mean putting people
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in isolation is a form of torture yeah well well known and well practiced but but like i say i don't
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think it's just that yeah if you were healthy you could manage five or six days on your own yeah
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and it'd be fine yeah and also you'd be able to go out and do stuff and also the other mental
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thing that i noticed is once uh i'd got to a point where i i want so i tested negative initially
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then the next day when i'd had symptoms i tested positive and then i did a pcr test that i ordered
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that didn't arrive for about three or four days god bless the government and then i didn't really
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want to go out for a few days because i wasn't feeling well but eventually probably about eight
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I remember just walking along the river near our flat
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and just being awestruck because all I had known is the confines of the flat and bless Anton who
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looked after me and you know and got me food and all the rest of it but I remember him saying to
00:19:17.600
me you can be in the flat it's okay we you can just sit at one end just open the window yeah and
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then you can sit and the ability just to be able to sit and if even if he was working on an episode
00:19:30.920
of doing something but knowing there was another human being in the room I mean it made it so much
00:19:38.080
more bearable yeah now the other thing about it I find very odd for me it's extremely unusual is
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we had uh some of our staff getting in touch asking questions what do we do about this what
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do we do about that and I literally for me this is unheard of because I think it's fair to say
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that I'm sort of like the big picture part yeah yeah of course and I manage all of that yeah and
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i love doing it i love working with our team i love going we need to do this we need to do that
00:20:04.280
let's let's work it out and people were contacting me and i literally had to just say
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guys i'm ill i can't do like you're just gonna have to wait or or resolve this yourself that
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to me was shocking because that's not how i am yeah i'm never like that yeah but but that's how
00:20:19.880
it was now i should say what before we go on as well like i know what we're describing sounds bad
00:20:33.540
I'll say it again, I have had flu worse than this.
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But my point is, one of the realizations for me
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which I still suspect is the variant that we had,
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you didn't have to go to hospital and stay in hospital.
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you're going to have an easy time of it now i never thought it was you know going to kill us
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or anything like that but it was unpleasant for sure it was very very very unpleasant and
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i i think the people who have just said you know we hear this word mild and we inevitably think oh
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headache and a runny nose yeah but medically mild essentially it's like you said you don't end up in
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hospital but that doesn't mean that it's not desperately unpleasant and also as well we
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trivialize flu we go it's a bit of flu flu I've had mates who've been hospitalized for flu who
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actually very fit healthy people and then caught COVID the next year and didn't have a problem
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yeah and you know we're fine well you know they're still rough but they were fine with it yeah so I
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think that we trivialize both flu and COVID Brett once I made this very point if you remember yeah
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we trivialize both of these illnesses and go oh it's flu it's what they're both you know quite
00:21:50.020
serious if you don't treat them well or you're you're vulnerable in some way to them yes i agree
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however the reason i think we do that is we accept that it's part of life yeah we accept that you are
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throughout the course of your life going to get flu probably 10 15 20 30 times yeah it's just
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going to happen yeah um and we'll talk more about the the conclusions that we draw from it but one
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of them for me particularly seeing how infectious omicron has been because when we had it like
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everyone had it like everyone i knew had it like probably 30 or 40 people that i personally know
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including former guests and people friends and whatever all had it yeah so one of the conclusions
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for me is look the reality is everyone's gonna this there is a pandemic of a highly contagious
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disease airborne disease airborne disease everyone's going to get it yeah so you the the one of the
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conclusions i think we all reached here is we got to make sure that our physical and mental health
00:22:54.220
is absolutely at its peak and we've got to protect ourselves in that way because i don't think
00:23:01.220
no amount of you know being careful wearing a mask that most of which don't even work it's so
00:23:10.100
social whatever like you're going to live your life yeah and you're probably going to catch it
00:23:14.120
exactly and this idea of zero covid for me it's it's ridiculous because you're trying to deny a
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biological fact you can't stop the spread of an airborne virus you you might remember at the start
00:23:27.960
of this whole thing the whole purpose of lockdown wasn't to stop it it was to slow the spread
00:23:33.380
because everybody knows you can't stop it well right the idea was you want to spread out yeah
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the disease over time but the same number of people are still going to catch it and that to
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me is probably what is happening and will happen yeah and this idea that you know we're going to
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have you know not that we adopt this policy adopted this policy in this country but the idea
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like we've seen it in new zealand or australia zero covid i'm sorry it's for the birds it's it's
00:23:59.400
just not going to happen it's it's it's an impossibility yeah especially in this globalized
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world of us what you think you're going to stop an airborne virus from coming in yeah and look at
00:24:09.700
the i mean we'll talk about the restrictions but look at what's happening in europe right now they've
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got vaccine passports restrictions stay at home vaccinated fucking going and what you know i
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nearly said going in the camps but pretty much yeah right they've got more cases and more disease
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and more deaths than we do in this country you know so just look at wales they're locking
00:24:29.980
everything down and they had vax passports yeah yeah so in many ways i'm sure people will want to
00:24:35.360
know our opinion my opinion about all of the authoritarianism that covid has engendered hasn't
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changed one bit if anything like i say i think everyone's going to get it so the the the priority
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for me is to protect yourself by being in peak physical condition peak mental condition for a
00:24:53.080
lot of people that will also mean being vaccinated because there are people who are so vulnerable
00:24:56.980
to this disease, that that was a thing for them.
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but this has shown me you can catch COVID twice,
00:25:21.060
that I was very cavalier about the idea of natural immunity.
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if you're going to rely on that which from now on that's obviously a factor right you have to
00:25:30.240
measure your antibody levels regularly which i think joe rogan does for example right he's not
00:25:34.080
just like well i had covid that's it he's measuring his antibodies and his team's antibodies and that's
00:25:39.860
what you've got to do you can't just be like well i had covid three years ago i'm going to be fine
00:25:43.980
because these variants also evade the immunity right the other thing i learned as well is
00:25:51.180
in order to get a very good uh natural immunity you have to have had it badly and you sort of
00:25:59.160
did have it quite badly the first time but I had it very mildly the first time so you probably had
00:26:04.320
better natural immunity and it still didn't help it still didn't help because after I think natural
00:26:09.220
immunity on average lasts around six months yeah so by the time you know the new variants coming
00:26:14.520
until there's a new variant yeah or until there's a new variant and there's nothing you can do but
00:26:18.560
for me when it comes to vaccinations I have made a decision that I'm going to get vaccinated
00:26:23.700
probably in around three months when my natural immunity starts to fade and like I said I'll be
00:26:29.740
doing the you know the antibody test that's something I need to get on top of but I will
00:26:33.820
be getting vaccinated because for a couple of reasons number one I can't be getting ill like
00:26:38.240
that again I can't it's you know because not only does it have an impact on you it has an impact on
00:26:43.960
everyone around you the fact the fact that I can't I couldn't work you know it's it's it's not
00:26:50.320
fine obviously but if you're employed there's less it's easier there's less of a burden etc etc
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but you know we're running a business I can't be on my ass like I was for 10 days well yeah we were
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off work for three weeks it wasn't 10 days it was three weeks we didn't work for three weeks and
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that was obviously bad however i would say to you and look i i i am going to keep this whole thing
00:27:15.320
under review we we know i mean anton made this point the other day we know a lot of people who
00:27:20.240
were vaccinated even triple vaccinated younger than us probably healthier than us or maybe you
00:27:25.640
know whatever who had it had it and they had it just as bad but statistically speaking the statistics
00:27:32.980
say you're less likely to have a serious illness and i did see a lot of people who were vaccinated
00:27:38.500
around me have a much less serious illness as well.
00:27:42.780
So I think statistically speaking, that's fine.
00:27:53.860
For me, I'm going to monitor my antibody levels
00:27:56.680
and I'm also going to keep an eye on whatever else is going on.
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The reason that I am thinking about getting vaccinated
00:28:06.140
So when it wanes, the only way you can boost it is by getting COVID again.
00:28:10.800
Whereas at least with vaccines, it seems like if you could have the natural immunity in a few months,
00:28:17.080
you get vaccinated, you just take one dose, that boosts it, and then you can boost it again whenever you need.
00:28:23.500
And also they're putting out vaccines now that are using more conventional technology as opposed to the mRNA one.
00:28:31.000
So that would be the thing that I'd be interested in doing.
00:28:35.160
because I am concerned and I think it's objectively true
00:28:49.480
I'm just saying we're not quite being told the truth.
00:28:51.920
You know, the myocarditis thing is not being properly discussed
00:28:57.180
And also, you know, I got a message the other day on Twitter
00:29:00.180
from somebody who said, I hope you're recovering.
00:29:03.900
But please consider I'm a scientist, I got vaccinated, and now I have a seizure, a mini seizure, every three minutes.
00:29:17.160
So to me, which of those two would I rather have?
00:29:20.000
COVID again the way that I had it or have that?
00:29:25.240
Now, statistically speaking, far less likely, but I'd much rather a higher risk of getting COVID badly the way I had it before than a much lower risk of something completely terrible.
00:29:40.060
There are people who've had legs amputated because of things that the vaccine has done to them, that it's been reported in the news.
00:29:56.980
Well, I'm probably going to get the Chinese one because that's the most...
1.00
00:30:00.140
Well, actually, the Chinese one is the one that uses
00:30:12.160
But like I said, the reason that I'm going to do it is purely for myself
00:30:18.260
because it's just not practical to be out of action for that long.
00:30:25.320
What I'm saying to you is you could still be out of action for that long.
00:30:28.520
And also, unfortunately, getting vaccinated involves a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny,
00:30:34.200
but nonetheless risk of actual serious adverse effects.
00:30:42.160
Everybody's got to make their own decision about it.
00:30:55.520
It always, always should be your body, your choice.
00:31:09.340
is I do think that all of us now operate within a bit of a bubble.
00:31:15.220
So, for example, when I was reading previously to Catching COVID Again
00:31:19.980
about natural immunity, there are a lot of studies
00:31:29.640
But there's also some studies that don't show that.
00:31:32.300
And they're not all quite as good as the ones that blah, blah, blah.
00:31:36.180
But basically, the comprehensive analysis is that the vaccine is, my understanding, Chris Takis wrote about this recently, the vaccine is much better at preventing serious illness, but they both are similarly effective at preventing you from catching COVID.
00:31:53.460
So if you have natural immunity, you're between 80% to 95% protected.
00:32:02.260
But apparently, according to this, you're less likely to have a serious illness.
00:32:08.140
Now, I wasn't quite aware of that because I was like,
00:32:12.320
well, there's studies that show natural immunity is better, so I'm fine.
00:32:17.200
Right. There are people who claimed, and us getting ill coincided with Peter McCullough going on Joe Rogan's show.
00:32:24.660
You can't get it twice. We've never had a single case.
00:32:28.440
What you have is you have a friend who thinks he had it twice.
00:32:32.000
What happened is on one or more occasions, it's a false positive test or he actually had the dead virus that he's carrying forward.
00:32:41.580
Somebody in my family circles had COVID-19, for sure had it, got sick.
00:32:46.400
That person tested positive intermittently 17 times.
00:32:52.860
He got sick, he recovered, and then about seven, eight months later, he got sick again,
00:32:59.060
tested positive again, and had a much milder case of it, but still got COVID twice.
00:33:07.520
There's about 100 purported cases like this in the literature.
00:33:11.800
And so when I said, well, we've caught COVID for a second time,
00:33:18.680
And I was like, well, I have COVID for a second time, right?
00:33:28.720
who had just come back from China in February 2020.
00:33:31.140
And then when he went to America and got tested
00:33:38.660
but because we all live in this bubble where we we want to believe certain things more than others
00:33:44.860
i think most of us now we don't really follow the evidence enough and we follow our own biases
00:33:52.240
too much and i and i did start to see that in how people were responding even people who know and
00:33:57.540
trust me and i was like guys i do have it for a second time you like if you've trusted me for the
00:34:03.040
last three years you can kind of know i'm not making it up but a lot of people were you know
00:34:07.860
they don't want it to be true and i get it because here's the truth francis we're all very
0.98
00:34:14.440
fucking tired of this shit yeah we're all are we want it to end everyone whether you're vaccinated
0.99
00:34:20.300
or not vaccinated or whatever we all want the shit to end and that's why people attach
1.00
00:34:26.140
their emotion of i just wanted to stop to various things so people who are pro-vaccine
0.93
00:34:33.720
attach their desire for things to stop to the fact that not enough people are vaccinated,
00:34:39.340
even though in this country it's like 92% of adults over 18 are vaccinated.
00:34:44.480
But they believe that, some people believe, that the reason COVID goes on is there are too many
1.00
00:34:50.640
unvaccinated people, which is bullshit, complete bullshit. And there are also people who are
0.99
00:34:54.900
leaning towards vaccine hesitancy or being anti-vax. They don't want to believe anything
00:34:59.160
about COVID. They don't even want to believe it exists because they just want this shit to end.
1.00
00:35:05.740
Yeah, and it's such a good point because we're all tired of this.
00:35:11.160
And I use the word tired in its most accurate sense.
00:35:17.020
We're just tired. It's been two fucking years of constantly thinking about this,
0.99
00:35:23.160
of it dominating the news, of it disrupting our lives,
0.98
00:35:27.360
of us not being able to plan, of us feeling that the world is changing.
00:35:31.440
and we're looking at a world that is unrecognisable
00:35:35.700
to the one that we used to know two short years ago.
00:35:40.180
And so you look for anything to confirm your bias.
00:35:44.380
But the reality is, I remember I was talking to a friend about this
00:35:49.160
at the very start of the pandemic and he made this point
00:35:52.240
He went, just as we live in a post-AIDS world,
0.98
00:35:57.620
And unfortunately, we're going to have to accept that.
00:36:01.440
there's always going to be you know people getting sick there's it's something that the
00:36:07.660
nhs is going to have to cope with i don't know how it's going to cope with it but it's going to
00:36:11.280
have to we're now living in a post-covid world and the sooner we come to accept i don't know about
00:36:16.900
that i don't know that we live in a post-covid world i think we're still in the pandemic yeah
00:36:22.480
in the crutches yeah yeah okay but eventually we're going to have to accept that this is part
00:36:27.760
of our world. And we need to. The reason I say we're not in a post-COVID world, Francis, is I've
00:36:32.740
been talking to a lot of scientists because I've had the time. This is the other thing I realized
00:36:36.560
is no one has time to research things properly. I certainly didn't. So we go with headlines or
00:36:41.480
newspaper articles when you actually, you have to do research. You have to look at studies. You
00:36:45.140
have to talk to people who understand what's going on. So I've been talking to scientists
00:36:49.080
and one of the things that people have said to me, there's a Russian-Canadian scientist called
00:36:54.740
Yuri Dagan, who was one of the originators of the lab leak hypothesis,
00:36:59.020
the idea that the OG COVID, the original COVID,
00:37:09.280
But he says, I'm not saying it's true, I'm not saying I know,
00:37:18.360
that Omicron transitioned through mice somehow.
00:37:23.480
And what that likely means is that Omicron was made in a lab.
00:37:32.880
People, please stop fucking making viruses in labs.
0.99
00:37:38.160
He's very much on board, but he's not the one in charge, Francis.
00:37:41.520
But basically what people are saying is there are dozens of these labs
1.00
00:37:45.820
where these fucking idiots are doing gain-of-function research.
1.00
00:37:49.380
Gain-of-function research being you take a virus,
1.00
00:37:51.340
you play around with it until a virus that only affects bats
00:38:06.380
But I think another scenario is that there are other variants
00:38:11.000
or other variants that develop naturally through mutation.
00:38:20.880
that viruses become more contagious and less lethal.
00:38:27.440
There's no guarantee that that's going to happen.
00:38:30.580
It could be contagious and lethal for a bit
0.99
00:38:33.440
before he kills off everyone he's going to kill off
1.00
00:39:05.800
this idea that it's not going to become, you know, endemic,
0.99
00:39:15.720
We need better technology in order to deal with it.
00:39:20.760
I have no problem with having some kind of breathalyzer type test
00:39:26.300
that you do if you want to go into a restaurant or a bar or, you know, breathe into it.
00:39:31.820
If that stops someone from getting hospitalized, I've got no problem at all.
00:39:38.220
What they need to do is develop some kind of test where you just spit in the test tube
00:39:41.540
and it literally lights up red or green or something.
00:39:44.400
And if that was accurate and if that was readily available
00:39:46.960
and it was cheap and you could mass produce it,
00:39:58.680
oh, GB News are now testing people before putting them on the set.
00:40:06.960
Why wouldn't you make sure that you're not going to infect other people?
00:40:18.480
But pretty much everyone except Anton got infected.
00:40:33.000
And it's just going to become a factor in our lives.
00:40:40.700
prevent you from getting ill if you take it in the first couple of days. The reason that they
00:40:44.460
only give it to super vulnerable people in the UK is it's expensive. It's like $2,000 for one...
00:40:52.180
Yeah, Rogan took it and he didn't get ill. Dana White the same. I would have taken it if we had
00:40:55.700
access to it in the UK. We just don't have access to it. If we'd taken that, we wouldn't have got
00:41:00.160
ill, almost certainly. They've also just approved a couple of antiviral drugs that can be taken as
00:41:06.120
a cocktail to again prevent serious illness but again they're only giving it to the vulnerable
00:41:10.700
again because it's expensive now this is i think one of the reasons that they're pushing the
00:41:15.540
vaccine so hard is they claim it's cheaper i don't know whether it's true by the way there's a lot of
00:41:21.360
a lot of questions about that but apparently it's cheaper so that would make sense if you can
00:41:26.980
prevent people from getting ill with a cheaper thing it's better than from a financial perspective
00:41:33.440
anyway uh so new drugs are coming out new treatments are going to come out and this is
00:41:39.080
really maybe how the answer is going to be sure everyone's going to get it but almost no one's
00:41:44.900
going to die from it because we have ways of treating it i hope that's the path that it ends
00:41:49.420
up being because look the reality is people talk about the unvaccinated or whatever the overwhelming
00:41:56.680
majority of people who are currently unvaccinated are going to stay unvaccinated that's the reality
00:42:02.440
You're not going to change those people's minds.
00:42:04.820
And you're certainly not going to change those people's minds.
00:42:07.540
Did you see that press release from the United States government
00:42:11.760
about saying that, you know, the people who are vaccinated,
00:42:17.980
The unvaccinated, you will have a rough time.
0.51
00:42:23.020
They said this new year will be a year of sickness and death.
00:42:26.120
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, something horrible.
00:42:34.720
Tony Blair calling people stupid and selfish
1.00
00:42:41.380
like we disagreed with you invading Iraq, right?
00:42:44.780
But it doesn't mean that they're stupid, right?
0.99
00:42:47.660
And Austria is fining unvaccinated people.
0.99
00:42:56.660
And the point that, you know, Carissa Vélez made,
00:43:02.720
is you don't know how technology will be used later down the line.
00:43:08.460
The Dutch had a very good system of statistics.
00:43:11.300
They had a guy called Lenz who was one of the pioneers of statistics,
00:43:14.260
and he wanted to build a system that followed people from cradle to grave.
00:43:18.240
And in his census, there were a lot of questions
00:43:20.620
and there was data collection about your religious affiliation,
00:43:23.980
but also your ancestry and things like where your grandparents lived.
00:43:27.300
Now, in contrast, in France, they had made a decision since 1872
00:43:32.120
not to collect that kind of data for privacy reasons.
00:43:35.800
And so when the Nazis arrived to France and asked, you know, where are the Jews?
00:43:39.240
They said, you know, we have no idea how many Jews we have,
00:43:42.020
let alone where they live, so good luck with that.
00:43:44.720
And the Nazis had to depend on either Jewish people turning themselves in
0.71
00:43:49.140
or having neighbors turn them in, which was very inefficient.
00:43:53.180
And the result is that in the Netherlands, the Nazis found and killed 73% of the Jewish population.
00:44:01.180
And the difference is hundreds of thousands of people.
00:44:04.180
So creating vaccine passport databases and all of that stuff, you have no idea how that's going to be used.
00:44:12.180
But I don't mind spitting in a test tube that just gets thrown in the bin without being attached to my name before I enter a large venue.
00:44:25.240
I wish, you know, if we had something very simple,
00:44:28.500
very cheap, very easy to use at our live show, great.
00:44:33.240
If we could do that with our guests and with ourselves
00:44:40.280
I don't want to give COVID to someone in their 80s.
00:44:48.600
oh do you do you agree with you know people taking my temperature before i go into a venue and i was
00:44:54.960
like yes yeah we do agree i i don't know how effective checking your temperature is you could
00:45:00.740
still have covid you can still have covid but you might have but that's why i'm saying you need good
00:45:05.420
tests not testing people's temperature but also as well if you've got a fever you shouldn't be
00:45:10.680
around people anyway i agree well i mean but but you've got to remember francis it's like
00:45:44.020
well that's absolutely fine you know i just i don't i think the way that the germany new zealand
00:45:52.820
australia austria italy italy france france it's basically everyone yeah everybody exactly
00:46:01.240
not only yeah not only you know the authoritarian it's dangerous it's what we're doing is we're
00:46:10.300
playing with things that we should not be playing with and especially yeah when you play with things
00:46:17.660
you shouldn't yeah exactly come on man yeah yeah that's the covid particularly with when it concerns
00:46:22.860
western liberal democracies but also it doesn't work yeah it doesn't work it's discriminatory for
0.91
00:46:28.460
no good reason vaccine passports are moronic because they don't prove that you don't have
0.57
00:46:32.260
covid yeah vaccinated people can pass it on they can catch it testing checking whether someone is
0.62
00:46:37.460
vaccinated isn't ensuring that people are safe so if while there's a super contagious variant like
00:46:44.680
omicron we we have a test where you go green in yeah great great to me that makes sense i've got
0.95
00:46:53.980
absolutely no problem with that all this other authoritarian shit can get in the bin but it's
0.88
00:46:58.720
also as well is they're bringing authoritarianism through the back door like my friend went to new
0.99
00:47:02.640
York went to a conference took her temperature she was fine and then they scanned her face
00:47:11.020
yeah and she was like well hang on a second they were all don't worry about it madam you can go
00:47:15.240
through she went no why are you scanning my face you've just taken my data yeah what's going to
00:47:20.540
happen to that data absolutely it's going to get then sold on so just saying for those people who
00:47:25.040
are worried about it's like Carissa Belize said yeah they could scan your face 20 years time
00:47:28.900
you want to have life insurance and they'll go well unfortunately you've got a genetic
00:47:33.980
predisposition I don't know to MS therefore we can't we can't give you the life insurance
00:47:38.300
how do you know that absolutely absolutely so all of those doors that are being opened and
00:47:45.320
I'm glad to see people that we respect tremendously like Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray
00:47:50.640
who I believe I don't know about Douglas I suspect he's vaccinated I don't know I don't I haven't
00:47:55.660
asked him and i don't think he's talked about it publicly but let's assume that he is jordan is
00:48:00.280
i think double vaccinated and i think there was even a point where jordan said to people just
0.95
00:48:06.180
get the damn jab or something yeah and let's get back to normal but we can all see now that the
0.70
00:48:12.180
promises that we were made about people taking the vaccine means freedom well these things don't seem
0.99
00:48:19.460
to be that correlated if you look on the continent where people are getting vaccinated just like in
00:48:24.500
the uk not quite at the same levels they're they're having all of these the all of this
00:48:30.640
authoritarianism and i think we're really in a dangerous place uh and just and i think there
00:48:37.540
will be people who who who are thinking oh you had covered badly ha ha ha well it doesn't change
00:48:43.140
my opinion of any of this other stuff it doesn't at all yeah you know uh and you've got to remember
00:48:49.080
as well like sure you can force people to do things you don't want to do and then you might
00:48:54.340
you and I might not have got ill or whatever not got ill as badly but what about all the people
00:48:58.580
who are suffering as a result of all these measures medically physically mentally financially
00:49:05.740
in every way what me not getting ill for a couple of weeks is that worth it I don't personally feel
00:49:12.160
entitled to ruin other people's lives so that I don't have a bad flu for a couple of weeks
00:49:16.040
i don't and it's also as well you look at some of these you know some of the measures that are
00:49:21.040
brought in by these european countries they're anti-scientific italy demanding you wear masks
00:49:26.980
outside when the science says that your risk of contracting covid outside a minimal 0.0 so
00:49:35.620
masks aren't going to do anything yet they insist most masks don't work yeah exactly no matter how
00:49:41.440
badly i had covid i still am able to understand the data yeah most of the cloth masks that people
00:49:46.020
wear don't work. They said this. There's this crazy woman on CNN called Leanna Wen, who's always
1.00
00:49:51.840
like more vaccine, more lockdown, more everything. She came out and said it while we were ill on CNN
0.84
00:49:58.760
that masks, cloth masks don't stop COVID. Cloth masks are not appropriate for this pandemic.
00:50:06.540
It's not appropriate for Omicron. It was not appropriate for Delta, Alpha or any of the
00:50:10.760
previous variants either because we're dealing with something that's airborne. Cloth masks don't
00:50:16.300
stop COVID, right? And I've been saying this for a long time. They don't. Now, there are some masks
00:50:21.320
that do help, N95 masks. They do work to reduce you transmitting it to other people, but also
00:50:28.220
slightly to reduce the risk of you catching it. So people need to understand the nuances of things.
00:50:43.720
And I think a lot of people on all sides of the argument
00:50:56.380
I've always said vulnerable people should take the vaccine.
00:50:59.300
But also said that when I explained to him that I'm not,
00:51:04.700
it was like well all the people in hospital are unvaccinated well that's completely not true
00:51:10.960
right now statistically speaking the data is suggesting that you're much less likely to be
00:51:16.660
hospitalized if you're vaccinated and that's true if that's true great people should make their own
1.00
00:51:22.880
decision about that but my point is people on both sides of the argument they're not doing enough
00:51:28.380
research and i include myself on this until recently to understand what they're actually
00:51:32.560
talking about because we all just want it to be over and so we all look for a scapegoat you know
00:51:38.720
the scapegoat is China or the scapegoat is the scientist or the scapegoat is the unvaccinated
0.91
00:51:44.580
or the scapegoat is you know the great reset or whatever you know everyone wants to have
00:51:49.640
like an explanation of there's a small group of evil people who we can blame on this well
00:51:53.780
pandemics happen they've always happened throughout history usually we blame the Jews
0.74
00:51:59.260
now we've leveled up and we're blaming people who are unvaccinated people just need to take a step
00:52:05.180
back and realize all of this happens man most people are going to catch it you're not going
00:52:10.380
to get away from it protect yourself as best you can by improving your physical and mental health
00:52:15.020
if you want to get vaccinated get vaccinated that's it part of the problem as well is before
00:52:21.720
the pandemic there was this air of you know we've kind of conquered nature yeah we've conquered
00:52:30.060
nature you know we're above nature yeah and as a result of that there's this we don't have to worry
00:52:35.940
we use nature for our ends well the pandemic came along and reminded everybody you ain't in control
0.98
00:52:42.740
of shit mate yeah well I remember your dad came around here didn't he a few weeks before we got
0.98
00:52:48.120
COVID and we were talking about this and I said to him oh you know no disrespect but you're older
0.99
00:52:53.000
than us obviously and you would have lived through the Hong Kong flu that was in the UK and he was
00:52:58.720
like oh yeah I don't even remember it but it was it was it was a there was a pandemic of a airborne
00:53:06.360
virus but because we didn't feel that we could do as much people just got on with life and I remember
00:53:12.980
him saying that he took a week off school to look after my grandfather who had it yeah and that's
00:53:17.280
just what you did you just coped and you got on with it right you manned up
00:53:21.620
you man up you have a lucasade and you walk it off and three weeks later you're just fine yeah
00:53:29.400
once you've had medical intervention in your case yeah absolutely but yeah and it
00:53:36.400
what we need to do is we need and it's very difficult to say this we need to take the emotion
00:55:04.300
Then they said, the vaccine is this, then it's that.
00:55:09.180
They said, oh, we just need to give it to the vulnerable.
00:55:11.300
we gave it to the vulnerable. They were like, no, no, everyone needs to take it, right?
00:55:16.320
Then they said, I mean, there was a clip of Rachel Maddow, huge in America, saying,
00:55:20.760
if you get the vaccine, you can't pass it on. Well, you can.
00:55:25.800
Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person.
00:55:36.060
the virus does not infect them the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else
00:55:42.920
it cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people right and when you get all of the
00:55:51.160
stuff coming out it's fine because science it works that way in that it never knows the exact
00:55:57.560
answer and you're always feeling in the dark for what the actual answer is but you've got to retain
00:56:02.500
that humility you've got to say look we don't know exactly currently our best estimate is that
00:56:08.880
if you get the vaccine you're going to be protected it may be that not everybody is right and it's the
00:56:14.180
same and peter mccullough who i have some issues with because right as you and i had covered for
00:56:18.740
the second time he was saying you can't catch it and doing it without any humility on joe rogan
00:56:23.280
he was quite arrogant about it at the same time two weeks later when it was clear that you can
00:56:28.060
catch Omicron even if you've got natural immunity, to be fair to him, he came out on Twitter and said
00:56:32.940
so. So that's how it should be. People need to, on both sides, need to take that certainty out of it.
00:56:40.340
You don't know. Even if you're a scientist, you don't know. You just don't know exactly. So you
00:56:46.760
can give people a best estimate, but you can't claim that you know. And then when people don't
00:56:54.020
believe you because you keep getting things wrong, be upset. And it's also as well, there's a lot of
00:57:00.480
scientists, particularly in the UK, who need to take responsibility for the modelling and modelling
00:57:05.480
these huge numbers of people dying. They did it with Omicron, they did it at the start, terrifying
00:57:11.060
people. And then it doesn't come to fruition, but we go back to these people again and again.
00:57:23.980
well one of the things that happened while we were ill
0.62
00:57:33.000
essentially became clear, there's a very good Spectator
00:57:44.800
and then they tell them the worst possible scenario
00:57:47.360
without saying this is actually statistically incredibly unlikely.
00:57:51.560
Here's the most likely scenario, which is much milder.
00:58:07.500
because we're operating not on the most likely scenario,
00:58:16.300
there's something wrong there because it's not just the impact on the government it's it's the
00:58:20.940
impact on ordinary people's lives where there there are people who are more neurotic they're
00:58:26.660
more anxious they're more risk averse and you're terrifying them yeah and you're terrifying these
00:58:32.360
people and it's just not the effect it's having on their lives it's the effect it's having on
00:58:36.780
their relationships it's the effect it's having on businesses people not going to coffee shops
00:58:41.660
restaurants not going here not going there this is having a huge effect and we're not talking
00:58:48.500
about it yeah the fact is i can't remember now what the stat is tens of thousands of kids are
00:58:55.380
no longer on the school roll yeah we don't know what's happened to them we just we don't know
00:58:59.260
yeah what effect is that going to have 10 20 years down the line well what effect is that going to
00:59:03.980
have now what's happened to them they could have been killed by by uh someone in their home or
00:59:09.480
whatever we just don't know we don't know right these kids have literally disappeared off the
00:59:13.180
roll so to me that's pretty bad here's here's an unpleasant stat if you go into secondary school
00:59:19.080
being behind your peers yeah the statistic is that you're never gonna you're never gonna catch
00:59:24.240
up yeah that's a stat it's a famous stat in education you're just never gonna catch very
00:59:28.460
unlikely to yeah yeah highly unlikely to but we have now a generation of children yeah yeah but
0.90
00:59:35.400
they're all stupid now so that's fine yeah it's fine mate well listen mate speaking of covid and
0.98
00:59:40.620
you know our recovery i'm you know i'm really enjoying being back to work as you can see i've
0.99
00:59:45.080
got a bit of a lingering cough i'm not infectious for people who are worried about me coughing and
00:59:49.060
whatever but um you know we've done an hour and i do feel like my energy levels are not certainly
00:59:55.300
not what they used to be in terms of doing this so i think we'll wrap it up here we'll do a few
00:59:59.260
questions for locals and if people have got a bunch of questions we'll maybe do a follow-up
01:00:03.380
conversation depending on whether people find this interesting or not but in the meantime thank you
01:00:07.800
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01:00:11.720
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01:00:18.280
brain is not working so yeah so it's normal episodes which are always on a wednesday and
01:00:22.440
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01:00:31.620
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01:00:37.400
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