Verdict with Ted Cruz - False Positive ft. Steve Deace

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.240 It has been 170 days since 15 days to slow the spread.

00:00:09.300 So it seems like good a time as any to take stock where we are now,

00:00:13.220 how the coronavirus pandemic stands,

00:00:15.360 and most importantly, when we will be able to reopen our country.

00:00:20.140 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:27.740 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:29.600 I'm Michael Knowles, joined as ever by the senator and a very special guest,

00:00:35.080 Steve Dace of the Steve Dace Show over at The Blaze.

00:00:39.240 I'm sure you've seen him everywhere.

00:00:41.480 And he's a longtime friend, not just of the show, but of Senator Cruz as well.

00:00:46.120 Steve, welcome.

00:00:46.920 It's good to have you.

00:00:48.040 You know, Steve and I have spent thousands of hours together on the road traveling.

00:00:54.100 I got to tell you, Steve is brilliant.

00:00:56.520 He is a passionate conservative.

00:01:00.400 But I got to tell you also, there may be no one in the country who has lit my phone up with more texts

00:01:06.420 during this whole pandemic than Steve at every stage because he has been diving in,

00:01:14.800 from the beginning of this pandemic, to the numbers, to what the numbers mean,

00:01:19.200 to what the testing tells us, to what the antibody numbers tell us,

00:01:24.280 to what the impacts of the shutdown tell us.

00:01:27.300 And so Steve and I have talked about many, many issues at great length.

00:01:31.500 But I think that this pod in particular, it's valuable to get in to what's going on with the pandemic

00:01:39.880 and the country right now.

00:01:41.860 So I know that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

00:01:46.120 And everybody seems to have their own statistics on this pandemic.

00:01:49.720 And even I, I try to keep my head into it.

00:01:51.920 I can't really make heads or tails of it.

00:01:53.820 I don't know what to believe.

00:01:54.900 So Steve, where do we stand on the coronavirus?

00:01:57.860 I think if I could choose one point for us to center the conversation on,

00:02:02.900 it would really come down to what we've learned about our testing metric, guys,

00:02:07.760 because it goes to the heart of why we, you know, none of us are epidemiologists.

00:02:12.200 We're all fairly intelligent guys, but it's not our field of expertise.

00:02:15.900 And so I like to keep the conversation where it impacts public policy as much as possible,

00:02:21.580 because that is each of our areas of expertise.

00:02:23.760 And if you look at the number one concern for why we did these shutdowns across the country,

00:02:28.640 it's because we were concerned about masses of asymptomatic spread,

00:02:32.480 that all kinds of people who were otherwise healthy would get the virus,

00:02:36.700 go home, infect grandma, grandpa, or have these mass spreader events,

00:02:41.600 and then go home, and then we get to an R2, R3 situation.

00:02:45.180 All right, now let me stop you right there and just ask for folks listening,

00:02:49.720 what is an R2, R3?

00:02:51.480 What does that mean?

00:02:52.420 It means the rate of who's infected or how many people you infect based on who's infected, right?

00:02:58.660 So does two people get infected for every person that's infected, three people, et cetera?

00:03:03.300 The goal in a pandemic is to get to R1 and then hopefully to R0, okay?

00:03:07.820 And so if you go way back to March 26th,

00:03:10.820 there's a guy that we used to think was brilliant named Didier Realt.

00:03:14.760 He was considered the leading infectious disease expert in the world until March 12th.

00:03:20.140 And that's when he had the unfortunate circumstance of having President Trump cite positively and

00:03:25.820 affirmatively his research on hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.

00:03:30.960 So all over the world, yes, it was for him at the time.

00:03:34.820 All over the world, we were beginning to use hydroxychloroquine until it was Orange Man bad, 1.00

00:03:39.540 and now suddenly we could not, right?

00:03:41.120 Well, on March 26th, he issued a piece on PCR testing for COVID-19.

00:03:48.160 And if you go back to the first SARS, the World Health Organization was very concerned about the

00:03:52.380 amount of false positives with PCR testing because of how sensitive they were.

00:03:56.880 And they wanted two positives before they would report.

00:03:59.780 And so a PCR test is the test that's used most frequently.

00:04:06.740 It's the one where they stick the thing way up your nose, and it feels like it's in the back of

00:04:10.680 your brain, and it takes often a couple of days or even a week or two in some circumstances to get

00:04:18.280 the result back.

00:04:19.360 Correct.

00:04:20.020 It's a great testing module.

00:04:22.040 They're very sensitive.

00:04:23.300 They're very accurate.

00:04:24.560 But like any other algorithm, it comes down to what do you program it for the setting that you want.

00:04:29.020 And so back on March 26th, Rayal put out a paper in France saying, hey, what we're finding is when

00:04:36.800 we get beyond 30 CTs, all right, which is cycle thresholds, all right, meaning how many times they

00:04:43.480 have to zero in on a sample before they detect a virus, like when you're zooming in on something

00:04:48.000 on your phone or your computer, okay?

00:04:50.900 When we have to zoom beyond 30 times, these people are not contagious.

00:04:56.980 They're probably not infected.

00:04:57.980 He even in his paper, he refers to them as, quote, viral artifacts.

00:05:01.460 And we all know what an artifact is.

00:05:02.820 It's something that's long since gone.

00:05:04.880 It's a remnant of something that's long since dead, right?

00:05:07.920 And so he recommended that no one set their PCR tests above a cycle threshold or a CT of 33

00:05:13.980 and recommended 30.

00:05:15.960 For whatever reasons, and we don't know the answer to this, and Ted, this is probably where it becomes

00:05:19.460 your job as a senator to help us find out.

00:05:21.400 Our CDC and CDC, like institutions across the world, decided to set their sensitivity levels

00:05:29.160 anywhere from 35 to 40.

00:05:31.680 In our country, it's 37 to 40.

00:05:34.760 And so what the New York Times found when they did this survey across the country is that if

00:05:38.780 your state is at a 37 or at a 40, anywhere from 40 to 90% of our positive tests are false positives

00:05:47.420 because these people are either asymptomatic to the point they're not contagious, they're not

00:05:52.000 contagious at all, or it's a viral artifact.

00:05:54.640 We're picking up a remnant of an exposure that just is no longer any kind of a live culture.

00:06:00.120 Well, I can't begin to express what that means for a public policy.

00:06:03.220 Steve, Steve, let me stop you for a second because I want to underscore something that

00:06:08.580 you mentioned there but that a lot of folks listening and watching may not know.

00:06:14.020 It would be easy for some skeptics perhaps to dismiss the three of us as crazy right-wingers.

00:06:21.500 But you mentioned the New York Times, which I think it's fair to say whether or not we're

00:06:26.980 crazy right-wingers, the New York Times is not a crazy right-wing institution.

00:06:31.200 I don't think that's going too far out on a limb to say that.

00:06:35.160 And the New York Times wrote a stunning article just a few days ago that lays out exactly what

00:06:42.760 you're saying.

00:06:43.500 So if you're skeptical of what you're hearing right now, I'm going to say something I have

00:06:48.920 never said before and probably will never say again.

00:06:51.460 Go look up the New York Times.

00:06:52.880 Go read the article from the New York Times.

00:06:55.720 And by the way, if the New York Times and Steve Dace and Cruz and Knowles are all agreeing,

00:07:04.220 that may actually be in the book of Revelations a sign of the end times.

00:07:10.060 I think so.

00:07:11.600 And by the way, the way it was reported in the New York Times seemed to be this kind of

00:07:16.060 stunning revelation that you could have up to 90 percent of people who are not contagious.

00:07:20.360 And I think that's how a lot of people took it.

00:07:21.640 That's how I took it.

00:07:22.360 But, Steve, it seems to me what you're saying is this was built into the testing from the

00:07:26.620 beginning, that by making the tests so hypersensitive beyond what would be the usual convention,

00:07:32.800 that you were setting yourself up for this kind of scenario.

00:07:35.860 Now, this is where, from a public policy standpoint, we have to get into what was the motivation

00:07:40.480 for this.

00:07:41.500 And if you want to give everyone the maximum benefit of the doubt back in March, it is a

00:07:44.980 novel coronavirus.

00:07:46.540 Now, it's not a novel virus.

00:07:48.020 We have been studying coronaviruses for 70 years.

00:07:51.180 The common cold is one of the coronaviruses, for example.

00:07:54.080 But it was the first time we had seen one of these mutate from animal to animal to animal

00:07:57.940 to human and behave like this.

00:07:59.820 And we also understood that we couldn't trust China's data.

00:08:02.840 So if we all went into this saying, let's be hyper cautious.

00:08:06.120 We're still in the cold flu season anyway.

00:08:08.540 There's not a lot going on in this country in March anyway, except for spring breakers.

00:08:13.360 So let's be hypersensitive about this, fine.

00:08:16.440 But why we have continued to do this now for five, for six months?

00:08:20.980 You know, there was an interesting, there's an interesting situation happening at the University

00:08:23.960 of Alabama as we speak.

00:08:25.420 Last I heard, they have reported 1,200 positive cases since the students returned.

00:08:30.800 But Newsweek went and did a survey of these cases and found almost all of them were asymptomatic

00:08:35.560 and there were zero hospitalizations.

00:08:37.420 LSU and Clemson, the top two teams in college football last year, when they brought the student

00:08:42.320 athletes back to campus in June and started testing, they had 54 combined positives, almost

00:08:48.880 all asymptomatic, zero hospitalizations.

00:08:52.260 So that actually dovetails with the New York Times report, meaning that because we have this

00:08:57.920 case-demic going on right now, in which we're creating so many cases, it's not we're doing

00:09:03.160 too much testing.

00:09:03.940 I love the fact we're doing too much testing because it shows that the virus is actually

00:09:08.560 not as strong or as lethal as we originally feared back in March.

00:09:12.300 But there's a difference between too much testing and too many cases.

00:09:16.420 We had 16 million cases of H1N1, guys, when the Obama administration finally decided to

00:09:22.120 cut off the testing because it wasn't going anywhere.

00:09:25.680 This is what we're doing now.

00:09:27.360 And we've got to realize, what is our ultimate metric to reopen the country?

00:09:31.440 When deaths plummeted around Memorial Day weekend, we were told, yeah, but then the cases were

00:09:35.760 too high.

00:09:36.560 Well, now we've had six straight weeks of cases going down and we're being told, well,

00:09:40.460 now it's about deaths.

00:09:41.880 We need a defined metric of what it is that actually says we're beating this thing.

00:09:47.600 And I'll leave one more point.

00:09:48.580 Go ahead.

00:09:48.820 Well, Steve, you know, I'm here in Los Angeles and in California, the new metric for reopening

00:09:55.060 to be almost fully reopened is that you've got to get down to a 2% rate of positive tests.

00:10:01.660 So if we have this issue of the tests that you're describing and that the New York Times

00:10:05.740 is describing, then you're in a situation where it looks like we're never going to reopen.

00:10:09.800 Well, last week, Los Angeles County was at its lowest rate for hospitalizations since

00:10:14.400 April 2nd.

00:10:16.560 Nationwide, for COVID symptoms, we are at the lowest rate of hospitalization since March

00:10:21.000 21st.

00:10:22.680 Nationwide, we are below 2% of ER visits are for COVID-like symptoms.

00:10:27.020 Now, guys, I ask you, without a, not a therapeutic, a meaningful vaccine, without a meaningful vaccine,

00:10:33.520 and since we, since now, apparently the natural herd immunity that saved human civilization from

00:10:38.580 plagues for 6,000 years is now suddenly voodoo. 1.00

00:10:41.400 So without, without herd immunity and without a meaningful vaccine in a nation of 331 million,

00:10:47.300 how do we do better than less than 2% of ER visits for COVID?

00:10:51.140 When, when are the numbers low enough?

00:10:52.820 I think that's the question that needs to be asked.

00:10:54.580 Let me drill down a little bit in, in the testing information you're talking about and

00:10:59.220 what's in this New York Times article, which is, we're not saying that, that COVID isn't

00:11:06.720 real, that it isn't serious.

00:11:08.260 And, and, and if you're very elderly, if you've got serious other health conditions, COVID can

00:11:15.080 be, can be lethal.

00:11:17.300 Um, but for a great many people who are not elderly, a great many people who don't have other

00:11:24.300 serious health ailments, uh, the fatality rate for COVID is much, much, much lower.

00:11:31.040 And, and the point you're emphasizing here, and, and, and it's actually something as you

00:11:35.240 read the New York Times article that was really stunning is the testing is producing a massive

00:11:41.300 number of false positives over 90%.

00:11:43.680 And these false positives are people, um, you know, it's worth drilling down a little bit

00:11:50.480 at what it means if the test is set at 37 or at 40, that's, and I like the analogy of

00:11:56.680 sort of zooming in, zooming in, zooming in.

00:11:58.420 So that's super zoomed in.

00:12:00.560 So it detects a little bit of virus in you, but not much, not enough virus typically to

00:12:07.500 make you sick. 0.67

00:12:09.300 And, and interestingly, and really importantly, not enough virus, probably, although we're still

00:12:16.400 learning how this operates, but not enough virus very possibly, let me put it that way,

00:12:21.040 not enough virus very possibly to be contagious.

00:12:24.640 And, and, and this insight is important because if you want to stop a pandemic, what you want

00:12:29.740 to focus on is people who are contagious.

00:12:32.360 You want to stop someone, even if they're healthy from giving it to someone else who's

00:12:36.680 very vulnerable.

00:12:38.180 And if the vast majority of these false positives are not having symptoms and not contagious,

00:12:44.020 it means we're focusing our energy, the wrong place rather than directly on the people that

00:12:50.260 actually have a significant amount of virus, a significant viral load in their body where,

00:12:57.380 where they, they could well be, be symptomatic and getting sick and they could well be contagious.

00:13:02.660 Is that, am I characterizing that fairly, Steve?

00:13:06.960 You nailed it.

00:13:08.240 You nailed it, Senator.

00:13:09.400 And then this goes back to the beginning of the lockdowns where we didn't secure America's

00:13:14.280 nursing homes up until about the end of July, something like 45% of all COVID deaths in America

00:13:20.180 had taken place in a long-term care facility.

00:13:23.440 Gentlemen, only 0.6% of Americans live in a long-term healthcare facility.

00:13:28.380 So we didn't lock down the vulnerable because we put in this incredible effort to lock everybody

00:13:34.620 else down.

00:13:35.620 And it was over the sphere of asymptomatic spread.

00:13:38.120 The largest contact tracing study that was done in this world so far was about two weeks

00:13:42.500 ago, over 3,500 cases, 8% of them, they could trace back to some form of asymptomatic spread,

00:13:50.140 8% out of over 3,000 cases.

00:13:53.600 So we made this huge investment.

00:13:56.160 We went, essentially, we went out, we're like, we went hunting with mice with an elephant

00:13:59.940 gun.

00:14:00.280 We made this huge investment in locking everyone down over the canard of asymptomatic spread 0.98

00:14:06.120 and didn't protect the most vulnerable among us.

00:14:08.600 If I'm elderly in Alabama, why are we testing all these students at Alabama?

00:14:13.200 What are we, why are we protecting?

00:14:14.500 Well, and Steve, you know, you know, it's interesting that, that I can tell you firsthand, I've seen

00:14:20.640 how the understanding of doctors and scientists and epidemiologists about this disease have, has

00:14:27.440 changed and been uncertain, which is Michael and I were observing earlier today, that, that

00:14:32.720 it was back in March, actually on the verdict podcast, where we did a podcast from the stage

00:14:38.740 at CPAC, uh, with Ronna McDaniel, the head of the RNC.

00:14:42.360 And we did it live.

00:14:43.820 It was a fun episode at CPAC.

00:14:46.260 And, and you'll recall at CPAC, uh, Michael and I both encountered an individual who subsequently

00:14:52.780 tested positive and was symptomatic.

00:14:54.700 He, he, he got, he got ill.

00:14:56.800 Um, and, and in the wake of that, that, that that's when I decided initially to self quarantine.

00:15:03.480 And this is right at the beginning of, of when COVID was starting to become a meaningful issue

00:15:10.060 in the U S and the physicians all told me, if you're asymptomatic and if the person was not

00:15:18.040 actively sick, when you encountered him, you don't have a concern, you don't need to quarantine,

00:15:23.160 you're fine.

00:15:24.460 And I ended up deciding I'm going to stay home to protect everyone else around.

00:15:30.040 But what's interesting is having seen the months that have gone on, I have seen the experts at

00:15:35.660 CDC say categorically asymptomatic people cannot transmit it, which is what they told me in March

00:15:42.380 categorically to there was a period of time where they were focused on, okay, the whole worry

00:15:47.520 is asymptomatic.

00:15:48.420 And I have to admit that felt a little weird, a weird focus.

00:15:52.880 And then we seem to be moving back into an area of, of a greater common sense that, that

00:15:59.760 we need to focus on who's actually seriously contagious.

00:16:03.700 And, and, you know, as, as you were talking about nursing homes, here's a question for you,

00:16:09.580 Steve, can you think of a more catastrophically damaging public health decision than the public

00:16:17.500 policy of the New York state government and governor Cuomo, who was just lionized at the

00:16:23.320 DNC, then, then his policies of sending people into nursing homes, uh, who, who were, who were

00:16:31.400 sick with COVID and were contagious and, and the incredible death toll that, that, that resulted

00:16:36.180 from that.

00:16:37.020 I cannot.

00:16:38.540 And Ted, I gotta tell you, I'm pretty cynical as you well know, this is the worst gas lighting

00:16:43.600 I've ever seen.

00:16:44.840 I mean, this is what the, the retconning of, of Cuomo's record where this is concerned.

00:16:50.080 I mean, we're sitting here the early September.

00:16:52.600 And right now, if New York was its own country, it would still be the sixth worst country in

00:16:57.900 the world for COVID-19 death, like the seventh worst country in the world for COVID cases

00:17:03.520 per 1 million, still about one out of every five deaths in America from COVID occurred in

00:17:09.180 New York or New Jersey.

00:17:11.700 Um, and, and, and so the, the way that this has been retconned and we've been gaslighted

00:17:15.880 that he's some kind of hero.

00:17:17.240 And you look at a guy like Ron DeSantis in Florida, for example, where he's got a larger

00:17:20.960 population, he's got a larger elderly population and his CFR is lower than the country's, a

00:17:28.160 case fatality rate, which is easy to divide, which is just simply the amount of cases divided

00:17:32.920 by the amount of people who, who sadly died.

00:17:35.740 And it's 1.9% in Florida below the national average.

00:17:39.840 And the one in New York is 7.1%.

00:17:43.060 So he's almost seven times lower than the one in New York with the second largest elderly

00:17:47.660 population per capita in the country.

00:17:50.140 And he gets ripped as some kind of a grim raper and Cuomo gets elevated.

00:17:54.280 So what did New York do wrong?

00:17:56.500 And what did New Jersey do wrong?

00:17:58.500 What New York did wrong is there, and there, there is a debate about whether this came from

00:18:02.420 the feds.

00:18:03.100 There is a bureau that did recommend that nursing homes, because they were concerned coming

00:18:09.000 off the Imperial college and especially the IHME surveys that we were going to overload

00:18:13.380 of the hospitals.

00:18:14.140 There was a memo that, that suggested that states could take a look, some minor bureaucracy

00:18:20.100 you've probably never heard of, did put out a memo suggesting that states take a look at

00:18:24.200 the possibility of reinserting COVID infected patients back into nursing homes if they weren't

00:18:29.940 immediately in danger of perishing because they were concerned about ICU overload.

00:18:36.240 All right.

00:18:36.460 And so six states took the lead on this.

00:18:38.640 Five of them were governed by Democrats.

00:18:40.440 And then there was Massachusetts, which has a Republican governor who's basically a Democrat.

00:18:45.440 All right.

00:18:45.700 New York was the one that took the lead out of these six states.

00:18:49.040 And if you look at the death rate in these six states that made this, made this decision

00:18:52.920 compared to the rest of the country, it's, it's really just not even close.

00:18:57.400 And what they did is they brought a bomb into their nursing homes.

00:19:01.580 And if nursing homes are anything, they are, they are pockets of autoimmune deficiencies.

00:19:06.640 You're talking about the elderly, obviously.

00:19:09.040 And so they brought them in and re-exposed them to COVID with these reinsertions of these 0.86

00:19:13.500 COVID patients.

00:19:14.840 And there are some estimates, Phil Kirpin's a phenomenal researcher out there.

00:19:18.520 He estimates that it could be 20,000 people in New York died in New York nursing homes.

00:19:23.280 The AP has been pointed out on numerous occasions that the numbers that Cuomo and his state are

00:19:28.380 putting out are false and inaccurate.

00:19:30.660 And the other day, Cuomo said, well, you know, it's probably going to take until around November

00:19:33.960 5th or so for us to get an accurate count.

00:19:36.620 Gee, I wonder why we might take until November 5th.

00:19:39.600 Anybody know why that's a magic date?

00:19:41.220 What's going on on November 3rd?

00:19:42.520 It's just a coincidence, I would say, Steve.

00:19:44.940 Well, I think this is the point.

00:19:46.480 You put it so well.

00:19:48.000 It's this gaslighting.

00:19:49.700 It's some of the greatest gaslighting we've ever seen.

00:19:52.500 And that isn't even coming from, you know, the scientists or people looking at the data.

00:19:56.640 That is coming from the politicians.

00:19:59.180 Actually, Mike, I want to ask him two questions.

00:20:01.720 Number one, for people listening, if you want to understand more about the numbers, if you

00:20:06.580 want to dig down more deeply, are there names, are there people, are there scientists, are

00:20:12.440 there researchers that folks ought to look for and read what they're saying?

00:20:17.320 I would urge people to go back to John Ianides at Stanford University.

00:20:21.020 His very first white paper on March 17th, which all he did, he's the head of their public

00:20:26.760 health department at Stanford, which is a top five medical school in the country.

00:20:30.880 All he did was break down the IFR and the CFR from our original guinea pig, the Diamond

00:20:35.380 Princess cruise ship, and project out what that would be for our American population. 0.99

00:20:39.760 And he nailed those numbers back on March 17th exactly.

00:20:44.020 He was considered a quack, but he's turned out to be exactly right. 1.00

00:20:47.900 Oxford University, the number one university in the world, numerous epidemiologists at

00:20:52.220 Oxford have been calling BS on this all along.

00:20:55.660 So, I mean, I would look at a Dr. Tony Katz at Yale University is another one.

00:21:00.180 I mean, there's a long list.

00:21:01.660 That's what's been fascinating about this, guys, from the very beginning.

00:21:04.340 When I started poking at the Imperial College model and realized that their math did not

00:21:08.980 add up, I was like, you know, this is going to be like a climate change debate.

00:21:12.820 It's going to be Steve Dase, Breitbart, Michael Knowles against academia, right?

00:21:17.380 What blew me away is how much of academia all over the world has been pushing back on the

00:21:23.680 life.

00:21:24.180 Steve, let me ask you.

00:21:25.700 I mean, look, the institutions you mentioned, Stanford, Oxford, Yale, I mean, those are not

00:21:31.940 fly-by-night institutions.

00:21:33.680 OK, Yale is, but the other two are not.

00:21:36.500 I knew that was coming.

00:21:38.240 You can't give me a hanging curveball like that and not expect me to swing.

00:21:42.360 But like how do you get researchers and physicians and doctors at the most esteemed academic institutions

00:21:51.660 on the face of the planet, how do you get them dismissed over and over again as quacks? 1.00

00:21:56.620 That seems an odd dynamic.

00:21:59.560 What's going on?

00:22:00.720 I wish I knew.

00:22:01.940 Now, I will tell you this.

00:22:03.240 You mentioned the whole thing that you were told at CPAC about asymptomatic spread.

00:22:06.880 Guys, when somebody in your offices come in and says, you know, my kid at home, I think,

00:22:11.260 has the flu.

00:22:12.320 If they have no fever, no cough, no symptoms, do you make them go home?

00:22:15.920 No, nobody does that, right?

00:22:17.440 OK, so why did we do that with this?

00:22:20.100 You know, Dr. Scott Atlas was on my show on April 27th, and he said something very interesting,

00:22:25.320 which is we have suspended the natural laws of biology, immunology and virology.

00:22:30.780 We've acted like we don't have hundreds of years and decades of established science on

00:22:35.180 this, and I can't figure out why.

00:22:37.440 Thankfully, he was brought into the White House Coronavirus Task Force about a month ago,

00:22:41.180 and I think you'll notice the difference in messaging from the White House since he was

00:22:46.080 brought in.

00:22:46.640 He gave a fantastic press conference a couple of days ago with Governor DeSantis down in Florida

00:22:52.240 because I don't think this is about science, the question that you asked, Ted.

00:22:55.880 I think that we've gotten into the politics of this, and I think that's what's really sad

00:23:01.200 is it's made it so that, you know, suddenly a drug that's been FDA approved for 60 years

00:23:05.880 is not healthy, despite all the studies around the world that show that it has at least some

00:23:10.920 marked success early on as a treatment.

00:23:13.520 The level of politicization of this is just, frankly, despicable given the human lives that

00:23:19.740 are at stake.

00:23:21.100 College football.

00:23:22.460 You have strong thoughts on this.

00:23:24.720 Share your thoughts on college football.

00:23:27.760 Well, according to CDC, those 15 to 24, right in the age of playing high school and college

00:23:32.840 football, are 12.9 percent of the population.

00:23:35.660 And yet there's 0.2 percent of people who have died with COVID.

00:23:40.360 Only 1.5 percent of deaths since March of those in that age group have been with COVID.

00:23:47.240 There's not a single recorded case that we can point to around the world of a student giving

00:23:52.160 a teacher COVID.

00:23:53.740 Why we're not playing football when comorbidities are the number one cause of death with COVID.

00:23:59.320 94 percent of the deaths have been with comorbidities because the number one thing this virus

00:24:03.340 does is weaken your immune system.

00:24:05.980 Well, Steve, I have to ask, because I noticed you're using very specific language.

00:24:09.280 You're saying dying with COVID, which I think ties into this 94 percent, 6 percent number

00:24:14.460 that has been going around.

00:24:15.680 What does that mean?

00:24:16.460 I mean, what's the distinction here?

00:24:17.620 And what are we talking about with the comorbidities?

00:24:19.220 Through August 15, CDC says 6 percent of deaths were people who walked in who were otherwise

00:24:24.180 healthy, got COVID-19 and died.

00:24:27.140 The other 94 percent were people who had an average of 2.1 comorbidities, meaning that this

00:24:33.340 virus weakened their already weakened immune systems.

00:24:36.960 It does not mean that 94 percent of deaths are fake news.

00:24:40.700 That's not what it means.

00:24:42.080 What it means, though, is the way that this virus attacks the human body is it specifically

00:24:46.480 targets those who already have an immune deficiency.

00:24:49.480 So somebody you guys well know that I work with, Glenn Beckett, the Blaze.

00:24:53.360 He has autoimmune disease.

00:24:55.260 He would not normally have to self-quarantine during a typical flu season.

00:24:59.160 Right.

00:24:59.520 But because this virus specifically goes after weakened immune systems, Glenn did self-quarantine

00:25:05.620 from our studios for about two to three months.

00:25:08.260 And so it is a very vicious virus.

00:25:10.640 I don't want to understate that whatsoever.

00:25:12.240 But there's a very targeted demo that it goes after.

00:25:16.160 And that's why this policy that we have done of attacking mice with elephant guns.

00:25:20.980 Guys, I'll leave you with this.

00:25:22.540 I mean, look at Hawaii.

00:25:24.020 Hawaii has had some form of a mask mandate since April 24th.

00:25:27.860 They're 2,000 miles away from the next closest civilization.

00:25:31.700 They've seen a 700 percent increase in cases there.

00:25:35.780 Hong Kong, where they've been masking up since they're on their third wave of lockdowns in Hong

00:25:40.000 Kong now, the Philippines on their second wave of lockdowns, where, again, these are isolated

00:25:45.120 places, the Philippines, Hawaii, high mask use.

00:25:48.640 And yet, in the end, the virus makes its way through.

00:25:52.180 So we're not going to stop it from getting through.

00:25:54.360 The question is, can we stop it from getting to the people that it's most going to hurt?

00:25:59.340 That is the question.

00:26:01.020 And, Steve, to be clear, I'm not sure you can refer to California as civilization.

00:26:08.140 Also a very true point.

00:26:09.760 You might even say that's a scientific point.

00:26:11.920 Gentlemen, that's all the time we have.

00:26:13.560 Steve, thank you so much for being here.

00:26:14.720 You can always go.

00:26:15.600 And I would highly recommend you go check out the Steve Dace show over at The Blaze.

00:26:21.280 And Senator Cruz, I will see you in just a little while for our next episode.

00:26:25.640 In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:26:27.420 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:26:29.040 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs Freedom and Security

00:26:43.220 Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations

00:26:48.380 and candidates across the country.

00:26:50.420 In 2022, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running

00:26:56.080 for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.

00:27:00.280 This is an iHeart Podcast.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 07, 2020

False Positive ft. Steve Deace

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