TDS Time Machine | Klepper vs. Anti-Vaxxers

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 3 Normally when I'm in search of an angry mob of people screaming anti-science, deep state, vaccine, microchip, conspiracy jazz, I head to the heartland of America.

Speaker 4 But it turns out I can find those very same people right here in my own backyard in New York City.

Speaker 9 That's right. Last week outside of Mayor Bill de Blasio's home, there was a group protesting his new mandate that customers show proof of vaccination in order to enter restaurants, gyms, and theaters.

Speaker 11 It was a mix of hardcore anti-vaxxers, people who are okay with vaccines but hated the mandate, and then of course, some people who put together a Joker costume once, loved the attention, so now that's pretty much all they do.

Speaker 18 I'm the only one in my family that hasn't gotten the vaccine. It's not approved by the FDA.
I don't know what's in that.

Speaker 19 Women are miscarrying.

Speaker 19 People are having their DNAs wiped out.

Speaker 20 What? What do you mean, like completely wiped out?

Speaker 19 Yeah, they're telling women that it's okay for you to get the vaccine.

Speaker 20 What does it mean their DNA is wiped out?

Speaker 18 Like their immunity. Their immunity is getting wiped out.

Speaker 6 So they say like COVID wiped out 600,000 DNAs.

Speaker 18 Yes, of course, you know?

Speaker 25 Actually, some people have died from the vaccine. Don't believe me.
Go to the media, go to the Google.

Speaker 26 or...

Speaker 7 Some people have died from COVID.

Speaker 25 Yes.

Speaker 23 So many more than from the vaccine.

Speaker 25 One thing with me, I try not to argue facts.

Speaker 29 I don't believe that suggesting strongly and coming out with mandates for a vaccine is a way of medical intervention. This is not what I believe in.

Speaker 5 That's a lot of quotes.

Speaker 32 People from both sides of the issue came from far and wide to express their hate or love of vaccines.

Speaker 30 But I think you're killing kids, right? I think you're killing people.

Speaker 30 Don't get your kill.

Speaker 24 Come on, Keel. Let me clough on you.

Speaker 30 You know, Don DeSantis and Ted Cruz have both been vaccinated. Bullshit.

Speaker 33 This is why I love doing interviews in New York.

Speaker 30 You're from Pennsylvania.

Speaker 22 Yes, because we know it's coming to Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 How important is it like that to think ahead to protect something before it gets out of control?

Speaker 26 It's everything.

Speaker 30 It's everything because once it's gone out of control, you don't reel it in.

Speaker 21 Right.

Speaker 35 Like that's why it's important for everybody to get a vaccine, squash it before it gets out of control.

Speaker 34 That's why what?

Speaker 35 It's important that we take the vaccine, squash it.

Speaker 34 Oh my god, what side are you on? Are you nuts?

Speaker 36 What were you talking about?

Speaker 37 I'm talking to you.

Speaker 23 What were you talking about?

Speaker 34 I am not for the vaccine.

Speaker 38 Are you in your mind?

Speaker 7 Well, you were just talking about getting ahead of it.

Speaker 36 Getting ahead of the mandate.

Speaker 7 The mandate is what's spreading.

Speaker 26 Yes.

Speaker 22 We don't want the mandate to come to people.

Speaker 22 We don't want to take the vaccine. Oh.

Speaker 35 Why should I?

Speaker 39 You see why I'm confused, though.

Speaker 13 Clearly, putting potentially harmful toxins into your body was something these anti-vax mandate health nuts were very concerned about.

Speaker 24 My name is Edundara Cruz, and I'm running for city council.

Speaker 7 Running for New York office.

Speaker 41 As a Republican.

Speaker 30 As a Republican.

Speaker 37 The science is still new.

Speaker 24 We still have question marks. We rushed the science.

Speaker 42 We were moving at warp speed.

Speaker 24 Well, we moved at warp speed.

Speaker 7 So Donald Trump rushed it. Not correct.
Who rushed it?

Speaker 30 Who rushed it?

Speaker 24 Can I ask you, how about if we change places and I start attacking you?

Speaker 30 You're the one who's running for public office.

Speaker 11 The Republicans of New York were clearly trying to move on from the past, and in some cases, forgetting it completely.

Speaker 43 My name is Vish Burrough, and I'm the vice president of the New York Young Republican Club. This is a protest against the anti-freedom mandates from a petty tyrant like Bill de Blasio.

Speaker 5 Do you think this is something the Founding Fathers would support?

Speaker 43 The Founding Fathers would support vaccine mandates. Yeah.
No, I don't believe so.

Speaker 28 George Washington had a vaccine mandate.

Speaker 41 Well, that's okay. Oh,

Speaker 30 that's okay.

Speaker 33 Oh, he's a lower founding father.

Speaker 40 I mean,

Speaker 43 I love the lore, but at the end of the day, we are the ones who have to deal with what is going on in America today.

Speaker 28 What are you going to miss out on if this mandate prevents you from doing this?

Speaker 44 I just tried to get some Thai food. I love Thai food.
I just tried to get some Thai food around the corner.

Speaker 43 They told me I couldn't sit down and eat.

Speaker 37 I can't go in a restaurant. I can't go to a music club.

Speaker 41 50% more people who are not going to go out to eat.

Speaker 7 How are they going to get food?

Speaker 41 Exactly. Yeah, right.
So maybe they'll go out of state and come back.

Speaker 30 Who knows?

Speaker 7 If only the city had a seamless way to get food to their door, fresh, direct way to get there, you know?

Speaker 30 Maybe that's it.

Speaker 13 Their point is this mandate is a slippery slope that only leads to hyperbole.

Speaker 45 So many don't get it. It's 1937 and never again is now.
Do not comply to show in your papers. This isn't Nazi Germany.

Speaker 30 Maybe you can help me out.

Speaker 20 I'm seeing signs that say vaccine mandates are fascism.

Speaker 7 And also signs that say vaccine mandates are communism.

Speaker 20 Which one is it?

Speaker 7 It's both. It's both.

Speaker 20 Those are diametrically opposed ideologies.

Speaker 18 I don't think it's communism. It's more like a dictatorship.
Like we're living in like a Nazi Germany and the only thing that's missing is the camps and the gas.

Speaker 20 That's what's happening right now?

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 7 Because you can't go to a concert?

Speaker 18 I can't go to a concert. I can't go to a gym.

Speaker 20 Do you think that's what it was like in Nazi Germany?

Speaker 21 People were bitching about not going to a gym?

Speaker 13 Regardless of our differences, this was still New York.

Speaker 40 A melting pot, crammed onto an island, then pushed into a subway car with a rat eating pizza. You're not left or right.

Speaker 13 You're a new f ⁇ ing New Yorker. And we're in this together.

Speaker 43 I mean, I've heard the we, we live in a society line a million times, and we're over it.

Speaker 7 The we the people thing holds no sway for you.

Speaker 24 No, we the people is.

Speaker 33 Then who are the people of the we the people that you are willing to support?

Speaker 43 It's definitely not the illegal immigrants that are bringing COVID over our border right now, that's for sure. I do not believe that vaccine mandates are constitutionally

Speaker 7 supported.

Speaker 5 Which is a bummer because the Supreme Court has upheld it many times.

Speaker 43 It's not my court.

Speaker 7 All right, well, enjoy.

Speaker 21 I hope you don't get sick.

Speaker 40 Good luck to everyone out there, and may you get the pad CU our founding fathers said you deserve to eat inside during a global pandemic.

Speaker 15 The discussion around vaccines and mandates tends to pit red state versus blue.

Speaker 13 But I had heard there was vaccine hesitancy and misinformation in the elitist of the elite blue corners of the U.S.

Speaker 13 So I headed to a protest in sunny Southern California.

Speaker 23 I came to California curious if the anti-vax mandate crowd would talk to me.

Speaker 20 Then I realized I brought a camera and we're in Southern California.

Speaker 23 I think I'll be fine.

Speaker 5 Is this an anti-vaccination?

Speaker 49 It is not an anti-vax, so don't go there.

Speaker 47 Don't go there.

Speaker 50 Please don't. Are you vaccinated?

Speaker 49 I am not.

Speaker 33 So you're anti-vax.

Speaker 49 I do not want to get the vaccination for COVID.

Speaker 47 What do you support?

Speaker 43 People's freedom of choice.

Speaker 9 Don't you benefit from a society that supports that by getting vaccinated?

Speaker 52 You shouldn't be able to force that stuff on people. It's step one.
Then there'll be step two.

Speaker 26 What's step two?

Speaker 43 Who knows?

Speaker 52 I'm not a conspiracy theorist here.

Speaker 36 Even though we have step one with polio. We didn't really mandate that.

Speaker 52 The people were docile back in the industrious age. They were more willing to take these shots.

Speaker 10 Polio is mandated for students going to school.

Speaker 52 Polio has to be because we know what it's done.

Speaker 42 Don't we know what COVID's done?

Speaker 10 I mean there's 750,000 people who have a pretty good idea.

Speaker 52 Dig it.

Speaker 4 Do you trust the vaccine whatsoever?

Speaker 55 Zero, like zero percent. And because I know what the end runt the end goal is.

Speaker 33 What's the end goal?

Speaker 55 Bill Gates said in 2015, if we can get all these health things, vaccination, we can reduce the population by 10 to 15 percent. What's 15 percent of 7 billion? That's a billion people.

Speaker 39 The vaccine is all about depopulation.

Speaker 44 They've said that.

Speaker 10 So this is just Bill Gates' pet project to depopulate the globe.

Speaker 33 He's probably a puppet of the people above him.

Speaker 56 Which are who?

Speaker 21 No clue.

Speaker 42 It's a big claim to say there is a giant plan to kill half the population and not have a Thanos to point to.

Speaker 50 So why does the conversation on this SoCal Boardwalk sound like a Shones in Lancaster PA?

Speaker 9 I talked to Derek Barris, who's been tracking this coastal elite anti-vax movement for years.

Speaker 57 You've had a long anti-vaccine sentiment here. Specifically in 2017 there was a measles outbreak right over there in Brentwood in Santa Monica where an eradicated disease in America sprung up again.

Speaker 57 This idea of bodily sovereignty has really come about since the pandemic but that has been taught for decades inside of yoga studios in America.

Speaker 27 Bodily sovereignty sounds a lot like what I told my parents I was doing freshman year of high school.

Speaker 57 You have pretty liberal parents then.

Speaker 36 Yeah.

Speaker 36 My body, I can do what I want with it as often as I want to do wherever I want in the living room. You're still here.

Speaker 9 People hear about anti-vax and they think MAGA world, but now we're seeing this wellness, which we see maybe more to the left.

Speaker 57 The Center for Countering Digital Hate identified 12 practitioners in the wellness space that were responsible for something like 70% of the vaccine disinformation on social media.

Speaker 4 Turns out, ignoring the advice of the medical experts and sacrificing the health of the community at large can actually be quite profitable for the wellness business.

Speaker 57 Everyone knows about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine at this moment. The The idea that that could help.
You have meditations that are sold that are supposed to ward off COVID.

Speaker 57 You also have different breathing techniques. Some practitioners, including here in Los Angeles, teach breathing workshops because COVID is a respiratory illness.

Speaker 57 And so their belief is, well, if you're breathing properly, it won't actually affect you.

Speaker 58 You can breathe your way out of COVID.

Speaker 53 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 That's a class you can pay for.

Speaker 57 Yes, that is absolutely a class you could pay for.

Speaker 32 So like how many smoothies does one have to ingest to get to the point where they can completely disregard the health of the community they live in?

Speaker 57 In Los Angeles, one,

Speaker 57 because they're usually $25.

Speaker 9 I never knew there's that many parts of honey to ingest.

Speaker 57 And the honey is blessed by a shaman from Tibet, so you're paying for that as well. You have to remember that.

Speaker 40 I wanted to talk to these people, so I set up outside of the bougiest health food market in Venice Beach.

Speaker 9 And I also had a hankering for an activated charcoal bone broth rose hip smoothie cure-all.

Speaker 10 Are you vaccinated?

Speaker 26 Uh,

Speaker 38 maybe.

Speaker 26 No,

Speaker 59 I'm not.

Speaker 56 You're not?

Speaker 33 No.

Speaker 60 Are you fearful of catching COVID?

Speaker 30 No. No?

Speaker 59 I think that it's more about the lifestyle versus like vaccinated, not vaccinated.

Speaker 54 What is the lifestyle?

Speaker 59 Like being healthy. Like taking care of yourself, like your mind, your body.
If you live a lifestyle of wellness, then

Speaker 59 your body should be able to handle COVID.

Speaker 7 So what do you recommend for basic public health?

Speaker 61 Eating healthy, boosting your immunity system. And don't watch the news because it's just brainwashing you with fear.
And the fear is lowering your frequency.

Speaker 61 I only eat fish and only certain kind of fish. Like for example, I don't eat tuna.
And I actually found that out when I was trying to feed tuna to my cat and she shook her head and walked off.

Speaker 28 Do you often take medical advice from a cat?

Speaker 61 In general, from nature.

Speaker 9 From nature. What do you think of the COVID vaccine?

Speaker 61 I don't think it's a vaccine. I think it's snapping the DNA in huh.

Speaker 4 Where did you hear this?

Speaker 10 A Siamese cat?

Speaker 27 You recommend for public health people meditating?

Speaker 9 Of course. People working out in groups?

Speaker 60 Definitely. Eating healthy?

Speaker 6 Definitely. COVID vaccine?

Speaker 62 No.

Speaker 47 No.

Speaker 60 Coffee enema?

Speaker 49 Possibly.

Speaker 9 Okay, maybe on the coffee enema. Definite hard no on the COVID vaccine.

Speaker 63 No. I'm not an anti-vaxxer per se.

Speaker 25 I'm a staunch and I mandate person.

Speaker 10 Can I ask, are you both vaccinated?

Speaker 62 Sorry, I just want to share with you. We don't want to vaccinate

Speaker 33 the status. No.

Speaker 23 If you don't want to share your vaccine status, that's okay.

Speaker 28 I'm vaccinated.

Speaker 36 And look how I look.

Speaker 10 Don't judge me. I know everybody in LA is judging people.

Speaker 50 I'm an LA 5, a New York 6, and a DC 12.

Speaker 26 I can tell.

Speaker 40 Cold, but fair.

Speaker 50 Now what say you, dude?

Speaker 16 I want to talk about wellness and public health.

Speaker 10 And trust me, we'll get to your script later. Can I ask you, are you vaccinated?

Speaker 62 I am.

Speaker 50 Do you find that most people in Los Angeles that you encounter are vaccinated?

Speaker 64 Like, I'm kind of a New Yorker. Yeah.
And there there's a sense of like civic duty.

Speaker 13 There isn't so much of that here, here to be totally honest it's more like well I had to get vaccinated because I'm paying a trip to Toulouse so if more Americans were dangled a trip to Toulouse we might get that vaccination rate up in the 90s maybe so yeah no matter what part of the anti-vax world they come from there's one comparison they just can't resist making I think what's interesting especially coming from Germany I think history is repeating itself right now what are you saying that what the vaccine mandats and everything it's like it's turning into a police state and you're equating it to World War II era Germany Yes.

Speaker 61 Where is your papers? Where are your papers? It's very similar to the Hitler Times.

Speaker 39 But like Jewish people are fleeing Poland because they can't get into gyms.

Speaker 50 It's not funny. But is that comparison, though...

Speaker 61 You just didn't get the point. Sorry.
I'm good.

Speaker 26 Bye.

Speaker 40 Maybe historical dramas aren't big in LA.

Speaker 4 But certainly there is commercial viability in saving humanity, right?

Speaker 9 We're in LA. Maybe there's an elevator pitch here, right?

Speaker 4 So zoom in on a country at war with itself, and then a magical cure comes along that helps people take care of the rest of their community by making a choice to help other people.

Speaker 4 Would you buy that ticket?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 14 Nope?

Speaker 26 Okay.

Speaker 16 Three weeks ago, north of the border, a new kind of protest emerged.

Speaker 54 The trucker convoy has arrived in Ottawa.

Speaker 22 This city in the downtown core remains gridlocked.

Speaker 45 Some residents here say that they really can take no more.

Speaker 4 So I traveled to Ottawa, expecting to find some Canada nice.

Speaker 40 But their messaging was a bit more coarse.

Speaker 47 These trucks shut down businesses and made roads impassable.

Speaker 21 Can I go...

Speaker 4 Can I go around here? How do I...

Speaker 4 How do I get around?

Speaker 14 But how long were the protesters planning to paralyze Canada's eighth-best city?

Speaker 21 David, how long have you been here?

Speaker 37 I've been here here since day one.

Speaker 48 Holding down the fort.

Speaker 37 Pretty much. I'm not going anywhere.

Speaker 48 I'm coming in from New York.

Speaker 7 I go by Brooklyn's kindest on the same base.

Speaker 33 There you go.

Speaker 21 You're able to stay here up to two years.

Speaker 15 You're committed to being here for two years.

Speaker 37 Yeah, because two years is nothing.

Speaker 23 Are you going to keep up the energy to be here for two years?

Speaker 36 That's not a problem.

Speaker 37 People will bring it.

Speaker 4 Stimulants?

Speaker 21 No, but the people are bringing it. I smoke a lot of weed.

Speaker 30 Yeah. Okay.
Right? Yeah.

Speaker 37 But that's just to calm me down and

Speaker 37 keep me centered.

Speaker 4 Are you worried at all with weed, paranoia, that might creep it? No. No.

Speaker 41 No.

Speaker 23 Do you think the government is coming for you?

Speaker 31 Oh yeah, constantly.

Speaker 21 I do like

Speaker 43 night little tactics.

Speaker 37 They try to look, they move around, they move in, they add more.

Speaker 30 Are you paranoid? No.

Speaker 21 Sure.

Speaker 48 What kind of stuff do you haul?

Speaker 37 I haul everything. In 2020, I hauled from food to building supplies to medical supplies.

Speaker 21 You have my end table that I ordered from Wayfair like three weeks ago?

Speaker 37 It's probably up sitting either in Montreal or Toronto or on the border.

Speaker 4 It would really look great in my apartment.

Speaker 16 So what what exactly was the point of interrupting the supply chain?

Speaker 48 So what is this all about? You know what? Sorry.

Speaker 21 What is this all about?

Speaker 65 This is about our freedoms.

Speaker 58 Can you be any more generic?

Speaker 65 You know, if you are vaccinated, you get to do certain things. If you're not vaccinated, you don't.
I don't think people should be divided. We should all be together, united.

Speaker 10 We're setting up essentially a truck barrier to keep everybody together so they can be united.

Speaker 46 Yes.

Speaker 33 Gotcha. Yeah, we might as well lock them in.

Speaker 21 It's sort of like a parent who locks the door and says, you guys are in here until the water runs out, you become friends, or democracy crumbles.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 2 And if you're not vaccinated, you're literally a second-class citizen in this country.

Speaker 36 I can't go to the restaurant.

Speaker 41 I can't go play hockey.

Speaker 2 I can't go watch the auto with senators.

Speaker 17 We don't live in Germany.

Speaker 24 We don't live in Nazi Germany.

Speaker 42 Those days are over.

Speaker 21 Just show me your papers don't happen anymore. That's a freedom that everyone should have.

Speaker 4 Is the Germany comparison a stretch here in Canada?

Speaker 62 No.

Speaker 4 Are you afraid of cultural appropriation?

Speaker 62 Probably.

Speaker 4 American cultural appropriation, because we use the German excuse all the time.

Speaker 11 Oddly enough, that wasn't the only thing Canadians were appropriating.

Speaker 37 Yeah, I hate to use that slogan, but

Speaker 31 make North America great again.

Speaker 37 Make North America great again, and I don't mean to use that guy's word, but it's true.

Speaker 42 To be honest, it wasn't even his.

Speaker 46 He stole it from another guy before him.

Speaker 48 I see the Q army on your hat. Isn't Q the American thing trying to find JFK Jr.? Exactly.

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 48 Exactly. What Q shit is going down here?

Speaker 43 Q? No, Q is a small USC.

Speaker 5 Oh, so this is like a Yankees hat.

Speaker 23 Ah, exactly.

Speaker 14 Okay, the Q thing might just be a fashion choice, but they're definitely reading the same internet as many Americans.

Speaker 38 But it's more than just vaccine passport and stuff.

Speaker 67 What else?

Speaker 66 The Agenda 2030 is a good start.

Speaker 42 What's Agenda 2030?

Speaker 66 Two of the world's hand towards one government. They wanna sterilize us that only certain certain people can have kids.

Speaker 67 Really?

Speaker 17 You're afraid the government will sterilize you?

Speaker 67 Probably not me, but down the line, yeah.

Speaker 48 Spending two weeks in the cab of a truck pissing in a mountain dew can

Speaker 48 can't be too good for the sperm production.

Speaker 30 Probably sterile wedding, so what's the difference?

Speaker 58 So, Margaret Atwood audiobooks are apparently a thing with Canadian truckers.

Speaker 12 And while shutting down a city seems to have many obvious downsides.

Speaker 30 Hey. Here's Meg.

Speaker 24 Hey.

Speaker 30 Hi.

Speaker 48 Have you seen a Prius around here?

Speaker 4 Some see an opportunity coming from literal gridlock.

Speaker 37 The truckers are bringing in customers. They're bringing in tourists from Montreal, from all across Canada.

Speaker 24 Everybody wants to check this out.

Speaker 33 This is essentially a tourist boom for Ottawa right now.

Speaker 48 You can feel the tourism in the air, right?

Speaker 46 You can smell it. It smells like amphetamines and thrifter blood.

Speaker 62 Definitely.

Speaker 14 The flood of 18-wheeler driving tourists and their Canadian AF outfits created legitimate tension with residents of the city.

Speaker 17 The downtown was shut and there was palpable anger directed at local media.

Speaker 47 And even at the daily show.

Speaker 36 Lack of nuance is tyranny.

Speaker 21 We're getting booed over here.

Speaker 28 We've been walking around here.

Speaker 10 There seems to be a real distrust of media here.

Speaker 54 Oh for sure.

Speaker 10 It's a lot of cameras up in your face, cameras on cameras.

Speaker 13 And while Canadian authorities have finally enacted emergency measures to try to clear the convoy, so far the trucks are still there.

Speaker 14 And a well-funded, never-ending street party infused with misinformation and nationalism feels remarkably possible in our own land of the free.

Speaker 46 Where does this movement go from here?

Speaker 65 I believe it's going to be worldwide.

Speaker 30 It's going to come to America?

Speaker 34 Yes, definitely.

Speaker 10 You think this is inspiring the dickheads in America?

Speaker 30 Pardon me?

Speaker 10 This is inspiring the dickheads of America?

Speaker 65 It's inspiring people.

Speaker 65 People of America to join together to stand for freedom.

Speaker 14 Okay, if they do come to America, then maybe I'll finally get my f ⁇ ing end table.

Speaker 20 I'm in Johnson County, North Carolina, marching with anti-mass protesters to what has become America's new thunderdome,

Speaker 7 school board meetings.

Speaker 16 North Carolina parents are desperate to get their kids back into schools.

Speaker 16 But with PACed ICUs and COVID cases in children four times what they were last year, new studies in the CDC are recommending masks as a way to keep in-person learning.

Speaker 16 But PAC school board meetings and new stars of the right are upset because putting on a piece of cloth is just too much.

Speaker 69 I'm against all mandates. So from there, I don't believe where it's mask, where it's vaccinations.
I'm against it all.

Speaker 53 Masks will never protect Americans.

Speaker 1 Masks don't work. My child was suffering after wearing his mask for so long.

Speaker 6 What kind of issues has he had?

Speaker 1 He's had acne on his face from, you know, the mask covering and not letting his skin breathe.

Speaker 39 Has he had COVID?

Speaker 26 No.

Speaker 10 But he has had acne.

Speaker 61 Yes.

Speaker 39 So, have you had to choose?

Speaker 26 No. What's wrong with...

Speaker 3 having children wear masks in school?

Speaker 31 Well, you're breathing in the toxins that your body is trying to get rid of.

Speaker 33 How do surgeons do it?

Speaker 31 That is a good question.

Speaker 20 There's been some new studies that have come out both by the CDC and by even Duke University talking about masks being helpful, especially in a school situation.

Speaker 31 I challenge anybody to put a mask on and five minutes later smell that funk and think it's good for them.

Speaker 23 So there's science and then there's the smell test and you're going with the smell test.

Speaker 33 Yes.

Speaker 9 What are some of the ways kids suffer when they have to wear masks?

Speaker 70 I think breathing. I've done a little bit of research about the carbon dioxide that people are saying is an issue now with the mask.

Speaker 16 Wearing a mask helps stop the spread of COVID in settings like a school.

Speaker 70 But they still are outside, like right now.

Speaker 71 I mean, this is a kind of example. There's kids out there playing and stuff.

Speaker 28 Well, we're outside right now.

Speaker 9 When you go inside, isn't it beneficial to wear a mask if you're close to someone?

Speaker 38 Uh-uh.

Speaker 71 No. No.
I mean, I don't think so.

Speaker 32 The science says it is helpful to wear a mask so it doesn't spread when you're in close proximity indoors.

Speaker 70 The science.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 70 I don't think, I mean, because they're.

Speaker 70 Oh, I don't know. I just.

Speaker 70 Do y'all edit this? I'm sorry.

Speaker 16 So some people are bewildered by science, both the practice and the word.

Speaker 14 But maybe scary images like full ICUs would have an impact.

Speaker 30 We're in a mask. What's the harm?

Speaker 72 Well, for kids, the harm is they can't gauge emotional awareness of other kids.

Speaker 24 They don't see the facial expressions.

Speaker 50 Do you think not being able to see people's lower halves of face outweighs the dangers that COVID might pose to kids and communities?

Speaker 72 Well, the dangers aren't what you think they are.

Speaker 9 The ICUs here are full.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 72 But how many positive tests in all of North Carolina have died?

Speaker 26 How many are sick?

Speaker 6 The ones in the ICU are pretty sick.

Speaker 53 Yeah. I've been in ICUs three times in the last year and a half with my wife and have questioned the nurses and doctors.

Speaker 54 You have ICUs full of people suffering from COVID, right?

Speaker 26 Do you know?

Speaker 53 Is that true?

Speaker 39 Are they just being the diagnosis on paper? I've walked through the hospitals, I videotaped inside the hospitals, and guess what?

Speaker 33 It's not full of COVID patients.

Speaker 23 Now I'm worried about COVID and security measures at North Carolina hospitals.

Speaker 15 Like so many of these school board battles, it was never about just one thing, but more of a general airing of grievances.

Speaker 38 When we got a governor here that thinks it's okay to have CRT in the classroom, they need to focus on advocating and not indoctrinating our children here in North Carolina.

Speaker 31 No CRT, that's ridiculous.

Speaker 53 We're saving the kids from all that's going on with CRT, critical race theory.

Speaker 23 Here in North Carolina, they don't need to learn about racism in school.

Speaker 47 No, where are they going to learn about racism mostly?

Speaker 23 Walking past one of the tobacco fields?

Speaker 53 Well, no, not walking past the tobacco field, so you know, it's not like that.

Speaker 50 It was hard to sum up the outrage of that afternoon.

Speaker 16 There were many thoughtful political statements being made.

Speaker 14 But looking looking around, it was difficult to miss the real catchphrase of the day.

Speaker 69 I don't co-parent with the government.

Speaker 23 Well, you don't want to co-parent with the government.

Speaker 10 Don't get pregnant in Texas.

Speaker 69 There we go.

Speaker 69 Don't get pregnant anywhere.

Speaker 33 Your kids go to private school?

Speaker 30 Or enrolled in public school?

Speaker 7 Isn't that kind of co-parenting with the government?

Speaker 69 No, it isn't, because you know why? We have a Board of Education. We also elect who our officials are.
We get to have a voice.

Speaker 30 Right. So you work with the government.

Speaker 36 We do.

Speaker 3 In parenting decisions. Yeah.

Speaker 26 You're in public school.

Speaker 28 So you do kind of co-parent with the government

Speaker 72 in that regard i guess yeah if you want to

Speaker 28 say my taxes pay for that yeah but you're giving back your child tax credit

Speaker 14 this crowd that was ready to fight for what they believed in was using the power of democracy that was bestowed upon all of us by our founding fathers did you vote for school board no no I don't even vote.

Speaker 47 You don't even vote? No.

Speaker 9 You could vote for somebody who reflects your values.

Speaker 74 I could vote.

Speaker 71 You're right.

Speaker 14 Yeah. But that's a hassle.

Speaker 70 Take the time to do it. I'm sorry.

Speaker 50 But at the end of the day, they saw this as a fight against something much more disturbing than kids' face coverings.

Speaker 31 It's terrible for them to wear masks.

Speaker 30 Absolutely.

Speaker 31 It's just absolutely terrible. It's a sign of slavery.
Wait, where? Very basically.

Speaker 23 Wearing a mask is a sign of slavery.

Speaker 31 I discovered in my research also that Satanists stand six feet apart. They wear masks during the rituals.
Who does?

Speaker 30 Satanists.

Speaker 31 Satanists, six feet apart.

Speaker 31 Six feet apart. Wear a mask.

Speaker 31 I don't know. Is it coincidence? I don't know.

Speaker 30 Satanism is, well, we're at war with Satan.

Speaker 30 How are we doing? I think we're winning. Good.

Speaker 62 Finally, some good news.

Speaker 31 I have no fears.

Speaker 50 No fears, but a healthy belief in Satanism and its affecting the COVID.

Speaker 31 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 4 Vaccination is still going a bit slow in America, and we should be past this talk by now.

Speaker 14 But we're not, and it's definitely gonna come up at your holiday gatherings.

Speaker 50 So that you're prepared for those conversations.

Speaker 4 Here is our gift to you.

Speaker 47 These are moments from past rallies we haven't shown before with some truly unique arguments from the vaccine-hesitant crowd.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen that it's been life-saving at all. I've seen a lot more people in the hospital after they got this vaccine than you know, it being

Speaker 20 helpful.

Speaker 4 Right now in North Carolina, 92% of the people who are in the hospital because of COVID are unvaccinated.

Speaker 17 Does that worry you?

Speaker 67 No? No.

Speaker 20 Where nowadays can the unvaccinated congregate?

Speaker 24 Basically nowhere unless they form a group.

Speaker 7 Yeah, unless it's the ICU.

Speaker 24 What do you mean by ICU?

Speaker 7 That tends to be where many of the unvaccinated congregate.

Speaker 30 Okay, yeah, whatever.

Speaker 9 The ICUs here are full.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 24 But in the general scope of things, of the entire population of everybody who's been tested, what does that weigh out to?

Speaker 21 So a full ICU is just a full ICU.

Speaker 20 Kids need to see the lower half of other kids' faces.

Speaker 20 That seems like a take.

Speaker 22 I'm not an anti-vaxxer.

Speaker 31 Just don't be putting some shit in my

Speaker 22 stuff in my body that isn't proven.

Speaker 30 It's not proven.

Speaker 21 Right. So your issue is that maybe they rushed this through too fast.

Speaker 35 Absolutely.

Speaker 21 Do you feel like it was an issue that America moved at warp speed?

Speaker 26 Yes, I do.

Speaker 6 Who did you support in the last election?

Speaker 33 Trump.

Speaker 6 Do you think he deserves more credit for what he did with the vaccine?

Speaker 22 Kills me. Biden gets in.
Biden gets the credit for the vaccine. Oh, yeah, give me the vaccine.

Speaker 30 So Trump deserves more credit or less credit?

Speaker 30 I think Trump did what he could do.

Speaker 4 Which he moved the vaccine at warp speed.

Speaker 30 He did.

Speaker 33 Which you were against like a second ago.

Speaker 20 Do you have a distrust about some of the narratives that are going on in the country?

Speaker 49 I have a lot of distrust.

Speaker 33 Talk to me about that.

Speaker 31 Ah, it's too long.

Speaker 10 Where are you getting your information about the vaccine?

Speaker 49 I have a lot of information, just like you guys all get your information.

Speaker 51 Where do you go for your information?

Speaker 49 From a lot of places.

Speaker 33 Specifically.

Speaker 28 What are you going to miss out on if this mandate prevents you from doing this?

Speaker 44 I just tried to get some Thai. I love Thai food.
I just tried to get some Thai food around the corner.

Speaker 43 They told me I couldn't sit down and eat unless

Speaker 43 I had a vaccine mandate.

Speaker 43 Now, I believe things like that were said to Martin Luther King when he tried to walk into places to eat, but they said they had a different reason to make him a second-class citizen.

Speaker 7 Compare yourself to MLK are big words for a guy wearing 80s b-boy jeans.

Speaker 43 Actually, these are not 80s b-boy jeans, they are new true religions. I know you can't tell because you're a Democrat and you can't afford these things.

Speaker 7 All right, well, enjoy.

Speaker 21 I hope you don't get sick.

Speaker 44 Thank you. I still haven't yet.

Speaker 43 Have you gotten COVID?

Speaker 24 I did. Have that sucks.
Too bad for you.

Speaker 5 That's the empathy that the young Republicans bring.

Speaker 47 Thank you.

Speaker 4 Where are you getting your information?

Speaker 14 Everywhere. Everywhere.

Speaker 63 Yeah, well, not everywhere, but like

Speaker 63 those places, internet, by word of mouth,

Speaker 4 here.

Speaker 74 I mean, you see

Speaker 63 a nice burrito and it has like farm fresh eggs in it.

Speaker 40 If you got to see the workers at Pfizer's make you a vaccine burrito, would you trust that?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 22 Tens of thousands of people have already died from the vaccine. When the flu vaccine came out,

Speaker 22 75 people died and they stopped it to rework it.

Speaker 21 Tens of thousands of people, where do you get that stat?

Speaker 22 I get that stat from the

Speaker 22 VPEAR, the one that puts out the stats.

Speaker 31 Let me ask my daughter.

Speaker 30 Levy!

Speaker 30 The CDC.

Speaker 34 No, not the CDC.

Speaker 34 What's that people? What's that?

Speaker 5 What's that? The VT.

Speaker 21 S-H-B-U-L-L-T-E-R. Where they're getting H-IT.

Speaker 34 What did you say?

Speaker 64 They are violating bodily autonomy.

Speaker 55 They are creating the same as vaccine passports, which is

Speaker 48 illegal segregation.

Speaker 9 Illegal segregation.

Speaker 55 We are going back to a state in which there are two groups of people. You have the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

Speaker 17 You feel like what's going on right now is back to 60s America.

Speaker 55 Creating that. A lot of my friends, they concentrate on Nazi Germany.

Speaker 39 That's a whole other planet.

Speaker 55 That's a whole other country.

Speaker 39 That's a crazy comparison.

Speaker 42 Asking people to get a COVID vaccine, Holocaust comparison, a little much. Jim Crow feels about right.

Speaker 56 Yeah, not, I mean.

Speaker 4 When someone asks you what they can get you for Christmas, just tell them to get vaccinated.

Speaker 74 Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

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