Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E17: Coronavirus: What's The Government To Do? With Michael Knowles

Transcript

E17: Coronavirus: What's The Government To Do? With Michael Knowles · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  Hey everybody, welcome to the Lila Rd.
• 0:01
  Show. Thanks for listening.
• 0:03
  I am looking forward to today's episode because we're going to
• 0:06
  be talking about the pandemic, yes, the news around that, but
• 0:10
  talking about it from a larger perspective.
• 0:12
  So this is a, you know, many of us are experiencing a lot of the
• 0:17
  consequences of both the virus and the the fear, the anxiety,
• 0:20
  the chaos. And then also economically, many
• 0:22
  people have been losing their jobs or losing their income.
• 0:25
  So this is infecting all of us. I did an episode, the last
• 0:29
  episode, about 6 things that we can do to be at peace and to
• 0:33
  make the most of this difficult time to have a different
• 0:36
  perspective during this pandemic.
• 0:38
  This episode is a little different.
• 0:39
  It is about exploring, and I'm going to have my friend Michael
• 0:42
  Knowles on exploring the larger dynamics at play here because we
• 0:47
  are seeing some of the controversy.
• 0:49
  I don't know if you've noticed it, but there's kind of two
• 0:51
  camps that have emerged. The camp of we need to shut down
• 0:55
  or slow the economy indefinitely until we can stop the spread and
• 0:59
  protect human life. And then the camp of saying we
• 1:01
  should protect human life. But at the same time, we need to
• 1:04
  not be taking such stringent measures or we should really
• 1:07
  question them because it's going to negatively impact human lives
• 1:11
  by having economic consequences. So the reason I want to get into
• 1:15
  this is because we, we do have our civic responsibility to vote
• 1:18
  to elect our government officials.
• 1:20
  They are taking action right now.
• 1:22
  And I think we should do our best to understand the larger
• 1:24
  context here, even though we do not have a decision to make,
• 1:27
  obviously, ourselves, except to do our best to follow the law
• 1:30
  and try to protect people, other people around us and try to
• 1:34
  practice social distancing and and live by the different
• 1:36
  regulations that haven't passed. So this conversation is really
• 1:39
  going to explore some of those that larger context around this.
• 1:42
  I hope it's interesting. Michael Knowles is the host of
• 1:44
  the Daily Wire podcast, The Michael Knowles Show, as well as
• 1:48
  verdict with Ted Cruz and the book club with Prageru.
• 1:51
  Michael, welcome to the program. I'm really looking forward to
• 1:54
  our conversation today because you are a if the number of your
• 1:58
  tweets and how prolific you are on Twitter is a sign of how
• 2:01
  speedily you read and consume everything that's happening in
• 2:03
  the news right now. It is pretty incredible.
• 2:06
  And I thought you would be the perfect person to talk to about
• 2:08
  catching us up on what's going on with coronavirus and then
• 2:10
  also hearing a little bit about the bigger picture around this
• 2:14
  pandemic, the conservative movements concerns, the
• 2:17
  government's responses, our responses, people of faith,
• 2:20
  etcetera. So welcome.
• 2:21
  Well, thank you very much and I should clarify, my number of
• 2:24
  tweets is purely a measure of how much I opine it is not.
• 2:27
  Surely has no connection to the amount of actual information I'm
• 2:31
  getting in. But I have been paying a little
• 2:32
  bit of attention to this and there's a lot of conflicting
• 2:35
  information out there. And I know that also because
• 2:38
  because we are both in California sheltered in place
• 2:40
  largely you have special, we both actually have special
• 2:43
  permission from the state of California to do podcasting.
• 2:46
  So even more the reason to be in the know right now and hopefully
• 2:48
  share it and make it more available to other people.
• 2:51
  That's right. I was very surprised when
• 2:53
  Governor Gavin Newsom decided that podcasting is an essential
• 2:57
  service. When I think of essential
• 2:59
  services, I think of food, water, hospitals.
• 3:02
  But apparently podcasting qualifies.
• 3:03
  And yeah, though it's a little dubious, I'm I'm certainly happy
• 3:06
  to. Take this questionable if he
• 3:07
  meant or podcasts, but nonetheless, we will, we will
• 3:10
  proceed. So give us a little background
• 3:13
  here. This is a brand new virus that
• 3:14
  just entered the you know, the world really we we didn't even
• 3:18
  know about it before November and it's now this full blown
• 3:21
  global pandemic. It's hitting the United States.
• 3:23
  It's caused, I think we're up to 10,000 deaths.
• 3:26
  Well, there have been 10 / 10,000 deaths in Italy.
• 3:28
  In the United States, there's over 5000 deaths and the numbers
• 3:31
  continue to climb. What what?
• 3:34
  Looking at this as a commentator, having looked at it
• 3:36
  from the beginning, especially having this having come out of
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  China, what's your big picture perspective on how bad this
• 3:42
  really is based on all the different experts you've been
• 3:44
  reading, all the different perspectives you've been looking
• 3:47
  at? Well, to begin, it's a lot worse
• 3:50
  than it needed to be. And the reason for that is the
• 3:52
  Chinese government lied about the virus from the very
• 3:55
  beginning. We didn't hear about this thing.
• 3:57
  And I mean, really, it didn't enter into the mainstream
• 3:59
  conversation until February. We we knew about it a little
• 4:03
  sooner than that. But there's evidence that this
• 4:05
  virus was in China and that the Chinese authorities knew about
• 4:08
  it as early as October and possibly even earlier.
• 4:11
  And when there were whistleblowers talking about
• 4:13
  this virus, the Chinese government punished them and
• 4:16
  clammed down on a. That literally gave his life.
• 4:19
  This young doctor said something weird is going on in Wuhan, a
• 4:22
  Chinese doctor, and he was literally, I think, imprisoned
• 4:25
  and silenced and then he ended up being released and could
• 4:27
  continue to treat patients and then died of the disease.
• 4:29
  And then he he actually succumbed to this disease that
• 4:32
  the government was was covering up.
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  So that was one problem. There was a study from the
• 4:35
  University of Southampton that said that if China had admitted
• 4:40
  to the world that the virus was taking place one week earlier,
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  they would have reduced the spread by 66%.
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  If they had admitted to the world two weeks earlier that the
• 4:51
  virus was taking place, they could have reduced it by 86%.
• 4:53
  Three weeks earlier would have reduced the spread by 95%.
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  So there is a lot of blood on the hands of the Chinese
• 5:00
  government here. And that's because that's
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  because they could have stopped the spread from other countries.
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  We could have closed borders or prevented do more extreme
• 5:07
  measures to prevent the spread coming into other countries,
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  right? Other countries just had no
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  clue. So we had, you know, foreign
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  nationals coming in from China and then that ultimately spread
• 5:16
  the disease obviously to northern Italy and then
• 5:18
  ultimately other countries in the United.
• 5:19
  States that's exactly right. And I mean you, you just see
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  what happened in Italy, where Italy was relying on a lot of
• 5:24
  low wage Chinese workers specifically in Milan.
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  And then which which city gets hit with the worst is going to
• 5:30
  be Milan. So that was a big problem.
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  This was compounded by the fact that the World Health
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  Organization, which we all think of as a totally neutral
• 5:39
  international organization, is actually a puppet of the Chinese
• 5:43
  government. The Chinese government for well
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  over a decade now, has sought to consolidate power in a lot of
• 5:48
  international institutions, particularly those in the United
• 5:50
  Nations. So, for instance, of the UN's
• 5:54
  many constituent organizations, China now controls four of them.
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  They have proxies in place to control four of them.
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  No other country controls more than 1.
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  And in the case of the World Health Organization, they
• 6:06
  installed a puppet leader there. And The Who covered up for
• 6:10
  China. So The Who didn't even send
• 6:12
  experts to look into what was happening in China until
• 6:14
  February. That is so many months too late.
• 6:17
  And now we're we're supposed to trust the WH OS information?
• 6:20
  In fact, the, the most energy that The Who has put into
• 6:24
  anything regarding the virus was in it was being spent as a part
• 6:28
  of a propaganda campaign to get people to stop acknowledging
• 6:31
  that the virus even came from China in the 1st place.
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  So they made the the situation a lot worse.
• 6:37
  Yeah. And I, I mean, I think that WHO,
• 6:39
  there have been a lot of concerns with them just on the
• 6:41
  issue on issue that, you know, I'm very passionate about
• 6:44
  abortion because they take a political stance.
• 6:47
  I mean, they don't acknowledge scientific facts about
• 6:49
  biological life, life in the womb.
• 6:51
  They don't talk about risk of abortion.
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  And they, they are pushing a political agenda there.
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  I don't think we should be surprised that there are other
• 6:57
  political agendas that they might be involved with.
• 6:59
  And we should take everything with a grain of a grain of salt.
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  I mean, one of the challenges of the United Nations and the World
• 7:04
  Health Organization, there's some good intentions, but at the
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  same time, there are a lot of political agendas that can come
• 7:09
  out to play from these superpowers.
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  And that's clearly it appears that it's happening with China,
• 7:14
  which is very unfortunate. And Taiwan is not getting to you
• 7:17
  have their response to the pandemic taken into account.
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  My understanding is WHO is really taking the China's side
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  on that and not allowing even experts to review what Taiwan is
• 7:28
  doing because of the political enmity between Taiwan and China?
• 7:31
  The Who won't allow their experts to acknowledge that
• 7:34
  Taiwan exists. They were actually interviewed
• 7:37
  about this and a reporter brought up Taiwan and the guy
• 7:41
  cancelled the call. He refused to even admit it.
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  So that made it a lot worse. And then in the United States,
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  President Trump actually, from the beginning has taken this
• 7:49
  very seriously because he closed off our virtual border with
• 7:52
  China. He stopped the flights.
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  Then he later on stopped the flights from Europe.
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  But in some of his rhetoric, he urged caution.
• 7:59
  He said, listen, we don't want this to be overblown.
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  Maybe people are being a little bit alarmist here.
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  So we don't want to stop everything for it.
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  Then, as you know, we did stop everything.
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  We've now got state shutdowns and now federal guidelines to
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  get people to stop moving around and social distance and stop
• 8:18
  working. And at the at the same time, I
• 8:22
  understand why President Trump did that and I understand why
• 8:25
  the governors did that. If you're being told that 2
• 8:27
  million Americans are going to die, you don't want the headline
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  to be Governor Newsom killed 2 million Americans.
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  So they've, they've, I mean, they've ground this economy to a
• 8:36
  halt. It was the greatest economy in
• 8:37
  the history of the world. Now what what's happening is
• 8:41
  we're seeing different numbers come in that maybe suggest those
• 8:44
  that 2,000,000 number was way too high.
• 8:46
  Well, let's, let's get into that because I think there have been
• 8:48
  some epitomizing like Doctor Unidis from Stanford and others
• 8:52
  that are experts themselves in infectious disease and it's
• 8:55
  spread. And then there are there's
• 8:56
  obviously the advisors to the president that are getting to
• 8:59
  advise directly. And, you know, there's this
• 9:01
  disparity between predictions, huge disparities between
• 9:04
  predictions of how far the virus will spread.
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  Talk to inform our audience a little more about what the what
• 9:09
  that disparity looks like. And, and, and you know, there's,
• 9:13
  it can be understandable to the degree that this is a brand new
• 9:16
  virus. It's just a few months in, but
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  there has been such a strong, strong response from the
• 9:20
  government in order to attempt to save lives.
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  And really we have to look at it, though, will there be more
• 9:26
  repercussions because of those strong responses?
• 9:28
  So First off, what does that disparity look like that you've
• 9:30
  seen as you've looked at the different experts in their
• 9:32
  positions on how bad this virus is and how it can spread?
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  The disparity is massive. We could be looking at a
• 9:38
  situation where 50,000 Americans die.
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  That is to say, fewer Americans than die each year from drug
• 9:43
  overdoses. You know, on par with the number
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  of Americans who could die each year from, you know, car
• 9:50
  accidents or, or the flu or things like that.
• 9:53
  Or you could see all the way up to 2 million, though
• 9:55
  increasingly that looks unlikely.
• 9:57
  And the reason for that is a problem with modeling.
• 10:00
  It's I, I think epidemiology it's, it is a field of science,
• 10:04
  but it's certainly not a precise science because you've got to
• 10:06
  predict the future. And the trouble with models is
• 10:08
  the conclusions that the models come up with are only as good as
• 10:12
  the data that you put into the models.
• 10:13
  Doctor Fauci made this point the other day.
• 10:15
  So if you get numbers just a little bit off at the beginning,
• 10:17
  you could get radically different results.
• 10:20
  Now, there are a number of scientists who are saying, wait
• 10:22
  a second, this 2,000,000 number is hysterical and unrealistic.
• 10:26
  You saw the scientist you mentioned, you saw Jay
• 10:29
  Bhattacharia out of Stanford, you saw Michael Levitt, a 2013
• 10:32
  Nobel laureate, all saying the numbers could be a lot lower.
• 10:35
  Jay Bhattacharia suggests that the number, the actual mortality
• 10:40
  rate couldn't possibly not be 3%.
• 10:43
  It could be 0.06% or it could be even lower and a big.
• 10:49
  Part of that my understanding is, is the fact that they're not
• 10:51
  doing their, the samples of that they're receiving of tests that
• 10:55
  are being done, they're testing at least the initial testing was
• 10:57
  on patients that exhibited the most extreme symptoms.
• 11:00
  So they had were seriously ill that were in hospitals being
• 11:04
  intubated on respirators. And so there's a whole
• 11:08
  population of people that may be carriers that are not exhibiting
• 11:11
  symptoms but are not being tested as well.
• 11:14
  So that that infection rate versus the death rate, we really
• 11:17
  do not have that clear. That's been the trouble with the
• 11:19
  data is my understanding. Right.
• 11:21
  Because you in terms of finding the mortality rate, you need 2
• 11:25
  numbers, the numerator and the denominator.
• 11:27
  You need to know the number of people who have died against the
• 11:30
  number of people who have been infected.
• 11:31
  But we have no idea what that number is.
• 11:33
  And a lot of these early policies of locking down all the
• 11:36
  states were based on what we now know is was a flawed study out
• 11:40
  of Imperial College in the United Kingdom.
• 11:43
  So there is now evidence that perhaps orders of magnitude more
• 11:47
  people have been infected with this, but they don't show
• 11:49
  symptoms or they show mild symptoms or they just don't go
• 11:51
  to the doctor because it's not so bad.
• 11:53
  I mean, I've talked to a lot of people, myself included, who had
• 11:56
  a really, really bad respiratory infection in late December or
• 12:00
  January who now think perhaps that was the coronavirus
• 12:03
  undetected. We just don't know.
• 12:05
  Part of This is why it's very important to get antibodies
• 12:07
  tests. So we want to be able to test
• 12:09
  not just if you have the virus, but if you have had the virus to
• 12:13
  get a clearer view on that number because there is going to
• 12:16
  come A reckoning here. Obviously, the governors and the
• 12:19
  president don't want to be held responsible for a million
• 12:23
  Americans. Who knows?
• 12:25
  I mean, I, I do not envy being a public official right now
• 12:28
  because you have to make judgement calls with limited
• 12:30
  information quickly because lies are on the line.
• 12:33
  And so we're seeing, you know, we've, we're seeing original
• 12:37
  originally Trump sort of reticence about making strong
• 12:39
  decisions on this because of the lack of data that he's making
• 12:42
  now stronger at least of the federal level guidelines.
• 12:45
  But then you see this very strong response from governors,
• 12:48
  like in the state of California where we're at, Governor Newsom,
• 12:51
  obviously Governor Cuomo, and then there's a question, is that
• 12:54
  too strong? Is it strong enough?
• 12:56
  I mean, obviously we're not, we're not in those decision
• 12:58
  making seats, but there are repercussions to every decision.
• 13:01
  And it's funny that you bring up Andrew Cuomo because Cuomo has
• 13:05
  the key line to trying to understand this ethical dilemma.
• 13:08
  He said he's, look, he's shut down the economy in New York.
• 13:11
  We've really shut down the global economy.
• 13:13
  So just last week, 6.6 million Americans filed for
• 13:16
  unemployment. Another 3.3 million filed the
• 13:18
  week before. You're right.
• 13:19
  Now, in two weeks, 10 million Americans thrown out of their
• 13:23
  jobs. That's not unprecedented, right?
• 13:26
  I mean, even the recession of 2008, I mean, I think that
• 13:29
  eclipses the unemployment filings for that recession.
• 13:32
  So we're in uncharted territory right now, yeah.
• 13:35
  We've never been here before. I mean, a better analogy than
• 13:38
  2008 would be the Great Depression.
• 13:40
  I mean, now hopefully, because we don't have as many underlying
• 13:44
  financial problems, hopefully the recovery could be a lot
• 13:46
  quicker than the Great Depression.
• 13:47
  But those are the kind of numbers we're dealing with.
• 13:49
  And what Andrew Cuomo said was if everything we have done saves
• 13:54
  just one life, then it will have all been worth it.
• 13:57
  And, you know, it's really ironic to hear Andrew Cuomo
• 14:00
  talking about pro-life since Andrew Cuomo is the man who
• 14:05
  celebrated. He turned the Freedom Tower the
• 14:07
  color pink to celebrate allowing abortion up until the point of
• 14:11
  birth in New York, I mean. That's, that's been my biggest
• 14:14
  concern with all of this is seeing that, you know, the, the
• 14:17
  fact that we're shutting down churches and schools, which I
• 14:20
  can understand and I promoted, you know, social distancing,
• 14:23
  especially because we don't know exactly the infection rate, the
• 14:26
  case for fatality rate to, to do our best to stop the spread.
• 14:30
  I mean, I think we can all agree on that.
• 14:32
  But some of these more extreme measures, I think they do need
• 14:35
  to be weighed. And I think good citizens should
• 14:37
  be look into it and, and try to be aware because these are our,
• 14:40
  these are our elected officials. But then also the fact that
• 14:42
  abortion facilities are open, I mean, in virtually every state
• 14:45
  except for Governor Abbott shutting them down in Texas,
• 14:47
  that was attempted in Louisiana. But in New York, where Cuomo
• 14:51
  says it's all worth it to save one life, he's allowing the
• 14:54
  abortion facilities to remain open, killing children.
• 14:57
  Same here in in California. In Los Angeles, Mayor Garcetti
• 14:59
  says life is precious. And that's why he's doing this.
• 15:03
  Shutting, shuttering of all the restaurants, churches and
• 15:05
  schools. And yet abortion facilities are
• 15:07
  considered essential services. I think that in and of itself,
• 15:12
  apart from all the suffering that the virus is causing, is
• 15:15
  incredibly problematic, Of course, the precedent that it's
• 15:18
  setting. And you know, abortionists are
• 15:20
  considered medical personnel, which is another ironic title
• 15:24
  that they have. But Even so, let's let's take
• 15:27
  the pro abortion premise at its face value.
• 15:31
  I thought what we were supposed to be doing is redirecting all
• 15:33
  medical personnel to try to help out with this pandemic.
• 15:35
  Why is it that we're canceling all other elective surgeries and
• 15:39
  medical procedures and yet we can still kill babies basically
• 15:43
  unimpeded throughout the United States?
• 15:44
  That's a big problem. And then the other problem here
• 15:47
  that Andrew Cuomo has to face is what does it mean to save a life
• 15:51
  in a pandemic? What he's forgetting is that
• 15:53
  during economic downturns, people die because of the
• 15:56
  economic downturns. Suicide rates spike, opioid
• 16:00
  deaths will spike. We're already in the midst of a
• 16:02
  horrible opioid crisis. Drug overdoses always spike
• 16:05
  during recessions and certainly depressions.
• 16:07
  So let's say you save one life in in the pandemic.
• 16:12
  You know, there's typically this effects people who are much
• 16:14
  older. So you extend someone's life
• 16:16
  who's 80 years old by a year. And as a result of that
• 16:20
  utilitarian calculation you've made, you end up killing someone
• 16:24
  through suicide. That person kills himself or
• 16:27
  through drug addiction. Or, you know, in in
• 16:29
  Philadelphia, they've relaxed crime rules now so that if
• 16:33
  you're in, if you're a burglar, if you're a vandal, if you're a
• 16:36
  prostitute, if you're a pimp, you will not be arrested.
• 16:39
  The cops can see you committing the ACT.
• 16:41
  They will not arrest you because they want to reduce the jail
• 16:43
  population for the coronavirus if it ever gets there.
• 16:46
  So what if what if you save one life, but one girl is lured into
• 16:50
  prostitution because of it ruins her life.
• 16:52
  And I mean. Yeah.
• 16:54
  I mean, it's very, very, very challenging decisions that
• 16:57
  they're having to make. I mean, one of the things, I
• 16:59
  mean, it's easy for us obviously to comment on it because we're
• 17:02
  not in those seats taking that heat if we make the right or the
• 17:04
  wrong decision. And you see this big difference
• 17:06
  between decisions like the governor of Florida, DeSantis
• 17:09
  versus the governor of New York and, you know, not enforcing
• 17:11
  such stringent guidelines to shut down businesses, etcetera.
• 17:16
  But you know what, what is, what do you think?
• 17:19
  I mean, it's easy again, for us to say, be concerned for the
• 17:21
  economy, be concerned for the lives lost through like you're
• 17:24
  describing maybe opioid overdose or through suicide or whatever
• 17:27
  it is. But what is the solution then?
• 17:29
  Because I think we can all agree we want to save lives.
• 17:32
  I think that we value the elderly just as much as the
• 17:34
  young. I think that's the pro-life
• 17:36
  position. There's not like 1 is more
• 17:37
  valuable than the other. Every life is precious, you
• 17:41
  know, And again, we're not in the in the seat to make these
• 17:43
  decisions ourselves. And yet what is the just way to
• 17:48
  judge even our elected officials right now, the ones who are
• 17:51
  making such extreme decisions? I mean, the abortion issue is
• 17:54
  clear. That's horrific that they're
• 17:55
  leaving the abortion facilities open, the personal protective
• 17:58
  equipment that our precious nurses and doctors fighting to
• 18:01
  save lives in hospitals that they need the gloves, the masks,
• 18:04
  you know, abortionists are now using, right?
• 18:06
  So that's clear that that's horrific.
• 18:08
  But what position do we really take then, for our elected
• 18:13
  officials who are in such a tough spot to have to make these
• 18:16
  calls? They're in a very tough spot.
• 18:18
  One mistake that they have virtually all made though, is
• 18:21
  they have turned over the governing power that we the
• 18:24
  people invest them with to experts.
• 18:28
  And I guess this is a little counterintuitive because people
• 18:31
  think during a big public health crisis, we should just do
• 18:33
  whatever the experts tell us to do.
• 18:35
  Meaning the disease experts. The disease experts, right?
• 18:38
  Well, you put your finger on the problem, which is that someone
• 18:41
  who is expert in one particular discipline is usually not very
• 18:45
  expert in other disciplines. And it has been a dream,
• 18:49
  particularly on the political left for a century now, to have
• 18:53
  government more and more governed by experts, by
• 18:56
  technocrats. You just put people in the room
• 18:58
  who are the smartest people, and they'll govern our lives.
• 19:01
  And we don't have to debate internal political.
• 19:03
  It's a. Question of, of human freedom,
• 19:05
  right? I think that's, that is where I
• 19:06
  think the real, the real nerve is right now.
• 19:09
  And the real you see these, you know, commentators saying and,
• 19:12
  and those on the conservative side really concerned about
• 19:14
  these actions taken by Governor Cuomo or, or Governor, you know,
• 19:18
  the California's election officials, Newsom or Garcetti,
• 19:22
  Mayor Garcetti. And you know, what is really at
• 19:24
  stake there, though, I think it is a question of freedom and a
• 19:29
  rule of law that is not an overreach of the government
• 19:32
  ruling every part of our economy, you know, interfering
• 19:35
  in the free market, destroying the free market, quite frankly,
• 19:37
  taking over our way of life as we know it.
• 19:40
  I think that's the, the feeling on the street that people have
• 19:42
  along with, of course, the economic straight up, you know,
• 19:45
  problems people are having, losing their jobs, losing their
• 19:47
  businesses. Talk, talk more about that.
• 19:50
  Tell us more about that because I think that's that's a real
• 19:52
  value difference that people have about, you know, life to be
• 19:56
  protected at any cost if the government can keep you safe
• 19:58
  versus a certain level of freedom and risk in order to
• 20:02
  enjoy freedom. And the question we're asking on
• 20:04
  that freedom point is who governs us?
• 20:07
  You know, I, I like Doctor Fauci.
• 20:08
  He seems like a nice guy. Nobody elected I.
• 20:10
  Think we all love him? Yeah, you know, he's great on
• 20:13
  TV. Very likeable.
• 20:14
  Yeah, to be very smart and. I'm sure he's well-intentioned.
• 20:17
  I mean, the guy, he's brilliant and he's trying to save lives.
• 20:20
  Sure, and that's an admirable thing to do.
• 20:23
  But nobody elected Doctor Fauci. And it reminds me of a line that
• 20:27
  Antonin Scalia, the late, great justice, put into his decision
• 20:31
  on Obergefell, which redefined marriage to include same sex
• 20:34
  unions. And he said, and I'm
• 20:36
  paraphrasing, that the particulars of this case are not
• 20:39
  what interests him the most. What interests him more is who
• 20:43
  rules me, Who will decide in that case, he was referring to
• 20:46
  the Supreme Court or the people through their representatives.
• 20:49
  And in this case, we're talking about, are we just going to be
• 20:51
  ruled by experts Who, by the way, if the public health
• 20:54
  experts were just to accomplish their task of preventing and
• 20:57
  mitigating the spread, they would shut down the economy for
• 21:00
  18 months, right? That is the best way to stop the
• 21:03
  spread. But we the people and our
• 21:04
  elected representatives have other things to think about.
• 21:07
  Human freedom, our ability to pay our rent and feed ourselves.
• 21:11
  And they're tied. I mean, you can't, like you said
• 21:13
  earlier, you can't protect human life if you have a totally
• 21:16
  tanked economy. I mean, there, there comes a
• 21:19
  point where it starts to be counterproductive.
• 21:22
  And, you know, and I think you're making such an important
• 21:24
  point that people I think need to really see what is happening
• 21:27
  here, which is who, who, who decides?
• 21:29
  You know, it's one thing if the experts say, you know, practice
• 21:32
  social distancing, it's we, we recommend it.
• 21:35
  Maybe it provides incentives. The government provides
• 21:37
  incentives for it. Businesses try to change the way
• 21:40
  they operate so that they make sure to, you know, abide by
• 21:43
  those standards, social distancing standards, extra
• 21:46
  hygiene. You know, in order to slow the
• 21:48
  spread versus you have to shut down versus you have to close
• 21:52
  your churches, even to the point of, of pastors being thrown into
• 21:55
  jail for open having their churches open or, or business as
• 21:59
  being threatened to have their licenses revoked.
• 22:01
  Doing that's a that's, that's no longer just slow the spread.
• 22:04
  That's you're going to be forced to take certain actions that
• 22:06
  will cripple your practice of freedom of religion right now or
• 22:09
  your business right now. Lila, consider that on the
• 22:12
  arresting of the pastors, we are now seeing jails being opened to
• 22:17
  get criminals out of jail in New York.
• 22:19
  They just released, it was a jail, jail just outside New
• 22:22
  York. They released 50 criminals, nine
• 22:25
  of whom were sex offenders, three of whom were Level 3 child
• 22:30
  rapists. Level 3, there's no level 4.
• 22:32
  OK, Level 3 is the highest level most likely to reoffend.
• 22:36
  They just let them go. They actually put some of them
• 22:38
  up at a local Holiday Inn. And yet in the meantime, in
• 22:42
  Florida and in Louisiana, the authorities are arresting
• 22:45
  pastors, 2 pastors here, charging them with misdemeanors,
• 22:49
  charging them for each count of holding a church service because
• 22:52
  they refused to shutter their doors.
• 22:54
  And you know, this is a question that goes across different
• 22:58
  religions. And I know people of good faith
• 23:00
  have a disagreement on this, but the traditional view, at least
• 23:03
  in the Catholic Church, was that now more than ever is when we
• 23:07
  need the sacraments. Now more than ever is is when we
• 23:10
  need our religious services. And yet it would, it would
• 23:12
  appear really bizarrely, that that is the area most
• 23:16
  specifically that the government has tried to shut down.
• 23:19
  Right well, I, I don't envy either the position of our
• 23:21
  beloved bishops or episcopate as Catholics.
• 23:23
  You know, I'm Catholic as many people listening.
• 23:25
  No, you know, I think Christians right now trying to celebrate
• 23:28
  church and or celebrate Lent and enjoy this season of prayer.
• 23:31
  I mean, that's a whole other aspect to this, that this is a
• 23:34
  global pandemic happening during Lent and it's a time for prayer
• 23:38
  mortification of time to look at our own mortality.
• 23:40
  What are your thoughts about that?
• 23:41
  Well, this is the key point I think in not just in the Church,
• 23:45
  but in the broader public reaction to this.
• 23:49
  Everyday we're going to see more people die from this virus.
• 23:52
  Now, there's actually been some good news or or hopeful news,
• 23:55
  which is that in New York so far, that's the epicenter of the
• 23:58
  virus in America. There have only been 18 people
• 24:01
  as of last night who have died from coronavirus without
• 24:05
  underlying health conditions like lung disease, like cancer,
• 24:09
  like, you know, pretty serious ailments.
• 24:11
  So that number is much lower. But every day, every person who
• 24:13
  dies is a tragedy. And everyone's very sad about
• 24:16
  that. People don't realize that 70,000
• 24:18
  people a year die from drug overdoses.
• 24:20
  People don't realize that 38,000 people a year die in car
• 24:23
  accidents. People don't realize that 7500
• 24:26
  people in the United States die every single day just because
• 24:30
  because that's what happens. We forget that we are going to
• 24:34
  die. And, you know, on Ash Wednesday,
• 24:36
  we received the memento Mori, the reminder that we are dust.
• 24:39
  And to dust we shall return. But I think increasingly, as we
• 24:43
  see the country secularize, people stop paying attention to
• 24:47
  these eternal questions. They're shocked.
• 24:49
  They're horrified by the fact that they're going to die.
• 24:52
  And so the reaction becomes so out of whack because we're
• 24:56
  denying A fundamental fact of our nature.
• 24:59
  Well, and it's all the more reason for us to be sharing the
• 25:01
  faith and the good news that there's life beyond death.
• 25:03
  There's that. There's an Easter after Lent.
• 25:06
  That's right. I mean that that's the the I was
• 25:09
  talking to my friend Spencer Clavin, who is Christian.
• 25:12
  He's an Anglican. So he's, you know, a little bit,
• 25:14
  you know, he's not quite all the way to Catholic.
• 25:16
  We love. We love them all.
• 25:18
  And we're working on it and, but, but Spencer said that he's
• 25:21
  not sure if God has a liturgical calendar, but he knows that God
• 25:25
  respects our liturgical calendar.
• 25:27
  And so the coincidence of this scourge beginning at Lent really
• 25:32
  shows us something. And as Catholics, you know, we
• 25:35
  need the sacraments. And this is the first time in my
• 25:38
  entire life, and I think in most people's lives that they have
• 25:42
  been cut off from the sacraments.
• 25:43
  We cannot go. And I think it certainly gives
• 25:47
  you more of a longing for it and more of an appreciation for it
• 25:50
  and a hope that we can see not only the commemoration of the
• 25:56
  resurrection on Easter, but maybe we can see a spiritual and
• 25:59
  national resurrection as well. I love that.
• 26:01
  And God is still with us. He is always with us and he's
• 26:04
  with us even more so in the darkness.
• 26:05
  So thank you so much, Michael. Awesome to talk with you.
• 26:08
  And we'll pray for each other and pray for this country.
• 26:11
  That sounds good to me. Thank you, Lila.
• 26:14
  Thank you guys so much for listening.
• 26:15
  Again, as Michael was saying, and we were just discussing for
• 26:17
  those people of faith, this is the time of Lent.
• 26:20
  I've talked about that before, but it is a particular time for
• 26:23
  us to really deeper do a deeper dive into our faith, into
• 26:27
  prayer, into really contemplating what is the, the
• 26:31
  purpose of our lives and trying to get closer to God during this
• 26:34
  time. So I wanted to encourage all of
• 26:36
  you to to use this time for that.
• 26:38
  I know it's been helpful for me to keep that in mind, especially
• 26:41
  with all the changes and the chaos around us to make this a
• 26:44
  time to focus more on prayer, focus more on family.
• 26:47
  Thank you all so much for listening.
• 26:48
  If you enjoyed this episode, please share it.
• 26:50
  Please subscribe to the podcast. Please also review, give us five
• 26:53
  stars that'll help the podcast reach more people.
• 26:56
  And as always, you can e-mail thoughts at lilaroshow.com.
• 26:59
  Send me your thoughts about future episodes.
• 27:01
  Guess anything that you want to share, I'd love to hear from
• 27:03
  you. That's thoughts at
• 27:04
  lilaroshow.com. Thanks so much guys and God
• 27:06
  bless.