Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / False Positive ft. Steve Deace
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: It has been one hundred seventy days since fifteen days
- 0:03Speaker 1: to slow the spread, So it seems like good at
- 0:05Speaker 1: time as any to take stock where we are now,
- 0:08Speaker 1: how the coronavirus pandemic stands, and most importantly, when we
- 0:13Speaker 1: will be able to reopen our country. This is Verdict
- 0:16Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- 0:25Speaker 1: I'm Michael Knowles, joined as ever by the Senator and
- 0:28Speaker 1: a very special guest, Steve Dace of the Steve Dace
- 0:33Speaker 1: Show over at the Blaze. I'm sure you've seen him
- 0:36Speaker 1: everywhere and he's a longtime friend, not just of the show,
- 0:39Speaker 1: but of Senator Cruz as well. Steve, Welcome, It's good
- 0:43Speaker 1: to have you. You know, Steve and I have spent
- 0:45Speaker 1: thousands of hours together on the road traveling. I gotta
- 0:50Speaker 1: tell you if Steve is brilliant, he is a passionate conservative.
- 0:56Speaker 1: But I gotta tell y'all so there may be no
- 0:58Speaker 1: one in the country who is my phone up with
- 1:01Speaker 1: more texts during this whole pandemic than Steve at every stage,
- 1:06Speaker 1: because because he has been diving in from the beginning
- 1:11Speaker 1: of this pandemic to the numbers to what the numbers
- 1:14Speaker 1: mean to what the testing tells us, to what the
- 1:18Speaker 1: antibody numbers tell us, to what the impacts of the
- 1:21Speaker 1: shutdown tell us. And so Steve and I have talked
- 1:24Speaker 1: about many, many issues at great length, but but I
- 1:28Speaker 1: think this pod in particular, it's it's it's valuable to
- 1:32Speaker 1: get in to what's going on with the pandemic and
- 1:36Speaker 1: the country right now. So I know that there are lies,
- 1:39Speaker 1: damned lies and statistics, and everybody seems to have their
- 1:43Speaker 1: own statistics on this pandemic. And even I try to
- 1:46Speaker 1: keep my head into it, I can't really make heads
- 1:48Speaker 1: or tails of it. I don't know what to believe. So, Steve,
- 1:51Speaker 1: where do we stand on the coronavirus? I think if
- 1:54Speaker 1: I could choose one point for us to center the
- 1:57Speaker 1: conversation on, it would really come down to what we've
- 2:01Speaker 1: learned about our testing metric guys, because it goes to
- 2:04Speaker 1: the heart of why we You know, none of us
- 2:06Speaker 1: are epidemiologists. We're all fairly intelligent guys, but it's not
- 2:09Speaker 1: our field of expertise. And so I like to keep
- 2:12Speaker 1: the conversation where it impacts public policy as much as possible,
- 2:17Speaker 1: because that is each of our areas of expertise. And
- 2:20Speaker 1: if you look at the number one concern for why
- 2:22Speaker 1: we did these shutdowns across the country, it's because we
- 2:25Speaker 1: were concerned about masses of asymptomatic spread that all kinds
- 2:28Speaker 1: of people who were otherwise healthy would get the virus,
- 2:32Speaker 1: go home, infect grandma, grandpa, and or have these mass
- 2:36Speaker 1: spread or events and then go home. And then we
- 2:38Speaker 1: get to an R two R three situation. Right now,
- 2:41Speaker 1: let me stop, stop you right there and just ask
- 2:44Speaker 1: for folks listening, what is an R two R three
- 2:47Speaker 1: What does what does that mean? It means the rate
- 2:49Speaker 1: of who's infected or how many people you infect based
- 2:53Speaker 1: on who's infected. Right, So does two people get infected
- 2:56Speaker 1: for every person that's infected, three people, etc. The goal
- 2:59Speaker 1: in a paid MC is to get to R one
- 3:01Speaker 1: and then hopefully to R zero. Okay. And so if
- 3:04Speaker 1: you go way back to March twenty sixth, there's a
- 3:07Speaker 1: guy that we used to think was brilliant named Didier
- 3:09Speaker 1: Rayalt was considered the leading infectious disease expert in the
- 3:14Speaker 1: world until March twelfth, and that's when he had the
- 3:17Speaker 1: unfortunate circumstance of having President Trump site positively and affirmatively
- 3:22Speaker 1: his research on hydroxy chloroquin as a treatment for COVID nineteen.
- 3:26Speaker 1: So all over the world, yes, well it was for
- 3:29Speaker 1: him at the time. All over the world. We were
- 3:31Speaker 1: beginning to use hydroxy chloroquin until it was orange man
- 3:34Speaker 1: bad and now suddenly we could not write well. On
- 3:37Speaker 1: March twenty sixth, he issued a piece on PCR testing
- 3:42Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen and if you go back to the
- 3:44Speaker 1: first stars, the World Health Organization was very concerned about
- 3:47Speaker 1: the amount of false positives with PCR testing because of
- 3:51Speaker 1: how sensitive they were, and they wanted two positives before
- 3:54Speaker 1: they would report. And so a PCR test is the
- 3:59Speaker 1: test that's the it's used most frequently. It's the one
- 4:03Speaker 1: where they stick the thing way up your nose and
- 4:05Speaker 1: it feels like it's in the back of your brain,
- 4:06Speaker 1: and it takes often a couple of days or even
- 4:11Speaker 1: a week or two in some circumstances to get the
- 4:14Speaker 1: result back correct. It's a great testing module. They're very sensitive,
- 4:18Speaker 1: they're very accurate, but like any other algorithm, it comes
- 4:21Speaker 1: down to what do you program it for the setting
- 4:24Speaker 1: that you want. And so back on March twenty sixth,
- 4:27Speaker 1: Rail put out a paper in France saying, hey, what
- 4:30Speaker 1: we're finding is when we get beyond thirty cts, all right,
- 4:35Speaker 1: which is cycle thresholds, all right, meaning how many times
- 4:39Speaker 1: they have to zero in on a sample before they
- 4:41Speaker 1: detect a virus, like when you're zooming in on something
- 4:43Speaker 1: on your phone or your computer. Okay, when we have
- 4:47Speaker 1: to zoom zoom beyond thirty times, these people are not
- 4:51Speaker 1: they're not contagious, they're probably not infected. He even in
- 4:54Speaker 1: his papery refers to them as quote viral artifacts. And
- 4:57Speaker 1: we all know what an artifact is. It's something that's
- 4:59Speaker 1: long since gone. It's a remnant of something that's long
- 5:02Speaker 1: since dead. Right, And so he recommended that no one
- 5:06Speaker 1: set their PCR tests above a cycle threshold or a
- 5:08Speaker 1: CT of thirty three, and recommended thirty for whatever reasons.
- 5:12Speaker 1: And we don't know the answer to this, and this
- 5:14Speaker 1: is probably where it becomes your job as a senator
- 5:16Speaker 1: to help us find out our CDC and CDC like
- 5:20Speaker 1: institutions across the world decided to set their sensitivity levels
- 5:25Speaker 1: anywhere from thirty five to forty. In our country, it's
- 5:28Speaker 1: thirty seven to forty. And so what the New York
- 5:31Speaker 1: Times found when they did this survey across the country
- 5:34Speaker 1: is that if your state is at a thirty seven
- 5:36Speaker 1: or at a forty, anywhere from forty to ninety percent
- 5:40Speaker 1: of our positive test are false positives because these people
- 5:44Speaker 1: are either asymptomatic to the point they're not contagious, they're
- 5:47Speaker 1: not contagious at all, or it's a viral artifact. We're
- 5:50Speaker 1: picking up a remnant of an exposure that just is
- 5:53Speaker 1: no longer any kind of a live culture. Well, I
- 5:56Speaker 1: can't begin to express what that means from a public
- 5:58Speaker 1: is Steve Steven Let me let me stop you for
- 6:01Speaker 1: a second, because I want to underscore something that you
- 6:04Speaker 1: mentioned there, but that a lot of folks listening and
- 6:06Speaker 1: watching may not know. It would be easy for some
- 6:11Speaker 1: skeptics perhaps to dismiss the three of us as crazy
- 6:15Speaker 1: right wingers. But but but you mentioned The New York Times,
- 6:19Speaker 1: which I think it's fair to say, whether or not
- 6:22Speaker 1: we're crazy right wingers, the New York Times is not
- 6:25Speaker 1: a crazy right wing institution. I don't think that's going
- 6:27Speaker 1: too far out on a limb to say that. And
- 6:31Speaker 1: The New York Times wrote a stunning article just a
- 6:35Speaker 1: few days ago that that lays out exactly what you're saying. So,
- 6:39Speaker 1: so if you're skeptical of what you're hearing right now,
- 6:43Speaker 1: I'm going to say something I have never said before
- 6:45Speaker 1: and probably will never say again. Go look up the
- 6:47Speaker 1: New York Times. Go read the article from the New
- 6:50Speaker 1: York Times. And by the way, if the New York
- 6:55Speaker 1: Times and Steve Dace and Cruise and Knolls are all agreeing,
- 6:59Speaker 1: that may actually be in the Book of Revelations a
- 7:02Speaker 1: sign of the end times, I think so. And by
- 7:07Speaker 1: the way, the way it was reported in the New
- 7:09Speaker 1: York Times seemed to be this kind of stunning revelation
- 7:12Speaker 1: that you could have up to ninety percent of people
- 7:14Speaker 1: who are not contagious. And I think that's how a
- 7:16Speaker 1: lot of people took it. It's how I took it.
- 7:18Speaker 1: But Steve, it seems to me what you're saying is
- 7:20Speaker 1: this was built into the testing from the beginning, that
- 7:23Speaker 1: by making the tests so hyper sensitive beyond what would
- 7:27Speaker 1: be the usual convention, that you were setting yourself up
- 7:30Speaker 1: for this kind of scenario. Now, this is where from
- 7:33Speaker 1: a public policy standpoint, we have to get into what
- 7:35Speaker 1: was the motivation for this And if you want to
- 7:37Speaker 1: give everyone the maximum benefited it out back in March.
- 7:40Speaker 1: It is a novel coronavirus. Now, it's not a novel virus.
- 7:43Speaker 1: We have been studying coronaviruses for seventy years. The common
- 7:47Speaker 1: cold is one of the coronaviruses, for example. But it
- 7:50Speaker 1: was the first time we had seen one of these
- 7:51Speaker 1: mutate from animal to animal to animal to human and
- 7:54Speaker 1: behave like this. And we also understood that we couldn't
- 7:57Speaker 1: trust China's data. So if we all went into this saying,
- 8:00Speaker 1: let's be hyper cautious, We're still in the cold flu
- 8:03Speaker 1: season anyway. There's not a lot going on in this
- 8:05Speaker 1: country in March anyway, except for spring breakers, so let's
- 8:09Speaker 1: be hyper sensitive about this. Fine, But why we have
- 8:13Speaker 1: continued to do this now for five for six months?
- 8:16Speaker 1: You know, there was an interesting there's an interesting situation
- 8:18Speaker 1: happening at the University of Alabama as we speak. Last
- 8:21Speaker 1: I heard they have reported twelve hundred positive cases since
- 8:25Speaker 1: the students returned. But news we went and did a
- 8:27Speaker 1: survey of these cases and found almost all of them
- 8:30Speaker 1: were asymptomatic and there were zero hospitalizations. LSU and Clemson,
- 8:34Speaker 1: the top two teams in college football last year, when
- 8:37Speaker 1: they brought the student athletes back to campus in June
- 8:39Speaker 1: and started testing, they had fifty four combined positives, all
- 8:44Speaker 1: almost all asymptomatic, zero hospitalizations. So how so that actually
- 8:49Speaker 1: dovetails with the New York Times report, meaning that because
- 8:52Speaker 1: we have this case demit going on right now and
- 8:55Speaker 1: which we're creating so many cases, that's not we're doing
- 8:58Speaker 1: too much testing. I love the fact we're doing too
- 9:01Speaker 1: much testing because it shows that the virus is actually
- 9:04Speaker 1: not as strong or as lethal as we originally feared
- 9:07Speaker 1: back in March. But there's a difference between too much
- 9:09Speaker 1: testing and too many cases. We had sixty million cases
- 9:14Speaker 1: of H one N one guys when the Obama administration
- 9:16Speaker 1: finally decided to cut off the testing because they it
- 9:20Speaker 1: wasn't going anywhere. This is what we're doing now, and
- 9:23Speaker 1: we've got to realize what is our ultimate metric to
- 9:26Speaker 1: reopen the country. When deaths plummeted around Memorial Day weekend,
- 9:29Speaker 1: we were told, yeah, but then the cases we're too high.
- 9:32Speaker 1: Well now we've had six straight weeks of cases going down,
- 9:35Speaker 1: and we're being told, well, now now it's about deaths.
- 9:37Speaker 1: We need a defined metric of what it is that
- 9:40Speaker 1: actually says we're beating this thing, and I'll leap more.
- 9:44Speaker 1: Go ahead, Well, Steve, you know I'm here in Los
- 9:46Speaker 1: Angeles and in California. The new metric for reopening, to
- 9:50Speaker 1: be almost fully reopened, is that you've got to get
- 9:53Speaker 1: down to a two percent rate of positive tests. So
- 9:57Speaker 1: if we have this issue of the tests that you're
- 10:00Speaker 1: describing and that the New York Times is describing, then
- 10:02Speaker 1: then you're in a situation where it looks it looks
- 10:04Speaker 1: like we're never gonna right. Last week, Los Angeles County
- 10:07Speaker 1: was at its lowest rate for hospitalizations since April second.
- 10:11Speaker 1: Nationwide for COVID symptoms, we are at the lowest rate
- 10:15Speaker 1: of hospitalization since March twenty first. Nationwide, we are below
- 10:19Speaker 1: two percent of er visits are for COVID like symptoms. Now, guys,
- 10:23Speaker 1: I ask you without not a therapeutic, a meaningful vaccine,
- 10:27Speaker 1: Without a meaningful vaccine, and since we all since now
- 10:30Speaker 1: apparently the natural herd immunity that saved human civilization from
- 10:34Speaker 1: plagues for six thousand years is now suddenly voodoo. So
- 10:37Speaker 1: without without herd immunity and without a meaningful vaccine, in
- 10:40Speaker 1: a nation of three hundred and thirty one million. How
- 10:43Speaker 1: do we do better than less than two percent of
- 10:45Speaker 1: er visits for COVID? Wh When are the numbers low enough?
- 10:48Speaker 1: I think that's the question instant. And let me drill
- 10:51Speaker 1: down a little bit in the testing information you're talking about,
- 10:54Speaker 1: and what's in this New York Times article, which is
- 10:58Speaker 1: we're not saying that COVID isn't real, that it isn't serious,
- 11:04Speaker 1: and and if you're very elderly, if you've got serious
- 11:08Speaker 1: other health conditions, COVID can be lethal. But for a
- 11:15Speaker 1: great many people who are not elderly, a great many
- 11:18Speaker 1: people who don't have other serious health ailments, the fatality
- 11:23Speaker 1: rate for COVID is much much much lower. And the
- 11:27Speaker 1: point you're emphasizing here, and it's actually something as you
- 11:30Speaker 1: read the New York Times article that was really stunning,
- 11:33Speaker 1: is the testing is producing a massive number of false positives,
- 11:38Speaker 1: over ninety percent. And these false positives are people. You know,
- 11:44Speaker 1: it's worth drilling down a little bit at what it
- 11:46Speaker 1: means if the test is said at thirty seven or
- 11:49Speaker 1: at forty, that's that. I like the analogy of sort
- 11:52Speaker 1: of zooming in, zooming in zooming in So that's super
- 11:55Speaker 1: zoomed in, so it detects a little bit of virus
- 11:59Speaker 1: in you, but not much, not enough virus typically to
- 12:03Speaker 1: make you sick. And interestingly, and really importantly, not enough
- 12:09Speaker 1: virus probably, although we're still learning how this operates, but
- 12:13Speaker 1: not enough virus very possibly, let me put it that way,
- 12:16Speaker 1: not enough virus very possibly to be contagious. And this
- 12:21Speaker 1: insight is important because if you want to stop a pandemic,
- 12:24Speaker 1: what you want to focus on is people who are contagious.
- 12:28Speaker 1: You want to stop someone, even if they're healthy, from
- 12:30Speaker 1: giving it to someone else who's very vulnerable. And if
- 12:34Speaker 1: the vast majority of these false positives are not having
- 12:38Speaker 1: symptoms and not contagious, it means we're focusing our energy
- 12:41Speaker 1: the wrong place rather than directly on the people that
- 12:45Speaker 1: actually have a significant amount of virus, a significant viral
- 12:51Speaker 1: loading their body where they could well be symptomatic and
- 12:56Speaker 1: getting sick and they could well be contagious. Is that
- 12:58Speaker 1: am I characterizing that fairly? Steve, you nailed it. You
- 13:04Speaker 1: nailed its, Senator. And then this goes back to the
- 13:06Speaker 1: beginning of the lockdowns, where we didn't secure America's nursing
- 13:10Speaker 1: homes up until about the end of July, something like
- 13:12Speaker 1: forty five percent of all COVID deaths in America had
- 13:16Speaker 1: taken place in a long term care facility. Gentlemen, only
- 13:19Speaker 1: zero point six percent of Americans live in a long
- 13:22Speaker 1: term healthcare facility. So we didn't lock down the vulnerable
- 13:27Speaker 1: because we put in this incredible effort to lock everybody
- 13:30Speaker 1: else down, and it was over the sphere of asymptomatic spread.
- 13:34Speaker 1: The largest contact tracing study that was done in this
- 13:36Speaker 1: world so far was about two weeks ago, over five cases.
- 13:40Speaker 1: Eight percent of them they could trace back to some
- 13:44Speaker 1: form of asymptomatic spread, eight percent out of over three
- 13:47Speaker 1: thousand cases. So we made this huge investment. We went essentially,
- 13:52Speaker 1: we went out were like it, We went honey with
- 13:54Speaker 1: mice with an elephant gun. We made this huge investment
- 13:58Speaker 1: in locking everyone down over the canarative asymptomatic spread and
- 14:02Speaker 1: didn't protect the most of vulnerable among us. If I'm
- 14:04Speaker 1: elderly in Alabama, why are we testing all these students
- 14:07Speaker 1: at Alabama? What are we why are we protecting well
- 14:10Speaker 1: and Steve? You know, you know it's interesting that I
- 14:14Speaker 1: can tell you firsthand. I've seen how the understanding of
- 14:18Speaker 1: doctors and scientists and epidimimologists about this disease has changed
- 14:23Speaker 1: and been uncertain, which is Michael and I were observing
- 14:26Speaker 1: earlier today that it was back in March, actually on
- 14:29Speaker 1: the Verdict podcast where we did a podcast from the
- 14:34Speaker 1: stage at Sepack with Ronald McDaniel, the head of the RNC,
- 14:38Speaker 1: and we did it live. It was a fun episode
- 14:40Speaker 1: at Spack, and you'll recall at Spack Michael and I
- 14:45Speaker 1: both encountered an individual who subsequently tested positive and was symptomatic.
- 14:50Speaker 1: He got he got ill. And in the wake of
- 14:55Speaker 1: that that that's when I decided initially to self quarantine.
- 14:59Speaker 1: And this is right the beginning of when COVID was
- 15:02Speaker 1: starting to become a meaningful issue in the US, and
- 15:07Speaker 1: the physicians all told me, if you're asymptomatic, and if
- 15:12Speaker 1: the person was not actively sick when you encountered him,
- 15:15Speaker 1: you don't have a concern, you don't need to quarantine,
- 15:18Speaker 1: You're fine. And I ended up decide I'm going to
- 15:22Speaker 1: stay home to protect everyone else around. But what's interesting is,
- 15:27Speaker 1: having seen the months that have gone on, I have
- 15:29Speaker 1: seen the experts at CDC say categorically, asymptomatic people cannot
- 15:35Speaker 1: transmit it, which is what they told me in March.
- 15:38Speaker 1: Categorically too, there was a period of time where they
- 15:41Speaker 1: were focused on, Okay, the whole worry is asymptomatic, and
- 15:44Speaker 1: I have to admit that felt a little weird, a
- 15:47Speaker 1: weird focus. And then we seem to be moving back
- 15:51Speaker 1: into an area of a greater common sense that we
- 15:55Speaker 1: need to focus on who's actually seriously contagious. And you know,
- 16:00Speaker 1: as you were talking about nursing homes, here's a question
- 16:04Speaker 1: for you, Steve. Can you think of a more catastrophically
- 16:09Speaker 1: damaging public health decision than the public policy of the
- 16:14Speaker 1: New York State government and Governor Cuomo, who was just
- 16:17Speaker 1: lionized at the DNC then his policies of sending people
- 16:22Speaker 1: into nursing homes who were who were sick with COVID
- 16:28Speaker 1: and were contagious, and the incredible death told that that
- 16:31Speaker 1: resulted from that. I cannot, And Ted, I gotta tell you,
- 16:35Speaker 1: I'm pretty cynical, as you well know, this is the
- 16:38Speaker 1: worst gas lighting I've ever seen. I mean, this is
- 16:41Speaker 1: what the retconning of Cuomo's record where this is concerned.
- 16:45Speaker 1: I mean, we're sitting here the early September and right
- 16:49Speaker 1: now if New York was its own country, it would
- 16:51Speaker 1: still be a sixth worst country in the world for
- 16:54Speaker 1: COVID nineteen death like the seventh worst country in the
- 16:57Speaker 1: world for COVID cases per one million. Still about one
- 17:01Speaker 1: out of every five deaths in America from COVID occurred
- 17:04Speaker 1: in New York or New Jersey. And and so the
- 17:08Speaker 1: way that this has been retcon and we've been gas
- 17:11Speaker 1: lighted that he's some kind of hero. And you look
- 17:13Speaker 1: at a guy like Ron DeSantis in Florida, for example,
- 17:15Speaker 1: where he's got a larger population, he's got a larger
- 17:18Speaker 1: elderly population, and his CFR is lower than the countries
- 17:23Speaker 1: a case fatality rate which is easy to divide, which
- 17:26Speaker 1: is just simply the amount of cases divided by the
- 17:28Speaker 1: amount of people who who sadly died, and it's one
- 17:32Speaker 1: point nine percent in Florida, below the national average, and
- 17:36Speaker 1: the one in New York is seven point one percent.
- 17:38Speaker 1: So he's almost seven times lower than the one in
- 17:41Speaker 1: New York, with the second largest elderly population per capita
- 17:45Speaker 1: in the country. And he gets ripped as some kind
- 17:47Speaker 1: of a grim raper and Cuomo gets elevated. So what
- 17:50Speaker 1: did New York do wrong, and what did New Jersey
- 17:53Speaker 1: do wrong? What New York did wrong? He is there,
- 17:55Speaker 1: and there is a debate about whether this came from
- 17:58Speaker 1: the fence. There is a bureau that did recommend that
- 18:02Speaker 1: nursing homes because they were concerned coming off the Imperial
- 18:05Speaker 1: College and especially the IHMME surveys, that we were going
- 18:08Speaker 1: to overload the hospitals. There was a memo that suggested
- 18:12Speaker 1: that states could take a look. Some minor bureaucracy you've
- 18:15Speaker 1: probably never heard of, did put out a memo suggesting
- 18:18Speaker 1: that states take a look at the possibility of reinserting
- 18:22Speaker 1: COVID infected patients back into nursing homes if they weren't
- 18:25Speaker 1: immediately in danger of perishing, because they were concerned about
- 18:30Speaker 1: ICU overload, all right. And so six states took the
- 18:33Speaker 1: lead on this. Five of them were governed by Democrats,
- 18:36Speaker 1: and then there was Massachusetts, which as a Republican governor
- 18:39Speaker 1: who's basically a Democrat. All right. New York was the
- 18:42Speaker 1: one that took the lead out of these six states.
- 18:44Speaker 1: And if you look at the death rate in these
- 18:46Speaker 1: six states that made made this decision compared to the
- 18:49Speaker 1: rest of the country, it's really just not even close.
- 18:53Speaker 1: And what they did is they brought a bomb into
- 18:55Speaker 1: their nursing homes. And if nursing homes or anything they are,
- 18:59Speaker 1: they are gets of autoimmune deficiencies. Yeah, you're talking about
- 19:03Speaker 1: the elderly obviously, And so they brought them in and
- 19:05Speaker 1: re exposed them to COVID with these reinsertions of these
- 19:09Speaker 1: COVID patients. And there are some estimate. Phil Kirpin's a
- 19:12Speaker 1: phenomenal researcher out there. He estimates that it could be
- 19:15Speaker 1: twenty thousand people in New York died in New York
- 19:18Speaker 1: nursing homes. The AP has been passed pointed out on
- 19:20Speaker 1: numerous occasions that the numbers that Cuomo and his stand
- 19:23Speaker 1: are putting out are false and inaccurate. And the other
- 19:26Speaker 1: day Cuomo said, well, you know, it's probably gonna take
- 19:28Speaker 1: tim arow November fifth or so thrust to get an
- 19:31Speaker 1: accurate account. Gee, I wonder why we might take until
- 19:34Speaker 1: November fifth. Anybody know why that's a magic date. What's
- 19:37Speaker 1: going on in thirds? Just coincidence? I would say, Steve, Well,
- 19:40Speaker 1: I think this is the point. You put it so well,
- 19:43Speaker 1: it's this gas lighting, it's it's some of the greatest
- 19:46Speaker 1: gaslighting we've ever seen, and that isn't even coming from
- 19:50Speaker 1: you know, the scientists or people looking at the data.
- 19:52Speaker 1: That is coming from the politicians and you, miy I.
- 19:55Speaker 1: I want to ask him two questions. Number one, for
- 19:58Speaker 1: people listening, if you want to understand more about the numbers,
- 20:01Speaker 1: if you want to dig down more deeply, are their names?
- 20:05Speaker 1: Are their people? Are their scientists? Are their researchers that
- 20:09Speaker 1: folks to look for and read what they're saying. I
- 20:13Speaker 1: would urge people to go back to Johnny and Eades
- 20:15Speaker 1: at Stanford University his very first white paper on March seventeenth,
- 20:20Speaker 1: which all he did, He's the head of their public
- 20:22Speaker 1: health department at Stanford, which is a top five medical
- 20:25Speaker 1: school in the country. All he did was break down
- 20:27Speaker 1: the i FR and the CFAR from our original guinea pig,
- 20:30Speaker 1: the Diamond Princess cruise ship, and project out what that
- 20:33Speaker 1: would be for our American population. And he nailed those
- 20:36Speaker 1: numbers back on March seventeenth exactly. He was considered a quack,
- 20:41Speaker 1: but he's turned out to be exactly right. Oxford University,
- 20:44Speaker 1: the number one university in the world. Numerous epidemiologist at
- 20:47Speaker 1: Oxford had been calling bs on this all along. So
- 20:51Speaker 1: I mean I would look at a doctor. Tony Katz
- 20:53Speaker 1: at Yale University is another one. I mean, there's a
- 20:56Speaker 1: long list. That's what's been fascinating about this guy's from
- 20:59Speaker 1: the very beginning. When I started poking at the Imperial
- 21:02Speaker 1: College model and realized that their math did not add up,
- 21:05Speaker 1: I was like, you know, this is going to be
- 21:06Speaker 1: like a climate change debate. It's gonna be Steve days Breitbart,
- 21:10Speaker 1: Michael Knowles against academia. Right. What blew me away is
- 21:14Speaker 1: how much of academia all over the world has been
- 21:17Speaker 1: pushing back on the It's Steve, let me let me
- 21:20Speaker 1: ask you. I mean, look the institutions you mentioned, Stanford, Oxford, Yale.
- 21:26Speaker 1: I mean those are not fly by night institutions. Okay,
- 21:29Speaker 1: Yale is, but but the other two are not. I
- 21:32Speaker 1: knew that was coming. You can't give me a hagging
- 21:35Speaker 1: curveball like that and not expect me to swing. But like, like,
- 21:38Speaker 1: how do you get researchers and physicians and doctors at
- 21:45Speaker 1: the most esteemed academic institutions on the face of the planet.
- 21:48Speaker 1: How do you get them dismissed over and over again
- 21:51Speaker 1: as quacks that seems an odd, an odd dynamic. What's
- 21:55Speaker 1: going on? I wish I knew? Now I will tell
- 21:58Speaker 1: you this. You mentioned the whole thing that you were
- 22:00Speaker 1: told at Sepack about asymptomatic spread. Guys, when somebody in
- 22:03Speaker 1: your office is come ins and says, you know, my
- 22:05Speaker 1: kid at home, I think has the flu. If they
- 22:08Speaker 1: have no fever, no cough, no symptoms, do you make
- 22:10Speaker 1: them go home? No? Nobody does that, right, Okay, So
- 22:13Speaker 1: why did we do that with this? You know? Doctor
- 22:16Speaker 1: Scott Atlas was on my show on April twenty seventh
- 22:19Speaker 1: and he said something very interesting, which is, we have
- 22:22Speaker 1: suspended the natural laws of biology, immunology and virology. We've
- 22:26Speaker 1: acted like we have We don't have hundreds of years
- 22:29Speaker 1: and decades of established science on this, and I can't
- 22:31Speaker 1: figure out why. Thankfully, he was brought into the White
- 22:34Speaker 1: House Coronavirus Task Force about a month ago, and I
- 22:37Speaker 1: think you'll notice the difference and messaging from the White
- 22:40Speaker 1: House since he was brought in. He gave a fantastic
- 22:43Speaker 1: press conference a couple of days ago with Governor De
- 22:46Speaker 1: Santis down in Florida. Because I don't think this is
- 22:49Speaker 1: about science. The question that you asked, had I think
- 22:52Speaker 1: that we've gotten into the politics of this, and I
- 22:55Speaker 1: think that's what's really sad is it's made it so
- 22:58Speaker 1: that suddenly a drug that's been ft approved for sixty
- 23:01Speaker 1: years is not healthy, despite all the studies around the
- 23:04Speaker 1: world that showed that it has at least some marked
- 23:07Speaker 1: success early on as a treatment. The level of politicization
- 23:11Speaker 1: of this is just frankly despicable given to human lives
- 23:15Speaker 1: that are at stake. College football, you have strong thoughts
- 23:19Speaker 1: on this, Share your thoughts on college football. Well. According
- 23:24Speaker 1: to CDC, those fifteen to twenty four right in the
- 23:27Speaker 1: age you're playing high school and college football are twelve
- 23:29Speaker 1: point nine percent of the population, and yet there's zero
- 23:32Speaker 1: point two percent of people who have died with COVID.
- 23:36Speaker 1: Only one point five percent of deaths since March of
- 23:39Speaker 1: those in that age group have been with COVID. There's
- 23:43Speaker 1: not a single recorded case that we can point to
- 23:45Speaker 1: around the world of a student giving a teacher COVID
- 23:49Speaker 1: why we're not playing football when co morbidities are the
- 23:53Speaker 1: number one cause of death with COVID, ninety four percent
- 23:55Speaker 1: of the deaths have been with co morbidities. Because the
- 23:58Speaker 1: number one thing this virus does is weaken your immune system.
- 24:00Speaker 1: So if you're well, Steve, I have to ask, is
- 24:03Speaker 1: I notice you're using very specific language. You're saying dying
- 24:05Speaker 1: with COVID, which I think ties into this ninety four
- 24:08Speaker 1: percent six percent number that has been going around. What
- 24:11Speaker 1: does that mean? I mean, what's the distinction here and
- 24:13Speaker 1: what are we talking about with the consent? Through August fifteen,
- 24:15Speaker 1: CD says six percent of deaths were people who walked
- 24:19Speaker 1: in who are otherwise healthy, got COVID nineteen and died.
- 24:22Speaker 1: The other ninety four percent were people who had an
- 24:25Speaker 1: average of two point one comorbidities, meaning that this virus
- 24:30Speaker 1: weakened they're already weakened immune systems. It does not mean
- 24:33Speaker 1: that ninety four percent of deaths are fake new That's
- 24:36Speaker 1: not what it means. What it means, though, is the
- 24:38Speaker 1: way that this virus attacks the human body. Is it
- 24:41Speaker 1: specifically targets those who already have an immune deficiency. So somebody,
- 24:46Speaker 1: you guys well know that I work with Glenn Beck
- 24:48Speaker 1: at the Blaze. He has autoimmune disease. He would not
- 24:51Speaker 1: normally have to self quarantine during a typical flu season, right,
- 24:55Speaker 1: but because this virus specifically goes after weakened immune systems
- 25:00Speaker 1: and did self quarantine from our studios for about two
- 25:02Speaker 1: to three months. And so it is a very vicious virus.
- 25:06Speaker 1: I don't want to understate that whatsoever, but there's a
- 25:09Speaker 1: very targeted demo that it goes after. And that's why
- 25:12Speaker 1: this policy that we have done of attacking mice with
- 25:15Speaker 1: elephant guns. Guys, I'll leave you with this. I mean,
- 25:18Speaker 1: look at Hawaii. Hawaii has had some form of a
- 25:21Speaker 1: mask mandate since April twenty fourth. They're two thousand miles
- 25:24Speaker 1: away from the next closest civilization. They've seen as seven
- 25:28Speaker 1: hundred percent increase in cases there Hong Kong, where they've
- 25:32Speaker 1: been masking up since they're on their third wave of
- 25:34Speaker 1: lockdowns in Hong Kong. Now the Philippines on their second
- 25:37Speaker 1: wave of lockdowns, where again these are isolated places. The
- 25:41Speaker 1: Philippines Hawaii high mask use. And yet in the end
- 25:45Speaker 1: the virus makes its way through. So we're not going
- 25:48Speaker 1: to stop it from getting through. The question is can
- 25:51Speaker 1: we stop it from getting to the people that it's
- 25:53Speaker 1: most going to hurt? That is the question. And stay
- 25:57Speaker 1: to be clear, I'm not sure you can refer to
- 25:59Speaker 1: California as civilization also a very true point. You might
- 26:05Speaker 1: even say that's a scientific point, gentleman. That's all the
- 26:08Speaker 1: time we have. Steve, thank you so much for being here.
- 26:10Speaker 1: You can always go, and I would highly recommend you
- 26:12Speaker 1: go check out the Steve Days show over at the
- 26:15Speaker 1: Blaze and the Senator Cruz. I will see you in
- 26:19Speaker 1: just a little while for our next episode. In the meantime,
- 26:22Speaker 1: I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This
- 26:34Speaker 1: episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to
- 26:37Speaker 1: you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action
- 26:40Speaker 1: committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across
- 26:45Speaker 1: the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security
- 26:48Speaker 1: Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress
- 26:52Speaker 1: and help the Republican Party across the nation.