Will Cain on the CDC and vaccines, 4/30/21
Citation From the April 30, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Will Cain Podcast
WILL CAIN (HOST): Joe Rogan is the top podcasters in the game. He's a superstar. And he got that way by being an independent thinker, by being brave, by being willing to say whatever it is he thought was correct. That, of course, will place you in the crosshairs in 2021. And it did so this week. On one of the episodes of his podcast, Rogan said the following. He said, if you were 21 years old, you exercised, you ate well, you were in good health, then you wouldn't need to get the vaccine for the coronavirus. In response to that, the sharks are now circling. CNN put out a fascinating hit piece where they draped themselves in all the appropriate 1984 language of 2021. They absolutely draped themselves in, quote-unquote, “misinformation, disinformation, anti-vaccine, misleading content“ when discussing Joe Rogan. Here's just a taste of an article up on CNN, and I quote, “Rogan said in a recent episode of the podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, that healthy young people should not get the COVID vaccine, a statement that stands in contrast to all credible public health advice." It went on to call his statements misleading, misinformation and to characterize what Rogen had to say as anti-vaccine.
Of course, Rogen is not anti-vaccine. By CNN characterizing him as such, they're hoping to throw him in the same bucket as those who question the measles and the mumps or smallpox or whatever other vaccine that society has been distributing for some half a century. They're trying to cast him as a quack, and they're not stopping there. They're calling on his company, of course, to silence him. Rogen has a deal with Spotify. And in a Spotify earnings call with investors, CEO Daniel Elk was questioned about Rogan's comments. Elk has stood by Rogan's comments. But of course, that hasn't stopped the sharks from circling. No, Rogan's comments are not anti-vaccine. They're just injecting a small bit of common sense into the current, quote-unquote, “religion of science." And, of course, that science has very little to do with actual science and data.
You don't know what's truly anti-vaccine? How about this: How about President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and numerous politicians, almost all of whom are vaccinated, gathering for a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night and continuing to mask and socially distance despite having been vaccinated. Now, that is anti-vax. Why do you need to triple mask? Why do you need to stay 12-feet apart, six-feet apart, three-feet apart, whatever the moving target of CDC guidelines is this week, if you've already been vaccinated. Why do you need to continue to do all the things we did when the pandemic was raging full and no one had been vaccinated after you get the vaccine? Talk about breeding vaccine hesitancy. Talk about sending the message that the vaccine doesn't work. Talk about telling us we don't need the vaccine. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi's actions speak much louder than Joe Rogan's common sense words.
You know, and it once again begs the question: What is this really all about? Why are politicians walking around -- why is Joe Biden walking around masked when he is vaccinated? What's this all about? Let me give you four things I think this is about.
Why are we hanging on so desperately as a society and as politicians to this pandemic so desperately? Why are we hanging on to the coronavirus? Here are four reasons. Number one, agoraphobia. Like any shut-in who stays in their apartment afraid of what's outside, we've totally warped our risk calculation for the coronavirus. This thing was something that 99.5% of people survived before the vaccine. Now we're sitting at a place where at least 50% of the population has received at least the first shot, the first shot getting you 80% immune to the coronavirus. So with 50 percent of the population being at least 80% covered, we're in a much better place. And yet our risk calculation is totally off. We're like paranoid news junkies in the summer who only ever see stories about shark attacks and therefore we're afraid to go in a pond or a lake, any body of water. We're afraid of sharks everywhere we turn. Is that pool safe? Could there be a great white at the bottom of the deep end? We've lost our sense, our calculation of actual risk. We've become essentially COVID agoraphobes. That's number one.
Number two, and this is something I've talked to you about on several occasions, people have integrated the coronavirus into their personality. They've integrated it into their identity. It's who they are. At this point, they're cloaking themselves in, quote-unquote, “the religion of science." And I say that because, of course, we know it's divorced from actual data and science, but they feel better about themselves to say, I believe in science and you maskless risk-takers, don't listen to our gods, Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson and of course, the Zeus of our religion of science gods, Dr. Anthony Fauci. It's part of who they are. They go out hoping to find you maskless. They hope that opportunity to shame you. They look for the opportunity, as we talked about in the last episode of The Will Cain Podcast, to narc on you, because at this point, it's how they find their superiority. It's part of their personality. It's part of their identity.
Number three, we're hanging on to this because it's about President Trump. Look, the truth is President Trump was going to win the 2020 presidential election in a landslide, but for COVID. COVID became the left's source of power. It became their major policy platform. It gave them, by the way, the platform to enact all of their other policies. Everything they ever dreamed of. COVID has been their absolute wishing well of power. But it also gave them a place to stand in opposition to President Trump. COVID bravery was Trump's; COVID fear was theirs. And they're going to hang on to it because it was on the other side of the spectrum from their nemesis, from President Trump.
And number four, as I just mentioned, it's been their wishing well, their font, their absolute source of power. Your Bill de Blasios, your Eric Garcettis, your Gavin Newsoms, your Gretchen Whitmers. These would-be authoritarians have found the biggest source of power in going on a century, and they're not going to let go of that easily.
This is why we as a society and they as politicians can't let go of the pandemic. This is why Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi are distanced and masked despite being vaxxed while speaking to the nation. That -- not Joe Rogan -- is a true anti-vaccine message.
But let me tell you another story. This past week, I went around the country doing a couple diners for Fox & Friends. I did a diner in Springfield, Missouri, on Wednesday, and I met a young mother. She had an 8-year-old son with her; her older son was 12. He was at basketball practice, and she and her younger son were enjoying breakfast until school started. She told me a story about Cooperstown, New York. Her oldest son is into baseball, really into baseball, such that he travels. And one of the biggest tournaments of the year when it comes to youth baseball is apparently in Cooperstown, New York -- something that these kids look forward to every year. She told me that this year, in order to play in that tournament, of course, outside, and there's not many sports more socially distanced than baseball that the tournament was requiring her 12-year-old son to be vaccinated. Now that, of course, exceeds any CDC guideline. No one's asking for 13-year-olds to 12-year-olds to be vaccinated yet, but it's coming. Where do you think this moving target of the religion of science, this moving target of hectoring, this moving target of mandates is going?
Here, I want you to listen to Joe Biden again in that joint session of Congress when he talks about Americans and the need to get vaccinated.
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It's beginning to sound less like a request, less like persuasion, less like advice, and more like an order. Look, I think it's wise to get vaccinated. I have been vaccinated. My wife has been vaccinated. My mother, her husband, they have been vaccinated.
But you know who hasn't been vaccinated? My children. And I have to be honest with you, I don't know why they should be. No science, no data suggest that children are either a threat to themselves or their peers or to any adults. In fact, the science and data does back up that if you're young, you're healthy, you don't have comorbidities, that coronavirus is not a statistical threat to your life.
Of course, there are examples and they are tragic. Of course, there are people who have suffered and of course, there are young people who have died. But there are many statistically improbable tragedies and we don't use them all as a source for a new mandated power.
Joe Rogan injected an ounce of common sense on whether a 21-year-old healthy person should get a vaccine. Mark my words, that target will move. Soon it will be 16-year-olds. IIf you don't get your 16-year-old vaccinated, your anti-vaccine, your anti-science. If you question whether or not soon after that your 12-year-old should get a vaccine, well, you'll be indulging in misinformation and disinformation.
The calls to get your young child vaccinated won't sound like advice or persuasion. They won't be medical requests. They're going to be government mandates. They're going to be orders. They're going to sound a lot like Joe Biden in that joint session of Congress and each and every one of us listening when it comes to our 5-year-old, our 8-year-old, our 12-year-old, our 16-year-old, or whether you're a 21-year-old might do well to listen to a little bit of common sense, a little bit of actual science; might do well to listen to the data; might do well to listen to people like Joe Rogan over the triple-masked, socially distanced, already vaccinated, locked in their house, yelling-at-you old stooges on social media.