Tucker Carlson: CDC's mask logic doesn’t make sense
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines why vaccinated Americans remain under COVID restrictions
On Friday, Joe Biden participated in a kind of summit with more than a dozen other world leaders. They were all there, including the guy who runs France. The meeting itself turned out to be only marginally interesting. What got your attention was Joe Biden. Of the 16 heads of state who were present, only Joe Biden wore a face mask – sat there silently, nose and mouth covered in black cloth like a rustler from an old western, as mask-less Vladimir Putin held forth on international affairs. But here’s the weirdest part: that meeting took place over Zoom. None of the leaders were in the same room, they were thousands of miles from each other. So why was Joe Biden, who has been fully vaccinated, the only one wearing a mask?
No one asked that question. All precautions against COVID are considered legitimate by the American news media no matter how self-evidentially lunatic they may be. Cover your face during a Zoom call! Drive to work alone with a mask on! It’s all normal, says the New York Times. Then, finally yesterday, our own Peter Doocy at the White House asked what the hell was going on. And here’s the response he got:
PETER DOOCY: Why was President Biden the only world leader at the climate summit Zoom, who was wearing a mask?
PRESS SECRETARY JEN PSAKI: Because he is sending a message to the world that he is putting in place precautions and continuing to do that as leader of the United States. And I don't know what setups they all had in their countries that may warrant some more reporting or not. But obviously, he had a pool there for portions. There were additional staff there, additional personnel. That's the sort of model that we try to keep ourselves to here.
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So there you go. That’s the answer. Joe Biden was "sending a message to the world." The message was not, as we’d suspected, that Joe Biden has some sort of emotional disorder that makes him afraid of conference calls. No. Not at all. The message, as his flack explained, is that Joe Biden is "putting in place precautions." Those of course would be sensible precautions. Precautions against Zoom. Because it turns out, COVID is digitally transmissible. It travels through Wi-Fi networks. The virus embeds itself among the ones and the zeros and then springs unsuspected, teeth bared and ready to strike, from any available hotspot, whether it’s at Starbuck’s, down in your basement rec room, or even in the Oval Office. Digital COVID could be anywhere. Where there’s an internet connection, there’s a pandemic. So mask up on those Zoom calls, ladies and gentlemen. YouTube and online backgammon too.
We’re kidding of course. If that were true, we’d be super spreaders, given we’re in the digital media business, and we’d hate to bear that burden. The White House never did explain exactly why Joe Biden was wearing a face mask on a Zoom call, after getting fully vaccinated. You’re not supposed to ask, you’re supposed to accept that. It’s a good thing, shut up.
Just like you’re not supposed to ask questions about why children are being forced to wear masks while exercising outside. That doesn’t make sense, in fact, it’s dangerous. Kids aren’t at great risk from COVID. The coronavirus generally doesn’t spread outdoors. We’ve gotten a lot of studies that prove that. And wearing a mask when you’re breathing heavily clearly isn’t good for you, to say nothing of the psychological effects of it. But whatever. Shut up.
Yesterday, we did not shut up. We asked those simple questions. For our trouble, Bill Kristol promptly denounced us as Nazis. Pretty funny. Ask whatever questions you want, as long as they’re not relevant questions, and you don’t insist on answers to them. Those at the rules. Break the rules and you’re a bad person.
But, as it happens, the CDC did offer some clarity today. We were grateful for that. Joe Biden shuffled outside to announce the new mask guidelines.
REPORTER: If the risk is so low outdoors, why doesn't this new guidance apply to everybody?
BIDEN: Because the science indicates that this most certain way to make sure it doesn't spread if both people have been vaccinated, the people you're with and you're outside.
REPORTER: And you chose to wear a mask and you chose to wear a mask, you chose to wear a mask as you walked out here, what message were you sending by wearing a mask outside alone?
BIDEN: By watching me take it off and not put it back until I get inside.
So here are the standards: the government is now allowing people who’ve been fully vaccinated to go outside without masks, as long as they remain with other people who’ve been fully vaccinated, but only under certain circumstances. So why, you may ask, was Joe Biden walking alone to the mask announcement with a mask on like it was a zoom call or something. Because they put him in the costume and he forgot he had it on. "A mask? What mask? Oh yeah." And then he took it off. The whole thing inspired more amusement than confidence.
But here’s the real headline: According to the CDC, Americans must remain under COVID restrictions indefinitely, even those who have been fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated Americans must continue to wear masks at all times while indoors, whether they’re in church, getting a haircut, or walking into a restaurant. So, get a vaccine. Cover your face. Period.
No one is saying so, but consider the logic here, it doesn’t make any sense. We know the vaccine works. We know that anyone who wants a vaccine in this country can get one. They’ve told us those two things again and again, and most of us are willing to believe that they’re true. But if they are true, why wear masks? Anyone who’d afraid of getting COVID can get a vaccine. And then everyone else can return to normal life, including those who don’t want to get the vaccine. The people who want it can get it and they’ll be protected. And that should be the end. So why the mask fetish? What’s the answer?
No one will say. Instead, the CDC has produced a new round of guidelines that are as indecipherable as a Turkish train schedule. Next stop, Istanbul. Or is it Ankara? We still don’t know.
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According to the CDC, fully vaccinated Americans can go on mask-less bike rides with other fully vaccinated bike riders. They can even have dinner outside. Oh, bless you, CDC. Thank you. But they may not, under any circumstances, despite their vaccines, attend baseball games or concerts or parades. Why is that? I don’t know, just speculating, maybe because they will unknowingly carry the virus and accidentally infect people who’ve refused to take the vaccine? We can only guess. Joe Biden didn’t explain.
Nor did Joe Biden, once he got his mask off. He just asserted it.
BIDEN: I want to be absolutely clear. If you’re in a crowd like a stadium or conference or concert, you still need to wear a mask – even if you’re outside.
Ok, so see if you can fit these two thoughts in your head – accept them both as true, and see if they match, like Lego pieces, or, if they repel one another. Vaccinated people have to wear masks outside. Joe Biden just told us that. But at the same time, vaccines work perfectly, and if you suggest otherwise, you’re a Nazi and we’re going to ban you from the internet. So vaccinated people have to wear masks outside. But at the same time, vaccines work perfectly and don’t suggest otherwise and we’ll call you a Nazi and ban you from the internet.
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What is going on here? We never learned. According to Joe Biden, science isn’t really the point. The point, as always, is race, and that’s the one subject the White House is always delighted to talk about as long as it’s from their very specific perspective.
Joe Biden even told you it’s a sign of "progress" that certain racial groups are more protected from the virus than other racial groups.
BIDEN: I said from the beginning that we were we're going to fight this virus with equity - equity for all. It's a matter of fact, if I'm not mistaken, there are more Latinos and African-Americans seniors that have been vaccinated as a percentage than white seniors. These numbers are a sign of progress on that front as well.
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Now it’s getting even more confusing. "It’s equity," he says. But we thought "equity" meant archiving the same outcome? If that’s true, why was Joe Biden bragging about different outcomes and calling it "equity." Maybe there’s another meaning to the word equity. We’ll make a note to check up on that. Meantime, next up in today’s edition of pandemic theater, here’s the new director of the CDC bringing actual science to bear on these questions. Again, why are vaccinated people being told to wear face masks? That’s what we’re wondering. Here was her answer:
WALENSKY: And right now it’s very hard to tease apart who is vaccinated and where they are in the vaccination so it’s not just to protect themselves but largely to protect others and really to protect the unvaccinated.
Did you see the last line? Wearing masks is "really to protect the unvaccinated." There you go. That’s the answer. Just as we guessed. The vaccine is now universally available. Everyone can get it. But because some people have chosen not to get the vaccine, the rest of us must continue to live as if we haven’t gotten the vaccine either. That’s the reasoning: Because some people decide not to wear seatbelts, you can’t drive. That’s just science. Got it? Thanks, mom.
So, how do we fix this problem? The problem of people who refuse to get vaccinated, for whom we’re pretending that we haven’t been vaccinated either. Thankfully our media were on the scene with fresh ideas.
The race lady from MSNBC finally put her Harvard degree to work. It’s simple she said. Just charge people who don’t get the vaccine with felonies:
JOY REID: Now the vaccine-resistant Trump crowd is becoming a problem for the rest of us. That’s because the country is fast approaching a tipping point where vaccine hesitancy will become the biggest hurdle to achieving herd immunity…So after a while, "vaccine hesitancy" might be better described as reckless endangerment.
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But wait a second, Harvard-educated race lady. Now you’re really confusing us. If you’ve gotten the vaccine, why is other people’s refusal to get the vaccine a problem for you? If the vaccine is so effective, why are the people who chose to get it so mad at the people who choose not to get it? Huh? Do people who’ve slimmed down from gastric bypass yell at fat people on the street? You wouldn’t think so. It’s not really their business. Your body, your choice, remember? But your body, your choice is definitely not the standard with the COVID vaccine. With the COVID vaccine, it’s your body, MSNBC’s choice.
GUPTA: I don’t know how we get to herd immunity unless we normalize the framework around vaccine certification. We’re doing it in colleges. Some organizations are doing it. We are in a global crisis, we have to reach herd immunity. And the carrot and stick of you get the vaccine, you’ll be able to participate in travel, restaurants, you name it, because that’s, frankly, easier for small businesses to adhere to.
It seems like not so long ago, maybe back in the ’50s, or last week, using the term ‘herd immunity’ was enough to get you yanked off the air as an anti-vaxxer. Now we’re bragging about herd immunity. But again, people who’ve got the vaccine and are totally safe are angry at the people who haven’t gotten it because somehow they’re endangering the people who are already vaccinated. So, to protect people who have voluntarily taken the risk of not getting the vaccine, we have to hurt those people. We’ve got to burn the village to save the village. As the doctor on TV put it, we’ve got to use the carrot and the stick, but especially the stick. Colleges love this idea. Many of them are requiring proof of vaccination as a condition of returning to campus in the fall.
In the state of California, both of California's state school systems — the University of California and the California State University systems — are forcing students returning to campus to prove they’ve been vaccinated.
Schools in New York -- places like Columbia, Fordham, and Syracuse -- are doing the same thing.
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What’s interesting is that no one has bothered to explain why we’re doing this. Virtually no college-age kids have died of COVID. According to an April report by the CDC, a total of 587 Americans between the ages of 15-24 died of the virus last year. Many times that — thousands and thousands — died from suicide over the same period.
In the state of Michigan, which now requires two-year-olds to wear masks outside, there were just 13 coronavirus deaths last year for people aged 15-24. Compare that to overdose deaths in Michigan. It’s a tiny fraction.
The coronavirus doesn’t kill many young people. But it does infect quite a few, and that’s the other problem. Many thousands of college-age kids already have been infected and have antibodies from previous coronavirus infections they’ve recovered from. Science suggests these kids are highly unlikely to be re-infected with COVID. So why are they being forced to get the vaccine? That’s a serious question. That’s not an anti-vaxxer question. That’s a question people who support vaccines and care about them would ask. Because we don’t give medicine to people unnecessarily. It’s unethical. Meningitis kills a fair number of people every year, but we don’t require everyone to start a regimen of antibiotics before they return to work. That would be crazy. But we are requiring universal vaccination, even of kids who’ve already been infected. Is that a medically sound idea? Some physicians are concerned that it’s not.
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Joe Rogan voiced this concern on the air the other day. Here's what he said:
JOE ROGAN: When people say "do you think it’s safe to get vaccinated?" I’ve said, "yeah, I think for the most part it’s safe to get vaccinated, I do, I do." But, if you’re 21 years old and you say to me "should I get vaccinated?" I go "no! "Are you healthy? Are you a healthy person? Look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. If you’re a healthy person and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this.
Yeah, so if you’re at risk, get the vaccine, protect yourself, be happy, be grateful we have the vaccine. And if you’re not at risk, maybe you don’t. Is that a crazy point? Well, yeah, that’s crazy.
"Joe Rogan's Idiotic Advice: ‘Healthy’ Young People Don’t Need COVID-19 Vaccine," sneered one headline in The Daily Beast, America’s foremost defender to ruling class absurdities. You’ll notice the website doesn't explain why exactly Joe Rogan’s advice was idiotic. It just dismisses him as a moron. Don’t listen! He’s crazy! Probably a Nazi. Or, worse, a Trump voter. That’s MSNBC’s concern.
WALLACE: I don’t know how the right got so far ahead on creating such a political connotation around the conversation about vaccine passports…There are all sorts of things you have to do to travel to all sorts of different places. How has that debate become so corrupted so early?
MCCASKILL: I don’t know, but it’s bad. I live in a state that is — the state legislature is dominated by Trumpers and they are busy making it illegal for a business to require a passport, a vaccine passport…And they’re politicizing the appropriate way to encourage people to get vaccines which will cost lives.
"How did it get so political?" says Jeb Bush’s former flack and the long-term senator of Missouri. Political.
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See that? All the mouth-breathers, the dumb people, the hillbillies and inbred and extra-chromosome folks — the Trumpers — are all spun up with their conspiracy theories about vaccine passports. As if. There are no vaccine passports. That’s insane. It’s Alex Jones stuff. By the way, just so you know, as proof, if you want to get a job, you'll need your vaccination papers.
DR. DAVID RICH, PRESIDENT OF MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL IN NEW YORK: Although It’s always challenging in society to make things mandatory, perhaps in certain employment settings, especially where there is higher risk, we may decide mandatory vaccination is a reasonable thing to do in certain circumstances.
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So to recap: it’s always challenging when you make things mandatory. Yeah, it’s also sometimes unconstitutional and not science. But whatever here’s where we are right now: if you want to live in this country, you will need a vaccination. If you’re the right skin color, the government will celebrate when you get it. But either way, you must get it. The vaccine works perfectly. Don’t question that. Once you do get the vaccine, you must continue to live as if you didn’t get the vaccine, for the protection of people who chose not to get the vaccine. And if that bothers you, or you have questions about why we’re doing it this way, then you are a bad person and we must hurt you. Get ready to be unemployed, if not in prison for reckless endangerment, a felony. Hope that settles your concerns about the available science on vaccines. Roll up your sleeve.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the April 27, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."