Paradigm Shift Episode 4: How Covid Change our World

Rob & Jesse Table The Covid Conversation & Dive Into The Fine Details Of The Whole Covid Situation, How Covid effected our World Our Families & Our Relationships,

How Much Of It Was a Scam & How Much Of It Was Serious?

Join The Conversation Today!!!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome back to the Paradigm Shift, guys. I am your host, Big Rob, along with my partner in crime, Jesse. What's going on, buddy? How you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_04 0:09

Hey, doing great. Glad to be back for another fine episode of this fine show. Hell yeah, I hear that, man.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

We got a barn burner of an episode today, man. A highly controversial topic. Some people are probably going to be offended by this one. But it's what we do, right?

SPEAKER_04 0:29

It is what we do. I mean, the the ulterior um ego of this show is the controversial topic.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Controversy creates cash, as Eric Bischoff would say. Let's shout out to the 90s. Let's get going here, man. COVID. The whole COVID uh pandemic era. How did our friends and family conduct themselves and how has it changed the world today? Also, how was the rules for thee, not for me, politician? Right? Yeah. How'd that play out? So I guess I'll kick things off with uh, I mean, guys, I mean, my my goodness, man. This, I where do you even begin with the insanity that was the COVID? I mean, the COVID era. I mean, you had friends and family turn on each other. People on the left were screaming that anyone who didn't get the shot should be denied medical care and should be allowed to die without medical care. Um, you know, families were were turning on each other, similar to the Trump situation, but worse, right? Family, families were turning on each other, people were dying because of the shot, people wouldn't listen, and as a result, a lot of relationships were destroyed. Now, I think the funny thing I want to kick off the top is that when it all came out, that it was all just a big ruse, and even Fauci himself said he just made shit up, right? Because everyone was looking at him saying, Hey, give us some rules. So he's like, Uh stay two feet away from each other, put a mask on, right? The more masks, the better. Maybe you should wear five masks at the same time, right? Yeah, yeah, he just made shit up. He openly admitted it. And you have people to this day who still stand by the things that they were doing, wearing the masks, social distancing, all that stuff. Even though the man who told them to do it himself said it was all bullshit that he just made up, they're still still that is how hard some people's egos are to put aside. Right? It's too hard for some people to say, I fucked up, I was wrong, I overreacted, and I acted like an asshole at the end of the day, right? Now, the funny thing is, to this day, you have people on the left who behaved that way now saying, Yeah, yeah, let's just move on, let's get past how we treated you. It's over, it's in the past. Let's no, no, no, no, no. Oh, contraire, mofr. We're not moving past shit. You said your friends and family could should die without medical treatment because they didn't want to get a shot. There's no moving past that and forgetting how you conducted yourself. A lot of people's true personalities came to the surface when that happened. What do you think about all of that? I know I put a lot at you.

SPEAKER_04 3:53

That's a lot. Uh, that's definitely a lot. A very, very loaded question. Um, I think uh the the first thing I would like to say is that one of my favorite bands of all time broke up over a COVID dispute.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Well, that's the worst of it all, right there.

SPEAKER_04 4:18

Yeah. So um when I was younger, um, I listened to I kind of started with like a lot of like rock music, kind of got into like metal. After a while, it all felt too dark. And I went through this phase where I was like, I'm tired of listening to dark music. I want I need something more upbeat. Um, um, but I wanted something a little more upbeat, right? So I end up discovering the punk ska movement, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

And one of the bands that was in that wait, you're gonna back to truck up, you're gonna have to expand on what what that is exactly.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

Okay, okay, sorry, let me back up. So in the in the punk rock scene, it's um let's say fast-paced guitars, not the greatest guitar work. It's more about just the feeling and and kind of the feeling it gives you. You get kind of amped up, right? On the ska side, it's horns. So it's it's almost like if you took reggae and you added horns to it and you sped it up, that's ska. Okay. Interesting. Yes. So the the horns are like, you know, your tenor sacks, baritone sacks, trombone, uh, those kinds of things. So you basically have a horn section with a rock band, is what it is.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Oh, yeah. I'm gonna have to look that up because I I gotta hear it.

SPEAKER_04 5:49

So, so, anyways, so the particular band I'm referring to um had been a band since the gosh, I think the early 80s maybe. Um, and the band was the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones. Okay. I love the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones. They've always been one of my favorite bands. I met them all at one point at Warp Tour when I was younger, right? Um really, really good band, really great vibe. Um, just one of my all-time favorites, just so authentic. I mean, they're from Boston, they're the Bostones, like they like live that Boston thing, you know? And um anyway, COVID comes around, and they actually had just released an album uh for the first time in years, where one of their founding members, their guitarists, that um he had been gone out of the band for 15, 20 years, and he went to LA and he became a music exec, and he's found some of the largest groups like we hear today on the radio. He found them. Okay. So he's really good in that world, but he's also really good as the guitarist of the Boston. So anyway, so he comes back, makes this epic album with them, probably the best album they've made in years. And before anything happens, they had a falling out over COVID. And their lead singer, um, his name is uh Dickie Barrett, and he's actually the um, I think for a long time, I don't know if he still is or not, but he was like the band leader of um uh the late night show, the uh gosh, the guy, the guy that's always going back and forth with Trump. I can't think of his name right now, I'm drawing a blank. Um, but he was his his band leader, okay? Which again is ironic because the show, the show, you know, highlights all of Trump's gaffes, right? But anyway, so he's he's the main guy there, the band leader, outside of being the lead singer of the Bostones. And so they got into a dispute over COVID where he was like, I'm not getting your vaccine. And they were like, You need to get the vaccine. He was like, I'm not getting the vaccine. And the freaking Bostones broke up over him getting the vaccine, yes or no. And like I said, these guys are like best friends from like elementary school that have been a band for like 40 years, you know.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

People went insane.

SPEAKER_04 8:19

Yes, they're still broken up today. They're still broken up. It like it just kills me that the Bostones are not touring, that they're not making music because they're so good.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

There are still there are still family members that don't talk to each other from back then, yeah. From the COVID era, like I totally get what you mean. And for using the band as an example, for people to not be able to put that aside at this point, now that we've learned in hindsight the scam that it was, people still can't put it aside and say, All right, you know what? I was I was I mean, and there are some people who say, like, hey man, like I completely was inappropriate with the things I was saying, the things I was doing. There are some people who are who are able to do that. So I want to give credit to those people because it is a hard thing to put one's ego aside, someone's pride aside, and say I was wrong, especially when you behaved in such a passionate way about something, right? Yeah, to be able to flip that and say, I fucked up and I'm sorry, right? Some people can't, a lot of people can't do that, and a lot of they're just instead of saying, you know what, I was wrong, I'm sorry, I behaved in an inappropriate manner, I I broke a lot of loved ones' hearts, stuff like that. Instead of being able to say, I was wrong, it it's you know, nope, can't admit it, can't, you know, I can't put that aside. And it's a shame.

SPEAKER_04 9:50

Yeah, the the show was uh Jimmy Kimmel, that's what it was.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

He's he's the band leader on Kimmel's show. And and he was against the vaccine.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Wow. I'm surprised he didn't kick him off the show. Kimmel was uh isn't Kimmel like a hard left leaning kind of guy.

SPEAKER_04 10:08

I don't know if I'd say hard left, but he definitely makes fun of every every time Trump says something dumb, he highlights it, right? And so so anyway, so the case in point is you could see from his point of view, I mean, he he could say, like, look, I'm on you know, one of the leftist leaning late night shows there is, but I I'm simply just not getting it because it's my own personal choice. But the band felt like he needed to get it because I mean, when you're a band and you're touring, you're in close proximity to each other, they're you know, they're sharing a bus or whatever they're doing, you know, and and so they were like adamant that he'd do it and he didn't do it, and so they broke up. And I mean, he is like the he's he's probably the main guy that the band is known for, and they they kicked him out, and then they've they haven't been a band ever since, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Well, for me personally, now at that time, um, it was a little bit of a harder time for uh for me and my family. You know, I have I have children, I have a wife to take care of and stuff, and I was working, uh I was working for the man at the time. Well, I I had my own business, but I was a subcontractor to a dealership as a finance manager, so um, and to be able to continue, uh obviously auto sales and finance was one of the industries that was allowed to stay open, but uh like people weren't allowed to come into the dealership, obviously, right? Everything had to be done over the phone or on the internet, right? Yep. So in saying that, to be able to go into work or to continue working at all, uh like a lot of people out there, I was forced and I took two shots.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

You did get a vaccine. Wow, that's surprising.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

It was it was take the shots or not be able to support my wife and and children.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

My wife is a homemaker, so she didn't have any revenue coming in. So, and a lot of people, uh, like my wife didn't get the shot, and my my children damn sure didn't get the shot, right? Uh, but I had no choice. I felt I had no, I mean there's always a choice. I don't want to say that I had no choice, but you know, it was it was choosing between you know my my ethics and my beliefs versus feeding my wife and children, right? And as a man, you know as well as I do, that is our sole purpose in this world, right? Um, everything else is a luxury beyond that. So I did take two two of the shots, and then I didn't go back for a third. Uh, I was able to kind of inch and squinch my way through not being able to, you know, yeah, I got it, I got it. I got a third, but um, and I'm so far I've been fortunate with no ill effects, but who knows in the future, right? Because a lot of people can there could be a latent effect years down the road or something like that. Uh, a lot of people were were dying from getting this shot. They were getting sick. I mean, I was I would have been absolutely terrified to see my children get this shot and then they get sick and ill and die, or you know, or whatever the case might be. I cannot imagine how some of those some of the people who got who were trying to get through it who did lose loved ones to taking the shot.

SPEAKER_04 13:31

Can I ask which one you got?

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Uh not Pfizer, Moderna? You got the Moderna one? I think Moderna.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

That was slightly different.

SPEAKER_04 13:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Yeah. So uh, but yeah, so far I'm fine. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm in a mental institution right now, and I'm imagining this whole thing. Who knows, right? But yeah. I assume that that you didn't, right? You didn't have to get it for work or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 14:00

I'm a pure pureblock. I did not get it.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Um, you know what the red flag when you have to sign a waiver that says you're not going to sue if something bad happens to you from taking the shot. That's your first red flag right there, right?

SPEAKER_04 14:18

Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, I I've said it, this will be controversial. I've said this before that I I don't I don't like any of the U.S. presidents for the most part. Um I I did like Obama, but there were even things about him that at times I didn't like. But this is one of the things that in particular that I didn't care for during Biden's presidency was forcing this on people. You know, like this is a very personal decision. And especially like uh here in the US in the in the military, you know, if you were in the government, it was like you had to get it, or you're gonna be court-martialed, you know, you could be thrown in jail, you're uh thrown out of your your livelihood, your position, all these things. And so uh I didn't agree with that at all. And I thought that was the wrong decision. And I saw how they sped up the approval of it, right? Like it was sort of like approved overnight. And if this was any other thing, it it would not be, you know, and um I don't I don't like um I don't like the way that they rolled it out, and I I really did not like the uh parties behind it, you know, the the the Pfizer coming to save the day, the Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, we're here to save you. Uh no, you're not. You know, I mean, come on, let's be honest. No, you're not. You're not here to save anybody. Um, you're here to make a lot of money. And especially with Pfizer, you know, it it was kind of like, yeah, we can we can roll out millions of doses, and you know, and it's it's got kind of that overpromise, under deliver. It's all sales, right? I mean, they're selling, yeah, you know, the this thing, you know, you get it, and then then you're gonna be okay. And and the thing with the vaccines, this is another thing that really bugged me about them, is that if you look at like the other vaccines, like the polio or you know, the smallpox, all these ones that have been around for like hundreds of years, when you take those vaccines, as far as I'm aware, you you don't still get polio or smallpox or you know, any of these things, you don't you don't get them, like you're resistant to picking them up. But with the COVID vaccines, it was, oh no, you're gonna get it even more now. It'll the symptoms will lessen, though. That's what they said. So you're still gonna get it, it's just gonna be less severe. And I thought, well, why the hell am I gonna run the risk of taking this thing if now you're gonna increase the odds that I get sick to begin with? And then on top of that, um, you you say it's less severe, but but is it? And then is it always that way? I mean, if I'm injecting this into my body, does it stay around forever, like like getting bit by a spider? Like I'm just stuck with it now.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Well, that's true, right? Um, here in here in Canada, Trudeau was running things at the time, right? And I was I've been trying to find uh his press conferences where he literally painted Canadians into a corner where he said, You can't, we're not gonna let you guys work, we're not gonna let you go into any public spaces, you can't go groceries, you can't do anything. He literally said it with like authoritarianism, right? Like, we're gonna basically, we're gonna force you, we're not he he was speaking like it's like he was talking to the people who were pro-COVID or pro-shot, right? He was saying, we're not going to let them, the anti-vaxxers, if you will, we're not gonna let them go anywhere. You want you wanna you wanna not get the shot? You get to stay home. You're not allowed to go anywhere, you're not allowed to do anything, right? That's what he said, flat out. And now I'm gonna I want to play this. I'm hoping that it gets picked up, the audio gets picked up on the uh on the podcast, but I just want to play this quick one-minute clip here covering him now or him now denying that he was trying to force people to take the COVID shot, right? Listen to this.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earned blowback online after he claimed during a recent interview that he didn't force anyone to get vaccinated. Let's watch.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Since the Spanish flu, my responsibility was to keep as many Canadians alive as possible. And all of the scientists and the medical experts and the researchers, not just in Canada but around the world, understood that vaccination was going to be the way through this. And therefore, while not forcing anyone to get vaccinated, I chose to make sure that all the incentives and all the protections were there to encourage Canadians to get vaccinated, and that's exactly what they did. We got vaccinated to a higher level than just about any other of our peer countries, and that's why we had a less deadly pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

Now, what he means by incentives is your ability to leave your house, right? Yeah, that's the incentive uh that that he was talking about, right? So he claims now that he never tried to force anyone, you just can't live, right? You just can't live. You just can't you can't live, right? You can't leave your house, you can't go to the grocery store, you can't go to a restaurant, you can't go to your friend's house. It was it was to a degree. I mean, most of us can look back, but let's revisit it here. I remember sitting in a rest going into a restaurant with my sister. I drove into her town, and we went to this restaurant. Of course, we had to put our masks on when we walk in the door. They they walk us to our table, sit us down. And most of you guys remember how absurd this is. Of course, when our food arrived, we could take our masks off to eat our food. But if I get up to go to the bathroom, I gotta put my mask on. Like, what the hell were we doing?

SPEAKER_04 20:30

Yeah, well, you you know, the the thing with the masks was that they said, um, really all you're protecting is technically you're you're sort of like blowing all your air back into you, right? So really it was only like if you already had it that maybe somehow you would lessen, but they never actually there was never any proof anywhere that any of that really worked. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Well, yeah, that's exactly it. You had people wearing like like 10 masks and stuff like that. Like you had people duct taping, like uh the you know the big uh like leader or leader, uh the big freaking water jugs, I don't know, uh gallons, the big gallon water jugs, or whatever. They were like cutting the tops off, putting them on their heads, and duct taping them on their heads on the subway and stuff. Like, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 21:26

That's really funny.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

And people are still doing it. Every once in a while you still see somebody walking around the gym or whatever with a mask on, and it's not to judge them or anything. I mean, it is what it is, but I mean, I hope it's for reasons that maybe who knows, maybe you're just sick right now and you don't want to spread your rooms. That's considerate to everyone around you. You know, I applaud it. But there is a percentage of people who are still who are still buying this. Like my mother in law, holy smokes, did she buy it hook, line, and sinker. She still talks, she got every shot, and you know, she still talks about it like it's you know, and I'm just Like, man, you know, I got a bridge to nowhere, I'll sell you.

SPEAKER_04 22:07

Well, you know, speaking of selling you something, right? This is one of my thoughts on the whole thing. Like the conspiracy theorist in me says, look at all the people that got rich on this, right? It was kind of like a gold rush, right? Like we talk about uh PPE, I think was the term for the for the things like masks, gloves, uh, you name it, um, they were getting sold out of their PPE, all the companies that manufactured and made it. All the all the people that popped up that were selling masks on Amazon, right? Like this is kind of like the groups. Um like if this was the gold rush, these are the people selling the shovels, right? And they totally made millions, millions and millions of dollars selling everybody a bunch of junk. That did it actually work? Did like did did wearing gloves actually prevent COVID? Did did any of this actually prevent it, right? I I don't know. The there I don't I never saw any clear scientific empirical data that said by wearing a mask, your odds of getting it go down by X, and here's Y, right? Like no one ever supplied that. It was more of a zero sum game. And I, you know, I say this all the time that life is not a zero sum game. You're not gonna have 100% on one side and zero on the other. It doesn't work that way, right? And this is one of those issues that everybody tried to make it zero sum. You're either in or you're out. Well, no, no, I just simply I don't believe what's being force fed to me, you know?

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Well, trust the science, but the same people that screamed trust the science then. Now that the science is saying the opposite, they don't want to trust the science anymore, right? Now it's that's not a that's not a cat, that's not on t-shirts anymore, right? Trust the science. That's suddenly it's hey, we don't want to talk about trusting the science. That's science is bullshit, right?

SPEAKER_04 24:12

Well, well, let's talk about the science for a minute. So, you know, in terms of the the science of this thing, every year there's always a flu season, every single year. Yeah. Well, all of a sudden, when COVID came out, there was no more flu season, right? And and I don't know if you knew this, but like it here in the US at least, like if you went to the hospital, let's say, and let's say you had a broken arm or you had uh abdominal pain or something random, right? You're there for kidney stones, and you happened to have COVID also, then they would mark you as COVID. That's what it was. He was here for COVID. And and so they slanted all the data to say that, oh, there's this this COVID thing's completely out of control, you know. But really, it was like, well, why'd you go to the hospital? Was it because of COVID or was it because you had kidney stones, right? Like it was something totally different, but they mark it a certain way to sell that statistic of it being COVID. And so, you know, like that was one of the things we kept talking about in our family is like, what happened to flu season? So what that just doesn't exist anymore? Now it's just uh COVID season?

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah, what I said, yeah, absolutely. Like, I'm actually looking up that statistic right now because I remember it dropped something like 98% in reported flu cases. Uh, and it was just like, are you it just dropped off a cliff to almost non-existent flu cases? And it's like, who who who really who is I'm sorry to say it, but who's stupid enough to believe that? To believe that the flu just fucking disappeared when COVID came.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

It's been around for millions and millions of years.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Yeah, like it's just COVID just you know body slammed the flu and dropped an out, and then the flu is just out, owed on a stretcher to the ambulance, no more flu. And now suddenly we have the flu again.

SPEAKER_04 26:16

So, okay, so here's another thing though, uh on in regard to science, right? So it was, as far as I'm aware, it was proven that over time COVID got weaker, right? And so theoretically, the earlier strains of COVID at the very beginning would have been the most severe. And then as it replicated over time, it became less and less and less severe as time went on. But you're all selling us this vaccine that we have to get right now, right? Or we're gonna die from this thing that has gone from the flu to the common cold to like a sniffle in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

So from 2019 and 2020, there were an average of about 36 million reported cases of the flu. Those two years. 36 million. Okay. In 2021, there were between 2,000 and 2100 reported. Come on, yeah, and then it shot back up in 2022 to 11 million, back up, and just kept now, it's back up at an average of 40 million.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

So it's back where it was, and that would follow the population as a whole for the planet.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Yeah, so for the one year they were shilling COVID, 2,000 to 2100 cases reported.

SPEAKER_04 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

And so again, I have a bridge to nowhere, I'll sell you.

SPEAKER_04 27:59

It is, and and so think about this. So remember all the statistics they had around COVID-related deaths? Oh, it's a COVID-related death. Like that was the term, right? Was it? Or was that person gonna die anyway and they just happen to have COVID? You know, like like if I had a heart attack, the widowmaker, let's say, and it killed me, but then they did an autopsy and found out he had COVID, then they marked that as a COVID death.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Yeah, but was it? Well, I heard in the beginning, I I can't subs now. Oh, real quick, the the statistics I gave you was for Canada, by the way. So if anyone's listening, right? Um, I don't know what they were for the US, but um uh there I was hearing stories I cannot substantiate if they're true or not, but when COVID first kicked off, uh, you know, they canceled the NHL season and all that kind of fun stuff, right? Um that's when I was like, oh shit, so they're really gonna run with this. Like, you know, this this at that time I was like, this might be something serious, right? Before we knew that was like the early stages, like one of the first things they did was like shut down the NHL season and and you know, sport national sports and stuff like that. And that's when you're kind of like, huh, you know, because now it's affecting me, right? Because that's how the individual thinks, right? But um, where I was going with that is that uh, you know, that's when it started to get crazy. But the stories I was hearing was that they were actually when people were passing away in the hospital, they were actually refusing to let family members come in and say goodbye, and then burning the bodies afterwards of the people who passed away, not even allowing the rights of the people to bury the body or whatever their their you know their wishes were in terms of you know, when they pass away, maybe they didn't want to be cremated, but they were destroying the bodies and not allowing loved ones to come in and say goodbye, even though they were like still alive to be able to say goodbye and stuff. I can't substantiate whether that's true or not. Maybe somebody listening can confirm or deny whether that's true. Again, this is stuff that I was reading and hearing at the time, it didn't personally happen to me, so I can't confirm it. Did you hear anything similar?

SPEAKER_04 30:13

Yes, I think that is true.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Okay, so it was crazy.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

Well, well, it could also be true in in different countries, right? Yeah, I think in like in Europe, I I want to say they were really strict about it in some of the European countries, so yeah, that is true.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Well, before it got here, I remember watching the news and and reading, and it was like I think it was really bad first in like Italy. And they were I remember being surprised because people in Italy were in like lockdown in their homes and stuff like that at the time, and I was like, wow, man, like this is crazy, right? Well, I didn't didn't think it would come to the West like that, but wow.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

But you know, and again, here's where statistics are misleading if you don't know the backstory behind statistics, right? Like in Europe, a large at least larger than the US, I don't know if it's the same in Canada, but in Europe, a large percentage of the population smokes cigarettes. Okay. And I don't know if you've ever seen, I saw somebody do a uh they did a test on this, right? Where they took a two-liter bottle and they simulated what a lung looks like and fed it cigarettes, right? And over just the course of like one day, I mean, this thing is like annihilated, right? Like it's bad. And so if your lungs are taking that in every day, then you can't breathe. Okay. So you basically have somebody that's already right up to the edge of that cliff, and you give them a hard enough kick in the ass in terms of this flu thing, and it sends them over. Yeah, that could totally happen. And and it can happen with the common flu. It doesn't have to be COVID. The fact that you already have emphysema and now you really can't breathe at all, and now you're dying in the hospital because you can't breathe. Like even here in the US, there was a lot of people of uh color that got it, and a lot of people of color are overweight, and so again, it's it's this breathing problem, right? So it's it's kind of like somebody who naturally maybe uh had issues with lung capacity, then gets really sick. And so is it is it necessarily COVID itself, or is it that they were already the the right person to knock over the edge?

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Well, and that's exactly it, right? That you're absolutely right. There was a percentage of people globally who were far more susceptible on a lethal level to a virus like COVID. For sure, that's undeniable. But a lot of those people already had pre-existing conditions, like you said, asthma or you know, whatever whatever the case might be, right? Yeah, um, that were far more susceptible. And those are the people that, yes, it did it did take their lives, unfortunately, right? Um, and you know, I mean, I I agreed with certain things, like yes, okay, well, everyone should probably stay out of uh retirement homes, first of all. Yeah, that's a probably a pretty good idea because the elderly most definitely were susceptible, right? Uh, things like that, uh, most definitely, but I mean, we took it to a zombie apocalypse absurd level, right? Like people were fighting over toilet paper, my dude.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

I forgot about that. That's how you knew the world was ending was the toilet paper shortage. Yeah, I mean, what? What? I I I don't know if you had to do this. There was one time that I was like, holy shit, I'm like, we may actually run out of toilet paper. I mean, we were normally, you know, if you're doing a full wipe, you get you get two squares, right? And it was like we're already down to just one square a wipe. I'm like later. Exactly. And I was like, I was like, okay, I'm like, we actually got to get some toilet paper. And so I actually called our local grocery store, right? And I was like, hey, like, when's it coming in? They're like, oh, it should be here, you know, Tuesday morning. I was like, thanks. What time do you open? 6 a.m. I'm like, I'll be there. And no shit, man. It was the one and only time I did it. But I went there and there was me and like 25 other people, and I was at the front of it, but I mean, we were all there, and it was like we're looking at each other like I will, I will throw a bow straight into you.

SPEAKER_02 34:41

FAFO, man. FAFO.

SPEAKER_04 34:44

Yeah, absolutely, right. You know, it was like there was no way I was getting out of there with no toilet paper.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

It's Black Friday for toilet paper. Yeah. Oh man. Uh going back to the political side of it, uh, reports I'm reading uh are that Justin Trudeau's net worth was about $10 million before COVID and reported afterwards, allegedly, between 90 to 96 million dollars after COVID. He 10xed his net worth in two or three years.

SPEAKER_04 35:16

Hey, Andy upgraded to Katy Perry.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Yeah. I don't know if that's an upgrade in some people. Yeah, it depends on how you look at it. Superficially, yes. I mean, but who's who's the who's the man in that relationship, though? That's the question. I mean, you ever see the picture of Trudeau sitting next to Trump, and uh Trump's got his his he's manspreading sitting there like a guy in a chair, and Trudeau's got his legs crossed.

SPEAKER_04 35:47

So hey, let me just say real quick, quick sidebar. The men that that go on like public TV shows and they cross their legs like a woman, like they cross them above the knee.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:59

I I I don't know how they do that. How do they do that? I mean, they're they're they're just like crushing their nuts, right? I know.

SPEAKER_02 36:07

What how do you do that? How do you do that? What's the angle here? Yeah, no, I agree. It's that's definitely an uncomfortable uh thought, but uh, but but then you had other politicians too. I remember in the States, I can't remember who it was who I think it was in New York. Uh it was a female politician, but she was caught on camera. She went to a hair salon and got her hair done, no masks or anything. Swan was supposed to be shut down, no one was supposed, no one was supposed to be allowed to go get their hair done or anything. I remember this specifically. I don't know if I can't remember who it was. I don't know if it was like Maxine Waters or somebody like that, right? I think it was in New York, and it was it made the news because she got caught and she's out and she's getting her hair done and stuff like that. And and then in the same breath, they're telling you, you can't go get, you know, you can't go anywhere without your mask, you can't go in public at all, you can't go get your hair done, and stuff like that. And yet these politicians were doing it left, right, and center. They were doing whatever they wanted. Essentially, politicians were living their lives no different than they were before COVID, during COVID. They were just doing whatever they wanted. Rules for thee, not for me, right?

SPEAKER_04 37:27

Well, you know what the moral of that story is. I mean, you're married, I'm married. Never get between a woman and her hair. Amen to that. That's the moral to that one. She was getting her hair done regardless. She didn't give a shit if there were COVID restrictions or not.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

You know, you say that's funny you say that my wife's still getting her hair done right now.

SPEAKER_04 37:51

Hey, funny thing though, that reminded me of something. So when COVID happened, you know, I was in the corporate world and everything went remote, right? The whole operation went remote. And this is what led to remote work all across the globe. And all of a sudden, we all realized hey, we don't need to be in an office, we can all just work from home and believe it or not, we're actually more productive because we're not getting distracted all day long, right? And and so uh one of the funny things was at the beginning of it, our company, they would have like just touch base calls, right? So we would call in, there'd be like like 150 people on this phone call, and they're like, hey everybody, um, we know it's it's really difficult right now. We just want to see how you're doing. How are how are you doing out there? You are you guys you guys holding on? And and and I'm sitting here on my side thinking, what what do you mean are you holding on? Like, like I'm doing great, I'm thriving, not not having to drive through fucking rush hour every morning, every afternoon. Like, I am like kicking ass over here. I'm more productive than I've ever been. And you're wanting to know like how we're doing, and I'm thinking, what the hell is wrong with you people? How are you doing? Yeah, how how are you guys doing? And you know, like some of them were like, Yeah, you know, it was it was a big shock at first, and I wasn't quite sure what to do. And and then I realized I could I can actually get exercise now. I can I can actually walk around my neighborhood, I can I can become healthy, and it's like, no shit, like, oh my god, you know, and and and then there was a bunch that were like, I actually think I'm more productive because normally when I'm you know, when I'm uh in a normal workday, right? It takes me, you know, half hour to an hour to drive to work, half hour to an hour to drive home while I'm there. You know, I'm bullshitting with everybody all around my desk or whatever. I'm not getting anything accomplished. I go to lunch early, I stay at lunch late, I go out for afternoon coffee. You know, there's all these breaks through throughout the whole thing, like there's never any rhythm to it at all. You know, there's meetings, whatever. Turns out we could do all the meetings remotely.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Unbelievable, yeah. And people today, people today, there's still people working from home.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

Well, well, see, here's the here's the funny thing though with all of this is that in the US, it started to crater the commercial real estate, which is significant. Okay. So all so if you think about like this, like every downtown and every big city is where a lot of people work, right? There's restaurants all around there. Um, there's support businesses, all kinds of random businesses thrive on people being down there for for lunch. And now all of a sudden, no one's there, right? Like nobody's nobody's doing this stuff. All of a sudden, the organizations are saying, hey, we don't need all this commercial space. And so it was in a way, it's like the canary in the coal mine. And the politicians across the globe caught onto it and said, Hey, everybody's got to just go back to the office five days a week. And everybody who's been working from home and more productive are all like, what? What do you mean? And so, in the time sense, like fast forward to today, most people have been forced back to the office five days a week. Uh, but the the good companies out there, you know, like the small companies, the ones that are still running remotely, run better and more efficiently. And so the point is, is if you really need a reason to meet as a group in person, that's fine, right? Like, I'm not saying you don't do that. Yes, of course you still do that. But you don't need to be there five days a week all day long, completely inefficient, when you could be working remote at least half of that, and be far more efficient.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

I agree. I mean, I don't see, I really don't see anything wrong with people working from home. As long as your your numbers are, you know, productive and you're you're producing at the level that your job requires you to be producing at or above, then I mean, absolutely think about the time you're saving, uh commuting back and forth to work, the gas that you're not spending going back and forth to work. So it is it is beneficial. I mean, some people are able to work and not have to pay for uh childcare anymore because they can be home with their children and still get work done, right? So there's there's a lot of benefits to uh working from home for sure. But I think there's probably a maj uh a minority, I will say, of people who are just flat out not productive whatsoever working at home, eh?

SPEAKER_04 42:44

Yeah, yeah, you well, let's put it this way. I think most people fall in the middle that let's say the hybrid, right? They could do either one, but there are those extremes where they either uh if they're at home, they're completely useless and they're not doing anything at all. There's the other extreme that they sort of have to go to the office every day or they feel like they have no purpose. And I I knew plenty of people like that too that were like, I just can't do it at home. I feel like I just can't focus, I have to leave, I have to go to the office.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Well, it is uh another thing, too, is like I understand that because, for example, the office that I was working at, like I said, uh I was a subcontractor, my business was a subcontractor to the dealership, right? And during during COVID, when we would we would still go into the office, even though customers were not coming in, right? I showed up in a suit every single day, right? Shaved suit, right? Because that is the standard that I set for myself. And the reason I did that was because of how I feel, right? Um, everybody else was coming in in sweatpants and sweat, you know, pajamas, uh, you know, not shaved for like a week and you know, whatever, all just bloodshot eyes and Like you know, but because no one was coming in, so they just look like a bomb. Hair hair's not done, probably didn't shower before coming in, right? And I'm I was the only one there in a suit, and people just look at me like, what like why are you? I said, you know what? Because I feel better than you do right now. That's why, right? I like when I when I I've done that, everyone's done that. Like they've sat around in their house for three or four days in pajamas, haven't never shaved or anything like that. You feel like shit, man, right? You really do, and because you look like shit, you haven't been productive, you look like a bum, so you feel like a bum, right? I don't like feeling that way. So I went in every day, I'd shave, shower, go in, right? And and go through the motions. And I probably in because that's a lot of depression comes from that kind of behavior, too. A lot of that's the thing, depression spiked during COVID. I think more people were dying of depression and stuff like that. Like, you know, there were suicides, a lot of suicides were spiking and stuff, because people were lonely, locked in their homes. Not everybody had family in their homes and stuff to to interact with it, right? And it was a long time, so a lot of people suffered.

SPEAKER_04 45:05

Yeah, and and that's very true. I think the isolation of it, I agree with you 100%. If you did not have a family that you were lit with, then yeah, it probably was a little too isolating. Like it, I can remember my uh mother-in-law at the time, uh, my father-in-law had passed away. And so it was just her at her house with her two cats. And at one point, she didn't leave for no shit, like six months. She didn't leave the house for six months. Like, that's that's crazy. That's insane to me. Whereas, like the situation I was in, it was me, my wife, my son, and our house is big enough that we were never really on top of each other at all. And so we we were just sort of fine. And you know, ironically, the company I work for had this health benefit that they would pay towards, you know, like uh uh health and well-being, whether it's physical or mental, right? So I spent all my shit on a home gym, so I've got a full-blown home gym here. So I kind of like had I had things to do, I had plenty of room, I was comfortable. I mean, it it was all good, but the flip side of that was like in my mother-in-law, you know, isolated, no one saw her. I mean, we were actually kind of worried about her. Like, is she literally talking to anyone? Like, no one knew, you know.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Like I think I played more World of Warcraft in that three-year period than I had ever done in my life. Sales for time cards on Warcraft were probably spiking. It's funny. True, man. But I'm I'm in a similar way. Like, I I had my own space. We had a pantry that the wife had completely filled up uh in the beginning stages of of COVID and all that stuff, so we were well stocked when it came to that stuff. Uh I had uh uh you know a fort made of toilet paper, the same size as my house, apparently. And uh, you know, everyone kind of had space, right? So, same thing. I got my I got my treadmill, my uh my Peloton bike, right? I went and picked up some some dumbbells and stuff, but I will say this, I never worked out anywhere near as much as I should have during COVID. I gained a lot of unnecessary weight in that time frame because the exercise fell off a cliff because I was I was going to the gym every single day consistently like like a beast, right? And then COVID came, couldn't go back to the gym, man. It was just right, the nosedive, you you ate like a total asshole, too, right? Everything and anything you just shove down your throat, and then next thing you know, boom, 30 pounds overweight.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

Well, you you needed a workout partner, truthfully. That's what you really needed that you that you don't get when you're not at the gym, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

Someone to yeah, someone to kind of push, but that's for me where it kind of went downhill, and I never really recovered um to the condition that I was in before. So I was in phenomenal shape beforehand, right? And um, I'm just starting to get back on on track now. Now I tried a couple times, but you also have to remember that the conditioning that I was in when COVID hit, I mean, what was that? Four or five five years ago, right? Six years, at least maybe longer. I was like 39, right? I was still in my late 30s. I'll tell you right now, recovery time and and working out in your mid-40s compared to when you're in your 30s. Oh man, it's so much harder to get back. Plus, I had been training for 20 25 years before that, you know. So my conditioning, it wasn't hard to maintain that conditioning or to keep pushing because that's all I had known up to that point. But then you take five, six years off because COVID kind of kicks you in the ass, and then you never really you've just been a stalled engine ever since then. Well, now it's so much harder to get going again. And and they opened gyms during COVID, and I tried going back, but they were like making you wear a mask on the treadmill, like on your elliptical and stuff. I'm like, you can barely breathe without a mask. Yeah, and you wear glasses. I mean, your glasses were probably fogging up, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I take my glasses off when I'm doing my cardio, I just put them in the cup holder and go to town. I can't see anything, I don't need to see anything anyway. Only thing I'm seeing is stars now doing our absurd. And you know, I'm I'm glad we're past that time. But ultimately, for me, I am glad that it revealed to me, you know, I was able to nonchalantly and passively cut a lot of people out of my life that um I didn't have, you know, incredibly strong relationships with anyway, just kind of more acquaintances that called them your themselves your friends, and they'd be like, hey, I'm happy to see you when you see them in public or something. That kind of a relationship. I was able to cut a lot of those people out who conducted themselves, you know, who were constantly posting on Facebook about allowing people who didn't want to take the shot to die, and you know, and and how stupid you were if you didn't want to get the shot and all the derogatory stuff, right? Uh I was able to cut a lot of those people out, and it's those same people now, like I said, who post on Facebook and socials, like, let's just move past how I behaved inappropriately without so much as an apology, right? Or acknowledgement of what I did. Let's just move past it, right? And I'm like, no, I don't want to be associated with you, you're just a shitty person, right? And you showed me that you were willing to let other people die because they didn't agree with how you felt about a shot, right?

SPEAKER_04 50:57

Yeah, so on our last episode we did, I told you the story of my dad, right? And and let me kind of recap that once more until you're telling you again, yeah. Yeah, so so what happened was uh my dad was uh he he's 40 years older than me. I'm 43, he's currently 82, right? And no, 83. And so uh do the correct math, Jesse. He's 40 years, okay. So so he's 40 years older than me. And so his generation was fed hard. You get the vaccine or you're going to die. Get the vaccine, get the vaccine. And so within our family group, he kept he was adamantly for it, and I was adamantly against it. And uh, my reason for being against it is mainly not because of whether it was valid or not, it was because of who was selling it. I don't trust the pharmaceuticals being the driver, and I know how much money they're making. So that that was it. It's not that I'm not pro-vaccine, I'm pro the vaccines that come from an educational, a college that have been around a hundred years, that came out of the medical world. I bel I tend to believe that stuff, but I do not believe the stuff coming from the pharmaceuticals. Okay. So that was my main reason for not doing it. And so at the time, he kept saying, No, you're you're so stupid. That this was, you know, the exact words, you're so stupid for not getting it, right? Okay, great. So he gets the vaccine, and within three weeks, it was like two and a half weeks later, he has a heart attack for the first time in his life. He's never had any heart attacks, no history, nothing. I'm pretty sure he either got Pfizer or Moderna, it was one of those. And it was a bit of a wake-up call. And so he's in the hospital, right? And at the time, uh my dad has uh or had three sisters. So one of my aunts is there, another aunt lives local, she's there. And so the one that flies into town, we end up talking on the side about the vaccine. And I'm I'm kind of talking to her and I'm telling her, look, I'm like, I just I don't really trust who it's coming from. I don't trust the speed at which they've rolled it out. I don't trust that we're being forced to take it or you're somehow like losing your job or whatever. There's a lot of things I I really don't trust here that aren't sitting well with me. And she looked at me and said, You're stupid if you're not getting it. So I heard it from two of them, right? I heard it from my dad and I heard it from her. And she was adamant that I would, I was the I was the dumb one here. Um, and and she's talking to me like I'm I'm like politically hard right, and I'm not. I'm politically center, I'm an independent, okay? Sometimes I see left, sometimes I see right. I make up my decision. I'm an individual. You're not gonna tell me what to think. I can think for myself, right? And so so she was adamant that I was stupid. My dad was adamant that I was stupid. And so then later, my dad has a follow-up appointment with this longtime doctor, who he highly respects because she's been a doctor for like 50 years. I think, I think I mentioned the other call. She was she's had like peer-reviewed papers, and she was like a big deal. I think she was out of like Puerto Rico or something like that. And the one of the very first questions she asked was, Did you get the vaccine? And he said, Yes. And she goes, Well, we got to write that down as a finding. And it was like the mic dropped in the room, and and he's like, What? All of a sudden the light bulb went on, you know, the switch flipped, my mom's looking over, I'm looking at them like like you motherfuckers, none of none of you listen to me. No, you would not listen to me because it came from me. Now, if it came from her, they're gonna listen, but because it was coming to me, that it was easy to say, hey, this is bullshit, it's you, you know. You don't say, Yeah, and so again, you know, kind of how you have these family uh dilemmas and arguments, right? Like this, this is what happened in ours. So my my parents were for it, my aunt was for it, or I was a moron. I'm apparently a moron because I was against it, and then he has a heart attack, and then the actual professional says, We need to report this as a finding.

SPEAKER_02 55:41

See, I was fortunate. My wife was in agreement with me that it was all a scam, it was bullshit, right? Yeah, and I never my like unfortunately, you know, my mother had passed away in 2019 just before COVID started, right? Like six months before or something like that. It was odd timing. So my and my my father, we didn't really talk about it, right? So I didn't have any controversy in my family because I just chose not to have the conversation with my family, and they chose not to have it, and you know, so it wasn't really an issue. I think I think my father went and got his shots and stuff like that. You know, he's he was but to be fair, he was he did uh respite care, home respite care for uh elderly people, right? So he kind of was a requirement for his job. Like he goes and and helps administer, you know, uh cancer treatments and stuff like that for elderly people in their homes and things like that, right? So that's obvious you have to take all of the precautions when you're dealing with people who are that susceptible when it comes to their immune systems and stuff like that, right? So I wasn't gonna have that conversation with him because whether he believed in it or not, he didn't really have much of an option, right? Um but so I I didn't have that problem, but interesting story. Now, since the 1970s, every president at the end of their term has granted clemency, right? Has has granted pardons, right? I don't know if you know that that's I don't know if you know that or not, but that's kind of like a tradition for presidents. Right. So in the last 30 years, though, so Bill this is this is a funny number. Bill Clinton granted between 140 and 177 at the end of his term. Okay, right? George Bush granted um final days 2009. Doesn't give me a number, okay. Uh Barack Obama granted 330. Okay, so we've got so far we've got 140 to 177, 330. Trump in 2021 granted between 70 and 74 pardons. Biden 1500. Huh, bit of an outlier. What the hell happened there? Including Fauci, right? Being one of the most controversial. Now, why would you need to pardon the doctor who led the charge in the fight against COVID, right? Didn't they do a documentary uh create marking him as a hero of the people? And you know, he's he's fighting to keep everybody alive. And why would a man of that stature require a pardon from the president after the president's leaving office?

SPEAKER_04 58:49

Yeah, you know, the thing with Fauci, I think, is complicated. Like he's a he's a career long medical government person, right? And you know, this is the thing with like the medical field, and this might be controversial too.

SPEAKER_02 59:08

Sorry, quick sidebar. Wasn't he also he ran the charge for HIV and AIDS too, didn't he?

SPEAKER_04 59:15

He likely did, yeah, likely, because he would have been there at that time, uh, for sure, in the 80s. Um but uh, you know, one of the problems that I inherently have with the the just the medical world, right, is they're very matter-of-fact, and they're not not not all of them, but most of them are very matter-of-fact and they're not open to other views, right? And I I think he's somebody that would be guilty of that, right? And like if you look at um just going to the doctor in general, right? Like, let's let's pick something like blood pressure, okay. Every time you go, they want to check your blood pressure and they want to fit every single person, no matter how big, how small, how much weight you have, female, male, how old, how young, they want to put everybody in one little box and they say, Well, if you're not in this box, you're going to die. And therefore, we need to sell you lacinepril and lasartan, pharmaceutical shit. Okay. And everybody who takes it feels awful. Okay. So it's kind of like if if you took your car that runs on unleaded and you filled it up with diesel, that's basically what they do, right? Everybody's lightheaded. They're like, this is this is awful. I I don't know what uh where do I start? And the reality is, is they're not treating the the cause, they're treating the result, right? So so the cause of why you may have high blood pressure could be stress at your job. It could be you're a few pounds overweight, right? It could be you have too much sodium in your diet. Um it could be a million different, it could be simply that you're aging, right? As you age, your blood pressure naturally goes up as your arteries tend to harden over time, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

Which is why you have to change your lifestyle.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:13

Correct, right? Like this is why you got to focus on blood flow and and re removing inflammation and exercising, right? But if you simply go to the doctor, they're gonna say, you need blood pressure medication. No, you don't. You don't need blood pressure medication. You need you need to you need to work on all these other things, and then you'll naturally feel better because you don't need some some shit from some pharmaceutical company that's gonna drop your points by like 30 points, and now all of a sudden you're lightheaded and you you feel terrible.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:50

Stop eating so much bacon and get a gym membership. That's what that's what you need. No, bacon's good for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:55

Bacon is high protein, high fat. That's exactly what you should be eating. Oh, there you go. Bacon. Okay. Yeah. If it's like maple bacon, there's sugar all over it. Well, that's a little bit different. But if it's straight bacon, that's actually really good for you. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

Bacon wrapped in bacon.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:15

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so going back to Fauci, he's he's like at the top of that group of people, you know, that he wants to, he thinks he's right. He's been doing it forever, he's read a million books, and this is it. And there's only one solution. And the solution is vaccine. And maybe he's looking at it in terms of like, well, the more people vaccinated, the less chance of dying. Okay, but that's again, you're looking at statistics that aren't even accurate. Like this this was one of my biggest arguments with COVID the entire time. And this is coming from somebody who worked in corporate America for over 20 years, okay, is that our data was shit. It was shit from the get-go and it was shit at the end, and it's still shit today. Still shit. You can rely on. It's crap.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

You can't even get accurate job data.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:06

No, no, the data is not accurate, and what they're reporting in the numbers has never been accurate. And then, you know, like the the studies of the um how uh the efficacy of of these vaccines was provided by the vaccine maker. It's not independent third parties, you know. Yeah, trust me, bro. We we did it right this time. Um, and so you know, again, I mean, I just I don't know, that really that really bugged me. But hey, so I got a couple things I want to bring up. Um I was thinking about before I forget. So one of them hang on one second. All right, far away, brother. All right, so three three three kind of totally different things with COVID. First thing was that COVID kind of became popular around March or April of I think it was 2018, I think, right? Now that previous fall um is where it actually supposedly came about. Okay. So it it was out there before they actually knew it was a pandemic. And what's interesting with it is that that fall, my wife and I both got sick, okay. And we got like really sick. Like, like it was it was like an ass kicker, knock you down, multiple days of like, oh my God, what is this? Neither one of us went to the doctor, but we simply stayed home. And when we were recovered, you know, a week and a half, two weeks later, whatever it was, we were we both kind of said to each other, like, wow, whatever we just got, that was that that seemed more severe than normal. And it wasn't like the flu. I wasn't throwing up or anything like that, but it was it was harsh and it was like immediate, it was like a like you know, somebody dropped an anvil on you, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:07

And so then ironically, three, four months go by and the pandemic comes out, this whole thing about COVID. And so I don't know if this happened to you or not, but I was one of the people that I kind of assumed I already had it, and maybe I had it at the very beginning before anyone knew what it was, because once they identified it, they basically said, Hey, the barn doors are open, the horses are gone. Okay, well, when did that happen? Like, well, we don't know, but somewhere over the last couple months. And so I kind of always assumed like maybe we just had it right away, and then we got like our our natural bodies built the antibodies to fend it off. And then, in all the time since that all these people I know have tested positive for COVID, I have never once tested positive. I did test one time, never once have come back positive. Ever and the people who got the vaccine have COVID all the time. Oh, yeah, I've got COVID again. And it turned into like this excuse to call out of work. Yeah, I got COVID. I'm not gonna be there the rest of the week.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:14

Oh, because no one would question it. Right. You could cancel anything. Dinner plans with friends, family.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:20

Ah, I got COVID. Got COVID again. Sorry, not gonna be able to make it.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

Nobody can no one would question it. Okay, hey, no problem, right? Um, funny thing is I tested positive for twice, once right in the beginning, like you, right? I got it, and the first time, similar to you, it was worse than a normal cold, but tolerable, right? And then the second time, it was barely anything because, like you said, my body had built up uh an immunity to it, so it was kind of like it wasn't so bad the second time around, right? Yeah, um, like it was barely anything. And to this day, though, to this day, I went to just for a regular uh well, I went to my doctor's because uh I I thought I had strep, I had I did have strep throat about a month ago, right? So my throat was a little bit raw. I went in and I could tell I had strep throat before. We all know the feeling of strep throat, right? You can tell you have strep throat. So I go into my doctor and I just he's great. He lives his office a couple blocks, he lets me just pop in and say, Hey man, I need 10 minutes of your time. So he just squeezes me in, right? And so I go in and he's like, he swabs my throat and he sends it away. We both know it's COVID, so he gives me a prescription for an antibiotic, whatever. And then he he walks over to his desk, and this is a little short little Persian man, okay? Like we're talking five, four, just you know, just a little bowling ball of body shape, right? And he comes walking back over. I'm sitting in this chair, puts his hand on my forehead, and goes wham, and just rubs rams this long ass q-tip up my nose to my brain cells, right? I'm pretty sure I'm dumber now, yeah, because of it. And like like COVID shot or a COVID COVID test, right? Bang, right up my nose. And then I'm like, I'm like, ah, what the hell are you doing, man? He he looks turns around, looks at me with a straight face and goes, stop being a girl. That's the thing, and get a test back, uh, positive for strep throat, negative for COVID, whatever, right? But it's just to this day, just sneak attacks me and shoves this thing up my nose, right? That that hurts, man. I'm sorry, but like my eyes are watering for like 20 minutes afterwards. Like, was that necessary? Just stop being a girl.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:40

Yeah, you know what's interesting is that see, I think we're both against this for different reasons, but with you, it's almost like you've been violated because you've had the swab, you've gotten the shots, and you're like, what the hell? Leave me alone, just leave me alone. Like, I don't want any, I don't want to participate in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

We're sticking things in me.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:07

That was after you got out of prison. Yeah, I was used to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

Good times, anyway.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:20

Um, no, so two other things. So one other one, um, the origination. I don't know if you remember this. So it was kind of like, where did it come from? And everybody was trying to figure out, right? And and one of the conspiracy theories was like, oh, there's a there's a uh virus lab in Wuhan, uh China, that they thought maybe it was released from. And it it was sort of like a right conspiracy, right? Like, oh yeah, it came out of that lab. And then the left was adamantly against it, didn't come out of that lab. And then, like, a couple of years later, they were like, maybe it came out of that lab. Like, like it might have actually come out of the lab, you know? And then the other thing that was happening at the same time, I don't know if you ever saw these, but they said that uh the other fear was that it came out of one of these Asian like live markets. Have you seen this?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:16

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:17

It is sketchy. So it's it's like um, you know, in a lot of these Asian uh countries, they don't have like they don't have like a traditional grocery store, right? It's it's like an outdoor market. And at this market, like here's a barrel of whatever guinea pigs, and there's like 50 of them in there alive, you know, and here's a uh, you know, thing of uh squid, you know, and there's 50 of them in there, they're alive, and it's it's like they have everything possible. And one of the creatures that they have in these markets, uh, I can't think of its exact name, but it looks like an armadillo. You know what armadillo is? Yep. Yeah, so it looks like an armadillo, but it's it's like an Asian version of it. And apparently they eat these things over over in China and in this area. They eat these this armadillo-looking creature. And like here in the US, uh, they always say that I don't know if this is true or not, but they always said that uh armadillo supposedly carried leprosy, so you never want to ever attempt to touch it, eat it, cook it, put it in the soup.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:31

So they're like the raccoons over there.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:35

Yeah, kinda, kinda. I mean, you know, an armadillo is just kind of like um, in terms of a creature, like we got them all over the place here where I'm at, right? And they're basically like a night creature. They come out at night, they come out of a hole in the ground, they root around and they look for worms, and then they go back to sleep during the day. That that's like all they do. And where I'm at, they get hit by cars all the time because they really don't have good peripheral vision and they'll run out in the road and somebody will hit it, you know, with a car. But anyway, in China, supposedly, they eat those things and they're at the market. And the fear was that because of all these crazy creatures are all in this very close proximity to each other, that if one of them's sick, it can spread a disease, a virus from the sick one to a different species altogether that would normally never get it. And I I think this is how uh I want to say like the bird flu supposedly came about, just like that. And so, anyway, so if you ever look at that Asian market, like the outdoor thing, like it is sketchy. And it's it's like I could I could totally see some weird shit coming out of there because I mean, just the fact that you have all these things there and they're all live.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:55

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:56

I mean, it like it's I don't know, like you know, like here in the US, there's presentation that goes into selling you food. Over there, it's like, yeah, here's this thing we just caught, and there's 18 others, you want them all?

unknown 1:13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:14

What wasn't there also this this leftist strategy that was employed during that time too when they were talking about where the origination of COVID came from? It was like if you said that it came from a lab in Wuhan, you were racist. Yeah, right? You were racist. That's that's what the left, uh, the the the far left does, right? If if there's something, if it's a controversial talk, whatever it is, if you're if you're talking about like we're talking about geo ra geographical location, but you're racist if you say that you know that's where the it originated from. But that's what they do with everything, right? You you want to discuss something instead of tabling a conversation, you're a bigot, you're a racist, you're a transphobe, you're a whatever the case, so that they don't have to talk about the facts of the of the situation, right? It's easier to smash the table and walk away, right? Flip the board over, uh, you know, and and walk away, right? So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:11

And that's I remember that.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:12

It was like you were racist if you said that. And I was like, racist? What the fuck? How do I how does me thinking it came from a lab in in some place make me not like Asian people? What the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:26

And and again, the funny thing with that whole theory was at first it was like, oh, this is just a crazy conspiracy theory, but then later it it did start to like get gain some traction, like it may have actually come out of there, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Well, it could have been the lab could have been in Sweden, right? It didn't matter, it didn't matter which I mean at the end of it it didn't matter like the race of the people in the country the lab was located in. It could have been Sweden, could have been in France, could have been anywhere. It doesn't matter. It's not racist to say this lab at this geographical location is where we suspect the the virus originated from. It's nothing to do with the race of people living in that just happen to be living in that area. Yeah, right. That's the logic of them, right? So you you must thereby hate those people. So if it was in Sweden, we must have all been racist against Swedish people or something. I don't know. Right.

unknown 1:15:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:24

Yeah, yeah. Every everybody's looking, they're looking for the zero sum game. This is what bugs me again. You know, it's that 100% right, 100% wrong. It doesn't work that way. Like nothing is zero sum. Um okay, my my last my last topic item on COVID was I have a friend of mine that he got COVID. He was vaccinated, he he's had COVID shit five times, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:52

The guy canceled a lot of canceled a lot of dinner plans.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:58

Well, anyway, one of those times he supposedly got what they refer to as long COVID. Have you heard of long COVID?

unknown 1:16:06

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:07

Okay, so long COVID apparently is a is an actual thing where people who have gotten COVID have long-term loss. Like, like if you were, you know, how you talked about being athletic and then COVID app, and then you really haven't been able to get back into it. Well, they have similar stories, but it's like, you know, I was highly athletic, I could do, you know, whatever metric it was, you know, I could do let's say an hour of cycling, no problem, at whatever pace. After I had COVID, I can only do like half an hour. I it's like I just don't have the one capacity, I just can't do it. Um, and you know, again, I don't know, I don't know how true it is because I don't trust the statistics behind it. Like there could be a million other factors that play into this. Like you said, somebody with asthma, right? And then they had COVID and now their lung capacity has dropped. But the but the I guess the real question is is do you think it's possible that they had a permanent lung capacity loss? So if they were at 100 before and now they're at 85, do you think that's real?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:21

Here's what I think. I think when you have something that can ravage your lungs, like COVID, right? Um, can it like you said, you're able to bike at a certain pay certain pace or uh run at a certain pace, or whatever the case might be beforehand, but that's no different than like a bad flu or or uh pneumonia or something like that, where can it affect your lung capacity? Yeah, but you lung capacity is a funny thing, it's a fickle thing, right? It can disappear very quickly, and you have to build that lung stamina back up again. That's that's a common thing. If you could you could lose that lung capacity simply by not biking for two months and then getting back on a bike, and you'd lose the same percentage of you know, from from down to 85%, and you feel like after half an hour, like I just don't have any left. Well, that's just because a regular weakening of the lungs by not exercising them, they're almost like a muscle. Your organs are almost like muscles. Same thing with your metabolism and everything else. You have to exercise that organ to keep it healthy, right? So something like COVID comes along and ravages it, of course, it's gonna cause some damage in the immediate term, but I think you just have to build that lung capacity back up again. Is it gonna be hard? Probably, but not any harder than it was to build it to that point in the first place. Let's not forget how hard it was to get your lung capacity to the level where you could bike for an hour to begin with, right? It wasn't a cakewalk, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:48

No. And and and typically you have to level up, right? I mean, you really do level up over years to get to a certain condition. And you know, like I can think of uh when I was a younger adult, I got into surfing. I had a friend of mine that really liked surfing, right? And at the time I wasn't married and no kids, and it was like, well, what are we gonna do? And it was like, let's just go surfing, right? And so in our job that we worked in, we were sort of like on call. And so if we were on call, we would get deployed somewhere like states away and be gone for months at a time. But when you finally got released and you were at home, you're at home for potentially months. And so what was ironic was when whenever we were home at the same time, we'd start surfing a lot together because what else were we gonna do? And and your body, like when you when you go from never surfing to surfing, it's like a full body workout. Everything, everything's happening. And it would take me at least what felt like three to three to five weeks just to get in the flow of it. And all of a sudden you'd turn that corner and I would feel like, wow, I'm in like the best shape of my entire life. Like, this is crazy, you know? And I could totally see how if you had COVID, you didn't surf for like three months, and then on top of that, let's say you have asthma or something else, yeah, your lung capacity would like plummet, and yeah, you've got to slowly build it up one level at a time after that. So I I mean, I never got diagnosed with long COVID, but I just I don't know. I don't know if that's real or not, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:27

I think it's I think a big part of it is psychological. Um, you know, you you meet that resistance, you're used to being able to function at a certain level. It's no different than me, uh, you know, what I was being able to do in the gym before COVID, and now me struggling to try to get back to it simply because of a lack of inactivity, right? My my non-use of those muscles, uh even my lung capacity, my lung capacity and everything like that, right? Like when I first started going back a few weeks ago, I was only able to do about 10 minutes on the stair mill. Lung capacity is uh done, my you know, my legs are done, I just I just don't have the stamina. Today I finally hit 40 minutes again, right? But I've had to build that back up over the course of a couple of weeks, right? And it's the same thing, right? Eventually I'll get back to where I was, but um it by no means is it easy, but like you said, you've got to level up, you've got to work through it, and I think part of it's psychological, where if you had just you know had that inactivity for a while, or just had uh if you if you had pneumonia or a flu, just a regular flu without the buzz of COVID, if you got the flu and you were bedridden for a week and a half, and then you tried to go back to the gym, your lung capacity would be sorely affected in the same way. But you wouldn't be using that as an excuse. I don't want to say excuse, but as a reason for oh, I can't push any further because the flu permanently damaged my ability to my lung capacity. You would just be like, man, it's hard recovering from this flu. But because of the buzz around COVID, you're like, I'm permanently damaged forever. Throw me in the trash. I feel like Woody and Buzz. It's Toy Story 5, right? Throw me in the garbage, straight in the trash can. So for me, I guess to sum up, I mean, we're not saying that it's not a zero-sum game, as Jesse said. It's not COVID's a scam or it's not a scam. There are people who lost loved ones to COVID who were susceptible, and our hearts go out to them and we pray for them. Um, so but when you table the conversation and you get into the nuance of the whole situation, there were a lot of scams and lies that we were fed, right? There's also a lot of legitimacy, again, to people losing loved ones and stuff like that. So be willing to table the conversation and look into the nuances of the situation as a whole instead of just saying, oh, it's a scam or oh, it's not a scam, right? There's a gray area. Join us in there.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:10

There you go, the gray area, right? I mean, there's a full discussion that you can be had that you can have when you're open. And like I said in those couple stories earlier with my own family, they weren't open at all. And so I wanted to have a discussion with them, and they just they just were completely closed off and shut down, told me I was wrong, and that was that. No, until all of a sudden, maybe I wasn't. You know, but I mean, I'm sure we all deal with this all the time. And you know, again, going back to the data, this is why I said, you know, I don't I don't trust the data at all. And and I know how, you know, I th I think there's a point to be made of when you go to the doctor that when you when you ask leading questions, it self-reinforces, right? Like kind of like you were saying about the gym and COVID. I mean, it's the same thing. It's like, well, why why can't you work out in the gym? Oh, it's COVID. I can't work out in the gym. Really? Well, okay, what if COVID didn't exist? What would you say? Like, what would you say that? Well, I I got tired early. Okay, and if you got tired early, what what would you do next time? Would you try to push through it? Well, yeah, probably. And you know, I can think of like even with my uh mother-in-law, she uh had bronchitis recently. And when she would go to the doctor, every time she went, she'd say, I'm not sick, I'm fine. And they'd say, you know what? Yeah, you're fine. It's just allergies. And then she'd be around us and she's like literally coughing up phlegm constantly. And we're looking at her like, that's not allergies. Like you legitimately have like bronchitis, you need like some antibiotics here. And then she'd go back to the doctor and she'd say, I don't know, they they think it's uh allergies, and we'd say, Well, what'd you tell them? Well, I told them it's allergies.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:03

They disagreed with each other.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:05

Yeah, yeah. So she she's steering the conversation every time by telling them she has allergies when when it's she's never had allergies related to phlegm in her throat in her entire life.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:16

But let's be real though. I mean, doctors today en masse generally try to get you in and out as quickly as possible. They don't do proper analysis of what could actually be the problem. When I go to my doctor, like I said, I I don't mind him, but let's be honest. I go into his office, I sit down, and he he sits, he turns his computer on, he turns around, looks at me, and goes, So, what are you complaining about today? Uh nothing, I'm fine, right? Yeah, yeah. So, but but they don't. They I mean they just they briefly, you know, will say, Oh, he'll give me a physical, whatever. It's oh, you're fine, get out of here. Okay, but I got this now, I'll get out of here. You're fine. You know, and that's why so many, there's so many people uh who end up with like cancer, and if it was just diagnosed earlier, you know, they they would have had a better chance at survival and stuff. You hear about those stories all the time, and it's because, and I'm not saying it's necessarily the doctors are bad, but I mean we have a shortage of doctors, because let's be honest, not everybody has a family doctor, right? And their time, I mean, they have such a high turnover rate when it comes to patients, right? It's their patients, their their waiting rooms are full. So, of course, they're gonna they want to get people in and out as quickly as possible, right? But there has to be a middle ground there where we can catch more of these um, you know, serious things, especially when it comes to elderly people, that could extend people's lives if caught early enough, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:26:50

So it's a I think it's a problem, but yeah, you know I I personally one of one of the hard things I have with with doctors in general is that I d I don't need their opinion, but I do want their expertise. You know what I mean? Like I don't I don't necessarily need you to push a pharmaceutical on me from the rep that just left your office 45 minutes ago. You know, like I need you to simply tell me, like, I'm I'm concerned with the route, and I'm I'm not concerned with treating it. And so we look at the same thing totally different. And you know, like this might be a little controversial, also, but I actually I really like running my health stuff through various AI platforms. Why not ask it? I ask it, I I'll I'll lay everything out. Here's everything that's going on with me. What do you think's happening here? What's going on? And I'll get a response back. And it gives me insight that's not like opinionated, like it's it's based on articles.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:55

Your rotator cuff hurts, try some Viagra.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:59

Well, well. You know, case in point, going back to the blood pressure thing, I do not uh believe in pharmaceuticals. That should be apparent. But I do take vitamins and supplements. And so I'm looking for healthier alternatives to what's out there, right? And uh there's a couple of them that I ran through it and I basically said, hey, you know, I'm looking at this thing, I'm looking at this, I'm wondering if they counteract or if they'd work together, are there adverse effects? Should I be concerned? And it gives me back like an honest answer that's simply okay, these are two totally different processes. No, they don't overlap each other. Yes, you could have a pretty significant gain here. And it's like, okay, that's kind of what I'm looking for. I'm looking for objective empirical data. That's that's all I want, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:49

Well, I I think that uh if we're including if we're including times you wanted to cancel plans and not go to work and stuff, I think I've had COVID about 600 times. I think I speak for everybody listening.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:03

Yeah, I definitely had COVID the whole last year that I worked in corporate America, that's for sure. Nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:11

It's my birthday. Remember, we're going out tonight? Oh, I got COVID. I can't do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:16

Right. Yeah, you know, we we have a running joke in our house. Uh I'm I think I'm working that day. You know, well, yeah, it's uh COVID. Yeah. COVID.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:27

Oh man. Well, I mean, I guess we're uh we're about out of time here, my friend, for another episode. But uh I definitely want to know uh from everybody listening what your thoughts are. Are you capable of tabling the conversation and looking into the nuance that was the whole COVID experience, or are you closed-minded to zero-sum games? Right? Let us know down below. Is it a scam, not a scam, or are you willing to dig a little deeper? For me, big Rob, and of course, my one and only partner in crime, Jesse. Any closing thoughts, brother?

SPEAKER_04 1:30:10

I think whether it's COVID or any other controversial topic that everybody's telling you to pick aside, I think you simply need to look at it from multiple different angles and from multiple sources of information. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:29

I have a perfect little example to kind of capitalize on what you just said. I have a Patreon of my own for you know another topic, right? As you know, and somebody over there this morning, panic sold a bunch of their coins that they were holding in a certain project, and they posted it in the chat over in the Patreon. And they said, Wow, I mean, a lot of the comments uh over on uh Coin Market Cap told me that this the people who founded this coin are are you know bad, so I sold all my coins, and I made a comment. I said, Well, whenever you hear some bad news about any company that you're invested in, it might be a good idea to go and confirm that that information is correct. Don't just listen to people in comment sections on the internet, right? Because most people don't know what the hell they're talking about, they don't do research on what they just say things that they've heard inside their eco chambers, right? Sure enough, half an hour later he commented, Yeah, I went and did the research on that, wasn't true. I sold my voice, gotcha. Lesson learned, right? So always confirm when you whenever you hear something, like Jesse said, if somebody's telling you to pick a side, pick your own side. Do the research and decide for yourself.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:46

Yes, and you need to be you need to be aware. I don't know if everybody's aware of this, but you need to be aware that your social media algorithms are feeding you what you watch more of. So if you're watching an endless loop of, let's say, pro-COVID content, then it's gonna keep feeding you more pro-COVID content. If you watch an endless loop of uh anti-COVID comment, it's gonna keep feeding you that. And you need to be aware that these that that's how these companies are built because they want you on the platform as long as possible. So they're going to reinforce your views, which is why you need to find information from multiple sources.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:32

Yeah. What your eco chamber is telling you.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:39

Right. And in in every in every discussion, there's multiple multiple facets. So maybe part of it is true, maybe part of it isn't true.

unknown 1:32:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:47

But I always say look for two or three sources that confirm what you're looking for. And by sources, I don't mean someone posting on X, I mean actual legitimate sources from the companies.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:03

Somebody with credibility, hopefully. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:08

Yes. All right. Well, this wraps up another episode. We will see you again on Sunday night, guys. Thank you once again. Give us a five star review on whatever platform you're listening to us on, and make sure you let us know how you feel because we're always interested. But that is it for me, Big Rob, and uh Jesse. We'll see you again on the Paradigm Shift next Sunday.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:31

God bless Paradigm Shift out.