 Well, folks, I want to take some time to talk about the COVID-19 vaccines. I haven't been talking about them frequently because there hasn't really been any new updates, but I will take this opportunity to remind everyone watching to go get your updated COVID-19 booster. I'm, of course, talking about the Bivalent Booster, which targets the Omicron variant. I think this is really important. I got mine a couple of weeks ago. Feel fine. I haven't turned into a demon yet or have been possessed by the devil, at least to my knowledge. Go get it. It'll protect yourself. Add an extra layer of protection at least. I think it's really important, but I want to talk about the vaccines because there's a new study that was just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, and they essentially confirm what we all suspected. COVID-19 has disproportionately killed Republicans. Now, this isn't surprising, but seeing the numbers here actually startled me because I didn't suspect it to be that huge of a gap between Democrats and Republicans, and it just goes to show you how lethal the anti-vax movement was. So let's get to the article here. This is from James Risen of the Intercept, who writes, in a detailed examination of data from Ohio and Florida, the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, and that significantly more Republicans than Democrats have died from the virus since the introduction of vaccines in early 2021 to protect against the disease. By cross-referencing voter registration data and mortality figures, the study found that excess death rates, the number of deaths above pre-pandemic levels for registered Republicans were significantly higher than for registered Democrats after the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines. Now, the study tracked hundreds of thousands of people, and we'll get to the specifics here in a moment, but I just want anyone who may have spread misinformation or disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines to understand that they indeed played a role in the deaths of these human beings. I disagree with Republicans. I criticize Republicans. I poke fun at Republicans, but I never want them to die. I want them to change their minds, and they don't have the capacity to change their minds on any issue if they are no longer with us. So the people who pushed vaccine hesitancy, the folks like Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dorr, you can't quantify the damage that they did, but deep down, they've got to know that they did tremendous damage and they assisted this anti-vax movement in convincing Republicans to not do something that could have saved their lives. Now, let's get to the numbers here. The study tracked 577,659 people who died in Ohio and Florida at age 25 or older between January of 2018 and December of 2021. It then linked those people to their 2017 Ohio and Florida voting records. Between March of 2020 and March of 2021, excess death rates for Republicans in Ohio and Florida were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats. From April of 2021 to December of 2021, after vaccines became widely available, the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points. The study found that the largest gaps in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats came in Ohio and Florida counties with low vaccination rates. By using county-level vaccination rates in Ohio and Florida, we find evidence that vaccination contributes to explaining differences in excess deaths by political party affiliation even after controlling for location and age differences the study said. So let's repeat that number. 10.6 percentage points. There was nearly an 11-point difference in excess deaths in 2021 between Democrats and Republicans. And I think this is deeply sad. I think this is deeply, deeply sad because many of the people who participated in this misinformation, I think that a lot of them didn't know what they were doing. I think that they were genuine, but it's the grifters who I place blame on disproportionately who pushed vaccine hesitancy. And if you have the biggest platform, the bigger the platform, the higher level of culpability that you share individuals like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan are among the biggest names who I think are responsible for these people. Now they aren't going to look at this data and have a sudden change of heart or feel guilt, but I think it's really important that we know just how devastating this anti-vaccine movement was. And for all of the people in 2021 who called me a big pharma shill for pushing the vaccines, well, this is why, because I suspected that this was indeed the case. I have family members who have berated other family members, my mom in particular, because she was vaccinated, saying that she was a demon or possessed by the devil to do something like that, saying that she was going to be sick because of the vaccines. So I saw it firsthand. I saw how potent the propaganda was, and I tried to use my platform to do my part. But, you know, people aren't going to listen to me. We needed the people who were in these positions of influence with the anti-vaccine movement to come out and admit that they were wrong. That is what would have been powerful, but we didn't see that. Now, conversely, we know that the vaccines have saved lots and lots of lives, estimates show that in the United States alone, it's a lot. COVID vaccines prevented more than 700,000 hospitalizations and 300,000 deaths for senior citizens in 2021. Now, globally, 19.8 million lives were saved across 185 countries in the first year when vaccines were available. So there would be so much more deaths had it not been for the COVID-19 vaccines. But there were people who refused to take it, and now they're no longer here. And I find this really, really sad. But some people, you just can't get through to them. You know, just the other day on Twitter, the singer, MIA, she made some tweet on Twitter that was incredibly stupid, saying that, oh, well, if Alex Jones can be charged because he lied, can all of the celebrities who pushed vaccines, like I'm paraphrasing, but something along those lines. And for whatever reason, the anti-vax movement feels emboldened. Today, I still am seeing tweets directed at me saying, oh, well, are you going to apologize for pushing the vaccines? You've been really quiet lately. Because there's not really anything left that we can say. At this point in time, the people who haven't been vaccinated, they have at least seen some data, right? We're adults here. If you choose to not get vaccinated, that's on you. So we all tried. That's the point. Even if I felt like I maybe influenced zero people in 2021, I at least tried. And that's more than I can say for people like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, who absolutely share a lot of the blame here in this anti-vax movement and these excess deaths. People who listen to Joe Rogan, who were instructed to not get the vaccines because alternative medicine, like, you know, I've remarked not that that's an alternative medicine, but an alternative treatment they claimed is better. It's just he should never be able to live with himself. He should be up every single night feeling guilt for all of these deaths. How many of his own listeners did he kill? You just don't know. Now, you know, I hate that this vaccine argument has devolved into a debate about like, oh, well, if you push the vaccine, you're pro big pharma. No, I think that we should nationalize the companies that produced these vaccines. Pfizer, Beyond Tech, Moderna. I don't know if they're American companies is I think Beyond Tech is a German company, but whatever is an American company, I think that we should nationalize them. I have a lot of critiques. You've all heard them about our for-profit healthcare industry. And that extends to pharmaceutical companies that rip off Americans, especially after we give them our tax dollars to fund research that leads to the development of new medications. So I have issues. I have criticisms, but there's no criticism against modern medicine. You can't not participate in modern medicine. It doesn't make you a big pharma shill if you take a Tylenol, if you have a headache. It doesn't make you a big pharma shill if you pop a thumbs or two, if you have heartburn. These are things that are available to us that have drastically improved our lives and vaccines are among those things that have improved our lives. And to see a section of the population reject them, just flat out because it's a partisan issue, that is very, very sad. It's very devastating to me. And it goes beyond, you know, their apprehension about vaccines. This Vax movement is also linked to the Trump movement, right? Not it is not exclusively, right? It's not mutually exclusive. But a lot of them are also Trump supporters who believe that the election was stolen. You know, conspiratorial thinking tends to expand to other areas of society. And a lot of them think that the election was stolen. A lot of them are kind of living in their own alternate reality. And so I don't know how to get through to these people. And this is kind of an open question that I've had for years now on this program. But I genuinely don't know. But sometimes misinformation doesn't just harm democracy, it harms individuals in a profound way. We're talking 11 percent of people dying due to conspiracy theories and misinformation. And I, for one, find that sad just because, you know, I disagree with them politically. Doesn't mean that I think that the sentence should be death. No, I want them to live. I want them to get the vaccines so they can live their lives. But that's not where we're at. And this the study is sad, although, honestly, not that surprising. I'm just a little bit startled by how big the number is, how big the deviation, you know, it is. I wouldn't have not expect. I wouldn't have, I should say, expected it to be 11 percent, maybe like 5 percent, but 11 percent almost. That's huge. And if this doesn't cause a little bit of introspection among the biggest and loudest anti-vax propagandists, which it won't, you know, it goes to show you that these people care about nothing but views and clicks. And I just find that gross, but nothing left to say about this. So I'll leave that there.