 Right, but the top of the news everywhere is this new strain of COVID, the Omnicron, Omnicron, Omnicron, Omnicron, which I guess is a Greek alphabet letter or something like that, Latin something. Anyway, this is the new variant of COVID coming out of South Africa. South Africa is seeing a significant spike in COVID after months of pretty stable numbers. The spike is attributed to this new variant of COVID. The variant has already escaped Africa. It's significant numbers have already been, UK I think has two or three and the rest of Europe and there's strong suspicious and likelihood that it's already in the United States. It's already sped all over the world. But what are governments do? What are the idiots in power and those who advise them do because because it makes them look like they're doing something. Trump did this in March of last year. Biden is doing it now. The Brits, the Europeans are all doing it. Shut down the borders. Too late guys. Virus is already here. Virus is already spreading locally. Who the hell just stop running our lives. Stop dictating what we can and cannot do. I'm upset because the Brits have now decided that in order to come into the UK, you are going to have to go into isolation. No matter whether you're vaccinated or not vaccinated, you go into isolation then get a PCR test and only when you get the negative test results in the PCR test can you go out of isolation. You know, given the now the demand for PCR tests, who knows how long that will be. That basically destroys all my plans, which I had for travel. I just bought tickets to go to the UK in January as part of a European tour. It's just so, you know, they have no respect for our lives, no respect for our liberty, no respect for our freedom, no respect for our ability to make choices for ourselves. Anyway, the virus, this new variant is already spreading around the world. It looks like it's very, very contagious. It's spreading fast. There was a plane that came in from South Africa into the Netherlands that I was reading an article that said 61, 61 of the people on the plane tested positive for this new variant, which is bizarre to get those kind of numbers. They didn't get it on the plane. They got it before they got it on the plane. But to get in those numbers means that it's pretty prevalent in South Africa itself. So the numbers are very high. Can't go to Africa because Biden has banned all traveled to Africa. So again, our commanders in chief, the people who command our lives are dictating where we can and cannot go and how we can and cannot, where, how, what. Anyway, so it's time we adopted a new metric. Case numbers are not important. Indeed, COVID is endemic. We're probably all going to get it at some point. The only thing that's important is how many people die from this and what are the demographics of those who die from it. And maybe, you know, is it overwhelming the hospital system? That's it. The only thing that matters is, you know, how many people are going to ICU and how many people are dying. Case numbers are insignificant. It doesn't matter. Nobody cares how many people get a disease. The question is, how deadly is this disease? Now, usually with viruses, as they mutate, they become more transmittable and less potent, less deadly. Particularly, if you're vaccinated, that becomes, that makes you less deadly. You know, the vaccine even from mutated virus is probably going to make it less harmful to you. And at some point, we're just going to have to let it go. We should have, you know, you could argue, done this already. Remember the lockdowns in March of last year? Flatten the curve for the hospitals. Not to achieve zero cases. That should have, could have never been the goal. But politicians have tasted what it power feels like. Conservative leftists, status politicians, feel what power is like, whether it's the conservative Johnson, whether it's Orban in Hungary, whether it's the Germans, the French, no matter where it is. And of course, Biden in the United States, they feel what power is like and they won't let it go. They won't let it go. And of course they're afraid. They're afraid. You know, it's easy to perceive politicians as these power-lusting, ooh, scheming evil guys. But really much of what motivates politicians is fear. What if it gets out of control? I might lose the next election. What if I'm perceived as weak? What if I'm perceived as non-scientific? What if I'm perceived? Politicians are motivated by fear and fear of the electorate and fear of how people look at them and fear of what the intelligentsia, of what they crowd will think of them, and they panic. So we will see what happens with all of this. But it looks bad in terms of the government's responses. It looks like the government responses to this are pretty uniform across the globe. So it's not the case that this is just a phenomena of the Biden administration, but it looks like this kind of crazy response, lockdown response, reduced liberty, reduced freedom, shut down airports, don't allow people to travel, tell them where they can and cannot go, isolate them, put them, whether they test positive or negative, doesn't matter, get them. That kind of mentality is just going to continue on and on and on. And look, it could be that this variant is more deadly. But for what I'm reading out of South Africa, it doesn't seem that that's the case. The South African health authorities are claiming that it's less deadly, less likely to get you in hospital, particularly if you're vaccinated, but it is very contagious. So let's get it over with. I just heard today from a friend of mine who also hires me to give talks. So I was with her at an event. What was it a week and a day ago in Colorado and, no, in Connecticut. Connecticut, basically a week ago, last Friday, last Friday. And it turns out that a number of people at that event got COVID. She has gotten COVID. She spent Thanksgiving kind of in isolation, struggling with COVID. I think she's doing fine. She's vaccinated. I think she's fine. One of the other speakers at the event also got COVID. He too, I saw on Facebook, he's vaccinated. But it's a little scary, particularly once you get to a certain age, and he's got COVID. Anyway, I still don't have it. Now, I'm not eager to get it. It's not like I'm eager to get it, but I do find it interesting that I have been traveling throughout. I was traveling in February, March, airplanes all over the place without many precautions. I was traveling throughout last year, 2020. I was traveling all of this year. My wife had COVID and I spent an entire week, 10 days where she had symptoms and I was with a nonstop and I didn't get it. I just, you know, I've been lecturing unmasked and where the audience is unmasked for months and months and months. And I'm not encouraging anybody else to do this. I'm just, this is just what I've done. And I was at this event a week ago where a bunch of people have got COVID and I didn't get COVID. So I'm happy. I'm lucky, whatever it is, I am. I have not been able to get COVID and I hope that continues. But the reality is, the reality is that we're probably all going to get it. I mean, Dio in Michigan, the entire, you know, significant percentage of the population of Dio in Michigan have COVID. And it's likely that human beings will get it back from Dio. And this is like endemic. And this is just going to continue. And to some extent, at some point, we're all going to get it. The tragedy is that nobody seems to be learning lessons from this and improving policy prescriptions for it. The response is just as fearful. And as it has always, always been, right? It's just as fearful. One of the people who says, you're on as Japanese genes immune to COVID. It might be that I've been traveling so much for so many years that my immune system is well developed. Though, you know, I've got so many COVID colds that, you know, I don't know who knows who knows what's going on. And it could be I just got lucky, right? The fact is the reality is that the most likely answer is you're on is just lucky. Don't underestimate the role luck, luck in the sense of, you know, actually having a low probability event and surviving a low probability event. All right. Anyway, so I just wanted to get everybody up to speed. This is spending like crazy. Everybody's going to be talking about this, this new variant of COVID. It's going to be everywhere. Locking down borders is not going to help. Let's hope and fight for a non lockdown solution in the United States, even if cases accelerate and increase significantly. Let's hope that the response this time is more rational. I would encourage people who are 65 and older might have comorbidities to get their booster shot. This would be a good time or maybe wait a few weeks until we know more about this particular variant. And maybe the booster shots could be modified to cover this variant. But this is a great time to consider getting vaccinated and getting your vaccines all caught up so that if you have comorbidities, if you're susceptible to COVID and susceptible to bad outcomes from COVID, you reduce the odds of those bad outcomes. So I'd still not gotten my booster. I don't expect to get a booster until I know more about this new variant and whether the booster is going to be modified or not. All right. Oh, one last thing I would say is where's the outrage that the FDA has not approved the Pfizer and Mooc pills that are supposed to reduce basically the risk of death from COVID to zero? Where are these pills? If these pills were circulating, then it wouldn't matter. None of this would matter. It would all be over. So maybe the political class has an incentive not for this not to be over because they're benefiting enormously in terms of the power grab from this. But approve the frigging pills so that we can stop worrying about this. $700 course of the Pfizer, the Mooc pill and you're almost guaranteed not to have a significantly negative effect from COVID. I would take the pills like that. I have no qualms about taking the pill even if they're only approved for emergency use or whatever the hell they call it. So get the pills out there. All right. No, I'm not using Ivermectin explained why yesterday chances that Ivermectin actually works on COVID are very, very low and is just absolutely no reason to be using them. The fact is that if I get COVID chances of me having a really bad outcome are very, very, very low. I'm not going to worry about it. And Ivermectin is certainly not the first thing I would jump out to other drugs. There's this one antidepressant that taking a small doses has shown significant positive results with COVID, much better results than Ivermectin in much better studies. So if you're going to get COVID and you're going to take something, be scientific about it and not political and I'll jump to whatever the latest fad among the doctors that a cool happen to say, yes, flux fluvoxamon, fluvoxamon, that's it. Some, yeah, that's the that's the antidepressant. It's a it's a mild antidepressant. You can take it in low doses and it is proven of all the different and it's very cheap. It's all the different drugs that are being tried that are very cheap that are approved already that have no side effects that are easy to use that have no issues. Flu fluvoxamine fluvoxamine it has produced as far as I can tell I'm not a doctor don't take my word for this as far as I can tell has produced the best results. So and if you take it in the right dose in low doses, it won't have an effect on your on your mind and it and you can go on and off it easily. So again, this is the one that Scott Alexander and I've read others have said it has the best large peer reviewed statistically significant study out there, much, much better, much, much more informative than than ivermectin. So if I had if I was going to take something, I would take that. So we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to your on book show dot com slash support by going to patreon subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get announcement when we go live. 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