 dystopian time. This is really interesting to me. This has been, and I'm sure that the panel has a lot to say about this. Perhaps one of the worst governors in terms of handling COVID-19, but he finally did the right thing since Delta has come to Florida and it's ravaging communities all across the country and the globe right now. But he was called a sellout because he promoted vaccinations. Now I just want to read a little bit of this before we start discussing this. So Florida's COVID crisis has wedged Governor Ron DeSantis of all people between two competing forces, public health experts who urge him to do more and anti-vaxxers who want him to do less. The Republican governor has come under attack from the medical community and Democrats as the Delta strain of COVID-19 sweeps through Florida, turning it into a national coronavirus hotspot. The state recorded more than 73,000 infections last week, four times as many as the start of July, leading to overcrowded hospitals and more than 300 deaths. In the most recent seven-day period, Florida is now home to one in five new cases of COVID-19 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But as DeSantis encourages vaccinations, he said vaccines are saving lives. He's facing a backlash from the anti-vaccination wing of his political base. It's the same group that praised him and helped thrust him onto the national stage for his hands-off approach to the virus. DeSantis, with 2024 presidential ambitions, has to walk the fine line between keeping his conservative base satisfied and keeping his state from becoming more of a disease hotspot. Now, it's not just Ron DeSantis who's facing backlash here. It is also the likes of Sean Hannity as well who actually promoted vaccines on his show and then basically had to tepidly walk it back after receiving backlash. If you go against what the right-wing base wants, they're going to make you pay for it. They're going to make you suffer. It is nice to see at least some Republicans doing the right thing. It's interesting to me. I'm not sure if you all saw the headline about Mitch McConnell saying he's so perplexed as to why there's so much anti-vax sentiment in the Republican Party. I don't know, folks. Why would there be anti-vax sentiment in the Republican Party? This is about Florida also, but before we get to the Floridians on the panel who are my like correspondents for the Humanist Report and dystopian times on Florida issues, I do want to ask basically what the experience is in your area because I live in a fairly liberal area. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, and it's not really controversial to wear masks. It's not super controversial to get vaccinated like I have a brother who's very conservative, but he's also vaccinated, but certain areas in the country, it tends to change. First of all, I'll go to Amy. In your region, how is it like, I mean, this is a generalization. You can't possibly know everyone in your area, but if you walk into a store wearing a mask, do you feel like you're getting dirty looks, or is it just kind of like, because that's how I feel it is for me. Nobody really cares in my area. Well, I'm in the hippie-dippy liberal elitist California. Coastal elite, Amy, just like me. Yeah, so you get it. We're a coastal elite. There is a mandate where you have to wear masks indoors that was reinstated, and barely did we get to a point where local laws were lifting mask mandates. So if I walked into a store without a mask, I would be getting all of the weird looks, right? That's just the way that it would be. That's my experience as well. And when the mask mandate was lifted before Delta hit the United States, the first time when the mask mandates were lifted and I walked into the store, I was with my mom, and we still had our masks on. And she's like, not a lot of people are wearing masks. I mean, I guess it's fine. We're vaccinated. And I'm sure most people are. So we took off our masks, and then it felt like I was naked, honestly. It's like, no, I want to go back to wearing the mask again. Like it's still like the pandemic isn't over. So it felt, it felt weird. How about you, Lumi? What's your experience when you walk into the store with a mask? So first off, I moved from Indiana to D.C., and then from D.C. to a place outside of D.C., like two, three hours away, right? And from Indiana to D.C., there was culture shock with masks. I had a lady almost like push me out of an elevator, and I didn't, it was right when the pandemic was hitting. And I was so shocked because I wasn't even thinking about it. And that was embarrassing, but important. I'm glad. And I was so glad to be in that area. And then I moved out here. And just recently, I had just finished my second shot. And I went into a smoke shop. And I was talking to this guy, and he had his mask off. And I was kind of like shocked. And I was like, Oh, I don't know exactly what I said. But I was like, Oh, how'd your shot go? Or something like that. And he goes, I didn't get my shot. And I was like, Oh, and then he looked around and no one had their masks on there in there. And he's like, I don't think any of us have gotten our shot. And I was like, Anyway, I'm just gonna check out now. And so I just like talked a little bit about how mine had gone and tried to like smooth things over while still like, you know, well, I got my shot. I'm really, you know, excited and not have to worry about it without like coming off too harsh because I'm like, everyone in here is like side eyeing me at this point. But yeah, no one wears their masks. It's it would it's taboo. It feels taboo. I've seen like maybe here and there, a few and it's in it's even a shock to me to see someone else wearing their mask. No kidding. So before we go to the UK, I've got to get the the Floridians to weigh in on this. What's the I know. So I've heard from individuals also from Florida, like Farron Cousin's friend of the show, who says like, when you walk into a store with a mask, all the eyes kind of turn to you kind of like what Lumi was experiencing with vaccines when they were talking about that whole conversation. What is it like for you? Yeah, actually, what's really interesting is I recently have driven I spent a month in North Carolina and so I drove and then drove back and really it's county dependent. If you live in a blue town, which is Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, and then I think there's a couple of others, you will see mostly mask. If you're in a red county, you'll see mostly not mask. Florida is a very like county run type of state. So and as you get further into other states, like when I got into Georgia and South Carolina, nobody was wearing masks. Nobody was wearing masks. And then once you come back into like Broward County, you've got your coastal lead thing again, and there you go and everybody's got their masks on. That's interesting. Yeah. But again, an issue like this should not be political. Like it doesn't need to be political. And this also gets back to the issue of Medicare for all and the fact that if we did have a universal health care system in place from the very beginning, this virus would never have spread the extent that it did and hundreds of thousands of lives would have been safe. People would have died. Yes. But in terms of much more mitigated. Yeah. Like a good friend of ours who we do not know if he passed from COVID or not, he probably would be alive considering all the hell he put himself through. He's someone who ended up having to pick up an older gentleman who was already on Medicare, whose cancer treatments weren't covered and had to when COVID hit and had to pick up extra shifts driving an Uber. And I don't think he necessarily died from COVID, but he died because of the situation of just running himself ragged. You know, we talk about like the rhetoric that you hear on TV. Forgive me for not remembering his name, but the Lieutenant Governor of Texas in particular, I remember when he went on national TV and basically said, you're going to have to die for America because we can't shut down. We can't be giving people checks so we can't give them health care. And I'm just thinking, yeah, there it is, because they're going to, and that to me, that's not, that's like on the level of Governor Fomal being accessory to murder with all of the nursing homes. Yeah. Like that's how. Well, it's people are expendable. Yeah. That's the message. Is it expendable? Like that's what you could do. The one thing you could say about the Santas is that he's, he's reckless, but he was somebody who was never going on TV and telling people to be reckless. And I will, I will give him that. But there are ones that are out there that absolutely had a hand in this. There's no question that they did. And Trump is certainly, you know, as guilty as anybody, because he absolutely could have made that difference. One thing that I will say about the Santas, he has one of the most, if not the best political team around him, the only moves he makes are moves that are net positives. So if he's out there right now telling people to get the vaccine, that means that there is enough of the probably independent voter base that thinks that that's an important issue. So he's going to push it because he's running for president. He 1000. Right. And with the way that, you know, the Biden presidency is going now. And as Amy alluded to, if we ultimately see this catastrophic housing crisis allowed to happen at such a monumental scale, it's not a question of if, but a question of who from the GOP is going to be the next president. And in my opinion, right now, Ron DeSantis is the next president. Yeah, I'm glad that you said that about the net positive, because I was trying to figure out the logic because it seems like it's just, it's, it's political suicide at this point. If you try to even be somewhat reasonable when it comes to, you know, vaccines, hence Sean Hannity walking back his stance. And so what I wanted to ask Cav, because it's so different in the UK, hopefully anyways, but you'll give us some more insight is, are there any like politicians? And it's a little bit different system structured differently. But is there any political incentive whatsoever to be anti Vax or to be anti mask in the UK? Yeah, just before I get started, I'm, I'm glad you gave me a platform to talk about vaccinations and masks and COVID. I haven't touched this stuff on my own channel because YouTube is so I'm, you're pretty brave because YouTube is so zealots about this stuff, they'll ban your channel so quick. So I barely talk about this stuff. But yeah, in the UK, no mainstream politician, I'm trying to think of just some weird maybe Tories from like up north or like the Midlands. No politician has really come out as anti Vax. It's generally considered like with a lot of things in the UK, things are more acceptable in terms like masks and vaccines. The science is just accepted in a lot of places. There's a fringe and it's an anti authoritarian, often pro fascist fringe, which are anti mask, anti vaccine. You see this in the US as well. But I think the only good thing about the, I don't even know if it's a good thing, but basically the Republicans have taken the steam out of the fascist movement to pushing this stuff. But I read a report about Europe really suffering from these anti mask, anti lockdown, anti vaccine groups because it's really given a rise in fascism. But it's not sometimes under the mask of anti authoritarianism. And I've actually seen a lot of young people share anti Vax stuff saying, don't be a part of a human experiment and stuff. And I was a pharmaceutical journalist for about a year. So I've covered like clinical trials. And the fact that like these people think that these companies, if you don't trust anything, trust human greed, these companies, pharmaceutical companies are some of the biggest companies in the world. They pump trillions of dollars into clinical trials for products. And it's just one little thing from the FDA can set them back and destroy all this work. So trust human greed that these pharmaceutical companies are not putting, you're not a human experiment. The technology for this stuff has existed, you know, for decades with coronavirus have been around for ages. There was a big one in 2004, I think there was one before as well. So if I just want to use my platform quick, that's one thing I want to say, because I see that sentiment. But the mainstream discourse is whether you are Tory, whether you are Lib Dem, whether you are Labour, most people are getting the vaccines. But the main thing is, and this is the problem, and you guys have it in America, because minority populations have often been used in medical experiments, especially by the West, they are automatically skeptical. So there's a big one here, because the UK has quite a prominent Muslim and Pakistani population, because the CIA used a fake polio vaccination team to find out where bin Laden is. This has led to a massive rise of conspiracy theories that it's actually vaccines generally are a plot by Israel to sterilize Muslims, right. And that's the sort of, when you make people distrust power, that's the sort of stuff that goes on. Because you just say, well, look like they did to bin Laden, they use this vaccination team, it's in Afghanistan as well, you have this sort of logic. So lots of minorities do not trust the vaccine. And I have a lot of sympathy for them because minorities are dying at higher rates, because often in the UK, they're migrants from poor countries, so they're doing the jobs that you were saying about Uber drivers. And that's sort of like the untold story of the pandemic. We're not all like working at home, having a great time, Zoom chats with our friends, lots of people work for the entire thing and service workers, I think it was like chefs and stuff in America disproportionately died. And that's just like this slow killing of the population is something in both countries. And it's frustrating, like you're saying, these anti-vax movements that are spreading anti-mass, although it's not got as big of a political element in the UK, there's a very strong undercurrent in some sections of youth. And it really goes with poverty and education because, you know, you don't trust the system, you're not educated on how vaccines work and how health things work. But yeah, that's the difference to the UK and the US. There isn't a political party staking their reputation, stoking the flames of anti-mass. It's usually fringe elements. But I feel like as people getting more frustrated with lockdowns, because our government have handled it so badly, and you guys probably haven't experienced it, I think LA has been quite bad. We've had lockdowns where you literally cannot do anything. We've had that twice for like three and four months each, like you can't do anything. You're not even allowed to go outside. That's the whole country. And I think that's added to people being like, you know, basically, I fuck this. I don't want to do this anymore. Like, fuck your lockdowns, fuck your masks. I've been cooped up for eight months out of like 15. I'm not doing this. And, you know, that's just what I'm saying. If a government does not handle something like this properly, you only have a certain window where the population will comply. And I feel like that's why I'm so frustrated about the US getting rid of the mask mandate. You're not going to make people do it again, really. Like, I feel like it's gone. You basically told them double vaccination. You're all good. Go do whatever you want. But now it's like, oh, wait, the Pfizer's only 40% to stop transmission. And now it's, you know what I'm saying? The Delta variant is spreading. And that's just, I feel like the genius out of the bottle, we can't do this again. And because we were saying before about the collectivization of certain societies in Asia, maybe where they will wear masks anyway without COVID, I think the US and the UK are pretty screwed because we do have this more individualist mindset. And I think people are sick of it now. And I can't blame certain people. I know, like, we are all like responsible and smart and we'll wear our masks and get our vaccines and stuff. But I can't blame certain people now of just being sick of like this stuff and being so confused. If you have in constant governments, Trump and Boris, and they fucked you about so much, you feel like you can't trust anyone anymore. So it's a frustrating thing to seeing this like happen across like the West in general.