Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” fill-in host and show regular Mark Steyn decried elements of the COVID-19 response, including fiscal measures taken by Congress, and the ever-changing proclamations made by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Transcript as follows:
STEYN: A couple of hours ago the House of Representatives increased the individual payment in the so-called COVID Relief Bill from $600.00 to $2,000.00. Enjoy it while you can, the Senate won’t vote for that, so you’ll be back to that lousy 600 bucks, but instead of getting it next month, the following month, the first day of baseball season, they’ll be arguing about it through the New Year, so the lousy 600 bucks will be going out, oh, second quarter, third quarter, the first Ramadan after the next Boxing Day.
Six hundred bucks to cover the last eight months works out to $75.00 per month, which is pretty competitive with say, the average congressman’s grade schooler’s allowance. Whoops, no, actually, it isn’t 2019, average American kid’s allowance $120.00 per month.
But that’s the turf we’re playing on. You’re the child, they are the grownups, 600 bucks from big nanny, and in return, all you’ve got to do is be grounded forever.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIANNA GOLODGRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Health experts have warned about the dangers of traveling right now due to COVID-19. Yet millions of Americans are ignoring that advice.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Even on this COVID Christmas, America’s airports are packed full of people.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Images of so many air travelers are fueling fears we will in fact, see another surge superimposed on a surge and dark January days ahead.
DR. WILLIAM HASELTINE, CHAIR AND PRESIDENT, ACCESS HEALTH INTERNATIONAL: More travelers than you can imagine packing the airports and many people that are going on those vacations are going to die at the end of January.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: You’re going to die at the end of January. So the laugh is on you, pal. You’re going to die before you even get that lousy 600 bucks. And when you do, they’re just going to add it to the $13 million they are sending to Libya to build an interpretive dance center in Benghazi and that’ll show you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why have so many couples prioritized a party over human life?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are incentives for people to be selfish. We have people in power, we’re encouraging people to be selfish who are promoting reckless reopening policies.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, and you point out — I’m going to read part of your article, “Call the wedding stupid or selfish if you want. I can’t argue with either characterization, but they aren’t ever and there’s nothing more American than a gaudy expensive party that kills people.”
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: “There’s nothing more American than a gaudy expensive party that kills people,” so don’t have a sick, murderous psycho wedding with dad dancing with his lovely daughter to some shimmering tune and the rustle of taffeta under the dappled lights of the glitter ball, instead do the responsible thing and have an emotionally meaningless casual sex hook up with a random stranger you met on the internet as His Holiness, the infallible Fauci recommends.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder or Bumble or Grindr, and you match with someone and you just kind of like, maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over, what do you say to that person?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks. It depends on the level of the interaction that you want to have.
If you’re looking for friends sit in a room, put a mask on, and you know, chat a bit. If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding the risk.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: There’s nothing I enjoy more than Dr. Fauci talking about hooking up. That is awfully generous of the infallible Fauci and our rulers in the United States Congress, considering that experts are now warning of a new strain of COVID-related super mega hyper gonorrhea.
Oh, dear me, I do apologize if you’re just sitting down to eat, I am so sorry for putting you off your dinner by using the truly disgusting phrase, the United States Congress.
Now back to super mega hyper gonorrhea. After eight months of wall-to-wall Tinder hookups, do you feel you maybe deserve a night off? Perhaps a romantic dinner for two at that candlelit corner table in your favorite California eatery? Not a chance.
The Golden State’s shelter-in-place order is being extended. However, the $700 million windfall that you, the American taxpayer have generously given to the Sudanese government seems to have done the trick and unleashed the awesome economic potential of Sudan.
Jalelah Sophia Ahmed, Chairman of the Sudan Policy Network says, “Sudan is finally open for business.” So the good news is that thanks to the Washington uni-party, Sudan is open for business. The bad news is California and New York will never be open for business ever again.
If you’re one of those Manhattan restaurateurs who today sued Cuomo and de Blasio, it might be easier just to reopen your elegant French bistro in a more favorable business climate, such as Dongola, the upper west side of Northern Sudan.
In other restaurant industry developments, the good news is that the COVID Relief Bill has renewed the expanded deductibility of a business lunch. The bad news is you have to have a business in order to claim a business lunch, and you have to live in a jurisdiction that has not criminalized lunching.
Speaking of which, when the Wu-flu struck, San Francisco bars and restaurants were encouraged to create attractive outdoor patio areas so they could cater to all those chief execs expensing their three Martini lunches.
Three weeks ago, outdoor dining was banned in the city, so those attractive patio parklets as they are called now stand, well, not entirely empty. San Francisco’s massive homeless population can’t afford to do lunch, but they can do their business in there.
“My parklets are now being used as bathrooms,” says Brian Cassanego, owner of The Wine Jar and Noir Lounge. “Some guy was camping in one. I find empty cans of beer needles. The parklets have become homeless shelters, and drug dens just like everything else in San Francisco.”
How long is this going on for? Not 15 days to flatten the curve, not 15 months to flatten everything else but now and forever.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HASELTINE: You’ll see I think in the next few weeks, that we have our own homegrown strains and we have to start thinking about adjusting the vaccines. So this is probably going to be much more like a decade’s long battle that we have with a flu than a once and done battle that we’ve had with polio.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: A decade’s long battle, so is he saying we just have to live with it? No. That’s the same guy who says you’re going to die if you visit Auntie Mabel for Christmas.
Meanwhile, the infallible Fauci, Director of the centers for goalpost moving has a touch of the old mission creep.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: You would need somewhere between 70 to 75, maybe 80 percent of the population vaccinated. The number that I’ve been using, again, it’s an estimate. You can make an extrapolation from other infections, I say between 75 and 80 to 85 percent of the population.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: OK, but it could soon be 99.99 percent. How does that sound for herd immunity? As long as the herd is staying home.
Meanwhile, what’s up with the vaccine distribution? In Virginia, over 6,200 people under 30 have gotten the vaccine, only 857 Virginians over 70. In Massachusetts, again, 6,000 people under 30 have gotten it, but only 715 over 70. In the state where the average age of COVID fatality is 80 and who’s laughably misnamed long-term care facilities were turned into slaughterhouses and where some of them are once again taking in COVID patients, presumably because they feel they didn’t kill enough seniors last time round.
Still and all, in troubled times, we turn to the ancient enduring truths and celebrate the birth of our Savior.
On Christmas Eve, a star appeared in the sky and the strains of Joe, Jim and Hunter Biden singing we Three Kings of Orient Investments, LLC, a 501 (c) 37 corporation registered around the back of the Wuhan Institute of Virology drifted across the air as the world came together to celebrate the birth of a child come to save us all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JILL AND JOE BIDEN: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday, Dr. Fauci. Happy birthday to you.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hey, pal, happy birthday. It is Joe and Jill Biden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEYN: If it’s been a while since you’ve read the U.S. Constitution, the line of succession is, well the incumbent ruler is the Commissar of Contagion, followed by the Vice Commissar, then the Speaker of the Centers for Disease Control, the President Pro Tem of Climate Change, the Doctor of Education of Delaware and then the old guy sleeping naked in the stable in Wilmington and chasing the dog around.
In totally unrelated news, in the City of San Francisco this year, there have been 173 deaths from CHICOM-19, but 621 deaths from drug overdoses. That’s basically a 50 percent increase in fatal drug overdoses since last year and the additional deaths alone, 180, outnumber those 173 COVID deaths, but for some reason that’s of no interest to our all-powerful experts.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor