Dave Rubin: Lockdowns ‘Don’t Work’ and ‘Are Destroying Lives’

Lockdown and shutdown decrees — ostensibly issued for public health purposes — are “destroying lives,” noted Dave Rubin, host of the Rubin Report, in an interview with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on Sunday at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in West Palm Beach, FL.

Marlow invited Rubin, a Californian and Los Angelino, to compare California’s lockdown with the relative openness of Florida. Partial transcript below.

MARLOW: Describe the difference [between California and Florida], because it’s not like the state of California is doing better with the virus than Florida is.

RUBIN: Well, that’s the irony. I mean, if lockdowns worked, if crushing all of these businesses — making sure we didn’t go outside, as Eric Garcetti, our mayor, said, canceling everything — if any of this worked, wouldn’t we be seeing numbers dropping? Bottoming out? We’d be down here. We would have flattened that curve. Remember when we wanted to flatten the curve? That was about nine months ago. We went from two weeks to ‘flatten the curve’ to now — it’s a hundred days — maybe we’ll see what happens in a couple months. Nine months later, right? 

So the whole thing’s nuts, but the simple truth is, here we are in Florida where it’s largely open. People are doing what they think is right. So some people are walking around with masks here. Some people aren’t, but everyone’s basically doing what they think is right, which is what personal responsibility is about, what America is about, actually. 

MARLOW: We thought.

RUBIN: What we thought it was about, and if either system worked or didn’t work, wouldn’t we see exploding numbers in Florida and depressing numbers in California? But we don’t, actually. The numbers are on par, or if anything, now from what I understand, California is is jumping up, and you know some of that [is due to] population differences and all that, but Florida also has a very elderly population, so you’d think there would be all these deaths. 

The point is — because everyone gets lost in the numbers — the point is that these things don’t work, but what we do know is that we are destroying lives. There are people that have jobs, that own restaurants, mom and pop stores. Why is it that if you own a little electronic shop, you have to be closed, but Target doesn’t have to be closed to sell the same exact stuff?

Why can I go to Home Depot, which I go [to] every freaking weekend, basically, just to do projects around my house. … But why can I go to Home Depot, and it’s jam-packed, and I could buy as much stuff as I want, but the little mom and pop shop that does the same thing is not open?

None of this makes sense, and we’ve conceded a tremendous amount of freedom to people who are more than happy to take it away from us.

Marlow highlighted the arbitrary and conflicting applications of shutdown decrees by politicians affording special exemptions to their political allies. He recalled the Sherman Oaks-based saloon owner’s viral criticism of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti over their outdoor dining bans while allowing a television production to set up eating areas just feet away from her establishment. Pineapple Hill Saloon & Grill owner Angela Marsden filmed the television production’s eating areas and shared it in a viral video.

Marlow remarked, “Just to see that little shop shut down, but a huge [television] production is open. There’s no science to that.”

Marlow concluded by clarifying that economic ruin is being driven by lockdown and shutdown edicts, not the coronavirus. Residents of Los Angeles “have to know that the left is doing this to them,” he held. “It’s not the virus that’s doing it to them.”

Rubin estimated that abusive decrees issued by Democrats are raising political awareness among otherwise apolitical persons.

“Newsom and Garcetti and the rest of these clowns, they’re doing a mass red-pilling in ways that we could only dream of doing,” Rubin stated.