Clay Travis Sits Down With Alex Berenson

This week on Wins & Losses with Clay Travis, Clay is joined by author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson to have a discussion regarding the Coronavirus situation in the United States. Berenson gives Clay and the audience some background on his career as a reporter, and the two dive into what has been a crazy year in regards to the Coronavirus. Clay and Alex discuss a number of different topics directly related to the Coronavirus, including the lockdown decision, numerous false predictions on death totals, the debate of schools opening back up, and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Wins and Losses with Clay Travis. Clay talks
with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome in Wins and Losses Podcast.
I am Clay Travis. I hope all of you are

(00:23):
having a fantastic time wherever you may be across this
great country or this great land. We are joined by
a guy that I think has been doing incredible work,
a warding off Team Apocalypse, as he sometimes says it.
He is Alex Barnson, a former New York Times reporter
who has been focused on the coronavirus and the response
of our government. Obviously, we talk a lot about politics

(00:44):
and the intersection of sports as it pertains to the
return of sports, and so I thought he was gonna
be and is a perfect guest for us. So welcome in, Alex.
I appreciate you joining us. For people who may not
have followed you on Twitter or been reading the books
that you have put out that are available on Amazon.
What is your background? Kind of introduce yourself to our

(01:05):
audience as best you can. Sure, So, I worked for
the New York Times from until two thousand and ten.
I was a reporter. I've been a reporter since I
graduated college in ninety four and uh to ten. I
mainly did investigative reporting, business really business investigating. Before I
covered the drug industry, a lot of stuff like that.

(01:27):
And then in two dozen six, I wrote uh, a
spy novel because I've been in a rack in a
two three and oh four for The Times, not not
for that long, but for a few months, and I
and I wound up writing the spine novel called The
Faithful Spy about a CIA operative who converts to Islam
and get sent back to the United States and al
Qaeda doesn't really trust him because they know he's American,

(01:49):
and and the CIA doesn't really trust him because they
know he converted. And that book did pretty well. Actually,
it became a number one New York Times bestseller in
paperback in two thousand and eight. And so writing these
spine novels or took over my my life for a
number of years, um uh and uh. And I left
The Times in two thousand and ten um and to

(02:09):
to become a full time novelist um. Which is interesting
because because I really think of myself more. And even
when I was writing these books, I thought of myself
more of a journalist than a novelist, and sometimes I
kind of wish that I had been able to, you know,
express my imagination more freely, because I think that can
make a really great novel. And sometimes I felt like
I was a little bit bound by my desire to

(02:31):
write authentic fiction rather than doing stuff that was a
little bit more magical. But that's that's a that's a
total side issue. But but it is interesting to me
that I went then went back to journalism, so I
found I wound up after um, after a number of
years writing these spine novels in two dozen nineteen was
really two seventeen eighteen, I wrote the book, but in
two nineteen it came out. I wrote a book called

(02:52):
Tell Your Children, which is about cannabis and um and
the dangers that it may present for some people. And
I wrote that, sorry, I hope that this is not
too big a digression, but I sort of want people
to understand my whole career because sometimes people say, oh,
he's just trading on his you know, the fact that
he worked for the New York Times for a little while, um,

(03:13):
when in fact I worked for the Times for ten
years but the reality is I've been a journalist almost
my whole life. Um uh. In any case, this book
called Tell Your Children I wrote because my wife is
a psychiatrist who deals with the criminal mentally ill, and
she would tell me about all these terrible cases she'd
seeing where what the people had in common who had
come to her you know, attention or people she was treating,

(03:36):
um was that they were really heavy cannabis users. And
I actually didn't believe that. Okay, I did not believe
this was a real problem, and I and I kind
of pushed back on her. But you know, she's the psychiatrist.
She's the one with the many years of medical training.
She's the one who actually sees these people. She's the
one who, um, you know, who got you know, who

(03:56):
got all this training. And she told me, you know, essentially,
after a year or more of listening to me talk
about stuff about which I didn't know what I was
talking about, she said, why don't you go read the papers?
So I went and read this stuff and realized, of
course she was right. She knew exactly what she was
talking about, and I wanted to realizing that there was
a book here, not just in the idea that people, um,

(04:16):
you know, that cannabis is a real risk to people's
mental health. Not everybody, but some people. But also the
fact that nobody knew this and there were sort of
marching towards uh full legalization of this drug and no
one really had any idea of the risks, and then
it was actually being sold to people of medicine. So
that book became to tell your children, and that came
out in early twenty nineteen. Uh. And that's directly relevant

(04:38):
to this because because as soon as I wrote that book,
essentially I became a cast out from the world of journalists,
certainly in the world of the elite uh New York
slash Washington academic you know a slash New York Times
slash uh you know, Ivy League pedigree journalism. I became
a traitor to the class. So so you know, I

(05:01):
went to Yale, I worked for the New York Times.
There's nothing that people who who who work at those places,
you know, work at the New York Times lotion puss
like less than somebody who who work there, And doesn't
you know, play in the sandbox. And by saying that
you know that cannabis is actually kind of a dangerous
drug for some people, and that you know, by the
way you hear that, you know that there are millions

(05:23):
of black people in prison for for you know, for
having one join in their pockets, and that's completely untrue.
You can you know, you can look at what the
statistics are and they're completely not that. Um. You know
when when I when I pointed that out, people hated
me and uh, and it became very hard for me
to get of national publicity for this book, aside from

(05:45):
Fox and some other conservative outlets. And that was when
I really saw for myself that polarization in the media
just how deep it is. So fast forward to March
of this year. Um, and again I apologize for the
length of but but but it really doesn't form what
I've been doing the last six months. March of this year,
you know, really January, we all start hearing about this virus.

(06:06):
There's this terrible videos coming out of China, very scary stuff.
The hospitals are being overrun. We hear it's going to
spread all over China. It's going to be completely impossible
to stop. Um. You know, the the there's a travel
band from China. There's an argument about what it's going
to make any difference. February, nothing really happens for a
little while, and then the hospitals in parts of northern

(06:29):
Italy start getting overrun. And then and then all of
a sudden, it's here, the the the the Stars Cove
two is in Seattle, it's in New York. It's here.
And suddenly, in a matter of days, we shut down
not just the United States, we shut down the whole world.
And and I certainly was nervous. I think, I think
anybody where you know where the pulse was nervous at

(06:51):
that time. UM. But I but I started to you know,
I started to read everything I could find about um,
about what the prediction war, and why we had taken
such a drastic and dramatic action. And more than anything else,
there was one paper from a place called Imperial College, London,
which works with the World Health Organization, that drove this

(07:14):
incredible action in mid March, and the paper said two
million people in the United States might die if there's
a lockdown, uh, you know, half million people. And I'm sorry,
if there's no lockdown. A half million people in Britain
might die if there's no lockdown. We have to we
have to take incredibly uh dramatic action and so um

(07:35):
and so I read that paper and this was in
mid March, and I'll never forget. You know, I'm in uh,
you know, at home reading this on my computer and
I realized, wait a minute, the vast, vast majority of
deaths that are predicted here are in people over over
eighty and seventy really really eighty, but you know, and

(07:55):
then an affair number in the seven eight band. This
just doesn't look at that tame interest to people under seventy.
And that's not to say it's not real. It's not
to say it's not dangerous. It's not to say it
can't hurt people. But but but my impression of this,
like a lot of people have been, this is going
to be the Spanish flu. This is gonna kill pregnant women,
and it's gonna kill children, and it's gonna kill healthy adults,

(08:16):
and you know, there's there's gonna be people dropping dead
in the streets. And all of a sudden, I realized
that's not what this is at all. This is this
is this is a virus that really affects people who
are at severe risk because of their age or because
they're really severely ill with other conditions, and and it's
like the scale self from my eyes. And ever since then, UM,

(08:39):
I've been trying to trying to talk, trying to get
people to talk reasonably about what the risks are and
what we should be doing. And that doesn't mean we
should be doing nothing. It means that we should stop
pretending that everybody's an equal risk here. Everybody's that you know,
anything near equal risk here, And maybe we should be
trying to protect the people are the most vulnerable. But

(08:59):
why on earth are we letting this destroy our society?
Who we have? And everything that I've reported practically in
the last five months has only served to make me
feel more strongly about this. And I'll just give you
one example and then and then I'll stop talking. Let you,
you know, ask questions. UM. There was a lot of
talk in two thousand seven about what if another um,

(09:24):
you know, bad flu hits uh. You know, there's been
the Antwracks attacks in two thousand and one. George W.
Bush was very concerned about bio terrorism. There had also
been the stars scaring you know three, there had been
a swine flu scare you know five, And so we
spent a lot of time back then really thinking about this.
Very smart people, um, you know, in government, outside government, uh,

(09:45):
people who have been experts on pandemics uh, and they
all basically reached the same conclusion, which is a big
lockdown is not a great idea like this is, even
even if it's really serious, even if it's on the
order of the Spanish flu. What you want is you
want to encourage sick people to stay home. You may
want to temporarily close schools, you know, maybe for maybe

(10:08):
for a few weeks. Maybe you encourage people to telecommute,
maybe you encourage people not to use you know, mass
public transportation at the height of this. But the idea
that that this that the correct response to a pandemic,
even a really severe pandemic, would be to shut down
the world, with all the pain that that would cause

(10:30):
our economy and all the pain that would cause people working,
and all the pain it would cause children not to
be able to go to school, not to be able
to see their friends, some of those children at very
severe risk you know, being an abusive homes uh, you know,
or or children with special needs who really are are
you know need need people who are who are well
trained to take care of them, and it's very, very

(10:51):
difficult for their parents to take care of them. Seven.
All of that was considered and and people said, let's
not panic when this happen. Let's have a bunch of rules,
reasonable rules that we're going to follow. And and unfortunately,
when the moment came this March, we threw all of
that away and we have been suffering for it ever since.

(11:15):
So much to unpack there. I'm Clay Travis's wins and losses,
and we're talking with Alex Barrenson, former New York Times
employee who has been covering the coronavirus since March. As
you heard him say, Okay, I'm gonna unpack, I'm gonna
go back in several different directions. You mentioned this expert forecast,
this Nile Ferguson I believe is his name, at the
Imperial College of London. Why did he get it wrong

(11:38):
so badly? And why did so many people believe his
forecast to such an extent Because there were a lot
of forecasts out there. What I've been saying is the
fear porn lad the media to adopt the worst possible forecast.
How what happened there? That that particular forecast became, for

(11:59):
lie of a better term, viral and the central lynchpin
of many decisions to lock down around the globe leading
to disastrous consequences. I believe what was it about that
forecast that so captured the public's imagination and the media's imagination.
So that's a that's a great, great question play. And

(12:20):
and you know, in in in in the law. So
I've written these two booklets as you, as you were
kind enough to mention, And the second one is about
the lockdown. The first one is really about death and
what a worst case projection might be in the US
and howard counting death and has there been overcounting all
of those questions. The second one is about lockdown and
and so and so it is fascinating that that Neil Ferguson,

(12:43):
the Professor Ferguson Um, became the authority on this because
he's not a doctor, okay, and he's not a virologist.
He's a physicist by training, and his specialty is making
these epidemiologic models, which he has actually failed that tremendously
in the past. Right, you are exactly right, he has
failed tremendously at those models. And at one point he

(13:05):
said the two d million people might die from from
swine flu, you know, five and you know, I mean
that number was a joke, okay, But but nobody ever
seems to remember the mistakes that he's made. So so
a couple of other are a couple of issues. The
first is you need to know how lethal the viruses,
and it appears that the virus is less lethal than

(13:26):
we thought it was, uh in you know, in in
January through March. Now, there's a couple of reasons for that.
First of all, the data from China, nobody really knew
what to make of it. Nobody really knew if we
could believe it. But there's a much even more serious
and deep problem than that, which is you need to
know how many people are being infected. And with this virus,

(13:48):
it appears that there are a tremendous number of people
who are infected who basically don't know it. They're either
asymptomatic or so lightly symptomatic that if they were not tested,
they would never know it. And because of that, this
is actually much less lethal than we thought it was
back then, okay, And it appears that there may be
a significant number of people who never can get it

(14:09):
at all, and we don't know how many that is,
but there, but there. But there's been a big and
ongoing argument in the scientific community about what's called T
cell cross reactivity, which, by the way, the New York
Times finally wrote about. They wrote about today literally as
we're talking about this, they wrote, we're talking about this
for people out there who are listening. Who knows when
they'll be listening. Officially, we're talking on Monday, uh, the

(14:31):
seventeenth of August. And there's an article today about that
in The New York Times, about the fact that there
may be a ton of people who have immunity to
this virus and trying to figure out why Suddenly, for instance,
in New York the infection rate just fell off a
cliff And as you imagine, I've seen as well, the
same thing now is happening in the South. Indeed, Florida
Governor Ron de Santis just came out and basically said

(14:54):
the bottom has fallen out of the outbreak in quotation
marks in Florida as well. Well, good for him for
saying it, because it's true and he's been he's been
better on this, and uh, you know, they're more forward
thinking on this than anybody else, and the media hates
him for it, and he has not benefited politically for it.
He clearly is only doing it because he believes that
he's doing the right thing, and and good for him

(15:14):
for that. Um uh, you know, But to your point,
your point is here, I think a good one the
death rate and the number of infections. If you don't
know those two numbers, then whatever epidemiological expert forecast you
create is essentially valueless because your numerator and your denomic
nator are both have issues. So it's almost impossible to

(15:37):
come up with a reliable, predictive forecast that is exactly correct.
That is that, so if a thousand people have died,
who know, a thousand people have died, and we think
ten thousand were infected, that's a ten death rate. Okay,
that means one person at ten who got it has died.
That's terrible. Okay that that you know, that would mean
you know, thirty million people in the U s would
die if everybody got it. Okay, But if the truth

(15:59):
is that a million people have already gotten in, not
ten thousand and one thousand people have died, that's a
death rate of one tenth of one percent. It's one
one what I just said, Okay, And that would mean
that three hundred thousand people in the US would die
if if everybody got it. Okay, Well you know, and
that's so you could say thople with a lot of people.

(16:20):
But that's because the US is a big country. Okay.
Smoking preventably killed half million people in the US every year,
So we get big numbers when you have big countries.
But so so Ferguson made this estimate, and you know,
and that people around him made this estimate and they
didn't really know what the numbers were. Okay, that is forgivable,

(16:43):
by the way, it's early in an epidemic. You are
you are, you're guessing. You're going with you know, sort
of dirty data from China. You don't really have much
from a western countries. Yet it is forgivable. What is
not forgivable is when more data comes in and you
update not to tell people the truth. And Ferguson and

(17:05):
this was the tweet actually that got me noticed more
than any other. This was this was about ten days
after that first paper came out. So Ferguson, who had
gotten the coronavirus By this time, Umu was testifying remotely
to a British parliamentary committee and he said, oh, you
know how I said half a million people might die
from the coronavirus if we didn't do anything in the UK.

(17:28):
Let's make it and you know there will be no
There will be a spike and it will be over
by mid April or late April, and after that I
think it's going to be Okay. That was basically what
he said. Okay, it was a It was a monumental
change in his forecast that he that he that he
tried to pass off as well, this is just kind

(17:51):
of an adjustment here, and this is because we locked down.
It's not true. Okay, he made a monumental change in
the forecast, and the media used to acknowledge it or
or or ask him what had happened, or call him on.
And that was when I realized, this is just like
how your children, only the steaks are much much bigger.

(18:11):
This has become a politicized issue already. This is about
people who want us to be in lockdown. They want
to push us there, um you know, for whatever reason,
because they're genuinely afraid, or because you know, they have
other uh, you know, they have other motivations which which
are not necessarily obvious to me at this time. But
but there's going to be a fight here and it's

(18:33):
not only going to be about science. And that was
and that was something that I knew could happen because
of how your children be sure to catch live editions
about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days at
six am Eastern, three am Pacific. Why did and this
is becomes a fascinating question. We're talking with Alex Brinson.
You can go read his two different books that he's

(18:54):
published on Amazon, which I'm gonna get to you here
in a moment. But you've elucidated one of major issues
that I think has gone with the coverage of the
coronavirus from the get go. And I'm curious, as a
member of the former New York Times media establishment, for
lack of a better phrase, how you would analyze this.
It seems to me that there are anecdotal outlier cases

(19:18):
which have driven the coverage of the coronavirus since this started.
In other words, thirty five year old person dies, Oh
my god, pregnant woman's got it, her baby's got it
now and when we actually look at the raw data,
the numbers tell us a different story, and a much
more calming story. And so, for instance, Uh, it seems

(19:39):
to me that emotion has totally overtaken the way that
this story was covered. And I thought it was crystallized
when the New York Times, on I think it was
Memorial Day weekend writes like a hundred thousand deaths and
incalculable lost as their headline with just a bunch of
different names on it. What has happened here? Why has
a motion overtaken the media? Why has logic and probability

(20:03):
and all of these things not taken route? Because I
keep and I'm just gonna put this out, a lot
of people will be listening from a sports perspective. Uh,
kids driving to college campuses are more likely to die
driving to their college campus in a car accident than
they are from the coronavirus. They're more likely to die
of the flu murder. Uh, They're more likely to die
of drug overdose. They're more likely to die of drinking

(20:24):
too much alcohol. All of these are more dangerous threats
if you're a parent with a college age student. Yet
right now, sports are being shut down in the Big
ten and the Pack twelve because of this overwhelming fear
porn which people still can't escape. Why did the media
fail so much talking to the public about this story
and fail so much by the way that they almost

(20:46):
managed to destroy their own business because you know, like
fear maybe well lead, but the advertising market destroyed when
you shut down the economy, It's like your ratings may
go up on MSNBC and CNN and Fox News as
well to a certain extent, but also nobody can buy
anything because the economy is collapsed. It's like that. Yeah,

(21:06):
people more watched, but you almost destroyed the entire country
in the process. Why did they get it wrong? How
did this happen? Another great question? So there are several
factors to play here. First of all, don't underestimate the
amount of real raw here that there was in mid March,
late March, yes, even in early April, especially even among
people who are media members who should be more analytical

(21:29):
at least in my mind, and less emotion base. They
gave into it as well. Well. I wouldn't you know.
I don't think there's better people in the media have
cool heads. Yeah, maybe there's a few war reporters out
there who have cool heads. But you know, you don't
you don't get you get into media because you like,
you like action and controversy and something new every day. Okay,
it's not necessarily something that leads to to uh, you know,

(21:50):
a lot of like you know, reasoned analysis exactly exactly.
But but so remember it was bad in New York
for a few days. Okay, there were there were you
know that the the the bubble of excess death was real.
What happened at Elmhurst was real. Now, where are things
that we didn't understand at that time, including that, you know,

(22:10):
the rush to put them up people on ventilators was
killing a bunch of people, and that the quality of
care at some of these hospitals, unfortunately, probably was not
very good. You know, these some of these some of
the city's municipal hospitals. You know, they struggle at the
best of times, and these were not the best of times.
But but but but the fear, the fear was real. Okay,
and so and and people very very quickly decided to

(22:35):
blame Donald Trump. You have failed us, and it is
your fault that people are dying. And that became a
very comforting narrative for people in the media, and it
is not it is not giving anything away to say
that outside of Fox, Donald Trump is not just not light,
but that he is despised by many people in the media,

(22:55):
and so and so. So they started as a genuine
fear of the unknown. Okay, And and then and and
but you know, I was in the city in March. Okay,
I don't I I you know, my uh my mother
and brother live in New York City, uh, you know,
and I was in to see I was in to
see them a bunch and it was it was scary,

(23:17):
you know, do not not because of what was happening,
but just because of the emptiness of the streets and
this feeling that, you know, the end is upon us. Okay.
So that was That's not five months ago, though, Clay.
So what's happened since then? Well, unfortunately a couple of
things in that. First of all, people in the media,
for the most part, there are exceptions, but are not
good at math. Okay, they're not good at statistics. They're

(23:40):
not good at math, and they and they haven't ever
put this in context, either for themselves or for anybody else. So,
so Clay forty five children under the age of fifteen
died of coronavirus as of August first had died of
coronavirus in the United States. And and you know, forty
five children. That that's had like a lot of children,

(24:00):
and obviously slowly five children, slowly, five children too many.
But thirteen thousand children in that age group have died
in the United States in the last six months. So
that's one in three hundred. More children have died of
drowning and in car accidents and um and of and
of abuse and neglect and of cancer and of many
many other things. So but journalists have never put these

(24:25):
numbers in context. I don't think they. I don't think
they understand them. And I think the handful who do
understand them, for the most part politically, are not interested
in offering context. Another thing that happened with the media
is that the media quickly realized, and this is you
can see it, okay, it's it's overt on places like
CNN and MSNBC, that this was the perfect issue to

(24:46):
beat Donald Trump over the head with because Trump, you know,
and I'm a registered political independent, Okay, um, you know,
my core political philosophy if it's anything is It's impossible
to be too cynical about our politics these days, really,
But but the media, the media saw that Trump's sort of,

(25:07):
you know, his his arrogance and his bluff and his
desire to make a joke out of things that played
incredibly badly when it came to this, and and so,
and they realized it, and they have and they have
nearly destroyed him with it, and so that's been very
very effective for them. So so to me, what happened
in March and April is forgivable. Okay, it's forgivable that

(25:30):
a bunch of people panicked, and some of us recognized
earlier than others that this wasn't all it was made
out to be, and that this was going to be manageable,
and that the hospitals are not going to be overrun,
and it really should be something that we as a
society should just should just try to go about our
business and let the medical system handle this as as

(25:52):
has happened now in places like Florida and Arizona, and
some people didn't realize as quickly. But everything that's happened
since has been to a greater or lesser extent politically
driven and that makes it very hard for me um
to accept. This is also fascinating to me. So let's
go back to uh, let's go back to Florida and Arizona,

(26:15):
which you just mentioned. Florida and Arizona as we speak.
On August seventeen, effectively, again, Ron de Santis came out,
I'm gonna read some of the data points that he
just tweeted, and frankly, he had to tweet it because
I don't think anybody would cover it otherwise, which goes
into the media coverage of this on a straightforward basis.
So I'm reading directly from front. De santiss tweets earlier

(26:37):
today he said Florida's reporting the lowest number of cases
and sixty since mid June. Emergency room visits for COVID
like illness or down sixty percent since July seven. Hospital
admissions for COVID are down sixty since July. The number
of COVID positive patients currently hospitalized is down fort since

(26:58):
July one, and they have twenty six point four percent
of all hospital beds available in the state. Of all
ICU beds, the pre pandemic percentages, by the way, twelve
point six percent available nine point three percent of ICU
beds available. So the worst case scenario basically happen for

(27:19):
as you would call it, team apocalypse in Florida and
in Arizona, and we handled it without really a substantial
loss of life. Now, nothing like what happened in New
York and in New Jersey. As we look forward with
the data now they're from Florida in Arizona, does anything
change or are people so committed to the idea that

(27:42):
the coronavirus is, uh, you know, the most devastating thing
that's going to happen in anybody's lifetime, that there's no
ability to acknowledge that we can start to get back
to normalcy now. I mean, so that's a that's a
political question. I don't have the answer that I've been
leaving for for the reality shed in you know, for
three months plus now, and you would think that you're

(28:05):
you're right, Like the worst case happened, Okay, the states unlocked.
There was rapid, uncontrolled spread all over the sun Belt
and and and nothing terrible and the fraction of the
deaths of New York and New Jersey as a result,
that's right, I think, you know, if the Florida peak
death day might have been three hundred. Um you know, Texas,

(28:27):
I think around three hundred. Also, you know, this is
a fraction of New York and and and it looks
like death or death in Arizona are definitely trending down. Okay,
Florida Texas have been a couple of weeks behind Arizona,
So they may be they may be still on the
flat part of the plateau, or they may be trending
down too. But it is going to be harder and
harder to argue that this that this is not over. Okay,

(28:48):
if it's if it's certainly in the sun Belt, and
that and that we didn't do anything. Those states really
didn't do anything. So you're hearing somehow that the masked
mandates made the difference, or closing bars made the difference.
I mean, this is this is nonsense. First of all,
a lot of people in the states were wearing masks
before the mandates. And second of all, bar closings like
that's that's what stopped this this incredible, once in a

(29:09):
lifetime epidemic. We closed a few bars for a couple
of weeks. I mean, I mean, you know, people are
saying stuff with a straight face. So here's here's here's
what I've wondered. I've wondered how long it will take
for the media to acknowledge reality, and then I've wondered
how long it will take from that reality to percolate
into the people who are so afraid still right now,
And it does seem to me like the divide is

(29:30):
getting sharper, The divide between people who are afraid and
not afraid is getting sharper, and I and I don't
know what fixes that. We're talking to Alex Berenson. You
can follow him on Twitter. I'll tweet out the link
to his profile. He's had incredible data analysis from the
get go. Okay, what made you willing to question the

(29:52):
overriding narrative. I've obviously done it in the world of sports,
and it's astounding to me how many members of what
I call the blue checkmark brigade in sports media have
been buying into these apocalyptic theories from the get go,
such that they get their furious at me for sharing
any kind of positive news, for suggesting that sports can

(30:12):
be played. I've labeled them all Corona bros. In the
sports media. It's like they're rooting for the worst possible outcome.
Right the minute that an athlete tests positive, they're the
first ones to run to Twitter and be like, oh
my god. You know, look at what's happened with the
Miami Marlins. A bunch of healthy guys are testing positive
for a virus they never would have known they had
unless we were testing them aggressively, right. I mean that's

(30:35):
the reality, and so it's crazy. In my universe, there's
hardly anybody sharing actual facts and combating what I would
call the fear porn, which tries to make it such
that sports can't be played, that your son can't play
little League, that your daughter can't play soccer. All these
things are certainly get to schools, which I want to
get to in a moment. Why do you think that

(30:57):
that the media? And I'm curious on this perspective from you.
It used to be you said, you know, be cynical,
be skeptical. I would say that in general, I am
a skeptic. I tend to be skeptical of every and
any and everything. Maybe that's my legal background, maybe that's
my natural persona. But it seems to me that the
media completely abandoned that natural skepticism and not only abandoned

(31:21):
the natural skepticism, but severely policed anyone who did it
by into the overriding narrative of complete danger, instead of
being rebels, or instead of being people who pushed back
against the tide, which I think is what you would
hope journalists would do. When did journalists become the people

(31:42):
who are out there enforcing what opinions people can have?
And how has it impacted you? In what I'm imagining,
You're now the black sheep of the New York Times fraternity.
You're completely ostracized. So so you know, it fascinates man.
And I don't know how much you hate you get
I I'm engine you get a lot of too, yes,

(32:04):
Like I want their grandmas to die, right, That's the
thing I get the most. Like you don't care about
old people dying, and I would saying no, I wish
everybody was immortal, right, I wish? But you know, two
point eight million people die every day in this every year,
in this country, undred a day. Everything has to be
balanced contextually. This idea that the coronavirus has to dictate
every decision that we make as social policy for the

(32:27):
entire year is crazy to me. It's a childlike understanding
of nuance and complexity. Yet I see people who value
their own knowledge of nuance and complexity fully embracing it,
and I just wonder what in the world is going
on in their brains. Yeah, so, I mean, look, look,
I mean I could call associated parent. You know, people

(32:47):
people tell me, people have told me, you know, not
not the blue checks so much. I hope some of
the checks said they hope I die. Yeah, yeah, people
people regularly blue check Margargade regularly. They remembers saying I
hope you get this and I hope you die. They
even some of the people out there, have you even
taken a step further. I've got three young kids and
they're in school now, and you know when I mentioned that,
they're like, I hope your kids get sick and die.
That would serve you, right, Like whot children to die? Like,

(33:10):
I mean, this is crazy to me, That's right, It's crazy.
I mean, and you know, my, my somebody and somebody
somebody said, well, Fauci says he's getting death threats. It's like, well,
you know what, you know the old joke, if you
ain't cheating, you ain't trying at this point, if you
ain't getting death threats, I get death threats every day,
come on all the time, right, So so you know, look,

(33:32):
there's Trump that the Trump hatred is enormous, and the
and the sort of innumeracy of the media is enormous,
and I guess, I guess you know, the group think
is enormous, okay, and and people and it's unfortunate because
it means that you know, there there are there are
many social media making it worse. Is social media making

(33:55):
group think worse? In your mind? As somebody who worked
at The New York Times in a pre basically so
media era. Oh absolutely, it's made it much worse. And
there's something else that's happening which is not much discussed,
but which has definitely been a real problem at the
New York Times. And I think it's a problem at
workplaces in general, which is so texting makes it possible
to run conspiracies. And I mean, and I mean, you know,

(34:16):
I mean a real conspiracy in a way that you
couldn't before another There can be five people in a
room and one of them has an opinion that the
other four don't like, and the other four are able
to have a conversation about that fifth person in front
of him without him knowing, okay, And that makes it
easier to ostracize. It makes it easier to drive people

(34:38):
out because all of a sudden you say, you know what,
I'm going to tweet this, and everybody else like, okay,
let's you know, let's do it, let's jump in, or
or you know, it isn't even quite that over, it's
I'm going to tweet this, and you send it around
to the other three people who don't like the last
person in the room in there, and they just jump off.
So so there's been there's you know, I'm sure you've

(34:58):
heard it. Uh, you know it's called pilot, right, So
don pil is when you know a thousand people tell
you that you should never speak again. Yes, okay, And
you have to be a certain kind of person to
decide I don't care, right, and which you are? And
I think I am too, like I just I genuinely
don't care. I mean again, I don't see this as partisan.

(35:18):
I don't see it as democrat. I don't see it
as republican. You said you're a registered independent. I worked
on Al Gore's presidential campaign. I wasn't particularly political. I've
never voted for a Republican president. But I look at
all this and I'm like, you know, I'm a First
Amendment absolutist, and I love rigorous debate. And to me,
and I want to get to the analogy you've made
to me, I say, the decision to go to war

(35:40):
in Iraq is the biggest failure in the twenty first
century prior to our response to the coronavirus from a
social policy perspective. You've gone even further back and said
you think in years to come, we'll look back on
our response to the coronavirus as the worst decision in
American policy since the Vietnam War. Uh. That's fast an

(36:00):
eating to me, because what it would require is analysis
and recognition from so many people that they misdiagnosed and
misresponded to this instance in the Vietnam War because the
opposition was liberal. It seems like the media was willing
to acknowledge that because they were like, hey, we got
this one right. I think predominantly liberal media is not

(36:23):
going to be willing to acknowledge it with the coronavirus
because it wasn't the people who were liberal who were
leading the charge necessarily on Oh my god, this response
is totally ludicrous, right, No, it's gonna be very very
hard to get people to admit that. And and you
know what's going to happen is the people who don't
want to admit it are just gonna say a hundred

(36:47):
eight wherever it is that we we top out on
this again without acknowledging that that half those people were
in nursing homes and had a life expectancy in months,
and that a significant portion of the rest, we're really
very shick. Okay that that that In other words, if
you look ahead to next year, for instance, the death

(37:07):
rate may well be down or even at the end
of the months of this year, depending how on how
things go, because the people who got the coronavirus and
died may have died a month or two earlier than
they otherwise were. But we're not talking about, as you said,
kids under fifteen. When you look at the total number
of years loss of life, we're not talking about a
massive amount because the average person dying of the coronavirus

(37:30):
is older than the average age of person dying of
all causes. That's right, And at the same time, they
will be unwilling to admit the damage of the lockdown,
which has been so enormous. And this is something you know,
I think I might see list, you know as much
as anybody, because people email me who are in pain.
You know, you know, this is a funny thing about Twitter.

(37:52):
People feel that they you know, that they that they
know me and that and that they and that they
want to and that they want to open up to me.
And there are people who are in awful pain. Now.
Now look, I'm not gonna say that, you know, these
people were perfectly happy before this happened, and you know,
coronavirus is the only problem in their lives. But what
I'm saying is that if if you have some kind

(38:12):
of you know, psychiatric or psychological weakness, the last five
months had been terrible for you for a lot of
people of people out there, alex have young people, according
to a recent study that I saw, have considered suicide
and suicides and drug overdoses and everything else. Is we've
taken away people's ability to go to work, to go
to school, to go to church, to go to things

(38:34):
that connect them to the larger fabric of society. They
have fallen apart as well, and we're not talking hardly
at all about that. We're not talking about it at all.
And just the sheer turn that some people feel from
I mean the way people have behaved and the way
people with children who haven't let their children out of
the house for for months months, that's some people have
done that. Some people haven't done that. And so you know,

(38:56):
people you can find stories on Twitter without trying too hard.
A will proudly saying I haven't left my apartment since March.
What like, what are you doing? I don't care. If
you have a ten percent risk of dying from this thing,
what are you doing to yourself? And you don't, I mean,
you have a you have a you know, one one
percent risk if you're you know, forty year old guy

(39:17):
or whatever. You know, if the risk is miniscule. But
but people, people have wrenched themselves into terror about this,
and as a society, we are tearing ourselves up over it.
And you know, and and here's the thing about lockdowns. Okay,
you either lockdown too early or too late. Here's your choices.
You lock down like Britain when it's already spread all

(39:39):
over the place, in which case you still have uncontrolled
spread in nursing homes and and and you know, as
a result, the UK is the worst death rate anywhere
of any country in the world, any major country. And
they locked down very hard, but late, or you locked
down really early, like New Zealand, in which case you're
living in fear of the stupid things forever. And whenever
there's a case, you have to side whether or not

(40:00):
to walk down again. Or you treat it like what
it is, a manageable respiratory virus, and you go on
with life like the Swedes did. And yes, some people
will die and then you'll be done and life goes on.
How important is it for schools to be open? In
your mind? I've got three kids, twelve, nine and five.

(40:21):
Come Monday, all three of them a week from today
when we're talking, all three of them will be an
in person school on Monday, August where I live so
so so our kids are going back to school. Uh.
One week later, they're going back on September. One we before.
My kids are you know, a little bit younger than yours. Uh.
And for you know, we're in New York. We actually
seriously considered moving this summer. And I'm glad we didn't

(40:42):
because you know, places we thought we might have moved to.
They're now saying the schools are gonna be closed at
least through November. But fortunately they're at a little you know,
they're at a little private school, um, you know, in
New York State, and they'll be able to have five
day a week school, which is a uh you know,
which is so important for their mental health, for their learning,
for their socialization, for their understanding that life goes on,

(41:05):
for their physical growth. It's so vital that schools be open.
And it is so wrong that that the teachers unions
are refusing this and are fighting about this. It couldn't
be more wrong of all the things we've done. It
is the absolute worst, and and all over Europe, by
the way, schools are reopening. All over Asia, schools are

(41:26):
reopening this if they're if you want proof of anything,
or if you want proof in a way that they're
you know, the best possible proof that this is just
a totally political issue at this point. Look at the
fact that many jurisdictions are saying we're going to reopen
or consider reopening in late October early November. You know,
the right what what's happening in early November that might

(41:49):
cause that to happen. And by the way, if you
really cared, you'd want them open now because it's before
flu season. Instead, we're going to reopen as flu season
is coming back. Fox Sports ready has the best sports
talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I
Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.

(42:11):
We're talking to Alex Barrens and I'm Clay Travis. This
is the Wins and Losses Podcast. Um, there's so many
things here that continue to amaze me. Uh, why do
you think your social media feed has been so filtered
with Why do you think your books which went up
on Amazon have in many ways not been distributed like

(42:32):
they would? Why is Fox News the only place? I
think you've talked with Paul Feinbaum on his radio show.
But by and large, I would imagine you know the
quote unquote mainstream of the media. Many people have have
ignored you. I know the New York Times did a
piece I think Ben Smith, if I'm not mistaken, I
read a piece there. But why do you think you
have become persona non grata If you had been the

(42:53):
person out there saying we've got to shut down everything.
If in other words, if you instead of being the
guy who has said, hey, I think we're overreacting, if
you had been the overreact or, you would be lauded
by the media. It's wild to think about, right, same
thing would be true for me if I had been
the keing of shutdowns, lockdown sports can never play again.

(43:14):
My media colleagues in sports media would have been like, oh,
how brave of him, when the reality is saying what
you or I are saying is infinitely more brave than
following the herd. Yeah, I mean, it's just accurate. Yeah, right,
But I mean a lot of people agree with us
but won't say it publicly because they're worried about the

(43:34):
consequences or the ostracization. Because I'm sure you've heard from
a lot of people in your industry as I have,
who have said, hey, keep saying what you're saying, but
they don't want to say it themselves. Yep, I get that,
and I'm glad to hear you get it too. I mean,
although it's not a surprising, why do you listen? Look, people,
I've been saying to a lot of people. Uh, you're wrong,

(43:55):
You're wrong about this. Yes, you don't know what you're
talking about. And I've been saying and you know, and
I won't back down and you can't shut me up,
and I'm going to keep pointing to facts and statistics.
And I don't care if you think I used to
be a good journalist and I'm not anymore, because I'm
exactly the same journalist I would when you liked me.
I'm just saying something you don't like and people people

(44:16):
can't stand it, and um, you know again, I think,
as we have found, it takes a certain kind of
personality to be willing to say this stuff, and it's
easier just to shoot the messenger. And one of the
things that I've discovered actually recently on Twitter is that
there are people out their media, people, um, who just
blocked me preemptively, people I never know. Yeah, that happens

(44:38):
to me all the time. Yes, And it's like, what
do you think you're gaining from this? They are so
upset by having their narrative challenged that for people out
there who don't recognize what you're saying. People who are
in media, like I will like cape people I've never
interacted with. This happens to me all the time in sports.
They'll have a tweet out somebody else, so retweet it

(44:59):
and I'll be like, oh, that's interesting, I'm curious what
they said, and I'll go to read it and I'll
realize that they blocked me. I've never interacted with him,
I've never in any way, you know, like debated any
issue with him, and then boom, they've got me blocked. Yep.
I mean, the media is incredibly hyperpartisan right now. And
here's the thing. At Fox they know they're partisan. Okay,

(45:20):
the New York Times and CNN they're still pretending they're not.
Now that has sort of fallen away, but it's still
it's still there to some extent. And and um, you know, look, Paul,
Paul find out he's a really good guy. I'm really
glad he's had me on. Okay, but basically, aside from
Fox and One America another conservative outlets, he's the only one,

(45:41):
you know, I was. I was supposed to go on
CNBC several times. I had confirmed interviews, and they canceled
on me. CNN and Paul and Paul, by the way,
knows me from the novels which is why he you
know why, He's like, he's kind of a fan of
my novels, and that's why he had me on to
begin with. But you know CNN Aaron, you know Aaron Burnet,
she's a fan of my novel I was going to

(46:02):
go on with her a couple of months ago. That
got canceled, never rescheduled. So yeah, so there is clearly
a media blackout. And and look, I really am glad
to have the chance to talk to you. I'm glad
to have a chance to talk to Tucker Carlson and
Laura and and everybody else on Fox. But Fox does
that leached the whole country because that's also siload and
people need to hear what you and I have to say,

(46:22):
even if they think we're wrong, it would be better
for them to know that there's another side to this
and that you can debate it. And that goes to
a larger question. I'm sure you get this all the time.
I went to law school. It's interesting you made a
living as a novelist. I went and got an m
f A. At Vanderbilt. I've got to advanced graduate degrees
from Vanderbilt, all right, And prior to that, I went

(46:42):
to g W. You can like me or dislike me.
They're decent academic credentials for me. You went to Yale,
you worked at the at the New York Times for
a decade. One of the things I think that offends
people out there is we're part of their ruling class
of elites, whatever you want to call it, and we're
not succumbing to their story. But how you respond to
people out there who are listening to us? And I'm

(47:03):
sure people will pop in as soon as I tweet
this out. Oh, let's go listen to those guys. They're
not doctors, they're not lawyers. When did you get your
degree in virology? Are you an epidemiological expert? How would
you respond to that segment of Twitter that believes that
because you and I do not have medical degrees aren't
epidemiological pH d s, do not have advanced degrees in virology,

(47:25):
that we're not allowed to talk about this. So here's
what I say. I try to avoid talking about the
practice of medicine. And I stated far away from you know,
the h c Q debate, and there are people other
who want the same thing for me. By the way,
there are people more knowledgeable inside of hospitals and talk
about that. I've just looked at the data. But continue,
that's right, so so so so so. You know, medicine

(47:47):
is something that you get a degree, you know, and
you practice. That's between doctors and patients, and you know
how exactly the spike protein you know, enters the cell
and how the virus replicates. Those are difficult technical questions
I don't and to know anything about. But here's here's
what I can do. Okay, I can look at a model.
It says they're gonna be sixty five thousand people in

(48:09):
hospital beds in New York, New York State on April five,
And it is April five, and there are sixteen thousand
people in hospital beds in New York State that day,
and the models off by a factor of four, even
though it was only made a week ago. And I
can say, what on earth is going on here? Why
is this so wrong? How did you get this so wrong?

(48:31):
And what does it mean that it's so wrong? Okay?
Is it because you know little green men have taken
all those people out of hospital beds? Or is there
something wrong with the model. And if there's something wrong
with the model, what does it mean? What does it
mean about lockdowns? What does it mean about what our
response should be? And I can say to people, what
does it mean that you know fifty of the people

(48:53):
who died are in nursing homes? And why aren't we
talking about that all the time? And why aren't we
trying to protect those people instead of shutting schools when
kids aren't no risk? You do? And I always say
no risk, And I have to say there's there's obviously everything.
And here's the other thing that would tie in with
that to Alex, and I'm Clay Travis. You're listening to
Wins and Losses with Alex Barrinson as we finish up here,

(49:15):
here's the other thing that matters a great deal. Those
forecasts being wrong, actually, I believe led to a much
elevated death rate in New York and New Jersey because
they sent all those patients back into nursing homes because
they believed those forecasts that they were going to need
a hundred thousand plus hospital beds, when in reality, I

(49:37):
believe it peaked at nineteen thousand instead of a hundred
and forty thousand like the forecast. So the forecasters being
so wrong literally cost probably tens of thousands of additional
lives of people that would otherwise have survived because of
the overreaction. I mean, I don't think we can prove
that yet, but I think there's a there's a case

(49:58):
to be made there. Look, if there was one thing
I was good at as a journalist or you know,
you know a couple of things I was good at.
I was good at finding stuff in documents that people
didn't want me to find. But what I was really
good at was saying to people, Hey, you said X yesterday,
and you're saying why today, what what's changed? Why? Why

(50:21):
is it that you're that that that what you said
yesterday isn't what you're saying today and what's on the
ground is really z okay? And I don't need to
be an epidemiologist to ask those questions. I just need
to be able to look at the data myself a
little bit okay, And I don't claim to be an epidemiologist.
But but I challenge anybody to go back and look

(50:41):
at my my, uh my reporting for the New York
Times and say either that I'm some kind of you know,
right wing person, or that you know that my reporting
is an air tight Um, and you know even Ben
Smith and that piece, you know that let's not even
talk about the piece. You know, he said, like I
this guy was a good journalist at the New York Times.
And you know I will, I will, I will, I

(51:02):
will fight that battle to my grave. Uh. Final question
for you for people out there who have enjoyed our conversation,
we might need to have another conversation because I think
people are gonna absolutely love this. I've been talking with
Alex Barrenson, I'm Clay Travis wins and losses. How would
they find you? How can they read what you have
written on Amazon? How would you instruct them to be
able to to consume more of the content that you

(51:23):
were putting out there? Sure? So, I mean Twitter has
been my main outlet, and I will say, you know,
Twitter has been pretty good to me. I've been concerned
that they you know, they had they do seem to
have a commitment to freak speech. And um, you know
my audience has grown, you know, from fewer than ten
thousand almost two hundred thousand in the last few months. Um.
So it's just alexperience and on Twitter and just you know,

(51:44):
just my A L. E X B. E R E
N S O m UM. And then I have these
two booklets out which you can get on Amazon or Apple.
You can download them to UM. You know, I I
there's another one I need to put out actually really
about masks and schools, because as we've talked about, the
school thing is crucial. Masks we haven't really talked about. UM.
I think the mask issue is very interesting. UM. But

(52:07):
but you know, if we have another conversation, we've talked
about masks. But that's that's really it. You know, occasionally, UM,
I write something that you know, Fox News will pick
up or other outlets will pick up. But as we
talked about the places like the New York Times op
ed page or the Wall Street Journal OpEd page, UM,
where I used to write, you know I've had I've

(52:27):
had pieces published on both of those pages in the
last couple of years. I'm not sure they're open to
me anymore. UM. And that that's really disturbing. Again, you
can think I'm totally wrong, and you're totally wrong, but
people should hear us. They should hear that there's another
side to this. Amen. And by the way, you've always
got an opportunity if you want to write out kick.
We're gonna have ten million readers this month. One reason

(52:49):
we're blowing up is because I think people want debates,
they want real discussion of issues, and so you're always
welcome to check out out kick dot com and right
for us anytime. We'd love to have it. All right,
it's been a great pleasure. I I hope I didn't,
you know, talk too much about about you know, the
Cannabis book or that's but I do think people should
know that that this my my contrarian views on this

(53:13):
don't come out of nowhere. They come from serving understanding, unfortunately,
of what the media has become, uh, you know, in
the last decade. Amen, I appreciate you. I keep up
the good work. I love the fact that you're not
bending to the will of the masses. And we'll talk
to you again. That's Alex Berenson. Go follow him on Twitter,
read his books on Amazon. I am Clay Travis. This

(53:34):
has been wins and losses. Be sure to catch live
editions about Kicked. The coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at
six am Eastern three am Pacific