Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to Okay f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live once again from
Speaker 1: our Podstream studios in Times Square. Folks, everything is bad.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to part and parcel out what
Speaker 1: we should talk about on any given day because when
Speaker 1: I open up Twitter, it's like just jumping into a
Speaker 1: cesspool filled with acid rain topped by I don't know,
Speaker 1: killer slugs and killer bees. Remember we had that back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty as well. So here's where we are.
Speaker 1: We live in a country, folks, where reality is being debated, right,
Speaker 1: And the question that I'm asking friends and colleagues is this,
Speaker 1: can reality exist if fifty percent of people have created
Speaker 1: their own is there actually a founding and a basis right,
Speaker 1: a commonality? Because you see, in reality, we have to
Speaker 1: agree on certain principles, right, on certain ideas, which is
Speaker 1: that gravity exists, right, that you know you should stop
Speaker 1: at stop signs, that there are certain laws that dictate
Speaker 1: the reality that we exist in. We cannot fly, so
Speaker 1: you should not try and jump off of a building,
Speaker 1: right that you should not ride a bicycle into you know,
Speaker 1: into a house. Like there were just certain things that
Speaker 1: based in reality, the reality that we all agree upon.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. We no longer agree upon any
Speaker 1: fucking thing, not anything whatsoever. And you know, there was
Speaker 1: a time when I believed in strong debate. I used
Speaker 1: to love the show Crossfire back in the day. You'll
Speaker 1: remember that, where you would have people from opposite sides
Speaker 1: and you would put out a theme or you'd put
Speaker 1: out an issue, and then they would hack it out
Speaker 1: and the audience right would be the better for it, until,
Speaker 1: of course, like everything else, they just descended into fuckery.
Speaker 1: But here's where we are. On Monday, Memorial Herman Hospital
Speaker 1: in Houston closed three ars down, three ers. They've closed.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you what they've said in the
Speaker 1: announcement that was made due to the continued COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: surge and the strain on the hospital system's operation, it
Speaker 1: was closing three of its twenty four hour emergency rooms.
Speaker 1: I want you to think about that for a minute.
Speaker 1: A hospital has made an announcement in a developed country,
Speaker 1: in these United States, to say that they are closing
Speaker 1: their fucking doors to three of their twenty four hour
Speaker 1: emergency rooms because they are overwhelmed and at capacity. Right,
Speaker 1: and apparently at capacity by a fucking hoax, by something.
Speaker 1: We've all made it up in our heads that apparently
Speaker 1: over six hundred thousand Americans have died in this country
Speaker 1: by something given to them by Peter Pan. Evidently it's
Speaker 1: all just in our fucking heads. Hospitals are crumbling all
Speaker 1: across this country, and yet fifty percent of the population
Speaker 1: wants to tell me that I should put a fucking
Speaker 1: spoon on my arm where the vaccination shot went in,
Speaker 1: and if it sticks, that means that my DNA has
Speaker 1: been altered. And people are actually believing this fuck shit.
Speaker 1: You know, when I saw the report, which was about
Speaker 1: a week or so ago, of the young girl, and
Speaker 1: I want us to remember her name. I want us
Speaker 1: to know her name right, eighth grader in Mississippi, And
Speaker 1: this is what the report says. Here, a sweet Mississippi
Speaker 1: town is in mourning the death of one of its
Speaker 1: sweetest students. A little over a thousand people called Raleigh,
Speaker 1: a place nestled in Smith County, Mississippi, home where a
Speaker 1: magnolia drive runs through the heart of downtown and a
Speaker 1: road is dotted with pastel colored storefronts and red brick
Speaker 1: government buildings. For half a mile. It's a sleepy place.
Speaker 1: And now this sleepy little quintessential apparently American town is
Speaker 1: in a collective state of grief over a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old girl named Michaela Robinson who died of COVID. Here's
Speaker 1: the thing, folks, and this is what is getting to me.
Speaker 1: How many Michaela's are there going to be? How many
Speaker 1: children across this country are going to die in the
Speaker 1: weeks because of the many executioners that we have at
Speaker 1: the helm of Red states across this country, death santis
Speaker 1: de satan, you know, choose your poison, abbot, and others.
Speaker 1: I just named the top two because this is who
Speaker 1: the rest of Red state governors are taking their cues from.
Speaker 1: Mikaela went back to school as every other eighth grader
Speaker 1: in her town was going to go back to school,
Speaker 1: and she, along with eight other children, ended up in
Speaker 1: the ICU of Children's of Mississippi, the Children's Hospital. She
Speaker 1: died on August fourteenth. And the thing here in this story, folks,
Speaker 1: is that we always have Republicans that want to feed
Speaker 1: us this line of absolute bullshit about the children, And
Speaker 1: what about the children? The children can't see two people
Speaker 1: of the same sex get married, because what about the children?
Speaker 1: The children can't go to the bathroom at the bathroom
Speaker 1: is gender neutral, because you know, what about the children?
Speaker 1: We need to put parental advisories on everything, because what
Speaker 1: about the children? But when it comes to actually changing
Speaker 1: and shaping and making sure that children are safe, right,
Speaker 1: and changing policy in order to keep children actually safe
Speaker 1: from harm, we don't fucking do that. And nobody ever
Speaker 1: calls out Republicans and says, hey, what about the children.
Speaker 1: You have a classroom of first graders that get mowed
Speaker 1: down by an AR fifteen in Sandy Hook, and you
Speaker 1: tell us not to politicize. Now, the same fraction of
Speaker 1: QAnon fus right who believe that the vaccine is changing
Speaker 1: human DNA are the same people that believe that Sandy
Speaker 1: Hook was all made up. That apparently the parents who
Speaker 1: lost their six and seventy year old children and had
Speaker 1: to bury them right, somehow they just made it up
Speaker 1: for attention. Say that the kids who watched their best
Speaker 1: friends die in front of them in Parkland, somehow they
Speaker 1: made that shit up too. They're just a bunch of actors.
Speaker 1: I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that
Speaker 1: one of the Parkland students. His own father somehow now
Speaker 1: because of QAnon, believes that he was some type of
Speaker 1: actor involved in the Parkland shooting. The man was in
Speaker 1: the house when he got the call that the school
Speaker 1: was locked down because there was a mass shooting. If
Speaker 1: this is where we have arrived in our society, we're
Speaker 1: instead of creating policy, instead of doing something to protect
Speaker 1: our children, we instead sell them bulletproof backpacks that instead
Speaker 1: of using a piece of fucking cloth that could keep
Speaker 1: your child from death from long term COVID, who has
Speaker 1: any idea what the fuck that will actually look like
Speaker 1: in a body that's still developing. Instead of doing that,
Speaker 1: we have anti mask mandates rolled out in all of
Speaker 1: these states, including Mississippi where MICHAELA died. What about the children?
Speaker 1: Coming up next? Friends, is my conversation with our in
Speaker 1: house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel to talk to us about
Speaker 1: the latest with COVID, folks. I am so excited to
Speaker 1: be back and in conversation with our in house doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor Jonathan Metzel, who is now back on location in
Speaker 1: Tennessee with his university, going to be teaching in person
Speaker 1: two hundred some odd students. Jonathan You've been in Tennessee
Speaker 1: for how long now? And what are you what are
Speaker 1: you seeing? As the differences between how New York and
Speaker 1: Connecticut were you also were throughout this time. We're hand
Speaker 1: are handling COVID versus what you're seeing in Tennessee. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been here, I guess for a week, but in
Speaker 1: dog years, it feels like I've been here for ten
Speaker 1: years already. It's been a really long week. It's great
Speaker 1: to talk to you. Hello, everybody. I would say in
Speaker 1: I've had this really weird thing right where for the
Speaker 1: past year I've been living on the East Coast, and
Speaker 1: I mean certainly everywhere. It's not like you're going to
Speaker 1: escape it, but in general in New York, for example,
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly some people do what some people don't,
Speaker 1: but there's a general playing by a particular set of rules.
Speaker 1: You know, you go somewhere, people are in general wearing
Speaker 1: a mask. You can pretty much people you're going to
Speaker 1: interact with have been vaccinated. And now I started triple
Speaker 1: masking yesterday because it's just odd. Well it's more just
Speaker 1: that like like are you breathing? Like do you have
Speaker 1: an oxygen techs? I had to go to the airport
Speaker 1: and take up light on Southwest Airlines, and so I
Speaker 1: just thought, man, I'm like swimming and I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's COVID or whatever something right now, So I
Speaker 1: figured I would rather be safe than sorry. But it's
Speaker 1: just it's interesting that like your everyday interactions are just
Speaker 1: you just you can't assume that people are playing by
Speaker 1: that same set of rules. I mean, I've been the
Speaker 1: only mask person in multiple indoor settings. Certainly there are
Speaker 1: people here who are scared out of their minds. There
Speaker 1: are people here who are worried about it, people who
Speaker 1: want to do the right thing. But it's just interesting
Speaker 1: to be part of a framework where the bigger framework
Speaker 1: is out of public health framework, and so everywhere you
Speaker 1: go you can pretty much just I just take it
Speaker 1: for granted outside of my university that I'm I just
Speaker 1: assume I'm going to be the only mass person, and
Speaker 1: that's It's not always the case, but it's often the case,
Speaker 1: and so it just leads to a different kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, again, I'm coming from a health perspective, it's
Speaker 1: much it's harder to relax. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: this for me, I would mu surether be in New York,
Speaker 1: where everybody's kind of playing by a set of rules
Speaker 1: that are linked to kind of communal safety. For me,
Speaker 1: that is more relaxing, even though we're faced with this
Speaker 1: shitty situation which is there's virus. But here it's kind
Speaker 1: of like everybody's it just feels like everybody's for themselves,
Speaker 1: which I don't know, I don't I don't like it
Speaker 1: as much, you know, It's just it's hard when you know,
Speaker 1: when you say that, like so in New York that
Speaker 1: everyone is playing by the same set of you know, similarly,
Speaker 1: the same set of rules, meaning that we're all kind
Speaker 1: of focused on community safety and community wellness, and that
Speaker 1: has been from the top down. Right, do you feel
Speaker 1: though that when you are the only mask person inside somewhere, like,
Speaker 1: are you receiving sneers or people looking at you because
Speaker 1: they're operating frankly on a set of community values as well.
Speaker 1: They're libertarian freedoms, right, and what it is that they
Speaker 1: perceive to be their autonomy, which is the ability to
Speaker 1: harm folks. And so I'm just wondering how are you
Speaker 1: being perceived with your masking with you know, within the university,
Speaker 1: but also just going to the store picking up you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you need. Yeah, even if you
Speaker 1: wanted to wear a mask, you're you're just out numbered
Speaker 1: here basically. And so it's kind of like it's just
Speaker 1: exhaustion really in a certain kind of way. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly there are some people give you bad looks. Some
Speaker 1: people are like, oh I A lot of people like
Speaker 1: probably tried to wear masks and then they just kind
Speaker 1: of tired of it and stuff like that. And so
Speaker 1: it's more like it's more that it's more a structural
Speaker 1: level exhaustion, if that makes any sense. In other words,
Speaker 1: like some people are worried about COVID, some people aren't.
Speaker 1: Some people want to do the right thing. Some people
Speaker 1: are just wanting to get on with their lives. But
Speaker 1: because the bigger structure isn't giving clear public health guidelines,
Speaker 1: and if they did, people wouldn't follow them. I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example. I was in the Nashville airport, and
Speaker 1: even though there's a mask mandate in the airport, plenty
Speaker 1: of people were just walking around with their mask, just
Speaker 1: covering their chin nostril patriots because they were determined to
Speaker 1: have their noses outside of their masks. Some people just
Speaker 1: had their masks around one ear, and other people were
Speaker 1: like scared o their minds and like me, they had
Speaker 1: like seventy five masks on and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: it's just like you're in this bigger pool of people
Speaker 1: doing things kind of differently. And so I don't know,
Speaker 1: certainly I had the individual economy to wear seventy five masks.
Speaker 1: That was my liberty and my freedom. But I I
Speaker 1: would rather be part of a I mean, I'd probably
Speaker 1: sound like some bleading socialist right now, but I'd rather
Speaker 1: be part of a place where like everybody's just kind
Speaker 1: of wearing a mask. I just find it moreally relaxing.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm trying to say, and it's hard
Speaker 1: to articulate because I'm in the middle of it now,
Speaker 1: is it's just coming from it. I find it to
Speaker 1: be in a situation where everyone is just making up
Speaker 1: their own rules. Yeah, and you know where are where
Speaker 1: Where is Tennessee right now? In terms of their icee
Speaker 1: you beds in terms of their infection right I'm certain
Speaker 1: that you're probably following that in the same way that
Speaker 1: we follow it here in New York, and so are
Speaker 1: they in I'm assuming that they are in similar positions
Speaker 1: as Florida and Texas and Mississippi and Alabama. What do
Speaker 1: their numbers look like right now? It's catastrophic. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's horrible. There was a piece in the New York
Speaker 1: Times about it this morning. Not just COVID. We had
Speaker 1: a flash floods here the other day. Yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people got killed. So there's um, you know, climate
Speaker 1: issues and things like that. But again we've got it.
Speaker 1: We've got, like many southern states, a governor who's going
Speaker 1: around overturning mask mandates, and so there's a push and
Speaker 1: pull like and there's a nice piece in the New
Speaker 1: York Times about it this morning that people are really worried,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of parents who are worried.
Speaker 1: But the big issue is school is going back in
Speaker 1: I'm starting teaching again tomorrow, and so it just it
Speaker 1: just feels like every person's out there for themselves and
Speaker 1: there's no an anytime you try to create like a
Speaker 1: kind of okay, let's do public health, you've got somebody
Speaker 1: like the horrible governor here, see who comes and overturns it.
Speaker 1: And so it's weird because on one hand, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, states rights or individual liberty or something like that.
Speaker 1: But every time a school tries to say, Okay, look
Speaker 1: we're going to we're going to legislate safety for our community,
Speaker 1: the governor comes in and says, you can't. You can't
Speaker 1: mandate masks in your schools. You've probably seen some videos
Speaker 1: of the people you know shouting down school board members
Speaker 1: and doctors are now getting getting attacked on social media,
Speaker 1: and so it's not a good situation. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: people have their individual lived there are times where you
Speaker 1: need communal public health, and so I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: the lay of the land. It's been a week here,
Speaker 1: but I will say that I feel like this week
Speaker 1: has been a very long week. I mean, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: still kicking right here as we proceed, and I feel
Speaker 1: you and the viewers in on what things are like
Speaker 1: in the South. It's just really again, everybody you see
Speaker 1: is not some crazy Twitter person, but just the everyday interaction.
Speaker 1: You just can't assume the same kind of safety. And
Speaker 1: of course this is all happening in the context of
Speaker 1: a bigger conversation where COVID is getting much worse and
Speaker 1: it's going to last now much longer, and vaccine hesitancy
Speaker 1: is really really going to prolong this narrative, so it
Speaker 1: just feels tiring right now, to be honest. That's it
Speaker 1: for today's Woke, a f daily podcast. To hear more
Speaker 1: from today's show, including my full interview with doctor Jonathan Metzel,
Speaker 1: support me on Patreon at patreon dot com slash woke
Speaker 1: F Power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.