Name: The Competing Covid Narratives
Uploaded: 2021-03-10T23:33:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Competing Covid Narratives' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Competing Covid Narratives' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-10. Transcript available.

I'll tell you this, flying into Texas, on an aircraft I was on, one of the
flight attendants
came up and kind of tapped me on the shoulder as we were getting ready to land
and said,
well, be careful because, you know, Texas has gotten rid of the mask band-aid.
And the point was, from the flight attendant, was, you know.
Did she just say it to you?
Yeah, it's going to be like, yeah, it's a wild west.
She's going to be the wild west.
Well, you know.
She's like, Mr. Pinker.
You be careful out there because, you know.
Because I like you.
Yeah.
And so, but the point, my wife was sitting right next to me.
There was nothing untoward.
It wasn't like, you know.
No, we were not engaged in any shenanigans.
But the point was, was that they looked at it and they go, oh, you know,
Governor Abbott said this.
And it's political, right?
But the point of my story is, I walked off the plane, everybody was wearing a
mask.
Yeah, this is the thing the Governor Abbott said.
He said, I encourage you to wear a mask.
You should still wear a mask.
But I don't want the state to tell you what to do.
That's what I support.
And if you don't want the state to tell you what to do, you shouldn't want the
federal government telling you what to do.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But everybody I've seen in Austin wearing a mask.
Wear a mask.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, until you go to a restaurant and then you sit down, then there's no mask.
And I don't understand that.
Well.
The whole thing is nonsense.
You have to wear a mask when you go to pee.
And then you don't wear a mask when you come back and sit down at your table
like, okay.
I mean, because, you know, to be fair, they've got, you know, mostly six foot
distance.
You know, they haven't, the places that I've been here in Texas, they keep the
social distance.
But I guess my point was like, you get this, and we talked about this earlier
before the show, but was the idea that some people just like to suffer and they
suffer well, right?
They enjoy the fact that this is hard and bad.
And that's really sad, but it's true.
There's people that they enjoy being depressed.
It's a hard thing to even say because you don't want it to be real.
You know, you don't want there to really be people out there that like when
there's some people that when we got shut into our homes and everyone was sad
and everyone was scared, they enjoyed it because that's how they live all the
time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or that's just, it's their time to shine.
Some people have, have really shown during the pandemic.
And it's like, I saw this post from this, this individual who is a professional,
clearly from their job.
And they, they posted, oh, I'm dealing with such anxiety now because of the
possible return to normal and the idea that I'm going to have to travel and I
won't be able to have dinner with my kids.
And I'm just like, and I'm thinking, fuck you, you've had the, it was clear
from the post that they've had the luxury of working from home and not losing
their job and they could teach their kids.
And it's this idea of not opening the public schools.
These kids out here who don't have wifi, who don't have laptops, who have a one
parent home, who has to work, all those that can't afford a tutor, can't make a
little pod to teach their kids.
You know, those people aren't doing well, right?
And those kids are suffering.
And then you get like the people who can afford to set up a private pod for
their kids and bring a tutor in and have strong wifi and can do all those
things, have English as a first language.
And they're doing just fine.
And they're like, well, we should not go back to school.
Fuck you.
Kids have disappeared off the radar during this past year.
And the schools don't even know where they are in places like New York and
Chicago and other places.
So it's, it's fucked up.
Yeah.
You know, it's, there's narratives out there.
And the problem with these narratives are, it's not that they're all completely
inaccurate.
The problem is that when you say, when you, when you espouse these narratives
in a very condensed, processed way, like social media,
you get a bunch of people that support it and a bunch of people that argue
against it.
But if it's a narrative, like we should stay home, we should all wear masks.
Yeah.
Pretty hard for people to fight against that.
Right.
So people, they, they, they pile on.
And then, and then people get addicted to like the reactions and the
interactions on Twitter.
And it's like, it becomes this weird fucking method of communication, the
method of discussing ideas.
And they get, people get really attached to whatever, whatever they believe in,
whether they believe the kids should be in school to the end of time.
And all, all fucking interactions should be done through Zoom or that we should
all throw away our masks and achieve herd immunity.
And we should take vitamin D and go out in the sun and fucking exercise and be
healthier.
And you can do, you can do all of it, right?
You can wear a mask because you don't get fine.
I, who can I, I, my, my freedoms aren't infringed by wearing a mask.
I don't give a shit.
It's not that big a deal.
Yeah, but at the same time, do I want my kids back in school?
Do I think it's healthy for my oldest boy Sluggo to, you know, be wearing his,
you know, pajamas or his sweatpants all day long and learning from distance?
No.
And I think that it's just, so there are, I, I, you know, I do agree with the
idea that there, there are people that, that suffer well.
They're kind of wielding this whole thing as a sort of justice.
Yeah.
So.
Well, you know, a good example, the comedy community is an interesting example
because one of the things that, uh,
a lot of my professional comedian friends have found is that there's a lot of
people that never worked.
And when I say never, I'm exaggerating, but they weren't, they weren't
successful.
They didn't, they weren't selling out clubs and theaters.
They weren't doing well.
And they're so angry that some comics have decided to go on the road again
because a lot of places have opened up.
Texas has opened up.
Florida has opened up.
You can go and do shows.
But that's a chance to do work, right?
I mean, so.
It is, but they're angry and they, they, they want the, the, the narrative is
that you're doing these super spreader events.
People even got mad at me and Dave Chappelle because Dave and I were doing
these shows at Stubbs, uh, amphitheater in Austin outside.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the, the, the, that the virus spreads
outside.
And I mean, literally none.
There's no evidence.
And then on top of that, we test everyone in the crowd.
It's expensive.
It takes a long time.
The people get there early.
We test the entire crowd.
Are you doing temperature checks?
No, we're doing, we're doing, uh, antigen tests for the entire crowd.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I mean, that's great, but it's crazy.
It's expensive, but it's the way to do it.
And we had a great fucking time and we're doing it again.
And, but some comics have been mad at that.
But if you go and look at the comics that are mad, they're all unsuccessful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or super liberal and they're virtue signaling, they're looking to, to like tag
on to this
idea that what you're doing is bad.
And then what we should do is all stay home and, and lock down.
Like you can go outside.
And by the way, most people like 99.9, whatever percent survive.
There was a recent study that showed that 78% of all the people that are
hospitalized from
COVID are overweight.
Yeah.
Have you seen that?
Yeah.
I've seen that.
Yeah.
The obesity issue.
Where is the shame in that?
Right.
Right.
Right.
All these people are talking about fat shaming.
Right.
You want to talk about the super spreaders?
Yeah.
It's people that have ignored their health and those people need help and they
need support
and they need love, but there's a reality to the people that are getting sick
from this.
If everyone was healthy, this would almost be a non-issue.
Now that's not a health shaming thing.
Like we should be shaming people that are in poor health or people that are
born with,
you know, comorbidity factors like diabetes and whatever.
Of course.
Of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we're not looking at this thing a hundred percent objective.
If we were, we would have a completely different take on it.
Well, look, there's no science.
That's an example.
I'm focused because I got these, I got these three knuckleheads at home.
Right.
So I'm focused on like the, the, the education side of things as well.
And so as, as, as are you, but it's, there's no science.
People believe science.
Well, of course, believe science.
That, that, that's one of the funniest narratives.
Believe science.
Well, who the fuck doesn't believe?
I mean, that's fine, but it's a political issue.
Right.
So, but I think that, uh, there's no science that shows that, that, you know, a
six foot distance
in public schools for kids, right.
Is, is, is, uh, is essential to their health.
So in fact, the science shows three foot.
That's fine.
And what that does though, the importance of that is logistics, right?
Because it allows for you to get the schools open again, people will talk about
this six
foot distance.
We can't get this kids back into their classrooms with six foot distance.
We can't get enough of them in there.
It's the little things.
It's the logistics of it saying, well, get it down to three foot, which is what
the science
supports.
And then you can get these schools.
You can start opening these places back up in a responsible manner.
Honest to God, we're going to look at this thing in a year or two.
Maybe we won't because we're not going to be honest with ourselves, but if we
actually
did an honest hot wash of this reaction to the pandemic, our reaction has been
pathetic
right over, over this past year, I, this has not been a shining moment for us.
Don't you think part of the problem is we started out with a different idea of
what the
virus is.
We started out thinking that it was going to be like the next Spanish flu and
that it was
going to kill.
I mean, everyone was terrified and me included.
I was scared of it.
In the beginning, I thought that it was going to be something that kills 10% of
the population,
you know, and it didn't turn out to be that way, but we never made an
adjustment.
Yeah, no, I, yes, I think that's true.
And I think also part of it is, is you can't negate the, uh, or minimize the
political reaction,
right?
If, if, if Joe Biden had been president when this thing broke, I guarantee you
the reaction
would have been somewhat different.
The fact that Trump was in there and created so much emotion, um, and there was
such animosity,
uh, thank God Trump wasn't pro vaccine.
We would be fucked because, you know, he was pro so many other therapeutics and
they're like,
hydroxychloroquine is racist.
You know, like, thank God he didn't say anything about ivermectin or vitamin D
or quercetin or
any of the other things that we've been, or zinc.
Yeah.
But I do think that way, you know, that was a big issue was, was like, ah, yeah,
see he's
so polarizing and we can't, and we can't trust the, the vaccines because you
know, they were
developed under Trump.
Right.
Well, fuck it.
Believe the science.
It would develop by companies that have nothing but scientists and doctors and
engineers that
working inside them.
Yeah.
And so if you believe the science and you better believe that they were
developing vaccines
that you should have been happy about.
So, you know, I guess everything, you know, I don't know.
It's the political nature of this country.
And again, going back to what we were talking about earlier with the Russians
and the Chinese,
they see that and they just keep, they keep sticking the knife in.
Right.
And the more they do, the more they tear the threads of our belief in the
system.
And the more polarized we get and the more yelling that goes on and the more
bullshit people
believe when they read social media and they don't bother to say, well, who
wrote this?
Right.
And is this actually a scientific piece of work or is this just, and what's the
origin
of it?
What's the outlet?
Right.
And half the time the outlet is overseas someplace and then you got to dig into
it.
It's like an asset tracing exercise.
Who owns that company?
Right.
Then you find out it's owned by some, you know, Russian entity that's got an
operation out
of Cyprus or whatever.
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The Competing Covid Narratives

I'll tell you this, flying into Texas, on an aircraft I was on, one of the
flight attendants
came up and kind of tapped me on the shoulder as we were getting ready to land
and said,
well, be careful because, you know, Texas has gotten rid of the mask band-aid.
And the point was, from the flight attendant, was, you know.
Did she just say it to you?
Yeah, it's going to be like, yeah, it's a wild west.
She's going to be the wild west.
Well, you know.
She's like, Mr. Pinker.
You be careful out there because, you know.
Because I like you.
Yeah.
And so, but the point, my wife was sitting right next to me.
There was nothing untoward.
It wasn't like, you know.
No, we were not engaged in any shenanigans.
But the point was, was that they looked at it and they go, oh, you know,
Governor Abbott said this.
And it's political, right?
But the point of my story is, I walked off the plane, everybody was wearing a
mask.
Yeah, this is the thing the Governor Abbott said.
He said, I encourage you to wear a mask.
You should still wear a mask.
But I don't want the state to tell you what to do.
That's what I support.
And if you don't want the state to tell you what to do, you shouldn't want the
federal government telling you what to do.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But everybody I've seen in Austin wearing a mask.
Wear a mask.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, until you go to a restaurant and then you sit down, then there's no mask.
And I don't understand that.
Well.
The whole thing is nonsense.
You have to wear a mask when you go to pee.
And then you don't wear a mask when you come back and sit down at your table
like, okay.
I mean, because, you know, to be fair, they've got, you know, mostly six foot
distance.
You know, they haven't, the places that I've been here in Texas, they keep the
social distance.
But I guess my point was like, you get this, and we talked about this earlier
before the show, but was the idea that some people just like to suffer and they
suffer well, right?
They enjoy the fact that this is hard and bad.
And that's really sad, but it's true.
There's people that they enjoy being depressed.
It's a hard thing to even say because you don't want it to be real.
You know, you don't want there to really be people out there that like when
there's some people that when we got shut into our homes and everyone was sad
and everyone was scared, they enjoyed it because that's how they live all the
time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or that's just, it's their time to shine.
Some people have, have really shown during the pandemic.
And it's like, I saw this post from this, this individual who is a professional,
clearly from their job.
And they, they posted, oh, I'm dealing with such anxiety now because of the
possible return to normal and the idea that I'm going to have to travel and I
won't be able to have dinner with my kids.
And I'm just like, and I'm thinking, fuck you, you've had the, it was clear
from the post that they've had the luxury of working from home and not losing
their job and they could teach their kids.
And it's this idea of not opening the public schools.
These kids out here who don't have wifi, who don't have laptops, who have a one
parent home, who has to work, all those that can't afford a tutor, can't make a
little pod to teach their kids.
You know, those people aren't doing well, right?
And those kids are suffering.
And then you get like the people who can afford to set up a private pod for
their kids and bring a tutor in and have strong wifi and can do all those
things, have English as a first language.
And they're doing just fine.
And they're like, well, we should not go back to school.
Fuck you.
Kids have disappeared off the radar during this past year.
And the schools don't even know where they are in places like New York and
Chicago and other places.
So it's, it's fucked up.
Yeah.
You know, it's, there's narratives out there.
And the problem with these narratives are, it's not that they're all completely
inaccurate.
The problem is that when you say, when you, when you espouse these narratives
in a very condensed, processed way, like social media,
you get a bunch of people that support it and a bunch of people that argue
against it.
But if it's a narrative, like we should stay home, we should all wear masks.
Yeah.
Pretty hard for people to fight against that.
Right.
So people, they, they, they pile on.
And then, and then people get addicted to like the reactions and the
interactions on Twitter.
And it's like, it becomes this weird fucking method of communication, the
method of discussing ideas.
And they get, people get really attached to whatever, whatever they believe in,
whether they believe the kids should be in school to the end of time.
And all, all fucking interactions should be done through Zoom or that we should
all throw away our masks and achieve herd immunity.
And we should take vitamin D and go out in the sun and fucking exercise and be
healthier.
And you can do, you can do all of it, right?
You can wear a mask because you don't get fine.
I, who can I, I, my, my freedoms aren't infringed by wearing a mask.
I don't give a shit.
It's not that big a deal.
Yeah, but at the same time, do I want my kids back in school?
Do I think it's healthy for my oldest boy Sluggo to, you know, be wearing his,
you know, pajamas or his sweatpants all day long and learning from distance?
No.
And I think that it's just, so there are, I, I, you know, I do agree with the
idea that there, there are people that, that suffer well.
They're kind of wielding this whole thing as a sort of justice.
Yeah.
So.
Well, you know, a good example, the comedy community is an interesting example
because one of the things that, uh,
a lot of my professional comedian friends have found is that there's a lot of
people that never worked.
And when I say never, I'm exaggerating, but they weren't, they weren't
successful.
They didn't, they weren't selling out clubs and theaters.
They weren't doing well.
And they're so angry that some comics have decided to go on the road again
because a lot of places have opened up.
Texas has opened up.
Florida has opened up.
You can go and do shows.
But that's a chance to do work, right?
I mean, so.
It is, but they're angry and they, they, they want the, the, the narrative is
that you're doing these super spreader events.
People even got mad at me and Dave Chappelle because Dave and I were doing
these shows at Stubbs, uh, amphitheater in Austin outside.
There's no evidence whatsoever that the, the, the, that the virus spreads
outside.
And I mean, literally none.
There's no evidence.
And then on top of that, we test everyone in the crowd.
It's expensive.
It takes a long time.
The people get there early.
We test the entire crowd.
Are you doing temperature checks?
No, we're doing, we're doing, uh, antigen tests for the entire crowd.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I mean, that's great, but it's crazy.
It's expensive, but it's the way to do it.
And we had a great fucking time and we're doing it again.
And, but some comics have been mad at that.
But if you go and look at the comics that are mad, they're all unsuccessful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or super liberal and they're virtue signaling, they're looking to, to like tag
on to this
idea that what you're doing is bad.
And then what we should do is all stay home and, and lock down.
Like you can go outside.
And by the way, most people like 99.9, whatever percent survive.
There was a recent study that showed that 78% of all the people that are
hospitalized from
COVID are overweight.
Yeah.
Have you seen that?
Yeah.
I've seen that.
Yeah.
The obesity issue.
Where is the shame in that?
Right.
Right.
Right.
All these people are talking about fat shaming.
Right.
You want to talk about the super spreaders?
Yeah.
It's people that have ignored their health and those people need help and they
need support
and they need love, but there's a reality to the people that are getting sick
from this.
If everyone was healthy, this would almost be a non-issue.
Now that's not a health shaming thing.
Like we should be shaming people that are in poor health or people that are
born with,
you know, comorbidity factors like diabetes and whatever.
Of course.
Of course.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we're not looking at this thing a hundred percent objective.
If we were, we would have a completely different take on it.
Well, look, there's no science.
That's an example.
I'm focused because I got these, I got these three knuckleheads at home.
Right.
So I'm focused on like the, the, the education side of things as well.
And so as, as, as are you, but it's, there's no science.
People believe science.
Well, of course, believe science.
That, that, that's one of the funniest narratives.
Believe science.
Well, who the fuck doesn't believe?
I mean, that's fine, but it's a political issue.
Right.
So, but I think that, uh, there's no science that shows that, that, you know, a
six foot distance
in public schools for kids, right.
Is, is, is, uh, is essential to their health.
So in fact, the science shows three foot.
That's fine.
And what that does though, the importance of that is logistics, right?
Because it allows for you to get the schools open again, people will talk about
this six
foot distance.
We can't get this kids back into their classrooms with six foot distance.
We can't get enough of them in there.
It's the little things.
It's the logistics of it saying, well, get it down to three foot, which is what
the science
supports.
And then you can get these schools.
You can start opening these places back up in a responsible manner.
Honest to God, we're going to look at this thing in a year or two.
Maybe we won't because we're not going to be honest with ourselves, but if we
actually
did an honest hot wash of this reaction to the pandemic, our reaction has been
pathetic
right over, over this past year, I, this has not been a shining moment for us.
Don't you think part of the problem is we started out with a different idea of
what the
virus is.
We started out thinking that it was going to be like the next Spanish flu and
that it was
going to kill.
I mean, everyone was terrified and me included.
I was scared of it.
In the beginning, I thought that it was going to be something that kills 10% of
the population,
you know, and it didn't turn out to be that way, but we never made an
adjustment.
Yeah, no, I, yes, I think that's true.
And I think also part of it is, is you can't negate the, uh, or minimize the
political reaction,
right?
If, if, if Joe Biden had been president when this thing broke, I guarantee you
the reaction
would have been somewhat different.
The fact that Trump was in there and created so much emotion, um, and there was
such animosity,
uh, thank God Trump wasn't pro vaccine.
We would be fucked because, you know, he was pro so many other therapeutics and
they're like,
hydroxychloroquine is racist.
You know, like, thank God he didn't say anything about ivermectin or vitamin D
or quercetin or
any of the other things that we've been, or zinc.
Yeah.
But I do think that way, you know, that was a big issue was, was like, ah, yeah,
see he's
so polarizing and we can't, and we can't trust the, the vaccines because you
know, they were
developed under Trump.
Right.
Well, fuck it.
Believe the science.
It would develop by companies that have nothing but scientists and doctors and
engineers that
working inside them.
Yeah.
And so if you believe the science and you better believe that they were
developing vaccines
that you should have been happy about.
So, you know, I guess everything, you know, I don't know.
It's the political nature of this country.
And again, going back to what we were talking about earlier with the Russians
and the Chinese,
they see that and they just keep, they keep sticking the knife in.
Right.
And the more they do, the more they tear the threads of our belief in the
system.
And the more polarized we get and the more yelling that goes on and the more
bullshit people
believe when they read social media and they 