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My name is Josh Rasheeds. Today on the show, I want to share with you, talk a little bit about freedom in a time of coronavirus. And I want to share with you, number one, why I think the United States is a pretty good place to be right now when judged from a global perspective.

Number two, what I think will happen in the coming months and next year or two with the pandemic. And number three, how to prepare if things actually turn worse and the United States turns into a worse place to be. Much of my audience is based in the United States and I have spoken with many of my audience members who are quite concerned right now, concerned about decreasing freedoms in their life and lifestyle.

Many are concerned about financial pressures, new legislation brought requiring forced vaccination, requiring employers to force their employees to be vaccinated, and many of the fines and financial pressures that come, many people are losing their jobs right now, et cetera. And so there are a lot of people concerned. So I just want to give you my perspective on these topics and tell you why I think the United States is a really good place to be right now, what I think will happen and how to prepare right now in case things get far worse.

Because I am very concerned that things might actually get far worse than what they are right now. And I want to tell you what I think can and should be done. To begin with, why do I think the USA is a pretty good place to be? I have made the intentional choice for the moment to move my family back to the United States.

And one big reason why I chose that, not the only reason, but one big reason why I chose to do that is, put simply, I'm done with the pandemic. I'm done with the pandemic. I don't understand why more people aren't done with it, but I'm done with it. And I don't desire to live as if it's 2020 anymore.

I desire to live a lifestyle of freedom. Now, my experience is probably different than a lot of people's experiences around the world. I have been, since the pandemic started, I think I counted on the other day, I think I've been in 10 countries, 10 different countries, some for shorter periods of time, some for extended periods of time since the pandemic started and while I have made regular visits during that time to the United States, I have not been living in the United States for any of the pandemic.

And so that's given me a different perspective on things than many other people. I've never been, throughout the pandemic, I haven't been a bunch, really an extremist on the different positions. I was concerned very early as I watched things develop, very concerned, my concern is lessened, but I've never, I haven't gotten on a bandwagon of this is what I, this is the side that I'm on.

I've been fairly moderate, at least by my own assessment, I've been fairly moderate in my perspectives, kind of trying to balance in the best way that I could come up with a prudent balance of risks and rewards and trying to make my way through. Now, that has changed a lot over time, but I've tried that.

But still, I reached the point over the past few months where I just said, I'm done. I don't wanna deal with it anymore. I don't understand why people are still living like it's 2020 when clearly it's not. And in my experience, and again, I think 10 different countries, nine or 10 different countries throughout the pandemic, I have observed that by far the place with the fewest restrictions, the most freedom, both legally speaking and culturally speaking, of all of the countries that I have been in has been the United States, most importantly, Florida.

Now, there've been times throughout this pandemic that it has been quite shocking to me to experience that. You get used to, for example, in the United States, there is a major arguments that people have about whether or not they should wear masks. And there's an important argument to be had there, but the US, meaning medically speaking, does a mask do any good, blah, blah, blah, it's an important conversation.

But in the United States, the culture has been arguing over this subject for many, many months. I'm not aware of anywhere else where there's been a clear argument about this. Maybe it exists, obviously the world's a big place. In many places, some places that I have been, some people don't wear masks, but usually they don't wear masks just 'cause they don't care.

It hasn't been a real argument big time in the culture about whether we should wear masks or not. The only place I know where the culture has been clearly divided has been in the United States. And most of the places that I have been have been super into the wearing masks, the big deal, et cetera.

So I became accustomed, right? I was accustomed to it and it became normal. And I remember coming to Florida kind of back in late 2020 and kind of, it felt weird to be close to people at the grocery store. It felt weird to see people without a mask on.

It was just strange because I had been so affected by living in the cultures where it's normal and it's just what you do. There's no question about it, it's what you do. And that was where I started to see so clearly the distinctions between the United States and some of the other countries.

As I have traveled, I've studied the situation. I've been able to live in many different countries. I've been able to be fine. Like it's not been that bad. I certainly have not gone to Australia or New Zealand. No interest in going to those. I've not gone to China. No interest in going to China right now.

But it hasn't been that bad, all things considered. But it did finally get to me over the summer. It did finally get to me. Every country that I have been in has had just, you face these dunder-headed regulations, these things that just don't make any sense on their face, but they are ham-fisted, clumsy attempts by government authorities to try to do something and be seen as doing something, even though that something makes no sense.

Give you a simple story. We were in Portugal a few months ago. Portugal was overall fine, right? Not a lot of restrictions. Everyone was wearing masks, good social distancing, et cetera. Some big events closed down. But for the most part, when I was in Portugal in the summer, I didn't have many complaints.

But I still saw a number of different events. For example, we wanted to take the children to a park. When you have four small children, you learn to appreciate the value of local parks and playgrounds more than you ever did, because they provide a really valuable opportunity for the children to let their energy out, to run, to play outside, to be crazy, to get just to move and get some sunshine, et cetera.

And it's extremely valuable to you as a parent to have good access to good, high-quality local parks. So we were in Portugal, and there was this nice local park near where we were in Lisbon in front of a mall. And at that time in Lisbon and Portugal, all of the malls were open.

You could go to the mall, the stores were open, no problem going there, no major counting. They weren't counting everybody at the door. There wasn't major problems. It was a relatively normal experience at the mall. But just outside the entrance of the mall, just around the corner, was this nice little kids' park that the mall had installed, with a nice playground, play set, benches for parents, et cetera.

And so we took our children to play on the playground. And then the security guard comes over and says, "No, you can't, 'cause the playground is closed." Well, why is the playground closed? 'Cause the government says playgrounds are closed. And so just imagine this, right? Over here, about 10 meters away, you have the entrance to the mall, where my entire family can go into the mall.

We can go and be in an enclosed indoor space with lots of other people, pushed up close to one another, standing in line, doing all the stuff, inside in a place with poor ventilation. And there's no limit on that. We could take the children there and let them run around and be crazy inside.

But just outside the mall, 10 meters away, is an outdoor park with full sunshine. We're the only ones there, and we're not allowed to be there on the play equipment. I find that inconceivable. I find it inconceivable how any security guard wouldn't just think and say, "I'm not going to enforce this." And we've gotten kicked out of playgrounds in Mexico, got kicked out of playgrounds in Costa Rica.

We got kicked off of a playground in Portugal. I think that's the places I remember getting kicked off of a playground. In addition to that, though, what really finally broke me was going to France. Because I remember back about a year and a half ago, after the initial chaos in China, China very quickly rolled out a vaccine passport, sorry, excuse me, a coronavirus testing passport, a tracing app that all the Chinese citizens had to have on their phone.

And in order for them to ride the train, they had to show that they had a green check mark. And at the time, it wasn't vaccination, it was collecting the location data. And I remember sitting watching those videos and saying, "Man, I can't imagine living under where the communists require you to show your pass to get on a train.

That's ridiculous. That is insane totalitarian tyranny." So then we went to France. And when we were in France over the summer, we followed all the rules to get into the country, had no problem, were granted access to the country. But at that time, France had imposed a vaccine passport where you had to register yourself with the government, download the government application, and then you had to put your vaccination records into the application in order to show that you were vaccinated and then demonstrate your QR code to gain access to any kind of facility.

And at the time, it was extremely intense. I believe that they may have lightened it up slightly, but when I was there, no access to restaurants without the health pass, no access to stores, the entire malls were closed down, guards at every entrance, you had to scan your pass to get into the mall, no access to cultural events, no museums, no art galleries, no access to any cultural events.

Quite literally, I couldn't even buy a coffee from a cafe on the street without showing a health pass. And thankfully, they didn't shut us out of a grocery store, so I was able to buy groceries, and we were able to go to the market and buy some food at a market, so we were able to eat, but pretty much nothing else.

And my wife did not wanna go to France. She had no interest in living under that. She's like, "We're not gonna do that." And I convinced her, I was like, "No, come on, "let's go for a time, it's probably not gonna be so bad. "I know they have this, "and we're obviously not gonna participate in that, "but it's probably not so bad.

"After all, I had read news reports, "the French are protesting, right? "There's people coming and bringing their lunch "and having picnics right outside the restaurants "that are enforcing the health passport." And so I thought, you know what, they'll probably be fine. After all, we're gonna be out in the country, we're not going to Paris, we're gonna be out in the country.

I think the French people will be free-thinking. They're not gonna stand for that. The French have a long history of kind of standing up against totalitarianism, and they have a very proud history, they have a protest culture. I thought it'd be great. Well, while I was there, I would read from time to time news reports that, hey, there was a protest somewhere, but I could see no personal evidence of any of the French people actually standing up against it.

I had one, one restaurant, the entire time we were there for a month, one restaurant served us food without forcing us to give a health pass. And man, you would not believe the tip that I left at that place. So we, in a month in France, we had one meal at a French restaurant.

Every other time, rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, go everywhere, rejected, because I didn't do that. And I asked them, I was like, why are you guys doing this? And they just rolled over and did it. And so being in France, I just, I thought, I'm done, right? I don't want to do this anymore.

I'm gonna go where things are more free, because it's no way to live under that stuff. And you say, well, Joshua, just give them your vaccination records or go and get a negative COVID test, right? 'Cause every two days, the other thing is, if you're not vaccinated under the system at that time, then you could every two days get a COVID test and you could get that registered on your QR code.

And I just find that utterly, like, no, I am not going to put up with these totalitarian Nazis putting their applications on people's phones. I'm not gonna support it. I refuse to give money to anybody who supports something like that. Like, that's just absolutely disgusting for anybody to participate in those kinds of schemes.

I'm not gonna, I can't look myself in the face or look my children in the face and say that I care at all about human freedom and liberty and then do that, right? And you're there in France where, what is it? Liberté, égalité, fraternité, the French national motto. Well, you've got the jackbooted thugs keeping you out of anything and you've got the government coming by and destroying the business owners saying, you have to enforce this.

It's insane to me. And so it kind of, it was the straw that broke this camel's back. I said, that's it, I'm done. And my wife said, I told you so, right? I told you you weren't gonna like it. And all right, well, I guess you're right, honey. You were right.

I shouldn't have come here in the first place. I should have skipped the whole place, et cetera. But you see all across Europe, you see many countries have done the same thing. And I really wanted to go to France and I shouldn't have gone. It was a mistake. I should have just, I should have skipped the whole thing.

But along the way, I couldn't get into Asia, which is where I wanted to get into. At the time, I was trying to go to Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, this winter, Malaysia. I wanted to spend my time in those places and I couldn't, they were all closed. And I just, I'm not gonna go and do a two week quarantine and sit with my children in a hotel room for two weeks.

And finally I said, that's it, this is not fun anymore. I don't wanna travel, this is not fun. So where should we go? And just being done with COVID, the freest place that I know of in the world is Florida. And I said, let's just go back to Florida for a time and just be done with this and wait for all this to blow over.

The final kind of hurdle to pass was taking the stupid COVID test to get back into the United States. And what frustrates me about that is that they forced me to test my children to get back into the United States. Many countries, for example, in Europe right now, if you are over the age of 12, then you have to do a COVID test to enter many places.

In some places it's six, just depends on the individual country, you can check their requirements. But to get in the United States is everyone over the age of two. I don't mind doing a COVID test. I don't understand why there aren't more easy tests available, but I've done lots of COVID tests for travel.

I've done a bunch of self tests just to make sure, do a quick antigen test to make sure if you're gonna be in a place that, hey, I might not be infected and not know it, et cetera. So I've gotten pretty good at getting a Q-tip jabbed up my nose and jabbing a Q-tip up my own nose and do my own self test.

It's not been that big of a deal for me, but it's very different for my children. And it's one thing when you impose some kind of hard medical procedure, painful thing on your children, because you know it's for their good. But we're sitting in the Madrid airport doing our COVID test to get back into the United States.

And I have to hold my younger children down where I got their head cemented against my head, my legs and my arms wrapped around them, my legs wrapped around them, and I'm immobilizing them so a nurse can jab a Q-tip up their nose. To do that to your two-year-old and your four-year-old, it's just, it's not worth it.

All of my children crying and done with it. And I've put a lot on them. And I just said, I'm not doing this anymore. There's no need for it. I'm not doing this anymore. We're not putting up with this. And it was so nice to get back to the United States.

And let me tell you, if you think it's bad in the United States, I'm here to tell you, it's quite literally a breath of fresh air. I walked out of the Miami airport, I took my mask off, I dumped it in a trash can, and I haven't put one on since.

And after two years of wearing a mask everywhere, that first week, I didn't realize how acculturated I had been, how conditioned I had been into this kind of new reality. And just being able to walk around and breathe fresh air again and not worry about, it took a few days for it to settle in.

First week I was back, I was back at a conference in Orlando and in a room with 3,000 other people, elbow to elbow, no social distancing. Guy on my left, guy on my right, guy in front of me, guy in back of me, bouncing up and down, singing, talking, et cetera.

10% of the people wearing masks, 90% not. And people were done with it. And it just was this tremendous sense of relief to be done with the pandemic and to be out of it again. And it kind of affirmed to me, yeah, this is the right decision for now.

And so I share that with you to know that if you think things are bad in the United States, I understand that things are difficult in some places and we're gonna talk about regulations, restrictions now. But I just wanted to share that kind of personal travelogue for you to know that if you think things are bad in the United States, they are much better than most places in the world.

You would not believe what many places in the world have gone through and have been living with. That's not to say that everywhere in the world is a totalitarian, tyrannical place. When I was in Western Europe, I was very quick keen to get out of Western Europe and get into Eastern Europe.

And all around the world, there are places and cultures where they've ignored it. I was planning to go to Albania, spend some time in Albania and all of my, I haven't been there, but all of my research indicated, yeah, the Albanians just, they're not into the COVID thing. No rules, no restrictions, no masks and all that stuff.

Like they're just, they're moving on with their life. And all around the world, you see kind of similar things. I follow a lot of travelers who travel in countries and you have all these Western travelers coming in and coming back and say, giving their reports. And so I follow them with interest.

So it's not that the whole world has been under that, but in much of the world that Americans are more closely related to, just know that the United States has been a vastly better place through it. By the way, I will cover, if you're screaming, yeah, but 700,000 dead, Fairpoint.

If I remember it, I'll come back and cover that at the moment, a little bit later. So let's talk about where we go from here and what I think will happen. Let's go back to the beginning of the pandemic when I laid out what I saw as kind of the three off-ramps out of the pandemic.

When you have a global pandemic, what happens? How do you get out of it? How do you overcome it and be done with it? And at the time, I believe I said that there were three off-ramps that I saw. Off-ramp number one is that the virus turns out to just be not such a big deal.

Okay, off-ramp number two is you develop good therapeutics. And then off-ramp number three is you have widespread immunization, either through the development of vaccines or through natural immunity through widespread infection. So let's talk about number one. Virus is no big deal. Now, this was one where at the beginning of the pandemic, back in early 2020, it was unclear.

It was really unclear because all of the initial indications about the severity of SARS-CoV-2 were unclear. You had, on the one hand, you had this general sense that, "Hey, this is no big deal. It's not a big deal." The Chinese government was saying, "Oh, it's no big deal, no problem." But then you had all kinds of wacky stuff.

You had leaked videos of people tumbling over on the street, like literally falling down while walking down the street. You had, and that didn't make much sense medically, but then simultaneously you had the Chinese government welding steel plates onto apartment buildings. They came to apartment buildings and they welded steel plates over the doors to keep everybody locked in the apartment building so that they didn't spread an infection.

You had Chinese government building these massive hospitals just overnight. And you're thinking, "What is going on?" We knew for a long time, since 2003 with the SARS pandemic, we knew that the Chinese government lied right through their teeth back then. And so the most probable answer was they were lying this time.

And yep, yep, they lied completely, concealed everything. Just the whole thing, it's just been a nightmare to watch how insane the Chinese government has been. And I mean, don't get me started. Like you'll go and look at the World Health Organization so-called investigation. It's just, stay on point. The data was unclear.

And so then you started to get data. And if you remember in those early days, nothing made sense. Nothing made sense about what was actually being said and done. So just take you back in your, and you remember, I don't have the timeline of this, all this stuff, but remember that in the first, the whole concept of there being a deadly virus was supposedly a hoax.

Remember you had the, in Washington, DC, a march, and the person in charge of health of Chicago is saying, "No, go march." And you had Nancy Pelosi saying, "Go and stand up in New York and do your marches "and whatnot while the data's coming out." People were saying, "Minimize gatherings." Then all of a sudden, hey, there starts to be more stuff.

And then there was the mask debacle, right? Anthony Fauci in the United States comes out and he says to the American people, "You shouldn't wear a mask "because this is a virus that won't affect it. "And so you should not wear a mask. "Definitely not, it doesn't do anything for you.

"It just creates a false sense of security. "There's no need to wear a mask." Meanwhile, the FBI is stealing masks from private entrepreneurs who had collected them and were selling them to medical professionals at inflated prices. The FBI is sending cops in New York and stealing the thousands of masks that the guys had accumulated and stockpiled and they were selling in the private market to medical professionals who couldn't get enough PPE.

And so then all of a sudden, everything changed and you didn't know what to believe 'cause you knew everyone was lying and you didn't have a clue what to do. And so we all sat in our homes and waited to see. And the data was difficult to discern for many people in the beginning.

Remember we had many of the early predictions that were hardcore predictions of millions and millions of people dying across the United States and there was really mixed results. And it took a while to emerge that COVID is largely a disease of highly variable outcomes depending on who was involved.

And so for people who are old or for people who have a lot of underlying conditions, people who are fat, people who have poor metabolic health, then COVID is a very serious disease. For people who are not old, for people who are not fat, people who are in good metabolic health, most of the time it's a very minor disease.

And so you had kind of these two narratives that took time to emerge from the data. But what has emerged is that in terms of the virus, what actually the first off-ramp, the virus isn't as bad, for most people, the virus has turned out to be not so bad as feared.

For old people, for obese people, for people who have underlying conditions, who are unhealthy, it is very severe. And so that's one good off-ramp. The second thing though, that's valuable to know about that off-ramp is, hey, can the virus weaken? That was the other expected thing. Most viruses have a tendency to weaken.

And so then you had the variants and you had the emergence of the Delta variant, which while not stronger, seems to be more contagious and certainly supplanted the previous iterations of the virus. So off-ramp number one, I would say, is a story of two diseases based upon the person who is sickened.

Young people, healthy people, et cetera, most of the time it's mild with a few moderate cases. Old people, sick people, fat people, much of the time it can be quite serious with a lot of complications. So that one has not been an obvious off-ramp. The second off-ramp though, was the development of new therapeutic treatments.

The idea is, if you can develop good therapies that allow you to effectively treat a sickness, then you can open things up and kind of go about your life and not worry about much. And so there, I think tremendous progress has been made all around the world with the development of good therapeutic treatments.

It's well understood now that simple things like vitamin D levels make a dramatic difference in your outcomes with coronavirus. And so I can't imagine anybody not regularly taking vitamin D and making sure that vitamin D levels are high in their entire family to make sure that they minimize the impact of the virus.

You have the importance of vitamin D, of zinc. There've been the development of a number of drugs, right? The much debated arguments about ivermectin has been quite interesting to watch, but I still am persuaded that while not being a medical researcher, I still am persuaded there's pretty good evidence that that is effective, especially as a prophylactic.

Much argued about, still no conclusive data, but that's an interesting debate that people watch. And then actual therapeutic treatments, right? I guess what would be the biggest one? Monoclonal antibodies, some of the development of these new systems of treatment that have been having really good effects. And especially if caught early enough and treated early enough, then COVID is not a death sentence for many people.

And so there's a number of good things that all reasonable people I would imagine are doing to protect their health, getting healthy, building up their metabolic health, getting lots of sunshine, taking vitamin D supplements, doing all the stuff that can result in having the experience of the virus be much less significant for most people.

And so I think we've made tremendous progress there. And then even in the worst cases, I'm not an emergency room physician or nurse, but it seems like even in the worst cases, they have gotten better at treating even some of the worst cases of COVID. So that's been a good off-ramp that is clearly visible and available.

Then the third off-ramp is immunity, widespread immunization and immunity. So here there are two obvious opportunities. Number one is vaccination, and number two is natural immunity, just people who are infected and is there natural immunity that is conferred because of that infection. So in the beginning days of the virus, it seemed very unlikely that vaccines could be developed quickly enough to do much good.

You were dealing with a viral infection, which is famously difficult to develop a vaccine for. We all heard the stories about how they never successfully developed a virus for AIDS, never successfully developed a virus for SARS, I think it was, the difficulties with the flu virus, things like that.

And so nobody really thought we'd be able to develop an effective vaccine quickly. And then we did, right? In the United States, President Trump did Operation Warp Speed all around the world. I think if memory is right, the Sputnik vaccine was the first to be trialed in humans out of Russia.

You had vaccines developed in South America, in Asia, all around the world. So where today there's so many vaccines that have all been developed and been trialed and with differing amounts of efficacy and different results all around the world. And it's been remarkable to see that. It's just absolutely incredible how quickly the vaccines have been able to be developed and rolled out and manufactured.

It's truly amazing. It's an amazing story of the modern era. I feel like for everything that you wanna criticize people about, you kinda gotta see the opposite side and recognize that people are not stupid. I've said this recently, for example, talking about the supply chain. On the one hand, the modern supply chain is a very weak thing when subjected to stress.

To me, that seems very obvious, right? The just-in-time delivery system has resulted in not much slack in the supply chain. On the other hand, the modern supply chain is an absolute miracle. When you look at how quickly it can adapt, it's actually really remarkable. And so I feel like most things are like this, where honesty compels us to acknowledge that there's been massive progress while simultaneously there being frequently many challenges that are new and different.

So this vaccine rollout all around the world has been remarkable to see. And while we don't have any long-term data on the safety of vaccines and we don't have any long-term data on the efficacy of vaccines, the short-term data seems really, really good, right? The short-term safety, very high, short-term efficacy of the vaccines, at least in terms of measuring from protection from the most serious of cases seems to be really, really good.

And so that's exciting because especially for the most vulnerable people, the most vulnerable people can be vaccinated and can be hopefully protected against many of the worst case outcomes of the coronavirus pandemic. And so that's just been an amazingly effective and productive thing. And then if we match that with natural immunity, we haven't known, and a year ago we didn't know how strong the natural immunity was, how long the antibodies would stay around.

Of course, we still don't know any long-term data, but it seems really good that people who have had the previous infection are very well protected against current and future infections. And so that's just phenomenal news, right? To know that the body retains its ability to protect against the virus.

It means that you could pretty much go about your life and not worry too much about it. So where do we go from here, right? Those are the three off-ramps that I sketched out for you in a podcast a year or so ago. And to me, those three off-ramps, we've made progress, tremendous progress on all of them.

Anybody, virtually anybody, anybody listening to me who wants a vaccine has had one. Anybody listening who wants good therapeutic treatments can have them. And the disease itself has proven to be more of a nuisance for most healthy people rather than something really serious and really long-lasting. And so the data on all fronts is really good.

Now, what is quote-unquote not good? Well, what's not good is the fact that there is simply no containing the virus. The last holdout on this was obviously Australia and New Zealand, right? Australia was committed for two years to a zero COVID plan, turning the entire former penal colony into a current day prison for all of the inhabitants and residents, not letting people in, not letting people out, not letting people out of their houses.

And the goal was zero COVID, zero COVID. Well, they finally abandoned the zero COVID policy a few months ago in reality, and then started making public statements a month or so ago, "Hey, we're officially abandoning zero COVID. We're just gonna, we're gonna abandon zero COVID when we get everybody vaccinated." And, but what has become obvious is that coronavirus is endemic.

It is not a pandemic, it is endemic. It's something that is within the culture and will never go away. It will change, it will mutate. It'll just be there along with all of the other, the other sicknesses and diseases that afflict us, the other viruses and the respiratory things that we catch, et cetera.

And so you see many people openly discussing that, and you see many people accepting it. Several European nations have led the way. Is it Norway, Denmark, Sweden, I think were the three, but I could be mistaken in those specific countries, but they have said, "We're removing all coronavirus restrictions.

There's no restrictions, there's no rules, there's no mandates." It just is, it is what it is. And we're gonna try to keep our hospital system strong enough to help people who are sick enough to need hospitalization, but we're not enforcing specific policies. Singapore has said this several months ago, they said they were moving in this direction.

I listened to a talk by the chief epidemiologist of Singapore and he explained how they were moving in this direction. And that's even as of this last week or so, while they've imposed some short-term things, he said, "As quickly as we can build hospital capacity, that's where we're going." Is we're just, we're gonna eliminate all coronavirus-related restrictions and we're moving on with life.

And I think what you see very clearly is that the people broadly have decided that. It's very obvious here in the United States, that it's been obvious for some time, that the people have decided that they're done. They're done with restrictions, they're done with it. As at the conference last week, with 3,000 people, you got 3,000 people in a room who have all decided we're done.

And the vulnerable people, I'm sure there were many people who have various vulnerabilities and they chose to watch things virtually, but there were 3,000 people in a room who've decided they're done. You see the football stadiums all around the country, full of people. Every event that I go to is full, right?

People are done, they don't care, they're done. Everyone who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated. Lots of other people have had the infection and have natural immunity, and everyone's pretty much made their own risk assessment and decided that, hey, you know what, we're done. And I think that's, I've seen it the strongest in the United States, but I think the same thing is happening in many other places.

At least as best I can read the cultural signals, it seems like many people all around the world have made exactly the same decision to different areas. Americans are much more brash about it, much more open about it, much more kind of stubborn and willing to fight, but all around the world, you see the same kind of thing.

And I hope that it continues. I hope that people continue, this last week, there were major protests in Rome about vaccine mandates, several major protests all across Europe. You see the disarray in the flight system, which seems like there's a very good chance that right now, all the disarray with Southwest Airlines and their vaccine mandate in the United States, I think that there's a good chance that that will spread.

I don't expect to spread everywhere, but I think there's a good chance that that movement will continue to spread. And so, as far as I can see, I don't see why anybody should be living at this point in time as though the vaccine's still on, or sorry, the pandemic is still on.

I don't see the point at this point in time. Which brings us to now the concerns and the fears that many people have. Right now, the thing that concerns most people is imposition of mandates. There are many millions and millions of people all around the world who have decided that they don't want a coronavirus vaccine, or at least they don't want any of the coronavirus vaccines that are currently available, or at least they don't want a coronavirus vaccine right now.

And they have decided that they are making a different choice for whatever their personal reasons are. And yet governments all around the world have decided to impose forced vaccination on people. And this was big news in the United States. Some weeks ago, President Biden announced that he was going to direct OSHA to rule out and that any employer with more than 100 employees was going to require all of its employees to be vaccinated.

Now, I'll tell you just my opinion on this. I studied, so on the one hand, I think that in the United States, there is a good legal precedent where the federal government potentially could mandate vaccination for all people. I think, what was it, Jacobson versus Massachusetts, if memory is right, back from the early 20th century, was I think a case that, to my non-lawyer brain, seems like it could be applied.

And you could say, look, the federal government has the legal ability based upon this case law to force and mandate vaccination. But having the legal ability to do something and having the actual moral authority, having the actual mandate given to you by the people to do something is a very different thing.

And I think, at least in the United States, where I understand the culture, I believe, not a chance in the world that they would be able to effect that. There would be harassment and killing widespread of any government agent who tried to enforce that across the board. Now, what I think is really interesting is if you study how the government is actually in the United States trying to force compliance through the employers and through the fines, I think that's probably the best lever that they could push on to kind of accomplish that goal, to accomplish the goal of forcing everybody to be vaccinated.

But even that, I think that in the United States, I don't think it will go through eventually, right? You've seen OSHA do absolutely nothing on this in the month and a half since President Biden announced the policy. Now, of course, OSHA says, oh, it takes us months and months to develop the regulations, as it should, as it does.

But if and when they finally actually come out with some kind of regulation, then we'll see what it actually says and then see what people actually are willing to enforce. I don't think that this forced vaccination scheme in the United States will win, I don't. First, I think that many of the mandates that are already issued are facing legal challenges that are very, very significant.

You look at the people who are suing various employers, suing the government, I think that the legal challenges are quite high. When you actually, and again, not a lawyer, but when I listen to the lawyers explain the duty of proof that somebody has to offer when they mandate vaccination, the proof is simply not there, right?

They cannot fulfill what the law requires them to fulfill in order to prove that something could happen. When you listen to what the OSHA regulations say, like they cannot prove it. They cannot prove that this is a, I can't remember what legal language, they cannot prove that this is a compelling danger for most people and they cannot prove that this is the best alternative, et cetera.

Like none of that stuff can be proved. And what happens is when some, in the court system in the United States, when something goes into court, it requires a very different level of evidence than it does in the public space. You can have all kinds of things in the public space.

You can have people say all kinds of things, but when it actually comes down to lawyers submitting documents into court, the judges don't fool around and the stuff actually has to be true. It actually has to be proven. And if it's not, it all falls apart. You see this all the time with lawsuits.

Politicians says, "Well, I'm gonna sue so and so." And they can say whatever you want. You can say whatever you want. You can shout on Twitter, et cetera. But then the only thing that actually matters is what do the lawyers say in the court documents and what is the testimony in court under oath where there are actually penalties for lying.

And all of a sudden it's a very different scenario. And so on that regard, I just, I don't see how they can prove it with any of my knowledge of, and kind of layman's observation of the data, the studies, the arguments, the efficacy, the actual danger of the disease for workers, et cetera.

I don't think that they win those lawsuits. Number two, if they do win the lawsuits, I don't think the American people will put up with it. I really don't. Now, I have questioned this a lot of times. I never thought the American people would put up with having their gyms closed for a year.

I never thought that they would. I couldn't imagine it. But I was really saddened to see that they rolled over, businesses closed, they shut everything down, and they dealt with it. I was surprised. But I've also seen a little bit of backbone be stuck back up and people have said, "No, we're gonna keep pressing on." And so things have gotten better along the way in terms of the Americans' willingness to stand up and just not put up with tyrants.

And so I'm happy to see that. And that's encouraged me. Along the way, as I've watched the mandates and everything that employers have put down, it's been an interesting conversation to watch. I think even this week, it'll be fascinating to see what emerges from the airline industry. Right now, there's a hot debate going on with the Southwest Airlines.

And so you have the airlines saying, "Oh, we're having problems with air traffic control "and we're having weather problems, "so we're canceling flights." Meanwhile, you've got lots of text messages and lots of inside information and everyone saying, "Hey, it's because people are walking off of their jobs "due to vaccine mandates." And yet that's generally being suppressed.

You go back and look at what happened in Australia a few weeks ago, right? The truckies had a big strike, but the government said, "We're absolutely going to shut down "any information on this." And so they refused to allow the reporting on it. Social media wasn't allowed. And the truckies said like, "Look, we're striking for freedom.

"If you look on the maps, "you can see where we've shut everything down, "but we're just gonna keep it all quiet." Or at least that's the news reports that I have read. Australians feel free to confirm or deny. But I think that right now you see a war of information.

And when you have a war of information, the truth will always prevail. You cannot hide truth. It's never hideable. And so the best thing to always do is to have your arguments and debates in public where the truth can come out clearly, quickly. That results in the best thing.

But right now you don't have that. So we'll see what happens in the coming months as more and more employers mandate vaccines and the government. I think that most of the government regulation stuff is primarily a publicity coup. It's trying to create cover for individual employers saying, "Hey, listen guys, you go ahead, "private market, you go ahead and do what we can't do." Think of it like this.

It's like censoring information. What does the government do? Well, the government knows, in the United States, the government knows that the government is not able to restrict speech. Can't do it legally. First Amendment right to open speech. So what the government does is try to incentivize individual businesses and corporations and entities at a local level to restrict speech.

And so the goal is get Facebook to say, "Okay, we're not gonna do that." Get YouTube to scrub all arguments about, what was the thing they just banned? Vaccines, right? You're not gonna argue about vaccines, not gonna talk about vaccines. Get YouTube to remove all the channels and all the videos related to anybody who questions a vaccination or wonders what vaccination schedule is right.

Get YouTube to do it. And so the government uses its winking authority to say, "We'll give you cover to do what we can't do." And so I think basically you see the same thing happening right now with vaccine mandates that the US government is trying to give cover to companies and employers who are saying, "Yeah, we're gonna do this "because this is what we want to be done," et cetera.

But I don't think it works, I really don't. If you look at, look at right now, the situation this week with all the canceled flights from Southwest Airlines. People have no concept of how easily the entire American society could be shut down by a few angry, organized, coordinated people.

The one that I always think about is I always think about when I was younger, there was the Maryland shooter. If you remember this story, there was a shooter in the Washington DC area who was shooting people on the street with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I forget how many people he killed, handful of people.

The entire Capitol was shut down for a couple weeks at least, I think. A couple weeks at least for one guy with a gun. One guy with a gun. People were scurrying around, scared to be outside, everything was shut down for weeks with one guy with a gun who was angry and shooting people on the street randomly.

Now, imagine in the United States where you have a few thousand people or a few hundred people who decide, you know what, I'm done with this, and they start doing crazy stuff and just gumming up the works of the wheels of government. Right now, it's really easy stuff to do.

Right now, it's, hey, I'm not gonna go to work today. And look at the chaos that ensues. And just imagine if a few hundred people start going beyond. Now, I think those kinds of people are just sitting back and watching and waiting and saying what actually happens. But there is a line, and whenever the public decides that's enough, the public is the one who has all of the power, right?

That's where all the power is, especially in a country like the United States. The people allow the government to go as far as they believe the government should go, and then things change. And you can't predict where that line is. You can't predict it, because a lot of it has to do with crowd dynamics, right?

I'll just say, for me, I have not been involved in, I never protested against masks. I didn't say I'm not gonna wear one. I admire people who did, but to me, I'm like, eh, okay, no big deal, wear a mask. I'll be polite, I'll be kind. I don't, you know, I just wanna be kind to others.

Maybe I can protect others. Maybe it does do some good, even though the box says it does no good. Maybe it does do some good. Maybe statistically, if enough people do it, it will bend the curve, and this seems like an easy, an easy thing that I can do.

So I do it. And I respect those who refuse to comply, and I respect those who absolutely say, we're gonna wear a mask no matter what. That's fine, it's your own position. You can do as you like. But if you, but over the last few weeks, like I've changed dramatically, where I have become, in the past, no, oh, it's probably medical, it makes sense, et cetera.

I've become more of an extremist over the last few weeks. No, this is enough. This is absolutely, this makes no sense, right? And I look at other countries where I can see more, it seems more clear. Like, it makes no sense for you to be imposing these things. It makes no sense.

Like, time and again, right? You have to be vaccinated to protect the vaccinated people, right? You have to get the vaccine that doesn't protect you from those who don't have the vaccine. So because of that, we have to vaccinate all the unvaccinated people so the vaccinated people can be protected from the, it makes no sense.

And you hear people twist themselves in knots trying to explain it, and I followed all the medical stuff. And like, you're an idiot. It doesn't work. You can't, there's no point. And so I think it's over. I think we're in the last bits of it because the people decided it's over.

And I have no intention of changing my lifestyle at this point in time for coronavirus stuff. And I think that most people are in the same position, at least in the United States. So I think that by maybe this winter, I mean, certainly we expect cases to go up this winter in many places in the cold climates, but I think that over the coming months, all the stuff will be gone.

They'll withdraw the regulations, at least in the United States, and things will continue forward. I don't know about on a global basis, but I think that by next year, we'll be done. That's my opinion. Now, we'll see if it's right or wrong. It's on the record now. We can go back and listen to this in a year and see.

Certainly things could change, right? A new variant that proves to be more deadly, a mutation that winds up causing more destruction, all of that would change. But at the moment, I think that we're pretty much done with COVID. I think that it's endemic. And I think that a lot of the restrictions will go away because in places where they're trying, I don't think the people are gonna put up with it.

And it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense to impose restrictions. So let's now pivot. What can you do or what do you do if things turn into a worse situation? For example, I have a significant number of listeners in Canada, right? What do you do if you're living in Canada and the Canadian government says, you can't, what did the recent couple of days ago?

You can't go on a plane. You can't go on a train. You can't go on any kind of public transportation. You can't move around unless you have your vaccine certificate. Now, I don't think the Canadians are gonna put up with it, but the Canadians have become a lot softer than I thought.

And the same thing with Australia. The most shocking thing to me has been Australia. I thought the Australians were like this independent people, freedom-oriented, like we're tough people living in the outback and everything. That was always the reputation that I always had of Australia. And it doesn't seem to be the case.

I mean, you see videos of the cops knocking on people's door or pushing a social media post in their face. And so I have badly misjudged the Australians evidently, and I don't understand. I don't understand what's happening. And so similar things in Canada. So what do you do if you are being targeted?

What do you do if you don't want to take a vaccination that is being forced on you and your employer says you have to do it? What do you do if the government says you have to do it? How can you protect yourself and prepare? I see this as where fundamentally everything we talk about.

One of the reasons why you build financial freedom in addition to other freedoms is so that you have the freedom to simply follow your conscience, to do what you believe is right. People who are slaves, people who are wage slaves, don't have many options. And I think it's important to recognize that, that the reason you build freedom is so that you have options when you need them.

Let's say there's a guy who says, I don't want to take a vaccine by force. I don't think this is the best for me. Maybe I already have natural immunity or I have something I'm concerned about. I don't want to have my heart messed up 'cause I think that the danger of having my heart messed up by this vaccine is worse potentially than potentially the disease.

I'd rather take my risk with the disease. Whatever reason you decide. I'm not your boss, I don't care. You decide for whatever reason you want. I'll do me, you do you. But the guy decides he's gonna do that, but his boss comes along and says, yeah, on this company, we're all gonna get vaccinated.

I don't fault that guy. If he's got no money and he's a wage slave, I don't fault that guy for taking the vaccine. To be able to support your family and to be able to do stuff is, you do what you gotta do because it makes sense. There are lots of laws that I follow, lots of things that I do that I don't think should exist, but I do them because, you know what?

They're the guys with all the force and I'm gonna do it. You know, I have a concealed carry permit. I don't think you need a concealed carry permit to carry a gun, right? It is your absolute natural right for you to carry a gun to protect yourself and your family.

I believe in so-called constitutional carry, which means that, hey, you don't need anything. Constitution says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. I'm not gonna infringe upon you. I'm not, if you tell me, yeah, Joshua, I don't have a concealed carry license, but you roll up your shirt and you show me a 45 strapped to your hip, I say, yeah, good for you, doesn't matter.

But I still have chosen to get a concealed carry license because I figure if I can reduce my legal risk a little bit, then I'm gonna do that. And even though I don't think it should be the law, I'm gonna choose to do what seems best for me, even if it's potentially a compromise.

So I'll go ahead, I'll get the license, and then I'll bide my time. And so I think about it like that, right? You may say, you know what? I don't think I really want the vaccine, but I need this job, so I'm gonna go ahead and do it. I think that's what you should do.

If you need to feed your family, you gotta make sure that you prioritize. And you can't be an activist on everything, or you wind up twisting yourself into knots. You can't make any forward progress. And so I don't think that, I don't look down on you. If you are choosing to do things, you don't wanna do because that's what you believe is best.

That's what allows you to have a job. That's what allows you to go the places you need to go. That's what allows you to protect yourself. That's not wrong, right? That's understandable, and that's probably the right thing to do. I would have a hard time if I were dependent upon a job.

I would have to be really confident being an activist and walking away from that job because of something. Respect for those who do. I hope that if I ever have to face it, I am that confident, but I don't fault you for doing it. What I point out though is the whole reason you build freedom and resiliency and backup and options in your life is so that you don't have to ignore your conscience.

The whole reason you build a freedom fund is so that when you're asked to do something unethical or illegal or immoral at your job, you can just walk out the door and you can not look back. It's for the good times, but it's also for the bad times. The whole reason why you stockpile food in your house is so that you don't have to potentially run the risk of going out and stealing from your neighbor to feed your children.

I understand why a man goes and steals food from his neighbor to feed his children. If my children were hungry and desperate, I like to believe that maybe I wouldn't, but I'm scared that I probably would. I probably would go and steal from my neighbor. And so what you do is you put resiliency in, and you say, I don't wanna be forced in a position where I have to go and steal from my neighbor, so let me go ahead and stockpile some food from my family so that I can avoid that moral risk.

So by extension, what I'm saying is you prepare, you build freedom so that you're not forced, you're not subject to it. I don't think that most Americans should leave the country for the reasons stated early in the show. I think the United States is probably a pretty good place to be right now.

I've made a pretty good, I've made an intentional choice with regard to COVID freedom to come back to the United States right now because I'm tired of living under the pandemic. I don't understand why the countries are not dumping all their regulations. And at least in the United States, although the government has dumped its dumb regulations, the people have decided they're done with it, and I can live a normal life in the United States.

But maybe it does get worse. I think here, your best plan is still what I talk about. Number one, it's basic preparedness, making sure that you have money, making sure that you have savings, making sure that your debts are under control, making sure that you have food, making sure that you have protection, making sure that you have energy resiliency.

Just imagine that people start rioting in a serious way. Imagine that truckers in the United States decide, you know what, we're gonna go ahead and protest. If you think a little bit of chaos at some airports and a few thousand canceled flights because of air traffic controllers and pilot striking has an impact, just imagine what a trucker strike would do.

It would shut the country down. It would shut the country down. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of what could happen. Just imagine some guys go out and they start cutting off power, right? And imagine that they sat back with a 22 single action or a pellet gun and guys start shooting power crews that go out to work on restoring the power.

Imagine if every power crew that's going out to fix infrastructure that a few guerrilla terrorists have destroyed to wage their protest against government overreach. Imagine that every power crew has to have two or three police officers protecting the power crew from being shot at by random people. And then it catches on, kind of like the, shall we say, the let's go Brandon chants, aka the FU Biden chants have taken off in the United States at every game you go to, the crowds are, to use the euphemism, are calling out let's go Brandon and pounding it.

Just imagine it comes out. And basically the idea gets out, you know what, let's shut things down and take a few potshots here and there. Like that kind of thing is, that kind of guerrilla warfare is utterly indefensible. There's no answer to it. And the entire thing, the entire country would be paralyzed and shut down overnight, absolutely overnight.

Think about a few years ago, the Dallas police shootings, right? One guy, one guy went out and started shooting police officers in Dallas. Imagine if government health inspectors were harassed and people just actually decided, you know what, we're done with this. And they start doing that. They would shut everything down.

So what do you need? Well, you gotta be prepared to do without systems of support, right? You need food, you need water, you need alternative energy. You need to be able to deal with and not go to work. You need money to pay your bills so that you can not have your house foreclosed on when you can't get to work because the roads are shut down.

And so the point is that we're always living right on that edge. And the vast majority of the time, you never see it, but we're always living right on that edge. Think of it like a virus. At every single year, every single time through human history, there are millions and millions and millions of viruses that are mutating and mutating and changing, et cetera.

And at any point in time, any one of those viruses can emerge and cause a worldwide pandemic. So that's basically the situation we live in is, what was it, Jonathan Edwards had the sermon, right? Where sinners walking across a precarious bridge over a lake of fire, right? Life is actually extremely fragile and we live on the edge.

So from a practical perspective, you save money, you cover your bills, you control your debts, you make sure you're covered, you build resiliency in your business, and then you build your skillset. Back to kind of mandates. I'm trying to focus in on what do you do if you get fired?

Right, there are lots of employers who are requiring their employees to be vaccinated. First thing you should obviously have is you should obviously have the ability to create the necessary paperwork that will satisfy your employer. In any tyrannical society, the way that you get life done is by knowing people.

Go and study any society that's given over to tyranny and you will find that many, many people do not obey the laws, but how do you do it? It's always about connections, it's always about network, et cetera. You have to know who you need to talk to to get the paper that you need from the right person.

You have to know who you need to talk to who has access to the computer records to put that in. You have to figure out how do I get the person the necessary payment for their services? This is how the world works. This is how the world has always worked.

Some people are equal, but some are more equal than others. It's a classic scenario, it's always that way. And so in every society, there is always a way to get done what you needed. Now what has happened is that Americans have been lulled to sleep by the basic expectation that hey, society should leave me alone.

And Americans have never really seen the need to know that. They haven't ever seen like, why would I need to know the doctor who can enter in the appropriate vaccination record into the computer and squirt the serum into the air while scanning the barcode so that I can have my pass?

Like that's just unthinkable for most Americans. But that's the way the world works, is you just simply need to know the right people. You need to know the right people who give you the paperwork that you need, who give you the passes that you need, and you need to know how to compensate them for their services in a way that provides them with plausible deniability.

Yes, I'm talking about bribing people. That's the way the world works. In most countries around the world, where you don't have this kind of broad, orderly scenario, the way that you move forward is you pay the people that you need to get the paperwork that you need. Now that's different, and that's kind of a foreign concept in the United States.

But if we go down the road of more and more restrictions, more and more mandates, that's the fundamental foundation. And so that's on you. You've gotta have the friends. You've gotta know who the contacts are. You've gotta know the people that you need to get the necessary paperwork to be able to live, to be able to get onto an airplane, to be able to get onto a train, et cetera.

It might be easy in a world of paper COVID vaccine cards to be able to simply print out and scrawl out the necessary vial numbers and dosage numbers and address and dates and everything, and now you have your vaccine card. Boom, done, et cetera. Go on with your day.

But it might be more important in New York City or in San Francisco that now you need to figure out who am I gonna know who's gonna get this stuff entered into the computer for me. And so you need connections. You need relationships. You need a network. And that's something that you can be building.

Now the same exact thing is necessary for you when it comes to actually building more options for yourself. Let's say that you say, "Listen, I'm not gonna get around. "I'm not gonna give a fake vaccine card. "If my employer's gonna require this, "I don't even wanna work here. "Like, that's not for me." So you need the network, the contacts that you can leave the job and go and get another one.

And what I wanna tell you is right now, stop this bellyaching of whining about, "Oh, everything is bad and it's gonna get worse." There has never been a better time in the history of mankind for you to be able to make a fortune, for you to be able to provide for your family, for you to be safe and secure, for you to be free than right now.

There have never been more money-making opportunities that you and I can do from a computer in a library, from a Chromebook on a Starbucks Wi-Fi or a McDonald's Wi-Fi. You can make a fortune simply with any number of businesses online. And you can transact more freely, right? We, even as the rules go up, we're developing new alternatives to that.

The rules go up, we develop alternatives. So whether it's, there's so many examples we could give. The point is stop bellyaching and complaining and stop being a doomer and a pessimistic doomer saying, "Oh, everything is so bad. "What am I gonna do? "How am I gonna feed my family?" Get out, get out, right?

Leave the company and go start your own business. You can do it. My words are failing me, which is frustrating. Buy a, go buy a pressure cleaner at the store and start knocking on the doors of houses that clearly need a driveway pressure cleaner. Start selling your services as a pressure cleaner.

No mandates, no restrictions, no business license needed. All you need is a pressure cleaner. Go online and find furniture that's old and beat up and buy it, paint it and resell it. The thing that is remarkable to me about coming to the United States, one of the things that I always notice when I come to the United States is the abundance of money-making opportunities.

I was talking to a buddy of mine, he's a professional guy, but he was talking about how he finds himself just in his spare time flipping couches. He's like, "It seems like I make 600," he's always flip buying and replacing his furniture. He's like, "I make 600 bucks every time I flip a couch." And he said, "If I wanted to, I got a pickup truck.

"I could flip a couch a week "and make just an easy five or 600 bucks a week "with flipping couches." And he's kind of in the market that he's in, in South Florida, where there's lots of high-end stuff and desire for high-end couches. And my point, I respond, I was like, "You're absolutely right." One of the things about the United States that is so obvious is there are money-making opportunities everywhere, everywhere.

And they're good money-making opportunities. They're often not glamorous, but they're good money-making opportunities. When I come to the United States, I'm overwhelmed by the number of businesses you can do that are just simple things. I'm not joking about the pressure cleaner. Like, a simple guy with a pressure cleaner can make a living.

A guy with a handyman sign on his van can make a lot of money. You can flip washing machines online. You can do all, I mean, those are just simple things that don't require a lot of intellect. They don't even require a computer. A guy with a pickup truck hauling junk can make a thousand bucks a week.

So don't complain and cry and be pessimistic. Just go out and ignore the laws that you don't think are right and go out and do it. Go out and build something better. And I think the idea here is, I don't have the full list of here's what you do, because it's all the same stuff we talk about all the rest of the time.

But most of what you do is in your attitude. And I don't like seeing people cry and worry about this stuff, just about the mandates and all of that. At least in the United States. Guys, toughen up and get busy and go. Go build the connections that you need to get the paperwork aligned and get your name in the appropriate computer system with a checkbox in it.

That's the obvious kind of level 101. Most people, many people will just go ahead and automatically take the vaccine because they believe it's better for them. That eliminates the vast majority. If you're in the minority and you don't want to be forced to take a vaccine, I'm with you.

It's stupid, it's tyrannical. But I don't think that it's gonna wind up being that big of a thing. You just have to deal with your individual employers. And this will blow over soon. In the United States, the last thing I said was, I talked about, I don't think these laws will actually become laws.

If they do become laws, I think that if we've ever seen an opportunity for jury nullification, this very well might be it. Remember that in the United States of America, in the jury system, any juror can vote any way that he or she wants for any reason or no reason at all.

And it's hard for me to imagine that if you have this stuff actually go to trials, it's hard for me to imagine that every jury doesn't have at least one man or one woman on it who on principle refuses to ever say guilty for anybody who's broken a law related to the vaccine mandate.

I think that takes off. And I think that today in a world of social media, where someone can, if we actually get trials and people start popularizing that, and you just have jury after jury after jury, hung or a hung jury because of no ability to come to a thing, the whole thing falls apart.

And that's the ultimate check and balance in the US American system, is that you have, the juries are ultimately in charge of what actually happens. The politicians can write any laws that they want. The people can choose whether they follow them or not. And they choose whether they follow them based upon the incentives and based upon their own good nature.

And so people follow the vaccine laws because they believe that the vaccines are good for them because, hey, we've got good short-term safety data. They seem to be saving lives for many people. And so most people follow them. But I still think, today I'm more confident than I was a year ago, but I think that the Americans will stand up and reject the overall tyranny.

There are a lot of people right now who are fully vaccinated, who refuse to participate in vaccination schemes because of the principle of things. So I think we're good, I think we're safe. And then finally, the ultimate check and balance is jury nullification. And I think there's definitely enough people that would just simply consistently vote to vacate any enforcement, any penalties for anybody who's ever prosecuted for any of this COVID restriction stuff.

If you can actually get it to a jury trial, I think that we're good to go. So those are my opinions on it. I know that, I hope that it's useful to you. I've tried to label this show clearly. Sometimes I worry about, there's not enough financial planning in this, but it is a big deal.

What I wanna point out to you is simply that all the stuff you do for every other emergency still applies in this current one. And so don't be downhearted, don't be depressed. Press forward and fight. Build the life that you want so that you can ignore most of the mandates so you can go where things are better.

And I guess I didn't talk much about fleeing 'cause I think the United States is a good place, but I tell you is keep your passports up to date. There are a bunch of Canadians who have successfully fled to the United States. And who knows, maybe someday there'll be a bunch of Americans who successfully fleed to Albania.

By the way, Americans can go on a 365-day tourist visa to Albania. So if you are looking for a country, but from all I haven't been there, all of my research when I was trying to get out of the Western Europe craziness, and I was asking in various travel groups, I asked, I said, "Where do you go "to get out of these ridiculous mandates "and occupancy laws and everything shut down?

"I'm just tired of it." One of the strong answers I got was, Albania and Eastern Europe. And so all of my data says that the Albanians don't really care much about COVID and Albanians like Americans. Again, you can come in and be in Albania for a 365-day tourist visa without any problem.

So if you're looking for a place to go and you need to get out of the United States, tuck that away and consider Albania right on the Mediterranean Sea. You can rent yourself a little beautiful seaside villa and build your internet business living in your inexpensive seaside villa on the Mediterranean Sea.

Thank you so much for listening. Hope this has been useful to you. Let's talk about kind of where I see things going. I think we're pretty much getting to the clear of the thing. I didn't talk about the 700,000 dead. I need to cover that. I will be fascinated 15 years from now to read some of the books, okay?

Because here is the weak point in kind of the freedom argument. It's too important of a point to not cover. The Australian government believes that what it is doing is in the ultimate best interest of the people because said government is protecting life. That we're gonna turn our country into a large-scale prison.

We're gonna bankrupt businesses left, right, and center. We're going to destroy any concept of freedom. We're not gonna let our own citizens leave the country without an approval from the government. But we're gonna do it because it's gonna save lives and we're gonna have a low death toll. It'll be interesting to see if that does turn out to be the case.

That will be a fascinating data to see. You can compare that with the Americans who have a death toll of, again, 700,000 people. And you can wait and see and say, okay, well, maybe the Americans said, you know what? We're not gonna, we're gonna stick to our freedom. We're not gonna social distance.

We're not gonna wear our masks. We're not gonna take a vaccine. We're just going to live free and we're gonna die. History will be the judge. There are too many factors that are kind of interfering factors to make any obvious argument, in my opinion, at the moment. There's no way that you can argue that, for example, well, the American death toll is all because of this.

There are many reasons. Americans are fatter than many people, more old people with other diseases than many other places, a very different structure than an island in the middle of nowhere. And so I'm super interested in that topic. But I think here you have the classic argument between risk and safety.

Imagine a beautiful lion that is locked behind the bars of a zoo. And you say to the lion, would you rather be here in perfect peace and safety in your 100 square meter cage, locked behind the bars, fed an easy diet where it shows up and you just simply have to eat it, or would you rather be out in the savanna with dangers on all sides, people coming through, hunting you, et cetera, but be out on the savanna?

The life expectancy of a lion in captivity is much higher than the life expectancy of a lion in the savanna. And yet I think most of us would rather see the lion have the choice and be placed out on the savanna versus behind the bars of a zoo. That's life.

And the older I get, the more I realize that it's not the number of years that you live that really makes the difference in your satisfaction with your life. Rather, it's the amount of living and the quality of living that you do in the years of your life that make the difference.

An appropriate balance seems right. I try to avoid certain things that I think are distinctly physically dangerous. I do my best, but the older I get, the less I care about the number of years that I live, and the more I care about the life that I live during the years that I live.

If you remember, I did the show about my friend who died of COVID, and he was late 60s. I forget if he was 68 or 69, something like that. Died of COVID. He lived 69 years, but he managed to pack, in my estimation, maybe 15 years of living into his almost 70 years.

That death rocked me hard. Not the death, meaning, as I stated publicly and I did that show, that death affected me because it showed me crystal clear what a tragedy not living is as compared to dying. And it showed me that here's my friend who died of COVID, or at least he died while being infected with COVID.

I don't know. I think it's probably a legit COVID death. He had many of the symptoms, went to the hospital, did the test, he's got COVID. So the point is, here's my friend who died of COVID, but he died never having really lived. And I think that it's much more important to think about the way that you live than the way that you die.

Or said differently, it's much more important to think about the way that you live than the date that you die. And so that doesn't mean that you have to be prudent, that you have to be imprudent. It doesn't mean that you go into a COVID-filled household just willy-nilly, especially when you don't know anything about your own risk.

I'm not saying that you'd be foolish. That's where you wanna be thoughtful and be careful. But when you look at the world of the living and the dying, I look at it as a pretty clear example when I think about the United States right now versus Australia. I think about it like the lions behind the bars versus the lions on the savanna.

And it's not a perfect analogy. I'm not, don't make it more than what you do. You and I all have to think about how it applies. But the older I get, the more concerned I am with how I'm living versus when I die. And when I do die, I want it to be said at my funeral that I really lived, not the focus being on the fact that I died.

Make of that what you will. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult if you would like to speak with me. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. Do more together this holiday in a new Chevy. Take on more adventure in the strong and capable Chevy Silverado. More confidence in the Chevy Equinox. Winner of the JD Power Award for initial quality among compact SUVs, two years running.

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