#1519 - Mike Baker

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Hello, Mike Baker.

Mike Baker (0:02)

Hello, Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan (0:03)

Brought your laptop this time, huh?

Mike Baker (0:05)

Look at that laptop. I got a pad of paper. You're prepared. I got a pen.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

There's many issues.

Mike Baker (0:10)

Thank you for my COVID test.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

Oh, yeah, we needed that. Yeah.

Yeah, we're doing them every week now. I don't even know how many times I've been tested, but it's good to know.

Mike Baker (0:20)

It's good to know. It's odd that you can travel across the country and find that some places it takes you ten days to get a response. And sometimes it takes 20 minutes to get a response.

That part I don't understand.

Joe Rogan (0:31)

Well, the super duper ones they have at the White House, they can get those in 20 minutes. The ones we have here. You can get the, well, the ten minute one.

See the antibody blood test will show you in ten minutes whether or not you have an, this is the FDA approved ones that we use here. They show you whether or not you have active antibodies, meaning a recent infection. You're probably currently fighting off the virus or whether or not it's an old infection. So you had the virus and beat it, and then the nose wobbles, say, definitively if you've got it in your system.

Mike Baker (0:59)

Now, if they come back during the course of this show and say that I've got it, am I quarantined in the studio?

Joe Rogan (1:04)

Yeah, well, the antibody is already negative, so most likely you don't have it.

Mike Baker (1:08)

Oh, good. I feel better.

Joe Rogan (1:11)

Well, how do you turn this thing towards you? No worries.

Mike Baker (1:15)

That's better.

Joe Rogan (1:15)

So how do you feel about all this? Are you weirded out? Like, you haven't been here since COVID, right?

Mike Baker (1:21)

Yeah, we were, I think the last time it was before then, just before then, it started to settle in.

And then I traveled last, it was mid-February, I was in New York City, and it was starting to, people were starting to be aware, and they were talking about it a little bit, but there were really no changes in behavior.

And then it really hit, and everybody went into a hurry lockdown. And the good thing is pandemics don't last, right? So we're going to get past this. This is not like the zombie apocalypse. So I'm not one of those people that is hiding in my bunker, even though I like my bunker. But...

Joe Rogan (1:54)

Kind of bunker you got.

Mike Baker (1:55)

Yeah, good bunker.

Joe Rogan (1:56)

I bet you do. But you have a real one, right?

Mike Baker (1:58)

I do, I do. A little periscope that comes up, looks around the compound.

Joe Rogan (2:05)

It looks like a gopher.

Mike Baker (2:08)

Yeah, we use it for a variety of reasons. But it's, I'm not, I mean, I'm worried because it's serious, and of course it's tragic to lose anybody, and we've lost over 150,000 people. But you also gotta keep this in context, right? I mean, we've had pandemics before. Pandemic just means it crossed international boundaries. So there's an element here. Two things can be true. You can believe the science, which of course you should do. You should pay attention to statistics and data and do the best things you can do. But you can also look at it and go, we're kind of fucked because part of this problem is the coverage of it because of political reasons. Not to jump right into the political thing, but I can't help but think that we wouldn't have quite as much confusion and we wouldn't have quite as much the angst that people are feeling.

If it weren't for sort of the visceral hatred that exists out there on some sectors for the president.

And again, I don't have a dog in the hunt, but I have a feeling like the tone of coverage will change in November if Biden wins.

Science doesn't change, right? It's still the same fucking virus. But I just have a feeling that we'll see a tone change.

Suddenly it'll be a little bit more about if Biden wins, it'll be more about, yeah, let's look on the bright side. Let's get this coverage sorted out. Let's get the country working. Let's do these things. And again, you can believe both things. You can believe that we're fucked because of the politics and you can also believe the science.

Joe Rogan (3:44)