New Abnormal

me since serious days. It's been quite an amazing journey, and I find that these days, on my birthday, I actually just want to give gratitude to all of the people around me. My family, my friends, you all, woke a F nation. Um. You know, the past couple of years, I think for all of us have been so incredibly trying.

We've been tested in a lot of different ways. And for me, you know, the journey I have shared with you all has been a long one to get to a place where right now I can say I've learned several things that I would like to kind of share this morning before we get into our normal Woke Wednesday conversation with our favorite in house doctor Doctor Jonathan Metzel.

But I've been I've learned a couple of things over the past few years, and one of it, one of them is this that I want to center my life and my work around feeling right, and around feelings of joy, feelings of passion, feelings of gratitude, feelings of peace. And I say that knowing you know that you all listen to me every single day, rage against the machine. But the thing that I have really understood about what it

means to be angry. And there's a book that I'm actually reading right now, and I'm hoping that we will have the author on which talks about how important anger is and that it is important to embody anger. That anger is purposeful, right. Anger is a motivator. Anger springs us into action. But when we hold that anger right, it begins to eat us from the inside out. It is toxic, right, That's why it is important to express it and get it out. But understand more importantly, what

is it that is causing the anger? Right for adults, unlike children, when children get into their tantrums, when they get angry, they do that physically right, or yell or scream because they don't really have the articulation or or have the ability to truly interrogate their emotions. And it's a term that I've been using a lot lately, interrogate your feelings. I've been saying this to friends, and I'm going to say to all of you, and what do I mean by interrogate your feelings? I mean get to

the why. Right. It's okay to feel sad, It's okay to feel lonely, it's okay to feel enraged, it's okay to feel exhausted. Right. I think that we live in a culture where we're really not allowed to express our feelings, and particularly if you come from a marginalized community. We all know the tropes about angry black women. You know the aggressive black man. We all know the hot Latino. All of the stereotypes and tropes that are thrown at us that have us, in a lot of ways dismiss

our emotions. And what happens when we do that is that they bottle up, much like traffic on a highway with no exits insight. Right, there's no free flowing. And I'm coming to understand that life really is about how we move in alignment and how we move in flow with our feelings and allow them to happen. And I say, interrogate your feelings, because get to your why. There are some days when I find myself completely depleted, and I don't just say, oh well I'm depleted, let me go

take a nap or let me go zone out. But what is causing that depletion? Right? Because if I can get to if I can begin to mind those emotions, that I can get to a place where I can understand. Did I do something to disrupt my schedule? Right? Did I get enough sleep? Did I drink enough of water? Did I fall out of my regular routine and begin doing so now I'm exhausted? Right? Did I have an outlet for myself this day? Did I speak to my friends? Did I speak to my family? You know? How? Was

I engaging? And a lot of times I find that on the days where I feel really depleted and really exhausted, I haven't worked out right? And for me, initially, when I started really aggressively working out, it was always surrounded by weight loss. Every time that I would get on these workout you know binges and things, it was always about I need to get to this particular number on the scale. I need to get to this particular number

that's hanging in my closet. But nowadays I actually in the pandemic has been really helpful in this fact that I look at my workouts as a way to stress relief. Right, I am filled with a lot of rage. There's a lot of shit to be angry about. If you are paying attention, then you were angry. But it's what else

am I doing with that? The show, right, the podcast, as well as Wednesdays and you democracy Ish and these places in this form of my work have been outlets in a lot of ways, but they've also been depleting. So I look for ways in which to understand the beginning of why I'm having these feelings and then understand what does it mean to alleviate them. So for me, walking doing high intensity training really makes me feel good, right, It gives me energy, and particularly when I say that

I'm exhausted. But then I managed to put my yoga mat down on the floor right behind me and get into a workout. By the time that I'm finished, I do really feel better. My mother wasn't lying to me all of this time when she would say go do yoga, go meditate, go work out and I would say, no, I just want to lay on the couch and marinate in my misery. That I realized that that is an outlet for me. So I say, feel your feelings right,

allow yourself to go through your emotions. You know, observe your emotions, which is what meditation teaches you, To not pull yourself out out of your emotions, but to observe them the way that you do clouds in the sky, the way that you do wind blowing through trees, the way that you observe you know the people around you. You don't attach yourself to them, but you recognize that it's happening right. And it's the same thing I feel with our emotions and with anger and with rage. And

for me, what I am learning and practicing. I'm not saying that I have found the answers, but what I am learning and what is working for me is that I say what I have to say right, whether it's to an individual or to an entire audience, and then I let it go. And it doesn't mean that I don't care. It just means that I reconcile with myself that I've done what I can, I've put the energy out there, I've shared the message that I've wanted to share,

and then I move on. And I have found that over the almost two years now of this practice, that I no longer carry the same type of pain that I was holding for really a long time, to the point where my family started to say, maybe you shouldn't do this show anymore, because you being forced or forcing yourself to be in the know of everything bad that is happening is changing you. It's changing your personality, it's

changing your demeanor. And they were right, because I hadn't figured out what my outlet was, how I was planning to actually move right, to move this energy around my body and out of my body right. And I'm a person who has wanted to dedicate their life and their work to public service, whether it was working on the hill, working for nonprofit organizations, working for different movement and social

justice organizations, or women's rights or organizations are LGBTQ. I've always wanted my work to be on purpose, right, And with that comes a lot of emotional exhaustion, because you're both working to push justice forward for a community that you're actually being oppressed in, right, And so there's a lot that's there there's a lot that is there to mind.

And what I offer to all of you today is my gift, my birthday gift to all of you, is to begin to interrogate your feelings, begin to understand where you have formed attachments right and are those attachments fruitful for you? Or is there more consciousness and awareness that you need to bring to varied situations, feelings and emotions and expressions as a way to begin to release right,

Release the negative energy, release the toxicity. And a lot of the convers stations that are upcoming in this week and in the coming days are with people who do extraordinary work, whether they are historians, doctors, journalists, activists, artists. But I'm asking them, I'm asking a lot of people the same question, which is, how do you stay in joy?

How do you find your joy right? What does that look like for you on a daily basis, Because frankly, folks in the society that we live in, they tell you to suspend joy for forty hours a week, then you go ahead and grab onto what you can for that good day and a half of the weekend before

you start all over again. They tell you to hold onto your joy for fifty for fifty weeks right out of the year, and then you get two weeks of vacation to then what live If we are not living every day, if we're not choosing how we want to live, if we're not orienting ourselves around the types of feelings

that we want. We've had a couple of really great conversations with folks, you know, about work and our relationship to work and do we go after work that is about our quote unquote passion or do we orient our work around how we want to feel at the end of the day. You know, maybe if we were to start thinking in that way, how do I want to feel when I enter into this space when I leave this space? Right, then maybe we realize that we don't need as much as we think, because look, everything is

a capitalistic driver. Right Like you're sitting around, you're watching TV. Even if you're fucking watching Netflix and the ship goes on pause, they're still advertising to you because do you know what these companies have realized is that your TVs are personalized billboards that are in your home. A couple of months ago, I was chilling on my couch hanging out with a friend and we were doing what everybody does on Netflix, just going through all the categories, trying

to find something to watch. Eventually, you know, listening to music, hanging out and forgot about the TV. Then all of a sudden, my smart TV started advertising all of the shows, all of the series, and the movies that were on Netflix. So even when we weren't actively going through the lists, the TV was still advertising to us, making us think that we wanted something that we actually had decided we didn't want. But I needed to hit off twice in

order to get my personalized billboard to go off. And so we don't realize how often we are inundated with messages that are telling us that we need more or should want more then we actually have or really truly need. I've been thinking about happiness a lot these days because I find myself after a really ending, a really long relationship, going through divorce, unpacking a lot of negativity and toxicity, and really understanding what is it that I want my life to be about? What do I want to do?

What do I want to offer? Again interrogating those feelings, I started to realize that all of the things that I thought that I wanted, that I thought meant success in one place or another, didn't conjure actually the type of feeling that I wanted, Right, I want to feel light, I want to feel at ease, I want to feel at peace. And you may say to yourself, denial, how do you do that when the world is falling apart around you? And I say, how do you not do

that when the world is falling apart around you? Because you see what I keep saying, and what I want to offer is that if we are not grounding ourselves, rooting ourselves like trees in things that are actually within our control, then what are we doing? We are just reacting to the whims of these other people. Now I have the ability in my small corner of the world what we all do, because that's what social media was

intended to do, was to democratize how we communicate. Right, So we all have the ability to have nuance to use our platforms, but then recognize that we can use our platforms to do other things other than spend day in and day out talking about talking about our white supremacists, domestic terrorists, political party that's trying to destroy the country. Though that is true, that is absolutely true, But do

you know what else is true. The leaves are changing colors if you live on the East Coast, like there's a Christmas to the air. Now it's cozy sweater season. The holidays are approaching, hoping to share with like friends and family or family. Right, life is about choosing, That's what I believe, like actual freedom is. That's why I fight for social justice, so that people have choices, right, they have the same choices that everybody else has. Right,

That's what I fight for. But what I recognize is that happiness is a choice, but it isn't a passive choice. You have to actually work to be happy. You have to think about what you're grateful for each and every day. You have to honor that. You have to put yourself in places and spaces with people who help you vibrate higher and be better. And so I offer this as my gift to all of you on my birthday today, because we all deserve joy. We all deserve sunshine and

laughter and happiness and dance and music, you know. And I want us not to suspend or wait for particular moments to really live. I want us to be living every single day because you don't know when it's going to be over. You don't know how it's going to end. And so if that is true, then how are we really living each day? How are we expressing our joy, our gratitude, our peace, and what are we offering into the world. I do believe that small groups of people

can change the world. As Margaret Mead said, it's indeed the only thing that ever has. And I do believe that self care is an act of revolution. That is what ARDR. Lord said. I also believe that joy, unrelenting, beautiful, just connected joy is how we fight against the hatred and the disgust and the oppression that we see. They are not going to steal my joy from me, right because even during slavery, there was dancing, there was music, there was love, there was marriage, there was hope. They

refused right in their own way, to be ruined. And when I say ruined, I mean to have every aspect of you destroyed. We have autonomy and we have choices on how we engage with each other, how we engage with the news. Right. I don't say to turn it off, because we need an engage citizenury, but you can choose how and when you do. I'm happy that all of you haven't been engaging with me and in community with each other, talking in the comment section, connecting with each

other on walk Wednesdays on the IG Live. It brings me such extraordinary joy, and I can't thank you all enough for making it worthwhile for me to wake up in the morning, for making it worthwhile for me to turn on the TV and to want to figure out what's going on so that I can share it with all of you. I get to do what I love. Some days I don't like it, but I always love it, and it is because of all of you. And so

today I just want to say thank you. I appreciate you and find ways to live in your joy, whatever that is, find it and do it each and every day. Coming up next, dear friends, is my conversation with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, where we will discuss the latest with COVID nineteen. What Jonathan's thoughts are about the vaccines that are now approved for people as young as five. For children as young as five years old, I'll talk about my own experience getting the booster shot

over the weekend. I can report that I had no symptoms other than dead arm. You know, I couldn't really lift it for about a day, but that was it. We'll get into that and so much more so coming up next doctor Jonathan Metzo. Folks, As you know, I'm always excited when I have the opportunity to chat with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzo to discuss, you know, a myriad of things that are playing our world that

are Lady, we talk about doom. Sometimes we text about, you know, nice things, but on a regular basis, I think that we talk probably more about doom. But I wanted to start off today with sharing a little bit. We will talk about COVID as we've been doing. Do you realize, Jonathan, that you and I have been talking about COVID for almost two years? It will be it will be two years when the calendar year changes. Oh my god, I had a full head of hair when

we started talking. It's crazy. Yeah, this thing, it's just our life. I guess it's our life. I mean, it really is. It really is our life. And it's you know what I find these days is, you know, we're never gonna not talk about COVID. I feel I feel like, um, we're never gonna not hear about it in you know, in the news. We are going to be in a constant state of watching numbers go up go down. I

think that well, first off, I will let folks know this. Um. Over the weekend, I was finally able to receive my booster shot. I had dead arm for you know, about the day, about twenty four hours and that was it. I had no side effects. But I didn't have any side effects in the first you know, in the first iteration of the vaccine. Thankfully, um, no fever, no chills, like, no nothing. And the same thing bode true for the booster shot. I had Maderna as my VACS as my vaccine,

and I had fisers as the booster shot. Jonathan, what have you been hearing and thinking with regard to the boosters? And you know, it looks as if only seventeen percent of Americans, if am I wrong, that have received a booster shot at this point. Well, I went in a hospital. So I got my booster a couple of months ago, and I was bummed out right. I got Maderna for my first shot, and then I got Maderna as the booster and I didn't feel anything like you know, I

had a little store arm for a little bit. But I'm like, did you guys, give me like the group on booster or like a sugar pill or something like that. Because I didn't have any side effects at all, and that was most people. Most people I know did not did not have any any side effects. And so, you know, I feel like if people were like freaked out by the first two shots, because people people really had some

side effects from the second shot very often. But I think in general, the set effects of the booster, because your system is kind of you to this thing. By now we're a lot less and so that that was kind of part of what I was, part of what

I was experiencing. But I do think that in general, you know, in general, more people getting boosters, I think, in general is a good thing in the context of what we what we've been talking about, you know what I have to say too, So I would I went into a local CBS um out on Long Island and was able to make an appointment about probably two days before I arrived. They had, you know, a slew of appointments available because I hadn't been able to get a

booster in Brooklyn. There were there have been no appointments and it's a it's appointment only. So I went out to Long Island. I was able to get it there. And Jonathan, you know, I'm sitting and I'm waiting the fifteen minutes right after you get this shot to make sure you're okay. When for me, when I get shots or you know of anything, Um, I get woozy, like immediately, uh.

And then and then it dissipates. I don't know if it's more my anxiety or like what, you know, what the shot is that I'm getting, but it happens without fail. But I was sitting there and I'm thinking to myself, God, I can't stand Americans. They are so selfish and so self absorbed. And I say that because it was literally no sweat off my back to go and get this appointment.

It was free, right, And all I could think of, Jonathan as I'm sitting there are the millions of people that are still around the world that are still clamoring to try and get their first shot of a vaccine. The fact that their governments haven't had you know, easy rollouts, the fact that it's money that is coming out of their pockets. Even though country the more the wealthier, high high income countries said that they would provide help and economic boost you know, to those two places and pay

for vaccines. But we know that that's been lagging. And I think to myself, my god, Americans have it so

goddamn easy, and yet we look to make everything so hard. Well, you know, it's weird because again, like you know, as we you know, we've got like now quite a lot of data on these vaccines, right and it's it's just um, you know there, it's just so clear, first of all, what's happening, Like there are countries in Europe for example, that have very low vaccination rates that have high COVID rates, and there are countries that have relatively high vaccination rates

that have low COVID rates, and so the vaccines are super effective. And as you say, you know, it's crazy, but like in Africa, like less than ten percent of the people have even have access to a vaccine, notably less. And so in a way, Number one, just as a country, we have a lot of privilege right now of access to this particular technology, and the fact that we're fighting about it and politicizing it, I totally agree with you,

is incredibly appalling. But I don't know, it's hard because that also that argument is not going to work, right, It's our goal to get as many people vaccinated as as as possible. We want many people to get vaccinated, and that argument will work as well as like, you know, the argument of like their poor starving children in Ethiopia, so eat your dinner when you're a kid, and stuff like that. Like, people don't respond to that kind of logic. And so I think this is just kind of the

state of where things are in general. In general right now, America is doing pretty well, I mean boosters aside, our rates of delta are going down. It feels it seems like places that have had the most vaccines are doing the best. Um, but there are It's not like, oh my god, work. There's some good things happening and some scary things happening. The good things I'll start with first, see something. I prefer you start with the bad things so that we can end on the good things. All right,

I'll start with the bad thing. Then tell us what's terrible so we can end on something good, you know, the bad thing. Put this at the w JO put out a warning this morning which I totally agree with. I've been thinking this for a while, which is that there are plenty of places in Europe that have good adherents and good vaccination rates that are seeing virus resurgences.

And so there's a lesson in that for the United States right now, which is like, even though our rates are falling right now, we tend to follow Europe by a month or two pretty often, and Europe is getting hammered certain parts of Europe right now, and so this idea of like the whole thing being over and stuff like that, we should just look as we did in the very beginning of the pandemic to Europe and recognize

that's probably what our fate is going to be. We're probably going to see some kind of other rise, and so right now is a very important time to get people vaccinated as much as possible. So partially I think the warning sign is comparable countries, comparable vaccine rates even better a little bit better than ours are seeing rises and virus right now. Is still delta that there. We haven't been talking about any new variations, uh for for quite some time, thank god. But why is this you

were about to say, but why is this rise happening? Well? Two reasons. One is there's probably a more contagious version of delta out there, certainly that that's what people are thinking about in the UK right now. But the other is, um, you know, kids haven't been vaccinated. People are letting their guard down and going back to mosh pits, which I love and I miss um and and other kinds of daily life kinds of things for a lot of people, and so social behavior is just going back to baseline.

So there are a bunch of different reasons that people just kind of thought, oh, were this is over because our rates are falling, and so it's all of it's all of those factors together, and there's still an open debate about how how contagious fully vaccinated people are in terms of what they're passing on to other people. We still, you know, we're working on it pretty hard, but we still don't know the answer. So I think that those

are the reasons. But again, this is, as they say, an evolving situation, and we have to think of it that way because it's not like, oh, here's the answer and then tomorrow, because it's not exactly the same. I understand that's anxiety producing, but I would say, you know, we just have to keep reminding people we're in the best possible spot right now right, we have the most access to the best treatment, and we should we should

continually to continually remember that. And there are you know, I don't know, I don't know if it will work here, but there are places like Singapore and Asia, in places like that where if people don't want to get vaccinated, that's kind of their right, but they also are getting denied access to like free treatment like the free booster you got, or free healthcare or free COVID tests stuff like that. So I think there's going to be an economic price to pay. Also, again, we'll have to see

how that happens. But of course having a lot of unvaccinated people is also just very expensive for our country because those people end up in the ICU and stuff like that. So the question is what's the economic cost of this kind of kind of stuff? You know? Um, So now we have five to eleven year olds, um with the five wait oh wait, I didn't get to say a good thing. You get to say the good thing. You're right. Let me let me Jonathan, what is your good thing to say? Well, you're real leading it to

two good things. Number one is um Vaccinating kids five to eleven is going to be huge it's a huge deal, massive deal, and I think that it will dramatically stop spread, it will dramatically improve health and and also because there is still long COVID for kids, it'll improve the lives of a lot of kids. And so certainly I think that getting kids vaccinated UM is a big deal. They're getting a smaller dose of the vaccine UM, but I

think I think it's a huge deal. And you know that there's you know, there's like if you look at the numbers, like the negative effects are so minimal compared to the actual effects of COVID. I know in parts of the world they're not using a full dose Maderna for kids because of the very very small risk but a real risk of cardiac inflammation. So we also have Visor and other stuff like that. But the other big news is that Visor has a pill that basically works

the same way that monoclonal antibodies do. This pill and I've been excited about this for a long time. I think we talked about on the show a couple of months ago that basically this is a pill that works the same way that monoclonal antibodies do. It gives you an antibody boost in response to a pill. So if you get if you get COVID, you can just take this pill and it will actually work the same way.

It'll it'll boost your boost your moon response. So having a pill treatment for COVID for people who get COVID, I think it's going to be a big deal because it's really a pain in the nethers to actually go get monoclonal antibody treatment. But the fact that there's going to be a pill for people who've been infected, I think is also a very It comes with a caveat, but it's a very big deal. Is it something? Is this pill if you can track COVID, do you have

to take it within a certain time frame? Otherwise the treatment is not as effective. Yeah, and that's true for monoclonal antibodies also, So if you think you've got it, you take up. It's basically the deal is going to be. If you think you've got it, you take a home task, you're positive, you take the pill and it'll improve your outcomes. Now, there are other anti inflammatory kind of medications that are working. There's an older antidepressant that seems to be helping people.

So anything that's going to mitigate the effects once you get the illness is a big deal. The caveat is that the illness, as we know, is a pretty slippery mofo, and so as people start taking this pill, the virus is going to start inventing ways to get around it. And so, you know, we have a lot of pills that we're promising in the beginning, but as the antibody, as the virus became more resistant, they were less fact But at least at this moment, it's it's gonna be

a big deal, you know. I wanted to ask you this question. I was reading an article in the New York Times over the weekend, and it was a story of a woman who had long COVID and she ended up killing herself because the I guess her organs were shutting down, the depression had settled in, and she just realized after months and months and months, she didn't want to live like that anymore. So sadly, she ended up taking her own life. I don't feel like we are

talking about long COVID enough. I don't know if that's because we don't have a real understanding about how it's caused and how it varies from person to person, but again. You know, I am of the philosophy that we need to scare people right into wanting to get the vaccine into understanding that it isn't just oh well I get COVID and then it goes away. It's like, no, there are many people who get it and they are suffering.

They are now going to be you know, technically disabled, you know, moving forward being able to get disability because of the effects. Can you talk to us about what you know about long COVID, what you have heard, what you have studied, and understand it to be sure? Well, let me just tell you why I think it makes sense and why maybe a little bit of help conceptualizing it. In the very beginning, people thought that COVID was a lung disease, and as shitty as having a lung disease is.

You know, a lot of people like me thought, well that's bad, but you know we can we can treat a lung disease, right, Well, we'll block access to lungs, we will, we have treatments for lung diseases, things like that. So when we thought it was just staying in the lungs the way largely some viruses, I mean, when you get a cold, for example, It's not like floating around your brain and stuff like that. So we thought it was a respiratory disease, possibly similar to like a rhinovirus

or something like that. But then people started having a bunch of other symptoms like cardiac comflammation, or the most important was psychiatric symptoms, which is what I pay attention to, or forgetfulness, brain symptoms, fatigue, all these other factors, and then all of a sudden, you're like, this virus is not just staying in one part of people's bodies. It actually has the ability to do things like, to use

a technical term, cross the blood brain barrier. That's the barrier that basically keeps your brain and your cerebro spinal fluid inclosed in your spine and your brain, right, And so if a virus can get in there, which is like sacred space for humanity, right because that's like very pristine territory, if a virus can do that, then we're looking at a different kind of virus. And so you

start thinking like what other viruses can do. That kind of thing can get into your heart, can get into your brain, and then it's a Then it's not a great category, right because you think, for example of lime disease, right, lime disease can get into you know, all these places that make you think and feel and feel tired and

things like that. Herpies is another really good example, right because think think about like when you had chickenpox as a kid, and then you can get herpes zoster later on in your life because this thing is living in your in your nerve cells and your root ganglian for your entire life, herpes encephalitis, all these kind of things. These things never go away. They're living in you forever

in a way. And you know then then then you're talking not talking about treating these things, you're talking about suppressing these things. And so um, there are a lot of people who have I mean, just to be totally honest, I have a version of this because I have a version of vertigo that is in my inner ear. It turns out like a lot of men get this for some reason, and it's like a herpes virus that you get like when you're a kid from your lip or you're something like that, and it lives in your ear.

And so I have this dizziness that I you know that I've had to take um of anti viral. It's kind of partly why I freaked out about to COVID so long. But it's like, you know, it's no big deal. I just have to take a suppressing drug because it's not like we can kill something like that or like, you know, people who have have shingles, right, same kind of thing. So these things live in you. And so I guess the point I'm trying to make here is

COVID put itself in that category, right. It's the kind of thing that's going to live in your body and and it's and so that's why I feel like people who are fighting to not you should not get COVID if you can help it um for this reason. Now, your immune response is super important. All these things that you know, leading intellectuals like Aaron Rodgers or telling us all that stuff super imported. I wanted to I want

to talk about him too very quickly. Again, but I'm saying that long COVID is telling us as a species that this illness is living in our body, right, and it's going to impact different people the way it does other people. But again, I'm thinking about this COVID in a way similar to like lyme disease causing chronic fatigue, or herpie is causing chronic encephalitis and things like that. Like in a way, all of a sudden, it becomes

something that you need to suppress. And what that means is that our immune system is not just going to destroy it completely for certain people not for others. I mean, that's really frightening, right, And again, I don't think that we're having those kind of conversations about how this virus lives and where it will live and how it won't.

It is not going to go away. Um, you know, on the Aaron Rodgers point, how dangerous was it what he did in terms of lying to the league or we're understanding now that everybody knew that he wasn't vaccinated, but the public didn't know. And I just want to say, again from your perspective, how dangerous is what it was that he has done, which is lying? Well, I think for me it's the line, right. I mean, I think that we're at a point right now. I were When

I get on an airplane, I wear a mask. In fact, I wear three masks because a lot of people aren't wearing masks on airplanes right now. And I'm just trying to protect myself and then protect the people who I'm going to hang out with. But I don't know if somebody is not going to wear a mask. At least now, I feel like I have a mask regiment that will protect me. I just treat an airplane like I treat

the emergency here. You know, I figured there's COVID all around me, and I want to protect myself and and and it's the same thing with vaccines, Like I just think I want everybody to get it. I want us to do better, but I realize certain people aren't going to do it right now. So I think that that's fine, But I think the line is a major major issue. Right this guy was not wearing a mask and going

into the room with media. I think that he was putting all these other people, including his teammates, at risk. He was putting reporters at risk and things like that. So I think, really, for me, what's really the dishonesty? And then come on, dude, like you're really going to then quote MLK, you know. So I just think that it just had like weeness written all over it for me.

And I would contrast it with like Kyrie Irving, who even though I don't agree with what he's doing, at least he's saying, look, I made this choice and I'm going to hear the by the policy. So I think the issue for me was the line more than anything. Yeah, it was. It was the same for me because at this point in time, there honestly was no reason for him to lie. Just be honest. I'm not getting vaccinated, and stick by whatever your convictions are, even if they're bullshit,

just stick by them and be honest about it. I don't agree with any of these athletes that don't get vaccinated, but I have more respect for the ones at the very least that are open and transparent about it. As always, Jonathan, thank you so much for making the time to join Woke a f and walk us through what is our new abnormal COVID and how we're living with it. We'll

get through it. Everybody appreciate you. That is it for me today, dear friends, on this wonderful, wonderful Woke Wednesday slash Birthaday, there will be no Woke Wednesday ig live today. I am taking my own advice and I am taking the rest of the week off. But don't you worry, because there are brand new episodes every single day this week because I think about you all before I check out, So do know that there are wonderful interviews and episodes

that are planned for you. But there will be no live today, but I will be back next week Wednesday, live on IG at three thirty pm Eastern, per usual as always, dear friends, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.