Dave Chappelle Discusses the Philosophical Implications of COVID, Lockdowns

Quick question before I go. This is what because this is coming up. And the next time we meet, I want to ask you about what you think. The vaccine. Are you taking it? I'll take it. If it works. If I feel that the doctors have all gotten their opinions behind it and they think you know what it is? It's like an mRNA vaccine. This new vaccine. It makes your body think that it doesn't introduce actual covid into your system and you fight it off and makes your body think that it's covid and your body builds the proper proteins to fight it off. I said a guy explained it to us yesterday. Nicholas Christakis. He's from Yale. His soybean boy. He thinks he's a good man. He he thinks that he's a great man and I won't let you disparage him. I know I'm not disparaging. He's like he's certain niggas is so it beam off. I have soybean. He's a doctor. Okay. Anyway, he he thinks the vaccine will be very effective. And even if you if it doesn't keep you from getting it, it'll prevent or hopefully prevent you from getting a bad case of it. I don't know though. So so what would you need? Would you would you would you need just the consensus of a body of doctors you trust and people's experiences because people have already taken it. So people have taken it like what is the experience? They say that they you know had they felt like shit for a few days. That's it. Now. Is that true? I mean, who are they? I have talked to them. What's a few days and what do you mean by feel like shit? Like did you try running four days later and you still felt terrible? Like so it apparently they're distributing this vaccine almost now, right? I don't think it's totally ready, but it very soon will be ready. And if it's effective, they're going to encourage people to take it. It's it makes me feel really nervous. They have it for like doctors and like essential people. Yeah first and then it's going to probably people that are high risk like Yeah, but the thing is it's going to have people have a sense of like there is something that could be done now. Like it's a sense of hope. It's a sense of progress. It's a sense of like, you know, we it was at one time we didn't even have a thought of a vaccine. Now we got competitors and shit. Yeah people to think different. Listen if it works, we should take it just but I know how people get real nervous. Black people don't fuck with vaccines. I told you that son. How do you feel about it? Black people don't fuck with no vaccines. Well, I mean, I feel like it's inconclusive because your caveat was I take it if I felt safe about it. Yeah, that's the just just the thing. Don't you feel like that same way? Well, of course, but so now, you know for the first time we're learning. We're learning how a drug the process of a drug, you know going through trials. We're learning this literally as a nation. We're all watching this thing take place and an accelerated version of it and accelerated version of it. It's usually a vaccine takes multiple years to develop. Yeah, so this is really quick to be able to have something this quick and turn it around and it's like how's movies where they find a cure by the end and you're like eyes bullshit. They're doing it. Well, not a cure but a vaccine. Big deal. It's the good thing is if another one comes around they're going to be more prepared to do something like this quicker. Right the like I think people needed to really understand that in our lifetime something can kill the world's economy and kill hundreds of thousands of people here and a million people worldwide. I think everybody I don't think we I think we knew it but I don't think we really expected it. Right now. They knew it. They were the Obama administration had prepared for precisely that eventuality but I mean us of Coia. We couldn't wrap our mind around it. Even if they told you even if you watch Bill Gates speech at TED talk in 2015, you would never internalize it and think there's there's a pandemic coming. Now we know. Nobody. Now we know there is now that we're going to want to invest in the medical infrastructure. To make sure that they prepare better next time. This is hopefully people are going to learn from this. That's all. Yeah. 100% people know glass half nothing is going to be nothing is going to be new. There's nothing going to be new about it. No. Well, the debate is largely philosophical, right? I mean to this end, there's two schools of thought one school of thought is it's just going to be what it's going to be and we'll you got to keep moving like why close anything and the other school thought which I thought was, you know, there's more than just a philosophy. It was it was a science. Remember the premise when they locked us up was we have to wait to catch up to our medical infrastructure. So we don't overburden our medical infrastructure. We got to suppress the disease till we can build up the infrastructure and they gave us an early estimate of two weeks. This is how comedian does when the comedian is doing a real long sitting goes one more thing before I go and then he does it four or five times. He realized those guys going to do another hour. Oh, yeah, that's so fucking rude. Yeah, but you know that trick? Yeah. That's what the pandemic the quarantine felt like two more weeks, three more weeks. Maybe we'll open bars and you know, that kind of shit. But there's no way to control it other than create it yourself. Right. What do you mean? Like the whole vibe of the scene, right? The vibe of which scene? The pandemic you said how do we get used to it? What can we do about it? Well, he's also saying here's the thing. We never signed up to let people tell us that we can and can't take risks or go to work and by saying that if you do it, you're going to kill other people. That's what changed the game. And so everybody has to figure out how much of that they're willing to accept and how much of that are they not and whether or not they're willing to take a shot. Take this this vaccine without, you know, knowing the long-term effects of it or worrying about the long-term effects of it. Some people are naturally averse to taking any kind of medication. They don't want to do it and other people are like, if you tell me it's good and all the doctors agree and then it will help mankind. I'll fucking do it. That's how I feel. If I listen polio, okay, shit doesn't exist anymore. Smallpox doesn't exist anymore. At least not in the numbers that it used to be. You got the old vaccine for that. That's because of vaccines like the idea that vaccines have done bad things only or that they're dangerous only. It's crazy like vaccines are the responsible for the giant vaccines. But I think that at the core of this is you just trust. Yes, the trustee sources and people realize that they're at the mercy of someone that they don't necessarily trust. Right. That's the that's the route. Well, maybe maybe don't don't touch your own face and don't go outside. I'll tell you when to come out. I said love a renowned liar. Yeah, right. It's tough one. That was a tough one. Especially here. It goes something really touches something really sore in the core of an American's identity. Like you said, how can you tell me to do this? Yeah, it's crazy man. This was a tough one here. It's a weird one. It's a makes us redefine what it is to be a person. You know, like if all of a sudden you have other people that got elected into a position of power. That's all they did. They won a popularity contest and they're dictating that whether things go this way or that way and they don't necessarily have the right answer. They just have their own answer and Dallas is doing a different that this town and you know, Washington State's doing it different than Nevada. Everyone's doing it different. But everybody's trying to do it also. Yeah, but governors can tell you what you can and can't do. It gets real weird and I get it. They're trying to keep the hospital numbers down. But you told us it was going to be two weeks. Like you guys said two weeks and now here we are like nine months later and everyone's just waiting. Only for a vaccine. But I'm not speaking about, you know, if it's right, if it's wrong, not speaking about like that. I'm just saying whatever it was that was very difficult. Yeah, that was very difficult. Very difficult. You know, I was fine, but not knowing when you can work, not being able to move around, not being able to see my mother, you know, you would never thought if someone had told me 11 months ago, even the night before the last night we went to a movie in Milwaukee. Yes, it was paps. And the last show, but there was the last night between shows, right? It's a two show night and energy had changed. It went from festive to like people look worried when I got off stage. Tom Hanks had had it. The one NBA guy who would touch everything and had it and then the horn starts ringing that they're going to shut the country down. I literally go that's impossible. Shut down the world. It's impossible. This is what I thought my initial reaction. But the energy changed. Now I go out and do the second show and immediately and I wouldn't think about this shit earlier that night. I come out on stage. I have by reaching out and I thought about it. Okay, I start, you know, shaking people's hands. Oh, worried. But yeah, it was if but the day before wouldn't have even been concerned about it. Went into the green room for 40 minutes and talked to people who've been glued to the television, Washington News. And then they they scared the shit out of me. My behavior changed almost instantly. It's interesting. I don't get too heavy. I mean, I'm only hanging out. No, man. No, it's not too heavy. That's exactly how I felt about it, too. I remember I shook a dude's hand on a flight. I was flying to Vegas for the fights. It was like one of the last fights before they shut it down and some dude goes, I don't know. You want to shake hands? I'll shake your hand. We shook hand. He had a mask on already. I was like, wow. He was ready to go down. I think this was the very beginning of March. This was the first time I would have been tested at any capacity was when I did your show that time. That was the first time I had an antibody test or anything. I would have never expected that here we would be deep into November and we're all still kind of locked down. When this started, you lived in LA. You had no plans to come here. Yeah, you're in Texas. Think about it. Your whole your whole life has changed. What's interesting about this time was another thing. We should talk about next time it come. Is that the in mass, it feels like we're rewriting our social contracts, you know, the whole thing and covid is an accelerant on this process that I could have never imagined. Yeah, you know, they're locked inside man. People are stuck in a house with their choices. Do you like your house? Do you like who you're with? Do you like these things you've accumulated? I hope you like them because you're stuck with them. I made great choices. I like my choice. You know, when I was faced with it like that, it's like I had much better than many people, but imagine people doing it in mass. It's pretty powerful. It's pretty powerful. What does this do to a society? This type of isolation and and and almost forced reflection. Yeah, which is not a necessarily a bad thing, right? And we've always talked about how life is a rat race, right? People get stuck in this rat race. It feels never ending. It's not good that all these people lost their jobs. It's not good that all these people are going to lose where they live, but it might help some people recognize that if you just keep going in this rat race, it just it never ends. You got to figure out a way out and now is a better time to figure out a way out than ever because you kind of have to you kind of have to and society as it existed 10 months ago. It's not the same place. What's the country? What's the country that is a country? Maybe somewhere in South Pacific or something that measures the their success of the nation with what they call their gross national happiness. There's totally different premise. What countries are I can't remember. Maybe maybe a Google gross national happiness. Channel. Thanks fingers. Says Bhutan. There it is. Bhutan. There you go. This is a real. This is a real principle. It's a philosophy guys. The government think about this is a philosophy that guys are going to put on and includes an index which is used to measure the collective happiness. This is the metric that they use to define their success. If they try that in America, they turn into an app and it would fuck up everything. Oh my God. People would just be striving to win the points on the app. It would make people insane. They get addicted to trying to be a better person. This is the vast thing. This is a vastly better metric. I'm not you know, a communist and that shit. But I think that I know too many people who are very wealthy who have what I consider poor quality of life. Yeah, that's because the like you say the wealth is the point. Yeah, they chased it. They chased it and they didn't have any friends. Right. You're very well. Once we are hunting you love your dog. Your dog hangs out with you like fucking Scooby-Doo. Your kids like your kids like you. You you you're living an adventure of a life. Now you're doing the same thing you were doing in LA in a totally different city just because you're following that knowing feeling I gotta be free. Episodes of the Joe Rogan experience are now free on Spotify. That's right. They're free from September 1st to December 1st. They're going to be available everywhere. But after December 1st, they will only be available on Spotify, but they will be free. That includes the video. The video will also be there. It'll also be free. That's all we're asking. Go download Spotify. Much love. Bye-bye.