Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1072 Scott Adams： Secret Police HOAX, Coronavirus Mysteries and Intrigue, Boris Johnson's Fatness

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. That's me. And this

00:00:21.900 will be, yeah, one of the highlights of your day. Maybe the best part of your day. Probably

00:00:28.740 the best part of your day. All right, it's the best part of your day. Come on, you know

00:00:33.280 it is. And to get it going, we'll do the simultaneous sip. And all it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass

00:00:39.900 of tank or a cellist or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it

00:00:45.840 with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the dopamine hit of the day,

00:00:52.460 the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now. Go.

00:00:58.740 Hmm. I feel my vitamin D increasing along with my IQ and my sex appeal. You could probably feel

00:01:13.220 the same thing at home. Speaking of being a new person, I've talked about this before, but I just

00:01:20.340 I'm blown away by it. It's sort of a personal thing, but it has a larger meaning. So I'm preparing

00:01:29.620 for some sinus surgery. And part of that is I'm on prednisone for the third or fourth time this year

00:01:35.260 to try to clear up the sinuses. And it works. In fact, my ability to smell just came back like two

00:01:45.060 minutes ago. So every time I go through one of these cycles, I can smell again for the first time

00:01:49.740 in years, but it doesn't last. However, here's the finding. The prednisone gives me probably takes

00:01:59.620 25 years off of my effective age, meaning that with just this little bit of prednisone, which is being

00:02:07.880 used for completely different purposes. My body doesn't get tired. I am full of energy and love

00:02:16.080 of life. I can speak better. I can exercise longer. I'm probably 25% stronger. I mean, it's not even

00:02:24.500 close. I can go to the gym and actually watch muscle development in 48 hours. It's crazy. It's crazy.

00:02:31.960 Now, so far, I haven't had any anger issues from the prednisone. Maybe that'll come later. But

00:02:39.000 now you can't do the prednisone for long periods because it has some negative side effects. But

00:02:46.240 the fact that it can change me by 25 years, and it activates in just a day, it makes me wonder how

00:02:56.120 close we are to something that doesn't have side effects. Is there any way to get there? Or is

00:03:01.940 just, there's an impossibility that if it's going to make you feel good, it's going to kill

00:03:07.660 you somehow? Is that always the case? Because, yeah, it's a steroid, somebody's saying. And

00:03:14.660 it's not healthy to do it in the long run, but I only do it for short bits. And yeah, riding

00:03:23.880 faster on my bike, I can walk for hours, and no soreness, no stiffness. It's just like being

00:03:29.060 a kid again. It's amazing. But anyway, just the fact that that's even possible really makes

00:03:34.780 you wonder what could happen with senior citizens. I mean, you could give an 80-year-old this

00:03:42.820 drug, and they could pretty much live like a 60-year-old, I think, if they had their mental 0.77

00:03:49.940 faculties. All right, let's talk about some other things that are not me. A pollster, well,

00:03:54.540 okay, a little bit more about me. A pollster called me last night, and I couldn't remember

00:03:59.100 if I've ever been called by a political pollster. So at least now we know that they call. Now

00:04:05.220 they call on my cell phone. It's the only one I have. And their first question was, you know,

00:04:11.820 they introduced themselves, but their first question was, am I registered to vote? Now,

00:04:17.780 I wasn't thinking clearly, because I should have said, yes, I'm registered to vote, so that then I

00:04:24.580 could lie on the poll itself. But they rejected me for not being a registered voter. Now, was there

00:04:33.180 any chance that if I had been a registered voter, is there any chance I would have told them the truth?

00:04:40.060 None. Not only is there no chance I would have told them the truth, I didn't even consider it.

00:04:47.620 It wasn't even my option set. There was no point at which I said to myself, uh, should I say maybe I

00:04:54.880 like Trump a little bit better as president? Nope. Not even a little bit was I tempted to tell the truth.

00:05:01.860 I wasn't tempted to tell the truth. That's how far away it is. Because normally, you know, I've got a

00:05:10.040 pretty strong, you know, bias toward telling the truth unless I'm going to die or something. You know,

00:05:15.200 unless you're literally protecting somebody's life or income or there's something big on the line.

00:05:21.600 I don't like lying at all. I mean, I hate it. It's, it's something I try to avoid as much as

00:05:27.760 possible. It never works out. You know, even if you try to lie, it never works. It just, that's my

00:05:33.480 experience. So I wouldn't lie in almost any situation, but I definitely would have lied to

00:05:40.740 the pollster because that's a security safety kind of a thing. And certainly that would be morally

00:05:47.140 acceptable in my view. Um, there was article, uh, Joel Pollack in Breitbart today talking about Joe

00:05:55.960 Biden who, uh, will not disavow the protesters who are also the violent ones. And, uh, this puts him

00:06:04.760 in the category of saying that the, uh, all the people at the, at the riots are fine people,

00:06:10.160 which is turn, turn about is fair play. Now, what is the difference or is there between the people who

00:06:19.960 said to president Trump, what he said, there were some fine people in Charlottesville at the

00:06:24.480 Confederate statue and, and the neo-Nazi march. And the president said, well, you know, I'm

00:06:33.140 paraphrasing, but they're not all neo-Nazis. Some of them were just there because of the statues and

00:06:38.840 they're fine people. But what's the difference between that, at which point somebody's not somebody,

00:06:44.940 lots of people said, well, you can't be a fine person if you're at the same event with the neo-Nazis.

00:06:51.440 It just can't happen. Well, of course it can happen because we're a big diverse country

00:06:56.160 where any big gathering has lots of different people. So of course they could be there. Of

00:07:01.220 course. It would be weird to not have counter protesters in America. You pretty much always

00:07:06.800 expect that. So, uh, but the point is how can the Democrats, how can Joe Biden say that it's okay

00:07:16.400 to march with the people who are literally rioting, literally Antifa, literally want to burn down the

00:07:22.900 courthouse, literally want to get rid of police, hurt the police, literally want to overthrow the

00:07:29.300 country, are literally bad. So, but those people who are marching with them and obviously giving them a

00:07:37.880 boost, they're, they're not, uh, they're not doing something wrong. Feels like at this point, the

00:07:45.600 people who just wanted to get the message out are kind of done, aren't they? Is it, raise your hand,

00:07:51.820 is anybody not heard Black Lives Matter? Has anybody not heard that? Is there anybody who needs to get

00:07:59.180 their mind changed more on that topic? Probably not. We're probably as persuaded as we're going to

00:08:06.600 be. And there really isn't much of anybody on the other side. There's nobody arguing for Black Lives

00:08:14.020 Not Mattering. Nobody's arguing that. And nobody's even saying we won't look at a proposal. Nobody's

00:08:20.780 even saying we're closed off to how to improve. Nothing. So what is the purpose of the further protests?

00:08:27.500 If the message is completely received, and I'd say it is, it's completely received, why are they protesting?

00:08:36.400 Well, you have to ask yourself if it's more about the bad element being the driving force. And it's starting

00:08:43.420 to look like that. Now, the interesting thing about this, and of course, in our world, everything comes back

00:08:49.680 to Trump one way or another, is that every day these protests go on, I'm pretty sure is good day for Trump.

00:08:57.500 Now, it might not feel like that yet. But it's one of those things that the longer it goes, the

00:09:04.380 different it looks. When a protest or a riot first starts, you say to yourself, well, it's unfortunate

00:09:12.000 about that, the rioting and the looting. But there was certainly a good reason for the protest. So you

00:09:18.200 can kind of excuse it in the early days. But once we've heard all the message, and there's not much

00:09:24.680 pushback about the general idea of, let's not have the police kill people that don't need to be killed,

00:09:29.780 you know, that sort of thing. You know, racism, could it be better? Could we improve the schools?

00:09:35.300 Open to all that. But I think Trump is just going to get stronger every day these go on, because the

00:09:42.900 original message will dim in importance, and all you're going to see is it just looks like trouble.

00:09:47.760 Now, the interesting part is that so far, Trump is only using his federal forces, the Department of

00:09:54.100 Homeland Security, I think in just one place, defending a federal building in Portland. They're

00:10:01.540 on call for Seattle, and other places too, I think, but they're just on call. And their job is to protect

00:10:08.340 federal assets, apparently. This is being turned into by people like the Lincoln Project and Rick Wilson,

00:10:15.460 who's got some real explaining to do. I think Rick Wilson has some explaining to do in his life,

00:10:22.140 but that's his problem. You may know of some of his troubles. But they're trying to turn it into

00:10:28.880 that these are secret police with secret badges, and it's a Trump secret police. And I'm trying to

00:10:34.700 figure out where that will rank on the list of Trump hoaxes. You know, the top one would be Russia

00:10:42.280 collusioned, and I'd say the other tent pole would be the fine people hoax. There's the he suggested

00:10:49.120 ingesting actual household disinfectant hoax. The hoax list is pretty long at this point.

00:10:56.200 But I wonder where the secret police hoax will be. I think it'll be in the top four, possibly a top four.

00:11:04.720 And now the media is trying to turn it into that Trump is causing the riots by allowing the Department

00:11:14.820 of Homeland Security to protect a federal building. And that's causing a riot, because they look like 0.98

00:11:22.720 secret police. Yeah, they're not, but they look that way.

00:11:26.720 Have you noticed a lot of women getting their asses kicked in these riots and on video? Every day I go to 1.00

00:11:35.320 Twitter. It's the first thing I do is I look at all the, you know, the new Andy Noe videos, etc. And it feels

00:11:42.780 like, have women become a lot more aggressive recently? Is anybody noticing this? And I can't tell if

00:11:50.880 what's happening is that women feel they won't be killed. Because that's generally true, right? If a woman gets 1.00

00:11:58.400 in a fight, she doesn't usually get killed. But if a man gets in a fight, there's a pretty good chance one of

00:12:05.860 you is going to end up dead. So I feel like women are just getting, well, somebody said the chubby ones in the 0.99

00:12:13.980 comments. I wasn't going to say that. But you can't not notice it. It's impossible not to notice

00:12:21.020 that the women who are getting in the fights tend to be larger. And maybe that's part of why they're 1.00

00:12:28.100 braver. They just, you know, have more mass to put against it. That's not a universal truth. We just

00:12:33.920 watched a skinny white woman get roughed up by the police on video yesterday. But she was, you know,

00:12:40.500 yelling in their faces and provoking them. So they finally just took her down. But I haven't seen

00:12:45.960 anything like this. This is the angriest, most violent group of women I've ever seen anywhere. 1.00

00:12:53.960 I don't think I've even seen another country with so many women getting into violent fights every day, 1.00

00:13:01.720 at least on a video. So it may be overstated because the video makes you think it's everywhere,

00:13:06.420 but it isn't. All right. What else we got going on? This is the biggest story that gets no attention.

00:13:16.600 And it's mind-blowing to watch the biggest stories be ignored while the smallest stories become the

00:13:22.480 story. The smallest story is that the police sometimes kill somebody or somebody dies in their,

00:13:29.480 you know, during the arrest phase. But it's so small. I mean, it's in terms of number of people

00:13:35.740 affected, even if you count the families of the people who died, it's still a small number

00:13:41.080 compared to just about every other problem. So we were sort of an upside down world where we're

00:13:47.900 making the biggest story out of the smallest story. But here's the biggest story. Apparently,

00:13:54.300 the United States policy against about China has changed to regime change. What? So Mike Pompeo

00:14:04.080 apparently says it directly that regime change is now the new policy. So we went from trying to work

00:14:14.080 a deal with China to finding out that we can't, that their mindset is such that they only want an

00:14:21.080 abusive deal or apparently no deal at all. So it looks like no deal at all is where it's going to head.

00:14:27.000 But Pompeo is just going at it directly and saying, now, our goal is the regime change in China. Now,

00:14:36.020 can the United States get that done? Now, I don't believe that that means, you know, supporting a 0.89

00:14:42.260 revolution or anything. I can't see that working in China. But it probably does mean not dealing with 0.98

00:14:48.640 China as a country. It probably does mean moving our facilities out. It probably does mean putting up 1.00

00:14:55.020 more obstacles than we ever were. It probably does mean putting more naval assets in the contested

00:15:01.620 areas, etc. So this is a really big story. It's by far the most important thing that's happening,

00:15:10.080 I would say. More important than climate change. More important than everything. More important than

00:15:15.180 coronavirus. More important, you know, the economy, I guess you could say, is the most important thing.

00:15:20.000 But it's way up there. And you won't see much about that today, I'll bet. There'll be an ignored

00:15:26.980 story. Speaking of ignored stories, Jonathan Turley, you know of him, a constitutional lawyer type.

00:15:37.760 And he's writing in The Hill how he's astonished that the media is just ignoring the fact that the

00:15:45.040 Obama administration did make up an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign. And we're trying to figure

00:15:53.340 out why this isn't the biggest story in the country. Is it just because it's about Trump? And

00:15:58.760 that it would be good for Trump because it would vindicate him for when he said that his wires were

00:16:04.240 being tapped? Which, you know, not technically true in terms of tapping, but true enough. I mean,

00:16:12.220 basically, he correctly called out that his campaign was being spied on. And that was just

00:16:18.240 true. Now, I tried to figure out why this story isn't getting the traction it should. It got a lot

00:16:25.620 of traction on, you know, the Fox News and the right, but it just didn't cross over. It just never

00:16:31.400 became a narrative on the other, the mainstream media. And I have a few theories why. The obvious one is

00:16:39.260 that the media can't admit that they sold us a hoax for three years or whatever it was. So the media

00:16:47.200 doesn't want to point out their own wrongness. They don't want to support Trump. So that might be

00:16:53.560 the entire reason. But the other reason is this. It's kind of complicated. And even though even when

00:17:00.480 I think I understand it, even just reading Jonathan Turley's article, I'll find four things I didn't

00:17:06.580 know. Or I used to know and I forgot. So it's just this big complicated thing of why did somebody

00:17:13.840 talk to somebody? What did Carter Page, you know, what did they have to do? Was he a CIA agent?

00:17:21.520 Did he work with them? What did Russia do? Where was the dossier? Just way too many people involved.

00:17:27.400 Way too many people. So I think because it's complicated and because it dripped out,

00:17:32.420 you know, a little fact, little fact, little fact, it just never got traction. So part of it is that

00:17:39.060 it dribbled out. So it lost all of its energy by dribbling. The other is that it's complicated. So we

00:17:44.800 wouldn't understand it if we saw the details. And then, of course, they just don't want to make

00:17:49.480 Trump look good. On PredictIt and other betting platforms, Kamala Harris just got a big upswing. 1.00

00:17:57.960 No explanation is given. But she's now at 39% chance of winning, at least according to the people

00:18:06.040 betting. If you go look at predictive markets, doesn't the stock market tell you that Trump is

00:18:13.340 going to win? It feels like it, right? Unless there's going to be some giant plot to tank the

00:18:19.980 stock market right before the election, which is possible. So do not be surprised if the stock market

00:18:25.940 takes a serious dump between now and November, but it might be politically motivated. So it could be

00:18:35.240 real. Maybe, you know, maybe the economic outlook won't look that good and it'll just be a natural

00:18:41.620 decline, which wouldn't be wouldn't be the worst thing in the world and it wouldn't be unexpected,

00:18:47.020 actually. But at the moment, the stock market captures the economy, obviously. It captures our

00:18:55.620 optimism. But I also think that the stock market at the moment is capturing coronavirus. So if you

00:19:04.160 look at the biggest things that the president has to do, it's stuff like, you know, trade deals with

00:19:09.980 China and coronavirus and the economy. And the stock market kind of captures all of that, because

00:19:15.280 they're all interconnected. And it's high, you know, went down a little bit last few days, but it

00:19:20.500 basically is high. So isn't that predicting that Trump will win? Just a question there. So I keep

00:19:33.440 seeing this graph by a user named Gummy Bear. Now, Gummy Bear was recommended to me as being a good,

00:19:42.620 credible source on the coronavirus stuff. Now, Gummy Bear is obviously a pseudonym for someone who

00:19:48.740 apparently has some kind of credentials. I don't know what kind, but they're the good kind, because

00:19:55.200 the Twitter feed has lots of credible looking good analysis, according to people who have been

00:20:01.740 following him. So I started following Gummy Bear. And there's one graph that Gummy Bear has posted a

00:20:10.820 number of times, and it's really persuasive, super persuasive. If you're a nerd like I am about

00:20:18.520 data visualization, it's just really good. It's like thrillingly well-designed just to give you

00:20:27.760 information. But I don't know if it's accurate. So I don't know if the data is right. I just know

00:20:33.800 that the way it's presented was great. And what it was is it just ranked all the countries, their death

00:20:38.920 rate, by how they used hydroxychloroquine. If they had used it early, according to the graph, which has

00:20:47.040 some credibility questions, that's what I'm going to get to, it would show that the people who didn't,

00:20:52.080 the countries that didn't use hydroxychloroquine early have all these problems. The ones that did

00:20:57.340 use it in a modest way have half as many problems, and those who used it aggressively have practically

00:21:03.820 no problems. And so I put it out there, and I had to tweet and say, can somebody tell me if this is

00:21:10.740 accurate? Because if it is accurate, we're done. Right? We're done. Somebody says, it's fake.

00:21:20.120 Why are you arguing? So I put it out there to let other people pick it apart. And sure enough,

00:21:27.760 some people said, well, you know, I'm looking at the graph, but I'm looking at this country,

00:21:32.700 and it's in the wrong place, or it doesn't capture it right. Somebody says, I doubt such data is

00:21:39.140 available. I also didn't see a date on it. So it might have been, you know, over a month ago when

00:21:44.520 things look different. So somebody says, why not research it yourself? Let me answer that question.

00:21:50.260 So somebody said, why not research it myself? That's the dumbest question in the world. 0.99

00:21:57.040 And I have to be blunt. Everybody who thinks that they are capable of researching this themselves, 0.99

00:22:03.820 you're just kidding yourself. Even the experts can't do it. If the experts could research this stuff,

00:22:10.280 they would all agree. Right? If what you could do is use your expertise and dig into it a little bit,

00:22:18.700 the people with expertise would be on the same side. But you don't notice, you don't see anything

00:22:23.660 like that happening. What you see is the experts digging in and coming to completely different

00:22:28.660 conclusions. So if you think you can do what the experts clearly can't do, because they're not coming

00:22:34.720 to the same conclusions. Why do you think I can do it? Why would you suggest that I would be able to

00:22:41.280 do this thing that literally no one in the world can do? It's just undoable. Now you can think you did

00:22:47.740 it. And you can do your research and you can come to a conclusion. But you would be talking yourself

00:22:53.420 into it. You would be talking yourself into stupidity, basically. Because confirmation bias 1.00

00:22:58.920 is going to look just like it. I mentioned the Michael Jackson allegations about pedophilia.

00:23:09.500 And now I've seen three different pieces of video content. One made a case that said,

00:23:14.740 oh, definitely he's guilty. No doubt about it. I watched another and you look at it, you go,

00:23:20.140 oh, wow, it's all a con. None of it was true. I watched another one yesterday that added more fuel to

00:23:27.540 the Eden. None of it was true. Fire. So I did my research, right? I looked into the whole Michael

00:23:35.120 Jackson situation. And what happened? Couldn't tell a thing. I mean, if I had to be in a jury based on

00:23:43.360 what I saw, I would say definitely not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I mean, it's way beyond

00:23:50.020 reasonable doubt. You know, reasonable doubt is just a thin sliver of, well, maybe, maybe he's not

00:23:56.740 guilty. The Michael Jackson thing is mostly reasonable doubt. It's like 95% reasonable doubt,

00:24:03.080 5% chance maybe something happened and there just didn't happen to be any evidence.

00:24:09.060 So I use that as an example of how doing your own research doesn't do you a bit of good. It really

00:24:14.540 doesn't. It's a complete illusion. And that probably has to do with our belief that we can do

00:24:26.560 more than we can do. Somebody says, interview Dr. Zelenko. Terrible idea. Terrible idea.

00:24:35.080 Whoever is saying in the comments, and I don't mean to pick on you as, but you could not be

00:24:42.200 less helpful than to suggest that I interview one expert. I've said this before, but it sounds like

00:24:49.620 I have to say it again. It is a disservice to the audience for someone who can't ask the right 1.00

00:24:55.760 questions to interview an expert. Because all you're going to hear is his side of it. You're

00:25:01.300 going to hear one side of the, you know, the Michael Jackson story. It's always convincing

00:25:07.560 if you hear one side. It's the same reason I won't talk to Dr. Shiva on this topic. Because Dr. Shiva

00:25:14.460 will say technical things, and then I'll say, I don't know. And then you will have been,

00:25:20.800 you will have gotten this unfiltered opinion that you know there's another opinion on the

00:25:25.620 other side, but you didn't hear it. Right? Now somebody says in the comments that Dr.

00:25:31.180 Drew did a periscope with Zelenko. Now that's how you do it. If I, actually I like to look for

00:25:39.140 that. If, if a doctor is interviewing a doctor, and the doctor doing the interviewing has a broad

00:25:45.900 experience enough to ask the right questions, that's exactly what you should read. But don't

00:25:50.120 ask me to bring one expert on, on a medical or scientific thing, unless I have some background.

00:25:56.600 So I don't mind bringing somebody on and say a nuclear energy question, because I've done enough

00:26:01.700 reading where I can at least ask the right questions. Thanks to Mark Schneider and Michael

00:26:07.180 Schellenberger have educated me a little bit, enough to ask the right questions. All right. So,

00:26:13.720 and, and I'm sorry if I make a big deal about that, the bringing the one expert on, but that's the

00:26:19.260 biggest problem in the world right now. The biggest problem in the world is that people still believe

00:26:24.940 that if they hear one expert, that they learn something. That is so not true. If you had one,

00:26:31.940 if you've only heard one expert, you have probably been misled. Probably. Not every time.

00:26:43.860 Boris Johnson is doing something awesome. You know, one of the problems with being a leader

00:26:50.480 is that the most important things you can do will sometimes be the most boring, and they don't get you

00:26:56.460 any attention and they don't get you reelected. So I'm going to give a big, big, big shout out and

00:27:03.140 props, thumbs up to Boris Johnson for just this. I don't have a comment on Boris Johnson's entire

00:27:11.280 political career, but just this. He's going to make a big, big deal about weight loss, using himself

00:27:18.200 as an example. So, you know, he had his coronavirus scare, and it's worse for people who have weight

00:27:24.380 problems, apparently. And I think that might have been a wake-up call. He'd wanted to lose weight

00:27:29.240 anyway, but now he's getting serious about it, and he's going to go, he goes for a run every day,

00:27:33.460 changing his diet. And I can't think of anything that would be more directly beneficial to the

00:27:40.800 country than having the leader promote good fitness and exercise. It's really important. And I guess in

00:27:48.880 Great Britain, the obesity level is just out of control. And the way Boris Johnson is selling

00:27:54.360 it is exactly right. He's selling it as a way to protect UK's national health system. Boom, there you are.

00:28:03.300 If you said to people you should lose weight for your own benefit, well, people say, I'll figure out what

00:28:09.960 my benefit is. You know, I don't need Boris Johnson telling me what to do with my personal life. You just run

00:28:17.100 the government, Boris. I'll decide if I eat a cheesesteak. But the way, so he's not doing it that

00:28:24.180 way. So he's not saying this will be good for you if you lose weight. He's saying this is how you lower

00:28:29.120 costs, basically. This is how you make national health service possible. I would say that President

00:28:37.640 Trump is missing the biggest opportunity with health care. Because there is a Republican plan.

00:28:46.400 It just hasn't been put together. So I guess you could say it's not a plan. But if you looked at all

00:28:51.800 the individual things that the Trump administration wants to do for health care, you know, such as the

00:28:58.000 executive orders on pharmaceutical costs, lowering meds costs, etc. There's a whole bunch of individual

00:29:04.960 things that will make things more competitive, could bring the prices down, such as making it

00:29:11.440 possible to do telehealth over the internet across state lines. You know, these little changes in the

00:29:17.380 regulatory environment can have a big impact. But one of the things that Trump could do, which I guess

00:29:24.460 it would be hard for him to do because he's got a few pounds himself, is to do what Boris Johnson's doing

00:29:30.520 and just say, if you want more people to have health care than the people who already have

00:29:37.220 health care, maybe they should lose some weight. Because if the people who already had health care, 0.89

00:29:42.700 well, plus the people who don't, you could say the whole public, if the whole public of the United

00:29:47.120 States simply became more fit, they just lost weight, got a little more exercise, what would that do

00:29:54.200 to the total cost of health care service? Well, if you've had an opportunity to go to a doctor's

00:30:03.020 waiting room or emergency room, is there something that you notice? Not so much an emergency room,

00:30:08.140 because those would be accidents. But let's say you go to a normal doctor's waiting room,

00:30:12.680 back when you could be in a room with other people. And you sit down and look at the other

00:30:17.400 people in the room. How many of them have a weight problem? A lot. A lot. What would be the total cost

00:30:26.520 reduction in health care if people got healthier? It could be a lot. 10%? A 10% reduction in health

00:30:34.740 care just by getting people healthier? That's enormous, dollar-wise. But I'm not sure Trump is

00:30:42.160 quite the right guy for that message unless he was going to, you know, lead by doing it the way Boris

00:30:48.220 Johnson is. So, I'm sorry, weight loss is the most boring political question, but that's my point.

00:30:53.620 It's the most important, and it's the most directly beneficial to people's lives. A plus Boris Johnson.

00:31:00.460 All right. It seems like we're going to be treated to a constant drip of stories about sports teams and

00:31:09.920 whether or not they all kneeled. Is there anything you're less interested in lately? Do you remember

00:31:16.340 when that was first a story? Oh, these athletes, some of them are kneeling. Kaepernick, he's

00:31:22.220 disrespecting our flag and all that. But now when they're all kneeling, or close to all, and it's

00:31:29.220 all the teams, it just lost all of its everything, didn't it? It doesn't have any shock value. It just

00:31:36.700 looks sort of weak and pathetic, which has nothing to do, by the way, with the cause. So, 0.97

00:31:44.540 when I say it looks weak and pathetic, it has nothing to do with the cause. It has only to do 0.98

00:31:50.160 with the way they're doing it. There's a news story that doesn't deserve to be a news story that

00:31:56.860 Joe Biden turned down Fox News' Chris Wallace for an interview. Now, as you know, Chris Wallace did

00:32:03.920 interview President Trump and, you know, gave him a pretty tough interview. One would imagine that

00:32:08.980 Chris Wallace would be a tough interview with Joe Biden, and so they turned it down. But is the news

00:32:15.740 that Chris Wallace was turned down for an interview, is that the news? Isn't the news that just Biden

00:32:21.840 doesn't talk to anybody? I don't think it has anything to do with Chris Wallace. Is there anybody

00:32:27.320 on the Fox News network who could get Biden to come on the air and answer questions? There's

00:32:33.100 nobody who could do that. It has nothing to do with Chris Wallace. But it turned into a Chris Wallace

00:32:37.700 story, I don't know, because it makes it look worse for Biden or something. But I don't know how it

00:32:44.320 could look any worse than I'm not going to have a debate and I'm not going to answer questions.

00:32:47.520 I should tell you everything you need to know there. Oh, I keep forgetting to talk about President

00:32:54.600 Trump's latest name for the coronavirus. So he's calling it the China virus now. You recall that

00:33:03.620 when he was calling it the Chinese virus, people were saying a racist, you racist, don't call it 0.89

00:33:09.340 Chinese because then Chinese Americans will be mocked for it, even though they have nothing 1.00

00:33:17.500 to do with it. And indeed, that looks like that actually was happening, which is tragic. But

00:33:23.360 now he's gone from Chinese virus to China virus. And it's very clever because you think there's 0.92

00:33:31.300 something wrong with it still, but there isn't. When he said Chinese, you could say to yourself,

00:33:38.120 wait a minute, Chinese would refer to maybe it came from China, but it also, the word refers

00:33:44.400 to the people. And we're not really talking about the people. We should be talking about the

00:33:48.340 government or the place. And, but when he changes it to China, that is unambiguously about the place.

00:33:57.200 You could, you could argue it's also about the government, but what it definitely isn't is about

00:34:02.640 the people. So that's an upgrade. But what's clever about the upgrade is because China and Chinese are 1.00

00:34:10.340 close enough in your mind, it still feels inappropriate, but it isn't because now it's

00:34:17.580 just a description of where it came from, just like other flus that are named after the place

00:34:22.680 that they came from. So I love the fact that he took something that really wasn't the right way to

00:34:28.500 go about it. Chinese, it just wasn't the right word, but he fixed it. He tweaked it. He tweaked it to

00:34:34.540 China. And now people are going to be just as angry about it, but they don't have a reason because 1.00

00:34:39.180 China is a different word. All right.

00:34:46.860 The best thing that could happen for Trump's reelection

00:34:50.000 chances are for other countries to have bad infections that pop back up. And it feels guaranteed,

00:35:00.200 doesn't it? Isn't it sort of guaranteed that other countries are going to have flare-ups,

00:35:05.360 even the ones that are doing well? I feel like it's guaranteed. And it should be guaranteed just

00:35:10.460 because the world still has travel. So no matter how good your little country of Estonia does,

00:35:18.120 if you're surrounded by people that have, well, let's say even one of those countries still have it,

00:35:24.480 well, you're going to get it back. And if you get it back, isn't it going to flare again before you can

00:35:29.640 get on top of it? So probably the biggest factor in Trump's reelection will be coronavirus and how

00:35:38.980 people feel he did with it. And that will be almost entirely based on what other countries do.

00:35:45.340 Because if he looks like he's just in the middle of the pack and other countries are having problems

00:35:50.680 then, then you're going to have to say to yourself, it looks like leadership didn't matter.

00:35:55.800 It will actually look like leadership didn't matter. Because you'll see all these different

00:36:01.420 leaders who did different things, and none of them had a great result. And some that did,

00:36:06.860 you don't know why. Here's what's confusing about all this. These are the candidates for why some

00:36:15.220 countries may or may not have had better results. And look at how many factors there are.

00:36:20.680 There's better mask compliance. Now, experts will argue whether that even makes any difference.

00:36:27.260 I'm on the side of saying it obviously does. Social distancing, that has a little to do with

00:36:33.940 lifestyle. But are some countries better at it? What's your vitamin D levels? How much diabetes do

00:36:41.940 you have in the country, which gets to age and demographics? The hydroxychloroquine use,

00:36:47.660 does it matter? Don't know yet. It's still uncertain. Tuberculosis shots, that's another

00:36:53.700 factor. Apparently, there's some correlation. If you've had tuberculosis shots, you have more

00:36:59.340 immunity, I think. And then there's some news today about there's some genetic variant that

00:37:06.320 some people have that might make them far more susceptible. So look at all these things that are

00:37:12.320 big, big variables. And we don't know how important any of them are. Listen to these again and realize

00:37:20.260 that we don't know anything about any of them. And they're the biggest variables. We don't know if

00:37:27.180 the masks make a big difference, a little difference. People are still arguing. I have my opinion, but

00:37:32.640 people are arguing. Social distancing? I don't know. Can you really tell that another country did it

00:37:38.040 better? How do you compare? It's hard to compare. How much is enough? How much is too much? Vitamin D?

00:37:45.320 I don't know. Diabetes? Looks like 40 or 50 percent of the people. I think 50 percent of the people

00:37:51.200 under a certain age are dying with diabetes as a comorbidity. Comorbidity. When we look at the

00:37:59.980 experience of other countries, are we seeing other countries with the same race of diabetes,

00:38:04.560 the same demographics? No. Same hydroxychloroquine use? No. Tuberculosis shots? No. Genetic variants?

00:38:13.120 I don't know. Are they different in different groups? So we will never know if Trump did a good

00:38:20.580 job or a bad job, in all likelihood. We'll probably never know. So if we never know if he's doing a good

00:38:28.560 job or a bad job, because there are just too many variables to know which ones matter, then you've got

00:38:33.580 the therapeutics and you've got the vaccines maybe or maybe not coming online. I would say that we'll

00:38:41.100 have enough room for everybody to have their own opinion. But the one thing that's the most solid

00:38:48.540 argument for Trump, if it happens, is that other countries got into trouble and we're just somewhere

00:38:55.040 in the middle of the pack. If it turns out that we're just somewhere in the middle, I think you just

00:39:00.820 have to say leadership didn't make a difference. Because we don't know what to lead to. Leadership

00:39:07.060 makes a difference if you know where you're going and it's the right thing and hindsight says, yeah,

00:39:11.340 that was the right thing. But if you don't know what the right thing to do is, leadership almost doesn't

00:39:17.960 matter. You just have to try things and adjust. And that's what everybody's doing. All right.

00:39:23.920 That is about all I have to say for today. Somebody says it's not about the leadership,

00:39:33.240 it's about the systems in place and the ability to prioritize. Maybe so. Certainly the fact that we

00:39:40.540 have, you know, states' rights puts us in a different category from some small country where

00:39:46.180 they can just say, hey, everybody do this. Whereas in the United States, it's 50 different entities

00:39:51.040 saying do this or that. All right. I'm just looking at your comments. All right. Did I speak about

00:40:07.820 China in Houston? Yeah, I talked, not today, but I have talked about the consulate being closed.

00:40:13.280 And there'll be a lot more of that, I think. Remember, no straws after surgery. What?

00:40:24.860 Oh, so just to warn you. So my surgery is on the 29th, a few days. I probably might miss a

00:40:35.840 periscope, but I'll tweet at you and let you know. Oh, yeah. So the Nadler video. So Nadler was

00:40:42.200 found on the park bench by, I don't know, Hogan, Hogan, Rogan Handley. And they asked him about the

00:40:52.340 violence and he thought that there was no violence. It's just protests. Now, do you think he actually

00:40:58.180 believes that? And what are the chances that Jerry Nadler is going to survive coronavirus?

00:41:04.820 If Jerry Nadler got the coronavirus, he's kind of dead, isn't he? I mean, I don't mean to be unkind,

00:41:12.520 but he would be sort of the poster child of people who are not going to make it through

00:41:16.400 coronavirus. So if I were him, I don't know how he, I mean, he's pretty brave to come to work at all.

00:41:21.860 I think he's coming to work and wearing his mask on his forehead. I saw a picture.

00:41:26.320 That's pretty brave because he's definitely in the death zone there, the kill box. So we'll give him that.

00:41:32.580 Thank you for the good wishes and I will talk to you. Hogan Gidley. Thank you. Hogan Gidley is the name

00:41:42.240 that I messed up. Sorry, Hogan.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 27, 2020

Episode 1072 Scott Adams： Secret Police HOAX, Coronavirus Mysteries and Intrigue, Boris Johnson's Fatness

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript