Real Coffee with Scott Adams - July 30, 2020


Episode 1076 Scott Adams： Trump is Medically Correct and CNN Might Be Killing Tens-of-Thousands


Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

144.6229

Word count

1,798

Sentence count

138

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Trump's opinion on hydroxychloroquine and the mainstream media's position on it are very similar. Here's how CNN and the anti-Trump folks are playing a trick on the public to make it seem like Trump is an idiot.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 All right, this is a special Periscope on one topic.
00:00:08.320 I'm going to be talking about President Trump's opinion on hydroxychloroquine versus the mainstream media.
00:00:16.860 And I'll use CNN as my stand-in for the mainstream media.
00:00:21.080 And I want to show you the trick that is being played on the public.
00:00:24.780 So there's a persuasion trick that CNN and the anti-Trump folks are doing.
00:00:31.140 And I just want to unravel the trick so you can watch it in real time.
00:00:36.440 And here's the setup.
00:00:41.560 So the idea that Dr. Zelenko, I think, was the first to come up with
00:00:47.440 is that the treatment with these three medicines in combination
00:00:52.500 might work for coronavirus and COVID.
00:00:58.600 Now, the first thing you need to know is that the whole point of it
00:01:02.900 is that the hydroxychloroquine is delivering the zinc.
00:01:07.480 And if you don't have the zinc, nothing's getting delivered.
00:01:10.980 So maybe nothing happens.
00:01:12.540 The azithromycin may be important or not.
00:01:17.560 It's not clear.
00:01:18.300 But let's look at what the doctors think versus what Trump thinks
00:01:24.720 and compare it to what CNN thinks.
00:01:27.700 I would guess that maybe 50,000 doctors around the world
00:01:32.600 are actually using it on themselves or they're prescribing it.
00:01:37.700 First of all, would you agree that that's probably somewhere in the neighborhood,
00:01:42.320 50,000 doctors, if you look at the entire world?
00:01:45.300 Now, I base that on the fact that I have personally talked to several doctors
00:01:51.160 who say that 95% of all the other doctors they know
00:01:55.500 are using it prophylactically or prescribing it.
00:02:01.720 So would you agree that there's some tens of thousands?
00:02:05.680 I'm just going to use 50,000 just to make the case.
00:02:08.640 It might be 100,000.
00:02:09.900 It might be 10,000.
00:02:11.300 But it won't change it too much, right?
00:02:12.720 The point is there's a whole bunch of doctors who say some version of this.
00:02:17.480 It might work.
00:02:19.180 They don't say it does work.
00:02:20.680 They say it might work.
00:02:22.440 It's very safe.
00:02:24.660 And it's cheap.
00:02:26.960 Now, who does that sound like?
00:02:29.220 That sounds like Trump.
00:02:31.220 That's exactly what Trump says.
00:02:33.100 Trump says it might work.
00:02:35.060 I don't think Trump has ever said this works.
00:02:38.260 Correct me on that if you can find something that looks like he said it does work.
00:02:46.760 But I think that Trump is exactly compatible with 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 doctors.
00:02:55.060 Now, what does CNN say about this?
00:02:57.160 They say it's dangerous, it doesn't work, and the trials prove it is ineffective.
00:03:06.200 And then they tell you that Trump is being unscientific and not listening to the experts.
00:03:14.520 That's the exact opposite of what's happening.
00:03:17.980 The experts are the doctors.
00:03:20.200 The experts that CNN looks to are virologists and scientists and researchers and people who do studies.
00:03:29.200 That's a different kind of expert.
00:03:31.580 Now, it is true that they're much less happy about hydroxychloroquine.
00:03:38.180 That's true, and we'll get into that in a minute.
00:03:39.620 But it is completely true that Trump's opinion on hydroxychloroquine matches exactly most of the doctors in the United States.
00:03:51.540 Let me ask you this.
00:03:53.100 Have you ever personally talked to a doctor who wouldn't prescribe this?
00:03:59.400 Right?
00:03:59.740 Every one of you just said,
00:04:01.820 Yeah, there was that time I talked to a doctor.
00:04:04.460 No, he said he would prescribe it.
00:04:06.280 And then there was that other doctor.
00:04:07.500 Yeah, he said he would do it too.
00:04:09.620 I would be surprised if you could find one doctor in the United States who wouldn't give this a try.
00:04:17.820 If it was available and it was the right kind of patient.
00:04:21.420 So, I don't know if it's 100%, and I won't make that claim.
00:04:24.720 But it's probably 90%.
00:04:26.220 How many doctors are there in the United States?
00:04:30.000 A lot of doctors in the United States.
00:04:32.000 How many of them would say the same thing?
00:04:36.000 So, yeah, Kaiser won't.
00:04:38.060 So, if you have an organization, as opposed to a private practice, I can see that the organization wouldn't do it.
00:04:45.180 But I don't see that the doctor wouldn't do it.
00:04:47.620 And if you can find a doctor who would not prescribe this, I'd be interested in hearing their argument.
00:04:53.280 But the point is that whether the doctors are right or wrong, there are probably at least 50,000 of them in the world who have exactly the same opinion as Trump does.
00:05:04.000 Here is the trick, or tricks, that CNN uses.
00:05:10.120 So, when they talk about it to try to make it sound like Trump is an idiot and he's giving the wrong advice, the first thing they do is misdirection.
00:05:19.160 So, they'll say, there were studies, but they were the wrong kind.
00:05:25.120 There were studies of people who were already near death, and they overdosed them with a dose that's, you know, way out of the normal range.
00:05:33.120 And sure enough, some of them were worse off, and none of them got any benefit that they could measure.
00:05:38.520 So, this is the first trick.
00:05:40.840 If you say, hey, I think it might work, might work, don't know, they'll misdirect you to the studies that show that it's dangerous, but they're the wrong studies.
00:05:50.540 The whole point of this is to get it early, not to get it near death, because the disease has two stages.
00:05:57.660 One is the infection part, which the hydroxychloroquine with the zinc might help with.
00:06:04.440 And then the second part is when your immune system goes crazy, and I don't know if anybody thinks it would help on that.
00:06:11.160 Second trick they use is weasel words.
00:06:13.160 I just saw this one today.
00:06:15.560 There is no evidence it works.
00:06:18.500 What's that mean?
00:06:19.800 There's no evidence it works?
00:06:21.820 What did the 50,000 doctors look at to decide it might be worth trying?
00:06:28.400 Did they look at no evidence, and then they said, well, there's no evidence, so I think I'll give it a try?
00:06:35.380 Probably not, because they all have access to the internet.
00:06:38.560 They probably at least Googled it, don't you think?
00:06:42.700 Do you think there's any doctor who didn't Google this when this became a thing?
00:06:46.260 They probably Googled it.
00:06:48.060 It probably popped up a whole bunch of studies that are not the gold standard kind.
00:06:53.360 They indicated that there was a mechanism that makes sense.
00:06:56.740 In other words, there's a cellular biological reason that this should work or could work.
00:07:02.980 I'll say could, not should.
00:07:04.960 So that's evidence, right?
00:07:07.100 And there are lots of studies that seem to indicate, but they're not quite as solid as they could be.
00:07:12.160 It's kind of evidence-y.
00:07:13.460 But they say there's no evidence.
00:07:16.960 But what they're doing is the misdirection.
00:07:19.180 They're saying that these studies that are the wrong studies provided no evidence.
00:07:24.520 The other thing they do is the missing zinc.
00:07:28.680 They'll say, well, here's some studies of people who got it early for prevention.
00:07:34.020 Didn't help a bit.
00:07:35.660 And they'll leave out the zinc, the active ingredient.
00:07:38.700 So, here's the part that's blowing my mind.
00:07:46.020 If we go back to the first whiteboard, and we see that the president is making sort of a judgment that's similar to doctors,
00:07:55.700 which is a risk management decision, not a medical decision.
00:07:59.620 And when CNN tries to couch it as a medical decision, they're just lying to you, because it's not that.
00:08:07.920 It's a medical realm, but it's a risk management decision.
00:08:12.400 And Trump, being a business person, sees risk management, apparently, similar to doctors who have to manage risk of this type all the time.
00:08:21.840 It's their main job.
00:08:22.620 So, these guys are completely compatible, and CNN isn't.
00:08:27.440 But here's the thing.
00:08:29.380 Suppose it works.
00:08:32.080 Suppose it works.
00:08:33.780 Or let's go the other way.
00:08:35.340 Let's say, suppose it doesn't work.
00:08:37.440 If it doesn't work, then nobody is really harmed.
00:08:42.180 People paid $20 for these cheap pills.
00:08:45.120 It didn't work.
00:08:47.160 You haven't lost much, right?
00:08:48.780 So, Trump has picked a risk management decision, similar to doctors, that says, worst case scenario, you're out $20.
00:08:58.780 Best case scenario, it saves you life.
00:09:01.220 It's a pretty easy decision, right?
00:09:02.720 If I said, you might die, but if you spend $20, you have a much better chance of living.
00:09:10.640 So, you spend your $20.
00:09:11.980 Do you feel bad about it?
00:09:13.060 No.
00:09:13.800 Nobody gets hurt.
00:09:15.360 But what about the other way?
00:09:17.520 What if it works?
00:09:19.720 What if the graphs that I don't trust, to be accurate, are showing that the countries using hydroxychloroquine the most, presumably with zinc, I don't know, seems to show that they're getting better results.
00:09:32.940 What if they're right?
00:09:34.020 Now, I don't trust any of that data, so I'm not on the team that says hydroxychloroquine and zinc work.
00:09:41.200 I'm on the team that says it might.
00:09:43.920 It might.
00:09:44.420 And if it does work, CNN would be, and let's say the mainstream media, but CNN more than most of them, I think, would have directly caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
00:09:59.900 Tens of thousands of people will die if CNN is wrong.
00:10:08.160 If they're right, it's about the same as if Trump was wrong.
00:10:13.080 So they've chosen the risk management that would kill tens of thousands of innocent Americans just to screw Trump.
00:10:24.100 Think about that.
00:10:25.060 They have actually chosen consciously a decision that they're selling as Trump being incompatible with the science, when in fact he's 100% compatible with doctors, most of them.
00:10:39.820 They've sold that as the opposite, when in fact CNN is the one who's opposite of the doctors, completely opposite.
00:10:47.900 And they have made a decision that if they're right, nobody benefits.
00:10:54.120 But if they're wrong, they've killed tens of thousands of Americans.
00:11:00.800 Think about that.
00:11:01.540 And that's a choice that they made consciously.
00:11:04.540 That's not something that, you know, I made up out of nothing.
00:11:08.980 That's a conscious decision.
00:11:11.020 So when Trump calls CNN and the fake news the enemy of the people, the enemy of the people may have just killed 10,000 Americans.
00:11:21.660 Maybe.
00:11:22.760 Just depends if it works or not.
00:11:24.540 So the point is not that they did or did not kill thousands of Americans. 0.53
00:11:29.620 The point is they made a decision which could only have that impact or not at all.
00:11:35.800 Only two choices.
00:11:37.260 No impact or kills tens of thousands of people.
00:11:41.260 Trump and the doctors chose the opposite.
00:11:44.520 Either nothing happens or we save tens of thousands of lives.
00:11:47.240 To imagine that these are somehow similar opinions of equal, let's say, credibility and of equal philosophical value, if you will, is crazy.
00:12:02.600 It's just crazy.
00:12:04.380 So watching the fake news sell a version of reality that a lot of people are buying into.
00:12:12.100 Basically, everybody I know who watches CNN, they kind of believe this version of reality.
00:12:18.300 And it's really, really dangerous.
00:12:20.340 So I just wanted to do a single topic periscope on that.
00:12:24.900 And that's all.