Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1159 Scott Adams： I Teach You How to Evaluate Trump’s Coronavirus Performance, Masks, Biden Laptops, Herd Immunity

00:00:00.000 Oh, wow. Are you lucky? You are lucky today. Come on in here, everybody. Let me tell you

00:00:18.040 how lucky you are. Some days you wake up and you say to yourself, I don't know, I'm not

00:00:23.620 feeling lucky today. And other days you wake up thinking, I think something good is going

00:00:28.580 to happen today. Well, today is your lucky day. You know why? Because you're here. You

00:00:35.880 just started off the day with the best possible way. You could not have beaten the way you

00:00:42.400 started today. Absolutely nailed it. So good for you. And all you need to maximize your

00:00:48.640 experience, some of you probably know, but it doesn't take much. All you need is a cup

00:00:54.720 or mugger glass, a tank or chalice or a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill

00:00:59.620 it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure

00:01:05.800 of the dopamine here of the day, the thing that makes everything better, except the coronavirus.

00:01:12.000 It's called the Simultaneous Sip. It happens now. Go.

00:01:14.340 Oh, I was wrong. I was wrong. It made the coronavirus better, too. Just when you think

00:01:25.380 there's something coffee can't do, it can do it. So a lot of you heard the news that there's

00:01:35.200 yet another laptop that's been discovered belonging to allegedly an associate of Hunter Biden.

00:01:42.560 One. This one's in the Ukraine. So I believe the count is now four laptops. Three of them were

00:01:50.540 left at a repair shop. And one of them was left in Ukraine. And when I saw that story, I started

00:01:58.320 thinking, I wonder where else there are laptops. Because I didn't even know that was a thing. I

00:02:04.720 haven't really ever, I don't think I've ever forgotten a laptop anywhere. But I thought, what if I have

00:02:11.420 one? So I started looking through my house to see if I have any Hunter Biden laptops? And I do.

00:02:19.580 I found one. So there's at least five Hunter Biden laptops. I've got one in my house.

00:02:26.860 It was in the garage. It was behind some rags. I don't know what it was there. I'm not sure why it

00:02:33.680 was there. But I'll be checking it later for emails. You should check your house too. Because

00:02:40.480 there are Hunter Biden related laptops freaking everywhere. Check behind the couch. If you've

00:02:49.060 got cushions, look under the cushions. You probably have a couple of Biden laptops. I mean, why wouldn't

00:02:55.020 you? So I see the news today that Biden was double masking at church. So he had two masks

00:03:05.580 on. He had a white mask below a darker colored mask. And I'm thinking, that's a good start.

00:03:14.220 That is a good start. But two masks? Could you really be safe with just two masks? Because I'm

00:03:23.120 thinking, you know, I value my life. I'm thinking three to five masks would be safe enough to go to

00:03:33.780 church. Now, considering he was also in church, so there was that extra risk of some religion getting

00:03:39.760 in through the mouth area. Satan, for example. Maybe when Biden went to church with his double

00:03:47.880 masking, he was thinking one mask for the coronavirus, one mask to keep Satan out of his 0.98

00:03:53.540 mouth hole. Because that could be a problem, couldn't it? So I'm thinking I might triple, maybe 0.96

00:04:01.260 quadruple mask. Just cover all bases. I've got a tip for you on how to accept bribes when you become

00:04:11.540 a senator. Now, nothing about what I'm about to say is to suggest that Joe Biden has taken bribes

00:04:20.400 from anybody. I have no data, no information that would suggest that. All right, so let's start with

00:04:27.520 no information to suggest he did anything illegal. Swampy, perhaps. But illegal? I don't know of

00:04:37.600 anything. But hypothetically, let's just say that you were just elected to Congress. Let's say you're a

00:04:46.500 senator. Let's say you thought that you would like to accept some bribes, but you don't want to get

00:04:52.060 caught. What would be the way to do that? Would you just say, hey, why don't you give me a check? I'll put

00:04:59.760 that check in my bank. That'll be safe enough. No, you would not do that, because that would create a paper

00:05:06.460 trail, a digital trail, and you would not want anybody bribing you in any way that could be

00:05:11.600 discovered later in any easy way. So one thing you might do, and there are lots of ways to do this,

00:05:19.200 but I'm just going to throw out one suggestion. One thing you could do is buy a fixer-up mansion.

00:05:26.980 Something that you could just sort of barely afford, but you definitely couldn't afford to fix it up.

00:05:33.080 You might be able to afford to buy it, but you don't have enough money to fix up a mansion.

00:05:42.060 So suppose you had subcontractors coming in there, and they're working on your mansion.

00:05:47.360 They're fixing it up. Is there any paper trail about who paid them in cash? Let's say they were

00:05:54.880 paid in cash. Have you ever heard of a subcontractor who was willing to accept cash

00:06:01.940 as opposed to checks? Yes, you have. It's called every subcontractor. I'm sure there's some

00:06:10.060 subcontractor in the world somewhere who will take a check. But if you offer them cash, if you make it

00:06:17.560 an option, most subcontractors would say a cash check, it's all the same. Sure, I'll take the cash.

00:06:27.220 I don't mind that. And they may or may not declare those earnings on their taxes because if it's cash,

00:06:34.560 it's hard to track. So imagine if you will, some rich person who wants to bribe you is not bribing

00:06:43.020 you directly, but maybe they're giving you the cash that you give to your contractors.

00:06:49.680 And how would that be discoverable? How in the world would anybody know anything was wrong?

00:06:56.780 The contractors would be getting cash, but they would be getting it from the homeowner.

00:07:01.320 The homeowner would just give them cash. If that cash came from someplace illicit,

00:07:07.600 some contractor doesn't care. All they know is they got paid. And it's not the homeowner's fault

00:07:13.000 if the subcontractor doesn't pay their taxes. It's not your responsibility to make your

00:07:19.500 subcontractor pay the taxes. Somebody says a 1099. Well, there's no 1099 if you pay cash.

00:07:27.660 And if your subcontractor just wants to stay under the radar. Now that would not be legal. And I'm not

00:07:34.380 suggesting that anybody in this story actually did that. I'm just saying that if you wanted the perfect

00:07:40.560 set up to accept bribes without it ever being evaluated or without it ever being discovered,

00:07:48.300 it would be a really good strategy to buy a fixer-upper mansion. Just saying.

00:07:58.060 Here's an opinion about... I'm going to make you smarter today. So I'm going to give you a...

00:08:05.060 somebody says a 10k IRS form. No, there is no tax form. There's no tax form that is going to show

00:08:14.960 whether a subcontractor got paid cash. That's not a thing. I'm looking at your comments. You think that

00:08:21.520 they could find that out, but they could not. They could not. At least not without a lot of work.

00:08:27.980 So here's a little piece of knowledge to make you smarter than all the people you know when they

00:08:37.400 talk about coronavirus. You know about herd immunity. You know that the experts say that

00:08:43.700 you probably need something like 60-70% of people to be infected before you can have a good herd

00:08:51.940 immunity. But I heard a modification to that that's really important, which is it depends on

00:08:58.820 the season. So for example, there's evidence from Adam Kucharski on Twitter. You can see me

00:09:07.620 retweeting him in my Twitter feed. And he's a mathematician and epidemiologist. And he's written

00:09:14.360 a book, The Rules of Contagion. So it's somebody who knows how to do math, knows epidemics,

00:09:20.320 and he informs us this. That if you looked at the regular influenza, the ordinary seasonal flu,

00:09:28.980 he did some serology data study, and he found that 40-50% of younger people get infected each year.

00:09:39.620 So they might not have symptoms. They might not know they were infected. But up to half of younger

00:09:44.880 people get infected with influenza each year. One assumes that's from school. And 15-20% of older

00:09:52.400 groups. Now, the influenza seems to come and then go each year. It doesn't completely disappear as I

00:10:00.020 understand it, but it becomes a non-issue in subsequent years. And I looked at that and I said,

00:10:05.620 that doesn't make sense. Because if only 10-20% of older people, and most citizens are older than

00:10:13.940 kids, if only 15-20% of them is enough for herd immunity, that doesn't make sense. Because shouldn't

00:10:22.480 it be closer to 60% or something like that? And as Adam informed me, and I hadn't really made this

00:10:30.540 connection before, it depends on the season. If it's the winter, and you're indoors, and you're

00:10:37.000 really spreading it around a lot, then your herd immunity has to be pretty high, because your risk

00:10:44.260 of infection is also so high. So you need a little extra herd immunity if people are going to be

00:10:50.040 indoors. But if it's the summer, and they're outdoors, and they're not in this super spreaders

00:10:56.880 kind of situation, then a lower herd immunity, and it could be a lot lower, would be enough

00:11:03.420 to burn it out. So you got two factors that both have to be considered. How much does the herd

00:11:10.660 immunity need to be? And then what season is it? Because the herd immunity can be a different amount

00:11:16.340 depending on the season. Got that? That's kind of an important concept to hold in your mind. It'll

00:11:24.040 help you explain what happens as the winter approaches. And then coming into the conversation

00:11:33.640 was Andres Backhouse. I always mention him because he's got a background in economics. So he's better

00:11:42.820 at comparing things than most of us. So he's better at picking apart these claims and telling you what to

00:11:50.460 believe. And here are a couple of quick facts that Andres points out. The one thing is that you can't

00:11:59.840 look at charts that show mask mandates coming into effect, and then show that the virus still was

00:12:09.140 raging. And so people say, look, here's my chart. And you can see that the virus was going up. And here's

00:12:15.600 the day that the masks went into effect. And the virus kept going up. So therefore, masks don't

00:12:23.200 work. That's what people say on the internet. And you'll see even smart people saying that. But here's

00:12:28.960 the thing. There's no control group. So how much would the how much would the infections have gone up

00:12:37.640 without masks? Because masks tend to go into a situation where you've got a known problem. So the

00:12:45.520 first part is, was there such a problem that was out of control? That's why you put masks on in the

00:12:51.460 first place. So the correlation might be backwards. People are saying, wait, the mask didn't work because

00:12:58.680 the infections went up. Whereas maybe what's happening is infections are going up. So that's why people are

00:13:05.060 wearing masks. So you might have the correlation and causation backwards. So we don't have anything to

00:13:12.000 compare it to. And we don't know if we've got the causation right. So you you could easily over interpret

00:13:17.740 the fact that somebody introduced masks in a location, and the coronavirus continued to increase. It doesn't

00:13:27.480 mean that alone, by itself, doesn't tell you anything. And we even saw, I think, Rand Paul,

00:13:37.400 making that kind of a claim that, you know, where masks were introduced, you didn't see much of a

00:13:42.700 difference. But countering that, we have Dr. Fauci. Now, don't you think that Dr. Fauci,

00:13:51.140 you know, probably more than anybody in the planet Earth, or at least in the top 1%, is somebody who's

00:14:00.540 looked into it. You and I probably have not looked at every mask study. And you and I may not be

00:14:08.640 qualified to look at a mask study and know if it tells you something useful or it doesn't.

00:14:15.300 But Dr. Fauci has, and people he's talked to has, and other experts have. And as of yesterday,

00:14:23.060 Fauci says the meta-analysis showed that masks really do work in preventing infection.

00:14:32.740 And so Fauci says, if you look at, you know, all of the information, masks work. Now,

00:14:40.820 does that mean that masks have been tested in one of those reliable kind of tests, the kind where you

00:14:48.140 do the randomized controlled study? Well, in order for it to be controlled, you would have to have some

00:14:55.960 group that you said, hey, there's going to be a whole bunch of coronavirus in your environment,

00:15:00.360 but we don't want this group to wear masks. You can't do that study. Because you can't say to

00:15:07.680 people, you shouldn't wear masks during a coronavirus, because the expectation is that

00:15:14.360 they probably work. So given that there's such a strong feeling among experts, who could be wrong?

00:15:21.360 They could be wrong, right? It's possible. But they have a strong feeling that the masks work.

00:15:26.720 And under that condition, you can't do a controlled test, because you can't ask anybody in a coronavirus

00:15:32.040 environment to not wear them. It just can't be done. So the meta-analyses have to do with other

00:15:40.300 viruses or other bacteria or other kinds of infections. So you might say to yourself, wait a

00:15:47.140 minute, those other things are not like this thing. This coronavirus is not the same size as other

00:15:54.240 things. It's not a case of protecting the person with the mask. It's more about protecting the other

00:16:00.280 people. It has a higher R value, meaning it's more infectious. Does that make a difference? Probably.

00:16:09.700 But there you have it. Dr. Fauci, who has looked at the data, says, and somewhat unambiguously,

00:16:17.020 he says this. He's not really hedging it too much at all, really. He's not hedging it at all,

00:16:22.180 I'd say. He's saying, mass work. Is he right? We'll see. We'll see. All right.

00:16:31.500 We'll get back to this coronavirus stuff. I got some more fun stuff to talk about.

00:16:38.680 I was watching a movie last night. And every now and then, I say to myself, you know,

00:16:45.100 I'm going to try watching a movie again. Because some of you might know, I bailed out on watching

00:16:51.400 movies because they're so bad. First of all, they take too long and they're all hackneyed and it's

00:16:58.780 the same movie, just rewritten over and over. There's always a car chase. There's somebody

00:17:04.100 killing a lot of bad guys. There's somebody tied to a chair. You know, they're just all boring and

00:17:10.380 predictable. So I watched this movie with Jessica Chastain. I forget the title of it. You certainly

00:17:17.480 don't need to watch it. And she was some kind of a super spy who, you know, everybody was trying to 1.00

00:17:24.760 kill her. And so it was one of these action movies in which the hero, in this case, played by Jessica

00:17:31.020 Chastain, kills lots and lots of bad guys from the beginning to the end. It's just death count,

00:17:38.820 death count, death count. And I'm watching it and I'm thinking to myself, okay, I don't, you know,

00:17:44.240 I get that there are far more female heroes in action movies and maybe the market wants that. 1.00

00:17:50.000 I don't know. I'm no expert. But I thought to myself, in what situation, in what other situation

00:17:57.380 do you get one person from one demographic group, in this case a woman, who can slay unlimited numbers

00:18:06.400 of people from another demographic group, in this case men, and that's okay? And you can make a movie 0.92

00:18:13.740 about that. What other situation could you do that? Has there ever been a movie in which a male hero

00:18:21.220 violently dispatches dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of female characters? No, you're not going to see

00:18:31.340 that movie. How about a movie where there's a white star, an action star, who is only killing 0.93

00:18:39.700 people of a different ethnicity? Well, you used to see those movies when I was a kid, right? It was

00:18:46.240 either like a, you know, a war movie from World War II, where the only people dying were the Japanese

00:18:52.520 characters in the movies, etc. But you don't see those in 2020. You don't really see a person from one

00:19:00.980 group exclusively killing people from another group, because that's no longer politically correct.

00:19:08.200 It would just send some kind of a, some kind of a message. Yeah, even the Rambo movies are now

00:19:14.620 quite aged. I don't think you'd see a Rambo movie where only one kind of person gets killed by another

00:19:21.320 kind of person. And so I ask you this, what is the impact on our youth of watching a female 1.00

00:19:30.980 character killing unlimited male characters, but never the reverse? You never see it the other

00:19:37.120 way. You can certainly see male characters killing unlimited other male characters. You'd accept that.

00:19:45.240 I feel like it's devaluing men, and sufficiently so, that we probably ought to ban those movies.

00:19:54.780 I think if we've gone so far, and we've gone pretty far with this political correctness,

00:20:00.960 you either have to make everything okay, and say, all right, anybody can kill anybody. It's just a movie.

00:20:07.000 Don't take it too seriously. Or you have to say, I don't think the one thing we can not only allow,

00:20:14.560 but feature? In fact, find me an action movie that does not include a female lead character killing

00:20:22.840 hundreds of males. That's the basic movie right now, right? Birds of prey, female characters killing 0.99

00:20:30.820 male characters. That's it. That's the movie. And I think you're going to see a lot more of that.

00:20:39.220 I find that unacceptable. And so I will boycott any movie that has a female character who is killing 0.99

00:20:46.760 exclusively or almost exclusively male characters as entertainment, because I'm not sure that's

00:20:55.500 entertainment. All right. Somebody is countering with The Handmaiden's Tale. I feel like The Handmaiden's

00:21:05.240 Tale is from the perspective of the victim. If the movies I was talking about were very sympathetic

00:21:13.140 to all the hundreds of henchmen who got killed, it's like, let's do a movie from the perspective

00:21:20.380 of all of the bad guys who got killed. That's what The Handmaiden's Tale is. That's from the

00:21:27.600 perspective of the victim. See? That's more of the same. It's not the counter example. That's more of

00:21:34.260 the same. All right. Let's talk about the polls. And let's talk about who's going to win. Do you want

00:21:41.740 some optimism about Trump winning the election? I got some. You ready for some optimism? I told you

00:21:48.920 this was going to be the best part of the day. It's going to be incredible. All right. So first of all,

00:21:54.280 the major polls and the polling average would show that Trump is not only behind, but behind by

00:22:00.880 fairly large numbers. But we know from 2016 that the polls in general, not every poll,

00:22:09.200 all right, we still, we love our Rasmussen's and, you know, Zogby's and a few others, Trafalgar.

00:22:18.020 But the polls in general appear to be, I feel like I can say this as just a fact, they appear to be

00:22:26.100 illegitimate. Can I say that as just a fact that is so well established that I don't need to defend it

00:22:34.380 with any reasons anymore? Have we reached that point where everybody's like, yeah, those are fake?

00:22:39.840 I think we have. And I think we would also expect that the fake polls would close in the final week,

00:22:46.860 so that they don't, they don't lose all of their credibility. Oh, it's something happened the final

00:22:52.920 week, and the polls closed. How about that? But I would think that Joe Biden's success with

00:23:01.860 fundraising recently, because he's, he's raising massive amounts of money, has a lot to do with

00:23:08.060 the polls. Because people like to give money to winning causes. They don't like to give money to

00:23:13.840 something that looks like it's going to lose. So as, as Biden's poll numbers look better,

00:23:19.480 he's raking in big numbers, not a big surprise. But besides the polls, are we seeing anything that

00:23:27.400 would suggest that maybe Trump has a better chance than the polls are indicating? And yes,

00:23:33.420 we are. And it turns out that just about everything that isn't those illegitimate polls

00:23:38.420 looks pro-Trump. Almost everything. Let me give you an example.

00:23:46.120 So first of all, there's a pollster, Patrick Basham, who, no relation, who has indicated that there are

00:23:56.760 something like four or five percent shy Trump supporters. So according to this one researcher

00:24:02.880 slash pollster, they are absolutely there. And it's not just because some rural people are hard to poll,

00:24:10.620 but that there is an absolute, no doubt about it, shy Trump supporter. And it's going to come out

00:24:17.560 on election day, similar to 2016. Now, apparently, there's also the internal polls don't show what the

00:24:25.420 external polls show. And the reason that Obama, I think Obama is going to Pennsylvania to help out

00:24:33.360 Biden. You don't send Obama to Pennsylvania if the polls that say Pennsylvania is going to go to Biden

00:24:40.660 are accurate. That is an indication by the Biden people that they don't believe the polls either.

00:24:47.660 So they're sending Obama there to nail down a state that, in theory and on paper, Biden's already

00:24:55.680 got in the bag. So that should tell you something. Also, the Trafalgar group, I think this is recent

00:25:03.780 enough, has Trump ahead in the battleground states. So it doesn't really matter what the national polls

00:25:09.760 say. The battleground states are enough. And so in at least five battleground states,

00:25:14.760 Trump is ahead, according to the Trafalgar group, who has done better in the past than other

00:25:21.460 pollsters. So you look at the ones who are the closest in 2016, and say, how are they? And once

00:25:28.800 again, the ones that have the best results in 2016 are looking really good for Trump. Surprise.

00:25:35.380 And we're also seeing polls that Trump is earning a higher percentage of black and Hispanic voters

00:25:45.440 than he did in 2016. How would you like to be the Biden campaign and realize that Trump is doing way

00:25:52.840 better with black and Hispanic voters? Pretty scary. Now, apparently, Biden is doing better with 0.99

00:25:59.300 seniors. But I don't know if I believe that, because that may be also coming from the same

00:26:05.640 illegitimate polls. But I suppose I could believe it. But I don't know if I do. It's possible just

00:26:15.540 because Biden, you know, Biden's a Democrat, and Biden is promising things and scaring people

00:26:21.840 with a bunch of lies about what Trump's going to do. So maybe, maybe. But I would think getting

00:26:27.880 back the black, or gaining in the black and Hispanic voters is going to make a big deal.

00:26:35.100 And also, the, if you just look at the enthusiasm, I think the enthusiasm gap is just so obvious.

00:26:44.320 If you look at any Biden rally, it's, you know, three cars and two reporters standing in circles.

00:26:51.640 And you look at any Trump event, and it's gigantic. Apparently, the polls show that Trump,

00:26:57.420 Trump likely voters are twice as enthusiastic as other voters. So twice, two times more enthusiastic

00:27:08.020 than Trump voters. That's not even close. Twice as enthusiastic. And it's pretty obvious. I mean,

00:27:15.340 it matches your observation. Also, I think Trump was shown in one poll, maybe it's already changed,

00:27:23.460 but 56% were better off, they thought. 56%. If that was the only thing you knew, that would pretty much

00:27:33.580 determine what's going to happen. And apparently, Trump's approval rating is high enough, even with

00:27:40.840 coronavirus and everything else, his approval rating is high enough that it actually predicts

00:27:45.940 re-election. So we don't know, but we shall see. Here's a, we'll talk about Trump and coronavirus in

00:27:54.200 a minute, but here's something I'm feeling, but I can't measure it. So tell me if you're feeling this

00:28:03.500 too. The thing we're worried about is that the election results will not look credible to one side

00:28:10.480 or the other, maybe both. And that could cause some kind of civil unrest leading to a breakdown of

00:28:17.220 civilization or something. I'm feeling the opposite, and I'm feeling it strongly. Now, anecdotally,

00:28:25.260 we're seeing lots of individual threats against, you know, we're going to hunt you down, you Trump

00:28:30.600 supporters. We're seeing individual acts of violence on the street. And a lot of Trump supporters

00:28:36.660 are thinking, if Trump loses, or even if he wins, and it's a contested election, are we going to be

00:28:44.500 hunted down? Because it's feeling like that? And I'm going to tell you, it's starting to feel the

00:28:51.380 opposite. And here's why. The very act of having an election, and the act of voting, and the act of

00:29:01.320 getting, let's say, getting dirty, in analyzing the election, and really looking at the data and

00:29:07.820 trying to understand what the candidates are proposing, looking at their policies, watching

00:29:13.340 the debates, all of this stuff that is really super concentrated in the last month has an effect

00:29:21.320 on us. And it has an effect of reintroducing us to democracy. Let's call it the republic, to be

00:29:29.920 technical. But the principles of democratic government are, they've gone from something

00:29:36.160 we know exists, but are not front of mind. It's now, it's not now going completely to front of mind.

00:29:43.580 And in the world of persuasion, if you can get somebody to do a small thing, it's easier to get

00:29:50.020 them to do a slightly bigger thing. It's how cults work. They get you to do small stuff, and then they

00:29:54.960 gradually get you to do more stuff. But getting people to actually physically vote, physically

00:30:01.980 fill out a ballot, physically deliver it, physically drive to the voting area, is very self-persuasive.

00:30:11.320 Meaning that we are brainwashing ourselves back into the love of democracy, the love of the republic.

00:30:19.860 And nobody's in charge of this, right? There's nobody whose message is, love your democracy.

00:30:27.420 There's nobody who's, I mean, I guess the politicians say that sometimes, but you wouldn't identify with

00:30:32.520 anybody. We are instead re-hypnotizing ourselves to love the country and love the system, even while

00:30:40.480 we're complaining, right? Because you can complain like crazy and still love the thing you're complaining

00:30:46.140 about, such as, you know, your own family. You can complain about your family, but still love them.

00:30:52.500 And I feel like there's a thing happening. And you're going to feel it more and more right up to

00:30:59.660 election day. And that thing is people buying into the system. If we do have a record turnout for the

00:31:07.520 election, that also means we had a record number of people who bought into the system. And that

00:31:15.260 is a very stabilizing thing. Very stabilizing. And the more people you see simply participating

00:31:23.260 in a peaceful way, and those number of people are going to be, how many? Over 100 million?

00:31:31.100 How many? Can somebody in the comments tell me how many people actually are likely to vote?

00:31:36.100 100 million? Now add up all the people who have protested in 2020. All of them. Every person

00:31:43.680 who went on the street, not just violent people, I'm not talking about looters, just every single

00:31:50.620 person who went on the street, every person who's threatened a Trump supporter, every person

00:31:57.220 who did violence, if you add them all up, how many are there? 20,000? What would be the total number

00:32:07.820 of people who seem to be revolution minded? You know, actually marched? 20,000? Maybe 100,000?

00:32:16.640 But we're talking about 100 million Americans just reminded themselves that they were Americans.

00:32:23.280 And we're going to keep reminding ourselves. And we're going to remind ourselves all the way to

00:32:27.400 election day. And when this election is over, no matter which way it goes, and we fight about it,

00:32:34.880 because we will. Will it go to the Supreme Court? I'd say more likely yes than no. More likely yes than

00:32:41.920 no. But when it's all done, we will be immersed in the system. We will have participated. We will

00:32:50.800 have done our part. We will have looked at the Supreme Court and watch it do its part. It will give us

00:32:56.980 an answer that we will respect, because it won't be stupid. It's some of the smartest people in the 0.95

00:33:04.180 whole freaking country are on the Supreme Court. They're not going to be stupid. You're going to 1.00

00:33:09.560 be proud of it. You're going to be glad of it. You're going to be happy that you live in a system

00:33:13.740 that can do this. It can do this. We can do this. Meaning the system can do this. And we can do it as

00:33:21.540 well. So my feeling at the moment is that no matter which way it goes, there will be the required paid

00:33:35.480 demonstrators. But I think the people demonstrating will largely be the organized people who have an

00:33:42.660 agenda. The Marxists, anybody who's getting paid by an outside authority, some organization that's

00:33:49.980 trying to get power. But what I don't see happening is the bulk of the country, or enough of them,

00:33:57.940 rejecting our system or rejecting the results. We'll complain about it forever, no matter which

00:34:04.220 way it goes. We're going to complain forever. But we probably, and I'm going to say 99.9% chance,

00:34:12.240 we will still be the United States in a year. We will still be the strongest country that the world has

00:34:19.260 ever known. And we're not going to be beaten by the fake news. Because it's the fake news that winds

00:34:26.400 us up. It's the AI that drives the fake news and drives the social engagement. Those things are not

00:34:35.520 working on our side. But the AI wants to keep us alive. The AI doesn't want the country to be destroyed

00:34:44.360 because that gives you less AI. So the AI wants the country to live. The public wants the country to

00:34:53.900 live. The few people, the few people who don't, are going to have to deal with a country that is more

00:35:00.780 armed than it has ever been before. If you think this country can be overthrown, I will give you what

00:35:07.800 I call the ISIS analogy. ISIS looked unstoppable until their ambition got bigger. As soon as they

00:35:16.340 tried to hold property and hold land and territory, they became an easy target. You knew exactly where

00:35:22.740 they were. Oh, look, they are. This is their territory. There's their standing army. Let's blow

00:35:28.940 them up. So things that work on a small scale do not necessarily work on a big scale. So if you take all

00:35:37.660 these protesters, etc., they found this little niche, niche, niche, say it any way you like, translated into

00:35:46.280 your head to your favorite pronunciation. So they found this weird little time and place that they could have

00:35:53.900 unlimited trouble. They'd have to find a democratic location. They'd have to get enough people that, you know,

00:36:01.100 the police were sort of outnumbered. They'd need to have just the right political situation. They'd need to have

00:36:07.680 funding from the outside. They'd have to have the right organizers. They'd have to have the right weather. And they

00:36:13.560 would have to have a whole bunch of things. It has to be sort of perfect. But one thing they really, really need is that

00:36:21.240 these citizens in the area they're causing trouble are not heavily armed. And that's not true once you

00:36:28.660 get out of the middle of the city. Soon as you get into the suburbs, people are armed to the teeth. And

00:36:35.740 it's only going to take... I would be amazed if there's not a mass casualty event, let's say, working

00:36:44.020 against the protesters. Now, the fact that it hasn't happened yet tells you a lot. As someone else was

00:36:52.940 opining on social media, the fact that conservatives who are armed to the teeth, we all agree on that,

00:37:01.820 conservatives are armed. But they have, I would say that they've held back the level of violence that

00:37:09.780 they are capable of delivering. They have held back almost completely. You know, the Proud Boys

00:37:17.460 actually like to fight. That's literally part of the culture. So they sort of look for trouble. They

00:37:22.840 like fights. But they don't represent, you know, conservatives or anything like that. You know,

00:37:28.320 they have some overlap, but they certainly don't represent them. So it would take a lot,

00:37:34.980 apparently, to get conservatives mad enough to be violent in some general way. But if you move into

00:37:42.480 the suburbs, you got it. If these protests move into the suburbs, it would be like ISIS trying to 1.00

00:37:50.660 hold property. You're going to move all these people into the kill zone, and somebody's going to

00:37:56.560 do something that we don't recommend, but it's predictable, right? And once there's a

00:38:04.960 mass casualty event among the protesters, they may be less inclined to protest again. But it would

00:38:11.200 take getting to the, probably takes getting into the suburbs before that happens. But I don't see

00:38:17.320 any chance that the, that the unrest can grow to destroy the country. I think that risk is basically

00:38:24.340 zero. So there's that. Let's talk about Trump's performance on the coronavirus. Oh, by the way, I,

00:38:32.980 I'm scheduled to be on MSNBC today. So later today, which would be sometime in the Eastern time zone,

00:38:42.220 it would be between six and seven. I don't know when between then. So if you're in California,

00:38:47.480 between three and four, if you're in East Coast, six to seven on MSNBC. So that's happening.

00:38:57.400 But let's talk about whether we know Trump is doing a good job or a bad job on coronavirus. And here are

00:39:05.880 some things to make you smarter. So if you remember everything I tell you, it's an Arie Melber show on

00:39:13.580 MSNBC. Somebody's asking. Here are the things you should ask yourself if somebody tells you Trump has

00:39:23.600 botched the coronavirus. So Trump closed China travel. And I think most people say he did it soon

00:39:32.240 enough, but he didn't close it completely because a lot of Americans who needed to get back home were

00:39:38.520 there. And there's some thinking that he should have forced them into quarantine or not let them come

00:39:45.640 home, I suppose. I don't know how that works. How do you not let Americans come back home? 1.00

00:39:50.740 That's a tough one. And we didn't really have the testing resources. And there were so many of them,

00:39:56.700 apparently lots of them, that you couldn't test them all or quarantine them all. It just didn't seem

00:40:01.820 practical. But here's the question I haven't seen asked or answered. What did the experts recommend

00:40:08.600 about the, I think it's mostly American citizens who were allowed back in from China? Did Fauci and

00:40:17.220 Birx say to President Trump, yes, you should close travel from China, but make sure you close it all?

00:40:25.060 Don't let the American citizens back in? Did that happen? Do you know if that happened or it didn't 1.00

00:40:30.940 happen? Because I don't know. That feels like it's pretty important, right? Because if the experts were

00:40:37.940 not terribly concerned about the number of people who were going to get back in, then why should the

00:40:44.820 president have been concerned? If what we're asking of the president, somebody says, yes, Fauci did.

00:40:53.820 So if you have a source for that, I'd like to see it. I'd like to see anything that would suggest

00:41:01.360 Fauci said it should be closed completely versus allowing the Americans back in, 1.00

00:41:06.780 which would be a smaller number compared to total travel. So that's a question that I don't know. But

00:41:15.840 if somebody says that too many people got back in, throw it back at them and say, what did Fauci and

00:41:23.000 Birx say? Did they say not to let those people in? Some says they were quarantined. I don't believe

00:41:30.540 that's true. I don't believe that the people coming in from China were quarantined. All right. So the

00:41:38.500 number one question there is, what did Trump do that's different from what the experts told them

00:41:43.200 to do? If Fauci and Birx had told Trump, no, no, no, you have to stop everybody. If that happened,

00:41:52.380 wouldn't we know that? Because that would be the number one headline, wouldn't it? Trump doesn't do

00:41:57.500 what experts say, right? If he violated what they recommended, we would know that, wouldn't we?

00:42:05.200 And I don't know that. All right. Here's the other thing. If you think that Trump's treatment of masks

00:42:13.120 caused fewer people to use them, and therefore more deaths, here's the question you would have to ask

00:42:19.480 if you were good at comparing things. Would Obama have been better at getting conservatives to wear masks?

00:42:26.260 What do you think? Is there any evidence to suggest that a President Obama or a President Clinton,

00:42:34.840 or I'll even extend it, how about a President Mitt Romney? What tells you that any of them, Obama,

00:42:43.580 Clinton, or Romney, which of them would have done a better job at getting conservatives to wear masks,

00:42:50.680 and young people to wear masks? I think that's where the problems are. I have no reason to think any of 1.00

00:42:56.940 them would have been more successful. It hasn't been tested. And certainly, there's no common sense

00:43:02.360 that would suggest that they would be better at it. And I'm not even sure that Trump's example is really

00:43:12.200 what's driving people. It might be. I mean, you have to worry about that. But I can't imagine that a

00:43:16.880 Democrat would get Republicans to wear masks, or that the young people would say, oh, it's a Democrat

00:43:23.200 asking. I wasn't going to wear a mask to my college, you know, party, my illegal college party. But now

00:43:32.780 that I know that a Democrat has asked me, I'm going to wear that mask. Said nobody. Said no college student

00:43:38.660 ever. So I would say that the idea that Trump has not handled the mask wearing fits common sense.

00:43:48.000 In other words, as you're watching him, you're saying, surely the way you're talking about this

00:43:52.340 is suboptimal. But that's not the end of the analysis. You still have to compare him to any

00:43:58.920 other President who would have been in that situation. And you'd have to know that that other

00:44:03.400 President would have achieved greater mask wearing. Do you know that? Because I don't see that.

00:44:10.980 It is not obvious to me that some other President would have somehow achieved this magical mask

00:44:16.680 wearing thing. I think our desire to not wear masks has more to do with Americans than it does with our

00:44:24.400 President. How about this? If you took a leader from another country that you thought did a good job

00:44:32.180 with the coronavirus, let's say South Korea or New Zealand, and you just plop that leader into the 0.98

00:44:38.960 United States with all of our problems. We've got more international travel than a lot of places

00:44:44.460 coming in from different directions. We might have a less compliant populace who is more freedom-loving

00:44:50.860 than compliant. We've got states' rights that add a wrinkle. How would that other leader do in the

00:44:58.880 same situation? Well, there's no way to know. And therefore, you don't really have any knowledge

00:45:04.720 of whether Trump did better or worse than some other leader would have done with the same scenario.

00:45:12.080 How about this? How do you compare countries that have different preferences for freedom over safety?

00:45:18.780 If the United States, by, let's say, historical and cultural reasons, we tend to, we value freedom

00:45:27.560 over safety. More so than some other places, which I believe, if you did a poll, I don't know if

00:45:34.620 anybody has done that, but if you did a poll, I think you would find that some countries value

00:45:39.720 health and safety over freedom, or at least their leaders do. Because if the leaders value it,

00:45:46.720 maybe they can force it to happen. But if the United States favors more freedom

00:45:52.980 at the expense of safety, how would you compare our death rate to a country that had a different set

00:46:01.380 of priorities? How is that a fair comparison? We should only be compared to countries that have the

00:46:07.800 same, let's say, preference for freedom over safety. And who would that be? I don't know. Do you?

00:46:17.520 Because we didn't do exactly the same thing as Sweden, so that's not a good comparison.

00:46:23.100 So people who are good at comparing things know that we don't have anything to compare.

00:46:29.220 And how about this? We still don't know why one country does better than another country.

00:46:34.760 We don't. If you read experts, and I'm talking about actual experts, who are talking about,

00:46:41.900 let's say, Sweden's experience, they don't even agree. There's no expert consensus on why Sweden

00:46:50.300 is having the experience that they are. We don't even agree if it's a good experience. The experts

00:46:55.580 can't even agree if things are going well there or poorly. I mean, think about that. We don't even know

00:47:02.540 if they're doing well or poorly. And we don't know why some countries mysteriously have good effects

00:47:08.720 and others don't. We have lots of hypotheses from cultural distance things to, I think,

00:47:16.680 vitamin D might be a big part of it, age, ethnicity, maybe masks, maybe distance. Who knows?

00:47:25.920 We don't know. So if you don't know, and I think that's fair to say, I feel like that's completely

00:47:32.320 fair to say that we don't know why some country does really well and some country doesn't. And if

00:47:38.940 you don't know why some country is doing well and another one isn't, why are we attributing that

00:47:44.700 difference to the leaders? Because there's no evidence that it's the leaders that are the problem

00:47:51.780 or the solution. All right. Now, so that would be the defense of the president's performance. And

00:48:01.240 it's mostly around the fact that you really can't tell how anybody's doing. So that's the summary.

00:48:07.140 You just can't tell. The fact that we have different outcomes only tells you there are different

00:48:12.440 outcomes. The different outcomes do not tell you the quality of the leadership. It doesn't tell you

00:48:18.800 that. All right. And when you imagine it does, you're in purely irrational territory. But that

00:48:25.680 said, are there some things we can say about the president's performance that you could still

00:48:30.420 clearly say are suboptimal? And the answer is yes. Here are the things that I would put at the top of

00:48:35.980 the list. On day one, I can forgive that we didn't have good testing because apparently there was a

00:48:42.320 technical problem. We didn't know we had it. We got a late start. It's not exactly the president's fault.

00:48:48.800 It was the fault of the experts who were doing the test kits, etc. But now it's been, what,

00:48:55.420 seven months in or something? Seven months later, I heard somebody else ask this on a news show.

00:49:02.400 So I'll just borrow this thought. Why is it that seven months in, the most capable country in the

00:49:09.460 world, I'd like to think we are, maybe not. Why is it that I can't just walk down to CVS and get

00:49:16.420 myself a coronavirus test as often as I want? Ideally, I'd like to have the results, you know,

00:49:23.200 same day, 15 minutes. But are you telling me that if we put, you know, balls to the wall,

00:49:31.140 you know, War Powers Act, pull out all the stops, stop at nothing to make sure every citizen could get 0.96

00:49:40.080 tested every freaking day. Every citizen, every day. How would we look in terms of the coronavirus

00:49:47.540 if we could do that? Well, a lot better, right? It would be a lot better. Has the president done that?

00:49:54.900 No. No. And although he has done a lot, and there's a lot happening with testing, a lot of different

00:50:04.080 companies are working on it, it does feel to me, just sort of as an observer, that by now,

00:50:12.920 if our president was doing everything that, you know, hindsight tells us he should have done,

00:50:17.960 we would be a lot further along in all of us being able to get tested as much as we wanted.

00:50:24.600 I feel like that's a safe statement. So if somebody said that's a problem, I don't know if I could argue

00:50:31.000 that. I have argued in the past that contact tracing only works when you have just a few

00:50:38.680 infections, and it doesn't work if you're already massively infected, as we were by the time we had

00:50:44.840 enough tests to even think about that. So I think I would not blame the president for doing less

00:50:50.800 contact tracing, because we didn't have the ability to do it until it was sort of too late.

00:50:55.780 But we should be able to test sort of everybody by now. And if we can't do it by now, can you tell

00:51:04.440 us when we could do that? Is that sort of a late November, you're going to be able to go into any

00:51:09.820 Walgreens and get a test? Yes or no? I'd love to know if that's on track. Somebody says disagree in

00:51:19.120 the comments. You've got more room for text than the word disagree. So while testing is more

00:51:29.100 available, it's certainly not available enough. Why don't you have an oxygen meter in your house?

00:51:36.460 How many of you have your own oxygen meter? You know, it's an inexpensive device. You just

00:51:41.660 clip it to your finger and it tells you your oxygen level. Why don't you have one of those?

00:51:46.600 Because those are really one of the first indicators you've got a problem, even before

00:51:52.440 a test, probably. Now, a lot of you have them. But why isn't a national effort to put one in every

00:52:01.660 house? Wouldn't you feel better if the president had said, look, we're going to fund one of these

00:52:08.260 companies that makes those oxygen meters, and we're going to just mail one to every house with a

00:52:13.880 ballot? You know, we'll probably mail them to the wrong addresses too. We'll just mail one to every

00:52:18.740 house. There will be no house that doesn't have an oxygen meter. That would feel like better

00:52:23.520 leadership, right? That didn't happen. Why are we not being continuously reminded to take more vitamin D?

00:52:33.900 Wouldn't that feel like good leadership? If every time you saw the president, he said,

00:52:38.080 make sure you're supplementing with vitamin D. Because, you know, he does mention wash your

00:52:43.960 hands and wear a mask if you're in close social distancing range. But wouldn't you like to see a

00:52:50.980 little more on vitamin D? You're probably doing it on your own. But wouldn't you like to see more of

00:52:55.220 that? Why have we not done a test of two different cities, one where masks are required, one where

00:53:06.020 they're not, if they have enough in common that maybe you could tell there's a difference? I would

00:53:11.200 feel like we had better leadership if we had more tests going on. You know, a test this versus this,

00:53:17.860 A-B testing. I don't see that. I'm not sure that would be easily organized by the federal government.

00:53:25.220 But they could at least call it out if there are two cities that went two different ways. I'd like

00:53:31.100 to see the president say, okay, we've got a good test case. We've got Cleveland going this way. We've

00:53:35.800 got Miami going this way. And hypothetically, let's say they had enough in common with infection rates

00:53:42.180 or whatever, that now we can see if these, if these procedures make a difference in the curve.

00:53:47.700 Curve. Wouldn't you like to see that? And then, of course, Trump has claimed that he does a bad job

00:53:56.600 explaining masks and the efficiency of masks. He made the claim that 85% of people who wear masks

00:54:03.280 caught COVID. So he kind of butchered that explanation. It wasn't about masks working or not.

00:54:10.380 So he's definitely said things which probably discourage people from wearing masks. That

00:54:17.820 feels safe. But again, would Obama have done better? How would you know? I don't see conservatives

00:54:25.740 saying, oh, Obama said it. I guess I'll go wear a mask now. Doesn't feel like that would happen.

00:54:30.420 All right. So those are your pros and cons for Trump and coronavirus. I sent a tweet this morning.

00:54:42.660 I said that listening to the experts is the dumbest smart sounding idea of all time. There's some things 0.89

00:54:49.440 that sound smart, but they're really the dumbest thing ever. I'll give you another example. Be yourself. 0.98

00:54:55.060 Have you ever gotten, have you ever heard that advice? So be yourself. Just be yourself. That's the best

00:55:02.840 thing you can do. Worst advice ever. There's no advice that's worse than be yourself.

00:55:12.420 Now, here's better advice. Try to be a better version of yourself. Try to be better than yourself.

00:55:20.120 All right. Now, that's good advice. Try to continuously improve. Try to not accept where

00:55:28.160 you are as good enough. Don't try to be yourself because you wouldn't wear clothes. You wouldn't,

00:55:34.420 you wouldn't bathe. Uh, you know, you wouldn't obey the law. If it was just up to you, just be in 0.58

00:55:41.500 yourself. You'd be the worst person ever. Do you ever have a friend who, uh, tells you that they're 0.94

00:55:48.680 just being honest? Oh yeah. I know. I know it's, it might sound rude, but I'm just honest. I'm just

00:55:54.440 being honest. Do you want that? Wouldn't you rather be around somebody who wouldn't be that honest if

00:56:01.540 the only purpose is to hurt you? Can't help you. Didn't, didn't help you at all. It was just honest

00:56:07.840 that it hurt. Maybe you don't want that person to be around you. All right. So listening to the experts

00:56:13.780 is the seriously, the stupidest advice anybody ever gave. And still, and still I'm going to give 1.00

00:56:22.900 you that advice too. It's both the stupidest advice ever given. And I'm also going to give it to you 1.00

00:56:29.960 right now. Yeah. You have to, you have to listen to the, the experts. You have to, you'd be an idiot

00:56:35.740 not to, but believing them. That's another story because you have to, you know, you want to reach 1.00

00:56:43.860 the level of maturity where you can say this to yourself. If the experts don't agree, how do you

00:56:52.220 know which expert is right? You're not the expert on experts. You're not an expert on coronavirus.

00:56:59.120 You're not an expert on climate change. And if you talk to the experts, you don't know if they're

00:57:03.920 lying to you. You can't tell you're just trusting the experts. So are you really trusting science?

00:57:11.100 Are you really listening to science? Are you really listening to the experts? Well, you might be

00:57:16.900 listening to them, but should you, you don't know, you don't know. How do you know that science is at

00:57:24.680 that early stage where they might be more wrong than right on some topic, or they've progressed to the

00:57:31.520 point where they're more right than wrong? How can you tell where they are on that progression? Can you

00:57:37.120 tell that something is really settled versus something that's not yet settled? You can't tell.

00:57:43.100 There's no way to tell. Even an expert can't tell that. So you certainly can't tell. So if you don't

00:57:49.220 know which experts are right and which ones are wrong, what does it mean to trust the experts?

00:57:55.400 It's nonsense. It's complete nonsense. So instead, you know, on questions like, you know, masks and 0.79

00:58:04.400 hydroxychloroquine and lockdowns, clearly there are experts on both sides. So what about going with

00:58:11.880 the majority? How about that? Should you go with the majority? Because most experts, if they're all on

00:58:20.040 one side, let's say it's 90-10, would you go with the 90 just automatically? Well, again, you don't know

00:58:28.020 if this is a mature science in which when 90% of the people are on the same side, it tells you a lot.

00:58:35.360 It tells you that that is a solid opinion. Or is it the beginning where 90% of the people are wrong,

00:58:42.600 well, we won't know for a while? How do you tell? You can't. So what I do is risk management instead.

00:58:54.280 So instead of saying that those experts are certainly right, I say to myself, if I follow

00:58:59.840 this expert, what's the upside and what's the downside? So with masks, for example, I don't

00:59:07.040 believe the experts because that would be stupid. And I don't believe them because there are more 0.94

00:59:12.320 they say it's that they work than don't, although I'm biased by that. I admit I'm biased by that,

00:59:18.540 but it's not automatically true because most experts say it. It's not true because there are studies,

00:59:26.080 metadata, meta-analysis, as Dr. Fauci says, that doesn't make it true because there are probably

00:59:32.680 plenty of things that there's meta-analysis and it's wrong. And we know that 50% of the studies

00:59:38.960 that are submitted to journals and published, peer-reviewed and published, something like half

00:59:44.780 of them turn out to be not reproducible. So science isn't one thing that's right and all the smart

00:59:51.960 people believe it because it's one thing and it's right. Science is this big mess of stuff that is more

00:59:58.260 wrong than right because there's more stuff that you're working through the early parts than there are

01:00:04.240 things that you've settled. And you don't know what's wrong and you don't know what's right.

01:00:09.040 So I go with risk management. And I stated myself, for example, I don't know anybody who died from

01:00:15.200 wearing a mask. Do you? I don't know anybody. I don't know anybody who got a, like some incurable

01:00:22.100 disease from wearing a mask. Do I believe it's possible? Yeah. Yeah, totally. Do I believe that

01:00:30.200 some people might be worse off wearing masks and that the downside for those certain medical

01:00:36.940 conditions, et cetera, is worse than the risk of getting coronavirus? Yeah, those people certainly

01:00:43.040 exist. I would say so. But until I see people dropping from mask-related illness, I'm going to go with

01:00:53.580 the meta-analysis and the Fauci that says we think it works. It might work. Could be wrong. But we don't

01:01:01.440 see people dying from wearing masks. But the meta-analysis strongly suggests people will die

01:01:07.440 from not wearing masks. So it's a risk management question. That is how smart people act. Trusting

01:01:16.920 experts is the dumbest frickin' thing you could ever do in your life, even though they're usually 1.00

01:01:23.220 right. They're usually right. I would bet that if you looked at all expert opinions over time, 1.00

01:01:31.520 you'd find they're more right than wrong, depending on the category.

01:01:35.840 All right. And that's about all I wanted to talk about. How about that?

01:01:48.460 Scott doesn't have to wear a mask for four hours like teachers. Well, I would grant you that wearing

01:01:55.560 a mask for a long time is way riskier than wearing it for a short time. So that's true. And there again,

01:02:05.060 I would go to, if we see a massive health issue from wearing masks, and we would see it first in

01:02:13.440 the people who have to wear masks for longer periods, I would say we should take that seriously.

01:02:18.500 But until we do, there's been enough people wearing masks. I mean, look at Asia. In Asia, 0.98

01:02:25.340 it's fairly common for people to wear masks, you know, all day long. Do we have data from Asia that

01:02:32.720 says, oh, all those mask wearers were worse off? Don't think so. Now, there's another thing

01:02:38.100 happening. I don't have confirmation of this. But it looks like the regular influenza rates are low

01:02:43.480 this year. I need a fact check on that because I didn't see a source I trusted. But I'm very curious

01:02:51.120 what regular influenza will look like this year. If masks work, you would expect it would be lower

01:02:58.700 than ever. If there's some kind of cross immunity thing, maybe it'll be less than ever because of 0.65

01:03:08.720 that. But here's something that I would at least put out there as a possibility. I've told you before

01:03:15.280 that the regular influenza death rate is fake, and that you've never met anybody who died from regular

01:03:23.520 flu. Have you? Now, there's always going to be somebody who says yes. But we all know somebody

01:03:30.520 who died of coronavirus. You know, maybe not directly. But you know somebody who knows somebody

01:03:36.700 who died of coronavirus. You see them in the news, etc. That seems real. There are real people dying of

01:03:42.860 coronavirus, and a lot of them. You don't know a lot of people who died of influenza. I know exactly

01:03:49.600 zero in 63 years of life. Apparently, 20,000 to 50,000 people around me have been dropping dead

01:03:56.600 from this influenza, and somehow I never noticed. It escaped my view. I certainly know people who died

01:04:04.620 in traffic accidents, and that's about the same number per year, right? Ask yourself this. Do you know

01:04:12.120 anybody who died of an overdose or anybody who died of a traffic-related accident? Yes, you do.

01:04:22.760 How many of those are there per year? About the same as alleged influenza deaths. I mean, it's in that

01:04:30.600 range, you know, the low tens of thousands per year. Same range. Why is it you know somebody who died of

01:04:37.660 AIDS, probably? You know somebody who died of a car accident? I know somebody who died in a parachute

01:04:43.740 accident. But I don't know anybody who died of influenza. So I'm going to say that, and this is

01:04:49.760 one of the tips I have in my book, Loser Think, that if you're trying to figure out what's true and

01:04:55.100 what's false, here are some tips. If the news on the left and the news on the right says a fact is a

01:05:02.920 fact and they say it the same, it's probably true. If either the news on the left or the news on the

01:05:09.180 right are the only ones that say it's a fact, but the other news says it's not a fact, it's probably

01:05:14.760 not a fact, all right? Whoever says it's not true has the advantage. It's usually not true if somebody

01:05:21.460 says it's not true. All right. That's a weird comment. And the other way you can tell if

01:05:33.860 something's true, or at least it's a flag, is if the official data completely conflicts with your

01:05:40.500 observation. All right. For example, most of my life, I was taught that if you ate within, I don't know,

01:05:49.260 half an hour or whatever of swimming, you would get a cramp and you would die because you ate food

01:05:55.260 too close to swimming. And yet I lived my entire life without hearing of a single person who died

01:06:02.780 because they got a cramp because they ate food too close to swimming. Do you know how many times

01:06:08.560 everybody I know ate food too soon to swimming? Basically everybody. So the whole world is full of

01:06:17.100 people who are violating that, eating food and swimming, and I'd never heard of anybody who got a

01:06:23.080 cramp and died from swimming. And then decades pass, and sure enough, the science comes out and it says,

01:06:29.420 um, there was never any science to suggest you would get a cramp from eating before swimming.

01:06:36.180 Sure enough, the observation was that none of it was happening. The data, what I thought was the science,

01:06:42.880 probably was never real science, but I thought it was science, said that people were dropping like

01:06:47.980 flies, or at least they could. So this, the influenza thing is the same.

01:06:55.780 Um, it's the same that it doesn't match observation. And I still have a big question on the Spanish flu.

01:07:02.380 I'm seeing in the comments, somebody mentioned that. How did the Spanish flu ever go away?

01:07:07.460 If everything that we've been told by the experts is true, and remember, we're supposed to trust the

01:07:13.940 experts. But the experts have told us that unless you have herd immunity, a virus isn't going to go

01:07:21.480 away. Spanish flu didn't reach herd immunity, did it? But it went away. So is that because there was

01:07:30.460 some other immunity that was cross-immunity? Was it because there's a genetic thing where all the people

01:07:36.500 could get it got it? There's a big, big unknown about the Spanish flu. And I see people even

01:07:43.240 disagreeing about whether masks worked during the Spanish flu. I feel like we would know that,

01:07:49.620 wouldn't we? But I guess we don't. Um, all right. That's all I got for now. I think that's plenty,

01:07:58.660 don't you? I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Coffee with Scott Adams. And I will see you

01:08:06.300 tomorrow. Well, if you're watching me on MSNBC, you'll see me later today. Otherwise, I'll see you

01:08:11.180 tomorrow. All right, YouTubers. Um, Periscope is off. I'm just watching you right now, looking at

01:08:21.480 your, uh, somebody says that they wore gauze for the Spanish flu. Yeah, that wouldn't work as well,

01:08:28.600 would it? Um, influenza is generally not listed on, uh, death certificates. Um, that is correct.

01:08:39.080 Uh, influenza is actually not counted. It's estimated based on excess, uh, mortality,

01:08:45.000 but I got a feeling there's some other reason that people are dying. So, um, why are you doing

01:08:51.780 this Periscope YouTube difference? Um, I don't know the question, but I'll, let me give you a

01:08:59.320 general answer. In order to do a live stream on both Periscope and YouTube, I had to use two

01:09:06.820 different iPads that are just, you know, nailed up to the two different services. And I just put them

01:09:12.260 in front of me together so that I'm on both. But every other technology, such as this device you see

01:09:18.180 behind me, that's a $13,000 worth of equipment, high-end equipment to be able to live stream

01:09:25.140 different, uh, to different destinations doesn't work. Now, technically it works, but you would need

01:09:32.720 to be a full-time engineer to, to debug it every time it goes down. Uh, unfortunately, if you have

01:09:39.420 a Windows platform, and I don't know why anybody would use Windows, frankly. Do you use Windows for

01:09:45.720 anything? Because every time you turn it on, it just starts begging you for updates and, and downloads

01:09:51.960 and, and you just can never use it. When I open up my Macintosh, I just start working.

01:09:59.720 Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. If I open up a Windows machine, I can spend the next hour just debugging all

01:10:07.080 the things that, uh, degraded since the last time I opened my computer. You know, all the software's

01:10:12.560 on a date and it's just a mess. So, uh, anyway, so all those, the systems that, um, try to stream to

01:10:21.120 multiple, uh, outlets, they use Windows machines, which are not dependable devices. And so you can't

01:10:28.400 really use them for production. And that's all I got for now. And I'll see you later.

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Real Coffee with Scott Adams - October 19, 2020

Episode 1159 Scott Adams： I Teach You How to Evaluate Trump’s Coronavirus Performance, Masks, Biden Laptops, Herd Immunity

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