Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1273 Scott Adams： What Conservatives Get Wrong About Masks, How to Legally Fix an Election

00:00:00.000 Come on in. Come on in. Come on in. Gather round. There's still plenty of chairs available.

00:00:07.520 Get a place up front and you'll get it first. That's right. And if you'd like to make this

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00:00:25.320 liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine

00:00:29.740 to end the day, the thing that makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip. Yeah.

00:00:35.620 And it's going to come to you worldwide right now. Go.

00:00:43.560 Ah, yeah, that's good. Yes, as one of the commenters noted, Periscope, the service will go away in March.

00:00:53.080 When that happens, those of you already watching this on YouTube don't have to do anything. But

00:01:00.400 those of you who always watch it on Periscope, you might want to look for it on YouTube and

00:01:06.360 just search for Real Coffee with Scott Adams or just look at my Twitter feed. I tweet it

00:01:11.420 every day. So how about all the things that are happening? Let's talk about the news. All

00:01:19.000 right. Let's talk about, so Mike Bloomberg is saying that Biden needs to do more to fight the

00:01:27.820 teachers' unions because the teachers' unions are keeping the schools closed. So Mike Bloomberg now

00:01:34.080 recognizes that the teachers' unions are a source of systemic racism. Now, he doesn't use that term,

00:01:42.400 but he does talk about how poor people are deeply disadvantaged with this Zoom school situation 1.00

00:01:50.620 because they don't have necessarily even Wi-Fi or iPads or any of that. And so having Mike Bloomberg and

00:01:58.940 maybe more Democrats starting to see that the biggest problem in our country, literally the biggest

00:02:05.560 problem is the teachers' unions. It's the biggest problem. There's nothing even close. Everything

00:02:12.040 else stems from that. So maybe this is a big deal when somebody as prominent as Bloomberg calls out the

00:02:22.520 teachers' unions as being a bad influence on society. Maybe that matters. You know, maybe each of us,

00:02:32.640 a lot of us on here, complaining about them. Maybe it mattered. We'll see. I like it when something I've

00:02:41.020 been advocating for strongly happens. And then I can tell myself, well, maybe I was, you know,

00:02:49.940 some small, tiny percentage of getting this moving in the right direction. Because these things don't

00:02:56.000 happen unless lots of people agree. And getting people to agree is kind of what I try to do.

00:03:02.640 I tweeted around a video the other day of Tony Robbins making the claim that the overall death

00:03:11.840 rate in the United States hasn't changed in 2020. And therefore that the pandemic is maybe not that

00:03:18.780 real because the overall death rate didn't change. So I tweeted that around and said, can you give me a

00:03:24.660 fact check on that? It took about, well, today I saw a good one, that the 2020 death rate so far,

00:03:33.220 and they're not even done counting yet, I guess some of the data lags, but so far it's up 12%

00:03:40.080 compared to normal. 12%. That's a lot for the death rate. The overall death rate in the country

00:03:48.440 is up at least 12%. They're still not done counting. That's a lot. All right. Something

00:03:56.140 happened. Now, is that death all from COVID? Don't know. I think it equated to 300 and some thousand

00:04:04.160 people extra. So, you know, we do have a question of how well we're counting the COVID deaths.

00:04:09.780 But it does look like something happened that might not be just from the lockdowns itself killing

00:04:17.560 people, although we know there's some of that. So when you see people claim that the death rate

00:04:22.960 did not change, there's at least one official U.S. source that says it did change and changed a lot.

00:04:29.540 Now, I think some other people tweeted this, so just be careful that everything you see has another

00:04:40.800 piece of data that says it's wrong. Just a general statement about everything. There's a issue now with

00:04:47.760 people who have had COVID and recovered, but have not recovered their sense of smell. And I think we

00:04:54.660 don't know at this point if that could be permanent with some people. But I guess some people

00:04:59.420 do recover their sense of smell. So we've seen some who did, some who maybe haven't yet. Is it

00:05:06.240 permanent? And if it were, how much would it affect you? Well, I can speak to that with great.

00:05:15.220 Yeah. Somebody says my smell is slowly coming back. So there will be some people on here who've had

00:05:21.080 this exact experience. Oh, I'm seeing in the comments. Mine came back fine.

00:05:25.700 Uh, and it sucks, somebody says. Uh, somebody says they know two people and it's been months and 0.57

00:05:35.120 they haven't gotten it back. It's been over a month for me, no smell. Uh, and then there's some

00:05:41.920 people who get smell, but it makes everything smell wrong. So things that used to smell good,

00:05:47.480 smell terrible, etc. Uh, my sons came back. It might have to do with age as well. It's called

00:05:58.600 congestion. Some, some says it's called long COVID. Yeah. Um, somebody says it's a psychological

00:06:05.160 phenomenon. I doubt it. I doubt that. Is it that big of a deal? Well, that's what I'm here to tell

00:06:12.620 you. So many of you, my regulars know that, uh, I lost my sense of smell, not from COVID,

00:06:19.000 but maybe 10 years ago or longer, 15, I don't remember, but I lost my sense of smell and didn't

00:06:25.420 really even know it for a long time because food still had the sensation of having a taste.

00:06:32.220 So my brain just filled in what was missing. And the biggest change was that I didn't get to smell

00:06:38.560 unpleasant things. That was it. The biggest change in my life is I did not, not smell unpleasant

00:06:45.900 things, which was great. Now for every pleasant smell, I don't really notice that I don't smell

00:06:52.900 them. And by the way, I've, uh, you know, I got my sense of smell back temporarily with some sinus

00:07:00.200 surgery, but I think as of today, it's probably gone again. Uh, I haven't smelled anything in a long

00:07:06.260 time. So I think I don't have a sense of smell right now. And I can tell you, it doesn't really

00:07:11.680 change much of anything. I like the same foods I liked before. They still feel like they smell.

00:07:19.000 I think that it might be a psychological phenomenon, but I, I feel as though they have some kind of a

00:07:25.260 taste. So it's not that big a deal, but I think for some people it would be if you're a foodie or

00:07:32.840 let's say you're a wine connoisseur or you really, really care what kind of coffee you're drinking,

00:07:37.940 that doesn't describe me at all. So for me, it was no big deal. Some people might be a big deal,

00:07:44.060 but we don't know yet if it's permanent. So, uh, president Trump has decided that he will not

00:07:49.880 testify at next week's Senate impeachment trial. Is that a good decision or a bad decision?

00:07:56.860 It's a good decision. Yeah. The less that president Trump, uh, appears in public for a little while,

00:08:06.180 right? It'll change over time. But for now, just for now, the less that he appears in public,

00:08:14.640 the better for him, I think, because he'll have capable people to defend him and everything that

00:08:20.600 he does draws more attention. Uh, and I think his very best play is exactly what he's doing to just

00:08:28.320 lay low, let the lawyers do the lawyer thing. And the real big question is, will they put the

00:08:34.200 election integrity on trial? Cause how could they not? Right? Because don't you have two completely

00:08:42.680 different feelings about what Trump did and the attack on the Capitol, et cetera. Don't you feel

00:08:49.440 completely different about it? If you assume that the election was definitely good versus if you

00:08:56.240 assume, Oh, we got some genuine questions. We don't know that it was fraudulent. We don't have any proof

00:09:01.480 of that, but we've got some questions. Here's one of my questions. Remember when I told you that I'd seen

00:09:08.960 stronger evidence, uh, than the public had seen about allegations of election impropriety?

00:09:16.200 Well, the things that I'd seen were statistical, meaning that, uh, things that were unlikely to

00:09:24.320 happen unless there had been mischief. Now I don't, here's my question to you. Would any of those kinds

00:09:31.380 of claims, just the general kind of claim that says something is statistically at a whack, would any of

00:09:38.340 them have any power in a court of law? Because I think not, right? If you, if you did not have

00:09:46.060 something more than a statistical oddity, you wouldn't have anything, right? Is that, is that fair?

00:09:53.020 And as far as I know, the statistical oddities, if they were in fact odd, because some would say

00:10:01.840 they're perfectly explained by turnout and whatever else, but if those oddities, um, have no court

00:10:10.920 power, but yet they do have, let's say they're persuasive to you just as an individual,

00:10:18.220 that's probably how we got here. That's probably how we got here. Um, are we not all probabilities?

00:10:24.860 Power as probable cause for inquiry. Looking at your comments. Uh, absolute proof documentary. Look

00:10:33.660 it up after the scope. Oh, there's something called absolute proof, a documentary. It's probably banned

00:10:38.620 by now. So, uh, as somebody saying, yes, statistical oddity can have evidential value, but if it's the

00:10:49.720 only evidence and there's an explanation that could be true, that's an alternate explanation,

00:10:56.740 that's kind of the end of it, isn't it? If you bring your statistics in and then the defense says,

00:11:03.860 well, yes, these are odd statistics, but it was an odd year. We had lots of turnout and the coronavirus

00:11:10.000 caused things to be different. That's it, right? How, how in the world could you ever convict

00:11:16.840 or get a, you know, some kind of a positive ruling? As long as the defense has a story that's perfectly

00:11:24.640 plausible, perfectly plausible to say, you know, everything about this election was different.

00:11:30.940 So yeah, statistical oddities, there are probably lots of them. Doesn't mean anything. It just means

00:11:35.560 it was a different year. I think that's the end of it. But, uh, that would be in a court of law,

00:11:42.680 in the court of your own opinion, maybe those things have greater weight. So I'm just asking

00:11:48.480 the question. Um, well, and then there's somebody who says really, really odd statistics, like one in

00:11:55.280 a zillion. The, the statistics that said that the election only had a, I think somebody came up with

00:12:03.060 one in a trillion chance that it was natural and, and fraud free. Do you think anybody can calculate

00:12:10.960 that? No, nobody can calculate that. That's not a thing. There's nobody who can calculate what are

00:12:19.960 the odds that the election was, uh, was real based on a statistical fact or a set of facts. I don't

00:12:27.220 think that's a real thing, right? That just sounds like a statistician getting a little attention.

00:12:32.700 So, um, what else we got going on? So I'd love to see the president put the, the, uh, let's say the

00:12:41.300 transparency of the election system on trial. That would be a good service because right now the

00:12:48.040 impeachment thing is a complete waste of time for the public. The public is not being served by any of

00:12:55.080 this. I think we know that it's sort of a revenge kind of thing. Um, but if the president says, Hey,

00:13:03.940 whether or not the election was fraudulent can't be known because the election system doesn't allow

00:13:11.140 you to know it, that would be really useful if the public learned that. Rand Paul's getting some heat

00:13:18.260 because he's not wearing his mask during the Senate, uh, floor events. And his reasoning is that he

00:13:26.800 already has recovered from COVID and therefore he has antibodies and it would not make sense for him to

00:13:33.760 be wearing a mask. What do you think of that? Yes. Dr. Rand Paul. So medical doctor Rand Paul

00:13:44.260 says he's not wearing a mask. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to withdraw my, uh, earlier statement

00:13:54.200 that he would be a good candidate for president based on this, that this is such a bad idea

00:14:02.520 from Rand Paul. And I know he's very popular and a lot of you are loving that he's doing this,

00:14:08.140 but I'll tell you why I have a different opinion on it. I think this is disqualifying for

00:14:13.960 president, frankly, and which is disappointing because he was my, he was sort of my top pick,

00:14:19.520 you know, preliminarily for a, for a Republican candidate. He would have been my top pick,

00:14:25.380 but I think the not wearing the mask in this context is disqualifying from my perspective.

00:14:31.320 A lot of you like it. Here's my, here's my reason why.

00:14:36.580 While we do know that people who have recovered do have immunity, we know this to be true. Do you all

00:14:43.060 agree? We are, we all know that a recovered COVID person does have some amount of immunity and that

00:14:51.120 it could last well over a year. Everybody on the same page so far. Immunity is a real thing and it

00:14:57.920 can last over a year. Well, I guess Rand Paul had his COVID a while ago and the experts are saying that

00:15:06.400 you can get reinfected possibly with a different strain, but also possibly with the same strain

00:15:12.820 in the, in the amount of time that's gone by. So can Rand Paul infect people the same way that

00:15:21.880 other people there who have not had COVID could infect people? Could he? The answer is yes. Yes,

00:15:29.360 he could. Now, what are the odds? What are the odds of him infecting you without a mask any different,

00:15:37.720 higher or lower than the odds of the other people who have never had COVID or never been tested for

00:15:42.980 it, uh, actually having it and then being spreaders? Which one is going to spread it the most? Rand Paul

00:15:50.420 without a mask with some of some amount of antibodies. We don't know if it's complete

00:15:55.740 or people with the masks who don't know if they've ever had it, might have it right now.

00:16:03.360 Somebody says their girlfriend got it twice. That's the end of the conversation.

00:16:09.040 That's the end of the conversation. His girlfriend got it twice. She's not the only one. We do know,

00:16:17.220 I believe for a fact, I'm sure the medicals, the medical profession has, has pretty much agreed

00:16:23.840 that there's no doubt about it. You can get it twice. If you're not wearing a mask and you get it

00:16:31.840 twice, you're a little bit dangerous, aren't you? So here's the thing. We don't know Rand Paul's risk

00:16:40.480 of transmitting it compared to someone else's. We imagine it's lower. We imagine he has a lower risk.

00:16:47.600 Probably. Probably. But as a leader, should he be taking off his mask because he judges without,

00:16:56.340 without the benefit of hard evidence, but reasonably, reasonably good judgment would say that he has

00:17:02.660 lower risk than other people of transmitting it, but not zero risk. And in the, in the context of

00:17:10.720 getting people to wear masks, if masks are a good idea medically, then Rand Paul is displaying

00:17:18.920 terrible leadership, really just terrible leadership, because he should not be taking any

00:17:24.720 chance. He should mask up so that other people say, yeah, masks are important. Even if you've had it

00:17:30.960 once, maybe you need to wear a mask. Why do I think it's a terrible idea to let people who have just 1.00

00:17:37.300 recovered from COVID go maskless? It should be obvious to you that masks won't work the moment

00:17:45.100 you allow some people to go without them. That's the end of masks. Because as soon as some people can

00:17:51.220 go without them, everybody's going to say, I already recovered. You'll take it off on the airplane.

00:17:57.900 The flight attendant will say, we require masks. And you'll say, no, I don't wear it. Rand Paul doesn't

00:18:04.800 wear it. He's a medical doctor. I listen to medical doctors. I'm not going to listen to you frauds on

00:18:09.880 this plane. It's a big problem. If you don't just say everybody has to wear a mask. Now, if you, if you

00:18:18.240 do say everybody wears a mask, it's a big burden on people who just recovered and really probably don't

00:18:24.140 have any reason to wear a mask, or at least their risk is so tiny that, that there's no real reason.

00:18:29.220 But as soon as you allow it, the whole system breaks down. And you know that, right? You know

00:18:35.820 that. You can't let some people just claim that they recovered. That system would not work. Day one,

00:18:43.880 people would cheat like crazy. All right, so I think that's a bad move by Rand Paul. He's making news

00:18:53.500 for all the wrong reasons. It might make him, it could easily get him the nomination, but it's

00:19:00.120 going to make it harder to win. Democrats are split on how to cancel student debt. So it looks like

00:19:08.820 that's going to happen. One of the weird side effects of running up our national debt so high

00:19:14.540 is that any new thing you want to add to the national debt doesn't seem like a big deal anymore.

00:19:20.380 Because remember, if you had said two years ago, if you had said, let's cancel $2 trillion, or let's

00:19:28.440 say $1 trillion of student debt. If you had floated that idea a year ago, people would have said,

00:19:36.640 we're not going to cancel a trillion dollars of debt for people who willingly took it on and then make

00:19:43.880 other people pay their debt. We're not going to do that. That's a trillion dollars. Are you kidding me?

00:19:49.020 But now, because we're spending a trillion every few weeks on the coronavirus, it seems like,

00:19:55.560 just mentally it seems like that, you can throw this in the mix. And people say, it's just another

00:20:02.360 trillion. You got $23 trillion debt or whatever the heck it is. Another trillion, get rid of student 0.78

00:20:11.360 debt. Why not? It's just another trillion. So, of course, the big problem with getting rid of student

00:20:18.700 debt is that people who have paid off student debt, they got a lot to complain about, don't they?

00:20:27.080 If you just paid off your own student debt, and then you find out that your sibling just had theirs

00:20:33.340 canceled for free, you're going to be pissed off. I don't know how they're going to deal with that.

00:20:41.280 I don't know how leadership could possibly deal with that. Here's the way I think it should be done.

00:20:47.160 I think the forgiving of the debt should be on the colleges. Because if you went to a college that

00:20:54.480 accepted your payment via student loan, and then gave you an education that doesn't allow you to get a job

00:21:03.980 that could pay off your debt, I feel like the colleges have a little bit to explain, too.

00:21:10.480 They've got a little bit to explain. So I don't know any way that this college debt thing can be

00:21:15.960 handled in a way that doesn't make a big part of the country really mad.

00:21:21.000 So Marjorie Taylor Greene, you're all following this story. She said provocative,

00:21:26.360 QAnon-like crazy things in the past. But she claims she hasn't said any of that since she ran for 0.97

00:21:33.720 office. And so it shouldn't count what she said in the past. But she has been stripped of her

00:21:39.340 committee memberships for being too crazy. Imagine being too crazy for Congress. 0.95

00:21:47.660 It's just a funny concept. How crazy do you have to be, to be so crazy that members of Congress even 0.95

00:21:57.380 say, whoa, we're pretty crazy. But you just crossed even our line. Now, is she crazy? Well, she has said 0.99

00:22:08.340 things which I don't think leaders should say. So I'm not going to be a supporter of hers in any way.

00:22:15.100 But I think it's interesting to see that the Democrats have successfully made her the

00:22:20.820 poster child of Democrats. They kind of did that successfully, wouldn't you say? Because now with

00:22:27.900 Trump off the stage, at least a little bit, they need some new Republican to paint as the face of the 1.00

00:22:36.760 Republicans. So it looks like the least important person in Congress, a freshman representative,

00:22:44.440 is being put forward as their leader. Now, might be a problem. It might be a problem. Because I

00:22:55.940 listened to her speak when she was defending herself. And I got to say, I didn't quite understand how she

00:23:04.980 could have got, how she got elected, given that she had this history of conspiracy theory stuff. 1.00

00:23:10.280 And then I heard her speak. She's actually pretty good. You know, as a public personality, 0.98

00:23:19.660 somebody who can just say what the base wants to hear, she's actually pretty good at it. You know,

00:23:28.500 in terms of just skill, for giving a speech, connecting with people, she sounded like she has

00:23:35.020 some real skill. So that's something to look for. But I don't really care about her story too much.

00:23:45.400 I mean, her story is mostly a fake story. So the Democrats can paint all Republicans as looking

00:23:52.480 like clowns. They succeeded, completely succeeded, in painting all Republicans to look like clowns, 0.99

00:23:59.760 because of this one Republican. So it was a good play. Persuasion-wise, the Democrats get the win 0.94

00:24:05.460 for that persuasion. All right. Smartmatics is suing Fox, and it looks like they might have a pretty

00:24:17.220 good case here. So they're suing Fox and three of the hosts, Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiroma,

00:24:24.640 and Janine Pirro. Now, they're also going after Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell separately. But

00:24:31.640 what do you think of this?

00:24:38.260 What exactly is the standard for this lawsuit? Is the standard that these claims are not proven?

00:24:47.560 Or do they have to prove that the claims are not true? How does that work?

00:24:52.400 Would it be enough for smartmatics to say there's no proof of the claims? Or do they actually have

00:25:00.680 to prove that their system has no problems? How does that work? So some smart people are saying that

00:25:09.520 Fox News is in trouble. So they're acting like maybe it's a pretty good case. Somebody said it was

00:25:14.880 sort of a textbook exact case of defamation. Maybe. But here's my question. Couldn't Trump or

00:25:24.360 Trump supporters sue CNN and the other networks for promoting the fine people hoax and the drinking

00:25:32.540 bleach hoax? Because the claim is that the network knew these things were not true, or at least these

00:25:40.540 hosts knew they weren't true, but said them anyway as if they were true. Because I think you have to

00:25:46.160 you have to demonstrate that they know it's not true. Because I don't think you can get a defamation

00:25:52.280 I'm not a lawyer, so help me on this. But I don't think you can get a defamation win

00:25:57.880 if it was an honest mistake. If somebody actually just believed what they were saying. I think you

00:26:04.200 don't win that way. But how would you possibly prove that Lou Dobbs didn't know that what he was

00:26:13.300 saying? Or how do you know what Lou Dobbs was thinking? How can you possibly prove that? That's

00:26:21.620 weird. Now, if they could win this, why couldn't Trump or even Trump supporters sue over the fine

00:26:27.540 people hoax and the drinking bleach hoax? Because they both look like they were not said with any

00:26:33.860 honesty. It does look like the network was intentionally lying about those things. And

00:26:39.740 they're extremely, extremely defamatory. I mean, extremely, way more than the example with the

00:26:49.380 machines. Although Smartmatics has a good business case in terms of it hurting their business. I think

00:26:54.700 they'll be able to demonstrate that. So I think either everything has to be suable or nothing.

00:27:02.460 You have to use the same standard, right? So if Smartmatics wins this defamation,

00:27:08.340 I think Trump should sue CNN for the fine people hoax and the bleach hoax. There's talk about Biden

00:27:16.740 wanting to establish a realities R. A realities R. Are you kidding me? 0.73

00:27:26.140 Every time you think that things couldn't get more ridiculous, then they do. And I guess the reason for

00:27:36.500 this is that they believe there's too much right-wing disinformation and they need somebody to clear

00:27:44.420 that up. But again, who gets to be in charge of what reality is? I see a problem there. Because

00:27:54.340 the, the, the, what they're selling right now is that disinformation only comes from one side.

00:28:01.840 Just think about this. The, the Democrats have created a generalized belief in this country

00:28:09.580 that incorrect information only comes from the right.

00:28:13.660 What world are they living in? There are plenty of examples of disinformation coming from the right,

00:28:23.880 plenty of it. But there's a lot coming from the left. And if you were to actually add it up and make a

00:28:32.340 list, do you think there would be more on the right or the left? I think it would be such a long list in

00:28:39.020 both cases that to imagine that one side is controlling the truth and the other side is not,

00:28:46.080 is pretty absurd. But I think they might actually believe that they have the truth

00:28:51.440 and the other side doesn't, which is scary in itself.

00:28:56.780 Tucker Carlson tonight reported exclusively that Bank of America apparently was helping law enforcement

00:29:03.860 identify who attended the capital assault or a capital protest, whatever you want to call them.

00:29:10.700 How do you like the fact that a major bank is giving the, I don't know, FBI or law enforcement,

00:29:17.500 whoever is asking anything they want about who was there and how, what they spent and how they spent it

00:29:24.620 so they can know who was there. Pretty scary, isn't it? On the other hand,

00:29:29.020 it's just basic police work, isn't it? Can't the police look at your financial records if they

00:29:36.660 have cause and they get a warrant? I'm not sure. I don't know if there's anything really different

00:29:43.080 happening here, but just hearing about it happening on a large scale is pretty scary.

00:29:47.440 Yeah. And then Snopes decided to weigh in on the story about AOC and whether she was, quote,

00:29:57.820 in the capital when the assault happened because she had her story about how scared she was.

00:30:03.580 Now, some say, and I guess some say in this case accurately, that her office was a few blocks away

00:30:10.100 from the capital building and therefore, some say, she was exaggerating what danger she was in.

00:30:17.080 Now, I think that that's subjective, right? It's sort of up to AOC to decide how much danger she

00:30:23.500 thought she was in because it's her story. So I think she gets to say how much, how dangerous it

00:30:28.640 felt. You know, it's not for us who weren't there to say how dangerous she felt it was. So,

00:30:35.580 but it is nonetheless true that she sold her involvement as being closer to the action

00:30:46.680 than it actually was. But Snopes decides to have her back and say that it was mostly false that she

00:30:55.320 wasn't in the capital because she was in the capital complex a few blocks away. And watching this

00:31:03.600 happen in real time, you know, just watching a fact-checking organization clearly just backing a

00:31:09.520 candidate. It just makes a little fact-checking idea kind of crazy. Here's the weirdest story. Tim

00:31:18.040 Poole was calling this out. Time magazine is doing a story about a secret cabal of people behind the

00:31:27.780 scenes who influenced the election. They didn't rig it. Oh, no. No, no. They didn't fix the election.

00:31:35.240 Everything that this secret cabal of people behind the scenes did was, as Time magazine calls it,

00:31:43.460 they were fortifying it. They fortified the election. And they did a number of things. They

00:31:48.680 did, here's what Time reports. It was a well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and

00:31:56.640 ideologies working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions. What? Influence perceptions.

00:32:04.740 That's propaganda, isn't it? So influence perceptions. Change rules and laws. For whose benefit?

00:32:14.860 Weren't all of the rules and laws that were changed for the benefit of Democrats? Like every single one?

00:32:20.440 Coincidence? Maybe. Steer media coverage. What? Steer media coverage. There was a secret cabal of

00:32:29.900 wealth-funded people and powerful people who were steering media coverage. Completely legal. Right? So far,

00:32:40.860 this is all legal. And control the flow of information. What? Seriously?

00:32:50.440 There was a well-funded cabal of people changing the election rules, influencing our perceptions,

00:32:58.420 and steering media coverage and controlling the flow of information. But Time says this. The very next

00:33:07.100 sentence wants to make sure that you're very clear on that, that although they are working behind the

00:33:14.280 scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of

00:33:19.560 information. Next sentence, period. They were not rigging the election. No, they were not rigging the

00:33:26.860 election. Semicolon. They were fortifying it. So all of you people who think that sounds like rigging an

00:33:36.540 election, you're also wrong. That's fortifying it. Now, why do you call it fortifying it? Because in their

00:33:44.720 opinion, they made the outcome the one they wanted and the one they expected. So it was the one they

00:33:51.780 wanted and the one they expected, so therefore it must have been fortified, not rigged. Because when

00:33:57.940 things go the way you don't want them, that's rigged. When things go the way you do want them to go,

00:34:03.320 well, that's fortified. That's pretty fortified. Now, I've been telling you for a while that democracy

00:34:09.900 is an illusion, but a useful one. It's a useful illusion that your vote matters. And the reason

00:34:18.140 that's useful is that it allows you to buy into the system and say, oh, my candidate didn't win,

00:34:24.360 but at least my vote counted. It was a fair process. So I guess I'll live with this leader that I didn't

00:34:30.200 choose. So we need a system that's credible, of course. And here we have a situation in which

00:34:41.540 according to time, their reporting is telling us that the outcome was influenced by a secret cabal of

00:34:50.040 powerful people. In other words, while they did everything that was everything they did was legal,

00:34:56.600 there's no accusation that they broke any laws. But they're saying very clearly, the article,

00:35:03.960 it changed the outcome of the election. So what kind of a democracy is it in which the election,

00:35:12.060 which was legal before, in other words, the way it was before any of these things happened,

00:35:17.040 was completely legal. It was changed to another situation, which was also completely legal,

00:35:22.640 because they used legal processes to change laws, etc. But that's what made the election outcome,

00:35:31.900 was these changes. It wasn't your vote. Now, we live in a country in which our media can tell us

00:35:41.020 right to our faces that we didn't have a real election. What we had was a number of people working

00:35:47.880 behind the scenes, whose collective actions determined who your president is. But not rigged,

00:35:55.800 fortified.

00:35:59.080 I don't even know what to add to this story. Usually, I'll tell you what's in the headlines,

00:36:04.960 and I'll give it my humorous or insightful spin. There's nothing to say about this.

00:36:11.700 Everything that needs to be said about this is being said openly, that this group of people

00:36:18.420 behind the scenes determined the president. Now, he may have also got the most votes. That appears to

00:36:25.420 be the case. But what kind of system are we living in? It's certainly not a republic. I don't know what

00:36:33.500 this is. What would you call it? It's sort of a contest of behind the scenes, well-funded cabals,

00:36:42.240 right? So there's your system you're living in. All right, I promised you that I was going to give

00:36:48.440 you what conservatives don't understand about masks. You ready for this? This will be draft one.

00:36:56.580 All right. So the first draft of this is just to give feedback. So if I say something that doesn't

00:37:04.260 pass the fact check, you'll get back to me. And then if I get the energy, I'll write this up so it's

00:37:10.380 maybe one better document. Starting with this, here's what conservatives tend to not know about masks.

00:37:18.900 Number one, there has never been a randomized controlled study of mask effectiveness for

00:37:26.180 coronavirus. It hasn't happened. So when you send me a link of all the studies that show that masks 0.90

00:37:35.660 don't work, you haven't sent me anything because that doesn't exist. There has never been a randomized

00:37:43.800 controlled trial of mask effectiveness for coronavirus. If you think that's ever happened,

00:37:53.120 you're misinformed. There has never been one. So what can you conclude if there's never been

00:37:59.340 the gold standard kind of trial where you've got a randomized controlled trial and you're comparing it

00:38:05.640 to something? Now, the first thing you need to know is that there can't be a trial like that

00:38:10.200 because it would be unethical. You wouldn't send people into a virus situation without masks

00:38:17.540 if the entire medical community, most of them, think that masks can save lives. So there's no way to test

00:38:24.820 it. So what are all these studies that people keep sending me saying that masks don't work? Well,

00:38:32.600 they are studies of other studies, which are none of them being the randomized controlled type.

00:38:37.620 So it might be a, let's say, after the fact study that says this group wore masks, this group wore

00:38:44.960 masks, let's say, later or differently or didn't, and then you just see how they did.

00:38:51.760 What would you know for sure if you compared two groups and one had a good result and one didn't?

00:38:57.640 If it's not a randomized controlled trial, if it's not that, what have you learned by comparing these

00:39:05.060 two situations? And the answer is nothing. If you think that those other kinds of trials

00:39:11.060 are telling you something useful, then you don't understand how any of this works.

00:39:17.320 There are also, try this experiment, go to Google and do a search on this. Masks work

00:39:27.480 for coronavirus. And just see how many studies will tell you that masks do work. Then do the same

00:39:36.100 study, same search, except masks do not work for coronavirus. And you know what you'll find? A whole

00:39:43.900 bunch of studies, none of them randomized controlled studies, that say masks don't work. So now you've

00:39:50.940 got a list of studies that did not study coronaviruses specifically, did not, because it wasn't a

00:39:59.020 randomized controlled study that studied coronavirus and masks. Usually it's something else. They'll

00:40:04.560 study something in the laboratory, or they'll look at a different kind of study, or some other example

00:40:10.660 from the past, etc. If you were to add up all of the ones that say masks maybe don't work, but they're

00:40:17.600 not the good kind of studies. And all the ones that say masks probably do work, but they're also not

00:40:24.080 the good kind of study. How do you weigh those? A whole bunch of trials, a whole bunch of studies

00:40:31.000 that say they do work, a whole bunch of ones that say they don't work. So that's all you know. How do

00:40:37.120 you weigh it? Now, I'm not going to tell you that masks work or don't work. If you think you're going

00:40:43.580 to get that out of this presentation, you're not. I'm going to tell you how to think about it.

00:40:49.360 The actual answer of whether masks in the end are better or make things worse, I don't know. And I

00:40:56.320 would suggest that if you think you know that, that's stupid. You don't know that. You don't know 1.00

00:41:04.420 for sure that masks work. You don't know, and you can't know for sure that they don't work. It is

00:41:12.440 completely unknowable. So if one of your opinions is they definitely work, or they definitely don't

00:41:18.880 work, those opinions are both stupid. A smart opinion would be something about probability. 1.00

00:41:26.400 All right? So you can tell right away whether you're stupid or smart by whether you're talking 0.99

00:41:31.800 about absolutes definitely don't work or definitely do work. Those are the stupid opinions. Okay? 1.00

00:41:38.460 Everything in between is smart. Even if you said 95% chance they work or 95% chance they don't work,

00:41:45.580 you're in the smart zone because you're talking about probability. And that's all we can do

00:41:49.980 because we don't have what? Randomized controlled trial. Don't have it. If we did,

00:42:00.260 and we had maybe more than one of them, so it could be repeatable, well, then we'd have something

00:42:05.040 pretty good. But we don't. So all we have are studies that say probably they work, studies that say

00:42:13.200 looks like probably they don't, and none of those studies have any value at all. In fact, what would

00:42:22.360 be the value of a study that got peer-reviewed and accepted for publication if you're going to put

00:42:28.760 some odds on it being true? You don't even know what the study's about. I just say, I just tell you

00:42:35.000 there was a study, it was peer-reviewed, it was accepted for publication in a major scientific

00:42:41.560 publication. What odds would you put on it that the result in that study is actually true? The answer

00:42:48.760 is, coin flip. That's it, coin flip. No better than a coin flip. The fact that it was peer-reviewed,

00:42:58.300 published, and you read it online, is a coin flip. You should put no more odds on it being true than a

00:43:06.760 coin flip, all right? So those of you who are saying, look at all these studies that show masks don't work,

00:43:12.880 what you don't understand is that all of those studies put together and even analyzed by really

00:43:18.240 smart people know better than a coin flip. Likewise, the ones that say that they do work know better

00:43:25.740 than a coin flip. So that's what we're working with, with the quality of information. All right,

00:43:30.540 let me go on. So what about herd immunity? Oh, here's one that conservatives think. Conservatives

00:43:44.140 say that masks don't work because the areas that have the strictest mask mandates and lockdowns,

00:43:53.100 people throw those together like it's the same issue. I separate lockdowns from masks. I think

00:43:59.220 there's less evidence for lockdowns being a good idea than there is for masks. So for me, those are

00:44:05.720 just separate questions. I'm pro-mask. I'll tell you why when we're done. I'm anti-lockdown,

00:44:14.600 except for some businesses that make sense. Maybe gyms can't open yet, for example. But I'm pro-opening up

00:44:21.940 and pro-opening the schools, in case you want to know where I'm at on this. All right, so

00:44:27.540 do mandates of masks work? Because we see that where the mask mandates are the strongest,

00:44:34.420 you also have the worst infections. So a lot of conservatives have said to me, obviously the

00:44:40.480 masks don't work because wherever there are the worst infections, there are also the most mask

00:44:45.720 mandates. It's obvious. And look at the curve. Here's where the mask mandate came in. You see the

00:44:52.260 curve still went up? Duh. Duh. If mask mandates happened on this date and the infections just got 0.78

00:44:59.700 worse, proof that masks don't work. That's what conservatives tell me. But it doesn't work that

00:45:07.380 way. You've got causation backwards. The reason there's a tough mask mandate is because they know

00:45:14.780 the infections are going to be impossible to control, even with masks. It's the best you can

00:45:20.440 do. But nobody says the masks stop the virus. Nobody says that's, oh, we got our masks on. We're

00:45:27.320 all good now. It's just to slow it down. So what you don't know is what that curve would have looked

00:45:33.120 like without masks. There's no comparison. You know that they did mask and you know that the

00:45:39.000 infections increased. But what would the infections have been without masks? It's unknowable because

00:45:46.580 that was never tested. So the fact that infections keep going up when mask mandates are in place

00:45:52.320 means nothing about the effectiveness of masks. Nothing. You should take nothing from that.

00:46:00.840 Except one thing. You can conclude that masks do not stop the virus. Right?

00:46:08.000 Can we agree that we can conclude that a tough mask mandate will not just stop the virus?

00:46:16.720 Because the curves are pretty clear on that. But we don't know if they would have been worse.

00:46:22.580 We don't know. All right? So you have to make your decision without knowing that.

00:46:28.140 I've heard also recently that what about herd immunity? Shouldn't we let the kids get it because

00:46:35.820 they won't be that likely they won't be that hurt by it? And then you get herd immunity. You keep the

00:46:41.140 old people home. Bada bing. Wouldn't that be good enough? Kids get herd immunity. Eventually hide the

00:46:51.060 old folks. Build up enough herd immunity. You're good to go. Well, here's the problem with that.

00:46:57.540 Kids bring the infection back to the family and then the old people get it and they die. 1.00

00:47:06.600 That's a problem. So if you don't want that problem where the kids get it, bring it into the family and

00:47:13.560 then old people die, then I hear conservatives say, but Scott, personal responsibility. Let the people

00:47:21.500 who don't have a risk live their lives or the ones who want to take the risk and let the people who

00:47:26.900 need to socially isolate, just do it better. Just do it better. Socially isolate better and you won't

00:47:34.340 have a problem. Except that's not the real world. Have you seen real people act in the real world?

00:47:44.200 People don't socially isolate at home. I'm sorry, they don't. And when the kid comes home,

00:47:50.500 they're going to interact with the parents every time. No parent is socially isolating from their

00:47:57.860 own freaking kid. That's not happening. Now the parent has it because of course they're not socially 0.97

00:48:04.480 isolating from their own children. What if the grandparents live in the house? Then mom and dad

00:48:11.180 talk to the grandparents, blah, blah, blah. Dad dies. Now, if you think that personal responsibility

00:48:18.320 is sort of the beginning and end of the conversation, I would say that's certainly a

00:48:24.860 philosophy that I could get behind as a consistent philosophy. But you have to know it is a decision

00:48:33.240 to kill lots and lots of old people because that's what would happen. There's nothing you can do to 1.00

00:48:39.760 protect the old people if the kids are running around getting infected. Nothing. You could say it's 0.83

00:48:45.760 their responsibility, but they're not going to act that much differently. You just have to accept

00:48:50.920 that from a legal perspective, saying who's responsible makes a lot of sense. You have to

00:48:56.940 have a system where somebody is responsible. But when you're talking about a disease,

00:49:03.200 responsibility is irrelevant if nobody's going to act any differently. And they're not.

00:49:08.200 So imagining that letting the kids get herd immunity would not kill millions of seniors is not

00:49:19.580 realistic. It would. It would kill millions of seniors if you got to herd immunity. So it's better 1.00

00:49:25.520 to prevent herd immunity and hope that the vaccines can make up the difference as opposed to infections

00:49:32.140 giving you the herd immunity. So herd immunity by vaccinations could be really good. Herd immunity

00:49:39.860 by people just getting it could be very bad. And here's why. Not only because of the old people 1.00

00:49:45.960 dying, because you can't socially isolate that well, but also because of the long haul problem.

00:49:53.100 So a lot of people are not familiar, a lot of conservatives for some reason have not heard

00:49:57.840 that there's a big concern about some kind of permanent or long, long damage from getting

00:50:05.440 the coronavirus. Now, it doesn't happen to most people, apparently, but there are enough stories

00:50:10.300 of it. Even some famous people who are having very long term problems. Maybe some of them will lose

00:50:18.680 their smell permanently. We don't know that yet. But how much weight should you put on the long haul

00:50:25.980 problem? Let's look at the randomized controlled study of the long haul problem. Oh, it doesn't

00:50:33.240 exist. So if we don't have a randomized controlled trial to know what this long haul problem is,

00:50:40.040 what can you do about it? You just have to use your judgment. You're going to have to say,

00:50:46.780 we think this is a risk, but we don't know how big it is. And that's like the real world. You have to

00:50:51.520 make judgments without really knowing the risk of each one. Personally, I think that's a big enough

00:50:58.360 risk that I would, I would be pretty extreme about avoiding that. Because I don't know if it's a

00:51:09.380 problem. But if it is a problem, it's a problem for the rest of your whole life. So it's not a risk

00:51:15.360 that I would take. So if you said, Scott, do you want to just get the coronavirus and get it over

00:51:21.120 with? Like Rand Paul, I would say, I don't know if I'm going to be the one who recovers well. So no,

00:51:29.080 I would rather not get it. And if you think that getting it is the right play, well, you could get

00:51:36.120 lucky and just get your antibodies and no symptoms. But it's not a risk I'm willing to take. The long haul

00:51:43.160 risk, it's a pretty big risk, at least in terms of if it if it's real, it would be the rest of your

00:51:50.620 life. That's a big risk. People lose limbs to sugar abuse. Well, of course, it depends on the size of

00:52:00.620 the problem, right? So if the long haul problem is 10 people in the United States ever, then I'm not

00:52:07.000 going to worry about it. If it's millions, if it's hundreds of thousands of people, which it well

00:52:13.460 could be, we just don't know. Well, then I'm pretty worried about it. I'm not I'm not feeling the same

00:52:18.940 as if about people eating sugar, as was said in the comments. All right. So you don't want herd

00:52:27.440 immunity to happen naturally. Some people still say that Sweden is a success story. But you should 1.00

00:52:33.380 update your information on Sweden. Apparently, Sweden has decided that their their technique of

00:52:40.000 being a little bit loose about this was probably the wrong technique. And I believe that Sweden is 0.94

00:52:45.180 is moving closer to the European model, having believed that they did not use the right model.

00:52:52.500 That's where I think it is right now. But don't don't use the Sweden example in your arguments because

00:52:58.340 that's changed. All right. How about here's some other things that I noticed conservatives don't

00:53:04.740 know. They've seen studies that say that the holes in the mask, any kind of mask are bigger than the

00:53:11.380 size of the virus. So the hole, if you were to go microscopic and look at the mask, there'd be,

00:53:17.240 let's say, holes this big, depending on your, you know, magnification. And then the virus would be like

00:53:22.620 a, you know, a little dot going through this big hole. So then conservatives, some conservatives say,

00:53:28.220 well, a mask is useless, because this virus will fly right through that gigantic hole.

00:53:35.180 Here's what people who make that argument miss. Viruses don't travel by themselves. They travel

00:53:44.180 attached to water particles. Try this experiment at home, go up to your mirror and put on your mask,

00:53:51.600 and then blow on the mirror. See how much of a, you know, water vapor film is there. Then take the

00:54:01.140 mask off and do the same thing. Just go on your window or mirror and see if there's a difference

00:54:08.000 in the water vapor. If there is, that means that the mask is stopping some amount of water vapor.

00:54:15.360 We're not trying to stop it all. I'll get into that. You're trying to reduce the amount that's

00:54:20.880 floating around. Now, if you put your mask on and you went into a phone booth with one person,

00:54:27.120 let's say one of you is infected, and you stayed in the phone booth for a couple of days,

00:54:32.600 would the mask help you avoid infection? No. No. Because you went into a phone booth

00:54:39.600 and whatever air got past the holes in the mask would stay in there and you'd be marinating in it

00:54:45.920 until you got it. So under that situation, would a mask work? No. A mask would be completely useless

00:54:55.380 if you were trapped in a phone booth for two days with somebody infected. But that's not the real

00:55:01.480 world. Most of the real world is small interactions. Could having a mask that we know stops some amount

00:55:08.500 of water vapor, which we know is what is carrying some amount of the virus, could that make a difference

00:55:14.240 for small interactions? Well, here's the other thing that conservatives seem not to know, which is

00:55:21.340 that the viral load makes a big difference. So in other words, if one particle of a virus got on you,

00:55:30.240 you'd probably either not get it, or it would start slowly, because it's starting from such a small

00:55:37.920 number of virus, that your body would have a little more time to organize its defenses. And that although

00:55:44.180 you might get symptoms, they might be more mild because of your low viral load. So in other words,

00:55:50.600 the person who's marinating in the phone booth with an infected person for two days is going to get a lot

00:55:57.540 of virus. That person is more likely, say the scientists, say the doctors, to get a worse outcome.

00:56:04.480 Now, is there a randomized controlled trial on viral load to show us for sure that getting more of it

00:56:14.840 is going to make you sicker than getting a little of it? No, no, there is not a randomized controlled

00:56:22.680 trial of coronavirus showing you that a greater viral load will give you a worse outcome. But it would

00:56:30.740 be consistent with what medical professionals know about viral loads. So it could be that coronavirus

00:56:39.480 is the exception to the rule. But that's not a smart play. In other words, if you're doing risk

00:56:45.980 management, again, you don't know, you've got all these unknowns, you would assume the, let's say,

00:56:53.280 the smartest way to approach it is that this virus is similar enough to other viruses that the amount

00:57:01.460 of viral load probably makes a big difference. Not every time, maybe you can't prove it for sure,

00:57:08.920 but it's the smart play. All right. So if the amount of virus you're infected with makes a big

00:57:15.660 difference, we don't know it, but it's a smart play that it would be. Assuming it's true would be the

00:57:22.980 smart way to think of it, even if it turns out it's not true later. So therefore, masks stop some

00:57:32.000 amount of moisture. That means they're stopping some amount of the virus. And if viral load matters,

00:57:39.500 there's your argument for why masks probably work, even if you can't measure them. What about the

00:57:47.140 problem of, here's some other points. Somebody said to me, if there's no strong evidence that masks

00:57:56.620 work, and that's true, there is no randomized control trial to say masks work. And since that,

00:58:04.020 we don't have that, we don't have that. And since we do know that masks could cause problems, might

00:58:10.100 reduce your oxygen, fog you glasses while you're driving, give you panic attacks, you can think of

00:58:17.180 a hundred ways that masks are definitely bad. So here's the argument. If we don't know they're good,

00:58:24.260 but we definitely know there's a cost to using them, why would you do it? You know, shouldn't you

00:58:30.260 know they're good before you take the harm of wearing them? And I would say, you might want to,

00:58:38.340 that would be a good point. It would be a good point under the condition that you don't have vaccines

00:58:47.780 coming, and that you don't have basically all medical and scientific organizations telling you to wear masks.

00:58:55.300 Now, the fact that every modern country is recommending its citizens wear masks, if the virus is present,

00:59:05.460 and every medical organization is saying the same thing, and probably 99% of doctors and experts

00:59:15.140 are saying the same thing. Does that mean they're all right? It doesn't. No. Because, again,

00:59:23.780 we're doing risk management, we don't know what's true. It is still completely possible that masks make

00:59:30.820 things worse. It is still completely possible that masks really, really make a big difference.

00:59:37.460 We don't know. And if you think you know, you're in the dumb world. You don't know. So you have to make 1.00

00:59:44.420 your decisions based on these factors. So when do you trust the doctors, and when do you be skeptical?

00:59:52.420 Because you've seen me be skeptical of experts a lot of times, right? So what am I looking at to

00:59:59.140 decide when to be skeptical, and when to say, yeah, I'm going to go with the experts on this one?

01:00:04.900 Well, one of my rules is how much complexity is involved. When you're looking at, say,

01:00:10.740 an 80-year prediction of climate change, that's, first of all, more economic than medical.

01:00:17.540 It's too complicated to do. That's just not something I would trust an expert with.

01:00:22.260 A 20-year, you know, 80-year projection of anything. I wouldn't trust any expert with that.

01:00:29.460 But when you have a really limited question, which is, do you think these masks probably help

01:00:37.700 with the coronavirus? And you have massive agreement among all the people who would understand this

01:00:45.380 field the best. And it's a pretty simple question. Now, there's a little bit of complexity to it,

01:00:50.900 but well within, you know, the expert range, right? So under the condition that it's a simple question,

01:00:57.460 and you have every country, every major medical organization, all the people who are the smartest

01:01:04.820 about this, 99% of them are on the same side? I take that pretty seriously, right? If it were 50-50,

01:01:14.820 I'd feel differently. If it were 90-10, I'd feel differently. But it's more like 99-1, I think,

01:01:21.620 at least observationally. When you see somebody disagreeing, it's a doctor with weird hair,

01:01:30.020 usually. Am I wrong? If you see somebody who's like the rebel doctor who's got his own little

01:01:37.040 video on YouTube, and he's the rebel, and he's saying that the medical community is all wrong,

01:01:43.180 look at his hair. Hi, I'm the medical community, and my hair looks like I've never

01:01:51.140 had a mirror in my entire life. Right? I'm just saying that when you see the doctor with the weird

01:02:03.160 hair, and he's the rogue, like he's the only one who thinks the masks don't work,

01:02:10.860 I'm not going to go with the weird hair guy every time. I love my skeptics, and I'm completely biased

01:02:18.500 toward wanting to believe the skeptic. Because I think half the time, at least, the skeptic is

01:02:24.460 right. But somebody says, I don't buy the long hair argument. Well, don't take the long hair

01:02:31.480 argument to be too serious. But the majority of medical professionals are on the same side of this.

01:02:39.560 All right, here's some other objections I hear from conservatives.

01:02:42.040 is that touching your mask, which people do, is going to reduce the whole point of a mask.

01:02:50.160 Because I don't know about you, but my hand is all over my face mask when I'm using it. So does that

01:02:56.100 make it worse? Well, I think not. Because when this first started, we thought that surfaces are where

01:03:05.140 you get your coronavirus, like touching a surface. But we have learned more recently that the surfaces

01:03:11.840 are not nearly the problem that we thought. It's pretty much an airborne problem. It doesn't seem

01:03:16.920 to be surfaces related. It's still smart to sanitize everything and wash your hands, because there's got

01:03:22.960 to be some effect from surfaces. But I think the thinking is that there's not enough of an effect

01:03:31.740 that touching your mask is going to increase the risk more than having a mask decreases it. Now,

01:03:39.540 could I be wrong? Sure. Right? It's risk management. It's not certainty. So could I be wrong that touching

01:03:48.660 your mask makes it worse? Maybe. Maybe it does. But I would say that my judgment on this is that since

01:03:56.500 touching surfaces seems to be not a big issue. I mean, your grocery store lets you touch everything.

01:04:04.280 You know, they don't love it. But, you know, are a lot of people getting coronavirus from grocery

01:04:08.840 stores? Because the grocery store is nothing but people touching common items all day long.

01:04:15.000 It doesn't seem to be a problem. So there's that. I'm touching. All right.

01:04:22.700 Conservatives also say that... All right. So getting back to the point of should you do something where

01:04:34.820 the mask benefit is not proven by a good trial, but there are lots of doctors who say, yeah,

01:04:41.800 our judgment is it's probably going to help because water particles are bigger than the mask

01:04:48.360 goals, etc. All right. What about opening businesses? I'm in favor of opening businesses

01:04:56.880 and then just tracking them. Because I think the only way that we can get opened, given that this

01:05:04.940 coronavirus is going to linger for God knows how long, I think you just have to open businesses. And

01:05:09.980 then when people get infected, ask them where they've been. And as soon as you see a correlation,

01:05:15.900 let's say, let's, we don't think restaurants are going to be the big problem, but let's say they

01:05:21.780 were. Well, then you close them up. So I think you just have to experiment with it. So I'm pro

01:05:28.160 opening businesses, just in case you wondered. All right. And kids in school, I think that the,

01:05:35.220 the harm to kids of keeping them out of school is probably exceeds the benefit. So I'm very pro

01:05:41.840 putting kids back in school with all the safety that we can bring them. But you should be aware

01:05:47.880 that that does mean grandma is more likely to die. There's just nothing you can do about it.

01:05:54.060 You can try to socially distance all you want, but people are going to die if kids go back to school.

01:06:00.720 I just think that's the trade-off that's worth it. I think killing, I'm going to say it directly.

01:06:05.780 I think that getting kids back in school is more important than saving, I don't know,

01:06:13.260 100,000 old people's lives. You know, if you can't say that out loud, you probably shouldn't 0.94

01:06:19.420 be involved in decision-making. But I'm going to say it out loud. Getting kids back to school

01:06:24.660 would be worth 100,000 senior citizens dying. You know, if you can't say that out loud, 0.96

01:06:32.480 you just don't belong in the conversation. You should be able to say it. Do I like that? No.

01:06:39.520 I'm one of the people who might be dead. I'm sort of rapidly approaching the high-risk category of

01:06:47.000 life. I don't like the fact that I might be dead, or there's somebody I love might be dead. But yeah,

01:06:54.120 I'm still going to say we should get the kids back to school. The other things that people say is that

01:07:00.380 the masks are really some kind of a control thing, and that really it's the global conspiracy to

01:07:10.620 make us all agree to anything. So the masks are really just a way to manipulate us into

01:07:17.840 higher control later. I would call that just crazy. There's some things that you don't need an argument

01:07:23.940 against. You know, if somebody says a UFO landed in their backyard, I'm not going to go check,

01:07:31.420 right? If somebody says Bigfoot ate the cupcakes that were on the counter in your kitchen, I'm not

01:07:39.560 going to check the video. I don't think Bigfoot ate the cupcakes. There's some things you don't need

01:07:44.440 to research. And I don't need to research that the masks are some kind of a global control

01:07:51.580 conspiracy thing. That's just crazy. All right? So somebody here says masks don't work.

01:08:02.800 So whoever it is who says here masks don't work, did you hear anything I said?

01:08:10.840 Was there anything I said that you listened to, or did you just sign on? Masks don't work.

01:08:18.500 So just in summary, for those of you who signed in later, I can't know, nor can you, if masks work

01:08:27.620 or they don't work. It's not knowable. We don't have a randomized control trial. We're not going to

01:08:33.820 have one because you can't ethically do it. You're going to have to use the information you have,

01:08:38.620 and it's all unreliable. So how do you make a decision with all unreliable information?

01:08:44.900 Well, all you can do is figure out which of the unreliable information is the worst.

01:08:51.440 All those studies that are not randomized controlled trials? Worthless. Ignore them all.

01:08:58.340 Size of the whole of the mask compared to the size of the virus? Worthless. That won't tell you

01:09:04.280 anything. The real world would tell you something, but those two different sizes don't tell you

01:09:10.160 anything because of the water vapor, blah, blah, blah. And then somebody had the argument that the

01:09:15.860 mask would rip off the water vapor and aerosol the virus, and it would actually be making the virus

01:09:22.820 more transmissible because the mask would carry it, would make it go from larger particles to smaller

01:09:31.720 particles, to which I say, I suppose anything's possible. Maybe. I wouldn't rule it out, but I

01:09:40.560 don't think we have evidence of it. So I would throw that in the mix and say, I can't judge that one.

01:09:46.520 I don't know. But there's certainly a risk both ways.

01:09:51.760 Somebody says, we found out that COVID is on vapor, not droplets. Well, vapor is still,

01:10:00.940 it's got to be on droplets as well. How can it not be on droplets? That doesn't make sense.

01:10:11.060 Are you for tagging people, Scott? You mean tagging the people who have been vaccinated?

01:10:15.720 I think we may have no choice at one point. I think we'll probably have no choice.

01:10:24.600 But it's not ideal. You know, I think that we've reached the point where our loss of privacy is

01:10:32.420 largely just guaranteed. So to me, I tend not to argue the privacy stuff too much because it would

01:10:40.320 be like arguing against rain. It's going to rain. You could argue against it, but it's still going

01:10:47.120 to rain. Privacy is like that. You're going to lose all your privacy. I don't see, there's just no way

01:10:54.000 around that in the long, long run. In the short run, you could, you know, claw it back a little bit,

01:10:58.920 but in the long run, there will be no privacy. Let's see. Somebody had COVID and donated plasma. Yeah.

01:11:12.520 How about tattoos? What about tattoos? Oh, tattoos to show that you've been vaccinated.

01:11:20.680 Somebody says the American Academy of Pediatrics study shows zero child to adult transmission.

01:11:27.500 Was that a randomized controlled trial? No, it wasn't. So what kind of credibility do you put on

01:11:36.300 that non-randomized, non-controlled trial? Coin flip. It's a coin flip. You shouldn't put any

01:11:45.460 credibility on it. It's just a coin flip. Now, this study like that could tell you there's something to

01:11:52.020 look into. It could tell you that you do want to do a randomized controlled trial, but if you don't

01:11:57.960 have one, you really don't know anything. All right. And there's a reason that we require the

01:12:05.700 randomized controlled trials. It's because without them, you're, you're so often wrong.

01:12:12.740 We will know who has been vaccinated once the side effects start happening. Well, no report of bad

01:12:21.140 side effects yet, except people getting sore and tired for a few days.

01:12:25.560 I'm just looking at your comments today. There's no randomized control for Bigfoot. Yeah, there's

01:12:35.380 some things that are just too obvious. You don't need a randomized control study.

01:12:41.300 Why do I think the time article came out? Well, it could be that the time article was to tell us

01:12:48.380 something that we would have found out a different way. So it could have been inoculation so that they

01:12:53.780 could spin it the way they wanted to spin it. And then the next time you hear it, you already have

01:12:57.860 this, this framework built and you go, Oh, they are, they already told us about that.

01:13:04.700 Somebody says some of these periscopes are good and others are like this one. Well,

01:13:09.440 the thing that you don't know is that it's when I disagree with you, that is where you find value.

01:13:18.360 So agreeing with you doesn't help you that much. Feels good. Feels good. But I think you'll like it

01:13:24.780 better when I disagree. All right.

01:13:31.300 Superbowl. Is there a Superbowl this weekend? Not paying attention.

01:13:40.440 Randomized control study. People don't know what it means.

01:13:43.060 Well, it just means that it's a high quality study that you could largely, largely trust.

01:13:51.520 All right. Give me a feedback. How, how many things did I tell you that you had not heard

01:13:58.280 before? So just in the comments, tell me what I said about masks today that you had not heard

01:14:05.480 before. Now forget about whether it's true. Cause remember we don't have certainty about any of this.

01:14:13.060 Um, let's see, looking at your, so some are saying none, nothing, nothing, nothing. Well,

01:14:21.240 you're a smart group. Uh, so most of you are saying that none of it, none of it is new. I guess what I

01:14:30.140 don't know is how many heard nothing new and, uh, didn't change their minds.

01:14:35.940 Okay. Interesting. So almost universally people are saying that, uh, there was nothing new there.

01:14:46.240 Now there may be nothing new in terms of the facts, but the way to think about it,

01:14:51.220 I think is not common to the way I'm seeing people thinking about it.

01:14:54.900 All right. So let me, give me some feedback on what points I may have gotten wrong on my mask

01:15:03.320 stuff. You can send it to me one way or another and I will revise and then we'll see where we go

01:15:09.700 from there. Bye for now. All right. Did anyone change their mind? I doubt it. Usually you don't

01:15:18.540 change your mind on one take. It's something that has to, it would take a while to filter in and sink

01:15:26.060 in. Do any masks stop water vapor? They all do. Every mask stops some water vapor.

01:15:37.260 All right. So I think, uh, I made my case. If somebody has a counter argument with the same

01:15:51.160 facts, that would be interesting. And I'll, I'll look for that on Twitter and elsewhere. And I'll talk

01:15:56.580 to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - February 05, 2021

Episode 1273 Scott Adams： What Conservatives Get Wrong About Masks, How to Legally Fix an Election

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