Episode 1454 Scott Adams： Trump is in Trouble. Again. Virus Stupidity Rages. And More Fun
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Summary
Jostdorf and Jono talk about fake news, the Biden administration, and a new strain of the chickenpox virus. Plus, a new kind of fake news that's going to make you think twice before you get your flu shot.
Transcript
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All right. Here we are. Good morning, everybody. It's the best time of the day again.
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Yeah. Sometimes you think to yourself, well, I don't know if it's going to be the best time,
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but today, totally. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank gel,
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a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid,
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not your second favorite liquid. That would be insanity. And join me now for the unparalleled
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pleasure. The dopamine of the day, nay, the week. It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens
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now. Go. Yes, Jostdorf, this is the Dilbert guy. But don't hold that against me. You say
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contrast is good, but pointing out hypocrisy isn't pointing out... Yeah, you can point out
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somebody asked me a question about hypocrisy versus contrast. Hypocrisy never convinces
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anybody. Because if you say to somebody, hey, you blamed me for doing X, but you did X last
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year. Are they going to stop blaming you? It's never worked in the history of the world.
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But contrast works. They're just different things. To answer your question. Well, the New York
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Times is in the news twice today, both for fake news. Now, I'm not saying it's fake news.
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I'll let you judge. But if you're the New York Times and you yourself are in the news twice,
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and both times it's for spreading potentially fake news, that's not a good day. Washington Post
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is getting a little pushback, too. I'll tell you about that. So the New York Times had this
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headline. Breaking news. I think this was yesterday. The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox
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and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal CDC report said.
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So that's pretty bad. New York Times paper of record telling us this new variant is as contagious
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as chickenpox and may spread just as easily if you're vaccinated. Wow. Pretty bad, isn't
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it? All right. Here's what a spokesperson for the Biden administration, who's a spokesperson
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on the the COVID stuff, I guess. Ben Wakana, not from Wakanda, but Wakana. He said vaccinated
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people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people. And if you fail to
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include that context, you're doing it wrong. That's right. The Biden administration just
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called out the New York Times for fake news. And really, really big fake news. This is the
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kind of fake news that kills people. Let me say that again. This is the kind of fake news
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that kills people. Because it's reporting that whether you get vaccinated or not, the difference
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is less than you thought it would be. Because you can still get it and still transmit it. Now,
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it turns out that that's just not true. The what does seem to be true is that you could have
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the same amount of virus in you, in your nose and your mouth. But apparently, the rate of actually
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transmitting it to other people is not even close. If you're vaccinated, you don't transmit it.
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But how is that possible? How is it possible that you could be vaccinated, have the same
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amount of virus in your nose and your mouth, which is presumably where it gets out, and you
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don't spread it? But the person right next to you who's unvaccinated with exactly the same
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amount of virus is spreading it? How do you explain any of that? Well, I asked this question
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on Twitter just moments ago. I haven't seen the answer yet. But I asked this. One of the things
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we know about people who have COVID symptoms is that they don't know their lungs are degrading.
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And so people just breathe deeper and harder to compensate for the fact that their lungs are
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as efficient. But they don't necessarily know they're doing it. So here's the question. If you're
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vaccinated, you've got a bunch of virus in you, but it's giving you no symptoms,
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presumably your breathing would be the same as normal. But the person right next to you who
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has no vaccination, they have the same amount of virus. But presumably, if their if their lungs
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are affected, they might be breathing 40% harder than you are, and not even know it. Because
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apparently that's a real thing. People don't know they're compensating. So I would think that how
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hard you breathe has some effect. I don't know if that's the whole story or any of the story. But
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we do need to know why a vaccinated person wouldn't spread it as much as a vaccine as unvaccinated.
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Retracted study from India using a vaccine we don't permit. Yeah. So then one part of the study
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was from India, looking at an Indian vaccination that we don't even allow in the United States.
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So that doesn't count. And then I guess in the one cluster and where was it province town or
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something? Zero people died. Which is pretty important, right? Zero people died. That should
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be the story. The story should be there was a mass breakout and nobody died. That seems pretty
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important. All right. So that's the first thing that the New York Times reported in a way that's
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misleading. I'm not going to say they get a fact wrong. I'll say that they reported it in in a way
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that's so misleading. It's basically fake news, according to the Biden administration. Now, I don't
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think the Biden administration calls out the New York Times unless they really mean it, right? Because
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it's sort of a friendly publication. So they must be pretty serious about it. Well, the other news is
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that there's some handwritten notes from the time of the January 6th event in which Trump allegedly told
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Attorney General Rosen, quote, according to some handwritten notes at the time, just say the
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election was corrupt and leave the rest to me. So the interpretation is that Trump was trying to
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get his Department of Justice to claim without the benefit of any evidence that the election was
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corrupt and that, quote, he would do the rest. Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? It's right here in the New
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York Times. Sounds pretty bad. But as Margot Cleveland and I think other people, this is just somebody I saw
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on Twitter, have noted that there's some ambiguity about what he meant. Surprise! Somebody talking about
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a conversation with Trump and there's some ambiguity about what he said or what he meant. Surprise! Right?
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And what is the ambiguity? The ambiguity is it looks like what Trump was saying was conditional,
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meaning look into the allegations. If you believe the allegations are credible, then call the election
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corrupt and that's all you need to do. Now, is that illegal? Is it illegal for the president to say,
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if you find a problem, say it publicly? What's the problem with that? If you see a problem,
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say it publicly and then I'll handle the rest. But the fake news leaves out the conditional part
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because that's a little ambiguous from the notes. Was it conditional on them finding something or do
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you think, just ask yourself how likely this is. Do you think it's likely that Trump asked somebody who
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could clearly talk to the press, somebody who would write their own memoir someday, somebody who was
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connected to tons of people who would talk, do you think that Trump said to somebody who would
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clearly leak it someday, I'd like you to lie about the election and say it was corrupt? Do you think he
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did that? To me, that sounds insanely unlikely. You know, Trump got this far not by telling people
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who could talk about it later to do illegal shit. I just don't think he does that. There's no history
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of that. Now, there might be history of people doing things sketchily. There may be, you know, God knows
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what has ever happened or whoever's done what. But is there any history of Trump telling somebody to do
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something illegal? I think no. I think no. And to imagine that a sitting president would tell somebody
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who definitely is going to tell other people to do something that illegal or, I don't know, maybe it's
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more unethical than illegal. I don't know what law would specifically be broken by that. But it's just so
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unlikely. You would have to start with the assumption that Trump is, you know, reckless and crazy and lost his
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mind for him to have said that. So I'm going to say that in all likelihood, that's fake news. And I guess the
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Washington Post was part of that fake news triad, too. So, or duo. Yes, and now apparently Congress is going to
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get Trump's tax returns. You want to make a prediction about what's in Trump's tax returns?
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In the comments, let's see your predictions. Give me your predictions for Trump's tax returns.
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And I want to see, I'm seeing, I'll just read your predictions. Nothing, nothing, nothing of
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consequence. Nothing illegal. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nope. There we go. One of you got it
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right. It's going to be two movies on one screen. Guaranteed. It doesn't matter what's actually in
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the taxes. I think we all know that that's not going to make a difference. What will matter is what
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the people say is in the taxes. And most of the public won't read the taxes themselves, because they
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wouldn't know what they're seeing anyway. So some part of the press will say, we found
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the smoking gun of horrible, horrible behavior. Who knows what that is? But they're going to
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say they found it. The people on the right, people who would support Trump, are going to
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say, no, you didn't. We're looking at the same tax returns. There's nothing there. Or there's
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nothing clear. There might be something that's ambiguous. But there's no clear indication of
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anything that's a problem. Do you want to bet against me? Does anybody want to take the
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opposite bet and bet that we'll have a clear outcome? No. There isn't the slightest chance
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we'll have a clear outcome. Here's how you can predict this. You can predict it because it's
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a complicated subject. That's it. If it's complicated, you know the public can't check it themselves.
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So the press can just say any freaking thing they want about it. And people will say, well,
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I'm not going to check the tax returns myself. But the Daily Beast said there's something bad
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in there. So what are you going to do? Yes, as James is saying here, the appearance of
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impropriety. You're going to get all kinds of stories about what if. But what if this indication
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of revenue is connected to something bad? There's no evidence of it. But what if? What if this
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is telling us something bad? Or how about this raises a red flag? There's no evidence of anything
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bad. But it raised the flag. There's a flag. So I feel like it's going to be endless options
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for the anti-Trumpers to just run stories of generalities and vagueness and innuendo and
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accusation. So if the IRS hasn't found a problem yet, an illegal problem, and apparently there's
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no suggestion that they have, what are the odds there is a problem? What are the odds? And if there
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is a problem, it's usually something that the accounting firm takes care of. What if Trump
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paid little or no taxes? Isn't that baked in? Would you want a president who did not take
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advantage of the tax laws the way they're written? Not really, right? Would you want a president
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who paid millions of dollars extra in taxes that were not necessary if that president had
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simply followed the existing laws of taxes and took the advice of accountants? So if he
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paid no taxes, it's just going to look like he knows what he's doing and he has good accountants.
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I just don't think that's going to hurt him. I mean, they'll make something of it, but it
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won't. It won't be a difference. All right, let's talk about hospital risk. Why are we not
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seeing evening reporting on how impacted our hospitals are and where they're headed? Why
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is that? Is it because it's hard to gather? It would be hard, but not without, you know,
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I think you could check the top 10, you know, hospitals and top 10 metropolitan areas and you'd
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have a pretty good idea what's going on. So why don't we see that reported? Is it because
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that's no longer a goal? Do we not have a worry about the hospitals? Because I feel as if once
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you have half the country vaccinated and it's mostly the people who get the sickest are the
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vaccinated ones. Do we have any risk? Is there any risk going forward that the coronavirus will
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crash our hospitals for more than, you know, say a week or something? I feel like there's no risk.
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Is there? Or it's so small that it's just not a national problem. So I don't know the answer
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to that, but if there's anybody who could put some numbers on that and tell me where we're
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headed, because I feel like the public should know that. It's a pretty important thing.
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Just skipping topics here for a moment. I guess Iran used a drone to attack some Israeli billionaires
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tanker in the Gulf. And it's a retaliation for something that Israel did militarily against
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Iranian assets. And I'm thinking to myself, they really pick just the right targets, don't they?
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Because it wasn't an Israeli flagship, but it belonged to an Israeli billionaire. So how much
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is Israel going to retaliate for something that wasn't really against Israel's country? And
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there weren't any Israeli citizens on the ship, probably, or certainly none got killed. So
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it's just the right amount of provocation. And Iran must be running out of things they can attack
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that will not invite full-scale retaliation. It's like they have to do something. We've got
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to do something. Not that it would make any difference. Do you think Israel is going to
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change their policies because a tanker got hit with a drone? No. So is it just for show?
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Or is it just for internal politics? Or I don't know why they're bothering to do it. It doesn't
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seem to be helping. Well, there's an ER doctor. Alex Busco wrote an article. I think this was in CNN.
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And he notes that, you know, he works in the ER. And he says 40% of Americans still remain
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unvaccinated. But 99.2% of deaths are among the unvaccinated. 99.2% are unvaccinated.
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So, and apparently people in ER, when they're, you know, close to death's door, because I've heard
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this in another story. So this is two anecdotal reports. Don't put too much weight on anecdotal stuff.
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But I've seen two reports of doctors who say that dying patients ask for the vaccine. And they
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don't understand that the vaccine is to prevent it, not to fix it. Although I think it's being
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tested to fix it, isn't it? But that seems like it wouldn't work. I don't know, just guessing.
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So do you think it's true that there are people who think they can wait until they're at death's
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door to get the vaccine? And that that's why they're waiting? Is there anybody out there who
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says, you know, I don't want to get the vaccination just in case, but I'll get the vaccination after
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I'm sick, and then I'll be fine. I doubt it. I mean, but so this doctor says, quote, basically
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he's complaining about the massive ignorance of his own patients. He actually used that word
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ignorance. He goes, many of my patients exhibit stunning levels of ignorance when it comes to
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this disease and the vaccine. If you looked at a chart of people who say they don't want to get
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the vaccine, even if it's proven to be safe. What percentage of the public doesn't want to get
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the vaccine? Well, if you look at Republicans, at least back in December, so this is several months
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old now. But back in December, 42% of Republicans said they wouldn't get the vaccination, even if
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everything looked good. Rural Americans, 35% said no. Black adults said 35% said no. But among
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vast other groups, white and Hispanic, adult males, etc., it's about 25% of the country.
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So if you take out Republicans and black adults and rural, about 25% of what's left don't want
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the vaccination. Now, is that the way to measure this? Do you think it's fair to try to figure
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out how many black people don't want the vaccination versus how many Republicans versus how many anything
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else? Does that seem fair? That that's the way we're slicing this? Because the way you decide to
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categorize things is going to help you with your decision making, right? So if you categorize things
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wrong, maybe you don't make the right decisions. Here's how I do it. By education level.
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Yeah, think about it. Suppose instead of saying how many Republicans or black people got vaccinated or
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wanted to, you simply reported it by education level, what do you think would happen? Do you think
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you would find, somebody says that, do IQ? Trouble with IQ is that you can't get to it. You know,
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people don't know their IQs, etc. So you could use education level as a rough proxy for IQ,
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which it is. It's a rough proxy. So suppose the only reporting was how informed you are or how
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educated you are. Suppose, let me ask this of those of you who decide to get unvaccinated.
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First of all, while I'm doing this, could you tell me in the comments how many of you watching this
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have decided to not get vaccinated? So I just want to see, you know, how many people who are
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watching this now are in that category. Okay, so watch, watch the comments go by. You'll see quite
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a few people who are not getting vaccinated. So this is a question to you.
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Question to you. If you knew that the most educated and high IQ people were getting vaccinated,
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would it change your opinion? If you knew the smartest, most informed people were getting
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vaccinated? Now, most of you are saying no. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
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So why is that? Can you explain? I know it's hard in the comments because the comments are short, but
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could you explain why you would not be influenced by all the smartest people getting the vaccination?
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I'm not saying you should. I'm just looking, I'm just wondering about your thinking. So I'm not
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trying to influence you. I'm curious. That's not how we make decisions, right? You don't want to
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look at the smart people to make your decisions. Now, can you give me an example in history where the
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least smart people made the best decisions? All right. And that's a, by the way, that's a serious
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question. I don't even know the answer to it. Usually I ask questions where I kind of know the
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answer, but I'm not leading the witness this time. Give me an example. Let's say in the United States
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and the past 20 years. So United States, past 20 years. How many decisions did the smartest people
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get wrong while the dumbest people got it right? Can you give me some examples? Somebody says Iraq. I don't know
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that the data would show that. Would it? I don't know. About Hunter Biden selling art. I don't know. The war in
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Iraq. I don't know that that's ever been studied. Have we ever looked at the difference between education level and
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support for the war in Iraq? I doubt we've seen that. War on drugs. Huh. That would be interesting.
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Are you saying that the dumb people, not the dumb people, but you're saying that the most educated
00:23:08.220
people thought the war on drugs was good? I don't know that the evidence would suggest that.
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Climate change? Well, climate change is a tricky one because it assumes that you know the right
00:23:22.440
answer. We don't. You know, I think with climate change you still have to play the odds. You know,
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it's not a yes-no situation. You have to play the odds on that one. So I don't think you can use
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that one. Wokeness? Oh, that's a pretty good example. Yeah, the wokeness would be an example
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where the high education people think it's a good idea, and it's obviously not. But I
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don't know if research would back that up. But anyway, if Rasmussen or somebody wants to
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do a poll to show us if the most educated and informed people are getting vaccinated more
00:24:04.140
than other people, I would be interested to know. Now, I'm not saying you should make your
00:24:07.980
decision based on that. But wouldn't you want to know? I'd want to know. Food pyramid
00:24:14.180
and trans fats. No, that's just an example of smart people being wrong. That's not an example
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of all the dumb people knew that the pyramid was wrong. Teachers unions? I don't see that
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point. Yeah. All right. So that's just my point. I just put that out there. When do you believe
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the experts? And when do you believe the smart people who are well-informed? And when do you
00:24:40.040
side with the dumb people? You know, do you ever feel exposed and maybe a little bit?
00:24:50.600
Well, let's put it this way. If you take the same side as the most educated and well-informed
00:24:55.700
people and you're wrong, because, you know, you could be wrong, at least you don't look
00:25:02.000
dumb, because at least you're on the side of all the smart people and, you know, you
00:25:05.700
don't get them all right. So that's not the most embarrassing thing. But suppose the smart
00:25:10.300
people were on one side and the dumb people were on another side of whatever the issue
00:25:15.160
is. And you sided with the dumb people and you knew it. You knew it. And then it turns
00:25:21.520
out that the dumb people were wrong, as you might expect dumb people to be, you know,
00:25:26.860
more often than not. So how would you feel about that? If you sided with the dumb people,
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you knew you were doing it, and then they turned out to be wrong. Yeah, I'm seeing lots
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of, lots of examples encounter. Somebody says religion. Yeah. Again, you're assuming you
00:25:45.860
know the right answer. I guess the problem is that a lot of these issues we don't know for
00:25:49.920
sure or agree on what was the right issue. So you'd have to have a topic where somehow
00:25:56.200
we all agreed what was the right issue in the end. I don't know if there are any. So
00:26:00.820
there are two lawsuits very similar happening now in Hollywood. So Gerard Butler is suing
00:26:06.940
his producers for his movies Olympia, Olympus has fallen for $10 million because he had a
00:26:12.660
deal where he would get money at the, based on the profits of the movie on top of his pay
00:26:18.820
for being in it. And they, allegedly, the Hollywood accounting is making it look like he has no
00:26:26.200
profits, when in fact there are lots of profits, but they're giving him none. So he's suing them.
00:26:32.020
At the same time, Black Widow star Johansson is doing something similar because her movie would give
00:26:40.060
her lots of money from the box office. But because of COVID, they streamed it instead. And the streaming
00:26:47.100
revenue was not in her contract in the same way. So because it got streamed, she got cut
00:26:53.240
out of, she says, a whole bunch of money that would have come her way. Now, here's my take
00:26:59.660
on both of them. They have really bad lawyers. Because what kind of a bad lawyer lets a contract
00:27:09.480
go out that says that the producers of the studio could make money in some way, and then she doesn't,
00:27:17.120
the star. If the whole point was that she's going to share in the profits, you've got to have a bad
00:27:23.040
lawyer to say, my star will share in the profits, but only certain ones. That's crazy. That's like the
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worst lawyering I've ever heard. The lawyer should say that my client will share in the profits no
00:27:40.240
matter how they are generated. That's it. No matter how they're generated. If he didn't put that in
00:27:45.660
there, yeah, or agents, right? The agents and the lawyers are sort of the same thing in a sense.
00:27:53.140
And then with Gerard Butler, let me tell you how this went when I negotiated my Dilbert TV
00:28:01.440
contract. So I was working with one of the top lawyers in the industry. Very experienced top
00:28:08.300
lawyer who knows how everything works. And when I got to the point where I was negotiating the money I
00:28:13.820
would make on the extra profits, my lawyer basically said, it doesn't matter what you put
00:28:20.100
in there, you're not getting a penny. That's what my lawyer told me. Doesn't matter what you write
00:28:25.460
there. They're going to game the accounting so you don't get anything. So you should make your
00:28:32.280
deal with the assumption that there's no money at the end, even if your contract says there's money
00:28:37.120
at the end. Because they will find a way to rig the accounting to make it look like there was no
00:28:44.800
profit when in fact there was lots. Now that's exactly what's happening. The Dilbert
00:28:49.520
animated show from years ago still runs on a number of platforms. And how much profit do I
00:28:55.780
get? Zero. Zero. Do you think that it really has made zero money? No, of course not. It's making
00:29:02.620
tons of money. You know, I mean not tons, but it's making money. So the difference between my lawyer
00:29:09.220
and their lawyers is my lawyer told me. My lawyer said, you're not going to get any of this money,
00:29:14.120
even though your contract clearly says so. It's never going to happen because they're crooks.
00:29:17.920
He didn't use those words, but he made it very clear that you're dealing with a criminal
00:29:23.980
enterprise, basically. Again, those were not my lawyer's words, but he made it very clear
00:29:30.140
that it's basically a criminal enterprise and don't go into it unless you understand that.
00:29:35.860
You will get an initial check and that's your money. Basically, you're done. The rest is just
00:29:42.920
a con game, basically. So, but there are people like Robert Downey Jr. who did make lots of money
00:29:50.260
on the profits of the movie. So how do you explain the fact that Robert Downey Jr. makes
00:29:55.120
it work, but Gerard Butler and Scarlett Johansson did not? And the answer is, maybe better lawyer.
00:30:03.240
Number one, maybe better lawyer. But number two, they can't make Iron Man movies without Iron Man.
00:30:12.580
They could make movies without Scarlett Johansson. If they wanted to replace Gerard Butler in the
00:30:19.460
Olympus has fallen franchise or make something like it with a different name or something,
00:30:25.100
I feel like you could make those movies without Gerard Butler. Just put somebody else there.
00:30:30.820
And I think you could make movies without Scarlett Johansson in, you know, Black Widow type
00:30:36.220
movies. But you can't really make Iron Man without Robert Downey Jr., can you?
00:30:43.040
I like the comment. Somebody's saying Doctor Who. If you watch the series Doctor Who, British
00:30:49.820
series, they replace the star every year or two so that the star never has any power, which
00:30:56.480
is pretty clever. It's a fucked up thing to do. Right? I don't know if that's the reason
00:31:01.860
they do it. There may be some other reason. But the Doctor Who series that's been on forever,
00:31:07.500
they replace the main star every year or every two or something. And that way the star is never
00:31:14.800
powerful enough to take too much of the profits. Pretty clever. All right. So Dave Rubin, who got,
00:31:29.060
I guess, limited on Twitter, they limit the account, for saying that the, I think essentially for saying
00:31:38.540
that the vaccinations weren't quite what we hoped they would be. And therefore we should rethink our
00:31:45.000
strategy because we have new information. Now, does that sound provocative? Because it's not.
00:31:52.500
It's pretty much what the CDC says. Hey, we got new information. Darn it. The vaccinations are not
00:31:59.880
as good as we'd hoped. People can still get it and spread it and you might need a booster and all that.
00:32:06.060
But so basically what Dave Rubin says was exactly what the CDC says. Just use different words.
00:32:13.100
And so he got suspended. But here's the good news. Twitter, Twitter reviewed it and said it was a
00:32:20.660
mistake. Twitter said they made a mistake and they reversed the suspension. Now, how do you feel
00:32:27.420
about that? Do you feel, and I think Dave may have had this feeling, it's like, why does it always
00:32:34.260
happen to the people who have one set of views? Is it happening to anybody else? Or is it always
00:32:41.460
people with a certain perspective who are the ones who get even the temporary accidental mistake
00:32:48.320
stuff? Well, it probably has to do with who's talking about what topic more than anything else.
00:32:54.720
But I'm going to say I give Twitter a, I don't want to give it a grade, but I would say Twitter
00:33:03.720
did the right thing. I don't think I can get mad about somebody who makes a mistake, corrects
00:33:10.560
it, tells you they made a mistake. It's just a different thing. To me, I'm never going to
00:33:16.760
treat those the same as, you know, some real big problem that lasts. But you do have to wonder
00:33:23.900
about why it seems to happen to the same people all the time. All right. Here's a tricky persuasion
00:33:31.660
thing that's happening to us all that just grates me. When I feel myself being manipulated by
00:33:39.640
the powers that be, it's just a bad feeling. Here's what I mean. The news treats everything
00:33:47.720
that Trump did around January 6th and everything he said about the election, they treat it as
00:33:54.020
him causing a certain set of problems and, you know, did he want to overthrow the government
00:34:02.160
and everything? And there's a whole bunch of assumptions you make that are all based on
00:34:07.300
one fact. The assumption that he's wrong. Right? All of the reporting about January 6th and Trump's
00:34:18.720
claims, they sort of start with the assumption that he's wrong. Has that been demonstrated? Because
00:34:26.820
while it is completely true that no court has found any widespread fraud, and I'm not aware of any
00:34:35.280
reporting from any credible source that would say there was any widespread fraud. But that has to do
00:34:42.680
with the quality of the reporting and what kinds of cases would make it to the court and what do courts
00:34:48.440
do in the first place? You know, like, what kind of things do they rule on? And so the only thing we know
00:34:54.040
for sure is we don't know, because it's an unauditable election, apparently. Even the auditors
00:35:00.140
can't get, you know, record, the electronic records. And so they can't get access to the routers,
00:35:06.260
I think, in Arizona. So there's a bunch of stuff they can't check. And we don't have any evidence
00:35:11.860
that the audit produced or did not produce any, you know, great surprises. So it feels very manipulative
00:35:22.000
that the assumption is Trump is wrong, as opposed to the assumption is that he can't prove his case.
00:35:30.660
Those are really, really different, aren't they? An assumption that there was no fraud is really
00:35:37.780
different from an assumption that we don't know how to check for it. Because guess what? We don't know
00:35:43.260
how to check for it. If you can't get access to the routers, and apparently that matters to find out if there was
00:35:49.660
any access to any access to them, I guess. If you don't have access to the routers, you don't have
00:35:54.720
access to, say, chain of custody, because they don't exist or something, you can't really audit,
00:36:00.360
can you? So it just bugs the shit out of me that Trump is assumed to be wrong, as opposed to has gone
00:36:11.500
too far in making his case because he can't know one way or the other. Very different.
00:36:20.060
I saw some pushback on Fox News, because they reported this, that in Washington, D.C., I think
00:36:28.180
it might have been, I don't know, this week or yesterday or something, there were four COVID deaths,
00:36:32.760
but 11 homicides. Now, Fox News was being mocked by a Twitter user for reporting it that
00:36:40.820
way. Is that unfair? To me, that just feels like useful context. How is it? And I guess
00:36:50.360
this is, you know, mind-boggling. So Fox News adds context to a story that is true, like it's
00:37:02.040
true context. And I would like to know the relative size of things. I feel like this is
00:37:09.140
a plus. I mean, it's not the whole story. And obviously, you have to look at the rates
00:37:15.160
of increase, right? If the rate of increase of homicide is 20% or 40%, it's pretty alarming.
00:37:22.120
But it's not like a virus, right? A virus can go to the moon, whereas homicide up 20% is
00:37:29.840
horrible. But looking at it today, Snapchat can be misleading. So I think if they wanted
00:37:38.140
to add a little extra context, they would have to say, very much like when we were afraid
00:37:44.120
of AIDS in the early days, it wasn't how many people had it. It was how many people you were
00:37:49.000
afraid were going to get it. Whereas with homicide, it's really about how many happened. It's not
00:37:54.560
so much about where you think the rate is going to go in the future. So it's a little bit apples
00:37:59.960
to oranges, but still that context was good. So I think Fox was completely justified in showing
00:38:07.140
that. All right. So here's some numbers so that you can evaluate your vaccination decision. Here's
00:38:16.760
some things that I think we know. And give me a fact check on this, okay? So whenever I give you
00:38:23.120
COVID numbers, there should be a little recording that plays in your head that says, but these numbers
00:38:29.480
could be completely off. Everything from God knows what. So according to this ER doctor, Alex Busco in
00:38:38.440
CNN, I assume CNN would have fact checked this and not let it in an opinion article if it's wrong.
00:38:44.920
But it said that the vaccinations have saved an estimated 275,000 lives in the U.S. alone.
00:38:53.560
Does that sound about right? Let's just take the range. Let's say it was 100,000, might have been
00:39:00.780
500,000, you know, whatever. But do you think, do you think that that's a responsible estimate given,
00:39:07.940
you know, it doesn't have to be exact, but is that a responsible estimate? Do you think it's in that
00:39:12.640
range? 275,000 American lives saved? What do you think? Because that would be less than 1% of the public.
00:39:23.560
And that's where the death rate is. All right. So I see a lot of yeses. A lot of yeses. But I do see
00:39:30.680
some noes. It feels right. I would say, you know, if you told me the real number was 100,000, I would
00:39:37.560
say, yeah, you know, 100,000, 300,000. I don't think we're good at estimating things. But that might be,
00:39:46.700
you know, order of magnitude, somewhere in that range. Now, how many people died from the shot itself?
00:39:52.860
The vaccination itself? Well, we don't know, because it's hard to get those numbers. But the
00:39:58.360
VAERS database has 6,200 people who seem to have died soon after getting the vaccination,
00:40:06.920
which doesn't mean it caused it. It just means there's a vaccination, and then somebody died
00:40:12.040
soon after, and there's a question. Maybe it caused it. You don't know. So 6,200 maybes.
00:40:18.980
But how many of the maybes do you think you could actually count? Maybe half? What's your
00:40:27.060
guess? Of the people who simply coincidentally died after the vaccination, do you think maybe
00:40:32.140
half of them would have died anyway? What's your guess? It was 12,000. They knocked it down
00:40:40.120
to 6,200 with different estimates, et cetera. So let's say it's, you know, somewhere under 10,000.
00:40:49.980
Would you buy the fact that there are 10 times as many people who were saved by the vaccination
00:40:55.740
as they were killed by the shot? Would anybody buy that? There are at least 10 times more people
00:41:04.640
saved than might have been killed, and we don't even know if there are any. It could have been
00:41:10.240
zero because of the way that you measure this. Okay. So I'm seeing some people say correct,
00:41:16.940
right? So I'm not telling you to get a vaccination, right? Because everybody's, your risks are
00:41:23.600
different. You know, if you're 15, it's different than if you're 60, right? So there's nothing I'm
00:41:28.800
going to say here that goes to your personal risk or your decision. Can we be clear on that? Because
00:41:34.800
I know you keep thinking I'm trying to secretly persuade you. If giving you accurate information
00:41:40.480
or updated information has the effect of persuading you, that's on you. I'm just telling you the
00:41:47.680
information. And information generally is not persuasive in the manipulative way, if you do it
00:41:53.860
right, if you keep it in context. So that's what we know. But that's not the only variable,
00:41:58.200
right? If the only variable was how many people died, then it's 10 to 1. Would you agree with
00:42:05.520
that? Would you agree that if there was no other consideration, there's a 10 to 1 advantage
00:42:12.620
statistically, at least? I mean, it could be 40 to 1, right? The range is anywhere from like 10 to 1
00:42:20.120
to 100 to 1, but at least 10 to 1 advantage of getting the vaccination based on what we know,
00:42:26.320
right? Now that's not about complications. It's not about what happens down the road. That's the
00:42:32.020
next question. Now, how many people who don't get vaccinated but do get the virus, how many of them
00:42:40.260
get long haul COVID? Well, I've seen estimates of 25%, which I don't believe, but I think it's at least
00:42:47.380
10 to 20% probably. And we don't know if any of that's permanent. So of the long hauls, the people
00:42:56.060
who don't get vaccinated, maybe 10 to 20% of them have some problems. But how many people would have
00:43:01.700
long haul problem from the vaccination? What if you do get vaccinated? And although you didn't die or
00:43:08.640
have a long term problem, how many of those people do get some problem down the line? And the answer is
00:43:15.920
you don't know. You don't know. That's a complete unknown. If you believe that that unknown is a big
00:43:22.980
number, well, then you have a reason not to get vaccinated. But you would have to believe it's a
00:43:28.600
pretty big number. Because if 10 to 20% are getting long haul problems without the vaccination,
00:43:36.900
that vaccination would have to be just a bastard to make it worth, not worth the risk. Can you agree?
00:43:44.880
That the long haul risk is really pretty frickin' big in the context of these kinds of things?
00:43:52.120
10 to 20%? That's a really big number for people with long haul that you don't know if it's permanent
00:43:57.640
for some of them. But do you think that you're ever going to get to the point where you'd get
00:44:03.300
10 to 20% of the people who were vaccinated who will have some kind of a bad outcome
00:44:23.360
What I'm doing now is completely irresponsible.
00:44:25.660
But I'm telling you that, so you can put it in context.
00:44:29.420
Use your life experience and just focus on one question.
00:44:38.400
The vaccination, far down the line, doesn't kill you right away, for sure.
00:44:43.200
But far down the line versus the unvaccinated COVID itself.
00:45:03.940
There's lots of comments, but they're suddenly not on point, are they?
00:45:28.220
All right, so you see a lot of people who are quite certain of the risk with no...
00:45:58.320
What do you think of the fact that people with no data have certainty about something?
00:46:06.720
People with no data, because you don't know if the vaccination will cause a problem in the future.
00:46:11.680
And you also don't know if long COVID is a real long-term problem or really just a short-term one.
00:46:23.540
Explain what would cause your sense of certainty when you quite...
00:46:28.680
I think you would all readily admit that there's no data.
00:46:32.340
So, there's no information by which to make a decision.
00:46:37.660
And yet you have achieved certainty among two choices of which you have zero information.
00:46:47.640
I'm only questioning what got you to a point of confidence and certainty with no information.
00:46:55.420
Because there's something in your life experience that got you there, right?
00:47:03.900
Somebody said intuition, and I think you're close to it.
00:47:19.820
Your life experience gives you a certain amount of trust in the experts, the medical experts.
00:47:25.300
And your life experience gives you a certain amount of instinct, let's say, about what having a virus would do to you in the long run.
00:47:35.340
Yeah, I'm saying Dunning-Kruger, and you're not wrong.
00:47:42.980
If you knew educated people believe in critical race theory, would you believe it?
00:47:48.940
Well, I think critical race theory has way more to do with how it's being taught than whether it's a good idea or not.
00:47:56.200
That's a pretty good example of what we talked about earlier.
00:48:01.220
How do people override failure from life experience?
00:48:05.340
Read my book, kind of failed almost everything, and still went big.
00:48:16.520
So, did you see what happened in the comments as soon as I asked the question,
00:48:24.140
how did you achieve certainty in your vaccination decision when you had zero, there's zero data?
00:48:39.980
Typically, in a conversation like this, something like 5% to 10% of you just said, oh, shit.
00:48:47.780
Has anybody, just in the last, like, five minutes, did anybody say, oh, shit, I just made, I arrived at a certainty with no information whatsoever?
00:49:00.000
Now, I'd expect that the vast majority, you were just hardening your current decisions.
00:49:16.020
It looks like there's nobody here who would say that they're, somebody says, the big FU says, poor Scott, just doesn't get it.
00:49:29.200
I guarantee that whoever said that, that Scott doesn't get it, I guarantee that whatever you would say after that to explain that is something that everybody gets.
00:49:41.400
You're going to say some dumb fuck thing like, it's about freedom, Scott.
00:49:56.840
You're a fucking idiot if you think I don't get it.
00:50:00.020
Put a reason, tell me something I don't know in the comments.
00:50:04.120
But if you're thinking, well, hold on, hold on, I've got a request.
00:50:11.500
I've been getting quite a few requests for somebody that you call Dale.
00:50:17.220
And I'd like Dale to come on and explain to me what I don't understand.
00:50:35.980
In fact, every single day, I've said it's about personal choice.
00:50:41.720
Well, what you don't understand is that these have not been FDA approved.
00:50:58.820
I incorporate that in all of my decision making.
00:51:03.200
Well, but you don't get that the VAERS database says people are dying from the vaccination.
00:51:16.860
And I compared it to the estimate, which I don't believe, of how many people were saved by it.
00:51:41.720
Now, I don't know how many of you wanted Dale to come back.
00:51:47.940
So I remind you again that I love disagreements.
00:51:55.360
If I've got a fact wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just tell me.
00:51:59.400
This show is not about being right all the time.
00:52:01.680
You know, even though I arrogantly act like I'm right all the time, that's just part of the show.
00:52:09.400
It just makes it more fun if I show more certainty than I deserve.
00:52:21.960
I'll tell you, there are two things that I spend a lot of time on.
00:52:29.220
I spent a lot of time talking in public about how wrong I was and mistakes I made.
00:52:38.620
Probably nobody has ever talked more about the things they've fucked up than I have.
00:52:45.840
So I spend half of my time talking about all the mistakes I've made and where I was wrong.
00:52:52.300
And I spend the other half of my time dealing with trolls who say,
00:52:59.940
I live in this absurd world where my critics accuse me of exactly the opposite of whatever is happening.
00:53:08.840
There's no correlation between what I'm being criticized for.