Episode 1483 Scott Adams: Hurricane Ida, the Afghan With Drawl, and Other Things That Totally Blow
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
145.24173
Summary
A video of Joe Biden falling asleep at the White House has been debunked as a fake, and a fake video of the Prime Minister of Israel answering a question about it has also been taken down as fake, but it's not hard to believe that someone could have fallen asleep for a few seconds.
Transcript
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But does that mean the show will be any less amazing?
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things are going to go really, really well this morning.
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In fact, this might be one of the highlights of your whole life.
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Sometimes, things turn out better than you think.
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And if you'd like to increase your chances of good luck,
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all you need is a cupper mugger, a glass of tanker, chaliser stein,
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a canteen jug or a flask of vessel of any kind.
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and watch it turn that Category 4 hurricane into a 3.9.
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Well, speaking of that hurricane, Hurricane Ida,
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And he's identifying as Wind so that he can marry Hurricane Ida.
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And then when people talk to Hurricane Ida and they say,
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Hurricane, the hurricane will say, I don't know.
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And then they'll say, no, seriously, what's your name?
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There's a video of Joe Biden talking to, I guess,
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the Prime Minister of Israel, whose face I don't recognize.
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Can you imagine not recognizing the Prime Minister of Israel?
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It's like Netanyahu was sort of a genius in self-promotion.
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Even when he wasn't Prime Minister, you still knew who he was.
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But I don't even know who the Prime Minister is now.
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But anyway, the Prime Minister was talking to Joe Biden at the White House.
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And there's some misleading video, misleading video of Biden closing his eyes.
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Now, it's being debunked as a fake video because he answers a question with his eyes closed,
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showing that he was awake the whole time and listening to the question.
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But is it impossible, is it impossible that he did nod off for a little bit?
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Maybe he might have nodded off for five or ten seconds and then came back in time to hear a question and answer.
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There's also a fake Obama video going around on Facebook.
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So, I guess in the fake, and it's just misleadingly edited,
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he is purported to say ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs.
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And that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign.
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So, I guess it's just edited to take out the context.
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This is probably the least, let's say the least obvious persuasion point you'll ever see.
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When I learned hypnosis, one of the things that my hypnosis instructor taught us
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is that people will be more easily hypnotized if they pay for it.
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If you do it for free, people will think it's worth nothing.
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If you say, I'll hypnotize you, and I'll do it for free, the person you're going to hypnotize assumes you're not very good at it.
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Because people will assume it won't work, and then you can't get people into the right frame of mind.
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But if you charge them a lot, and put them in a fancy-looking office and wear a nice suit and everything,
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There's something else like that happening now, along those lines, which is maybe a big deal.
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And a Twitter user named Machiavelli's Underbelly, who you should be following, Machiavelli's Underbelly.
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Just Google it, or just search for it on Twitter, you'll find it.
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He says, the biggest reason for so much vaccine hesitancy, and I'm not joking, parenthetically,
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Now, he doesn't go on to explain the reasoning behind that,
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because it's a fairly well-understood psychological phenomenon.
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Do you think that the credibility of the vaccination is degraded by the fact they're giving it away for free?
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Obviously, your taxes and inflation will pay for it.
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And obviously, the governments pay for it, blah, blah, blah.
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So it's not that it's free-free, but to the person who makes the decision, it's free-ish in the short term.
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I have an economics degree, so I don't like to call anything free, because there's always some related cost.
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The fact that it's free, has that convinced anybody, and maybe they don't realize it, that it's no good?
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Now, I think we'd probably get a lower uptake if it were not free, just because people would be making budgeting decisions.
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There is something about the fact that it's free, or feels free, even though it's not,
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that probably makes it look less credible, I think.
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So it's an interesting persuasion point of view.
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You may have heard that the anti-Trump smugness index has reached a record low.
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Well, you're pretty sure that Joe Biden was a serious adult in the room, and that clown Trump,
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Well, that was when the smugness index was at its peak.
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Joe Biden's going to fix a lot of problems that Trump left.
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But as time goes by, the smugness index starts to reduce.
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For example, people may be thinking that Trump was somewhat right about Black Lives Matter and Antifa,
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because they're not so popular these days, and it doesn't look like they did anything good.
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I mean, maybe Black Lives Matter did, but I can't think of anything.
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But I don't think people are having a great feeling about these groups that were against Trump.
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I don't think that critical race theory is as popular as it could be in the United States.
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I think people think Trump's largely right about that.
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I think people think he could have done better in Afghanistan.
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We don't know that, but it feels like anybody could have.
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He looks right on immigration, he looks right on taxes, he looks right on China,
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and he looks right on energy policy and gas prices.
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Because as soon as the fake news affect the clouds, everything, as soon as that started to dissipate,
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If you add the Trump rhetoric to anything, it turns it into a different thing.
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But as soon as the rhetoric sort of fades in your memory,
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oh, wait a minute, does remain in Mexico policy make sense?
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and I guess this was before the explosion at Kabul Airport.
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It was an interview with what purported to be an ISIS-K leader.
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And the ISIS-K leader said he'd have no problem getting into Kabul.
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and the only thing he asked is that they blur his face and hide his identity.
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Are you telling me that the CIA didn't talk to CNN and say,
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you know, we'd like to see the unblurred version of the face?
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You don't think CNN would show the CIA an unblurred copy?
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Now, I don't know if it makes any difference if only the CIA sees it.
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You know, maybe that doesn't make much of a difference.
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would want to give a CNN interview in such a dangerous way?
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we're not so sure you actually talked to an ISIS leader there.
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And, yeah, somebody's asking on Locals in the comments,
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And I have to think that he would have been droned by now
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but I don't think you could trust that that was really an ISIS leader.
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I'm just looking at some of your comments there.
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Let's talk about this hurricane a little bit more.
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But how much are we going to talk about climate change
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Where are the places that are getting better on Earth
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If you imagine that there are just as many places on Earth
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that are a little too low a temperature to be optimal,
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and there are some places that maybe were at the right temperature,
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shouldn't we have stories about the amazing farming yield
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that they've never seen so good coming out of some damn place?
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So Alex Berenson, a famous, let's see, contrarian,
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did actually say something that was misleading,
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Well, here's the tweet that got him kicked off.
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So I won't get kicked off because I'm talking about it.
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but I'm talking about the story so I can talk about it.
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as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy
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I guess he indicated he might be thinking of legal action,
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Well, it doesn't matter because that's just an opinion, all right?
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It's just an opinion about what to call things.
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you don't get kicked off for that kind of an opinion.
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how many times have I said the vaccine is really more of a therapeutic?
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which is that the vaccine doesn't stop you from getting,
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doesn't completely stop you from getting the illness.
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a reasonable person could call it more like a therapeutic than a vaccine.
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and it's just opinion about what the words mean,
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the next thing he says is a limited window of efficacy.
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now you're getting to a little bit more of an opinion that's kind of pushing on fact.
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Because it does have efficacy that decreases over time,
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I'm just talking about whether there's any disinformation or misinformation in this quote.
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so I would say limited window of efficacy is subject to debate.
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it's going to wear off before the pandemic ends.
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but because things have changed with the booster,
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his accurate statement sort of drifted into inaccurate, didn't it?
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Now I think he said it probably after the boosters were already in conversation,
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Then he says about the vaccination's terrible side effect profile.
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but then would it be fair to say it as just a statement?
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Because I would agree that if you are one of the people who has a bad side effect,
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if you happen to be one of those unlucky people,
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could it be said that you got a side effect that was terrible?
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Well, if you happen to be one of those people, then yes, you could actually maybe die.
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But when you say it has a terrible side effect profile,
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are you sort of suggesting that it's a bigger risk than it is?
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But is he referring to what would happen if it does happen, which would be terrible?
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But it sort of suggests, the terrible part, sort of suggests the risk as well as what would happen if that risk came true.
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And I don't think that the risk, the size of the risk, not what would happen,
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but the size of the risk, I don't know that it would be reasonable to call that terrible.
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It would be a terrible outcome if you're one of the bad ones, you know,
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But the odds of the side effect are really low, aren't they?
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Now, I do think that he should have gotten a chance to rewrite it for clarity
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then I would say that the ambiguity of the tweet, just the ambiguity,
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and what he believes he said to be true are accurate.
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So I think Berenson has a pretty good argument.
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At the same time, there was enough ambiguity there
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that I think Twitter was within its moral and ethical boundaries.
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Now, I'm not saying they should have that standard.
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I would rather see the skeptics than not see them.
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I'd rather, you know, the debate happened in public
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I don't think that's the best way to handle it.
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This is the point where those who don't like vaccination stuff
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But I'm only going to be talking about the odds of things.
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I'm not going to be telling you to get it or don't get it.
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And here's the kind of information that we get on vaccinations.
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See if this tracks with what you believe to be true.
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I'm not going to tell you something is or is not true.
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Is rationalizing censorship a side effect of the jab?
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These are just statistics that come off of CNN.
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But I want to see if it agrees with what you think is true.
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your chances of getting infected go down by three and a half fold.
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the odds of getting infected in the first place
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Because I actually wasn't sure what that was until I read it today, actually.
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Your chances of having symptoms if you're vaccinated go down by eightfold.
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Does that agree with sort of generally speaking how you thought of it?
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Chances of having symptoms go down by eightfold.
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I mean, not necessarily eight, but I thought it was a lot.
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You probably did know that your odds of being hospitalized
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And more than 99.99% of people who are fully vaccinated
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And I'm guessing that these statistics are debatable, right?
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Compared to states with above average vaccination rates.
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Do you believe that the vaccination rate of states
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Whenever anybody talks about a specific country,
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Now, I don't know if the second person's right.
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Because the one country comparison of anything,
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And as soon as you're looking at the one country,
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If you're talking about the results of one country,
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They tell you that they're looking at one country
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of whether it should or should not be legalized,