Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1610 Scott Adams： I Tell You How the Massive False Memories of the Pandemic Have Already Formed

00:00:00.000 Good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that happened to you in 2022 so far and

00:00:10.200 that's only because I haven't done any additional live streams. Each time I do one that will be the

00:00:15.380 new highlight of your year. Audio looks good. I've been hearing some low audio complaints about

00:00:21.240 YouTube. I gave it a little boost today. See if it makes a difference. And how would you like to

00:00:27.760 kick up the new year into the best possible situation you could ever have? Oh you do.

00:00:36.180 And all you need to do that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a tiny canteen,

00:00:39.840 a jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. And fill it with your favorite beverage. I like coffee.

00:00:49.220 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine, the day, the thing that makes everyone

00:00:54.560 feel better. It's better than a vaccination boost. It's better than the Omicron. It's

00:00:59.500 better than inflation. It's called the simultaneous sip and watch it do its business. Go.

00:01:09.460 I just realized how I should advertise because you know I have to do an advertisement that's like

00:01:15.380 dropped into the middle of the content. But I realized when I lifted my cup up

00:01:19.560 this could be the reveal. That would be like the sponsor of the show. And that's the only

00:01:25.700 time I'd show it. It'd be like, ooh. You'd be like, oh, Ford. Anyway, speaking of Ford,

00:01:37.100 one of the Ford executives locally gave some advice on Twitter yesterday. And he said that

00:01:46.300 if your dealer sells you a car or orders a car for you, but doesn't lock down the price

00:01:54.640 at the time that you order it, then you should cancel your order and, you know, you're dealing

00:02:00.680 with a bad dealership. I am in exactly that situation. So I tweeted back, should I cancel

00:02:09.460 my Mustang order? Because the Livermore Ford dealership told me I can't negotiate the price

00:02:15.640 until the car's on the lot. Which I always suspected was just a way for them to get an extra car on

00:02:22.360 the lot. And then they wouldn't care if I bought it or somebody else. Because they can sell 100%

00:02:27.380 of that model. It's just hard to get one. So they just did the paperwork, pretended they ordered a

00:02:33.860 car for me, I think. I think that's what happened. Yeah, I mean, there's a real order. But the car is

00:02:39.320 not really, really for me. It would only be for me, I think, if I paid the non-negotiated sticker

00:02:47.560 price. Because that's the estimate they gave me. But they said, oh, yeah, we negotiate when it gets

00:02:53.160 here. Well, how much negotiating are they going to do when it gets here? And everybody who walks

00:02:58.120 in would buy that car because it would be a popular model. It's hard to get. So I tweeted

00:03:04.160 back, you know, should I cancel my Mustang order with Livermore Ford? Now keep in mind, I'm talking

00:03:10.140 to a Ford executive in public. And the Ford executive said, yes, you should cancel your order

00:03:19.680 and I'll help you find a better dealership. I thought that was the most baller answer I've

00:03:25.980 ever seen from an executive. Yeah, you should cancel your order and I'll find you somebody who isn't a

00:03:30.820 crook, basically. Basically, that's what he said. I mean, those are my own words. And I thought to

00:03:36.980 myself, you know, I was getting ready to be pretty mad at Ford. But that is so transparent.

00:03:43.760 First of all, the executive said, watch out for this trick. And then when I said your own company

00:03:51.040 is doing that trick to me right now, your company is doing it to me right now. But you know, the

00:03:55.760 dealers operate somewhat independently. And as soon as he heard it, he said, yeah, cancel that order.

00:04:01.520 I'll help you find an honest dealership within my own company. That is a very baller answer. I give

00:04:08.240 him credit for that. All right. Well, we're learning today that Omicron is like beyond dangerous in

00:04:17.860 terms of a doctor. I just saw a doctor on CNN's website saying that you could transmit Omicron

00:04:26.040 just by taking your mask down for a moment to say something. That's it. Whereas we used to think,

00:04:33.140 you know, six feet of distance would protect you pretty well. Basically, it sounds like if

00:04:38.100 if one dude with Omicron walks through your party, it's going to be it's going to be a bad week for

00:04:44.700 the people who went to that party. Now, yeah, right. I'm not saying it's bad. Or is it? Because

00:04:51.140 here's the problem. If you get too many people who have to quarantine at the same time, the economy is

00:04:57.160 going to get really slow, really fast. But you know, it's really different. Different about this one.

00:05:04.660 So I feel like I feel like I feel like it's entirely possible that we'll have an organic

00:05:11.260 two week shutdown of the economy. Now, maybe not the most critical things, but I can easily imagine

00:05:19.740 that businesses just won't have enough employees. And so it won't have anything to do with a mandate.

00:05:26.600 Businesses will just say, you know, three quarters of our employees have infections

00:05:32.320 and they have to stay home. So there's no mandate, but we can't stay open. We just can't serve people

00:05:40.020 at this level of staffing. So you might have something like a two week voluntary shutdown of a lot of

00:05:47.660 places. Not voluntary because they wouldn't have the staff. But the Omicron passes through so quickly

00:05:54.580 that two weeks might get us to herd immunity. Now, I don't want to be the one, believe me,

00:06:00.680 I don't want to be the one who says two weeks to flatten the curve.

00:06:06.400 But we might have two weeks to flatten the curve. Like this time, it might be real.

00:06:10.360 And only because of the rapidity of the spread of Omicron plus being, you know, low danger,

00:06:17.880 relatively. All right. I am often criticized for talking too much about the pandemic. And that is

00:06:24.380 a correct criticism. However, I give you this one clarification. When I'm talking about the

00:06:32.200 pandemic, I'm usually talking about the mental part. Like how do we make decisions? And why do

00:06:38.400 we have different decisions? And why do you see one thing? And why don't I see something else?

00:06:42.880 And there are some amazing false memories that are being generated right now about what has already

00:06:50.580 happened. So when historians go to write the story of the pandemic, which of these two movies are they

00:06:57.200 going to write? Are they going to write this movie that says the vaccinations came out. Originally,

00:07:04.340 the data made it look like it was a pretty good deal. It was looked like it was stopping transmission

00:07:09.820 as well as keeping people healthier. Both of those things. And for the alpha version of the virus,

00:07:16.860 it looked like it was effective. But as Delta came in and, you know, it was sort of a sort of broke the

00:07:23.420 mold. And as we found that that the vaccinations themselves, unfortunately, somewhat rapidly declined

00:07:29.400 in efficacy, the very things that were working before stopped working. So the vaccinations that did

00:07:36.740 have initially good data, very good data, very quickly turned to negative data because of Delta

00:07:43.040 and because of a fall off of efficacy. Now, that's one of the movies. Don't don't hear that. I said

00:07:49.840 that's the true one. OK, because today I'm going to talk about what I've seen or what what I think is true

00:07:56.520 and what other people remember to be true. But I thought it would be unproductive to tell you which one is

00:08:03.920 true. Because all you would do is argue that mine was the false one. And I would say, no, no,

00:08:11.000 somebody else's is the false one. And we wouldn't be able to settle that. But here's what I want to do

00:08:16.300 instead. I want to show you how the two movies formed. So it won't be a question of who's right.

00:08:23.360 Because I don't think we can settle it. But it will be like a fascinating tour, I hope, of how such a thing

00:08:30.620 could happen. Now, here's the first false memory. And I'm dealing with this every day. It's a false memory of what

00:08:37.300 I have predicted or said versus what the reality is. And you probably some of you know, I'm there's a

00:08:46.920 massive bunch of hallucinations about what I have said, all of it false. Now, I can say that for sure,

00:08:54.680 because in this one case, I know my own opinion. And I know what I've said. So I can tell that they're

00:09:01.320 hallucinating or they have a false idea, completely false, often opposite of what I think. Now, here's

00:09:08.760 how that got formed. So here's the first clue about how illusions get formed. If I talk about a lot of

00:09:17.940 stuff about the pandemic, and somebody dips in and finds a little bit of my content, it would be as if

00:09:26.220 they were looking through one window of a house. And that's all they knew about the house. So online,

00:09:32.960 you hear lots of people who say, I looked into that Scott Adams's house, metaphorically, the pandemic

00:09:39.320 conversation. And I looked through that one window, and his whole house is a bathroom.

00:09:45.340 And then I'll say, No, that's not true. And they'll say, Yes, it is. I heard it myself.

00:09:50.880 I saw it myself. I looked in your damn house, through one window, and there was the bathroom. 1.00

00:09:58.060 There's nothing else to say here. That's what I saw. Then somebody else will say the opposite, 1.00

00:10:02.560 because they were looking and they saw the living room or some other room. So a huge amount of the

00:10:08.940 hallucinations, and they literally are hallucinations, like actual hallucinations,

00:10:15.000 about my opinions are because somebody saw part of it. Now, here's the weirdest part.

00:10:20.880 Some people are saying that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, Scott, you may have, you may have mentioned all

00:10:26.720 of the topics. But you you kind of focus on one thing, and you don't, let's say you focus on the

00:10:33.940 vaccines, whether they work, and you don't talk about, say, the cost of the shutdown. Would you say

00:10:42.580 that's true? That I have underestimated, or let's say, underemphasized, whenever I talk about the

00:10:49.260 topic, have I underemphasized the social cost of shutting down?

00:10:58.860 On locals, I'm seeing a mix, some yeses and some noes. Yes, yes, yes. So a lot of people would say

00:11:05.740 that's true. I've underestimated, or underemphasized, not estimated, I've underemphasized the cost of the

00:11:14.260 social shutdowns and the mandates. Now, here's my defense to that. You ready? For those of you who

00:11:22.160 think I've underemphasized that, here's my defense. Why would I have to tell you any of that?

00:11:29.120 We're all on the same page. Literally all of us are living those costs. It's obvious. Do I have to

00:11:39.880 tell you that teens don't like Zoom school? You didn't know that until I told you? Or did you

00:11:45.960 imagine that everybody knew it but me? Did you imagine that it was obvious to everyone, but because

00:11:53.540 I didn't emphasize it as much as you think, that I was the one who didn't know that Zoom school was bad 1.00

00:11:59.000 for kids? Did you think that? Because if I think that you know it, and obviously you know I know it,

00:12:05.560 I'm not going to talk about it a lot, because what would you say about it? I can't estimate it. I don't

00:12:10.900 know how big the damage is. I've talked about, you know, the suicides, etc. But, all right. So there's

00:12:19.940 obvious reasons why people have false memories of me. Now, here's the interesting part. If either my

00:12:27.800 memory of events or my critics' memory of the pandemic events is correct, one of us would be

00:12:34.520 triggered into cognitive dissonance. And here, I'm not going to tell you which one it is. I'll just

00:12:40.580 tell you, look for the trigger of whoever's wrong. But here's the part part. My critics think that I

00:12:47.080 have been proven unambiguously wrong, and the data shows it now clearly. And anybody can look at it.

00:12:54.760 You could just Google it. You could see what I said. You could see what's true. And you can see

00:13:00.160 I'm wrong. And then I asked for examples. And the examples, almost entirely, are things I didn't say,

00:13:09.040 or just crazy stuff. Or people will misinterpret the question, answer the wrong question, etc.

00:13:14.200 So that's going on, too. But we don't know who has the cognitive dissonance. But here's,

00:13:20.340 I boiled it down to one specific question, to see if I could get some insight on this.

00:13:28.920 And the question was, was it ever true that vaccinations stopped the transmission or spread

00:13:36.480 of the virus? Right? This seems to be one of the biggest issues that people have with me is that

00:13:43.860 they say that I believed or or said, based on my belief, that the vaccinations at one point early on

00:13:51.500 stopped the would stop the spread. Now, when somebody says stop the spread, how do you interpret

00:14:01.100 that? If somebody said, I think this vaccination will stop the spread? Would you interpret that as

00:14:09.740 every single person who's vaccinated could not get the virus and or spread it? Would you ever

00:14:16.520 interpret this will give you immunity as 100%? Does anybody just automatically say, well,

00:14:24.580 that means everybody? Because you should never do that. So here's another reason that the movies

00:14:30.980 diverged. A lot of people hear, this will give you immunity. This will work really well. This will stop the

00:14:39.280 spread. And what they hear is, this will 100% be effective. And then they look at the data, and it's not 100%

00:14:47.040 effective. Right? It's not 100% effective. So they say, well, this was a lie. Told us it would be

00:14:54.260 effective. And now it's not 100% effective. So that's a lie. Whereas other people like me would

00:15:00.200 say, you should assume that they didn't mean 100%. Now, it's way less than 100%. So that's, you know,

00:15:06.880 a big problem. But Joe Blow is saying that they literally said 100%. So I saw a video compilation

00:15:17.080 as part of this research here, if you can call it that on Twitter. And people sent me a video

00:15:23.760 compilation of people saying it would 100% stop. And I watched the compilation of all the experts,

00:15:32.140 Fauci and the CDC, saying that there would be 100% stopping of the virus. Right? How many of you saw

00:15:38.900 that? How many of you saw the compilation video of the experts actually saying something we know not

00:15:45.820 to be true, which is 100% it's going to stop the virus? I'm looking at the comments. A lot of people

00:15:51.240 saw it. I saw it this morning. It doesn't exist. I saw it this morning. And it doesn't exist.

00:16:01.280 So all of you who saw it, no, you didn't. I saw it too. And there's nothing on there that would

00:16:08.800 suggest 100%. It is your interpretation of what they meant. My interpretation as a writer, because I

00:16:17.460 write myself into this trap all the time. If you're a writer, you are continuously dealing

00:16:23.760 with people hearing absolutes in your writing, when you didn't mean an absolute. And the way that you

00:16:31.100 didn't mean it is, nobody should think this was an absolute. Suppose I say, guns stop a crime.

00:16:38.920 Private gun ownership stops crime. Would you interpret that as it stops all crime? Would

00:16:48.420 that be your natural interpretation? Oh, you're saying guns stop all crime? Would you interpret

00:16:54.200 it that way? That would be a silly interpretation, right? But with vaccines, we do, I don't know, 0.94

00:16:59.760 maybe because it's medical, our brains kind of, we're hearing 100% where nobody ever talks like

00:17:07.560 that. See what I just did? That was accidental. I just said, nobody ever talks like that.

00:17:15.080 So I gave you an absolute, and you should have understood it could never be an absolute, right?

00:17:22.040 So the very trap that I said people easily fall into, because it's just easier to talk in absolutes,

00:17:27.380 we all do it. So the very thing that you saw with your own eyes, as them saying it's 100%,

00:17:33.540 I watched with my own eyes just minutes ago. I didn't see it. I saw people talking the way people

00:17:40.220 talk. They talk in absolutes, but you as the audience should of course understand they don't

00:17:47.080 mean absolutes. Of course not. Straw man, gaslight. So some of you are going to have some difficulty

00:17:55.120 with this topic. There will be some squirming. All right. Then I asked this question to see if I could

00:18:03.440 get a percentage. Well, actually, let me give you a little test. Suppose the vaccines came out,

00:18:11.280 and here's the only thing you knew about the pharma industry. This isn't true. But suppose,

00:18:17.360 just as a mental exercise, suppose you knew that 100% of the FDA approved medicines that came out of

00:18:27.200 big pharma worked in the past, different ones. I'm not talking about vaccines, but every kind of

00:18:34.960 medicine the FDA had approved, suppose you knew, and again, this is not true. I'm just saying, suppose

00:18:41.360 you knew that they all worked, every one of them for decades and decades, they all worked, meaning

00:18:48.320 that they worked better than the cost of the side effects. Now, let's say in that context, big pharma

00:18:56.340 comes up with some new vaccinations. Every single thing they've ever done has worked. What would you

00:19:02.980 think is the likelihood that the new vaccinations would work, even given that they didn't have enough

00:19:09.240 time to do a long-term study? What would be your natural guess as to whether it's likely that they

00:19:15.940 worked? Pretty high, right? If everything had worked before, even if they had a compressed schedule for

00:19:23.560 testing, which they did with the vaccines, you'd think, well, yeah, this is more risky because they

00:19:29.000 don't have the long-term effects. But if you look at their track record, it's 100%. So it's a good bet,

00:19:36.800 right? Now, say it was the opposite. Let's go extreme opposite. Suppose you knew that 100% of every

00:19:44.980 kind of pharmaceutical drug that had ever been created and approved by the FDA was later found to be

00:19:51.180 ineffective. And then they, in that context, then somebody comes up with a new drug or a new vaccine.

00:19:58.680 What would be your reasonable prediction about whether the new one would work if 100% of the old ones

00:20:05.760 didn't work? And, you know, you'd probably say, well, you know, not so good. So I asked this poll

00:20:15.480 on Twitter, obviously very unscientific. I said, what percentage of FDA-approved drugs of any kind

00:20:22.620 do you believe work in terms of benefit over risk? And I gave people ranges from 0 to 25, 25 to 50,

00:20:31.460 to 75, et cetera. And it turns out that your opinions, you being the public who answered this

00:20:39.080 poll, are very evenly spread. Surprisingly so. So here are the number of people who answered my poll

00:20:47.220 unscientifically, who thought that the total number of FDA-approved drugs that have ever worked

00:20:53.140 is below 25% of all the FDA-approved drugs. A quarter of the people who answered, a quarter of the people

00:21:05.120 think that fewer than a quarter of the drugs have ever worked. Are they wrong? How would I know?

00:21:14.380 How would you know? All right. How many people thought that between 25 and 50% of those drugs

00:21:23.880 never worked? Like as high as half of all the drugs. So 28% said that between 25 and 50% of the drugs

00:21:37.220 have ever worked. And then, so that's about even, right? 24, 28. And then the number who think it's

00:21:44.240 between 50 and 75 is about 31%. And only 18%, this is the smallest number, think that the drugs work

00:21:52.540 between 75 and 100% of the time. Now, this explains our two movies. Because would you have a different

00:22:02.120 opinion of how likely Big Pharma lied if they were only right 25% of the time or less? But if you

00:22:12.540 thought they were right 75% of the time or more? Okay, damn it. That's too good. Damn it. 0.99

00:22:22.160 I just got linguistically kill-shotted. This is so good, I'm going to tell it. I'll regret this 0.99

00:22:28.680 forever. But the Craig 777 just gave me a nickname. Claw Adams. Damn you. That's good. That is so good.

00:22:41.240 Now, of course, it's based on a hallucination, right? The hallucination is that you believe I was

00:22:46.420 pushing vaccines. Now, none of that happened in my movie. But in your movie, where that stuff

00:22:52.880 happened, that is a really good nickname. I've got to give you credit for that. It'll probably ruin

00:22:58.840 my whole career. It's that good. And I mean that. I mean that nickname could actually ruin my whole

00:23:05.820 rest of my reputation in life. And none of it would be based on anything true. That's how powerful a good

00:23:12.560 nickname is. But damn, that's good. Damn. I have to appreciate the technique even if I don't like 0.99

00:23:19.880 the outcome. All right. So here's the, so if you've got different assumptions about how bad

00:23:29.460 big pharma has been in the past, how can you possibly end up with the same assumption about

00:23:34.280 whether the vaccines work? So here's the other reason that we've got two movies on one screen.

00:23:40.120 If you believe that big pharma almost always sells you fake drugs, you would assume that this next

00:23:46.840 one was fake and that they were lying about it, lying about it working, or even lying about them

00:23:52.180 being certain it worked. But if you thought that they were right 75 out of 100 times, you'd probably

00:23:58.880 think, you know, probably got this one too. So it's not so much that any of you are dumb or smart. 0.99

00:24:06.740 You're starting with different assumptions. And how would you ever know which of these assumptions 0.91

00:24:12.960 is correct? I mean, these are wildly different to imagine that the past drugs that have ever been

00:24:19.500 approved, that 75% or more of them worked versus only less than 25%. Those are completely different worlds.

00:24:29.300 So let's see. I'm just, I'm trying to resist blocking a user here who's like right on the edge. You're

00:24:43.560 right on the edge. And I'm just like barely containing a string of profanities that are about to come out

00:24:51.640 in my mouth. But I'm going to do my best. So those are some reasons for the false memories. But I got,

00:24:59.060 I had some exchanges with some people online who have a completely different memory of the beginning

00:25:05.620 of the vaccination phase. And I thought to myself, how could we have completely different memories?

00:25:11.320 And how would I know if mine is the right one? So I tested it on Twitter. And here's the single

00:25:19.960 question that I think a lot of this turns on. My memory of the early rollout is this. Now remember,

00:25:29.280 I'm not claiming my memory is the correct one. Right? And you're going to say to me, Scott,

00:25:34.080 why don't you just Google it? And I'm going to tell you why that won't work in a minute.

00:25:37.740 So my memory is the following, that when the vaccines first came out, that the early data,

00:25:45.880 the early data, which later changed, that the early data showed that it improved survivability,

00:25:53.380 but also reduced the spread. And then after the Delta came out, and after the,

00:26:01.500 and after Omicron came out, that was no longer as true, and maybe so untrue that it's just completely

00:26:09.820 true, untrue at this point, about the transmission part. Still true about the survivability according

00:26:15.680 to the data. Now, that was my memory. My memory is that there was data. And that when Delta and

00:26:23.360 Omicron, you know, came, it changed. And also the efficacy dropped off. And we couldn't know that

00:26:29.900 until the long term it happened. Right? Nobody knew the long term efficacy, because you can't study the

00:26:36.920 long term and the short term. So what I saw was people who were optimistic, but wrong.

00:26:45.020 Optimistic, but wrong. But I didn't see a lie, in terms of a direct lie, that there's a specific

00:26:51.760 person who told a lie. Now, that was my view of what happened. Now, on Twitter, I found out that

00:26:57.540 there's a whole bunch of other people. Okay, Drew, you're going to go away.

00:27:04.660 All right, so all the people on YouTube who are mocking me about boosters, number one, it's not funny.

00:27:12.600 It's not creative. Like, if it were clever, like Claw Adams, I'd at least give you some credit for being

00:27:18.240 clever. But if I can mock you with a funny face, and I don't need to do anything else,

00:27:28.020 then what you're saying is probably pretty stupid. Let's test it. I'm just going to say what you said, 1.00

00:27:33.920 but I'll do it with a funny mocking face. And see if you sound stupid using exactly what you said, 1.00

00:27:40.420 but with the addition of my funny mocking face. Scott, what are you going to get? The booster? 1.00

00:27:47.160 Are you going to get the booster? Are you going to get the booster? How about the booster? How about

00:27:51.920 the booster? Huh? Huh? Has he mentioned the booster yet? Ha ha ha! Are you getting your freedom

00:27:58.760 booster yet? All right. I hope that maybe you could stop saying the same dumbass comment. Message received.

00:28:08.780 Some people got shots and are considering the booster. It's not a fucking point that you're making. 0.99

00:28:18.900 So you're boring us. Stop doing it. Okay. Criticisms are allowed. Dumb, boring ones are not. 0.99

00:28:29.400 All right. So here's the question. So a lot of people said, no, Scott, you have a complete false 0.99

00:28:36.000 memory. And the early data never showed that transmissions could be reduced by vaccinations.

00:28:44.780 And I said to myself, seriously? And I thought, there can't be more than one person who thinks that

00:28:51.040 because my memory was so, so clear that it was based on data. And I thought multiple studies,

00:29:00.540 et cetera. So I thought, oh, do other people have the same view? And it turns out a lot of people have

00:29:06.500 the view that the data never showed at any point that the vaccines worked in any way.

00:29:15.820 Now, does that blow your mind at all? If you're in my movie, because some of you were in my movie,

00:29:23.100 but some of you in that other movie, does it blow your mind at all that both of these memories are

00:29:28.280 held by the public? One that the vaccinations used to work, but things changed. And the other that the

00:29:34.720 data never showed they worked, even in the beginning. That's freaky, isn't it? Because that would be the

00:29:42.340 easiest thing in the world to check, wouldn't it? So now you say to yourself, Scott, spend five seconds

00:29:49.720 on DuckDuckGo and find out, did the data exist or did it not? So do you think that was easy?

00:30:00.460 Just Google it. Nope. Turns out that's really hard. So even the search engine can't tell you what

00:30:07.960 happened. It's crazy. How are the historians going to write this story? Because you can't even

00:30:17.020 research it. Now, here's why I think I have the answer. Are you ready for this? So this is like

00:30:23.660 the key to unlock how these two movies formed. How could I have many of you, by the way, many of the

00:30:29.880 comments have supported my view of what happened? And others have not. So we know the two movies are

00:30:38.620 verified, that they both exist. Here's what happened, I believe. And it's kind of interesting.

00:30:47.420 And Ian Martiz has had the best, I think he unlocked this for me. Apparently people were using different

00:30:53.720 definitions for a lot of important stuff here. And let me just give you an idea of how bad it was.

00:31:00.860 Here are the various terms that have been used by experts as well as, you know, pundits talking about

00:31:05.660 it. Does the vaccination prevent infection or provide immunity? Does it boost your immune response

00:31:12.460 or does it provide protection? Does it prevent serious disease or does it vaccinate against?

00:31:17.460 And apparently, we don't have the same definition of what, the same idea of what those words mean.

00:31:25.520 For example, I was informed that the definition of a vaccination has changed. How many of you have

00:31:32.440 heard that? That the actual word vaccination suddenly magically changed to a different definition in 2021?

00:31:40.280 Yeah, you all heard that, right? I was saying yes, yes, yes. And so I saw the evidence of that.

00:31:49.500 So with my own eyes, I looked at the direct evidence, I read it with my own eyes, how the definition had

00:31:56.740 changed from one thing to this brand new definition in 2021. So I saw it with my own eyes, and it didn't

00:32:05.700 happen. I saw it with my own eyes, it didn't happen. I mean, I didn't see it. I looked at what you looked

00:32:16.460 at, and I didn't see it. Now, does that mean it didn't happen? Well, it happened in your movie.

00:32:21.800 I'm just saying that I can't see it.

00:32:23.480 Anyway, here's what happened when I asked this. So a number of people sent me studies to confirm

00:32:36.940 that my view was correct. So I've tweeted out the links. If you want to see them, I've got a couple

00:32:44.120 of links that show that the initial data showed it was very effective against transmission.

00:32:49.980 And then very quickly, things changed, and then it wasn't. Now, how can you not see it? Oh,

00:32:58.980 let me give you, yeah, let me finish the point there. You said, how could I not see it? And

00:33:04.300 the answer is, the definition changed from something that gives you immunity to something that gives

00:33:14.380 you protection. So there it is, right? So what I read that I was directed to read was that the

00:33:22.440 definition changed for vaccination from something that gives you immunity to something that gives

00:33:28.020 you protection. And there it is, right? I don't see it. Now, you're all saying, I just read it,

00:33:36.260 there it is. No, I don't see it. Let me read it again. Because I don't see it. The definition

00:33:42.420 changed from immunity to protection, two words that mean about the same thing to me.

00:33:47.280 So I see two words that mean the same thing, which means that the definition didn't change. They

00:33:55.700 use different words. But I see the same thing. Now, I believe this gets back to the 100% thing.

00:34:05.080 If somebody said a vaccine gives you immunity, what's that mean to you? What would it mean if

00:34:12.980 somebody says it gives you immunity? To me, it sounds like protection.

00:34:20.760 Yeah, they changed the word. But what does immunity mean to you? When you see immunity,

00:34:27.960 do you think 100% of people won't get it or 100% of people won't get sick?

00:34:33.800 Here it is. There it is. Okay. So somebody answered on locals. Somebody said directly,

00:34:40.160 the word immunity implies 100%. How many of you would agree with that? That the word immunity

00:34:48.100 implies 100% nothing's getting in. Yeah. Okay. So that's why you looked right at it and you could

00:34:55.680 see it. Because when you read the word immunity, you read 100%. When you read the word protection,

00:35:02.060 you're like, oh, that does not mean 100%, right? Right? Immunity means 100%, but protection obviously

00:35:10.840 doesn't mean 100%. So that's what all of you saw. Now, I am a writer by trade. And my interpretation of

00:35:23.460 the words are that it means the same thing. That's my interpretation. Because if you said to me,

00:35:31.100 Scott, this will give you immunity, I would never think 100%. In a medical context, when do you ever

00:35:38.760 think 100% except maybe if somebody's dead, they're not coming back? Well, I suppose it depends how long

00:35:45.280 they've been dead. But in the medical world, what is 100%? Anything? Is there ever anything ever been

00:35:51.900 100%? So if you're in the medical context, and somebody says something gives you immunity,

00:35:57.620 why would you ever think that meant 100%?

00:36:05.500 Why would you assume that? Now, my guess is that the reason they changed it is because people

00:36:11.260 misinterpreted the word immunity. That looks like the obvious reason. If I thought that people were

00:36:17.580 misinterpreting immunity to mean 100%, because remember, even the best initial data didn't say

00:36:23.860 100%. Does everybody agree with that? That even the initial data that all the experts were referring

00:36:31.480 to, it never said 100%. It was always 97, 95, this sort of thing, right? So let me ask you again.

00:36:39.340 Knowing, just hearing my explanation, if you ever interpreted immunity as 100%, does it make sense now

00:36:49.300 that other people didn't? Can you see why other people would interpret immunity within a medical

00:36:58.100 context to mean, yeah, it works pretty good? For some people, it might be immunity, some people might

00:37:05.800 kill them. Now, so I think mostly there's a definitional problem here. And it's really hard

00:37:15.320 to suss out which of the experts said something that really looked like a lie, and which of them said

00:37:22.480 something that was at one time true, and then new data came out, and it was different. And when they're

00:37:30.260 just talking sloppy, they're using words that mean something a little different to you. So I think

00:37:35.900 that a lot of the people who think that that we clearly were lied to, have the following illusions.

00:37:44.040 All right? So this would be supporting the theory that my worldview is correct, which doesn't mean it

00:37:54.360 is. It would just be a theory that would explain why one would be true. You can't prove it. So the

00:37:59.900 other worldview could be true if I'm misreading everything. So if I'm misreading everything, which

00:38:06.860 can happen, right? That's what cognitive dissonance is. I could absolutely be misremembering and

00:38:12.000 misreading everything. And by the way, my critics are saying, and a lot of them, and a lot of them

00:38:17.360 right here, are saying I'm doing exactly that. That I'm actually misreading basically everything.

00:38:25.080 And not just one thing. Just everything. So here's what causes the two movies. Number one,

00:38:31.420 if you assumed that the pharma companies are almost always lying, and almost always giving you fake

00:38:38.260 drugs that don't work, you would assume, quite reasonably, that this was probably another one

00:38:44.440 of those situations. If you believe that they probably usually make drugs that work,

00:38:51.540 but not all the time, you might be in the other movie. If you think that these definitions are

00:38:57.220 different, if you think that immunity meant 100%, which I would say would be a... I don't want to...

00:39:05.400 I don't want to use a word that sounds like I'm insulting you. Let's say... I was... I can't think

00:39:12.300 of a word that doesn't sound insulting. Because I don't mean this to be an insult. It's just an

00:39:16.600 interpretation thing. If you thought immunity meant 100%, you may not have the... maybe the writer's

00:39:27.820 experience. The people often misinterpret your statements as absolutes. So if you have that

00:39:35.320 continuing problem like I do of always being... I did it again. See what I did? I just said,

00:39:41.560 I'm always being misinterpreted. Should you have interpreted that statement,

00:39:48.300 I'm always being misinterpreted, to mean every single person misinterprets me every time?

00:39:53.460 Of course not. You would use the context. Of course it doesn't mean that.

00:39:57.500 Oh, here's a comment. Both things are true. Many facts are unchanged. Many interpret them being fed

00:40:06.100 by media. Yeah, so it's a soup of people being wrong, people interpreting words differently,

00:40:12.560 people not knowing that the data changed. But I can send you the links that say that the vaccines

00:40:19.040 did stop everything early, but then they became less effective over time. So if you don't believe

00:40:25.160 that ever happened, I can show you the links. All right, so what else we got going on here?

00:40:36.820 And also there's the question of whether the vaccine is, like, stopping the virus from getting

00:40:43.860 a hold, or is it just building up your natural immunity? So it does... it always gets a hold,

00:40:49.260 but it doesn't, you know, take root or something to use common language. So as long as we're

00:40:56.840 disagreeing on all these things, we'll see two movies forever. And as Ian said, Martises, if we don't

00:41:06.420 agree on what words mean, like at the very beginning, if we don't have common definitions, then one can

00:41:12.560 later claim any history of what they said. And that's exactly what's happening. So because we

00:41:17.840 don't agree on the assumptions of how likely a pharma company will lie to you in any given

00:41:23.300 situation, we don't agree what any of the words meant, and we have apparently, some number of us

00:41:29.720 have completely false memories. Maybe me, right? I can't rule that out. It might be me.

00:41:35.700 But maybe you. Complete false memories of whether the vaccines ever worked.

00:41:44.380 So, there's absolutely nothing else interesting happening. So, how many of you just heard this

00:41:54.560 and it sounded to you like I was promoting vaccinations? How many would interpret this

00:42:01.200 morning's live stream as promoting vaccinations? Thankfully, mostly no's. Right. No. And

00:42:10.500 have I given you my updated opinion on getting a booster myself? Don't think I have. Because it,

00:42:21.360 you know, it's sort of subject to change. But I'll wait as long as possible. I think there's the

00:42:26.160 extra risk that, you know, that level of boostiness can't be tested. So, it's sort of even more of a

00:42:35.020 guess than the other guesses. At the moment, I'm leaning toward waiting it out and getting some of

00:42:42.140 that sweet, sweet Omicron in my system instead. So, that's where I'm leaning. If I had to, you know,

00:42:47.980 suddenly travel and it was a mandate, I don't know, I might make a practical decision. But you want a real

00:42:54.820 mind teaser, I'm going to leave you with the final mind teaser. Suppose you were trying to decide

00:43:00.680 whether to get vaccinated and you wanted to, you wanted as much information as possible. And let's say

00:43:05.980 you knew, which you can't know, but let's say you knew the history of how accurate the vaccine,

00:43:13.640 all medications from big pharma had been in the past. And let's say you knew, you don't, but let's say you

00:43:20.720 did. You knew that fewer than 25% of the time, the drugs even work. Would it be rational

00:43:30.700 to take the vaccination with all the other stuff that we know that you may or may not trust? But

00:43:37.380 would it be rational if you knew that fewer than a quarter of the people, fewer than a quarter of any

00:43:43.420 medication that ever wanted in the market ever worked? The answer is, you can't tell. Do you know

00:43:53.440 why? Because none of the risks can be measured. You can't measure the risk of side effects in the long

00:44:03.980 term. You can't. So, if I told you that there's some chance that the vaccination works, you might make

00:44:11.380 a calculation closer to your ivermectin calculation. Because I've told you before that I predict

00:44:17.100 ivermectin will be shown not to be terribly effective, maybe a little, but I think it will

00:44:22.200 not be shown to be as effective as its proponents show. At the same time that I predict it doesn't

00:44:27.960 work, I would give the odds of it working at less than 25%. But would I take it if I got COVID?

00:44:38.300 Yes, I would. Assuming my doctor said yes. I would take it. Now, why would that be different

00:44:44.800 from the vaccinations? Now, one way it could be different is you say, well, Scott, the ivermectin

00:44:51.180 is so well known, we don't have a downside. But we also don't know anything about long COVID.

00:44:58.800 So, since all of the risks are completely unsizable, even if you knew that big pharma had a low track

00:45:07.900 record of success, it could still be ivermectin-ish in terms of your cost benefit. If you thought that

00:45:15.200 the risk was gigantic of getting COVID, and you thought that the risk of the vaccine killing you

00:45:22.120 itself was relatively small, you would still take a 25% chance that it made a difference.

00:45:27.660 I mean, or let me say it better. You would never have the numbers to know if you were making the

00:45:34.760 right decision. We wouldn't have the right data for that. But it wouldn't be irrational to get a shot

00:45:40.960 if you knew that medicine in general only worked 25% of the time. It wouldn't be irrational. It could

00:45:48.120 be wrong, but it wouldn't be irrational. Because all the decisions ultimately are irrational in the

00:45:55.180 sense that we don't have enough data. Yeah, you know, those who assume the government is guilty

00:46:00.360 and assume that big pharma is guilty, you kind of have to know how often that assumption works.

00:46:07.120 Thank you, AA. Scott is right about this. Yeah, as soon as you compare it to ivermectin,

00:46:12.680 it starts making sense. But you have to be careful, because ivermectin has a much safer long-term...

00:46:21.180 Well, actually, let me ask you this. Do you think ivermectin's ever been studied in a way that can

00:46:29.100 guarantee you it's safe? Can anything? Because there's no absolutes, right? There are no absolutes.

00:46:36.760 We have quite a few short-term trials. Yeah, we have lots of lower-quality data. At least there's...

00:46:50.420 You know, my old philosophy teacher used to say that the food in the cafeteria was bad,

00:46:55.940 but at least there's a lot of it. So that's our data. Well, all of our data about the pandemic is bad,

00:47:03.940 but we got a lot of it. So that's the good news. It's all bad, but hey, thank goodness there's not

00:47:10.760 a shortage of it. Nothing is absolute. Damn it, Jordan. Stop it with your mind games. Nothing is absolute.

00:47:21.520 All right. Scott, how many boosters would you be willing to go up to? I still want to...

00:47:28.940 I just feel like answering that question is a dead end. Because why would it matter to you

00:47:48.480 how many boosters that I thought I would get? And first of all, why would you think I could answer

00:47:53.760 that question? What would make you think I could answer that question? How could anybody answer

00:47:59.260 that question? How many boosters? Now, I have told you that I'm, you know, I'm undecided between

00:48:05.500 zero and one booster, but that I'm leaning heavily towards zero. Why would you ask me how many I would

00:48:12.620 get? Wouldn't that depend on what I learned between now and there and then? So if I don't learn anything

00:48:19.680 new, I would certainly, well, there will be something new because we'll know what happens

00:48:24.240 with Omicron. So the booster question is undecided. Wait as long as possible. And I haven't waited long

00:48:31.540 enough yet. So stop asking me if I'm going to get boosted. If you've made a decision about it,

00:48:37.680 you need to defend your decision. I say there's insufficient data, but there might be better data

00:48:45.300 later. Don't know, but there might be, even if the better data is only in the form of knowing more

00:48:51.380 about the alternative, which is getting infected by Omicron. All right. Have you seen Dr. Malone?

00:48:59.800 So here's my problem with Dr. Malone on Joe Rogan. And unfortunately, I'm trying to avoid the same

00:49:08.240 problem that my critics have with me, which is they see a little bit of my opinion and then form

00:49:13.860 a total opinion based on, you know, looking at that one pinprick. And I don't want to do that

00:49:19.460 with Dr. Malone because I think I've been guilty of that same sin myself. And I'm not going to watch

00:49:25.820 a three-hour anything, even that is sped up. So I will never be able to penetrate what Dr. Malone said.

00:49:34.660 And I just want to tell you, I'm not going to put in the work because I'm just not going to do that

00:49:40.820 much homework to listen to what one guy said. So let me say it this way. If there is a statement

00:49:46.540 he said, you know, a, just a clean statement of opinion or fact, I'd love to hear it. If you think

00:49:56.280 that that's, that's like the important thing. Somebody says it's a cop out. I think that the

00:50:04.300 weakest comment on the internet is that somebody else didn't do enough research because that assumes

00:50:09.260 that if you did more research it would make a difference. And all evidence suggests that's

00:50:13.140 not the case. We just get more confirmation bias. But no, I am definitely lazy about things that

00:50:21.620 don't make a difference. I try to be not lazy about things that do make a difference. Somebody says,

00:50:28.540 just watch the last half hour. You're, you're so close. But look, but let me test it. I know a number

00:50:34.400 of you have seen it by now. State in the comments one, just one sentence could be two that just says

00:50:41.020 something he said that you think would be different from what I believe. Go. Let's test it. For those

00:50:47.940 of you who've seen it, give me one example of something he said. And if I miss it, just repeat

00:50:55.620 it, please, because there's too many things. Look, so here's the, here's the kind of comments. So

00:51:02.320 Norman says, does Scott notice if he listens to Malone, he'll not be able to hide the cognitive

00:51:07.460 dissonance. Now that's the mind reader problem right there, right? Here's what I think would

00:51:13.220 happen if I listened to Dr. Malone. I think I would agree with him. Unless there's a difference in data

00:51:20.960 interpretation, in which case, I would look to others to say if his data was right or not.

00:51:26.960 Do you think I would disagree with him? What would I disagree about?

00:51:35.200 Malone talked about hypnosis. But what do you think I would disagree with him about?

00:51:42.280 Right? Nothing. So you're all shooting empties. There's the, what is it? Mass formation,

00:51:50.380 psychosis. I wouldn't disagree with him about that. That's just one window on this that's

00:51:56.460 somewhat incomplete. But all of the things that form mass, the mass hypnosis formation thing,

00:52:04.220 those, those things do exist and they do matter. But give me consent. No, I'm not going to disagree

00:52:10.780 about that. You're shooting blanks. Yeah, not empties.

00:52:21.580 Rogue, you disagree about him saying deaths are over counting.

00:52:27.100 No, I don't think I disagree. So if you can come up with any reason that you think I would disagree

00:52:34.320 with him, tell me what that disagreement is. And if there's a place on the video to see the context,

00:52:40.920 I'll listen to it. But if you can't tell me anything that he says that I don't say,

00:52:45.680 why are you recommending that I listen to him?

00:52:57.480 I need to watch it just to say I'm posting alone. Good one.

00:53:05.840 He talks about deep knowledge of corruption in the medical industry.

00:53:09.080 Does anybody think that I'm not aware of deep corruption in the medical industry?

00:53:15.440 Does anybody think that I would need to find that out for the first time?

00:53:20.100 So as far as somebody says I'm being obtuse, Andrew, it's a very easy test. Tell me something

00:53:28.280 he said that you believe I would disagree with.

00:53:31.460 Is that an unreasonable thing? If I'm being asked to consume three hours of content, even

00:53:41.400 sped up, it might be two hours. If I'm being asked to do a whole bunch of homework, don't

00:53:45.980 you think that's fair for me to say, name one thing he says that I might disagree with?

00:53:50.540 Somebody says, this is boring. No matter what we give you, you'll just say you agree with

00:54:06.340 it. Well, that's the point. My understanding is that Dr. Malone is well informed. If I'm

00:54:13.240 also well informed, would we just agree? I see no reason. Early treatment, what am I

00:54:21.720 going to disagree about that? All right. So let me ask you this. Have I made my case that

00:54:30.600 you can see the causes of the two movies? Did I make that case? I'm seeing yeses, mostly

00:54:41.600 yeses. Now, the question of who is right or wrong, I'll leave that to you. I'll leave

00:54:48.200 that to you. Do you think the next pandemic will be handled better? I do. I do. I mean,

00:54:56.160 I would be really surprised if this pandemic doesn't get us in much better shape. You said

00:55:04.720 deaths are undercounted. Yes, I said that. But also overcounted.

00:55:11.600 So here's the thing. Hospitals were, some people say, hospitals were incentivized to say that

00:55:24.480 somebody died of COVID, you know, even if maybe it was just with COVID. So everybody's on the same

00:55:29.520 page with that, right? And that would be an example of what? Overcounting, right? So have you ever

00:55:37.140 heard me disagree with the notion that some people are counted as COVID deaths when probably

00:55:43.680 they just had something else going on and they died? Have I ever disagreed with that, right? So in

00:55:48.100 that limited context, that would be an obvious case where you should assume there's overcounting.

00:55:54.860 Everybody on the same page? Now, here's the other part of the equation. When people die at home,

00:56:02.200 who determines what they died of? And it turns out more people than you think die at home.

00:56:12.660 So the people who died at home may have died of COVID, but if they were, let's say they were 98 years

00:56:18.500 old and had a comorbidity, if your 98-year-old grandmother dies and you knew she had a bad ticker,

00:56:26.500 what are you going to do? Are you going to do a COVID test? No, no. So the thought was, in India,

00:56:34.620 of course, this would be on a much bigger effect, but the thought is there are people who are dying

00:56:39.960 that because they didn't go through the hospital system, they died at home, for example, that they

00:56:45.260 wouldn't be counted. So I think that it's true that there is both overcounting and undercounting.

00:56:51.220 Would anybody disagree with that? That in one way, there's almost certainly overcounting,

00:56:59.000 but in another sense, in another element of it, there would be almost certainly undercounting.

00:57:05.860 Now, my estimate has always been that, let's say we get to, what are we up to? Deaths in the United

00:57:12.700 States, 800,000, something like that. Give you the current number. So my take is that if the

00:57:20.240 800,000 or so deaths was 600,000, or maybe it was 1.2 million, that we would have acted about the

00:57:31.480 same. So I'm not sure it matters, and I would imagine that you would find hospitals that have

00:57:37.700 overcounted and hospitals that have undercounted. Don't you think? I mean, it's a big world, and you

00:57:44.180 also have the different standards for determining if somebody has COVID. I can't believe everybody

00:57:49.340 used even the same standard. So I would say probably some places are under, some places are over.

00:57:55.880 If you ask me if I know what the net is, I don't. I don't. But I don't know that it would have changed

00:58:05.540 anything. Yeah, in rural India, there are plenty of deaths that don't get counted, so they might

00:58:12.680 have more deaths. That's correct. All right.

00:58:17.320 It's worth listening to. All right. Is this a positive discussion? Yeah, I think it's a positive

00:58:31.540 discussion only in the sense of how to make decisions and what to believe. Yeah, I'm much

00:58:37.720 less interested in the actual, you know, the medical what you do than how we process these

00:58:43.360 things. And how is it we have completely false memories of things that just happened, basically?

00:58:49.560 Anyway, tomorrow will be a lot better than today, because we'll have some actual news by then. Today's

00:58:56.080 going to be a slow news day. And let's go forth and have some fun. If you didn't see my special

00:59:04.240 live stream yesterday that I did after my normal live stream, you don't want to miss that one.

00:59:10.260 That one's the weird one. Weird good. So watch that one, please. And thank you. Some people

00:59:18.960 liked that video yesterday. And I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 01, 2022

Episode 1610 Scott Adams： I Tell You How the Massive False Memories of the Pandemic Have Already Formed

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