Episode 847 Scott Adams: Bernie's Great Week (He Doesn't Know it Yet), Coronavirus Loserthink
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
147.21773
Summary
Scott Adams talks about the coronavirus crisis, Jeopardy! and why the president is not the right person to have a virus like this, and why Bernie Sanders is going to win the 2020 Democratic primary.
Transcript
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum boom bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in here
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it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams and because this is a special day a Wednesday, I wore my finest sweatshirt
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yeah I don't put this on every day, not for everybody, but it did it for you
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And if you would like to enjoy the simultaneous sip,
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all you need, you know what you need, probably.
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You need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein,
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a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day,
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the thing that makes absolutely everything, including coronavirus, better.
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If you go out in the streets, Antifa will beat you up.
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Let's talk about some coronavirus stuff and some politics stuff, etc.
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I've come to a conclusion that President Trump's tool set is best used against people.
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In other words, if you say, hey, Donald Trump, President Trump, I've got a person that you need to defeat
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or you need to negotiate with them or you need to win them over.
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And then he goes and he does it and he does it very well.
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The president is really, really, really good at getting a result with people.
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But I don't know that he's exactly the right person to have a battle with a virus.
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You can't beat a virus with, you know, getting more attention on TV.
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Because pretty much the president's entire tool set is people-oriented.
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If we're being honest, I mean, I wouldn't expect you to believe anything I say good about the president
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if I can't also say, well, in this area, this area is not ideal.
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And I don't think he's nailing it on the coronavirus.
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But as I've said, I don't think it'll make any difference.
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Because it's a weird kind of crisis in which the president's involvement is the least important part.
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I mean, if you think about it, the president always has to be the one in charge
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Really, the only thing the president is doing is he assigned the right people.
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But once he's got Pence on board, you know, I'm sure he gets briefed a lot.
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But mostly his job is just talking to the public.
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Jeopardy! has had me as or one of the answers or questions, whichever it is.
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So I can't tell you how weird my life is to turn on television and watch a Jeopardy! question about myself.
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So, Van Jones is warning that, because of the primary last night, and it looks like Biden's got a commanding lead,
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that if and when Bernie fails, there are going to be a lot of people who are really wound up who lost their champion.
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They're losing their champion, meaning that they have an emotional connection to this thing.
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And as he points out, there's a lot of energy there in their emotions, and you don't know where that's going to go.
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I was saying yesterday that whoever canceled, well, I was saying yesterday that the big rallies should be canceled.
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Now, apparently the president doesn't have any scheduled.
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So the president didn't have anything to cancel.
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He was just obviously smart enough not to schedule anything.
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Whereas Bernie had to actually cancel something, and then I think Biden followed on and canceled some other thing.
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And I thought to myself, oh, man, the president missed this, too.
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If the president walks by a table and there's some money laying there, and he looks around and it doesn't seem to belong to anybody,
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And he does it in lots of different situations.
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And he had free money sitting on the table for this situation of canceling big events.
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Because whoever went first looks like the leader.
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So the free money is if you know you're going to cancel your events anyway, you might as well announce it.
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It forces everybody else to be a Me Too player who doesn't get as much attention.
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So the president should have very early said, I'm canceling all my events, even if he didn't have any scheduled.
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He should have just said, you know, I'm not going to have any more rallies.
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It would have immediately forced Sanders and Biden to do the same.
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Didn't everybody know that the rallies were eventually going to get canceled?
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If it's going to happen anyway, take the free money.
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Again, the president missed this opportunity, I think.
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Now, I've said, provocatively, that Bernie is having one of his best weeks.
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Why do you say that when he just got hammered in this latest series of primaries?
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It looks like the states that are upcoming are favorable to Biden.
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And all the smart people are saying Biden's just going to lock it down.
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There's one race that's the candidates against the other candidates.
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But there's another race that's happening right under our eyes.
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And it's the race to get Biden nominated before his mental decline becomes so obvious that it can't happen.
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And if you've been watching the clips lately of Biden, it's looking like he's fading fast.
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And that's confirmed by the fact that his campaign is keeping him away from the stage.
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You don't put your candidate on the stage for only seven minutes if you think he's he's got the goods.
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So it's obvious that the campaign knows he's failing and failing fast.
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And it's probably to me, to my eyes, to my non-medical eyes.
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And I'll put the caution on that everybody should put on this, which is we're not doctors.
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We can't diagnose things by looking at people on TV.
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Unless it's so obvious that even a non-doctor could see it.
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I think we're well beyond the point where you'd have to have a medical degree to look at Joe Biden and say there's something wrong.
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If it were your relative, you could see it easily.
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The real contest is that Biden's support is growing while his mental acuity is declining.
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If that crossover happens before the convention, and it looks like there's a good chance that could happen.
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Because there's nobody who doesn't see it at this point.
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Who tweeted that, you know, people pretending they can see Biden's mental problems are, you know, are kidding themselves.
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But that's sort of a desperate, you know, last move.
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It's pretty clear that the Democrats can see it at this point.
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So, if Biden crashes and burns before the convention just because of his own, you know, decline, do you look at Bernie?
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What if Bernie is still in the race, still has the most votes without being Biden, and Biden's mental faculties decline to the point where the Democrats say, okay, okay, we've got to stop this.
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Am I wrong that, so what day is the convention exactly?
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Because he might completely fall apart before he actually gets on the convention stage.
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Now, if he gets to the convention, I think he'll get nominated.
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President Trump keeps being asked whether he's going to be tested for the virus because he shook hands at CPAC or something.
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I mean, he's just not performing at his usual level for this crisis.
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You don't get tested just because you're not feeling fine.
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You get tested because you're the commander-in-chief and you've been exposed.
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Do you think somebody in the country could maybe give up a test so the president could get tested?
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We do put resources into protecting our leader greater than the resources we put into protecting any individual.
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And most of us think that's a good idea because the leader influences all of us.
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So here's what the president should say instead of that terrible, terrible answer that he feels good.
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He should say, I delegate that decision to my doctor, you know, the White House physician.
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I'm going to let the expert tell me when to be tested.
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Now, if he said that, wouldn't you feel a little bit more comfortable?
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But when he comes out and says, I'm not getting tested and I feel great, that makes you feel like he doesn't understand the problem.
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Because there are a lot of people without symptoms.
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And that's really the biggest part of the problem.
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If the only people who could spread it were people who showed symptoms, we'd be in good shape.
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I don't think the president could have done much worse in answering that question.
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But he should just defer to his physician next time.
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I feel as if people don't quite understand the strategy for dealing with the coronavirus.
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That if we can slow it down enough, it won't overwhelm our systems.
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And that we're not exactly trying to save lives compared to other flus or other problems.
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And if we're doing that too, you would, of course, try to save lives.
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So, we're trying to do our social distancing and hand washing and closing events and stuff.
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We do have a problem that we, with great confidence, we know we can flatten out the problem.
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And if we flatten it out and spread it out enough, then the hospitals will not be overrun.
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And we can get through it with some predictable amount of pain.
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And, you know, I didn't want to do what I'm going to do now.
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I've been watching Bill Mitchell tweeting all week, various different ways.
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He's saying some form of the, that the panic is overdone on this virus.
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And that really the panic is indicative of a political process, not scientific or medical.
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He says, H1N1, I guess that was, was that the swine flu?
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COVID-19 has received 10,000 times the media coverage that H1N1 received.
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And then Bill Mitchell concludes, he says, yes, folks, it's all political.
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Now, I ignored the first few times he did this.
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And, but at this point, it's sort of a public service that I stop this right now.
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Because the problem here, and I think most of you can tell,
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And if you compare an apple to an orange during an emergency,
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what are the odds you're going to make the right decisions?
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And the reason that you can't compare this coronavirus to any prior flu
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is that the experts have told you unambiguously,
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and it was with great effort that we got them under control.
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But the experts, Bill Mitchell, do not say this one is like those other ones,
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But otherwise, the curve and what it does to you is different.
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people died pretty quickly, so they couldn't spread it.
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So, these are just completely different problems.
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which with all of the effort of the United States
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has been so far in the earliest stages held to a thousand people,
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And if you try to draw a conclusion from that comparison,
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you are really damaging the country, in my opinion.
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Because knowing that is what causes you to modify your behavior.
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to say that they're already canceling optional surgeries.
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they're going to be canceling mandatory surgeries
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than, say, maybe Italy was in the United States
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There could be lots of things that are different.
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And I don't really see this politically being a...