Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 850 Scott Adams： #WuFlu and Coffee

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, get in here. It's time to talk about the coronavirus.

00:00:16.300 Are you sick of the coronavirus yet? Now we have to talk about it because it's affecting everything

00:00:22.080 and it's the only thing happening of consequence. So we'll be talking about that, but I am

00:00:29.620 so sick of the coronavirus and we've got a lot more coming. So let's do our best.

00:00:40.180 Join together, try to make this a perfect day. DJ Dr. Funk Juice, good to see you, as always.

00:00:48.320 And before we get started, I think we need to do a little thing called the simultaneous hip

00:00:53.400 and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a sty and a canteen jug

00:00:58.080 or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And

00:01:04.520 join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that

00:01:07.640 makes everything better, including the coronavirus. It's called the simultaneous hip and it happens

00:01:14.540 now. Go.

00:01:15.240 Someone says, what if it's all a hoax? Well, that was a good question a few weeks ago.

00:01:28.740 It's not a good question anymore. The ratio of people who are saying it's just the flu and

00:01:35.580 it's a hoax and it's all overblown. I'd say that ratio went from half or 80% or whatever

00:01:44.760 it was down to, well, there's not much of that anymore. But let's talk about what we've

00:01:50.600 learned. I didn't watch Bill Maher last night, but he makes so much news that you could always

00:02:00.220 read about it the next day. And I read some of his quotes when he was talking about Biden.

00:02:07.520 And I guess I have the answer to a question that I've been wondering for a long time.

00:02:14.160 And it goes like this. And I know you've probably have the same question, right? And it goes like

00:02:18.940 this. When Trump was first running for president, all the Democrats were saying some version of this

00:02:26.700 to me, Scott, can't you see it? Can't you see the problem here? Are you blind? Why are we all

00:02:36.380 seeing there's something wrong with Trump, but you don't see it? What's wrong with you? Why can't you

00:02:43.080 see it? Now, I, of course, thought the answer was that they were having TDS and I was not, and that he

00:02:52.240 would be good for the economy and trade deals and stuff like that. And I think largely that has

00:02:57.300 been true if you don't count the coronavirus. But that gets to my question, which is, don't the

00:03:07.400 Democrats see what's happening with Biden? Can't they see it? I mean, it's not really subtle anymore,

00:03:15.300 horror, is it? Maybe a year ago, you couldn't see it? Maybe a year ago, you'd say, oh, maybe that is

00:03:21.760 his stutter or something. But what about right now? Is there any Democrat who's been watching any of the

00:03:29.360 videos of Biden recently who doesn't see it? I mean, actually, it's not a rhetorical question. I'm

00:03:36.860 actually intensely curious about this. I don't know what they're seeing, because they're not going to tell

00:03:43.740 you exactly. But I think Bill Maher came pretty close. And I'm going to paraphrase and read his

00:03:50.860 mind and all the things that you shouldn't do. So, you know, Bill Maher will have to give you his own

00:03:55.520 opinion if you really want to know what it is. But in context, and I've talked to other people who

00:04:03.840 have a similar kind of vibe to them. I told you that my one friend said that he would vote for a pile

00:04:12.640 of old magazines before he would vote for Trump. And I thought, haha, that's funny. And then I

00:04:20.220 thought, no, he means it. He would actually vote for a pile of old magazines over Trump. He would

00:04:27.660 vote for anything. It doesn't even matter what it is. I think we've actually gotten to that point

00:04:32.460 where the candidate isn't even part of the question anymore. Is it? Because if Biden were part of the

00:04:40.140 decision in any way, it would be, oh, I guess we've got to have another four years of Trump. At least,

00:04:46.320 you know, at least he can function. But it's not even part of the question. We've gone so far into

00:04:54.980 ridiculousness that whether the candidate has a functioning brain will be alive or dead after

00:05:04.660 election doesn't even matter. I mean, that's actually what's happening. And I believe I'm not

00:05:10.580 exaggerating. I believe that people are saying, you know, we don't even care if he survives a week

00:05:17.420 after he gets elected. We don't care if, you know, they're feeding him with a spoon and he doesn't know

00:05:24.200 his name. I think we're being told that directly at this point. So Bill Maher seemed to clearly

00:05:33.280 understand there's something wrong with Biden. So again, I don't want to read his mind. But I will

00:05:38.360 say that he did indicate that he is aware that it's pretty obvious something wrong with Biden

00:05:46.260 and still wants him to be elected. So he's saying it kind of directly. It's an amazingly absurd

00:05:55.540 situation that you could only get there gradually. You know, the old thing about at a boil of

00:06:03.120 frog, you know, you do it gradually. But, you know, if we'd started from nothing and said,

00:06:09.400 okay, hey, everybody, we're thinking about running some Democrats against President Trump.

00:06:15.780 We don't have any names in mind. But we've got this idea, we're going to run this guy who will

00:06:22.200 be in his 80s if he gets elected. He's not very competent. He's not very accomplished. He's not good

00:06:29.520 in talking to people. And by the way, there's something seriously wrong with his mental acuity.

00:06:38.180 But that's who we're going to run against Trump. Now, if somebody had said that on day one,

00:06:43.120 you would say, oh, that's pretty funny. No, you're kidding, right? That can't be serious.

00:06:48.160 You're not actually going to run this shell of a, you know, of somebody who used to have a brain

00:06:56.160 against Trump. The one person who will not pull any punches because your brain's not working.

00:07:04.120 You don't expect Trump to pull any punches. If so, the only way you can get to this place is by this

00:07:12.120 gradual series of events where it's sort of slowly building there to the point where people are

00:07:17.520 actually willing to vote for a brain-dead guy over the current president. Truly amazing. It tells you

00:07:26.400 a lot about people. None of it's good. All right. Did anybody see Biden's attempt at doing a live stream,

00:07:36.460 some kind of a town hall situation? Oh, my God. If you haven't seen it, go look for it. It's in my

00:07:46.100 Twitter feed, and it's all over Twitter. It's pretty easy to find. So the basics of it are that since the

00:07:52.760 physical rallies in person were canceled, Biden was trying to do the best he could. He used Zoom,

00:07:58.860 a technology for sending out your stuff. And was Zoom live? I think they tried to do it live.

00:08:09.320 And they couldn't get, they just couldn't make it work. The sound didn't work. And then the worst part,

00:08:17.140 Biden didn't seem to understand that he needed to look at the camera because he starts wandering

00:08:22.800 around. He actually wandered off the camera. He was holding his phone in his hand. Now, this part is

00:08:30.160 not his fault, exactly, but it kind of is. So the sound didn't work the way it was supposed to with

00:08:37.940 whatever kind of microphones they had set up. So because it's Zoom, you have a second way to do it.

00:08:43.980 You can use your telephone as your microphone, basically. So you had Biden standing up there,

00:08:49.580 holding his phone like this and talking into it. But if you were watching it, you'd say to yourself,

00:08:55.680 because you wouldn't know why he was doing that. You'd say, is that an old man who doesn't know

00:09:01.880 there's a microphone and he thinks he's talking into his phone? Now, it turns out he had to do it

00:09:06.540 that way because of the technical problems. But if you were just tuning in to watch it,

00:09:11.220 it would look like he didn't understand how anything worked. Now, that wasn't his fault, exactly.

00:09:16.980 But he didn't make it any better. So I really don't see how anybody under the age of 70

00:09:25.400 could see that video and say, well, there's the guy. Got to get more of that. That's what we want,

00:09:32.020 leading us in an emergency. All right, let's talk about China. So there's...

00:09:39.540 I guess I need a fact check or a logic check on this, because I have a point of view that I'm

00:09:50.220 pretty confident about that doesn't seem to make any sense, which bothers me, of course. And it goes

00:09:56.580 like this. China's strategy against the Wuhan virus, not a racist, is it looks like they're trying to

00:10:07.680 eradicate it? In other words, just stop it. And they've done one heck of a good job, it looks like.

00:10:15.760 I mean, from the outside, you can't really tell. But from the outside, it would look like

00:10:20.220 they've done an amazing job, you know, given the size of the challenge and the size of the country

00:10:27.360 and all that. You know, slow clap, amazing, great job, rising to the challenge, etc. But

00:10:36.240 there's just one problem. Their strategy seems to be to try to stop it. But our strategy is to just

00:10:45.920 slow it down. How does our strategy live in the same world with their strategy? Because our strategy

00:10:55.500 is not to stop it. And our guys say that pretty directly. You have to let enough people get

00:11:02.420 infected until it's hard for it to spread after that point. So you protect the old people, you slow

00:11:09.660 it down so the hospitals are not overwhelmed, you let the young people who don't suffer too much from it

00:11:15.660 get it, and then the old people can leave the house, because all the younger people who might have

00:11:21.900 infected them have, you know, enough of them have gotten it and gotten over it, and have some kind

00:11:27.560 of immunity, that that the old people would be safe. So our strategy, I'm no expert, but based on

00:11:36.000 what the experts say every day, it looks like our strategy is not only completely reasonable,

00:11:42.900 but it's doable. It's really hard, but it's doable. We're just going to protect the weak,

00:11:50.240 build up a herd of immunity. But how in the world is that compatible with China's problem?

00:11:58.560 China's strategy is to stop all of it. They can't have one person in China who has this flu,

00:12:05.980 and it doesn't get immediately quarantined because it's going to spread. So correct me if I'm wrong,

00:12:12.900 but because our strategy is guaranteed to work with some amount of extreme pain, but it's guaranteed

00:12:20.900 to work, we don't have any doubt that when we get to the end of it that enough people have been

00:12:26.920 exposed that we'll be okay. That seems to be a solid assumption by all the experts. Now, there's a

00:12:33.040 rumor going around that you can be infected and reinfected, and I would say that the experts are not

00:12:38.160 saying that. It was a rumor on the internet, but when you listen to the experts talk, they talk

00:12:44.840 about herd immunity, which means that it's not a case of once you get it, you can get it a hundred

00:12:50.340 times again. So there must be immunity. So I wouldn't believe the internet rumors that there's

00:12:57.680 something unique about this particular one that it's the only one you can't get an immunity to.

00:13:01.920 That doesn't seem to be demonstrated. But the point is, the only way that China's strategy of

00:13:12.440 eradicating it would work is if the rest of the world did the same thing and succeeded, but they

00:13:18.020 can't. So China has a strategy that can't work. What are they going to have to do when they realize

00:13:27.800 that their strategy can't work? There isn't any chance it would work. There's none. It's not like

00:13:33.280 it's a long shot. It's a zero shot. And I think every expert would agree with me on this. I think

00:13:39.140 everyone, 100%, would agree that it can't work. So here's what's going to happen, I think. I think

00:13:49.700 the United States is going to get ravaged, but we'll pull through, because we're pretty good at

00:13:56.760 pulling through. And when I say ravaged, I mean most of you won't even have anything except a few

00:14:02.680 weeks off of work or whatever, you know, some inconvenience. But, you know, old people might be

00:14:09.780 dying at a higher rate, and, you know, it's going to press our medical staff and inconvenience us and,

00:14:15.300 you know, whack our economy for a while. But I think the United States has decided to pull off the

00:14:22.660 mandate. You know what I mean? Like, we have to get it to get past it. I think the United States

00:14:29.360 said, all right, that's our plan. If there's only one way to get there, that's the way we're going to

00:14:35.620 go. China seems to have picked a plan which, for political reasons, looks terrific. So if you're the

00:14:44.620 outside world and you're looking at China, you're saying, wow, that's terrific, China. Look at what

00:14:48.760 you've done, the sacrifice you've done, and that's protecting the world. And it probably is.

00:14:53.960 And by the way, thank you, China, you know, for, again, you know, I'm not loving the government

00:14:59.880 over there. But it can be said that the individual Chinese citizens fighting hard to stop this thing

00:15:06.580 have done a solid service for the rest of the world. It wasn't their fault. You know, the average

00:15:11.800 Chinese healthcare emergency person, it's not their fault the virus got out. They're just

00:15:18.100 sacrificing their life to stop it. So thank you, sincerely. The government's another question,

00:15:25.660 of course. But it seems to me that China is going to have to adopt our strategy. And when

00:15:31.500 they do, let's do some numbers. Let's say, best case scenario, they can get it down to

00:15:40.140 a 2% death rate. Now, in other countries, we have hope it could be under 1%. South Korea,

00:15:48.260 maybe that will be our experience. Italy is higher. Let's just pick a number. Let's just

00:15:54.680 say that China could get it down to 2%. But eventually, they're going to have to let people

00:16:01.080 get it, because that's the only way they're going to get past it. So they'll have to give

00:16:04.780 up on their trying to eradicate it and locking down everything. They have to open for business

00:16:09.880 eventually, or else everybody will starve to death. When they open for business, it's going

00:16:15.380 to go right back to where it was, because it has to. There isn't really any possibility

00:16:23.440 China won't go right back to where it was, right? I mean, seriously, there's no possibility

00:16:31.600 that it won't ravage the country as soon as they stop locking people down. So if it does,

00:16:40.780 they got, what, 1.3 billion people over there. What's 2% of 1.3 billion? Yeah, we're talking

00:16:49.960 about World War II level casualties just in China. And I think that's inevitable, because

00:16:59.980 again, you know, somebody says vaccine, but the vaccine's probably 18 months off, and I

00:17:07.320 don't know how effective it will be, and I'm not really sure we can make one. Maybe we can.

00:17:11.560 So is China trying to eradicate it until the vaccine comes out? Because they can't wait

00:17:17.900 18 months. There's no way they wait 18 months. I think they're going to have to loosen things

00:17:23.920 up in a month or two, and then it's just going to ravage the country again. So I think the

00:17:30.820 U.S. is going to come out better, because our strategy is better than their strategy.

00:17:36.460 Now, maybe they had to do it the way they're doing it, just to sort of slow it down and

00:17:40.320 get a handle on it. But ultimately, they're going to have to adopt our strategy. And when

00:17:44.160 they do, because of the size of the population, it could be 40 million people dead just in

00:17:52.280 China. Now, we might get it down to, say, 1%, and then we might have half a million, 1.5 million

00:18:01.520 at risk here as well. But it would be the older people who we already know are at risk.

00:18:09.420 Now, here's some good news, if you can call it that. You know, good news is relative.

00:18:16.280 But the world is, a lot of countries are handling things differently, which means that we have

00:18:22.240 massive A-B testing. So we can look at South Korea and all the other countries and say, all

00:18:28.420 right, what worked, and what didn't work. Now, that's a rare situation. You don't normally

00:18:34.520 have this many laboratories working simultaneously. And some of these laboratories are going to

00:18:39.260 come up with good results, and some are not. So it's very likely that the result of all

00:18:45.600 these different approaches is that we'll find one that works best, people will know it, you

00:18:51.560 know, because everybody's communicating, and they'll quickly adopt the best practices.

00:18:56.020 At the moment, we have pretty good practices. But clearly, given that everybody's doing things

00:19:04.520 a little bit differently, there is something that's a best practice. We just don't know

00:19:08.900 what it is yet. We're getting close. Let me give you some examples. So in China, some of the

00:19:14.560 things they're doing differently is they have portable CT scanners. What? Where's my portable

00:19:22.300 CT scanner? I just had a CT scan. I had to go to the office and get on this big bed, and

00:19:28.900 it's got these, you know, things that pass over you, and it's a big operation. But China

00:19:34.180 apparently has lots of portable CT scan equipment, which apparently is really helpful because they

00:19:42.420 can scan you. And I guess there's something visible in the lungs that can confirm the virus.

00:19:49.940 So if you have a portable CT scan, as they do in China, that's one of several ways that they

00:19:57.600 have of testing. Now, why is it we don't have portable CT scans in the United States? That's

00:20:03.980 a question for you. Why don't we have them? Or do we? Do we? I don't know. But I did a little bit

00:20:12.540 of research into medical expenses some time ago when I was trying to understand for myself why

00:20:19.080 everything is so expensive. You know, where are all the costs in this big, you know, budget of

00:20:25.080 healthcare? Where's all the cost? One of the things I found is that there was a story of somebody who

00:20:31.320 had, and I'm just operating from memory here, so I probably get some of the facts wrong. I believe

00:20:36.760 there was somebody who invented an MRI machine that was like a tenth of the cost. And red tape

00:20:44.520 prevented him from building it and selling it. That's right. Red tape in the United States

00:20:52.200 prevented a guy from building and selling a device he'd already invented. We know it works.

00:20:59.240 He built it. He built it and it works. It was like a tenth of the cost. And he just couldn't do it

00:21:05.220 because of the red tape. Now, China's got all these portable CT machines that don't work as well

00:21:11.340 as the big ones. But in a pinch, they can at least tell if you've got some visible signs in your lungs

00:21:17.800 fairly rapidly. And my guess, I have no reason to believe this is true from facts. It's just

00:21:29.280 experiential. I would guess this is true. I'll bet we couldn't get that built in this country.

00:21:34.000 Somebody says define portable. That's a good question. I was assuming it was, you know,

00:21:40.320 hand-carried, but portable might mean something else. You're absolutely right. It could mean you

00:21:44.880 put it on the truck and take it somewhere. You know, it could be a bigger unit. I don't know.

00:21:49.560 But the point is, they have lots of them and they're portable. I don't think we have that.

00:21:55.300 I would bet that that's something that the president could fix with an executive order,

00:22:00.780 meaning that there's something stopping those from getting built, probably. And it's probably

00:22:08.040 the government. All right. So that's one thing. The other thing that China's doing is temperature

00:22:14.060 testing every time you exit or enter a building, apparently. So they must have lots of access to

00:22:20.800 portable temperature-taking devices. I don't know if we have enough of those. And they're doing that.

00:22:27.160 We're not doing that. But it makes more sense that they're doing it because they're trying to

00:22:31.300 eradicate it, it looks like. And we're not. We're actually not trying to stop it. That's such an

00:22:38.060 important distinction. If you don't understand that in the United States we're not trying to stop it,

00:22:44.180 just slow it down, then nothing else will make sense to you. Because you'll say, well, why are some

00:22:51.220 kids still, you know, why are we people going out in public if we're trying to stop it? And the answer

00:22:57.080 is we're not. Here's another one. In Germany, apparently, you know, and this is information

00:23:05.780 from, you know, Ken on the internet and some sources. So everything I say on this should be

00:23:12.700 subject to fact-checking. But apparently Germany is recommending or we're pushing pneumonia vaccines.

00:23:20.920 Because if one of the reasons that people die is that the virus causes pneumonia, and that's the

00:23:27.360 pneumonia that's the cause of death, Germany seems to think that the pneumonia vaccine is helping.

00:23:35.400 Now, I don't know if I've had a pneumonia vaccine. That might be another one of the variables.

00:23:43.920 For example, how many of the Italian senior citizens have taken the pneumonia vaccine? I have no idea.

00:23:51.700 How many people in South Korea have had the pneumonia vaccine? No idea. How many in the United States?

00:24:00.060 I don't even know if I've had it. Because I'm over 50. So I'm a candidate for the vaccine for the

00:24:05.340 vaccination. I think my health care provider would have given it to me. No. Or do I have to ask for

00:24:14.040 it? I don't even know how that works. So it's a big question. Then the other thing that China does is

00:24:20.760 if anybody has symptoms, they separate them from family immediately. Could we do that? Do you think we

00:24:28.680 could put children in cages in this country? I'm saying it in a provocative way. But you see what I'm

00:24:35.880 getting at, right? If the United States started separating parents from their kids, it's going to look

00:24:45.160 like kids in cages pretty quickly. But China's doing that. If you've got the flu, you're not going to see

00:24:52.460 your family for three months. They take you immediately to a quarantine type of place.

00:25:00.780 But again, we're not trying to stop it here. We're just trying to slow it down. Now, I tweeted around

00:25:09.300 a great article talking about the difference in the old people in Italy versus South Korea.

00:25:17.040 And apparently, Italy's big problem is they just have lots of senior citizens. So it's no surprise

00:25:25.320 that they had more deaths and problems in hospitals, etc. So that might explain the entire difference

00:25:32.120 between Italy and everything else. But there might be one other difference. In this country, one of our

00:25:38.320 biggest problems might turn out to be one of our biggest lifesavers. Which is, in this country,

00:25:45.920 if you're a senior citizen, you're likely to be turned down to pasture to go live in isolation by

00:25:52.820 yourself and die in loneliness. Maybe you have a partner, maybe you don't. But in this country,

00:25:58.600 we kind of isolate senior citizens. They often have kind of lonely, lonely lives. Is that the same in

00:26:07.520 Italy? So I don't know. In Italy, are you likely to be living with your family if you're 80?

00:26:13.060 Let's delete that guy who's talking about my dead stepson? I don't know how that was

00:26:25.700 appropriate. And somebody says, no visitors to nursing homes. Yeah. And I wonder if in this country,

00:26:35.820 we are socially so, let's say, hostile to our elder citizens, which could not be more obvious than the

00:26:45.840 fact that the boomer remover is a hashtag that's trending. Literally the idea of culling the herd of

00:26:55.060 all the old boomers. The young people are sort of celebrating a little bit, sometimes privately,

00:27:00.780 sometimes not. We have a weird culture where old people are disrespected and therefore put out to

00:27:09.420 die in isolation. Could that help us? I mean, it's a horrible situation. Horrible. But it might have

00:27:18.080 something to do with why Italy has so much problems and maybe we would not. We'll see.

00:27:23.200 The schools in my area closed. Have your schools closed? So here's my question. So yesterday I was

00:27:33.660 saying what I really, really, really need, just as a parent slash step-parent, I really need the

00:27:42.360 government to issue some guidelines about what to do with the kids who are not going to school

00:27:47.560 because the schools are closed. Can they play with friends? Can they play with one friend?

00:27:54.940 If one friend comes over the house, is that okay? Because remember, we're not trying to stop it,

00:28:02.640 just trying to slow it down. So my current thinking is that kids can play with friends while they're

00:28:11.820 not at school, not at school, but we should limit the number as if you could really do that. Because

00:28:17.960 once they leave the house, you know, if a kid leaves the house and goes to a friend's house,

00:28:22.480 you have no control. You know, all of their friends could meet at that other house. So it's probably

00:28:27.420 going to be a lot of kids getting together, but not nearly as much as if they were in school.

00:28:33.940 So it definitely makes a difference. But what is the guideline? How many should you let your kids

00:28:40.360 leave the house? I need some guidelines from my government? I saw a suggestion going around the

00:28:49.400 internet, which I embrace. Restaurants are just going to get just absolutely killed. Because

00:28:57.040 restaurants seem like the kind of place you don't want to go when there's a flu epidemic.

00:29:03.420 Peggy Noonan tweeted, and I think other people had this idea as well, that you should buy gifts.

00:29:08.660 If you're in a position where your income is not going to go down because of all this stuff,

00:29:14.180 and a lot of people will be in that position. So a lot of people, if you work for a Fortune 500

00:29:19.220 company, you work from home, but otherwise your income would be about the same. So if your income

00:29:26.000 is about the same, and you were going to eat at restaurants, but you're not, it would be really

00:29:31.500 helpful to the restaurant if you bought a gift certificate. Because it could help them

00:29:36.320 through the tough times. But in order to buy that gift certificate, you have to walk into

00:29:41.600 the restaurant in most cases. So yeah, that's sort of a trade-off there. But it's not a terrible

00:29:49.320 idea. If we can find ways to help the local businesses, you should do it.

00:29:57.380 So, you know, Ivanka Trump retweeted me yesterday, my tweet about, we'll see more human ingenuity

00:30:05.500 in the next two weeks than you could imagine. It will be breathtaking. You know, you're seeing

00:30:10.880 it already, but the level of genius that is being applied to this is a global level that

00:30:19.680 we've never seen before. I mean, this is similar to the Manhattan Project on a global scale.

00:30:25.760 You know, the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb worked because the, you know, smartest

00:30:30.860 people we could find were put in one place to do it. But now the smartest people on the

00:30:36.740 entire globe, for at least smart in this specific way, are engaged in this one task. We've never

00:30:44.980 had this before. And it looks to me like the inventions, the thinking that comes out of this

00:30:52.260 is going to be just amazing. I mean, you know, we could easily come out of this with a solution

00:30:59.300 to coronaviruses, which seems even impossible. All right. I guess four people have

00:31:06.720 Mar-a-Lago have tested positive. Four people have been there at one time or another. The president's

00:31:12.560 doctor has now said that the president should not get tested. And the reasoning from the doctor

00:31:19.980 is that the people that the president had contact with, which were known to eventually test positive

00:31:29.080 for the virus, that those people were not showing symptoms at the time that the president

00:31:35.080 interacted with them. I don't know. Maybe we need to get rid of the president at this point.

00:31:42.760 I'll just complete the thought. The entire expert community is telling us that people can carry

00:31:49.520 the virus before they are symptomatic. The doctors, the doctors, I'm sorry, the president's doctor,

00:31:57.140 I sounded like Joe Biden there for a moment. The president's doctor is saying in public,

00:32:01.600 in the middle of the crisis, in the middle of the crisis, the opposite of what the experts in this

00:32:08.480 virus are telling us. Now, I don't know how you can have confidence in your president if he doesn't get

00:32:19.260 tested under these conditions. Because the whole point is he's trying to lead us to take extra

00:32:26.600 precautions. And he's modeling the opposite behavior. It's the opposite of leadership.

00:32:35.720 I can't pretend he's doing a good job on this. Somebody says, Scott, did you block Bill Mitchell?

00:32:43.240 Yeah, I did. Bill Mitchell is damaging the country with opinions that are so dumb that they're dangerous.

00:32:52.460 I hate to say that because I like Bill. But until recently, he was still saying it's just sort of the

00:33:01.740 common cold. Or he was downplaying it. I think that was the wrong move for the country. So here's the thing.

00:33:10.860 Okay. If the president got a test, some people are saying, Scott, Scott, Scott, if he gets the test,

00:33:19.720 somebody's going to say, the tests are limited. And so an old person couldn't get a test. How selfish

00:33:25.920 of you to take the test? No, they wouldn't. No, they wouldn't. If the president of the United States

00:33:33.200 gets tested, we're all just happy. Sure, critics will find anything to complain about, but even they

00:33:39.360 won't mean it. I'm not worried about complaints when you know that people complaining don't even

00:33:44.420 mean it. Of course we want the commander in chief to be tested. Is there any question about that?

00:33:52.540 No. Now, you might say to yourself, but Scott, I agree with his doctor that the odds of him having it

00:34:00.260 are so low that he's in the category that you should not get tested. And that's actually modeling

00:34:06.780 it correctly. That if you don't have symptoms and you don't think you're going to have symptoms,

00:34:10.880 there's not, you know, you're, you're not, you're not immediately dangerous. You don't want to test.

00:34:17.100 But that's, that's just not exactly what the experts are saying. At the moment, the president's

00:34:24.780 own experts are saying, if you came in contact with somebody, you should probably get tested.

00:34:28.540 And he's not. And he's still shaking hands in public. So if your president is shaking hands in

00:34:36.620 public while telling you not to, and your president is not getting tested while telling you that if

00:34:43.900 you were in the same situation, you should, meaning his experts are saying that, I don't have confidence

00:34:49.980 in him as, as a leader during this crisis. I hate to say it. I mean, I, I've been his strongest

00:34:56.860 supporter for a long time. Well, no, I'm not his strongest supporter. I'm sure there are stronger

00:35:01.900 supporters, but you got to, you know, there's, there's a point where the country is more important

00:35:06.980 and you just got to call it like you see it. And I, I just, it's hard for me to be political at the

00:35:12.520 moment because it's life and death. And at the moment, he's not getting it done. He's, he's,

00:35:19.680 he's telling us stuff that just isn't true. And normally I'm, I'm completely supportive of the

00:35:27.520 president saying things that are not true. Nobody said that more than I have, because it's usually

00:35:33.600 hyperbole and salesmanship and you know what he's doing and, and you know, it's not important that

00:35:38.760 he exaggerated something. I don't care about any of that. None of it. But if he gives you information

00:35:45.820 about what to do or what the government is doing during an emergency and it's not accurate,

00:35:50.620 well, that's a problem. You know, once or twice, you'd say, you know, if it happened once or twice,

00:35:55.200 you'd say, okay, it's an emergency. We're going to make mistakes. We'll quickly correct. I wouldn't

00:36:00.560 even, I wouldn't even be bothered by a few mistakes. But at this point, it looks like he just can't do it.

00:36:07.780 Sorry. It looks like he's not up to it. Now, does that have anything to do with the fact

00:36:15.140 that he's a certain age? You know, before President Trump ran, I said clearly and often,

00:36:23.800 we should not be electing leaders of this age. Because even if they look pretty good at the

00:36:29.020 beginning of their term, you don't know. Somebody says in all capitals, wow, Scott,

00:36:37.860 Trump is getting tests in all capitals, shouting at me. Does that matter? How does that matter to my

00:36:46.060 point? So the president's doctor just said today, it's news today that his doctor said he doesn't

00:36:55.100 need the test. So he at least needs to fire his doctor, which by the way, would give me confidence.

00:37:01.260 If the president fired the White House doctor and then took a test, I would be so down with that.

00:37:08.820 Completely down with that. Now, I don't know if the doctor is to blame. My guess is that the doctor

00:37:14.160 is taking orders and not giving them. And again, if it's true that Trump is telling his doctor what

00:37:21.100 to say, hey, just say this, and it's not what the doctor actually thinks is the best thing,

00:37:26.040 well, then the doctor should be fired. Wouldn't you agree? If the doctor is making a political

00:37:32.920 calculation and not a medical one, he should be fired. I don't know if that's the case. I'm just

00:37:39.060 saying as a hypothetical. But because it's an emergency, this next part is important. I am quite

00:37:49.360 confident in the experts. I'm quite confident in our medical community and the responders, etc.

00:37:56.040 They're going to have tons of obstacles. But I'm very confident in our general capability as a

00:38:02.840 country. And I don't think that the president is making bad decisions. That's important. If you look

00:38:09.720 at the actual decisions, put Pence in charge, throw money at it, try things, communicate, close down

00:38:17.640 travel. If you look at the decisions, they all look pretty good. I got to admit, the decisions

00:38:24.960 look pretty good. Somebody says, Dr. Drew disagrees with me on this. You mean on the testing of the

00:38:32.640 president? Well, here's the thing. I think Dr. Drew would agree that the president falls into the

00:38:41.320 category that the experts, and Dr. Drew, if you're listening, you can contact me later and tell me if

00:38:48.000 I'm wrong. But I think it's true that what the experts are recommending is different from what

00:38:52.000 the president is doing. That just needs to be fixed, however you do it.

00:38:57.780 All right. Let's see. You know, I have this suspicion. You know, we're all drowning in

00:39:08.800 conspiracy theories, and you know, our minds are, our imaginations are going wild. But this whole issue

00:39:17.600 of not enough testing in this country, I'm not sure it's exactly the way it's being explained. Now,

00:39:26.560 I do believe that we wish we were doing more testing and we don't have enough, you know, we

00:39:32.240 weren't prepared and all that. So there does seem to be some mistake at the base of it. But I wonder

00:39:40.000 if the reason we weren't so prepared is that it doesn't make as much difference as you think it

00:39:45.600 should. Let me say it this way. If you have enough cases to determine that there's a virus, and let's

00:39:52.880 say it's Ebola or something like that, and you've got enough tests, you probably, you don't need that

00:39:57.440 many tests. Because things like Ebola, apparently, we learn now, you can kind of isolate them and kill

00:40:03.840 them entirely. But the coronavirus is not like Ebola. And your odds of isolating it and killing it entirely

00:40:11.440 are basically zero. So in that situation, which is different from other situations, are the tests as

00:40:21.360 useful as they would be. Now, of course, you need tests. But does everybody need to get tested if your

00:40:28.960 strategy is for everybody to get it? I don't know. I've got a feeling that the more tests we had, the worse

00:40:36.720 off we would be. Follow me on this. You need some tests. So there's some amount of tests, and it could be a lot,

00:40:44.400 and it could be more than we have. So you need some tests. That's not in question. The question is,

00:40:50.720 imagine if you could test everybody. Imagine if just you had 400 million tests immediately, and

00:40:58.400 everybody could test one and throw one away and test again. You could all test. It was free, and it was

00:41:04.080 immediate, and everybody could know. Would you want to do it? Not if the goal is to get it. If the goal is

00:41:12.160 to avoid it, which is not a reasonable goal, because it can't be done, then having a test for every single

00:41:18.160 person all the time would be great. If your goal is simply to track it and manage it and flatten the curve

00:41:26.400 and take care of the important cases, take care of the vulnerable, do you need a test for everybody,

00:41:33.120 even if everybody wanted one? You're probably better off with some amount of testing, but not universal

00:41:40.880 testing. Because the government can't say directly too many ways, hey guys, we want to infect your

00:41:48.880 children, because that's how we'll protect these senior citizens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe some of them

00:41:53.680 will get sick and die. But we don't have any other way to do it. Everybody has to get infected.

00:41:58.400 So, this is my semi-conspiracy theory thought, which is, there definitely was a problem. I think

00:42:10.080 that's clear. So we needed more tests than we had, but I don't know if we want everybody tested,

00:42:16.480 if your goal is for everybody to get it. You don't want anybody hiding and saying, I'll be the last one

00:42:22.160 who doesn't get it. I'll just put that out there. So, yesterday I was asking about ventilators

00:42:35.120 and the access to them. We've learned a lot since then. But one thing I have not learned,

00:42:42.240 and maybe somebody can tell me in the comments, what's the difference between a ventilator and a

00:42:47.120 respirator? Because I see both words being used as something that is necessary equipment for

00:42:53.680 people who are in the worst situation with it. Are they the same thing? Is a ventilator and a

00:43:00.880 respirator the same? So I don't know that. But I asked about ventilators, because I'd heard that word,

00:43:06.800 and I asked this question, why had there been no reporting on how many ventilators we have

00:43:12.960 available in this country? Well, as luck would have it, Joel Pollack over at Breitbart did some

00:43:19.440 investigative reporting on that very question. And you can see his article in his Twitter feed,

00:43:25.600 or mine, or at Breitbart. And here's what we learned about ventilator companies. So there are

00:43:32.480 companies that make them in different parts of the world, but the United States has manufacturers who

00:43:37.600 make ventilators. And when Joel called one of the big ones in the United States and said,

00:43:44.160 do you have enough ventilators? Here's what they said. And this is mind-boggling,

00:43:50.640 and I don't even know how to interpret this. But the company that makes ventilators in the United

00:43:56.400 States during the middle of a crisis in which ventilators are a shortage said that they're getting

00:44:02.800 lots of calls and no extra orders. What? What? I don't understand that. How could the company that

00:44:16.240 makes them in the United States, and they said, we're ready to ramp up, you know, we expect to,

00:44:22.160 we're all ready to go. There are no orders. I mean, beyond the normal amount of orders.

00:44:27.840 What? What's happening? I don't understand that. Now, another thing I found out, which might actually

00:44:39.280 explain the other thing, is that the United States is way better in having this kind of equipment. So

00:44:46.160 apparently part of the, and here's my problem that I don't know if ventilator and respirator are really

00:44:52.960 the same thing. So I guess I need to know that. Respirators incubate, ventilators need intubation.

00:45:02.960 Ah, okay. So it looks like the ventilator, maybe they need to stick a, something down your throat,

00:45:11.520 and the respirator is just the mask. Is that it? So, so apparently the executive order

00:45:23.520 or the emergency thing allows a lot of ventilators that might have been, you know, in holding for

00:45:28.880 military and other purposes to be available. So, and then I guess Trump said that we ordered some more,

00:45:37.360 but perhaps not from this one company. So it could be that there's some other source,

00:45:42.720 and Joel talked to somebody who didn't get the big order, but why not? So it could be that our

00:45:50.960 experts have looked at the the lay of the land and said, you know, the ventilators in this country

00:45:56.560 won't be our big problem. Maybe. We're going to find out pretty soon.

00:46:01.200 So thank you for the answer that the respirator seems to be the mask and the ventilator. I think

00:46:08.720 they're putting a tube down into your lungs, a more aggressive approach. I think that's right.

00:46:14.560 But again, you'll need to check that with me.

00:46:20.080 So that's a big question. But I also saw that there was some data that 31 out of 32 people

00:46:27.200 somewhere, might have been Italy, died after ventilation. So the thinking was that they're

00:46:36.480 using the ventilators to keep people alive a little bit longer, but they actually just die anyway.

00:46:42.320 So it could be that we don't need that many ventilators because they don't work.

00:46:48.000 If that's possible. And I don't know if the president ordered respirators or ventilators. I

00:46:55.120 thought he ordered respirators, but I might be wrong about that. So there's some uncertainty here.

00:46:59.920 But the question, but the point is that we appear to have capacity. So in this country,

00:47:06.400 there's at least smart people seem to think that we can get enough ventilators and respirators

00:47:12.560 because we're starting early enough to do that. Might be right. Could be right.

00:47:16.960 But congratulations to Joel Pollack, who I believe is the only person who reported on this. I've not seen

00:47:24.560 any other report that actually talked to the manufacturers and said, can you do this? And

00:47:29.920 apparently we can. All right. This other question that is nothing but gray area and bad reporting.

00:47:39.600 So help me out with this. Why is this story not clear yet? We've had plenty of time. And the story is

00:47:45.040 this. That apparently there was some kind of pandemic team or pandemic office in the administration

00:47:53.360 that under Trump's administration was closed. And then there's a thought was, well, if we had that

00:47:59.520 pandemic department still up and running, we would have gotten going faster and communication would

00:48:05.520 have been better and we'd be in better shape. And I think it was John Bolton who might have been in

00:48:13.520 charge. Now, the president acted like he didn't know anything about the story, which again makes

00:48:20.160 him look like he's not up to the job of managing this crisis. And I'm just going to be honest about

00:48:24.800 it. It's one of the biggest stories in the country that this department was closed under Trump's

00:48:29.760 administration. And when he was asked about it, he acted like he didn't know the story.

00:48:35.440 Maybe. I mean, if he didn't know the story, that's a problem. And if he did know the story and he

00:48:40.880 lied about it, that's a problem. So that's not good. But I don't know the answer to the story

00:48:47.440 either. And I haven't seen reporting. Here's what I'm going to guess. So the way it's reported is that

00:48:54.880 there was this department that would would have been useful in the pandemic and it got closed,

00:49:00.400 presumably for budget reasons. Now, in the real world, let's say if you've had any experience in the

00:49:07.600 corporate world, what do you say about that? What is the context that is probably missing,

00:49:14.080 but we don't know? So without reporting, we don't know. But don't you think there's a little context

00:49:19.360 missing about the department that got closed? Don't you? All the people who have big company

00:49:25.200 experience know where I'm going with this. It probably wasn't closed, just guessing, if it's like

00:49:33.680 every other corporate situation in which I've been involved. It probably wasn't closed. It was

00:49:39.920 probably replaced, or those duties were taken on by another group, or it was merged and their name

00:49:47.040 disappeared and maybe some of the staff left because they didn't want to work for the new group or

00:49:51.280 whatever. But do you think it was as simple as they decided they didn't need a pandemic team?

00:49:57.200 Maybe. I mean, that's possible. I'm not going to rule it out. But don't you think we need some

00:50:03.920 reporting that tells us why John Bolton made that decision? We can find John Bolton, right? All the

00:50:12.480 news sources in the world, we can find John Bolton and we can say, hey, John, were you in charge of

00:50:18.400 that group? You know, the president isn't up to date on it, but why did you make that decision?

00:50:23.200 Why is that not in the news? Are you telling me that there's no Democrat who wants to track down

00:50:30.960 John Bolton and embarrass him by asking that question? Of course there are. Why don't we know that?

00:50:36.560 What's going on here? Why don't we know that? That's really worrisome.

00:50:43.040 So, you know, with Joe Biden being the likely nominee,

00:50:53.760 you have to ask yourself, what would it take for President Trump to lose an election

00:50:59.280 to a man who is obviously brain dead? That's an exaggeration. A candidate who obviously has

00:51:06.880 severe mental decline. How could you possibly lose an election to that? Well, I think we might find out

00:51:17.600 because so far, the way Trump has managed the crisis, and I'm only talking about the communication

00:51:25.120 part. I'm still happy with the decisions, actually. Even, you know, with mistakes. I'm fairly forgiving

00:51:32.640 in emergencies about mistakes if we quickly adjust and correct. So I think the president's decisions,

00:51:39.920 as far as I can tell, seem to be really good and maybe better than in other countries, especially

00:51:45.600 closing the airports early. But his communication on this is so, like, astoundingly bad. He's just

00:51:54.560 mismatched for this specific task that it could cost him the election easily. It could easily cost

00:52:00.560 the election. I would recommend he take himself off the field. Wouldn't you? If I could recommend

00:52:08.800 to the president how to handle this situation, I would tell him to just stop talking in public about

00:52:14.560 any details of this situation. He should stand up there so we know he's engaged. He should say,

00:52:21.280 Mike Pence is doing a great job. He should say, we'll get this done. He should tell us what we should do.

00:52:26.480 But he shouldn't answer any questions about tests or China or pandemics or he shouldn't tell us he's a

00:52:34.720 super genius because he's genetically similar to somebody who learned it in school. You gotta just

00:52:40.720 maybe stop talking in public about this. So I would like to see him get tested and say, I didn't think

00:52:47.840 I needed to get tested. My doctor said I didn't need to get tested. But the public is asking for it.

00:52:52.960 And for the benefit of the public's peace of mind, I'm gonna get tested. And then just sort of remove

00:53:00.640 himself from the communication channel. But, you know, stay as the leader. We still need to see him

00:53:06.240 every day. Still need to say, no, he's engaged. But he communicates so poorly on this, I think he needs

00:53:13.120 to take himself off the field. And you can imagine how difficult this is for me to say, right? I've spent

00:53:19.440 three years of my life saying he's the best communicator you've ever seen in your life.

00:53:24.560 And I stand by that for all of the political stuff. But this very unique situation,

00:53:32.720 he probably needs to take himself off the field for just the communication part.

00:53:37.120 All right, that's all I got today.

00:53:42.640 The Dunning-Kruger effect is high here today. Yeah, it really is. I certainly don't exempt

00:53:48.880 myself from that criticism.

00:53:55.760 Just looking at your comments, I want to see how this went over.

00:53:58.320 You are depressing to listen to anymore. Maybe you should be president.

00:54:07.280 Yeah, you know, it's a tough balance, isn't it?

00:54:11.760 You can't really be happy during the middle of a crisis. But we're also human. And sometimes

00:54:21.600 things do strike us as funny. And sometimes we just have to laugh. And sometimes a little

00:54:25.520 gallows humor is what you need. Now, I want to reiterate, and I'm probably going to say this

00:54:31.200 maybe every day. I might say this every day during the crisis. My personal crisis management system,

00:54:41.600 and by the way, I recommend that you have a system, not a goal. If your goal is to not get it,

00:54:49.440 you're thinking about it wrong. You should have systems in place. And the systems could be,

00:54:55.600 what do you do, you know, if there's shortages of food? So, you know, build a little system,

00:55:00.800 put in some stockpiles, etc. There should be some systems in your house. For example, I have

00:55:06.400 implemented the wash your hands when you enter system. Now, that's a pretty obvious one, right?

00:55:12.880 When you enter a house, it doesn't matter if it's my house, you know, or some other house,

00:55:18.720 whenever you enter a space, you wash your hands. That's the first thing you do when you enter the

00:55:23.280 new space. That's a system. The other system I have is for building up my immunity. Because my

00:55:29.920 assumption is, I have a high likelihood of coming in contact with it, and I'm going to be ready.

00:55:36.960 So I'm building up my immunity and doing a heck of a job, I must say. Pardon me while I pat myself on

00:55:43.600 the back. Good job, Scott. I would recommend that you build a system for your own immunity. So here's

00:55:51.440 what I do. I'm never going to skip a day of light exercise. Yeah, even if I have to do it at nine

00:55:57.920 o'clock at night, I will never skip a day of light exercise. Emphasis, light exercise. During this

00:56:05.840 next year, I'm not going to try to build muscle. I'm not going to try to run a marathon. Because

00:56:11.040 when you do those things, there's at least some part of your day where your immunity is low,

00:56:15.120 because you're sort of exhausting yourself to, you know, to get to the next level. Don't exhaust

00:56:20.800 yourself. A key thing you need to do is get plenty of sleep and don't exhaust yourself. So that's part

00:56:27.760 of my system. Every day, light exercise, little light weights, sometimes every other day. And

00:56:34.320 eating right. And I'm even staying away from foods that have inflammation properties.

00:56:46.480 Somebody says, you're obsessed with this. It's nuts. Well, that's a block.

00:56:54.000 When people say that somebody is obsessed or they're panicking, we don't need that. Because you

00:57:01.120 don't know my state of mind, and I don't need you characterizing it as obsessed or panicked or

00:57:07.680 depressing or anything else. All you know is what I say. So I would recommend to you, because my state

00:57:16.160 of mind, I have to tell you, is quite excellent, because I've done such a good job taking care of my

00:57:22.080 body that my mood and my sense of well-being is maybe higher than it's ever been, which is weird.

00:57:32.400 So I feel, just in a normal way, just sitting in a chair in any given moment, I feel great.

00:57:41.680 And it's because I've done everything right. You know, sleep, exercise, eating right, avoiding stress,

00:57:47.600 just doing it all right. That's my system. So I plan to get the coronavirus. And I'm not joking

00:57:54.640 when I say I'd like to get it over with. I'd kind of like to get it over with. So, you know,

00:58:00.240 I'll give you some herd immunity if I survive. I'm in the high risk category because I'm over 60 and

00:58:05.920 I've gotten some asthma. But I plan to beat it. And I plan to be part of, I think Naval Ravikant was

00:58:14.880 tweeting that we may see in, what did he call it, the immune core. So he coined the, he coined a

00:58:22.240 temporary name for it, the immune core. The people who got the, got the coronavirus recovered,

00:58:28.240 have some immunity, they will be like gold in the future. Six months from now, which would you

00:58:37.040 rather be? Somebody who got it and recovered six months from now, or somebody who didn't get it yet?

00:58:43.040 You know, you know, you know what I'm talking about, right? You'd rather be the one who got it

00:58:51.520 and got over it six months from now. Because if you're still hiding in six months and worried about

00:58:56.560 it, it's just not going to be fun. So the president's strategy, the CDC strategy, Dr. Fauci's strategy,

00:59:07.440 I'm fully embracing. Get really healthy. And by the way, Fauci says this too. This isn't me talking.

00:59:14.880 This is the best experts in the country telling you to take care of yourself. It's never been

00:59:21.280 a national priority. Any other time that you took, any other time that you selfishly took care of

00:59:28.640 yourself, it was a little bit selfish, wasn't it? Wasn't it? You know, looking out for your own health,

00:59:34.720 getting enough sleep, it's a little bit selfish. But not today. Today, it's not selfish. You are

00:59:40.400 all part of this giant experiment. Well, it's not a test. This is the real thing. You are all part of

00:59:47.120 this fight against this virus. And you need to be as strong as possible. So build up your immunity

00:59:53.520 so that you're not one of the ones overloading the hospitals. Build up your immunity. Do it.

01:00:00.000 Somebody says, you can have opinions, but not us. Well, let me clarify. You can have all kinds of

01:00:10.720 opinions. And I welcome them. And I like the opinions that have reasons. The opinions that will be

01:00:17.280 unwelcome are mind-reading. If you have an opinion about what I'm thinking, you're welcome to it.

01:00:23.360 Certainly. If you have an opinion, a private opinion about what I'm thinking internally that

01:00:29.520 you couldn't possibly know, you're welcome to that opinion. But if you say it in public,

01:00:35.040 I'm going to block you because it's stupid. You're totally allowed to have stupid opinions privately.

01:00:41.600 I just don't want to be exposed to them. If it's a stupid opinion about what's in my head,

01:00:48.320 you can have stupid opinions about other things as long as you show your reasons. I'm okay with that.

01:00:52.160 All right. Do we know you can't get it once you've had it? I mentioned that earlier,

01:00:59.360 but it's worth mentioning again because other people have come on here. The experts are talking

01:01:04.480 about building up a herd immunity. The only way that you could have herd immunity is if, in general,

01:01:11.760 you can't get it more than once. Now, is it true that somebody could get it more than once? Maybe.

01:01:19.280 Could be. But in general, that's not a thing. Otherwise, we would not be trying to build up

01:01:26.480 a herd immunity. It wouldn't make sense. Somebody says, why not get the flu now before hospitals get

01:01:34.800 overwhelmed? Well, you're reading my mind there. You're reading my mind. You don't want to be the

01:01:40.880 last person who gets it. Well, the last person would be fine. You don't want to be the one in the middle

01:01:45.920 because there's going to be a wave. So you want to be one of the first or one of the last. And one

01:01:52.320 of the last would be pretty good because then they've figured it out and they're past the bump.

01:01:57.600 Thank you.

01:02:05.520 But for the benefit, and let me be really clear about this, if I were being selfish, I would actively

01:02:13.440 infect myself. That's the most selfish thing I could do. Get it over with. You know, maybe I die,

01:02:20.000 maybe I don't. But I'm going to get infected anyway, I figure. And I would rather do it now

01:02:25.600 before the hospitals are overwhelmed. So if I were going to do it for selfish reasons, I would actually

01:02:30.400 be looking for it. I'd be go hanging around those nursing homes. Not really, but you know what I mean.

01:02:35.840 But if I am being a team player, what is best for the team is that all of us fight like mad weasels to

01:02:46.000 avoid it. Because that's really just slowing it down. And slowing it down is what we're really trying to

01:02:51.680 do. So for the benefit of the country, I'm going to try to avoid it. But that's not what's good for

01:02:56.400 me. So if it makes you feel better, don't be the one who's afraid of getting it. Fight for the country,

01:03:04.320 the world, really. Fight for the country to not get it right away. Fight hard to not get it right away.

01:03:12.400 But what's good for you is to get it, honestly. It's the best thing that could happen to you,

01:03:16.480 is to get it and get over it. So don't worry about getting it. That's sort of the good news

01:03:23.200 in this bad news world we're living in at the moment. The last thing I'm worried about is actually

01:03:29.440 getting it. But I'm going to fight not to. All right. Somebody said, should I postpone dental

01:03:36.240 cleaning? Well, I've got a few very minor, you know, surgical things coming out really minor.

01:03:43.280 And I think they'll be postponed, but I don't know yet. I'm going to check on that today.

01:03:48.400 Have you stopped smoking? Well, I don't smoke tobacco, never have. But I do smoke marijuana

01:03:55.440 for medicinal purposes. I have not yet heard the impact of marijuana smokers and the coronavirus.

01:04:06.160 We may never know that, because I doubt anybody will study that for a while. Maybe someday.

01:04:12.640 But here's what we know. And Dr. Drew, if you're watching this, you might want to turn this off.

01:04:18.720 You probably want to turn this off. You'll never talk to me again.

01:04:27.840 Marijuana has different effects on different people. So there's nothing that anybody tells

01:04:35.520 you about their experience with marijuana that you should generalize to yourself. It could be good

01:04:39.840 for one person, bad for another. I don't recommend marijuana under any situations except a doctor.

01:04:46.080 So if a doctor tells you it's a good idea to take it, you should. My doctor did. You know,

01:04:51.840 I have a doctor for this. And it's a real doctor. Yeah, it's not. And I do it, I don't do it to party.

01:04:58.240 I don't do it for fun. I do it, I do it because it has benefits. And here's one of the things.

01:05:06.640 I don't know how irresponsible this is to say. I have to pause for a moment and check myself.

01:05:16.480 Because there are things you would say when it's not a coronavirus emergency that, you know,

01:05:23.120 it's a different situation. You have to modify your communication a little bit.

01:05:27.120 But I'll just say this. I'll just say this because it's true. All right. So this is not an opinion.

01:05:34.960 Just some facts and do what you will with it. Marijuana is a vasodilator. It reduces inflammation,

01:05:43.600 has a lot of, you know, health benefits. That's why people do it in part. The studies have shown

01:05:50.720 that people, and I think only one study I know of, studied people who smoked marijuana every day

01:05:56.960 versus people who didn't smoke it at all. And the paradoxical finding is that the people who

01:06:02.800 smoked marijuana regularly had healthier lungs than people who didn't smoke at all.

01:06:09.120 And of course, people who smoked tobacco were the worst of all. Now, could you rely on that?

01:06:16.720 I don't think so. I don't think you could rely on that.

01:06:25.440 But, you know, but it is a fact. All right. It does make sense, if I were a doctor, and let me

01:06:35.520 let me be more responsible here. If I had to give you advice, and I won't because I'm not a doctor,

01:06:42.800 it doesn't make sense that you would put any smoke in your body during a coronavirus situation.

01:06:50.960 So probably, you know, if I were a doctor, I'd say, don't go anywhere near any smoke. Don't go

01:06:57.520 anywhere near any pollution. Keep your lungs as clean as possible because you're going to need it.

01:07:02.320 So that's what I'd tell you. But nonetheless, it is true that in at least one study, marijuana

01:07:09.440 smokers had better lung function than non-smokers. Take that with a gigantic grain of salt. The odds

01:07:18.640 of that being reproducible, 50% at best. So it's sort of a coin flip there. All right. So if you're

01:07:26.400 playing it safe, don't smoke marijuana. Boom. There's your medical advice. If you're playing

01:07:31.360 it safe, don't smoke marijuana. All right. How is that possible? You are cherry picking? Yeah. No,

01:07:44.000 I am cherry picking. I'm cherry picking one study, but there aren't any other studies. So is that

01:07:50.640 cherry picking if there's only one study? Because there are other worries about health consequences

01:07:57.120 of marijuana? They just weren't as relevant to the coronavirus conversation. Somebody says that

01:08:03.840 counters all logic. Yeah. You know, it counters all logic that a marijuana smoker would have better

01:08:12.080 lung function. One of the hypotheses that was given is that the act of smoking, because with marijuana,

01:08:19.600 you inhale it and you hold it, that you're actually doing lung exercises by inhaling deeply and holding

01:08:28.240 it on a regular basis. If you've ever heard of the William Hoff method of breathing, it's not like

01:08:34.880 that. But there's certainly good evidence that doing breathing exercises in which you take deep breaths

01:08:42.880 and hold them and then release them slowly might have medical benefits to your lungs and and elsewise.

01:08:50.960 Now, here's the trick. The CBD and the unique quality of marijuana has some weird combination of things

01:08:58.400 that are probably bad for you and things that are weirdly good for you. And science, I think, is still a

01:09:04.800 little bit confused about that mix. Because if you're saying, hey, isn't smoking your lungs bad for you? I would say,

01:09:10.640 well, I would think so. I mean, logically. But yet, marijuana smokers don't get cancer at a rate that's

01:09:20.160 higher than anybody else. Why not? They're filling their lungs with smoke, but they don't seem to get

01:09:26.560 cancer. So explain that. It probably has something to do with the CBD. All right.

01:09:32.720 Andrew Gillum. Yeah, I'm not talking about that story too much because that's more of a personal

01:09:44.000 situation. So Andrew Gillum, I think his political career is over. That feels safe to say. But he's got a

01:09:55.600 personal problem. That's not our problem. Stop this craziness. Which craziness in particular?

01:10:08.080 Scott, did experts say get tested if you come in contact with somebody with virus and showing

01:10:13.440 symptoms? Well, my understanding is that your doctor gets to decide if you get a test. And so you go to

01:10:21.200 your doctor and you say, hey, I was hugging somebody who had the virus, but they didn't show any symptoms.

01:10:31.600 I think your doctor would probably say get a test. You know, I think if you came in close contact,

01:10:37.360 let's say you have a, you know, and there are lots of variables. Let's say you have elderly parents

01:10:42.000 living at home. And you go into your doctor and you say, you know, it's sort of a, it's a gray area

01:10:47.360 here. I was in a room with somebody who later was confirmed to have it. I didn't shake hands,

01:10:54.960 but I was standing, you know, within six feet. Doctor, should I get a test? Doctor says, do you

01:11:00.560 have any elderly people at home? You say, yeah, my grandparents are 85 and 86. I think the doctor

01:11:07.600 would say, well, you know, normally I'd say no, but you've got a special case, a little extra risk

01:11:14.080 because of the seniors. So let's test you. So if you're asking me, should you test in this

01:11:21.440 concrete situation versus this concrete situation? I would say there's no such thing as a concrete

01:11:26.640 situation because we're all in different circumstance and your doctor can help you sort that out, I would

01:11:34.720 think. You know, I've seen more bad thinking about this crisis than just about any other topic in the

01:11:46.880 world. It's kind of crazy. Yeah, I guess we're starting to see it in Africa. There was some thought

01:11:55.760 that heat was killing it. Maybe that's why Africa was going to do okay. I had a nagging suspicion that

01:12:02.160 Africa was fully infected or was in the process of getting fully infected and maybe they just

01:12:08.480 weren't testing for it. So they didn't know. So my guess is that it's going to be plenty bad in Africa.

01:12:16.400 I hope not, but that's my guess. All right. All I got for today. I will talk to you tomorrow.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 14, 2020

Episode 850 Scott Adams： #WuFlu and Coffee

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