Episode 851 Scott Adams： #WuFlu and Coffee
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
151.07492
Summary
The world is a strange and confusing place at the moment, but we can still enjoy the best part of the day, which is called coffee and you don t need much to participate. No, you don't need it to drink it, but if you do, it's going to taste extra good.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
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And although the world is a strange and confusing place at the moment,
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we can still enjoy the best part of the day. It's called the simultaneous hip,
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and you don't need much to participate. No, you don't need coronavirus. Completely optional.
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But if you have it, your coffee is going to taste extra good. All you need is a coffee.
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Let me try that again. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein,
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a canteen jug or flask or a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
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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 everything better. It's a simultaneous hip. Go.
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That's a crisis quality there. Everything tastes better when you're worried about stuff.
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All right, let's talk about this. There's nothing else going on, right? Is it my imagination,
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or did all of the other news either completely stop or we don't care about it?
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So there's a whole lot of stuff that's happening that I couldn't care less about.
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But let's talk about what's interesting about this flu stuff. Here's the good news.
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There are three different treatments as opposed to a vaccine. Apparently, a vaccine is already going into rapid testing.
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Maybe we'll see that soon. Anyway, well, I'm going to switch topics.
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I'm going to switch topics because it just occurred to me at the moment. Trump has now said two things
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that are unambiguously untrue that seem to be coming true. So the first thing that Trump said was
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that we'd develop this vaccine and it would be in record time. And then the expert, Dr. Fauci said,
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well, you know, probably 18 months. So not really right away. And then the president would get up
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and he'd say, yep, we're going to have it in record time. And then Fauci would get up again. It's like, well, 18 months.
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And then the president would say, we're going to get that vaccine in record time.
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And then you read the news. And I think it was Gilead put their vaccine into rapid testing.
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And they said, hey, we've got an idea. And I think I have this right. I might have this wrong.
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But and Gilead was saying, why don't we do something we never did before, which is start developing it because we're optimistic.
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Developing, meaning, you know, making it, manufacturing it at the same time we're testing it.
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Because in the unlikely event that, you know, we hit it and I guess they're pretty confident that
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they're at least in the neighborhood of the right vaccine. They're saying we could be done with it
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and distribute it the same day. And I said to myself, was that included in the 18 months?
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Somebody says, not really. But, you know, it does the 18 months assume that we do this the way we
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normally do it. Because we're not doing things in a normal way at all. So here's what I think.
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I think we're going to be surprised in the good direction about how quickly the vaccine is developed.
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So let me give you that prediction. We will be surprised in the positive way.
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It will be done before we think it should be done.
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I don't think if I were to bet, you know, who is closer, you know, Trump saying it's, hey, it's,
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you know, any minute now or Fauci who's saying it's going to be 18 months, probably somewhere in the
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middle, maybe. Because what happens if the, here's the, here's the wild card. What happens if the problem
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starts getting, you know, 10 times worse, and only three months have gone by, and they vaccinated
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people, and it's, it apparently works. But they can't tell if there's a side effect yet, because you
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need to, you need to wait longer to figure that out. But they could kind of tell it works. Just they
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don't know if it's safe. We're going to have, we're going to have a decision like we've never seen
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before, which is, will you take this extra risk of semi-tested vaccine that's similar enough to
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things we've done before that we think it's safe? You know, the computer models, the, you know,
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the simulations they run, I'm sure they do that. They say it's safe, but you can't ever really
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know until you do the long, the long studies. Will we reach a point where the president will
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have the following decision? Mr. President, we can get you a vaccine in five months. The risk will be
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very, very high. But the risk of not using it could be higher. We need a decision. I think we're going
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to see that. Second story is the president quite famously went out and said that Google was building
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some kind of a nationally available website to, I think, figure out if they should get coronavirus
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medical care. And then Google said, no, we're not. We're not doing that. Nope. And then it came out
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that it was a subsidiary of Alphabet that really had been called Google until, I don't know, 2015 or
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something. So it was sort of a Google-like company. And then people said, oh, okay, okay. So it wasn't like
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100% wrong. It was a Google-like company within the Google universe. And you could call that a Google
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company, but technically it has another name, even though a Google company owns it. And then it came
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out that, but then people said, yeah, but it's not going to be done soon. And then the company says,
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well, you know, we're going to test it pretty soon. And obviously if it worked out, we can make it
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big pretty quickly. It's a website. How hard is it to take a website from small to big? That's
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something we know how to do. So, but here's the funny part. By the end of, I think the end of
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yesterday, Google announced that they, Google, were going to build a national website that the president
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said they were building. So I think in two occasions, you just watched the president bend
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reality in a way that only he can. I mean, I swear to God, there's nobody else who could have done this.
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And I'm not even saying it's a bug or a feature. I'm just saying it is. You know, you can decide
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whether you like it, whether it's an accident, whether it's luck, whether it's randomness. I don't even know
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what to call this. I mean, seriously, what do you call this? The guy who reads, who, who, who tells us,
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I mean, he's told us this many times, that he uses the power of positive thinking to bend reality.
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And you hear that sort of thing and you go, yeah, yeah, new age crap. You can't bend reality.
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You know, you can't, you can't bend reality. That's not a thing. So go read your power of positive
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thinking books, because reality isn't something you just bend by your positive thinking. And then
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the president gets up there and says two ridiculously false things about this, about this crisis. I
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think both of them are going to happen. Weirdly. I mean, one of them already happened. So I'm 50%
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right already. He has somebody says, I'll ask Steve Jobs, right? The reality distortion field.
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I think this president makes things happen, happen by wanting them. You know, obviously the country is
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primed to respond and, and, you know, every citizen is doing their thing to make things better.
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It's kind of remarkable. I don't know what to make of that, but here's some other good news. There are
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three treatments for people who have already gotten the coronavirus, so not a vaccine,
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that seem promising. And I'm hearing lots of chatter about them being promising, meaning that
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they're using them and they're working. So some number of, you know, this is just anecdotal. They
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haven't done controlled studies. But anecdotally, we're getting a lot of reports that this drug called
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remdesivir helps people recover faster. And here's the better one. I think there's some complication
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with remdesivir being widely available. I don't know the details of that, but there's some red tape or
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something else about that that may limit the availability. But the other one is a cheap malaria
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drug. So a drug that already exists and is widely available called chloroquine, chloroquine,
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I don't know, C-H-L-O-R-O-Q-U-I-N-E, chloroquine, chloroquine, something like that. And also a steroid
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called methylprednisone. Oh, methylprednisone. That sounds good. I think that's what I was on.
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I was on prednisone recently. So through trial and error and massive A-B testing, the medical
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community is getting faster, smarter. So I hate to watch this like it's a speculator sport,
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but consider this. The presumed path of this virus is that it will be exponential. So it's going to
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be like bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And then if it's allowed to, and we're doing everything to prevent
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this, but if it's allowed to, that curve is just going to go sharply up and we will be overwhelmed
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in our healthcare. But that's not the only thing that is exponential. There's something else
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happening right now that we take for granted that is also exponential, which is our ability
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to learn. So we have literally thousands, if not millions, of A-B tests going on. There are doctors
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all over the world saying, well, try this, try this, try that, try this. And then the reports are
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starting to come back. Now, once enough stuff has been tried, and then probably retried, because, you
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know, one experience wouldn't be enough, the rate at which the humanity is going to get smarter
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is going to be exponential. We are going to get smarter really fast, and we're not quite at the
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inflection point. But if the best case scenario is that now that we have the smartest, you know,
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most capable people in the world, the whole planet, this has never been the case, because we're so well
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connected by the internet that the entire world can be involved, and at least there's some chance
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that they can all have the same information or eventually have it. I would, the best case scenario
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is that human ingenuity is cranking along like a mofo, and you know that's happening, right? You
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could be confident that the smartest people are putting all of their smarts into this. There's a lot
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of smartitude going on. And as they learn, and they experiment, there's going to be an inflection
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point where we suddenly seem really smart. So I wouldn't straight line human ability any more than
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I would straight line the virus, because we have a way of being dumb until we need to be smart, and then
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we get smart really fast. And we're not there yet, but we're heading that way. I'm hearing reports today
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that are completely not credible. So there are things that people are saying on the internet,
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anecdotal reports coming in from various places. I'm going to say that this is not credible at this
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point. But the reports are that there are lots of younger people who are having serious problems and
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dying from the virus. Now that's different than everything we've heard up to this point, which is
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that the younger you are, the better, and there's just no exception to that. But anecdotally, we're
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hearing stories of younger people who are having a real tough time with it, maybe some dying. And I
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don't know what to make of that. Some of it could be they have underlying conditions they didn't know
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about. That's possible. And if hundreds of thousands of people are involved, somebody's going to have a
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weak immune system at any given time, and maybe not know about it. So yeah, and there's the mutation
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question. We're watching that. But yeah, has it mutated to be more deadly? Because that's usually
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the opposite direction. My understanding is that viruses typically, if not always, become weaker over
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time, partly because humans get used to them. Maybe that's the only reason. I don't know.
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So the British government has this strategy of letting the virus spread to 60% of Brits so they
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can reach some kind of herd immunity. But on the internet, people keep telling me,
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Scott, some expert or another says that you can get it more than once. So there's no such thing as
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herd immunity because you could get it more than once. To which I say, those are not necessarily
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incompatible facts. It could be that getting it gives you immunity at the same time that some people
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could get it again. So those could both be true. And it still could be good enough to eventually slow
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down the virus if enough people have been exposed. What I don't think is true, and I haven't seen any
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experts say, is that in general, people could get it twice. In other words, if this same virus popped
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up in three years, would it be just as bad as the first time? And I don't think anybody thinks that.
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I feel as though the experts are cautiously certain that there would be sufficient immunity built up
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by exposure, that even if some people did get it twice, you'd still have enough immunity.
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If you do the math on the British plan of letting people get it,
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that would lead to 277,000 deaths from the virus. But it should be noted that all 277,000 of those
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people who could potentially die, they were going to die anyway. And if it affects mostly
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people over 80, it probably wasn't going to be that long.
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So while there's no good news in saying that somebody who might have lived to 85 might only
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live to 82, it's context. It's part of the story. So you could make your own judgments about how much
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of a Holocaust that is or is not. That's the wrong word. I'm just using it figuratively.
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So, but here's the problem. The British model guarantees that the rest of the world gets infected,
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right? Because if the Brits all get a good dose of it, there's not really any chance that no Brits
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take it somewhere else later. I mean, if you're going to let 60% of your population get this thing,
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it's going to travel. There's no way around it. So it seems like the Brits are going to get a lot
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of pressure from other countries to do what they're doing. And I don't exactly understand
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what they're doing. They're acting like they're trying to stop it versus build up some herd immunity.
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I would recommend for your mental health that you block the people on the internet who are screaming,
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it's just the flu and any variant on that. Now, could they be right? Is there any scenario
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in which the people who are saying we're overreacting, and I would be in that category
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of an overreactor according to other people. Is there anything to that? What's the best argument
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you can make on the stop worrying about it side? Now, part of what the stop worrying about it people
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are trying to do is not crash the economy. That's a worthy goal. But here's what they need to answer,
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which is why other hospitals are being overrun. If you can answer that, then maybe you have a point.
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Because the regular flu does not overrun hospitals. The hospitals are built to handle annual flu. They
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do it every year, and you never even hear about it. Apparently they do it well. But the Italian
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hospitals are overrun. That's a huge tragedy going on there. I'm pretty sure the Chinese hospitals were
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overrun. They had to build temporary hospitals in two weeks. Why would it be different here? What would be
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the argument that our health care system would not be similarly overrun? I don't think there's an
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argument for that, right? Now we have better resources. We have more time to prepare. So we
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have some advantages that maybe Italy didn't have. And maybe China, because they got caught off guard
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there, maybe they didn't have. So we have advantages. There is a non-zero chance
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we can get through this without crashing our hospitals. But I think it's a low chance.
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The most likely scenario is that at least some hospitals are going to be turning away people
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who are dying. I would say that's likely. Now, I don't think all hospitals are going to be turning
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away people who are dying. But you're not going to be able to move to the empty bed in three states
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away too easily. So I think in some hospitals, they're going to get overrun. Maybe in metropolitan
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areas. But we'll certainly do, I think, a heroic job of doing what we can in a makeshift way.
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Because we've had enough time, fortunately, we've bought enough time with the airport closings,
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that we might be able to scramble and minimize the problem. But it's going to get ugly.
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And so I recommend just blocking and just not listening to the people who are arguing,
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oh, it's just like the flu. A few people die. Why do you care? It's like normal. Just take them out
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of your life. Get rid of them. President Trump took a test to see if he had the coronavirus. And he's
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negative, he says. Now, of course, all the skeptics say, would he tell us if he weren't?
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And the answer is, he'd have to. He'd have to. I don't think there's any question that if the
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president had been infected, I don't think there's any chance he would lie about it. Because it would
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be obvious, because the medical community would not allow him to interact with the rest of the
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government. If you see Trump and Pence standing together as in yesterday, it's because neither
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of them think they have it. And I think Pence is getting tested and the president was tested.
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So if you don't see the president being removed from other officials in the government, he doesn't
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have it. He doesn't have it. There's no way the medical community would let this president get away
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with that. And by the way, if the, you know, in the unlikely event that the White House doctor got
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co-opted to give, I don't know, just a reckless, stupid lie and say, oh, he doesn't have it when he does.
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Do we appoint White House doctors that week? I don't think so. Do we? Can you imagine a White House
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doctor presumably should be a pretty serious, qualified person? I can't imagine that person
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saying, yeah, I'll just lie and say the president doesn't have it, let him infect the entire government
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by going. There's just no way. So I would say you should completely discount any chance that he took
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a test and it was anything but what he said, which is negative. So that's good news. And we're watching
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here a president who is responding to the public. It was the public, you know, led by the media, of course,
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but it was the public who needed him to get tested. You know, I tweeted that the other day
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and I said that essentially that I said, you know, Mr. President, the public needs you to get tested
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because I wanted to put it in that terms. I didn't want to say you should get tested. You know, who am I?
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I didn't want to say doctors say you should get tested because again, it's up to the doctors to tell
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them, not me. But it was unambiguously true that the country needed it. We needed to check that box
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and say, okay, that's one thing we don't worry about because we got plenty to worry about.
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There's plenty. So the country needed it. And I tweeted that out and man, did I get pushback.
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The sort of automatic Trump supporters who will just, you know, back him, nobody, what he said,
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poured in and said, you know, he'll get a test if he needs to. His doctor said he didn't need it. You
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know, what are you trying to start here, Scott? And of course, he decided to get the test. So
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I think it's good news when the public cries out for something and then the president does it
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and it makes sense. There's nothing broken there. That's good news. All right.
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So here are some tips for managing your coronavirus anxiety. In my opinion,
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the odds of the United States losing its basic services, such as, you know, water and electricity,
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and food, transportation, I don't think we're going to lose our basics.
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I think it is funny that we'll probably, we'll have shortages of, you know, prepper stuff,
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all the emergency sized canisters and stuff. We'll probably have some shortages of those,
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but only because people are stocking up. It's not as if the factories stopped making that stuff.
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So the one thing I think that is safest to assume is that you'll have regular food.
00:25:04.660
You know, even if the stock market is in the toilet, farmers are still going to grow food.
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Even if some of the people making it have the virus, it's pretty low chance that it gets into your food.
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I mean, it's possible, but it could, it's a low chance. I think the, the food agricultural
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system and delivery are going to work well enough. So I wouldn't worry about that.
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If your company, you know, is at risk and there's a financial problem, I wouldn't worry about that,
00:25:37.700
but you probably won't starve. I would recommend also taking some serious
00:25:46.500
hours off of social media. I've been trying to do that, but it's really hard. So I,
00:25:52.420
I'm recommending it without being able to do it. And, but I'm going to work harder on it because the
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more you focus on it, you know, the more worked up you're going to get and the more anxiety.
00:26:05.380
So you really just need to remove yourself from it every now and then. Don't, don't ignore it
00:26:10.980
because it's important, but remove yourself from it a little bit every day. I've been trying,
00:26:18.260
trying to occupy myself, um, with, you know, other entertainment since I'm kind of locked in the
00:26:23.300
house. And my other recommendation is do not watch stressful media. Do not watch movies or TV shows
00:26:33.460
where people are dying and there's tension and stress. Just don't do it because your real,
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your real life has all that, all of that you need. Watch comedies, uh, watch, you know, YouTube
00:26:46.340
or content that just doesn't have any scary, stressful stuff. So, and watching me, of course,
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watching me is, is excellent. And, and I would say again, that I've never felt healthier than I do
00:27:00.980
right now. Like literally, um, just everything, everything about me is working pretty well at
00:27:06.980
the moment and it feels really good. I got to say that, you know, I got, I got my health to the
00:27:12.980
point where I can just sit in a chair quietly and just feel good. Like mentally, I'd feel good
00:27:18.740
because my body feels so it's operating at such a, an efficient level right now. So, um, as others
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have said, it's, it's good to do something. So even though, uh, I feel confident we won't run out of
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food, you can't be confident that that will be true on every town, everywhere. So, you know, do a,
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do a little, uh, reasonable planning and pull your stuff together and, you know, have a, have a few
00:27:48.180
weeks of extra. Um, but I, you know, I think the odds of it being a super big problem are really,
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really, really, really, really, really small. Um, how many of you have had this problem?
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You say to you, the teenager living in your house, hey teenager, I don't know if you've been following
00:28:11.300
the news, but schools are closed and you're just going to have to stay in the house for a month or
00:28:17.380
maybe three months and not, not see your friends. Do you know any teenager or child who is going to
00:28:27.940
accept the following proposition? Hey, Kevin, I would like you to have a horrible time for the
00:28:35.620
next three months. I'm just socially, it's going to be a desert. You're just, you're just not going
00:28:40.660
to see your friends. You're not going to have any fun. Your, your brain is going to want to explode,
00:28:45.700
but you will save the lives potentially, not necessarily you particularly, but if everybody
00:28:52.900
does this, you will save the lives of 80 year old strangers. Good luck. Good luck. You're going to have a
00:29:05.300
lot of fights. So, um, here's what I advise, I would advise. Make sure that the kids in your house
00:29:14.740
know that this one isn't a conversation. Uh, if, if you're like most families, you know, there,
00:29:21.860
there's some parents who, who've really, you know, got the parental thing down and kids won't question
00:29:28.020
them because they know that's a problem. But for most of you, you're negotiating with kids.
00:29:33.640
Well, if I can't do that, can I do this? Well, suppose I only did it for a little while.
00:29:39.580
Well, what if we went outside and played, but we were together? So the kids are going to start
00:29:44.340
negotiating with you. And I would recommend the following persuasion. And, and I've already done
00:29:51.700
this. And it goes like this in the context of a crisis, which we're in kids, opinions don't matter.
00:30:01.440
They will be ignored. I'll listen to them. If you have some information, that'd be great. I'll
00:30:07.520
incorporate it. But your opinions will be 100% ignored until this crisis is over. This is adults
00:30:14.760
only. There's no negotiating. Adults only. Kids don't get to participate in any decision making
00:30:22.160
during a crisis period, period. Now, of course, that's the way it should always be, right? But in
00:30:28.520
the real world, you know, there is negotiation. And I'm, I would say that you should shut down
00:30:34.160
anything that looks like negotiation. Just say, oh, oh, adults only. Now, the, the fake
00:30:43.220
because will work in almost every situation. And that is, give a reason, even if it's a
00:30:49.100
bad one. And the reason could be, the government said, got to do this. You know, you could argue
00:30:56.680
against anything, but it sounds like a reason. And say, adults are capable of making these
00:31:02.200
decisions. Children are not. You're not part of it. Do what I tell you. That's it. And
00:31:07.920
that, and that sounds like a reason too, because adults are smarter than kids. So, so say that
00:31:11.880
directly. You know, that the, the adults are in charge during the crisis. That's the end
00:31:16.900
of the story. Um, yeah. Uh, how do you tell a five-year-old? Well, with a five-year-old, um,
00:31:27.980
you just tell them that's the way it is. And they cry and they, they scream and then they
00:31:32.820
just cry and scream. But, you know, you might have to, it's not like the kid is going to go
00:31:38.440
steal your car keys and take your car or something. If you tell them no, I mean, unless you drive
00:31:45.160
them someplace, they're not going to get too far. So let them cry. Uh, that's, that's all
00:31:50.840
you got. How about the senile? Well, you know, that's, every case will be its own case, I
00:31:57.780
guess. Um, my understanding is that this weekend, the bars were full with young people who believe
00:32:10.580
that they are not personally at great risk and apparently don't care if they kill, you
00:32:16.360
know, a million old people by going to a bar. And I think it's because it's, there's, there
00:32:22.640
are too many levels of abstraction between a young person who goes to a bar and, you know,
00:32:28.960
your grandmother on the other side of the country who might end up dying because of it. And, you
00:32:34.200
know, statistically people are going to say, well, but it's not because I went to the bar. It's
00:32:39.600
because people went to the bar and I'm not people. I'm just me. I didn't kill your grandmother. I just
00:32:46.720
went and had a drink. And by the way, I didn't even get infected. So don't believe me. So I think
00:32:52.140
the millennials have found a, you know, a mental dodge to say, well, you know, it's somebody else's
00:32:58.820
problem. And by the way, they did rape the planet and leave nothing for us. And the cost of living is
00:33:04.700
way higher than when, when these old people were young. And well, maybe it's our turn. We could
00:33:10.220
use a few, a few fewer old people. So the weird thing about this one is I was thinking, hey, we're
00:33:18.720
all in this together. You know, all the countries, all the governments, be they Democrats, be they
00:33:25.220
Republicans. This will be the one time that we can all join together because it's a common problem.
00:33:30.620
And I thought, and I'd even said this, that it was kind of beautiful because you don't see
00:33:35.280
everybody on the same page ever, really. I've never seen it. It's the first time. And then I realized
00:33:43.120
that it doesn't apply to the young. We're very much not on the same page. People over 40, just picking
00:33:52.820
a random number here, people over 40 are trying to stay alive. People under 40 are trying to have
00:33:58.960
fun. And based on this weekend, they don't care if you live or die, if you're over, if
00:34:05.000
you're over a certain age. So we have unintentionally caused a war between the old and the young
00:34:11.260
in order for the old to survive at the, at the rate they would like to survive percentage
00:34:17.620
wise. We're going to have to crush the young. I don't see a way around it. The young, and
00:34:27.400
I mean, 20s and 30s, are going to have to get crushed. And by crushed, I mean, we'll probably
00:34:33.760
have to send the police out to send them home. Probably have to close the bars. Probably have
00:34:39.500
to, you know, mace anybody who gathers with more than four people in public. So when I
00:34:47.480
say crush, I don't mean hurt them. I mean, there's some serious pain coming that the people who
00:34:55.640
went to a bar this weekend don't know is coming. Or maybe they do. And they figured, well, one
00:35:00.540
more weekend, I'll go to the bar. Yeah, I did hear about the hashtag boomer remover. That's
00:35:08.020
what they're calling the virus. The young people who would just be delighted if the old people
00:35:14.800
died. My liberal sister blames Trump no matter what, of course. All right. So I'll just look
00:35:31.520
at some of your comments here. I would normally I would just end this, but I'm thinking about
00:35:37.880
adding a second Periscope in the afternoon or early evening or something. What would you think of
00:35:44.260
if I were to add a second Periscope just for the period of the crisis? Because one of the benefits of
00:35:51.700
what I do is it doesn't have commercials. If you watch the replay here on Periscope and or if you watch
00:36:00.940
live. And wouldn't the world be a little bit better with more content to consume because you're going to run
00:36:09.840
through your Netflix list pretty quickly. Oh, so somebody is saying in the comments that the
00:36:19.320
the NOLA, Louisiana police cleared Bourbon Street. That's interesting.
00:36:34.000
Somebody says, why no CPAC outbreak that was 16 days ago?
00:36:38.620
Uh, has there been none? I don't know the details there, but you're right. Now it could be that the
00:36:47.660
the one known infected person just wasn't shedding that much. That's possible. Now, um, it could be
00:36:54.800
that the one known infected person at CPAC washed his or her hands a lot because I think we're still
00:37:03.200
pretending we don't know who it is, right? How many of you know who it is? I'm just curious.
00:37:10.040
How many in the comments, how many of you have seen the name and and photo of the person who is accused
00:37:17.200
of being the accused is the wrong word, but the person we believe it was the infected person there.
00:37:27.140
Oh, okay. I'm seeing lots of people. The comments are a little delayed, but it looks like people are
00:37:33.180
willing to see a second periscope. Now it probably wouldn't be like the first one. So I don't know
00:37:38.840
exactly what that content would be, but I'm sure I can find some, take some questions or something.
00:37:43.920
So here are the things I'm doing. Lots of exercise, lots of fresh air, take a walk.
00:37:51.400
You would be amazed how much better you feel if you take a walk for an hour, just a, just a nice walk
00:37:57.820
outdoors. And you know, if the weather's bad, bundle up. If it's raining, bring an umbrella,
00:38:03.560
but get your walk in. Don't tell yourself tomorrow because you need to do something and
00:38:08.920
it makes a difference. You can build up your immunity. I would guess that my immunity is
00:38:14.520
really humming along right now because I've been getting to sleep, eating the food, doing all the right
00:38:21.460
stuff. All right. Um, it's very difficult to know if there was a spread at CPAC. That's true.
00:38:32.740
Why did we have the freedom of assembly again? Yeah.
00:38:38.240
Somebody says they'd like to hear me and Dr. Drew on the air. We'll probably do that. Dr. Drew,
00:38:45.000
if you're, if you're watching this, um, we should probably do that. Your place or mine is less
00:38:52.380
important, but we should probably do that. Um, more than of all. Yeah. You know, there's,
00:39:05.300
there's a really interesting thing happening. Uh, it's happening on social media, but you're
00:39:10.980
seeing, you're seeing a lot of people who very quickly, you know, entered the breach and you're
00:39:18.260
seeing people who are trying very hard to be positive influences. I'm trying as hard as I can
00:39:23.520
to do something productive during this. Uh, Nival is another one, one, maybe the most productive
00:39:30.780
thinker of our time. So having him fully engaged makes me feel a lot better. Um, if you're not
00:39:38.880
watching, following, uh, Balaji Srinivasan, you should, um, by far, he has the most insightful
00:39:45.420
comments about this whole, this whole situation from the, from the social, the economic, the,
00:39:51.840
the medical. So Balaji is one of these, uh, full stack people who I don't know if there's a category
00:40:00.040
of knowledge he doesn't know about. He, he seems to know every category of knowledge. Um, so if you
00:40:07.160
listen to his stuff, you'll get smarter, Scott, do you disagree with Dr. Shiva? I don't know. So I
00:40:14.440
don't, I assume you're asking about the, you're referring to this situation, but I don't know what
00:40:20.160
he says and why I would disagree. Um, oh, good. Somebody says they started walking after reading
00:40:32.080
one of my books, how to fail. Uh, I'm going to get rid of that obnoxious comment.
00:40:46.640
Dr. Drew will tell you to stop spreading panic. Well, it's a, it's a fine balance. And let me say
00:40:53.500
this, I think reasonable people can disagree about the exact right amount of preparation, worry,
00:41:02.480
concern, slash panic that is productive and how much is unproductive. And I would say that, um,
00:41:12.340
if you're in a situation where 10% of the public is panicking, but you had to do that to get 60% of
00:41:19.660
the public to do what they need to do. In other words, you know, if you, if you get the middle
00:41:25.800
of the country, let's say the, the most typical people in the country, deeply concerned, which is
00:41:33.320
what you want. So they'll act differently and they have to, to get through this. If 60% of them are
00:41:39.400
deeply concerned, there's still going to be, I'm just going to throw a number at it, you know, 10%
00:41:44.640
who are over-concerned and panicking. I don't think you can avoid that. I don't think there's
00:41:50.640
any such thing as getting all the people to respond the same to the same message because we
00:41:56.500
all respond differently to the same message. So, uh, there's plenty of room for, uh, Dr. Drew and I
00:42:03.620
to be, you know, off by a, off by a degree on what's the ultimate, most productive level of panic.
00:42:12.460
But we would both agree that you could go too far. And we both agree that the panic could be worse
00:42:19.020
than the, worse than the disease. So I think we're on the same page. If there's a difference,
00:42:25.300
it's maybe in a little bit of language, one degree of difference, but both of us would be guessing,
00:42:30.420
frankly, because nobody knows the exact amount of ideally productive worry, but you need some worry.
00:42:39.220
You know, you don't want to get rid of it because it's the worry that's causing anybody to do the
00:42:44.840
right thing. Um, looking at your comments, Dr. Shiva says we're overreacting. Well, uh, how do you
00:42:59.940
measure such a thing? You know, um, I still see people saying that people are panicking,
00:43:05.720
panicking, but I've not detected anything that I would call panic. Even the people buying toilet
00:43:12.140
paper, I don't know that they're panicking. Are they? It just feels like, you know, you see the
00:43:18.500
people with, uh, I saw pictures of people with carts piled high with, you know, massive toilet paper.
00:43:24.500
And I thought to myself, well, you don't know what the story is there. Are those people panicking
00:43:30.300
or are they buying for the nursing home? Right? Because if you're the, if you're the,
00:43:36.640
you know, if you work at the nursing home, maybe you need a lot of toilet paper and you're stocking
00:43:42.120
up. So you might be stocking up for the whole nursing home. So if I, can I just look at somebody
00:43:47.360
and say, well, you got a lot of toilet paper there, therefore you're panicking. You know,
00:43:52.300
you saw the story of somebody who bought up all the hand sanitizers in his area and then tried to
00:43:58.240
sell them at, uh, at, uh, you know, horribly high prices. And both, uh, eBay and Amazon shut him
00:44:05.580
down and said, yeah, well, you can't even be on our platform, which pretty much put him out of
00:44:10.620
business. Even that guy wasn't panicking. He was buying up all the hand sanitizer just to make
00:44:16.400
money. He was doing the opposite of panicking. So I've not seen anything in the public. Let's say
00:44:23.740
I've not seen any of our professionals do anything even remotely like panic. Have you,
00:44:31.080
is there anybody you would say, Oh, I watched, I don't know the view and saw somebody panicking.
00:44:36.500
Not really, not really. I'd, I'd have to say that I'd be pretty proud of, you know, the United States
00:44:44.340
for the way it's handling it attitude wise. I think we're, we're doing a good job really now.
00:44:50.900
Now I think some people are using the word panic to describe a set of decisions that the government
00:44:57.380
and maybe individuals are making about what businesses to stay open and how far away we
00:45:02.440
should stay from each other and, and, you know, selling your stocks and stuff like that. But I
00:45:08.360
don't know that that's panic either. It feels like people doing the best job they can of trying to
00:45:15.120
anticipate the odds. You know, what are the odds and, you know, what kind of a country do we want
00:45:20.340
to be? And, you know, how protective should we be of our seniors? I think people are just making
00:45:25.740
decisions. I just don't see panic, but correct me if I'm wrong. All it would take is one example
00:45:32.640
and I'd say, Oh, okay, that's, there's a panic, but I haven't seen it. Um, take the stock markets.
00:45:39.160
I read an article that, uh, like, I don't know, $5 trillion or whatever it was, was removed from
00:45:45.760
the stock market. Maybe it was bigger. It was a big number. And I said to myself, and there's
00:45:53.640
actually not even any point to that. Yeah. 5 trillion of imaginary money disappeared. Do you
00:46:01.020
know what happens when we get on the other side of this, um, this thing? We're all primed. Every
00:46:07.720
asset is already in place. No decisions, no risks. We just go back to work. And the stock market says,
00:46:15.060
thank you. It adds $5 trillion back magic. So should you panic that we lost $5 trillion? No,
00:46:26.580
no, no, because the nature of the market is it goes up and down. It's not really a loss unless you
00:46:32.840
were dumb enough to sell all your stocks. And, you know, uh, when it hit the low, that probably
00:46:38.080
was a bad idea, but don't get, I don't give financial advice. Um, I got rid of two assets
00:46:44.880
before this happened. So, um, right around the time that China was saying, Hey, we got something
00:46:52.360
going on over here with the flu. Well, before I thought I needed to care about it, you know,
00:46:57.480
because in the early days I was like, that's interesting. Uh, I'll worry about that if they
00:47:01.400
tell me to later, but there were only two assets I sold. Uh, one was my oil stocks. I got rid of
00:47:08.740
all those luckiest thing I ever did. Um, and, and, and by the way, I didn't even sell it because I was
00:47:17.700
smart. I actually sold it to free up some cash for something else I was doing. It wasn't even
00:47:22.940
because I was smart. It was just the one that didn't look like it was doing much lately. So
00:47:26.880
I was like, I'll get rid of my oil stocks, man, that worked out. And the only other thing I got
00:47:32.400
rid of was my Bitcoin. So I got rid of all of my Bitcoin holdings. Now I'm not recommending that you
00:47:39.620
do it. There are plenty of reasons to have Bitcoin, plenty of reasons to think it'll be around for a
00:47:44.540
while. But I did not buy the argument that Bitcoin would be a, uh, a gold like store that would go up
00:47:55.160
when everything else went down. I didn't think it was impossible. In other words, I didn't, I didn't
00:48:01.440
rule it out. I thought, well, it could happen. You know, if everything goes bad, maybe, maybe Bitcoin
00:48:06.760
goes up. It'd be good to have some, but I wasn't buying it. I wasn't buying it. And so I sold all my
00:48:14.080
Bitcoin and it dropped by 50%, I think since then. Um, now I'm not bragging. Both of those were total
00:48:22.420
luck, total luck. You shouldn't try to time the market. You shouldn't be buying individual stocks.
00:48:28.580
You shouldn't be listening to me for any advice, but I got lucky as hell on those two. Yeah. You know,
00:48:36.360
you have to balance that against all the times I've been unlucky. There are plenty of those.
00:48:40.200
So I think Bitcoin will be around a while. I'm sure it'll recover eventually, but I get out.
00:48:49.200
Um, I, you know, I haven't checked the when recently, but it's, it's in tiny territory like most of the
00:48:58.760
non-Bitcoin stuff is. Do you get financial advice or act on my own? Good question. When I was
00:49:06.760
first making some serious money with this little Dilbert thing I do, I, uh, I was offered by
00:49:13.520
bankers at Wells Fargo. They had a special rich person division that does some investing for rich
00:49:19.760
people. They said, Hey, we could put you in our, our special rich person department and we'll do
00:49:25.480
investing for you in the stock market. And I felt I was, you know, reasonably qualified to do that. I,
00:49:31.700
I mean, I have an MBA and a degree in economics and, you know, uh, I pay attention, but I was busy
00:49:38.740
and I thought, you know, I need somebody who's really paying attention because I'm, I'm not going
00:49:43.800
to be watching. I just, so I was working 18 hours a day then. And I thought I'm not going to be able
00:49:48.380
to watch my investments. It's better just to have somebody else do it. And, uh, hopefully they'll do so
00:49:53.140
well. It'll pay for itself. Uh, they bought on my behalf stock in Enron. Have you heard of Enron?
00:50:02.100
That's right. The smartest people I could hire to invest my money for me, put my money in Enron.
00:50:09.120
Not all of it, you know, a portion of it. Uh, other money they put in, uh, WorldCom. You ever heard of
00:50:17.140
WorldCom? That used to be a company. Now, if you tried really hard to invest someone else's money
00:50:27.080
in individual stocks and you were buying big companies, do you think you would even be able
00:50:33.580
to find two big companies that wouldn't exist in a year? Could you? I mean, we're in a weird
00:50:40.000
economic time right now, but in ordinary times, if you're going to say, Oh, I'll buy, I'll buy 20
00:50:45.840
different stocks for your portfolio. And then, you know, you'll have some diversification.
00:50:50.420
Do you think if you picked 20 fortune 500 stocks, do you think you could find two of them that would
00:50:56.380
be out of business in a year? It's kind of rare. Well, my professionals did it. And what they sold
00:51:02.780
to me was that they had extra insight because they talked to management. Do you know what would
00:51:09.480
happen if you talked to the management at Redron to get some insight? Well, here's what I'm saying.
00:51:15.840
The management of Enron would not tell my professional investors, investing professionals.
00:51:23.080
They would not say, Oh, you know, I have to be honest with you. Enron's just a whole pyramid scheme
00:51:29.020
scam and none of it's real. It's all going to fall apart. Do you think, do you think that's the
00:51:33.740
insight that my professionals got when they talked to management? Because that was, that's what they
00:51:38.200
sold me. They sold me. We know them personally. We're actually going to be in the room with them,
00:51:43.640
talking to them. So, you know, we have much better, you know, vision than you do because
00:51:48.760
we're in the room. What the hell did that help them? It didn't help them at all. All right.
00:51:56.220
Now, the good news is I was just smart enough to only give them half of my money that was
00:52:04.600
available for investing at the time because they were also charging a fee. I forget what it
00:52:10.320
was, but let's say the fee was one and a half percent and I didn't want to, you know, give away
00:52:16.940
one and a half percent. So I gave them half of my money that was available and I took the other half
00:52:25.160
and I just stuck it in a fortune 500 index fund. How do you think I did with my half that I didn't
00:52:33.380
manage? I just threw it in an index fund of, you know, a bunch of American companies and they were
00:52:38.780
picking stocks and talking to management. Who do you think won? Wasn't even close.
00:52:47.120
They lost a third of the money that I gave them to invest after, I don't know, several years. They
00:52:52.380
were down a third. And mine, I think, you know, fluttered around a little bit and then took off
00:52:58.320
and we're fine. Yeah. So effectively, I cut their fee in half, but also I diversified because the risk
00:53:07.780
I knew at the time that I had to diversify also against Wells Fargo. So you don't diversify just
00:53:15.300
among stocks. You should also diversify who's, you know, who's in the mix. And if you've only got one
00:53:22.720
person who's responsible for all of your investments, you've got a problem because if that one person
00:53:28.000
goes bad, you know, your whole portfolio is, is at risk. So I spread the risk of human beings that
00:53:35.880
they have any influence over my money and make sure that none of them have too much influence.
00:53:40.120
That's my, that's my advice. All right. Um, um, uh, just looking at your comments here. Did I invest
00:53:55.320
in Theranos? I did not. Yeah. The index funds will be 90% of financial managers. That is correct.
00:54:05.300
Always have, always will, in my, in my opinion. What year? This was a long time ago. So this was
00:54:12.180
90s. All right. Uh, say Scott actively got into oil, which is an anti-index decision. So I still have
00:54:28.320
oil stocks within my larger, uh, index fund because you can't, you can't pick and choose. You just take
00:54:34.360
the whole, the whole box. But separately, I don't know, 20 years ago or something, I had bought an
00:54:40.920
index fund of oil stocks. So the only exception to having a broad index that makes sense is if you
00:54:49.080
have a sub index of some industry you think is going to do extra well. So at the time I thought,
00:54:55.660
okay, two industries that I think will always do well is energy, wrong, and biotech. So I have a,
00:55:04.220
an index of biotech stocks and I had an index of oil stocks, oil stocks. I basically, I got out in
00:55:11.920
about the same place I put it in, but it was after years. So it was effectively a loss, but the, uh,
00:55:17.980
the biotech stock is up 400% at the same time. Now I would only put smaller amounts in the sub indexes.
00:55:25.160
So I still have 80% in the broad index, but I had a few kickers, a few kicker funds that,
00:55:33.540
you know, just in case oil or, or biotech stocks did well, I could get the upside.
00:55:38.280
All right. Oil will come back. Mark Cuban just invested in Twitter stock. Smart bastard.
00:55:49.400
Mark Cuban, if you're listening to this, that was a smart move because there's no way in hell
00:55:55.840
Twitter is going to stay at the price it is. Uh, if I had not already put all of my, you know,
00:56:03.940
cash that was on the sidelines into the market, I'm fully invested in financial assets. So I only
00:56:10.360
have real estate and stocks. That's all I own right now. A little, a little bit of something
00:56:16.740
else, but, um, and some investments in companies, but I was looking at the, uh, at the stocks that
00:56:24.660
got whacked the hardest. And I thought some of these are just a no brainer who, who is going
00:56:29.540
to use less Twitter during the, you know, any economic downturn, downturn. They're not,
00:56:35.700
they're going to use more Twitter. And Twitter was one of the few stocks that I was also looking
00:56:41.760
at to, to make a major shift into. I was looking at some other things, but, um, don't take any
00:56:47.760
financial advice from me, but if you see Mark Cuban making a big move on a company like that,
00:56:53.420
maybe you can take his advice. Um, I already own some Twitter stock. What if Trump loses?
00:57:01.880
Well, I think that's now an option. I think, uh, Trump losing the election went from unfathomable
00:57:10.120
before coronavirus to closer to a 50 50. So I'm going to readjust the slaughter meter, uh, down
00:57:19.300
to more like a 50 50 proposition right now. Now the, the biggest thing, you know, who gets
00:57:26.720
the blame? How bad, how bad is it? It takes away Trump's ability to brag about the economy,
00:57:32.080
even if it's only temporarily in the lull, it's just the wrong timing. So his biggest assets
00:57:38.220
have been taken from him. And, um, even, even Trump's biggest supporters would say that he's
00:57:46.740
had missteps with his coronavirus stuff, you know, that they're not getting tested, you
00:57:51.840
know, the, the wrong information, et cetera. But it's harder to argue that the United States
00:57:57.360
is making the wrong decisions. The communication part was really shaky and I criticized it like
00:58:05.080
crazy, but the decisions, you know, when to close these airports, what to do look pretty
00:58:10.920
solid. So I don't know if you'll get credit for the solid decisions as much as you'll be
00:58:16.620
criticized for the, some of the words and the communication were, were faulty at best.
00:58:22.960
Um, but he does seem to be learning on the job, if you will. In other words, uh, Trump's capability
00:58:30.440
to do this stuff. If you look at it today versus even two weeks ago, I don't think it's the same.
00:58:38.780
You know, he's not, he's not brain dead. He's figuring out what works and adjusting. So you
00:58:45.320
see him adjusting in real time, as long as he can adjust, as long as the feedback is getting to him.
00:58:50.040
And I know it is, you know, he is listening to social media. He's listening to the public. He's
00:58:54.280
listening to the media. And it's probably one of his greatest assets. I would say is that he does
00:58:59.020
respond to the public in real time. I mean, he, he changes in real time. So, um, I don't think you'll
00:59:07.200
see him perform as poorly as he did. I would expect, you know, big improvements actually.
00:59:15.000
Uh, but it's fair to say that you need a different personality for different challenges.
00:59:20.140
And I don't think he has perfectly fit this. It didn't perfectly fit in the way of perfectly
00:59:25.720
fits other things like running for president. He was kind of perfect for that. Um,
00:59:32.360
that's why he's doing massive stimulus. You know, all of these stimulus stuff, um, you know,
00:59:42.940
tax cuts, et cetera. I think those are mostly psychological, but that's good because the
00:59:49.460
economy is a psychology engine. So the president might be the very, well, let me put it this
00:59:55.080
way as, as ill suited as I think the president's personality is for this specific kind of disaster,
01:00:02.660
but not his decision-making. I think his decision-making has been good, but his personality
01:00:07.720
doesn't fit this at all. Um, when we get over it and it's time to, to crank the knob and get
01:00:15.140
back to work, that's the personality he has, you know, once it's time to, you know, once it's go
01:00:20.860
time and it's time to crank up the economy again and get past this, show the world, show the world
01:00:27.400
who America is basically. Um, that's what he's good at. So you're going to see the fastest,
01:00:34.380
I think that, I think this disaster, if you can call it that, the crisis, it's plenty bad, probably
01:00:42.000
will get worse before it gets better. But the recovery, whenever that starts, is going to be
01:00:49.280
amazing. I think it's going to be amazing. And that's what Trump is just perfect for.
01:00:53.320
All right. Um, somebody says they're giving themselves a massive stimulus right now. Good
01:01:03.060
for you. I hear it's good for your immune system. Uh, Andrew Yang, UBI meant under Biden's influence.
01:01:11.420
I don't know that he actually said that. Um, all right, that's all I got for now. I will maybe
01:01:20.520
talk to you again this afternoon. We'll see. Bye for now.