Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 18, 2020


Episode 856 Scott Adams： Making You Feel Better Before Bed


Episode Stats

Length

27 minutes

Words per Minute

151.09526

Word Count

4,111

Sentence Count

310

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Chris gets distracted by the coronavirus outbreak, and CNN's Dana Bash says the president's communication style is now right where it needs to be, and Chris talks about what we ve all been waiting for in the era of Trump.


Transcript

00:00:00.680 Pah-dum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum
00:00:03.420 Bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum
00:00:05.660 Bum-bum-bum
00:00:07.780 Hey everybody. Hey Chris.
00:00:11.060 We're gonna have a light crew tonight.
00:00:13.280 You got lots to do at night.
00:00:15.520 And you're not addicted to watching me at night.
00:00:18.580 Yet.
00:00:20.040 Yet.
00:00:21.620 Well, I thought I would do a little bonus periscope.
00:00:25.720 Because it's an emergency.
00:00:29.160 You know what you don't get enough of?
00:00:31.580 Entertainment.
00:00:32.620 When you're locked up in your house.
00:00:34.680 It's a rainy day here, but I still got my workout in.
00:00:38.800 I just put in a very large order of food from my local restaurant.
00:00:45.000 And I'm watching my map as the car is approaching.
00:00:50.280 I'll have to get off when they get here.
00:00:52.980 I even bought a little extra.
00:00:54.600 I bought a whole entree.
00:00:56.500 I may or may not even eat.
00:00:58.700 But it's a local restaurant, and I'm just sending my money their way.
00:01:03.600 I'm going to spread it around.
00:01:05.280 Hope you're all doing the same.
00:01:06.380 Now, the side benefit of that, of having them deliver hot food, aside from not having to cook,
00:01:14.000 is that you get to keep the food that's already in your house.
00:01:18.580 So my supply of whatever excess I have for an emergency, well, it's untouched.
00:01:25.140 I'll just door dash and support the local businesses.
00:01:28.320 Now, I don't think, and I'll say this a million times, I don't think we have a food problem.
00:01:35.960 Take, for example, nobody is hoarding broccoli.
00:01:41.540 Nobody.
00:01:42.740 Nobody's hoarding broccoli because broccoli doesn't last very long.
00:01:46.340 So, you know, as long as you're willing to have your food delivered or send somebody who is invulnerable to go get it for you, you've got plenty of food.
00:01:56.120 There's not really any chance that the vegetables are going to run out.
00:01:59.220 You know, worry about it when the vegetables run out, but it looks like there's not even any slight risk of that.
00:02:07.860 All the businesses are responding.
00:02:10.920 And I don't know if you can feel it yet.
00:02:14.300 Can you feel it in the zeitgeist?
00:02:16.860 You know, the zeitgeist is a German word because there's no word in English that has that same meaning.
00:02:23.960 And it's basically that general feeling in the air.
00:02:30.140 Well, who knew?
00:02:31.580 Who knew that the coronavirus would be the thing that brought us together?
00:02:35.720 But it's happening.
00:02:38.480 I have never seen less political partisanship than this week.
00:02:44.600 I mean, at least not in the era of Trump.
00:02:47.740 Am I right?
00:02:49.000 You know, there's still some people who are doing their political thing.
00:02:53.200 But as somebody mentioned in the comments, and this is worth calling out.
00:02:57.220 I don't know if you noticed that Dana Bash, CNN, one of their more prominent personalities.
00:03:07.700 I don't know what she would be.
00:03:08.860 She would be like, you know, a frequent guest or something.
00:03:12.700 And Dana Bash said on CNN, without reservation, that the president's communication style is now right where it needs to be.
00:03:24.700 And that's the leader that we've been waiting for.
00:03:27.840 And I think she's right.
00:03:29.940 Now, nobody's been tougher on the president's communication than I have.
00:03:35.600 And I've got to tell you, it's been painful.
00:03:37.940 Because I don't want to be the one who criticizes him.
00:03:41.220 It's just way less fun than talking about the things he does right.
00:03:45.080 But he wasn't crushing it.
00:03:46.840 The public spoke.
00:03:48.040 The media spoke.
00:03:49.080 I'm sure his advisors spoke.
00:03:51.200 But here's the good news.
00:03:52.920 He adjusted.
00:03:54.660 And boy, did he adjust.
00:03:55.920 And I was trying to figure out, like, what changed?
00:03:59.320 You know, some of it is, you know, maybe his thinking about it, you know, may have changed.
00:04:04.140 But it occurred to me that when he was struggling on his messaging was when he had to give us bad news.
00:04:12.820 And it was the kind of bad news that you kind of really would hope didn't necessarily come true.
00:04:21.300 So imagine Trump's perpetual optimistic personality, and he has the hardest job in the world, which is to tell the public, there's a really bad thing coming, and there's not a whole lot we can do to completely stop it.
00:04:36.320 You know, we're going to do the best we can.
00:04:37.600 But he wasn't really, his personality wasn't suited for that.
00:04:43.000 He has a lifetime of optimism.
00:04:45.420 And the leadership of the moment called for him to be brutally honest and sort of pessimistic.
00:04:52.920 You know, pessimistic maybe is too far.
00:04:55.000 But he had to be brutally honest about bad news.
00:04:57.380 And I don't think that's his sweet spot.
00:05:02.120 But we're no longer in that phase.
00:05:05.300 We have passed into a war.
00:05:08.560 This is war.
00:05:10.380 We're at war with an entity, this virus, that we're trying to divide and conquer.
00:05:17.060 We're trying to beat it.
00:05:18.520 We're using every tool in the arsenal, and we're making new ones.
00:05:22.340 But it's a war.
00:05:23.380 And it turns out that Trump's good at war, because as soon as the message was, we're under attack, we're going to beat this thing, suddenly he was fixed.
00:05:38.940 Because optimism works when you're in the war, as long as it's not crazy optimism.
00:05:46.060 You know, not the salesman stuff stuff, but the, you know, we're going to beat this, we're going to get this, you know, stick together.
00:05:52.460 That sort of thing.
00:05:54.080 That works when you're in the war.
00:05:56.020 It wasn't right.
00:05:57.620 You can't use that optimism when the trouble's coming.
00:06:01.320 And that's a big difference.
00:06:03.000 So I think one of the things I've often said about the president is that he is an extremely nimble learner.
00:06:11.040 Meaning that he, you know, became a, you know, real estate tycoon, he learned that, that he learned how to use the media, he learned how to build golf courses, he learned licensing, he learned these businesses, he learned how to be a television star, and then he learned how to be a president.
00:06:28.940 He's sort of an autodidact of, you know, of people, in a sense, that if people are involved, he can learn how to do this stuff really quickly.
00:06:41.220 So two things happened.
00:06:42.180 The situation changed to be more compatible with his aggressive personality.
00:06:49.820 You know, aggressive is what he does well.
00:06:52.260 It's, honestly, it's why a lot of us, you know, support him in the first place, is that he's more aggressive than other people.
00:06:58.520 And, honestly, that's the biggest part of his appeal, one of the biggest parts, is that he'll simply go where others won't go.
00:07:06.220 And sometimes you need that.
00:07:07.900 Maybe you don't need it every year.
00:07:09.680 Maybe you don't need it every decade.
00:07:11.920 But every now and then, you need somebody who will come in and just do the stuff that you wish had gotten done, but it's just too hard and nobody's going to be that aggressive.
00:07:21.220 And that's him.
00:07:21.780 So, I think we're close to turning a corner on ingenuity, not turning a corner on the problem.
00:07:31.960 There'll still be, you know, more cases tomorrow and maybe the day after.
00:07:36.640 But are you feeling the amount of human energy that's going into this?
00:07:43.700 Are you feeling the smartest people in the world just self-organizing into this, you know, mind-blowing power that we've never seen before, at least focused on a single issue?
00:07:56.820 I just saw a list.
00:07:58.460 I don't remember everything on it, but it was all a good news list.
00:08:03.320 So, you know, were you expecting to see a long list of good news?
00:08:07.720 Now, it's preliminary good news.
00:08:09.500 But it turns out that China has essentially written up their experience, and when you read it, it gives you kind of a playbook.
00:08:20.960 Because China tried a lot of stuff.
00:08:24.020 They tried it fast, they tried it hard, and they learned, and they learned, and they A-B tested, and they learned because they had to.
00:08:30.220 They had a lot of people to, you know, I hate to say experiment on because that's not the mindset.
00:08:35.340 But they had a lot of experiences by which they could see what worked and what didn't.
00:08:38.880 And they wrote them up.
00:08:40.580 And you look at the document, and it's almost a recipe for beating this thing in terms of the medicines that they used to treat.
00:08:48.700 And again, apparently this malaria drug that's been around for a long time, hydroxychloroquine, or whatever the other one is, totally works.
00:09:03.260 Apparently, the question about whether it's effective feels kind of answered, even though anecdotally there were so many anecdotal experiences, and they were so consistent.
00:09:16.520 It kind of looks like it works.
00:09:18.760 So, there's that.
00:09:20.560 Somebody's saying Plaquenil.
00:09:23.220 I think that's the manufacturer's name for it versus the generic name.
00:09:30.540 Oh, thank you.
00:09:31.120 In the comments, there's the word chloroquine.
00:09:34.260 Chloroquine.
00:09:35.740 And then there's one that's apparently even better that's, you know, hydroxychloroquine or something.
00:09:42.000 So, there's that.
00:09:42.860 Then there's also a number of other drugs that I didn't recognize that the Chinese tried and got good results with.
00:09:48.460 And then, also, we saw Ian on Twitter suggested the idea of taking the blood from people who had recovered and therefore had antibodies.
00:10:02.300 And I guess there's a process where you can take the good stuff out of the blood and give it to other people and get some immunity.
00:10:09.940 And, you know, Ian just floated this idea, was it this morning, I think?
00:10:16.300 It was early this morning, or yesterday, I guess.
00:10:18.980 And then the Chinese report came out, I just saw it today, and one of the things that they tried was that.
00:10:25.220 And apparently, it has some promise.
00:10:27.600 I don't know the full outcome, but it was worth trying, and it was worth it for them to mention it as something that others should try.
00:10:36.300 So, and apparently, they've done it, yeah.
00:10:39.200 So, there are a whole bunch of drugs for treating, and then there's news coming out of various places about vaccines.
00:10:49.660 I think that'll take longer.
00:10:51.160 But the effectiveness of the drugs that are, at least preliminarily, it's still too early to say, we have a drug that will fix this, you're all good.
00:10:59.840 But that's not what I'm saying.
00:11:01.560 I'm saying that the indication is so strong that we're ready to turn the corner, we haven't turned the corner.
00:11:09.800 But that we're prepping to turn the corner, you can almost feel it.
00:11:14.540 It's in the air now.
00:11:15.460 And you're seeing people being so amazingly creative and just self-motivated, you know, self-organizing, self-motivated.
00:11:29.460 So, on the treatment front, it's looking really good.
00:11:34.460 Now, the other thing that, of course, all of us, you know, we observers who are not experts, and we think we're experts because we, you know, we watched Hannity for 15 minutes or something.
00:11:45.460 But, you know, we're all crying for more test kits, and, you know, where's our testing?
00:11:51.800 Give me my test kit.
00:11:53.480 Blah, blah, blah.
00:11:55.300 Just watching my door-dashing approach here.
00:11:58.520 Excuse me.
00:11:59.300 Got to get that back on the map.
00:12:02.620 And here's the thing I don't know.
00:12:07.080 I don't, I, it seems to me that the, the regular news business became kind of hollow
00:12:12.960 because it turned into just talking about what Trump did today, which you don't need any base reporting for.
00:12:19.740 So, the only base reporting that we're seeing is coming out of just a few outlets.
00:12:24.400 You don't see much of it on TV.
00:12:26.500 Joel Pollack's done some for Breitbart.
00:12:29.380 I think the Washington Post has done some, probably the New York Times.
00:12:33.160 But, I imagine the Wall Street Journal.
00:12:35.260 But, there's not as much investigating.
00:12:37.740 And the question that I have is, what's up with the test kits?
00:12:42.980 What is up with the test kits?
00:12:44.480 My guess is that there's a whole lot of activity going on to prepare to make them.
00:12:54.040 And maybe they're already starting to crank them out in volume.
00:12:57.520 It's not, it's not the making it.
00:12:58.900 It's the volume part.
00:13:00.760 My guess is that by sometime next week, we're going to have a god-awful number of tests.
00:13:08.200 Because that's the sort of who we are.
00:13:10.280 We're a country that can manufacture stuff, and we can retrofit stuff, and we can figure stuff out, and we can solve problems.
00:13:18.440 And the best of us are focusing on the biggest problems.
00:13:21.980 The best of us.
00:13:25.740 So, I would take a lot of comfort from the fact that we've now had enough time that the smartest people in the world, no doubt, are starting to spin up factories to turn out the test kits.
00:13:38.300 And that's probably, if you had the treatment and the test kits, and you had them, let's say, in the next 30 days, you know, widely available, that might be optimistic.
00:13:48.320 But America, can America do that in 30 days?
00:13:53.100 In 30 days, do you think America could get these drugs into our pharmacies?
00:13:57.380 By the way, I checked my pharmacy, and I can't get that, you know, drug.
00:14:02.620 I just forget every time I mention it.
00:14:04.680 So, the drug that's working and widely available for malaria is not in my local pharmacy.
00:14:11.060 I don't know if it's because my doctor was a little unclear about why.
00:14:17.160 Could be because we don't need it.
00:14:19.640 Not a lot of malaria here.
00:14:21.500 Maybe.
00:14:22.380 Maybe that's why.
00:14:23.820 More likely, the government has already confiscated it.
00:14:27.940 Maybe.
00:14:31.000 Because there can't be that much of it that was sort of already in shells with the big medical, in this case it was Kaiser.
00:14:38.220 And it makes me wonder if the government didn't just say, you know, give it all to us and we'll control, we'll guess it, because it's going to be like gold.
00:14:47.280 Maybe.
00:14:47.820 I mean, just guessing.
00:14:49.080 It could be that they just don't keep it on stock.
00:14:51.180 So, I don't really know.
00:14:51.960 But, how hard would it be to get it?
00:14:55.860 How hard would it be to crank it out?
00:14:57.940 I don't think there's any chance that whatever manufacturing company makes this, I don't think there's any chance they aren't cranking it out right now.
00:15:09.960 You know, in all likelihood, the manufacturing is operating at, you know, 200% already.
00:15:18.080 We'll see if they can get enough.
00:15:21.500 Somebody said 47% false positive results.
00:15:24.700 Is that on the test?
00:15:27.000 You know, I'm told that the tests don't have to be 100% accurate to be 100% useful.
00:15:35.100 You know, it's better if they're accurate.
00:15:36.520 But, if you can catch most people, you really, you know, you can knock down the viral effect enough that maybe you can get a handle on it.
00:15:48.240 So, you don't have to beat it into complete submission.
00:15:51.880 You just want to wound it, and the testing might be able to do that.
00:15:57.960 Chloroquine.
00:15:58.620 Right.
00:15:59.500 Chloroquine.
00:16:00.820 That's the name of it.
00:16:03.700 17% are asymptomatic.
00:16:05.500 Yeah, the only thing I know, because we're all armchair experts here, right, the only thing we know for sure, oops, looks like my food's delivered.
00:16:17.460 It's a no-contact delivery.
00:16:19.460 So, I'm looking at the security camera, and I should get a text in a moment, because the new protocol is that you leave an instruction to just leave it at the front door, and then they text me when it's there.
00:16:34.320 There it is.
00:16:37.120 So, they're just texting me to say that they have delivered it to the front door.
00:16:41.620 Perfect.
00:16:42.740 It's a really good system.
00:16:44.220 You know, if you're not hooked on the home delivery of restaurant-cooked food, I get it, I get it.
00:16:49.960 It's a luxury.
00:16:50.820 Not everybody can afford it.
00:16:52.020 Even I don't do it often under normal conditions, but, man, it's a good product.
00:17:00.640 You know, if you don't mind paying a little extra, just the app and the delivery, they're really good.
00:17:07.900 It's one of the best products going.
00:17:10.760 Anyway, so there's that.
00:17:11.640 So, I think you're going to see testing coming online, and you're going to hear good news about that probably in a week.
00:17:19.320 I hope I can give you some good news about some stuff I know about that you don't know about.
00:17:24.800 But there are patriots who are trying to get some masks built and some other necessities, and they're working overtime on that, and it's happening.
00:17:35.880 Now, I want to give you another piece of optimism.
00:17:39.640 So, I saw a tweet from the head of the FCC, and let me see if I can find that there.
00:17:51.720 Boom, boom, boom, hold it.
00:17:53.400 So, I hope I can pronounce his name right, Ajit Pai, P-A-I.
00:17:59.140 So, chairman of the FCC, and I saw a tweet, and I thought, you know, he'd be a good person to ask about this,
00:18:06.220 you know, doctors practicing across state lines.
00:18:10.400 So, I thought, what are the odds, and what are the odds that the chairman of the FCC follows me on Twitter?
00:18:18.900 I think it was very high, but I check, and sure enough, the chairman of the FCC follows me on Twitter.
00:18:25.960 So, I followed him back, you know, I wasn't even following him, and DM'd him, and said, you know, because I think his tweet was about telemedicine,
00:18:38.160 and I said, when do we see the executive order for selling across state lines?
00:18:43.500 Now, keep in mind, this is just me sitting in my desk in California, and I sent a message to the head of the FCC in the middle of an emergency, productively.
00:18:56.220 I mean, this is not kids' business, it was a productive suggestion, and he gets back to me, like, right away.
00:19:05.200 I got a direct message to, you know, a central figure in our government with an important input, you know,
00:19:14.920 that we need that exception for practicing across state lines, just, you know, reminding, they got a lot under play, you know,
00:19:22.120 they got a hundred things going, but sometimes it helps just to, you know, move the important ones up to the front, make sure they're there.
00:19:28.640 So, he gets back to me, and basically, total agreement, and said, you know, they're working on it hard, and hopefully we'll get some movement on it.
00:19:38.320 Now, you know, that's far from the detail that would make me completely happy, because I really would like to know where this is going.
00:19:45.680 And then I just messaged him back, and I said, who needs their mind changed to get a temporary federal order?
00:19:51.820 I can help, because I can help, because of you.
00:19:56.380 So, you know, we've seen that the public is just part of this process now.
00:20:03.060 We're not spectators anymore.
00:20:05.560 So, if I can find out the name of somebody who's resisting, is there anybody resisting?
00:20:11.160 Because I have a hard time believing there's anybody on the other side of the question, which is partly why I suggest it.
00:20:16.920 It should be a no-brainer.
00:20:19.160 And, you know, obviously the states have their licensing boards, and they're a problem, but they're also not relevant.
00:20:26.380 Because emergency.
00:20:28.460 If the federal government, if, you know, if the president says, here's my executive order, you can practice across state lines, and the state bar says no, who cares?
00:20:41.000 Who cares?
00:20:41.680 If the federal government says, yeah, it's temporary, but you can do it, and the state says no, I don't know.
00:20:51.540 I think there must be some way that the feds could immunize, so to speak, doctors against any kind of harm.
00:20:59.020 So, part of why I wanted to talk about this is that, you know, there's going to be a lot of criticism, right, of who did what, did he do it in time, you know, was it the right thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:21:15.260 And that's just natural, because we're in the middle of something that we've never seen before.
00:21:21.540 Nobody's ever seen this.
00:21:22.800 Nobody knew what to do.
00:21:23.720 There was no game plan.
00:21:26.240 We do what we always do.
00:21:27.760 You've heard the famous saying about war, you know, everybody's got a strategy until the first bullet is fired.
00:21:34.500 Some version of that.
00:21:35.620 The idea is that you can have a strategy, but as soon as you get into the battle, you've got to improvise.
00:21:42.700 It's the improvising that's the thing.
00:21:44.840 It's not the strategy, because the strategies go on after the first bullet.
00:21:48.680 I think that was the case here.
00:21:50.900 Certainly, we could have had exactly the right strategy from the first moment, but I'm really skeptical anybody was that smart.
00:21:59.900 Not the greatest experts, and certainly not the people they were advising, our politicians.
00:22:04.760 So I don't think it was reasonable that we would hit a home run on the first pitch.
00:22:10.860 And I think, at the moment, people are doing a pretty good job of focusing on the ball, you know, focusing forward,
00:22:18.980 and not, you know, chewing ourselves to death with that stuff.
00:22:28.300 Just let me do this, and then I've got to go.
00:22:34.760 Excuse me.
00:22:37.860 House is full today.
00:22:39.860 With only the people who live here, not anybody else.
00:22:44.180 So, I just wanted to tell you that little story of incredible government efficiency.
00:22:54.260 That, you know, an idea can get to the right person, and I've been watching it all week.
00:22:59.220 There is no friction between a good idea and the person who needs to hear it.
00:23:04.340 There's no friction.
00:23:05.380 I've never seen this before.
00:23:07.160 I have a lot of, as you know, corporate experience, business experience.
00:23:11.400 And it's very rare that a good idea can get to the person who needs to hear it without any friction.
00:23:18.300 That's just now.
00:23:21.040 Nothing else is happening but that.
00:23:23.520 And the degree to which people are working together on this is amazing.
00:23:29.580 It's just amazing.
00:23:31.460 You know, I tweeted the other day that you're going to see some surges of human ingenuity
00:23:38.380 that would just be mind-boggling.
00:23:40.600 I'm already right on the edge of mind-boggled, but I don't think you've seen anything yet.
00:23:48.540 I feel like we're on the beginning.
00:23:50.480 We're in the elbow.
00:23:51.820 You know, I told you from the start that what this is going to look like is nothing, nothing,
00:23:57.620 nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing from our side.
00:23:59.940 You know, the humans.
00:24:01.340 No fight back, no weapons, no nothing.
00:24:03.560 Da-da-da-da-da.
00:24:04.260 Just getting worse, just getting worse.
00:24:06.040 Until it isn't.
00:24:06.940 When the weapons are ready, you know, when the atomic bomb is assembled, look at virus.
00:24:14.740 And we're getting close.
00:24:16.140 We're not there.
00:24:17.260 We're not there.
00:24:18.020 Hold on for another two weeks, and I think things are going to turn around.
00:24:21.440 The president's messaging is on track.
00:24:24.060 The experts are on track.
00:24:25.500 They know exactly what to do.
00:24:27.180 China, thank you.
00:24:28.340 The president thanked the people of China and President Xi for the great work of not only,
00:24:35.420 you know, getting it under control over there, but for also being transparent.
00:24:40.560 At this point, I think the president's being sincere about the transparency and telling us
00:24:45.340 what they did and what worked and what didn't, because that's the thing that will protect us.
00:24:48.880 So, do you love it or hate it that the president is being so generous to China?
00:24:56.380 Now, he was also calling it the Chinese virus as recently as yesterday.
00:25:01.460 In my opinion, that was a mistake, because it's just the wrong time to be political.
00:25:07.120 It just is.
00:25:07.860 But, when he says to China, this is also political, but I think in the context of a pandemic, it's the right play.
00:25:17.020 In the context of a pandemic, praising the work of the other countries is just where you want to be.
00:25:26.100 Even if you're not sincere about it, that's where you want to be.
00:25:28.980 So, get on the right side, pull together, unless you're single, and then you'll have to pull by yourself.
00:25:38.820 And then, I got a recommendation for some entertainment.
00:25:44.360 I just watched the Ford vs. Ferrari movie that's now available on pay-per-view.
00:25:51.160 And, I've got to say, for a guy who says on a regular basis there are no good movies anymore,
00:25:57.400 pretty good movie.
00:25:59.300 Pretty good movie.
00:26:00.140 You will not be disappointed by that movie.
00:26:02.100 It's really well done.
00:26:02.920 And, well done in, I would say, a more classic American film way.
00:26:09.840 Like, it reminded me of older films that I liked, but it was still a modern film.
00:26:15.020 And, it tells the real story about a, you know, a racing team, Ford, trying to beat Ferrari.
00:26:20.060 But, that doesn't give you the real flavor of it.
00:26:23.460 That's the backdrop.
00:26:24.840 You know, Ford trying to beat Ferrari.
00:26:26.700 But, it's way more interesting than that.
00:26:28.040 Characters are great.
00:26:29.040 The actors are great.
00:26:31.300 Plot is great.
00:26:33.500 Every part of it is actually, it's a great movie.
00:26:35.700 I can't find one weakness in it.
00:26:37.280 So, watch that.
00:26:38.020 If you like stuff like that, it'll make you feel good about America.
00:26:41.700 And, I'll talk to you later.
00:26:42.500 Thank you.