Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 861 Scott Adams： Sipping the Crisis Away. Join Me!

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in here. A little bit of technical difficulty, but I used all of

00:00:17.320 my technical know-how to work it out. It seems that if anybody from Twitter is listening,

00:00:26.360 for some reason the periscope would not initialize when I had the guest feature on, but when I turned

00:00:33.280 it off it did. I tested that on my phone with it out and my iPad, so there might be a little bug there

00:00:39.680 at the moment, or it could be a capacity issue. I'm guessing the internet is slowing down quite a

00:00:46.160 bit. People are noticing that already. But, oh, why are you here? Yes, I know why you're here.

00:00:52.980 It's a little thing called the simultaneous sip, and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass,

00:00:58.320 a tank or chalice or stye, and a canteen, jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:01:03.580 Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine to the end of the day, the thing that

00:01:06.720 makes everything better, including a pandemic. Join me now. Go.

00:01:14.480 Ah, just right. Well, let's talk about all of the things. So, big story in the news is that there

00:01:35.860 were some senators who sold some stocks ahead of announcing that things were as bad as they are.

00:01:44.480 And the thinking, of course, the thinking is that they traded on insider trading, but it seems like

00:01:53.580 there are at least three different situations. So, Senator Burr seems to have been more of a

00:02:02.600 cleaner situation where he got some information, he sold some stocks, and I think he owes the public

00:02:08.280 an explanation. Now, my experience with these things is that you really have to hear the other

00:02:16.120 side. You really have to hear the other side, but on the surface of it, it looks pretty bad. So,

00:02:23.700 he owes us an explanation. That's all I'm going to say. If he doesn't explain it, I think Tucker Carlson

00:02:30.040 said, and I would agree with it. If he can't explain it, he probably needs to resign. But I'm going to

00:02:36.040 say, hold my opinion until I hear the other side. Now, the other two seem a little sketchier. There's

00:02:44.740 somebody in Congress, doesn't matter who, who has the money in a trust, but is it a blind trust? Yeah,

00:02:53.320 there's some question there. Then the one that is the least credible is the Senator Dianne Feinstein.

00:03:00.300 Also, some amount of stock was sold. But if you don't realize how rich Dianne Feinstein is,

00:03:08.100 it looks like bad behavior. But as soon as you imagine that her wealth is this much, 0.80

00:03:13.780 the amount she sold was like a dot in that universe. The odds that Dianne Feinstein was doing

00:03:22.160 insider trading, I think, are vanishingly small. The others have a little more to explain.

00:03:28.660 But we'll wait. We'll see what's what. I want to mention something about Ilan Omar's

00:03:36.220 complimentary comments about President Trump, which, of course, is the most unexpected thing

00:03:41.660 in the world. And I'll remind you of this. Whatever you think of Ilan Omar personally or

00:03:50.920 her politics, and I'm sure that the audience for this is not big fans. But setting that aside for

00:03:57.560 a moment, if we can just be adult and separate the technique from the opinions, etc., her technique

00:04:06.440 has always been good, meaning that she's smart. She knows how to capture the public's attention. 1.00

00:04:13.740 And here's what I loved about Ilan Omar's play. First of all, it was the right thing to do.

00:04:20.280 Being supportive of your president when he's heading in the right direction, which was maybe

00:04:26.300 not day one, right? I mean, even supporters said it was off to a shaky start. But once the

00:04:33.460 president got on firm footing, and I think he clearly is at this point, it does make sense,

00:04:39.260 given the national mood and the worry that's in the air. It does make sense that Democrats would

00:04:45.040 at least try to join ranks, at least for the point of the emergency. And she did that. So if you could

00:04:52.500 separate yourself from, okay, what are her hidden intentions? What's she really up to? We can't read

00:05:00.160 her mind. We can just say, what was the right thing for a leader in the Democratic Party to do

00:05:05.960 right now? It was the right thing for the country. But there's another level to this in which Ilan

00:05:15.160 Omar solved one of her own biggest problems. And that's the clever part of this. Because if you can 0.97

00:05:22.040 find something that's unambiguously good for the country, and I think praising the president,

00:05:27.020 you know, once he was on firm footing, was good for the country, because it builds confidence, etc.

00:05:32.940 But there's another level, which is just good for her, which is, you know, you can argue that Ilan

00:05:40.320 Omar's biggest weakness as a politician is that people wonder if she's on the side of America, 0.87

00:05:47.140 right? I mean, this is not my opinion. I'm not even going to put my opinion in any of this.

00:05:52.420 I'm just saying that that is the criticism that her critics make. Hey, you're, you know,

00:05:57.460 you have some other loyalty. You're not an American, you want to destroy America, etc.

00:06:03.620 So by going so conspicuously against form, by complimenting the president, who she's eviscerated

00:06:11.120 on many occasions, she makes a really smart counterpoint, which is from this day forward,

00:06:19.980 if you say Ilan Omar doesn't have the best interests of the United States in mind, you have to explain

00:06:26.960 today. I mean, this week. Because to me, it looked like clearly a counter, counter political move.

00:06:36.660 Sorry, if you can hear my cat, she's going crazy. So she'll always have that thing to say,

00:06:43.500 you know, if I were purely a political creature, why did, why was I complimenting the president,

00:06:49.960 unless I meant it? So it's very smart play. It's good for the country. It's, you know, selfishly

00:06:57.040 politically good, but that's sort of hidden, and should be, by the fact it's good for the country.

00:07:02.560 So I'd say, if we could just separate what you think about her politically or personally,

00:07:07.040 from the technique, good technique. And, and it just has to be pointed out. I, you know,

00:07:19.840 I hate to be divisive, but there's something that's worth noticing in the public reactions

00:07:27.180 to things. You know, I've said that this is a time when everybody seems to be volunteering

00:07:33.340 to do whatever it is they can do. You know, what I can do is not that much. I can do this,

00:07:40.500 right? So, so I do this. I do this. And, but everybody's jumping in to do what they can do.

00:07:49.800 But the people who are least equipped for this situation, in many cases, are artists, you know,

00:07:56.700 writers, journalists, musicians, poets, etc. They may not have the skill set that is immediately

00:08:02.540 available. Now, I think artists are very important, and they'll certainly be part of,

00:08:08.120 you know, getting us back to normal and making us feel right. So artists are, you know, a gigantic

00:08:13.200 part of our experience and what makes life good, and it's important. So artists are wonderful.

00:08:19.520 And sometimes I pretend to be one. But during the crisis, we're noticing that the artists

00:08:25.580 sort of default to what they can do. And nobody cares about the art they're creating at the moment,

00:08:31.880 because we got bigger things to worry about. And I think they're defaulting to criticism,

00:08:36.460 because it's sort of what artists can do. So just a shout out to artists. This isn't the time.

00:08:46.120 You know, there will be a time when the artists are actually very important to our, our well-being,

00:08:51.520 our mind, or our public sense of, you know, who we are and all that stuff. You know, art's terribly

00:08:56.460 important. But not now, in terms of priorities. So, so you artists, I know you've got some opinions.

00:09:05.480 And how about just hold them? How about just hold them and help the, help the national mind to get

00:09:13.260 to some sort of comfort and some sort of confidence and do what can be done that is,

00:09:19.120 that's good. So cringy videos and criticisms of things that aren't going to change. Just not

00:09:27.320 helping. All right. Here's a, here's like a perfect example of bad behavior by an artist. Now,

00:09:36.840 I'm using artists to be, you know, writers and anybody in that field. This is something that

00:09:43.520 somebody said, where? Oh, in a CNN opinion piece. By not anticipating the catastrophe we are now

00:09:50.640 living, Trump joins a pantheon of American leaders whose failures of imagination have come at great

00:09:58.140 cost. The perspective was very different in the, in the Obama administration. Alice Hill writes for

00:10:04.900 CNN. And I'm thinking, is this the right time to pretend we know what somebody's imagination was

00:10:14.380 doing? I mean, it seems, again, not reading the room. Later? Later, this would be great. You know,

00:10:21.620 let's do our autopsy later. But this kind of weak, you know, generic concept level, I think I read his

00:10:31.860 mind. But compared to the person I imagined who doesn't exist, who was doing the job at the same

00:10:37.220 time in my imagination, man, the imaginary president did so well. So let me imagine what

00:10:43.640 this president did. And then I'll write something about what he was thinking and imagining as if I

00:10:48.040 knew. And compared to my magical thinking of somebody who wasn't actually there and doing the

00:10:53.000 job. And I don't really know any of the details of why they did what they did. It was just craziness.

00:10:58.440 Just skip them. So I would say that for a while, you know, people are going to be writing these

00:11:04.400 articles. They have to generate content. And let's, let's be honest, they need a paycheck too. 0.98

00:11:09.620 Everybody needs a paycheck. But for the time being, maybe just don't read them. You know,

00:11:14.800 forget about whether they're right or wrong. Just don't read them for now. Concentrate on something

00:11:18.760 else. The approval for the president has jumped dramatically in the last few days.

00:11:31.060 So he went from, I don't know, 43% approving to 55% approving of his management of the crisis.

00:11:40.180 That's pretty good. And I would say that the public is getting this right.

00:11:43.540 Wouldn't you? Because I think the public said that's a bad start. And the polls, the polls

00:11:51.120 reflected that. That was my opinion. I mean, my opinion was that we got off to a bad start.

00:11:56.660 But the difference is that when I say it's a bad start, I'm talking like an adult, an adult

00:12:05.080 who's lived more than, you know, three years of an adult life. An adult knows that in the

00:12:10.300 midst of an emergency of the type we've never quite seen. I mean, nothing's quite like this

00:12:15.340 experience. There's no such thing as people who were smart and knew what to do. That's

00:12:22.820 completely imaginary. Every criticism of what the administration did or did not do right

00:12:28.720 in the earliest days compares them to some magical non-existent person who knew exactly what

00:12:36.120 to do. That person didn't exist. Who exactly was the expert who knew what to do? I believe

00:12:43.020 there were none. Now, that's not to say that somebody didn't say the right thing from the

00:12:47.380 start. Because if you have any situation that it's complicated, there's a gray area, there's

00:12:52.860 lots of unknowns, and you can either go left or right, well, if you talk to enough experts,

00:12:58.880 you're going to have somebody who says go left and somebody says go right. After it's done,

00:13:04.760 you will mistakenly say that one of those two teams, either the go left or the go right,

00:13:10.660 got the right answer. But that's ridiculous. Because in any situation, there will be people 0.95

00:13:17.500 who say go left, people who say go right, and you're going to go one of those ways.

00:13:21.880 Somebody's going to look like they were geniuses in hindsight. That's not how it works. If you

00:13:27.400 were in the room in the early days, you probably didn't know what to do. And that's not because

00:13:33.460 you're dumb. It's not because you were incompetent. It's because the situation itself was very 1.00

00:13:39.300 opaque. China wasn't giving us, you know, reliable information. We didn't know yet how successful

00:13:45.680 we would be with this or that. So yeah, there are going to be plenty of people who say, oh,

00:13:51.360 yeah, I told you so. I knew it before the president did. It's just not a thing. It's just not a thing.

00:13:58.740 You will not find that there was anybody who just knew what to do. And here's the important part.

00:14:05.820 It's not knowing what to do. It's knowing exactly when to do it. Because remember, you're balancing

00:14:11.160 two unknowns, the unknown of what it would do to the economy, with potential devastating effect,

00:14:17.860 versus the unknown of what it would do to our health. These were two gigantic unknowns.

00:14:24.860 So I'm going to have no patience, no patience with the people who say that in that first week,

00:14:32.920 smart people knew what to do. That just isn't a thing. And let me say again, that on January 24th,

00:14:42.720 I was cursing in public online saying, close the airports, you know, a full week before the

00:14:49.120 president did, I think, something like that. Now, do I say I'm a genius, because I got that right?

00:14:58.180 I mean, in hindsight, it looks right. I do not. I do not. That was my opinion. All right. And when I

00:15:05.320 said we should close the airports, and I was damn certain about it. Does that mean I was right?

00:15:13.980 No. Does that mean that? I mean, it turns out I was right. But did I know it at the time?

00:15:20.900 I thought I knew it. But nobody's really that smart. Do I blame the president for waiting a few

00:15:28.040 days? I prefer he had gone earlier. But blame is sort of a child's game here. Because I didn't know

00:15:35.740 what the president knew. So all I knew was there's something bad happening in China to close the

00:15:42.160 airport. Now, when I said it, and many of you experienced it live, it was sort of a shocking

00:15:50.040 moment for people who didn't quite know how big the problem would become. My reaction to it probably

00:15:57.660 looked completely out of place. But here's the thing, you know, did I do that because I was smarter

00:16:04.620 than you? Did I do it because I've got a grudge against China, which I do? Did I, you know, 0.99

00:16:11.120 did I do it because I'm some, you know, expert on epidemiology? No, I can't even pronounce it.

00:16:19.900 But don't let anybody else tell you just because maybe they were on the right side, and they got

00:16:25.540 it early, like I did. You know, I think Jack Posobiec was even earlier than that. I think on January

00:16:31.780 22nd, he had tweeted, you know, close the borders. I think he had said something about close travel.

00:16:39.640 But basically, he was on it, you know, more than a week before the president closed it. Do I say then

00:16:45.900 therefore, oh, you know, Jack Posobiec and I were the geniuses? You know, we knew and gosh, anybody who

00:16:52.860 didn't know and do what we suggested got it wrong? No, no, I don't. Because I'm a frickin' adult.

00:17:02.060 And I've been in the world. And I know what it's like to be in the room. If you're in the room,

00:17:07.160 you know a lot more than cartoonist in California sitting in front of his iPad saying, you know,

00:17:12.200 shouting F-bombs saying close the travel from China. I thought I knew. And I thought it was

00:17:19.160 important enough to get people's attention so it was fully considered. But no, I didn't know what

00:17:24.120 they knew. I didn't have an economist saying, yeah, you know, if you do the math, you're going

00:17:30.140 to kill more people closing down the economy than you will. Maybe you wait a little. I don't know

00:17:35.300 what happened in the room. Who knows what the president was told? Who knows what the counterpoints

00:17:39.760 were? Who knows what the opinions are? So here's my thing. I'm going to say it a million times because

00:17:44.320 maybe nothing has ever been more important. Judge what the administration does by their

00:17:52.440 corrections. Not the mistakes. Because in an emergency, it's nothing but guessing, making

00:18:00.000 mistakes, seeing what happened, and correcting. So if you're only judging the guessing and making

00:18:04.740 mistakes part without the correcting part, you're not part of the productive world. You're not

00:18:10.980 looking at it correctly. It's not an adult opinion. It's almost like a childlike opinion.

00:18:15.900 Yeah, I know what the president of the United States and all of his experts should have done

00:18:19.980 without being there in the room, without having the knowledge. All right. So enough on that.

00:18:28.760 Let me give you a perfect, another example. So the government, the administration is looking

00:18:35.120 at, you know, there's cash payments to citizens to keep people eating and get them through the

00:18:41.480 crisis. And look at this. So you're seeing a reproduction of the fog of war around this

00:18:49.340 question of what to do to, you know, stabilize the economy. This is very similar in type.

00:18:56.000 I don't want to make an analogy, but it's similar in type because of the unknowns to the original

00:19:01.780 decision that the president and his administration had about what to do about the virus. So this

00:19:07.060 new fog of war is just a perfect example of what I'm talking about. So, you know, some

00:19:13.260 of the smartest people in the world are saying that, you know, a trillion-ish dollars should

00:19:18.440 be pumped into the economy. Now remember, these are like smartest people in the government

00:19:22.160 are saying, right, think about a trillion, put it in there. Meanwhile, you may know this

00:19:29.480 name, Ray Dalio, said the stimulus package is way too small and should be maybe doubled.

00:19:36.240 Doubled. A hundred percent difference. We're talking about an extra trillion dollars. Now

00:19:44.680 who's Ray Dalio? Do you care? Well, you should, because everybody who's smart knows Ray Dalio

00:19:50.140 is like the smart guy of the smart guys, right? In this world of finance and economics, the people

00:19:57.780 who know this world, and I count myself, you know, at least a little bit knowledgeable

00:20:03.460 about it. If anybody's new here, I've got a background in economics degree and MBA and

00:20:10.040 I've worked in corporate America for a long time. So Ray Dalio is somebody that would be

00:20:15.280 very familiar to me. Actually, I have his book. You know, I have his book downstairs. And

00:20:20.260 if he goes in the room and says the right number is two trillion and other people who are just

00:20:27.740 as smart, you know, Raymond, you know, Mnuchin and all of those cats, they're all in the same

00:20:33.800 room and one of them says the right number is a trillion and somebody else smart says the

00:20:38.840 right number is two trillion. Who's the smart one? The answer is nobody knows. There's, it's

00:20:46.560 sort of a guesswork. So that's how big the difference is that the most qualified and well-informed

00:20:53.680 experts could be that far apart. So they're going to make, they're going to try something,

00:20:58.420 right? So in the end, there will either be a check or not a check. And that check will

00:21:03.480 be a certain amount and not some other certain amount. We're going to try it. If it isn't right,

00:21:09.680 we're going to correct. Judge the correction. All right, you can see this one forming. If

00:21:16.800 it's too little and they correct, that was the right move. If it's too much, well, I don't

00:21:22.520 know if you can do too much. Can you? Can you do too much? Is that even a thing? So look

00:21:30.160 for the corrections, the fast corrections for your assumption of competence. Don't look for

00:21:35.340 the first guess because the smartest people in the world are not anywhere near the same

00:21:40.420 page. So you should not be second guessing. The smartest people in the world say, well,

00:21:45.360 if I were there, it's a trillion. I think it's 1.2 trillion. That's the right amount. All

00:21:51.080 right, let's talk about the idea itself. So the sticking point here is that at least the

00:21:55.660 way it's been floated is that there'd be a $100,000, $99,000, whatever cut off. And then

00:22:02.340 you wouldn't get a check if your income is above that. I don't know if that's family

00:22:06.420 or individual, but the details don't matter as much as the principle. Now, what would happen

00:22:13.380 to the country in terms of our unity, our national mood, etc., if only the people under a certain

00:22:21.920 income get that money? And we all know, I mean, you don't have to be a genius. You don't

00:22:27.340 have to be Ray Dalio to know this, that there would be plenty of people above 100,000, you

00:22:33.640 know, maybe below 150, whatever the number is, that lost their job and they can't buy food.

00:22:41.200 There are plenty of people. I mean, there have to be tens of millions of people in the category

00:22:46.260 that they make more than that on paper, but they can't buy groceries because they didn't

00:22:52.520 get paid this week. There's got to be plenty of people. So what happens if they don't get

00:22:56.040 any money and other people do? Well, there could be plenty of complaining and there's going 0.86

00:23:00.820 to be a lot of people saying, hey, what's going on? So let me, let me toss out one possibility

00:23:09.180 and I'm just going to put that out there. I don't know if this is a good idea. Again, to

00:23:16.040 my point, the smart people can disagree greatly in this field of great unknowns. Suppose you

00:23:24.520 did this and I'll just put it out there as a suggestion. I don't even know if it's a good

00:23:27.920 one. There is something very different about this situation that cannot be compared to anything

00:23:34.980 that we humans and especially we Americans have ever, have ever been in. And it has to

00:23:39.880 do with the fact that we're all on the same team for all practical purposes. That's a

00:23:47.480 different situation and it allows maybe some different strategies. Let me just put this

00:23:54.980 out here. And I said it once as a, as a thought experiment, but I'm getting more serious about

00:24:00.280 it now. It's still just a thought, but I'm a little more serious. And it goes like this.

00:24:05.280 Could you trust the people who have sufficient incomes to get through the emergency? I would

00:24:15.260 be one of them. Could you trust them to donate their money back? In other words, if you just

00:24:20.860 gave money to everybody with no regard to income, could you trust that the billionaires, the millionaires

00:24:28.280 or just the people who were, who didn't lose their paycheck? Could you trust that they would donate

00:24:34.480 it intelligently in their community? You know, give everybody a check and say, you know, your president

00:24:41.900 of the United States, look, we don't have time to sort this out, but you're, you're local. If you're rich,

00:24:48.960 I'm going to trust you to do the right thing. Now, maybe make it easy. There could be a specific way

00:24:53.720 you could donate it back. There might be a way you can, you know, write void on your check and,

00:24:58.740 you know, register it on something. Might be some way that you can, you can be sure that you gave it

00:25:06.080 to somebody who didn't already get money from somebody else. So maybe there's a way to register,

00:25:11.340 you know, who you donated to too, so they don't get, you know, multiple, too much multiple contributions

00:25:17.600 and when somebody else gets nothing. So I've seen a lot of no's, but if you, if you can, by the way,

00:25:28.580 I'm not selling this as a great idea. I'm just putting it out there because the more ideas we

00:25:33.420 have, you know, maybe that helps somebody fix a different idea. Somebody says some would and some

00:25:40.220 wouldn't. Now that's the assumption that I would like to test. Imagine that some would just keep it.

00:25:45.480 What percentage? And does it matter? Maybe not. Maybe it doesn't matter.

00:25:54.780 But I think this is a different national mood. I think that every person who can help is helping.

00:26:02.820 This is very different. So that's, that gets down to why this is different than any other time.

00:26:07.360 If this were normal times, of course you don't send money to rich people. Of course. But could you

00:26:13.640 trust them? Could you trust the citizens, the rich ones, the rich enough ones, you know, the ones that's

00:26:20.160 not even rich, but rich enough? Could you trust them? I think yes. Now I would certainly, I'm not going

00:26:29.080 to fight too hard with you if you say no, and that doesn't work, it'll make things worse, and people

00:26:34.320 will complain because the rich people kept their money and all that. But I don't think so. I think the

00:26:41.520 way I'm reading the room is that that money would fly out of the rich people's hands as fast as they

00:26:47.280 could get rid of it. I believe that they would be racing to get rid of it. Because you know what you

00:26:52.800 don't want to be in the middle of a pandemic? You know what you don't want to be? The rich asshole who

00:26:59.780 kept money that should have gone to the poor. Nobody wants to be that guy, that woman, that guy. 1.00

00:27:05.560 Nobody wants to be that person. And I think that money would just like fly out of the hands of the

00:27:12.440 rich. They'd give it to a local restaurant. They'd give it to a local business. I think it

00:27:18.380 wouldn't last 10 minutes before the rich gave it away. That's what I think. Now, I just put it out

00:27:24.960 there. It would require the highest level of trust. Can you trust your fellow citizens, especially the

00:27:34.500 ones who have more money, can you trust them in this emergency? I think you can. I think you can.

00:27:44.040 And maybe it would be a good thing for the national psyche just to prove it. Now, I'm not the smartest

00:27:50.700 guy in the room on this issue, that's for sure. Not even close. So I'll just put it out there as an idea.

00:27:56.020 All right. You know, here's some stuff I'd like to know an answer to. So, you know, we're coming to

00:28:10.520 understand that this is an information problem that got turned into a health care problem. You know,

00:28:16.200 if we had perfect information, we would have no problem already. It'd be solved because I would know

00:28:20.800 who has the virus. And I'd say, oh, Bob has the virus. I'll stay away from Bob. And then two weeks

00:28:24.860 later, everybody's good. So if you had perfect information, you'd be fine. And as we're gaining

00:28:30.480 information about, you know, what tools and what tests and who hasn't, who doesn't, what works,

00:28:35.200 what doesn't, you know, that's how we'll get over the top. So definitely an information

00:28:42.280 kind of a problem. But here's some questions with the information. So some things I want to know.

00:28:54.200 To improve my feeling of comfort, I would like to know the following thing. What do we know about

00:29:00.400 the number of people who were treated with chloroquine and then lived versus died? So in other words,

00:29:10.180 we have death rates of just people, you know, summed up in average. But I want to see the death

00:29:15.780 rates specifically of people who got chloroquine, let's say, before they were ventilated. So you

00:29:23.200 probably want to look at only pre-ventilated people because then you could imagine that it was too 0.78

00:29:28.640 late. So if you subtract out to people that you don't know if it's too late or not, but it would ruin

00:29:34.660 your numbers either way, you take them out. So no ventilated people, just people who were maybe

00:29:39.700 heading that direction. How many of them who got the full, you know, chloroquine treatment actually

00:29:46.900 died? And then of the ones who died, how many of them had an underlying condition that that explained

00:29:52.720 it? And because here's what I'm going to predict. All right. And I'm going to talk for him in a moment

00:29:59.620 about Dr. Fauci, who is a way less optimistic about chloroquine than, than people who have read up on it

00:30:08.400 are. And I'll explain that in a minute. But I want to know if this works to allow people not to die

00:30:19.820 unless they had an underlying condition. That would be very good to know. Now, the president said it could be a

00:30:25.600 game changer, you know, maybe, maybe not. So he left some doubt there, but he used the phrase game

00:30:30.960 changer. And that made the public think that we've really got something good and things are going to

00:30:35.920 go well. When Dr. Fauci, who we all recognize as the one we want to listen to, you know, if there's a

00:30:43.500 tiebreaker on facts, who are you going to listen to, right? All right. If our president who likes to put a

00:30:50.440 good spin on things says this, and Dr. Fauci, who does not try to put a good spin on things, he's just

00:30:56.800 trying to give it to you straight. He says something a little different. Who are you going to believe?

00:31:02.020 Well, under normal circumstances, I'd say, well, maybe you want to lean toward Dr. Fauci, but this

00:31:08.580 might be an exception. And let me, let me say why. So Fauci was asked about it. And he said, there's

00:31:13.920 no magic drug, meaning that is, and then he goes on to explain, there's no magic drug that's both

00:31:21.340 effective and safe, or has been tested to be effective and safe. It's the, has been tested part

00:31:29.740 that's critical. My cat won't shut up. Can you hold just a second? I got to let her out. I wouldn't do

00:31:37.640 this. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Thanks. You can tell this is a

00:32:07.620 high quality production, because all your high quality productions, they stop what they're

00:32:13.540 doing to let the cat out. All right. I was talking about Fauci somewhat disagreeing with

00:32:17.100 the president's characterization of this chloroquine. So is it a game changer? Maybe, as the president

00:32:25.740 says, or is it no magic drug that is, you know, tested to be safe and efficacious? Why would

00:32:33.040 they be sort of a little bit different? Well, are they? Are they? Did the president say that

00:32:41.400 the drug had been tested and was safe and efficacious? He did not. So when Fauci says that

00:32:48.720 there's no magic drug that is tested, that's safe and effective, that's compatible with what

00:32:55.680 the president says. The president is just saying it could be good. Fauci is just saying it could be

00:33:03.060 good. They're just using different words. Basically, there's no difference. Now, Fauci is holding back

00:33:10.680 on the optimism, but I believe he also gave us the why, because we've already experienced hoarding of

00:33:20.340 toilet paper, right? So we're in a world where we know that hoarding would happen. What if Fauci said,

00:33:27.420 this is the magic pill? If you have this pill, you can live. If you don't have this pill, you might die.

00:33:34.920 What would happen? What would happen? Right? So I think Fauci is playing a careful game here,

00:33:46.100 which is, I believe the government might have a lot more belief in its efficiency and safety

00:33:53.480 than our top expert is letting on. Number one, it just always makes sense not to let people get

00:34:00.840 complacent. It's still, you know, an emergency situation. And there would be several benefits

00:34:06.900 of downplaying it. The number one benefit is that it would reduce the number of people who hoard it,

00:34:13.500 and it would reduce the number of people who are willing to maybe get violent to get it.

00:34:18.260 Because the last thing you want to hear is that your neighbor has some of this drug and you don't,

00:34:22.540 but you have a gun. See where I'm going with this? How would you like a country where there's a magic

00:34:29.440 pill? Some people have it because they got a connection, whatever. So some people are going to

00:34:35.300 have anything. Some people got it from their secret Mexico source, whatever. And they've got the pill,

00:34:40.940 but the neighbor's got a gun. You want to live in that country? If your government says, yeah,

00:34:48.480 this is a magic pill. If you have it, you can live. If you don't have the pill, you might die.

00:34:54.120 Neighbor has it. The other neighbor doesn't have it, but he's got a gun. You don't want to live in

00:34:59.160 that world. So when you look at the brainpower in some of these people, so no matter what you want to

00:35:06.460 say about Fauci, he's going to have his critics, he's going to have his supporters just like

00:35:11.540 everybody, right? But he's super smart. Nobody's saying he's not smart. Is it smart for Fauci to

00:35:19.740 downplay it a little bit for now until we have so much of it that everybody can have as much as they

00:35:24.840 want? Because that's where we're at, right? Bear said they'd send us three million, but do we have

00:35:30.020 them? Do we have them? Probably not yet. Did they come over on the plane the same day? I don't know.

00:35:37.080 Did they give us, you know, 100,000, but they're cranking out the rest? I don't know. How many

00:35:42.200 hospitals are there? How many people might need it? What is the projection? I don't know. But I do know

00:35:47.940 that if the supply is not directly under the control of the medical professionals,

00:35:54.400 we're going to have some problems. How many of you know a doctor who could write a prescription

00:36:02.780 and you've contacted that doctor and said, doctor, can you get me some of this quick before it runs

00:36:09.620 out just in case? You know, I'm not your patient. I'm your best friend. Can you give me some of this?

00:36:15.800 How many people have done that already? A lot. A lot. Did I try to get some of that early? Oh, I did. I did.

00:36:27.220 I contacted my doctor by email, of course, and asked, I said, hey, I'm in the danger group. I said,

00:36:37.320 I'm in the danger group. I'm over 60, asthma. And is there any way I could get a hold of this

00:36:43.420 since it's well tolerated? I said, can I get a hold of it so I can take it prophylactically,

00:36:48.620 meaning to prevent getting the virus if I'm exposed? And my doctor gave me an answer

00:36:55.800 that I feel like was the responsible answer, but was probably also a lie. I think it was a lie by

00:37:04.300 omission. It wasn't a lie in the standard sense. And my doctor wrote back that we don't handle it in

00:37:13.040 the pharmacy. Now, here's what's wrong with that, Ansel. It's not carried in the pharmacy.

00:37:19.000 Here's what's wrong with that. Do you believe that? Well, first of all, I don't know. It's possible.

00:37:25.640 But the pharmacy can order kind of anything you want. And your doctor can write a prescription

00:37:32.040 that you could take to some other pharmacy. So did my doctor give me a straight answer

00:37:38.420 when she simply said, and then just dropped it, you know, we don't carry that in the pharmacy.

00:37:44.440 She didn't say it was a bad idea to take it. It's, you know, conspicuously not there.

00:37:51.540 She didn't say, you know, leave it for the medical professionals, because then I would have been

00:37:56.280 in hoarding mode for sure. No, I wouldn't have, but, you know, my mind would have gone there.

00:38:02.600 Um, and you don't want to be thinking about its availability, like, oh, what, maybe if I tried

00:38:09.840 harder, I could get some of this. So I think my, I think my doctor did the responsible thing

00:38:17.200 by sort of taking me off the trail, just sort of nudging me off the trail. And I felt it was like

00:38:23.260 a gentle nudge. It's like, not now. That's what it felt like. And I think that was exactly the right,

00:38:29.760 the right play. Not good for me. What's good for me is I get an early dose and I'm protective and

00:38:36.580 you're not right. That's what's good for me. But what was good for the public, I think is the way

00:38:42.280 my doctor played it, which is we don't carry that. Now what I think that might mean, and here I'm just

00:38:48.520 guessing, if I had to guess the big medical entities that would already have some supply of this,

00:38:56.040 probably some time ago got an order from the government that you can't give it out prophylactically.

00:39:04.160 Guessing. I would like to think that my government was clever enough as soon as they thought this,

00:39:10.500 this drug has some potential because they knew before we did, right? They were hearing the,

00:39:13.980 the official news from other countries. I would like to know that they immediately went to the

00:39:18.720 people who had the supply and said, lock it down. It's going to be only for the, you know,

00:39:23.720 essentials only for, I mean, I'd like to, I'd like to think that all of our first line healthcare

00:39:29.680 providers are getting it prophylactically by the end of the week. You know, there's a timing issue,

00:39:35.860 of course, but by the end of the week, wouldn't you like to know that even if you don't have it,

00:39:42.120 don't you want to know your doctor has it? You know, the doctor that's working on the front line,

00:39:46.000 you want them to have it first, right? Um, and that's probably where we're heading and there's

00:39:52.780 probably a limit of supply. So I'm going to be a team player for now and I'm not going to try to

00:39:57.840 find some secret way to hoard it, uh, even though I think I probably could if I worked on it. All

00:40:02.860 right. Um, so I'm going to say that Fauci and the president are not really on different pages,

00:40:11.620 but they're trying to manage, manage, uh, our expectations differently. I think I approve of

00:40:19.120 the difference because there's a little bit of an accidental, you know, there's some form of a good

00:40:24.580 cop, bad cop, bad example. But if the president's giving us a, Hey, there's reason for optimism

00:40:30.560 story. And his expert is saying, well, not so fast. That's sort of exactly where I want them to be.

00:40:39.320 See what I'm saying? I want my leader to say things will be all right. At the same time,

00:40:44.160 I want my expert to say, you know, hold on, you know, might be good, but let's test this thing.

00:40:52.260 All right. So I'm quite happy with that. Meanwhile, the least relevant person in the entire world,

00:40:57.780 uh, you may have heard of him. His name is Joe Biden. Have you heard that name? He's running for

00:41:03.300 president or something, but he's the least important person in the world right now. And,

00:41:08.240 uh, he, he tweets this out yesterday. Yesterday, he tweets this out. The Obama Biden administration

00:41:16.760 set up the white house national security council directorate for global health security and

00:41:21.760 biodefense to prepare for future biopandemics like COVID-19. Wow. They were smart. Donald Trump

00:41:29.600 eliminated it. And now we're paying the price. Well, most of you know, that's just fake news.

00:41:37.680 It was eliminated in the sense that those functions were folded into something else and the redundancy

00:41:43.260 was eliminated. Yeah, the redundancy was eliminated, but this is just not true. Now, how would you like

00:41:50.720 to be in the middle of a global pandemic? The country's fighting for its economic life and the

00:41:57.040 guy who wants to be president, the only thing he added to it was fake news to make you feel bad

00:42:03.120 about your president who is leading this effort? Seriously? I mean, I don't think you could do a worse

00:42:10.980 job of being even a citizen. I mean, forget about, you know, what it is for his campaign that's going to

00:42:18.580 lose anyway. I mean, he's irrelevant because he's not going to win. But that's the best you could do

00:42:25.480 for the country. The best you could do for the country, Joe Biden, was to put some fake news up

00:42:31.440 that makes you doubt your president during a time of crisis. That's it. That's how you thought you

00:42:36.560 could help? Disgusting. And let me shout out some people who have been critics of the president 0.99

00:42:45.220 who I think are really stepping up. I said this before. Mark Cuban, great job, leadership. You

00:42:52.640 know, just love to see natural leaders just stepping up. Ilhan Omar, praising the president's

00:43:02.780 performance against type. I give her credit. I think Presley said the same thing, if I'm not

00:43:10.380 mistaken. Fact check me on that. And I would like to thank Bernie, Bernie Sanders. So this is not a,

00:43:18.280 this definitely is not a Democrat versus Republican thing, because I'm praising Bernie Sanders for being

00:43:24.380 productive, for shouting down CNN about making this political. Andrew Yang, very productive. Thank you,

00:43:32.380 Andrew Yang. You know, good citizen. And I think Yang really softened up the public with his UBI to make

00:43:42.640 even what we're talking about possible. I mean, it just makes it easier for everybody. So I think Yang

00:43:47.260 has been tremendous. And I think, you know, Dana Bash, CNN contributor, I'm not sure exactly job title,

00:43:56.360 but very positive, very constructive, I think. So big shout out to everybody who's being

00:44:04.040 constructive, be they Democrats or anything else. But Joe Biden's not. And I think that's worth

00:44:11.520 mentioning. So did anybody buy stocks?

00:44:20.420 Oh, yeah. Mike Bloomberg, I believe, is donating gigantic amounts of money. And at the moment,

00:44:34.140 I haven't heard Bloomberg complain about the president. Kasich, John Kasich, Patriot. Exactly.

00:44:42.980 Somebody says Zuckerberg went live yesterday. You know, I don't know what Zuckerberg's doing.

00:44:47.500 Well, I think we can guarantee it's productive. I know Elon Musk said that Tesla could make

00:44:56.700 ventilators if needed. So I don't know if that's going to happen, but people are stepping up.

00:45:04.440 Somebody says maybe anti-malaria drug is a reason for a few cases in Africa. That is possible.

00:45:11.920 The other possibility is that there's a genetic marker. Well, there's a genetic difference, meaning

00:45:18.920 that the ACE2 inhibitors or whatever the hell it is, receptors in the lungs. Clearly, I'm not a doctor.

00:45:29.720 But there does seem to be some genetic difference that makes some people more susceptible. And some of

00:45:35.900 it might be smoking and weight and obesity and things like that. And here's one thing you don't,

00:45:41.480 you know, if you're looking for the obvious, how many obese people do you ever see in Africa?

00:45:49.580 And every time I hear about somebody dying, are they not 60% of them obese? Maybe 60% of the world is

00:46:00.420 obese. But if I'm, if I'm asking myself why it doesn't seem to be hitting Africa as hard as you'd 0.80

00:46:06.360 want, the questions you'd ask is, maybe they just don't have good testing. Maybe it is and we don't

00:46:12.600 know it. Maybe there's a lung difference that some people have. Maybe they're, maybe they smoke less.

00:46:18.940 I don't know. Do Africans smoke as many cigarettes as everybody else? You never, I can't think of a

00:46:26.300 picture of Africa where I saw somebody with a cigarette in their mouth. They must have smokers, 1.00

00:46:30.920 but I don't know. Is it a big thing there? And how often do you see obese Africans in Africa?

00:46:38.240 I don't know. It could be, they could actually just be healthier. Could be that. But it also could

00:46:45.320 be that some of them are already taking the malaria drug. That's possible. I can't imagine there would

00:46:51.000 be enough people taking it. Is it, is it, is it like a vitamin in Africa? Does somebody, somebody

00:46:57.060 do a fact check on that, right? Can somebody, here's what I want. I want somebody to do a fact

00:47:01.780 check where they overlay on the, on the global map, the percentage of people who are regularly

00:47:08.800 taking the malaria drug just because they're in that zone. Is that a thing? Do you take it

00:47:16.140 preventively? I don't even know if that's a thing. Um, but I like, I'd like some visibility on that.

00:47:23.740 All right. Somebody says, are you sure you want to go down this road? Yeah, I don't know what you're

00:47:30.060 talking about. Um, not many obese Chinese, but lots of smokers. Um, it also could be, um, ventilation. 1.00

00:47:47.100 You know, one thing I imagine that you have less of in Africa, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:47:52.600 is air conditioning. Now in the cities, I suppose they must have enough, but, uh, I can't imagine

00:48:00.300 there's a ton of air conditioning and just the, you know, the general African public outside of the,

00:48:05.500 the cities. So maybe that's a factor too. You know, the, the recirculating of the air.

00:48:10.340 Yeah, I saw that weird, uh, press thing where de Blasio said it's okay for him to go to the gym

00:48:19.140 because he needs to stay healthy to manage the crisis. And I thought that that goes in the pantheon

00:48:26.340 of bad political answers. But again, he's, he's a frontline leader in an emergency and I'm not going

00:48:34.180 to, you know, I'm not going to kneecap de Blasio for going to the gym. You know, you can, you can make

00:48:40.640 your own judgment about that. But at the moment we just need to be on the same team. Um, somebody

00:48:48.160 says Italy is a skinny country. Now others have suggested that the number of young people living

00:48:54.160 with grandparents probably is a big factor in the death rate, not in the rate of people who get it,

00:48:59.520 I suppose. But, um, we're, we're getting a pretty good idea that there are probably five or six

00:49:08.480 things going on that may have a factor. Um, even the expats I know in Africa eventually 1.00

00:49:18.800 stopped taking it. Oh, is it something you take for a while and then don't take anymore? I've never

00:49:24.560 heard that. Uh, no, it's experience from HIV, Ebola prevention. So somebody suggested that Africa

00:49:37.360 has some kind of experience maybe that's helping them, but I don't know how that would translate

00:49:41.680 into real world action. Somebody says, remember you pick this road. I don't know what you're talking

00:49:50.160 about. Somebody says it's summer in Africa. Could be, could be a factor. Somebody says 50% of the world

00:49:58.800 lives in malaria areas. Uh, Italian doctor says men do not do as well as women. Would that also be related

00:50:10.160 to the fact that men don't live as long as women? So in other words, if, if your problem is that old 0.52

00:50:15.920 people are dying and that it generally just, if it attacks you sort of generally, you know, it's not

00:50:23.520 like, well, let me say it this way. Among very old people, the males are going to die at a higher rate 0.99

00:50:32.160 than the women, right? So the same threat to a man or a woman at age 75 should be harder on the man.

00:50:40.480 No matter what it is. Is that true? You'd have to fact check that, but it could be as simple as,

00:50:47.040 you know, men have the lower, uh, lower life expectancy and it's just accentuated by this.

00:50:55.760 Have I heard about the Stafford Act hoax? Yeah. So apparently people are getting some kind of a

00:51:02.640 unsolicited text message saying that there's going to be some kind of martial law lockdown or something.

00:51:08.320 And we think that foreign, foreign actors are behind it. We think that might be China,

00:51:14.240 et cetera. Now you're watching that China continues to push the idea with people who are clearly have

00:51:21.520 been cleared by the government to blame the United States for starting the, for starting it. And

00:51:29.600 apparently they're going to keep pushing that button because their domestic audience, you know,

00:51:35.120 they can tell them anything they want. And, uh, how should we process that?

00:51:44.720 It seems to me that the, there's legislation, uh, right now to bring the supply lines,

00:51:50.640 at least for pharmaceuticals back. And I think there's other legislation about bringing just the

00:51:55.840 supply chain in general back. I don't think there's any, I don't think there's any chance

00:52:02.160 going forward that decoupling is not going to happen.

00:52:04.880 So if, if you're looking, if you're keeping track of who said, who said the right thing first,

00:52:12.480 and you should, because I always recommend you should look at people's predictions and then see

00:52:18.240 how they did. And you should do it for yourself and you should say it publicly. Because if you don't

00:52:22.880 say publicly, here's my prediction. And then publicly I got it right or publicly I got it wrong.

00:52:28.560 It's too easy to forget the ones you got wrong, if you know what I mean. If you don't put it out

00:52:33.520 there so other people could remind you. Um, I would like to remind you that not too many people were

00:52:38.800 saying decouple from China before I was, I wasn't first by any means, you know, Gordon Chang and Kyle

00:52:46.720 Bass and those guys have been on it for a long time, but I was early and there are going to be a lot

00:52:52.240 more people who are going to be joining that. So if you're keeping score, keep that in

00:52:57.680 mind. All right. Um, isn't LA on lockdown? Well, I, all of California is on lockdown as of

00:53:08.560 yesterday, I believe. So lockdown means that we can only, we can only leave the house for essential

00:53:14.080 services. So, uh, banks, uh, you can do takeout food. You can't go to a restaurant. You can have

00:53:21.280 delivery. You can go to the doctor. You can get, you can get meds. Um, and then anybody who's working

00:53:27.680 on critical infrastructure stuff they can do. So California is locked down.

00:53:36.240 Um, how many of you I'd like to see in the comments, I want to see if I've influenced you

00:53:42.640 in this one way. How many of you have added taking a nice walk to your daily routine? And I mean daily,

00:53:50.480 not just something you did once. How many of you have taken seriously going for a long walk every

00:53:55.680 day? Um, it was a little delay in the comments. So I'll wait to see, but just, just tell me how many

00:54:01.600 of you are doing it. Cause I could not recommend this more strongly. I've AB tested it at home.

00:54:07.440 And the, the one time I didn't go for my long walk, man, I could feel it mentally, mentally and

00:54:15.600 physically. I could really feel it. Um, yeah, Nikki Haley. I don't know what that's all about.

00:54:28.080 Doesn't trade encourage good behavior. Apparently it did not. Um, the hope was that trading with

00:54:34.960 China would cause them to be better partners, but instead they used it as a weakness to,

00:54:42.400 to, uh, take advantage. So given that that's what we know they will do, um, it makes no sense to

00:54:49.440 follow that, that plan still. Uh, Trump had, uh, yeah. And I think you'd have to say that

00:55:00.800 Trump was, um, early on and the China is not necessarily our friend, but let's not be,

00:55:09.200 let's not start a war with them, but they're not our friend. I think Trump was early on that.

00:55:14.240 Oh, look at all the, uh, comments that are starting to come in now. I'm very proud of you.

00:55:20.240 Because there aren't many things you can do during the emergency that you know are the right

00:55:24.240 thing to do. I mean, just unambiguously, you just know it's the right thing to do.

00:55:29.840 But taking a long walk every day is definitely the right thing to do.

00:55:37.280 Now, if you're going to, somebody is mentioning Nassim Taleb. Now, to be fair, I blocked him a long

00:55:42.800 time ago for not understanding this. Now, he's a smart guy, and I'm sure if you heard his side of it,

00:55:52.480 it would sound differently. It would sound, you know, maybe better than the way I'm going to

00:55:56.400 characterize it. But he was, he was always the main proponent of the argument that even if there

00:56:02.800 was just a small chance that climate change was real, you should still put massive resources against

00:56:08.800 it because a one percent chance of, of doing that much damage to the earth is just too big.

00:56:15.520 So he sort of did a math approach to it. And the, what's it called? There's some principle,

00:56:20.560 and he put big words to it and big names. And I looked at it and I said, that's just a great

00:56:26.560 thinking there if you only had one problem. If we lived in a world with exactly one thing that could

00:56:32.920 take down the entire economy, yeah, you should spend all your money on it. You should really make sure

00:56:39.440 you don't have that one percent chance. But what if you have more than one problem that could take out

00:56:44.120 your whole economy? If we had put, here's a thought experiment for you. Let's say that on day one,

00:56:52.120 when AOC and, and those who supported her came up with the Green New Deal on day one, and let's say

00:57:00.020 we, the country said, you know, sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good. Let's do that Green New Deal. 1.00

00:57:05.500 Now, the one thing we know about it is it would be a massive change. Whether you like it or don't like

00:57:11.300 it, everybody would agree, it's a fairly massive change to the economy. How would you like to be

00:57:16.020 going through a massive restructuring of the economy at the same time a pandemic hit?

00:57:23.280 How much money would you have? How much resources would you have? You know, would you be in the same

00:57:29.200 shape? Well, kind of depends what happened, right? But the point is, if you live in a world where

00:57:37.160 you might need an asteroid defense system, you might need a whole new pandemic recovery thing,

00:57:44.260 and maybe there's a risk with climate change that you should be throwing a lot of money at too.

00:57:48.520 If you have multiple take down the economy risks, the idea of massively spending resources on just one

00:57:56.300 of them doesn't make so much sense anymore. Now, can you think of anybody else in the world

00:58:02.620 who said publicly and often for the past, I don't know, 10 years, you better not spend all of your

00:58:10.140 money on climate change because pandemics could be expensive too, specifically. I've been specifically

00:58:17.960 saying for probably 10 years, I don't know if I checked it, maybe it's five, but a long time,

00:58:23.940 that you got to look at pandemics. You got to look at literally asteroids. You know, should we put a

00:58:31.120 trillion dollars into building a network of, you know, satellites that can see far enough that we

00:58:36.980 can send an atomic bomb and change the direction of a meteor coming our direction? Maybe. Maybe.

00:58:45.280 There is a very small chance we'd be wiped out by a meteor, but, you know, maybe. So, you know,

00:58:54.360 in a world with multiple risks, you got to be smarter about your risk management.

00:59:02.720 Somebody says, you are making excuses for what? I don't even know what your, don't even know what

00:59:08.360 that criticism is. Oh, make it, I think I know what your criticism is. Making excuses for not doing

00:59:15.040 enough about climate change. But then you would have missed the whole point. The slaughter meter is

00:59:23.340 at 100%. So, the slaughter meter is the prediction that the president would win based on current

00:59:32.840 conditions, which nobody assumes would remain stable from now until the election. So, it's an

00:59:41.160 artificial number. It doesn't really predict. It just says, if nothing changed, this is what would

00:59:45.280 happen. At this moment, you saw the president's poll numbers just reversed in a week and went from,

00:59:53.560 hey, that's a pretty good job, to, you know, from not such a good job. At the moment, there's just no

01:00:00.840 way he could lose unless something new happened. But, of course, new things will happen before now and

01:00:05.500 then. How much has the pandemic reduced CO2 planet wide? Smart people tell me this, that pollution can

01:00:15.080 go away quickly, you know, just falls to the ground. But CO2 has a far longer, you know, period of

01:00:22.640 reduction. But I still think it's the right question. Now, until somebody really, really smart who works in

01:00:29.100 this field tells me this is dumb, I'm going to say that this is at least possible, which is that we could

01:00:35.000 learn something that maybe we couldn't have learned in any other way, which is, does the level of CO2 0.52

01:00:42.680 come down at all? You know, does it come down at all in a month where you're not putting out as much?

01:00:51.100 Now, you might be able to measure that it didn't go up. Now, and again, it depends on the sensitivity.

01:00:56.340 I'm only talking about does it go up by a thousandth or something like that. But it's science, right?

01:01:00.420 Science can measure stuff. Somebody's asking me about the stock market, which I haven't looked at

01:01:07.100 today. Let's see what it's doing. If my stock ticker is up to date, well, I guess you're pretty happy

01:01:17.280 you bought stocks yesterday. Wynn Resorts are up 25% today. Snap is up six.

01:01:24.360 The broad index of the Fortune 500 is up 1.7. Apple's up 2.5. All green. Nothing but green.

01:01:42.000 Somebody says CO2 is not pollution. You need to go somewhere where people don't know that and then

01:01:48.000 shout that out. Everybody on this periscope knows that CO2 and pollution are different things.

01:01:54.360 All right. So if you're trying to tell me that CO2 and pollution are different things, you're

01:01:59.540 in the wrong place. There must be somebody who needs to know that, but nobody here would

01:02:04.740 be confused by that. Somebody says they miss me saying measure in my normal way. Measure

01:02:14.160 my upstate New York way. Somebody says stop asking about stocks. Why?

01:02:24.360 American Airlines is up, etc. And let me throw out an idea for you. This is a poorly thought

01:02:34.160 down idea. You can immediately see the problems. But if you're not new to this, you know that

01:02:40.760 I often throw out poorly formed ideas because it might make you think of one that's good.

01:02:46.620 So in other words, it will just take your brain to a different place. And you might say, well,

01:02:50.140 your idea doesn't work, but you reminded me of something that would work. So that's the spirit

01:02:55.680 of this. So we've got a bunch of cruise ships sitting there empty because nobody wants to take

01:03:02.980 a cruise. And it's probably not even legal at the moment. I don't know what the situation is.

01:03:08.040 We also have a bunch of young people who want to go on spring break.

01:03:11.840 See where I'm going? What if we take the young people who were going to spend money on spring 0.96

01:03:19.660 break? And we say, if you let us test you, at least for a fever or whatever. And again,

01:03:26.240 I know there's, you can't always get it all, etc. So the testing isn't complete. But suppose we say,

01:03:32.680 all you spring breakers, if you were going to spend your money anyway, I'll give you a cheap cruise. 0.99

01:03:39.380 Now, how much would spring breakers like to be on a cruise ship? A lot. A lot. Now, suppose you

01:03:48.220 said, all right, since, you know, if you agree to go on the cruise ship, you're also going to have

01:03:54.020 to agree to some other conditions, which is, you know, if something breaks out, you're all going to

01:04:00.420 be there for two weeks. But we're going to be a lot smarter about, you know, maybe you only fill up

01:04:05.480 half the cruise ship. Maybe we've learned something about the ventilation system. Maybe you give them

01:04:11.580 a pile of chloroquine. And they're young people to begin with, right? So they're young and healthy to

01:04:18.280 begin with. You give them a barrel of chloroquine. You get on the ship, maybe, and again, this is just

01:04:24.120 brainstorming. I do not kid myself that this is a good idea. It's just sort of creative and moving in

01:04:30.560 the right direction. And maybe you could fix it. So fix my idea for me if you can. Can we just load

01:04:36.500 up the cruise ships with people who are low risk, young people who have been checked before they got

01:04:42.240 on, checked while they're on, checked when they got off, to the degree that you could even do that.

01:04:48.420 Okay. So one way you could save the cruise industry is by taking the spring breakers

01:04:56.340 and testing them. So I don't know how many test kits we have, but if you could rapidly test,

01:05:05.860 could you save an industry by, you know, I know we need the tests everywhere and they're not enough,

01:05:12.660 but just brainstorming. Just stay with me. Could you focus some of the tests on an industry that

01:05:19.040 could be at least kept on life support until the economy comes out and just maybe, you know,

01:05:25.600 keep the cruise ship business alive? How about hotels? How about you say, you know, the Marriott in

01:05:32.380 Pica City, San Diego, has zero business and basically we're going to go out of business.

01:05:37.820 But if you're a spring breaker, you're a young person, we'll give you a deal. Half price. 0.98

01:05:45.520 There'll be nobody in the hotel except young people. No old people will get near it. You can't 1.00

01:05:50.940 check in without taking the chloroquine before you walk in the front door. And when you're here,

01:05:58.960 you can't leave. And before you leave, you'll be tested. I'm just throwing out ideas. Could you save

01:06:05.440 the travel industry by saying, we're going to limit it to young people? We're going to slash 0.59

01:06:10.340 the price, cut it in half. We're going to test before you get in and you're going to be limited

01:06:14.720 here. But, you know, who would be mad about being stuck in a hotel with only other young people who

01:06:22.120 are single? Nobody. Yeah. Tell me a young person who doesn't want to go stay at the Marriott with

01:06:29.620 only young people on spring break. Pay half price, but you can't leave the building for

01:06:35.620 two weeks. Might be popular. So this is the human ingenuity, not this idea, but at least

01:06:44.700 the idea of being flexible. Somebody says save airlines first. So here's the thing.

01:06:50.700 Okay. You might be able to do something similar by testing people before they got on a flight,

01:06:57.500 but it seems like it'd be too slow. In the case of a cruise ship, people actually will go a day early,

01:07:03.940 you know, and stay at the hotel near the cruise ship. And, you know, you spend hours and hours

01:07:09.800 waiting to actually board the ship itself. So the cruise ship is already built for people to expect a,

01:07:16.600 eight hour delay before they get on the ship. That's just normal already. But the airline

01:07:23.340 industry is really about getting someplace. And then when you're there, you're a free range chicken

01:07:27.820 infecting people. So maybe you could get enough rapid testing to make the airlines work again.

01:07:36.320 Maybe you can, you know, only fill every third seat. Maybe N95 masks and gloves are mandatory.

01:07:42.960 So yeah, I think, I think there's a way you could do it. It might be different.

01:07:52.600 We don't have much information on the number of COVID test kits coming. So that's a big question mark.

01:08:00.860 I'd love to have more, more information on that. All right. That's all for now. I will talk to you

01:08:06.100 again later today. Stay safe, stay strong, take a walk, eat right. Have a great day.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 20, 2020

Episode 861 Scott Adams： Sipping the Crisis Away. Join Me!

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript