Episode 866 Scott Adams： Wrapped in a Blanket and Answering Your Questions
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of Swaddled in a Cloth Blanket, Scott talks about the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, the new drug Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, and a question about disposable face shields.
Transcript
00:00:11.980
It's time for Swaddled in a Cloth Blanket with Scott.
00:00:19.640
You know, I just realized that the best time to do this in the evening,
00:00:22.760
if I'm going to be doing two furs for the remainder of the coronavirus crisis,
00:00:27.200
this is, I should do them at the same time a.m. as p.m., 7 a.m., 7 p.m. on the East Coast.
00:00:41.040
So I don't know if I'll actually do that, but maybe I will.
00:00:45.000
So how's everybody doing? Doing okay? In your isolation?
00:00:50.140
I'm getting a little bit squirrely, not going to lie.
00:00:54.140
I, the only people I've talked to who are not on video, seem to be my dog and my cat.
00:01:01.060
Who, as it turns out, are brilliant conversationalists, so not nearly as bad as you thought.
00:01:07.180
All right. Don't complain what's on Fox News counter-programming me.
00:01:15.940
All right. So I've got some questions slash assignments for you.
00:01:22.660
Meaning, if anybody knows the answer to this question, it would be really, really good to tell me.
00:01:33.360
We've got good feelings about this hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
00:01:42.780
So much so that Governor Cuomo is going to be testing some starting Tuesday.
00:01:47.720
So they'll start a test in New York on that drug.
00:01:54.920
My understanding is we probably don't have enough of it if it turns out to be as good as we think.
00:02:02.960
But is the bottleneck in the raw materials, you know, is there a certain chemical or chemicals that have to be mixed together to make this thing?
00:02:18.160
Or is it the actual construction of the pill and then the shipping of it?
00:02:25.240
Because there's a really interesting idea floating around that I don't want to tell you because people are working on it.
00:02:35.200
But, you know, it's just not my business to get you excited about it.
00:02:39.300
But if you can tell me if the bottleneck is in the materials or the actual construction of the pill, I might have something interesting to tell you.
00:02:48.520
Your second assignment is a question was asked on Twitter that I don't know the answer to.
00:02:59.380
If you can find an expert to tweet at me and just answer this question.
00:03:07.120
And it was if we know how long the coronavirus can last on different types of surfaces, and it's whatever number of days, depending on the surface, why can't we just take the N95 masks after using them once, stick them in a paper bag, put it on the shelf, and then just use it again in a week?
00:03:30.040
Because wouldn't everything that could be on it just die?
00:03:37.400
You know, presumably it would be dry fairly quickly.
00:03:42.060
And there's nothing that would degrade in the composition of the mask.
00:03:47.960
Please do not take that as a statement of some kind of quackery coming from the cartoonist guy.
00:03:53.600
I don't have an independent opinion of whether that's a good or a bad idea.
00:04:00.820
I did talk to somebody who directly knows very well somebody who's in the business.
00:04:08.920
So there's somebody who's in the business and making these masks at this moment.
00:04:14.320
And this is what the person who's making the masks, who has some scientific and engineering background, to make this statement.
00:04:27.240
Now again, do not take this as my opinion and do not take this as true.
00:04:35.300
You know, if there's somebody who could add something to this, does this make sense?
00:04:39.740
So this is what is the response back from somebody who does know what they're talking about.
00:04:46.020
Quote, I would not recommend reusing disposable gloves.
00:04:58.460
But certainly face shields and masks can be reused.
00:05:03.360
After spraying them or wiping them down on both inside and outside surfaces with a disinfectant and allowing them to dry.
00:05:12.160
The exception would be if you know you came in contact with a confirmed case, maybe you want to throw that one away.
00:05:20.520
But if you might see several customers that, you know, or patients that are not confirmed, this one individual subject to your fact-checking and getting confirming or debunking opinions seems to think this would work.
00:05:36.720
Now the question I asked is, well, if disinfectant is also in short supply, what's wrong with the first idea of just letting it age a week?
00:05:49.780
I imagine, you know, just spraying them with disinfectant and then allowing them to dry.
00:06:04.200
I mean, you can just add days until you're happy it's 100% effective.
00:06:09.260
I mean, we're still going to be in trouble in two weeks, so that would be better than nothing.
00:06:13.140
Someone else asked this sort of a follow-up question on the same topic.
00:06:20.320
The coronavirus becomes deactivated at a certain temperature.
00:06:31.100
But somewhere in that range, 120, 133 degrees, the virus breaks down.
00:06:36.660
But can you heat the masks to that temperature without degrading the mask?
00:06:45.940
And one person, and I don't know what background they have.
00:06:50.240
I'm just going to say that the question is out there.
00:06:56.120
And somebody says that they would maintain 95% efficacy if you heated them to 160,
00:07:05.060
and the hospital laundry dryers will reach that temperature.
00:07:10.820
So I have a hard time believing it would be that easy.
00:07:17.140
I mean, if you could just throw them in the dryer and, you know,
00:07:20.580
run them for 10 minutes on the heat cycle and they're all sterilized.
00:07:24.440
But they're, you know, just because it went through the dryer,
00:07:28.260
it might be a little less, no, I guess, no, you're saying still 95%.
00:07:39.980
You know, so without the benefit of any scientific insight into this question,
00:07:48.660
Well, you just throw them in the dryer, problem solved.
00:07:55.540
But I'd like you to see an expert opinion on that.
00:08:04.460
One is using a disinfectant and just waiting until they dry.
00:08:08.520
And, oh, and by the way, this is not assumed to work on every type of mask.
00:08:13.220
So the other caveat I should have said is that it would sort of depend on the mask,
00:08:18.660
and I don't know exactly if we can tell which are the ones that it works on.
00:08:22.240
But there's some thinking it would depend on the mask.
00:08:29.600
There is a website now that brands itself as a medical equipment clearinghouse.
00:08:37.040
Because if you saw the experts talking, you know that one of the big problems is there are plenty of people volunteering to make stuff,
00:08:45.060
but there are also plenty of frauds and middlemen trying to, you know, price gouge, and you've got to weed them out.
00:08:51.440
And then you've got people who want to buy them.
00:08:56.040
You've got lots of people who said, you know, if I can find a buyer, I'll whip up a factory and start making them tomorrow.
00:09:07.980
So when the need became obvious to a lot of people that there needed to be some kind of a website so people can find, you know,
00:09:16.700
the sources and the buyers can find each other, I'm sure that more than one entity just got busy and built one.
00:09:25.160
So I don't know that this is the one, but it's the one that I know of.
00:09:30.340
So if there's another one out there, tweet at me if there's some competing one that does the same thing.
00:09:35.760
And the website, the URL is projectn95, as in a N95 mask.
00:09:47.440
So if you think you can make something and you're looking for a buyer, I guess that's the place to try to make a connection.
00:09:55.220
I see somebody asking about UV light, and we see this question all over.
00:10:01.960
I'm going to guess, based on just a little bit of skimming I did on the topic, that there may be some specific cases where UV light is better than nothing.
00:10:12.440
But I don't know that we could get enough of them and that they're the right thing for these particular uses.
00:10:24.260
So while I believe it is well known that the UV light kills virus, what is unknown to me is if there are certain situations where using it makes sense and then others where it just doesn't make sense.
00:10:50.000
Yeah, a lot of people have volunteered to make masks.
00:10:52.820
So I'm going to look at some of my questions that came to me on Twitter.
00:10:55.880
Robert Barnes says, what if the black swan event, for those of you who don't know that term, black swan event is the once every hundred years or the most unexpected thing.
00:11:14.540
And what if the black swan event is the panic from the pandemic rather than the pandemic itself?
00:11:23.000
Well, I'm not sure I've seen something I would call panic.
00:11:31.080
But I've seen people taking care of their families.
00:11:37.960
But, you know, mostly people acting rationally and just want to get through it.
00:11:51.860
So, you know, I guess the question would be whether closing down the economy is the real question.
00:11:59.220
Not the state of mind, but rather the, you know, what do you do about it?
00:12:06.140
The most likely outcome is that things get darker and darker until it looks like,
00:12:11.780
my God, we can't go one more day without opening up.
00:12:15.140
And if by then we have more tests or more drugs that work, we'll make the decision to open up.
00:12:21.940
So I don't think there's much risk that there's some point of no return for the economy.
00:12:31.300
Because we would be so, it would be so obvious that we're at that point that some adult decision would be made,
00:12:39.780
which is, all right, some of you, maybe only the ones who are young,
00:12:44.060
maybe only the ones who have already had it and recovered,
00:12:46.560
maybe only the ones who have good meds that work, assuming they do work.
00:12:54.360
But you're going to see some kind of a surge in returns well before the economy breaks.
00:13:02.180
Somebody says, more movie recommendations, please.
00:13:05.320
You know, I'm not a movie guy and I've only watched one movie this year
00:13:12.440
because movies are no longer a form that I enjoy.
00:13:16.220
They're just too long and they're self-congratulatory and, you know, all the years.
00:13:26.300
But, if you want to laugh, go to YouTube and start looking for stand-up comedians that are to your liking.
00:13:35.900
You might have to, you know, knock around a little bit.
00:13:39.000
But, depending on how dark your humor is, you can laugh for a long time.
00:13:51.360
You know, just go Google around some stand-up comedians.
00:13:55.060
You'll get just tons of stuff and it's terrific.
00:14:05.720
So, the New York trial of the hydrochloroquine, I think, personally, that is my, that's the main variable I'm tracking.
00:14:17.680
Now, let me give you some variables to track for your own predictive abilities, all right?
00:14:25.060
Because, remember, somebody's saying, Giselnik, he's very dark but very funny.
00:14:38.260
So, you see some good recommendations going by on the comments.
00:14:50.240
So, yeah, it's all, oh, here's the things you should look for.
00:14:57.600
These are sort of the dogs that don't bark sort of thing.
00:15:00.860
We're going to be focused on whatever shiny object the news is pointing us to in social media.
00:15:05.880
But let me point to you something that you haven't heard.
00:15:10.300
Track the number of frontline healthcare workers, especially the younger ones, who die in the next two weeks from catching something while they're working, and then things just worsen and they died.
00:15:29.280
Now, if it had happened today, for example, if even one doctor or one nurse had caught it from somebody and died today, would we know it?
00:15:48.520
So, watch the healthcare workers themselves and see if their mortality rate approaches zero.
00:16:05.080
I think I'll be the first person who said this to you to watch that variable.
00:16:12.840
If there's a shortage of the hydrochloroquine, and if they know it works, who has it?
00:16:27.560
Now, at the very least, they would take it quickly if they saw symptoms.
00:16:32.260
Which means they would be first to get this drug.
00:16:37.820
If you hear that zero doctors and frontline medical staff have died, but you do hear that
00:16:45.540
people got it, at some point, you're going to have to ask yourself why you have zero mortality
00:16:55.960
And I think the answer is going to be that they have access to the hydrochloroquine.
00:17:01.480
Now, if tomorrow you hear of some tragic death, then take that as counter data.
00:17:10.200
And if you see another one, well, then this is falling apart pretty quickly.
00:17:15.380
But, if you just don't hear it for a week, that might be a pretty good drug.
00:17:28.460
There will be no important, like a senator, you know, Rand Paul, unfortunately, tested positive.
00:17:40.740
Now, he's young enough, and one assumes that, you know, he would be front of the line for
00:17:51.600
I mean, I don't want to be the person who says, oh, why do the politicians get it first?
00:18:01.620
If it's a choice between I get the meds or Rand Paul gets the meds, I'll give it to him.
00:18:06.660
Because he's, you know, he's got a higher leverage in the emergency.
00:18:11.040
So, I would think Rand Paul, the other senators who actually test positive, if any of them do,
00:18:21.100
You're just not going to see a celebrity death unless it's somebody who's, you know, 85 years old.
00:18:27.520
But your prediction, from this point on, you will not see a famous politician, rich person,
00:18:40.300
Basically, make your own list of anybody you think already has access to the limited supply.
00:18:47.620
And in your mind, say, okay, if anybody that I think has access to the limited supply,
00:18:53.080
if one of them dies and they're 45 and there's no underlying conditions, panic.
00:19:04.400
But, I mean, if you saw a trend developing there, then maybe you should be concerned about it.
00:19:11.260
That's the one variable that matters the most to me because it's the canary in the coal mine.
00:19:16.740
It's the one that's going to tell you that maybe there's something there, which we don't know yet.
00:19:25.200
I don't know exactly what's going on in Congress.
00:19:36.600
So, whatever the, somebody's saying Harvey Weinstein.
00:19:40.300
I just don't know if the Harvey Weinstein thing is true.
00:19:43.360
I think that's a wait and see because I think there was one sketchy source for it.
00:19:55.780
So, it doesn't look like Congress is doing their job.
00:19:59.840
In the sense that if they can't get legislation passed today because they're arguing about the way to do it.
00:20:06.220
And I'm not sure I have an opinion because I haven't looked at the details yet.
00:20:10.100
But if any of this money is being funneled through companies, the public is going to be pretty angry.
00:20:18.540
There, of course, will be the controversy of, you know, if we're saving hotels, what does that mean for the Trump hotels?
00:20:25.640
And I think I'm going to side with the president on this.
00:20:35.860
But certainly not even involved in the crisis, I haven't.
00:20:39.600
But I think it would not be right to exclude the president's hotels if like hotels, you know, if hotels in general are going to be rescued.
00:21:04.460
You know, it would be easy to imagine a million ways that that looks wrong, is wrong, could be wrong.
00:21:11.800
If they get treated, you know, if Don Jr.'s running the company and they get treated the way Hyatt gets treated, the way, I'm not sure if those are exactly comparable.
00:21:21.860
But if they get treated like their peers, I'm actually completely okay with it.
00:21:27.560
It would be more of a question about whether the whole industry is to be.
00:21:31.820
But, you know, it certainly wouldn't be fair to exclude somebody for that reason.
00:21:39.260
Do you think we could build UV light tunnels to disinfect faster?
00:21:46.480
I'm not exactly the engineer to ask that question.
00:21:57.160
Colorado governor wants citizens to run slash walk less and ration their time outside.
00:22:08.360
Certainly it might make sense to stay away from other people.
00:22:19.200
Do you think we need to cure TDS before we cure the Wuhan virus?
00:22:25.980
Well, I'm just going to take a vacation from that question, if you don't mind.
00:22:35.000
You know, nobody likes talking about TDS and who did what dumb in politics than I do.
00:22:40.660
But I don't really have the appetite for it right now.
00:22:43.720
I just don't have the stomach for the small stuff at the moment.
00:22:53.120
I have a bad feeling they aren't telling us the worst.
00:23:04.320
It will only be as bad for the bulk of society as we collectively are willing to let it be.
00:23:19.760
But I think you'd agree there's some point where we're just not going to.
00:23:23.820
And I feel like the government knows that, too, don't you?
00:23:27.640
You know, there's citizens are doing a fairly good job of doing what the government is asking for the greater good.
00:23:36.000
You know, there's some young people who are ignoring everything, of course.
00:23:48.500
In a month, if you've saved some old people but you don't know which ones,
00:23:57.820
You just know that nobody died or not as many people died as could have.
00:24:03.640
And I don't know if we could last more than a month.
00:24:08.420
Even if our government said, you've got to do it.
00:24:11.000
You know, we're going to send the police around.
00:24:20.740
And I don't think the police would have the appetite to lock you up for opening your business if you can't pay the bills.
00:24:26.840
So I think there's sort of a magic psychological deadline that feels like one month,
00:24:36.060
including the time that we've already been locked down.
00:24:38.740
It feels like that's just going to be, you know, a make or break point.
00:24:45.100
Because people tend to think in terms of these simple increments of time, like a week or a month.
00:25:02.820
We can handle two weeks and bounce back, if that's all it were.
00:25:18.140
Well, you're going to start getting defectors at about the fourth week.
00:25:22.000
And after the fourth week, the public is going to say, look, you know who's vulnerable.
00:25:33.200
And from this day forward, it's my job to go to work.
00:25:43.320
So there's a point where citizens would disobey.
00:25:48.820
But I don't think you're going to get into that.
00:25:51.680
You know, there will obviously, there will always be some people who are disobeying anything.
00:25:55.340
But I think that it will be obvious to all of us what is too long by American standards of, you know,
00:26:04.960
how much we want to protect each other versus how much risk do we want to take versus, you know,
00:26:09.920
what's good for the economy versus saving a few lives.
00:26:12.460
I feel like the American, I don't know, just the way we are, the American nature might put up with a month.
00:26:27.340
So, and I don't think we will have to after a month.
00:26:30.160
I think we'll have enough of a handle on the testing kits and the, you know, who's susceptible and the meds and stuff
00:26:36.840
that we'll start taking some chances in a month.
00:26:42.460
I think in two weeks we'll know what it looks like, but we won't be able to execute yet.
00:26:47.540
So I think in two weeks we'll know what our tools are, we'll know what the plan looks like,
00:26:51.920
we'll have a better idea how to get out, but it's not going to be in two weeks, probably.
00:26:56.060
How quickly will we know if the meds are effective?
00:27:04.580
My understanding is it's sort of a several-day thing.
00:27:10.440
You know, I think something like a one-week and you could be pretty confident.
00:27:14.840
Not that they're completely cleared, but that it's working.
00:27:20.200
And indeed, I think after three or four days, you know, you probably would know it's working on most people.
00:27:34.840
More crowding, more international travel, you know, more, you know, just more people.
00:27:41.620
They have more of everything except old people, but that's the good news.
00:28:00.480
What do you think about, predicts a quicker recovery?
00:28:05.340
So there's somebody who, a Nobel laureate, who's predicting a quicker recovery.
00:28:10.800
Let me see if the whole story is in the headline, and then somebody says, we're going to be fine.
00:28:23.720
She just, okay, she doesn't really have a, she doesn't have a point of view other than she's looking at the same data we are and saying, yeah, it'll be fine.
00:28:37.440
So some of you know there was an old TV show, sci-fi, called Babylon 5, and I had a guest role with, I don't know, two lines or three lines or something,
00:28:47.500
because I had said something good about the show when I was, you know, at the height of my Dilbert fame.
00:28:53.200
So they invited me to be on the show and just play myself and have a few lines.
00:29:01.740
Because I got to hang out with the cast and I was, you know, as a huge fan, so I just get to, you know, sit down at lunch and all of the cast of the show were like sitting with me at the table.
00:29:15.900
I could not have, I could not have geeked out harder than that.
00:29:19.780
And they're all friendly, you know, everybody's chatting with me and stuff.
00:29:22.680
And it just blew me away because they were even in costumes.
00:29:25.120
All right, how long do you think we can sustain?
00:29:31.900
Well, most of the questions are all about how long.
00:29:37.520
Will this pandemic be looked on as the most significant event in world history since World War II?
00:29:50.960
I've suggested that for any young children that this is their 9-11, this is their Pearl Harbor.
00:30:01.580
So certainly the kids who are going through this, it might be like a formative experience.
00:30:08.700
For those of us who are older, we've gone through, you know, we've had a few of these.
00:30:17.160
So we've had a little more experience seeing things get really dark before they get better.
00:30:25.740
Yeah, I'd be interested if people my age are generally less worried.
00:30:30.660
That would be a good and interesting poll, wouldn't it?
00:30:36.420
That probably has more to do with your specific situation.
00:30:39.500
But I wonder if people have just been here before.
00:30:44.720
I mean, to me, this all looks familiar, even though every part of it is new.
00:30:48.860
You know, there's nothing like this that's ever happened before.
00:30:53.720
Because the feeling that, oh, we humans, how are we ever going to beat this monster?
00:31:16.180
Do you think the stock market recovery will be graduated or spiky?
00:31:25.700
But probably not until we hear some good news out of New York.
00:31:40.960
Yeah, I don't want to give any hints to somebody who might try to become a hoarder.
00:31:49.720
What skills and projects do you think knowledge workers could look to focus on during the isolation?
00:31:54.620
Well, I would say it depends on your existing talent stack and your ambitions.
00:32:00.240
So look at what you already are good at and then say, what's the most valuable thing I could add to that?
00:32:10.720
It could be, you know, graphic design, for example.
00:32:13.920
Graphic design goes really well with technical skills.
00:32:16.820
Because at some point you're going to have to design the part that people look at and the buttons on it, the user interface.
00:32:28.880
You know, if you just straight-lined it from here, yes.
00:32:35.620
So I tweeted today, I think I mentioned this, that the Joe Biden thing is well beyond being funny.
00:32:46.800
And, you know, every once in a while I still laugh at it because it's like, ha-ha.
00:32:51.060
But this emergency has also reminded us that it's good to have backup plans.
00:32:58.860
Now, if something happens to Trump while he's in office, the backup plan is Mike Pence.
00:33:06.700
And I'm perfectly happy with that as a, you know, a solid spare tire.
00:33:10.940
You know, I probably, I don't think I'd vote for him if he ran for president.
00:33:14.360
But Mike Pence knows where all the jewelry is kept and where all the buttons are.
00:33:24.880
But what's our backup if between now and November something happens, because it's a very uncertain time,
00:33:32.320
either it's bad news or whatever it is, and Trump can't win re-election for whatever reason.
00:33:38.060
We'd have to imagine something new comes out of this, because so far he would win.
00:33:46.920
Well, the backup is whoever he's running against.
00:33:49.800
And it looks like that's going to be Joe Biden.
00:33:54.880
Is there any Democrat who has watched him basically hiding because there can't be any other reason he's hiding that he's not capable?
00:34:06.980
Can we agree there's no reason in the world that we're not seeing him every day, at least on video, except that he's not up to it?
00:34:20.240
And the longer that goes on, the more obvious it should be, even to his supporters, I would think.
00:34:34.800
I wouldn't mind having a Democrat that maybe is not your first choice, but they're not going to break anything.
00:34:45.360
So that's a call to Democrats to maybe make the adult decision there.
00:35:10.000
So Trump actually made a coronavirus insult to Mitt Romney because Mitt Romney is quarantining.
00:35:22.700
You know, I'm sure no matter what you think of him, I think we all hope that he does well and, you know, there's no bad outcome there.
00:35:29.680
But Trump actually, he says, oh, that's too bad.
00:35:45.600
You know, normally I love his put-downs and his insults.
00:35:48.880
It's just part of the act, and it's very effective.
00:35:57.320
I think if he watched it on replay, he might take it back.
00:36:08.920
But on the other hand, you know, if you're a Trump supporter,
00:36:12.460
you sort of have to accept that it's a package deal.
00:36:16.320
You know, I could wish all day long that he wouldn't do that sort of thing.
00:36:22.440
So I'm not going to spend a lot of time wishing he doesn't do it because he's going to do it.
00:36:29.120
And on some level, I kind of love that about him, that he's so committed to it.
00:36:35.940
But, you know, at the same time, I can say, well, it might have been not so good that time.
00:36:42.460
But how's my friend progressing on his treatment better?
00:36:52.460
So for two days in a row, the symptoms are noticeably improving
00:36:58.860
after several days of getting worse and being really quite bad.
00:37:03.380
So pretty much immediately upon taking the drugs, he capped out.
00:37:14.340
I don't know how many more days before you get to all better, but substantially better.
00:37:20.660
How many folks have died of seasonal flu this year?
00:37:29.120
Because if you're still asking that question, you're really not paying attention.
00:37:34.860
We're all smart enough not to compare it to the regular flu, right?
00:37:44.060
And I'll say again, because you see the doubters out there saying,
00:37:47.760
hey, the statistics don't suggest that this will be bad at all.
00:37:52.620
And the question that has to be asked, as I said this morning, look at the hospitals.
00:37:58.020
You know, if the hospitals do not go over capacity, I'm with you.
00:38:03.080
The moment we can be sure the hospitals will not be over capacity,
00:38:13.400
and the professionals at those hospitals think that it will be exceeded.
00:38:21.940
Well, I mean, it's possible for people to be wrong.
00:38:24.840
But people are so skeptical of all experts right now that people are actually asking,
00:38:32.780
What if it's all just mass hysteria, and the only problem is the panic itself?
00:38:36.860
To which I say, the hospitals are either full of patients,
00:38:43.560
and more coming every day, or that's not happening.
00:38:46.940
You can ignore every other question and just say, is that happening?
00:38:52.820
Hospitals filling up wherever there are outbreaks?
00:39:09.780
Can phones ping each other when we are social distanced too close?
00:39:14.720
When you push a button to say, it's okay, family member,
00:39:22.820
Does your Bluetooth allow you to tell the distance?
00:39:28.820
I mean, if you could somehow Bluetooth sense somebody
00:39:44.580
What about the town in Italy that had 3% infection rate in late February?
00:39:54.900
but it might have to do with people who live with their grandparents,
00:39:58.820
and small non-air-conditioned spaces and a lot of physicality and kissing on the cheek and stuff.
00:40:19.420
Do you support a UBI during the economic downturn?
00:40:23.860
If somebody has a better idea how somebody who doesn't have money can eat and at least pay for the essentials,
00:40:33.160
if you get a better idea, I'm certainly open to it.
00:40:36.180
But what's a better idea than, all right, here's some cash.
00:40:40.740
Yeah, we have to work out the details, but I don't see.
00:40:51.640
Kind of have to do it because I support a lot of people, too.
00:40:55.380
So there's probably no solution in which some big businesses you wish had not been bailed out are going to get bailed out.
00:41:05.140
But maybe that should be separated from the UBI decision.
00:41:14.460
What is going to happen to mortgages after three months of quarantine?
00:41:18.640
Well, you know, I've seen the idea floated, and I haven't spent enough time to sort of think it through to know whether I like it or not.
00:41:25.600
And the idea is that we just suspend all of those payments.
00:41:29.800
It's just nobody pays anybody for only these categories.
00:41:35.500
So you can imagine that just nobody pays their heat, utility, Comcast bill, cell phone, mortgage, rent, maybe, I don't know, health care if you're paying for it yourself.
00:41:51.500
So you can easily imagine that people would just stop paying for the duration of this and get $1,000 from the government, and they buy food, and they're just sort of not paying any bills.
00:42:05.440
So we're living kind of cheaply watching TV and looking at our phones for a few weeks.
00:42:09.660
So I don't see any way you could get around a UBI.
00:42:21.120
What's Trump planning to do with student loans?
00:42:23.300
He says there's more than 60 days interest rate.
00:42:26.160
Well, you know, that's pretty good, better than nothing.
00:42:29.880
How do you convince some of you know that this is a big deal, that they need to maintain distance from others?
00:42:38.340
Yeah, here's the problem, and it's very much like the gun debate.
00:42:43.260
I think I'm the only one who frames it this way.
00:42:46.760
The gun debate is not whether guns are good or guns are bad.
00:42:51.040
The real debate is that maybe a gun is good for me, because in my special situation, you know, I might get more of a stalker's.
00:43:00.100
So in my case, owning a gun might make me safer.
00:43:03.400
But at the very least, it should be up to me to decide that, right?
00:43:11.380
But it is nonetheless true that there are people who probably are less safe because they live in an area where guns are plentiful.
00:43:22.960
Do I get to win because a gun would make me safer?
00:43:26.480
Or does somebody else get to win because the guns make them less safe and they're not going to own one of their own, for whatever reason?
00:43:40.760
Basically, people have different preferences, different needs, different risk profiles,
00:43:45.820
and they're just acting rationally for their own risk profile.
00:43:49.620
I mean, if you just like shooting and hunting and, you know, you like guns,
00:43:55.080
well, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that, you know,
00:43:58.280
they can't be pried out of your cold, dead hands and you support the Constitution.
00:44:02.800
And if it's the opposite, you don't like guns, you don't want to be around them,
00:44:06.600
you're not going to hunt, they're only bad for you,
00:44:08.920
you're going to make up some argument why your side needs to win.
00:44:12.400
And it's really just an expression of self-interest that we dress up in these constitutional,
00:44:28.300
Oh, so the analogy to that, to the coronavirus, is that we have different risk profiles.
00:44:33.080
So the people that you can't convince to take you seriously,
00:44:38.320
also, for the most part, know it's not going to kill them.
00:44:50.640
It's more like they're acting selfish and they don't want to admit that that's all that's going on.
00:44:56.120
It's like, well, I really want to go to the bar and I know it might kill your grandma,
00:45:00.800
but I really like going to the bar and I don't know your grandmother that well.
00:45:06.340
And if you don't think that they're making that exact calculation,
00:45:10.540
you've not met people because they're making that exact calculation.
00:45:18.040
Exactly like I said it, you know, I could save your grandmother by not going to the bar,
00:45:43.320
Well, we're seeing all kinds of people invent things
00:45:45.260
and we're seeing human ingenuity in ways that we've never seen it.
00:45:51.000
We can see ourselves getting stronger, smarter, a little less political.
00:46:16.160
We're not going to run out of food because you can't hoard broccoli.
00:46:21.440
What would be the point of hoarding something that's just going to rot if you don't eat it all yourself?
00:46:26.900
And my guess is if you just don't pay your bills,
00:46:32.040
the people you owe those bills are going to have to work it out.
00:46:37.580
They're going to have to get something from the government.
00:46:39.880
So I don't think there will be a time when somebody can't eat
00:46:51.620
You might need to help your neighbor a little bit.
00:47:16.400
And they treat them with the meds that we're testing.
00:47:21.060
And it reduces the risk of dying to so close to zero
00:48:03.160
why does Trump seem to have a different opinion than Fauci?
00:48:08.300
not seeing a front-line medical people dropping dead,
00:48:42.340
because I haven't had my taste or smell too much.
00:49:08.920
You know, I went for my healthy evening walk today
00:49:40.700
So, did you see what Nextdoor is doing, the app?