Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 867 Scott Adams： Sip the Morning Away and Get a Great Start

00:00:00.000 right now for coffee with scott adams yeah yep it's going to be a good one one of the best

00:00:07.160 i predict i've got a special guest who's on my audio line waiting to answer some medical questions

00:00:15.040 dr uh... aris lavranos md offered to help us with some of the the medical questions and i've got him

00:00:24.100 on hold uh doctors say hi hi there everyone good morning all right thank you i'm taking my

00:00:32.520 microphone away i'll have to aim my microphone in your way if i ask you another question all right

00:00:38.360 everybody you know what's next i know you do it's this it's a simultaneous sip yeah aren't you lucky

00:00:46.360 i know you are and all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein a canteen

00:00:51.620 drink a flask or vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid i like coffee

00:00:54.540 and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day the thing that makes

00:01:00.280 every pandemic go away eventually it's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now

00:01:06.800 oh good stuff good stuff all right well i've got the the doctor here and we don't get too many

00:01:17.820 chances to ask these questions i'm going to ask some questions and if the sound is bad we'll we'll

00:01:23.140 deal with that uh doctor is lavranos the best way to pronounce it yeah you actually did a remarkable

00:01:32.540 job pronouncing both my first and last name i won't lie scott most people butcher it that was really

00:01:36.580 well said well i'm sure i'm sure i'll get it wrong next time uh so here's top of the list of questions

00:01:41.900 number one everything we've seen about the hydra hydroxychloroquine looks promising but it's all

00:01:51.040 anecdotal here's the question i ask you have you even heard of any anecdotal stories that go the

00:01:58.480 other way in other words every anecdotal story we hear is positive but again that's not scientifically

00:02:04.080 valid have you heard anything even you know on the grapevine or personally where there was somebody

00:02:10.760 who didn't have an underlying condition they got the hydroxychloroquine in time and then it still

00:02:17.320 went bad so i can't speak about the hydroxychloroquine for uh coronavirus specifically but in terms of sort

00:02:27.300 of the generic process of medications being used for conditions hopefully that they're working and they

00:02:32.160 end up not working unfortunately we have lots of examples of things like that a great example would be

00:02:37.900 steroids for spinal cord injuries it used to be the mainstay of therapy and then found out that it was

00:02:43.300 actually probably doing more harm than benefit but it took many months for years before we realized that

00:02:48.420 um so that's one example another example would be recently uh treated a patient with delt palsy and went

00:02:54.320 through the whole evidence with the patient we used to give them antivirals we don't give them

00:02:58.620 antivirals anymore we just give them steroids there's no real harm to having given them antivirals

00:03:04.000 but it doesn't produce any kind of a benefit from what i have heard from what my colleagues are

00:03:09.640 sharing online i get about 15 to 20 email updates with covid regularly i will tell you i'm hopeful that

00:03:17.000 hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin will be effective you know um i'm still looking for the first actual

00:03:24.880 medical doctor who who says i don't think it'll work and i haven't seen that yet have you

00:03:30.040 no not at all i can i can certainly say that everyone is sort of waiting with beta

00:03:35.680 to see if it'll work and we're all hopeful that it will no one is coming out with any kind of

00:03:42.100 idea or evidence to suggest that it shouldn't or would not work i haven't heard anything like that

00:03:46.100 yeah and and one of the uh one of the good things about this drug is that we understand the mechanism

00:03:51.640 of of why it should work fairly well right that's well understood though the why of it

00:03:57.440 yeah yes it is but you know i would i would be careful with that kind of logic because sort of

00:04:05.280 in hindsight we can sort of justify why it's working you know if you had asked three months ago hey do

00:04:11.260 you think that we should use hydroxychloroquine plus or minus azithromycin to treat coronavirus you

00:04:16.100 would probably have had a lot of people saying well i don't know how that would happen as opposed

00:04:20.240 to now potentially seeing in cases that it does it is effective it's much easier to identify so i

00:04:25.580 don't know that that mechanism that we believe is happening is going to ultimately be the true if

00:04:30.000 it is effective at all right it might be though so and it would be tough to sort that out because

00:04:35.400 my understanding is that 80 percent of people are just going to get better on their own

00:04:39.860 so if you gave everybody this drug 80 of them would look like they got better on their own

00:04:46.640 and the 20 would look like they died from an underlying condition anyway right right so i'm i'm

00:04:54.260 hoping that we are going to see some sort of randomized and it's not necessarily randomized at

00:04:59.500 least some control study groups where we'll be able to say in these 200 patients who did not receive

00:05:04.460 the intervention uh their general demographics like this their general sickness levels were like this

00:05:09.540 their fio2 requirements whether they were or not in the icu but the ones who did receive the

00:05:14.400 treatment ultimately did get better so i'm hoping that you know based on the speed that things are

00:05:18.720 happening we should probably get something like that out of italy south korea maybe don't um don't we

00:05:23.800 have a severe ethical conundrum here which is it seems that anecdotally the benefit of the drug

00:05:31.280 is just it's at the highest end of anecdotally looking good but not anywhere even touching

00:05:39.220 the bottom of scientifically valid so given that people are actually dying from it how do the

00:05:46.860 doctors treat the fact that you don't really want a control group at all i mean who's going to be in

00:05:52.060 the control group when they could die from a and when the drug is basically nobody's dying on it unless

00:05:59.800 they have underlying conditions as far as i can tell how do you how do you navigate that is the test of

00:06:04.960 new york city actually going to have a control group so you're right i don't i don't think that

00:06:11.100 it will be a the type of control group where we say listen you guys have registered we may or may not

00:06:15.680 give it to you i think that that would be at this point really unethical especially with the level of

00:06:20.160 panic it may have been ethical if we were not in such a state of emergency worldwide right because

00:06:25.480 this goes back to what you had said about 80 percent of people would like to get better

00:06:28.660 but i think it would be more a matter of we gave it to these 200 people and these 200 people who are

00:06:35.360 very similar are our comparison our control so but i think your point is well made that ultimately it

00:06:40.820 will be it won't be the rigorous randomly controlled trial i the thing i'm looking for and the the only

00:06:48.480 indicator that i care about because i feel like it's the leading indicator would be how many people

00:06:54.560 who are actually on the front line doctors such as yourself who actually uh contract it we expect

00:07:01.020 that'll be fairly high but then actually die from it without some underlying uh conditions of their own

00:07:08.180 and so far i've heard zero of that in the last week now it might be early because that the total number

00:07:15.720 of doctors touching uh an infected person is what well put a guess on in the united states given our

00:07:22.820 caseload how many doctors do you think of have come in uh your direct contact with equipment but

00:07:31.400 direct contact with an infected person it's in the thousands right oh i without a doubt it's in

00:07:37.620 thousands that's that's absolutely correct so i can tell you currently scott i'm actually on

00:07:42.540 quarantine at home for coming in contact with covid patient at work in the emergency department

00:07:47.940 and unfortunately that patient was deemed low risk screened so yes had had travel but greater than 14

00:07:59.140 days prior to his visit for respiratory illness now as far as i can recollect i was wearing my ppe

00:08:05.460 however because the patient had screened negative and still ended up having a very high viral load

00:08:13.280 and ultimately is uh i think the condition of the patient is stable currently as far as i know

00:08:18.640 um but because of that i have been quarantined there are 25 positions who work in my department

00:08:25.920 on that shift with me alone there were three so there were possibly three or 25 in that one instance

00:08:31.600 let alone all the other hundreds of patients who come into the department daily now is it your sense

00:08:36.420 that uh people in your situation where where you're not presenting symptoms although i heard you

00:08:42.640 clear your throat there a little bit all right do you have any symptoms no none no okay um do you

00:08:49.360 think we're reaching a point where people in your classification where it's not demonstrated that you

00:08:55.680 have it but you might have it do you think you would you would probably have to go back to work

00:09:00.320 if this gets a little bit worse yes yeah yeah i think you know i have spoken to the officer of health

00:09:08.480 and occupational health multiple times here we had a very strong disagreement if i'm being honest with

00:09:12.480 you about whether or not i should be quarantined i was quite adamant that i didn't need to because i

00:09:17.200 was appropriately uh down above but regardless of those particular details they agreed that it was a

00:09:24.640 bit of a fringe case that it could have gone either way and that's me coming in contact directly with

00:09:30.160 the patient because unfortunately that standard is far too high right we need to lower the standard to allow

00:09:36.400 uh clinicians and frontline workers to continue to work because otherwise everyone will be off

00:09:40.800 and the quarantine is 14 days yeah so your your quarantine is really still in the luxury category

00:09:47.120 because the moment they need you you're going back to work i assume yeah that's what i said yeah um

00:09:54.160 so all right so uh i'm going to ask you a question and i'm going to give you the option

00:09:59.280 of deferring so don't don't feel like you have to answer this think you think of the greater good

00:10:06.000 think of all the ramifications not just the the medical specific answer um your colleagues who are on

00:10:12.400 the front lines the medical doctors are they prophylactically taking the hydroxychlorine and again if you

00:10:20.240 would prefer to take a pass on that question that's perfectly acceptable

00:10:23.920 i don't have a problem uh answering that question because i can tell you honestly thus far we have

00:10:32.560 talked about it i have one colleague who jokingly had suggested getting a prescription to go and pick

00:10:38.800 it up i don't know if that person has or hasn't i don't know if that was sort of sending out feelers

00:10:45.280 to get a sense of if someone would do them a favor to write them such a prescription but

00:10:49.440 well well wait wait a second can't you guys write your own prescriptions no i cannot write

00:10:56.880 a prescription for myself but but you could write one for each other so that you could get it

00:11:00.800 prophylactically and and if if one of your colleagues who was working with infected patients

00:11:07.040 and was not yet to test as as uh as having been or at least not suspected of having it but has been

00:11:14.320 around it would you feel ethically uh in this current situation especially where there might be some

00:11:21.120 shortages of the drug would you prescribe it to a to a medical professional not not to a citizen

00:11:29.200 yes yeah and so that that's the sort of medical opinion i think is close to universal right now

00:11:36.720 and it really comes down to do you have supply and what's the specific situation um let me ask you

00:11:42.960 another medical question uh and i don't know if we can decide on it today but the the issue is

00:11:48.880 this with the shortage of masks it's been suggested but not in a way that i feel has enough credibility

00:11:56.320 yet that uh since the virus has a known lifespan on different materials could you not use a mask put

00:12:04.160 it in a paper bag come back to it in two weeks and feel pretty safe if you knew you weren't dealing

00:12:09.760 with somebody who was known to be effective just people who were suspected would you feel comfortable

00:12:15.600 putting uh an n95 mask back on if it sat in a paper bag for two weeks um with no other yeah yeah it's a

00:12:24.000 good question i think you raised this question if i recall correctly last night on your periscope yes the

00:12:28.320 issue is that unfortunately viruses don't last very long on these sorts of inorganic surfaces and this

00:12:34.320 goes back to the idea that you had said i think it was uh several days ago technically speaking we

00:12:39.600 don't really even classify viruses as being alive they are this strange simulation injected matter that

00:12:47.360 just messes around with humans so um but other infectious agents are so bacteria fungi all kinds of

00:12:56.400 other things are and they can last a lot a lot longer so it would have to be sterilized if it was my own

00:13:02.720 mask then yes we even still use our own masks for up to eight or ten hours on shift okay okay that so

00:13:10.800 that's exactly what i was talking about though is that you put your own mask in a paper bag and then you

00:13:16.480 rotate it you know the second week in an emergency obviously nobody would do it in any other way but um

00:13:21.840 but to your point if there were other you know germs bacteria whatever whatever uh but they were your own

00:13:29.200 they would be largely inert to you wouldn't they possibly i mean it's the sort of thing where if

00:13:37.200 i told you you know if you drank from a cup and you left it on the counter for two weeks and it was in

00:13:42.720 and out of the sun and whatever bacteria happened to be in your mouth were allowed to grow there would

00:13:46.480 you just go and pick up the cup later and drink it you could you would ideally not want to but you could

00:13:54.240 so uh you know it's hard for me to say what kind of bacteria people have and the conditions under which

00:13:59.520 it would grow we typically tend to think that it takes 20 minutes for bacteria to replicate in the

00:14:03.440 ideal situation without changes and disruption and you know sunlight and the exposure to air and

00:14:09.600 all those other things so it could fester but not necessarily so if you let's say you took your mask and

00:14:17.200 you hung it on a clothesline and yeah and you let it left it there for two weeks it doesn't rain

00:14:23.360 for whatever reason so the sun is just in and on it you know would it matter the temperature around

00:14:29.440 doors or would that pretty much kill yeah i think all of those would be considerations and now we're

00:14:34.000 starting to push into the category of yeah i probably would wear the mask again i i would okay so so there

00:14:40.080 might be in an emergency situation some way to i mean you know we're watching these amazing um hacks i

00:14:48.080 saw yesterday somebody who used hosing to turn a ventilator for one into a ventilator for nine patients

00:14:56.080 it is your sense that the ventilator machine would be able to handle that i mean that the the engine of

00:15:02.160 it would it handle the airflow for nine people does that does that feel like that would work yeah yeah uh

00:15:08.320 yeah so i have some experience with ventilators i put people on ventilators in the emergency

00:15:14.080 department not in frequent unfortunately um i think that from a machine point of view this sounds like

00:15:21.440 it could handle it i would be more worried about sort of the software and the interface of the machine

00:15:27.360 to do that we typically tend to control ventilator settings based on what we call either pressure

00:15:34.160 or volume you cannot control both okay so the machine pumps air out for a certain amount of pressure

00:15:41.440 or a certain amount of volume so i guess you could increase the amount of volumes if it's being distributed

00:15:48.480 but i've never seen uh the software being put through that kind of process to know that that could work

00:15:55.360 i don't know if it's certain machines that could do that and not others

00:15:57.840 i don't know and there are quite a lot of different models of ventilators so so that's a hard one to

00:16:04.240 answer right yeah that's more of a you know electrical engineering uh question that would depend on each

00:16:10.080 individual model but just on you know off the top of your head there's no there's nothing that would

00:16:14.480 eliminate the possibility you just don't know the details at this point right for example an adult who has

00:16:21.600 very large lungs uh on the ventilator i see no reason why two children could not be put on that same

00:16:27.680 ventilator with a bifurcating tube right for each of them so i don't i don't see something that's

00:16:33.680 prohibitive about it if the software machine could do it all right next question people keep asking me

00:16:40.160 about taking zinc supplements um sort of ahead of time because the hydrochloroquine you know interacts with

00:16:49.120 the zinc in a positive way so you might as well have some zinc in there is that a thing would you

00:16:54.000 recommend it at this point let's let's say you had you know zinc supplements in your multivitamin or

00:17:00.160 or just zinc supplements good idea or not yes i think it is a good idea i can tell you scott that

00:17:06.880 this isn't even academic i'm doing it myself i take a multivitamin every day that includes um a component

00:17:12.720 of zinc the evidence it has been a while since i have looked at the evidence for zinc but the last time i

00:17:18.160 looked at it the evidence for against common colds and flus was weak but it was there so you are

00:17:26.240 certainly not doing yourself any harm by taking a multivitamin with zinc in it as for its interaction with

00:17:31.680 hydrochloroquine hydroxychloroquine i think that that's largely nebulous i don't think that there's any

00:17:37.840 evidence to suggest that you should because of its benefit with the black vanilla or the hydroxychloroquine

00:17:42.560 but certainly there's no harm in taking it anyway okay so it might give you a little edge probably

00:17:47.120 won't hurt you so it's worth a shot all right and i think that this goes back to your general regime

00:17:52.960 of you know does walking outside for half an hour in the sun really help well probably a little bit

00:17:58.880 yeah and the harm none so these things all together mount uh some benefit and i recommend to people that

00:18:06.800 they don't inhale any substances including marijuana to keep their lungs as healthy as possible that they

00:18:12.560 take a multivitamin which includes a component of zinc vitamin d as well um and then that they're eating

00:18:18.800 well i suggest usually not to you don't want to gorge on a bunch of fatty meals or have a large proteinaceous

00:18:25.520 meal that will steal resources and cause a lot of energy to digest so a little bit of exercise you know i

00:18:32.560 taking your advice that i'm no longer muscle building i'm just kind of maintaining releasing

00:18:37.920 my endorphins wait wait wait a minute i'm not sure the audience heard you that you're taking my

00:18:43.840 medical advice could you say that again yeah yeah i think it stands to reason and it's excellent advice

00:18:51.840 that you want to be uh circulating your blood you want to be in a state of fitness you want to uh release

00:18:59.600 endorphins and being the lowest level of stress possible so you come in contact with the virus

00:19:03.680 so this is not the time to be pumping heavy iron to be uh building lots of lactic acid uh to

00:19:11.200 destroying and rebuilding muscle that's going to cost energy and vitamins and resources

00:19:15.840 some regular exercise to release endorphins is the best thing

00:19:21.280 thank you for that uh now i feel twice as smart because you know my my strategy is the strategy of one

00:19:27.520 percents you know if if my walking in the sun is one percent and my taking the zinc is one percent

00:19:34.080 and my getting some good sleep is one percent you know i could get up to ten percent and a ten percent

00:19:40.240 edge against a deadly pandemic that's a ten percent edge i you know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna leave

00:19:46.240 ten percent on the table not today and scott i think that for someone like you given your uh age and

00:19:54.640 your comorbidities with your history of asthma i think that that ten percent is probably an

00:19:58.560 underestimate right yeah you know i think trying to make that difference for someone who's otherwise

00:20:02.800 young and healthy probably they have all the reserve they need but you know i have told my dad has a

00:20:08.480 history of what i presume to be copd and he's 67 so i tell him to do all these things as well to stay

00:20:16.400 really well quarantined and good hand washing so it's much more important than a more vulnerable population

00:20:21.280 okay all right i am working on my uh biceps i've been told telling people but i don't lift too heavy

00:20:29.440 low weights all right doctor um i'm going to talk about some other topics and this was really great

00:20:35.760 and so thank you for volunteering to to do this i think the audience got a lot out of this um so thank

00:20:41.520 you keep up the good fight there scott all right take care bye all right that was really useful um let's

00:20:48.480 talk about some other stuff uh let's see okay um just getting some important notices there let me turn that

00:21:02.800 off i'm sorry all right here's here's a message to our leaders you know uh you probably watched the uh

00:21:14.080 uh uh the house and the senate basically fail to do the work of the people you you just watched you

00:21:24.640 know nancy pelosi and schumer come in and and kill the bill that that the other democrats had been

00:21:30.720 negotiating in good faith now of course the accusation is that uh well it's just political

00:21:36.480 you guys are flying in and killing the thing that was going pretty well other people say well it's

00:21:42.880 a good thing they got there in time to stop this corporate giveaway you know i can't tell the difference

00:21:48.960 from from the chair i'm sitting in i don't have enough visibility on these proposals to say this is

00:21:55.440 the good one this is the bad one if we help these businesses it will it will support x number of jobs that

00:22:01.920 would be lost but if we give money to individually you know they'll spend money and that's good for

00:22:07.360 the business if we can be honest i don't know if anybody knows the difference meaning if you

00:22:14.400 assemble the greatest economists in the world and said you know the democrats are leaning this way

00:22:19.280 the republicans are leaning this way one is more of a corporate path where you make the corporation

00:22:25.280 healthy and that supports jobs the other one's more direct but then they become good consumers and

00:22:30.640 they support the companies which one of these is better in the long run and the answer is i don't

00:22:37.680 know if you imagine you know maybe you should stop doing that because you don't know the reason that

00:22:46.080 congress can't agree is that they don't know so i think they default um this is just my presumption

00:22:53.760 right so i can't read any minds but i think they're going to default to what feels best politically

00:23:00.560 and is compatible with their brand independent of what is good for the country because i don't think

00:23:07.600 they can tell you not because they're not educated in this they're not economists they're not but i don't

00:23:13.840 think the economists could really you know i think that economists are going to be on different pages

00:23:20.960 so we've got that situation going on and our uh leaders are failed us last night let's just call it what it was

00:23:27.520 let's call it what it was the our leaders failed us last night collectively by not acting

00:23:36.640 um and we're in a situation where acting is probably more important than getting it just right

00:23:44.000 that's the sort of the emergency rule you know it'd be great to do everything right if you wait long

00:23:49.680 enough you know you could make sure you've tested everything and you make just the right decision you

00:23:55.040 know that might be good in in regular times but in an emergency action just has a greater value

00:24:02.720 because we're we're managing the psychology of all of us and trying to hold it together

00:24:07.360 remember this isn't this is partly a physical problem you know a big part the the life and death

00:24:13.200 of it but in order for that part to be minimized you got to get the psychology of it right too you

00:24:19.280 know the country's got to be on your side we got to trust our got to trust our leadership we got

00:24:24.080 to feel like progress is being made we got to feel like we're winning we're getting on top of the

00:24:29.040 virus and then pelosi and schumer jet into town and just just knocked the whole thing off the table

00:24:38.480 when it looked like it was good to go now are they right i don't know i don't know it could be

00:24:45.520 it's entirely possible that they came in and said all you inexperienced people are making a big mistake

00:24:51.040 you just got to fix this thing maybe but are schumer and pelosi that much smarter about what's good for

00:24:59.920 the country than the people who are already in the room is there something about schumer and pelosi that

00:25:07.680 they have they had knowledge that could not be transmitted by the the telephone is that what

00:25:14.240 happened were pelosi and schumer not in continuous contact with the people who are negotiating for

00:25:21.920 their team while it was happening what was it about flying in that changed the result because they do have

00:25:31.920 telephones and if nancy and chuck as we like to call them as the president likes to call them if they

00:25:38.400 had a problem with it during the negotiation why are we finding out when it's too late all right i i

00:25:46.560 can't i can't come up with a scenario in my head in which this is anything but a naked uh political

00:25:54.480 incompetence now it could be after the fact we we learned that there's more to it and i'm always open to

00:26:00.400 that i'm always open to well scott you didn't know at the time there was this good reason and i'll be a

00:26:05.680 little charitable because it's an emergency and i don't want to dwell on it right you know i don't

00:26:12.560 need to spend any more time talking about what happened yesterday but let me just make this point

00:26:18.320 to our leadership be they president be they senators be they representatives or mayors it goes like this

00:26:27.360 our leaders are asking us you know we the people to make big sacrifices big sacrifices they're asking us

00:26:40.160 to take big sacrifices your responsibility leaders be they presidents representatives senators or mayors

00:26:50.560 your responsibility is to be worthy of that sacrifice i realize we're going to do a lot of the lifting

00:26:58.560 we the people you know the the hard stuff is going to be down in the trenches

00:27:05.440 but you do have a responsibility to be worthy of that sacrifice and last night you were not

00:27:11.600 you were not and if you want if you're thinking oh scott you're being political let me let me round

00:27:17.680 it out for you when the president in my opinion mocked mit romney for being in quarantine not good

00:27:26.320 not good not ideal i i think we need all of our our leaders to be worthy of our sacrifice

00:27:36.560 governor cuomo in new york is worthy of our sacrifice my governor who i've criticized a lot

00:27:44.560 for the duration of this you know that at least the activities during the crisis is worthy of my

00:27:51.840 sacrifice he is worthy of my sacrifice um i'd like i'd like all of you to be worthy and congress isn't

00:28:00.800 there yet so so today is a request from the public i think i can speak for most of you in this narrow way

00:28:07.600 you know not in everything but in this narrow way we need our our leaders to be worthy of the sacrifice

00:28:13.840 and you're not close in in congress you're not close you got a lot of ground to make up and it

00:28:19.920 needs to be today tomorrow tomorrow's not good needs to be today and action is more important than

00:28:28.320 getting it exactly right that's that's a big deal i have a i have a sort of a thought experiment question

00:28:37.600 normally with these big economic questions i at least have a point of view meaning i can think to myself

00:28:43.120 yeah that makes sense probably or doesn't make sense probably everything's sort of a statistical

00:28:49.440 situation if you're predicting but here's one that i don't even have a little bit of a sense of and i'm

00:28:55.840 going to run it by and let me tell you if this has any any any merit suppose hypothetically and this

00:29:03.200 is not a recommendation it's a question hypothetically the federal government said that until further notice and

00:29:10.240 it might be 30 days or 60 days or 90 days whatever the period that makes sense nobody has to pay rent

00:29:17.840 nobody has to pay their mortgage nobody has to pay for their power phone or you know cable tv nobody

00:29:25.440 pays for the health care and nobody pays for their insurance now what all of these have in common is that

00:29:33.040 there's more like services than a physical product i don't think you can have a rule that says you can't

00:29:40.480 you don't have to pay for a physical product like a loaf of bread or a phone or something like that that

00:29:46.480 that still has to be you got to pay for it because things would go crazy otherwise but just just play this

00:29:53.600 through in your head so we'll take them one at a time nobody pays rent all right that's good for all

00:29:59.680 the people who pay rent um and let's say that you don't have to pay it back later either it's it's just

00:30:05.200 gone it's just off the table now all the landlords would be out of lock right so they would lose their

00:30:12.080 income if you're a landlord and you've owned you know several properties well you lose your income

00:30:16.960 for that month or three months but you're also not paying your rent and you're not paying for your

00:30:22.880 electricity or your health care so you would lose that but also your expenses would go down same as

00:30:29.680 the people who are not paying you and again i'm not saying this is a good idea i'm i'm asking for help

00:30:35.840 thinking it through because i don't know anything this out of the box has been considered um so how

00:30:43.120 about you don't pay your mortgage so the banks don't get that income for two or three months can

00:30:48.640 they afford it well i'll tell you the banks are going to make a fortune when we get back to work

00:30:54.240 because all the people who need working capital loans um they have good businesses that have been

00:30:59.360 demonstrated by their past and all they need is a little bit to just get back up and running banks

00:31:05.360 love those banks i don't even i don't even know if banks on the whole are going to be worse off if

00:31:12.480 you didn't pay your mortgage for three months and let's say it doesn't you don't you never have to

00:31:16.720 pay it it's just delayed you know you're going to pay the same amount you would have paid in the long

00:31:20.640 run but you delayed it three months just as an example what about your electricity phone and cable

00:31:27.040 could we keep all those things working if nobody paid for them for three months well probably because

00:31:37.120 phone companies are pretty rich cable companies power companies can probably you know get by for

00:31:44.400 a few months easier than individuals can you know if if my local power company let's say ran out of

00:31:51.120 money and they couldn't pay all their employees could they pay their employees half for three months

00:31:58.960 because remember under this scenario their their employees are not paying rent not paying mortgage not

00:32:04.320 paying for their own power cable everything so maybe pg and e can say oh god this is going to kill

00:32:09.440 us nobody's paying for power but we can get by for three months as long as we pay our people half half

00:32:15.760 amount and then their expenses are lower too so they can get by a few months just throwing it out there

00:32:21.760 and then insurance and health care same thing um would it be easier just to suspend all our big expenses

00:32:30.320 and make those big entities that largely could afford it just eat it for three months and then we just

00:32:38.480 come up back and running and now we we might also in addition to that might require some ubi in other

00:32:45.600 words it might not be enough that you don't have to pay rent because you still have to buy food and

00:32:50.400 maybe some medicines and stuff so you probably still need the ubi but i'll just put that out there

00:32:56.080 um i haven't been able to read all the comments as they're going by but if somebody had a some

00:33:00.800 visibility on that and you're you've got some economic background could you tell me what i'm

00:33:05.760 missing now i realize it would have gigantic unintended consequences in places that would be

00:33:12.720 hard to know in advance i mean it could be quite disruptive but as long as everybody got food money

00:33:19.440 and everybody still went to work to keep the lights on and the water flowing and everything

00:33:24.000 i think it would work would it all right i don't know um how long does it take to create a deep fake

00:33:33.520 digital version of joe biden um i'm thinking you know we might see that today now i'm just joking but

00:33:43.360 imagine if you will there was some entity you know some deep state you know deeply hidden enemy who wanted to

00:33:50.400 take over the united states uh like a dictatorship but you know make it look like it didn't happen

00:33:57.280 how would you do it well the first thing you do is you take some uh coronavirus and you'd you drop it

00:34:03.920 off in wuhan i don't think this happened i'm just making a movie this is the movie that could come out of

00:34:10.480 this so the movie would be somebody infects the world with a pandemic intentionally but in order to

00:34:17.360 cover their tracks they they put it somewhere next to a uh a weapons a bioweapons lab because of course

00:34:24.400 people are going to think what came from there so you so you release the thing in a city that's near

00:34:29.120 a bioweapons lab this is the first part of the movie i'm not saying this happened and then you you

00:34:35.360 run a candidate who's sort of a shell of his former self and kind of doesn't even know he's on stage

00:34:41.280 but he's got good name recognition and he's going to get a lot of votes just because they know him

00:34:46.960 and his name is joe biden but because it's a pandemic you have the option of taking him

00:34:53.600 completely out of the public eye which you could never do in any other situation you couldn't but you

00:35:01.520 can do it in this situation and then we happen to be coincidentally at exactly the point in human

00:35:09.040 history where you could pull off a deep fake now i'm not saying that's happening again i'm just

00:35:16.080 doing the movie version of our reality so you do the pandemic you blame it on somebody else the world

00:35:22.400 goes into lockdown you take your candidate who's a shell of his former self you lock him up nobody

00:35:27.520 sees him except digitally and it takes a while to get the deep fake up and running and then you cancel

00:35:36.640 all your debates because that's not going to work hey pandemic better cancel those debates

00:35:41.680 and suddenly you've got a deep fake president and we wouldn't know the difference

00:35:50.720 now again i don't think that's happening but isn't it a big coincidence that we get the one the one

00:35:58.000 time you've ever been locked down in your house and you can't go out in public is exactly the time in

00:36:03.040 history that we can make a deep fake and exactly the time in history that the the ideal candidate to

00:36:11.200 do that with joe biden looks like the presumptive nominee well that's a lot of coincidences but that's

00:36:18.560 what makes it a movie all right uh a lot of people saying uh open the country right now and some people

00:36:28.720 saying no and let's talk about that a little bit um don't get trapped in the binary the most likely

00:36:36.640 scenario as i've been telling you for some time is that we run our few weeks now the president has

00:36:42.400 signaled if you can if you can read the tea leaves here the president has signaled that he's very

00:36:48.720 optimistic about this hydroxychloroquine drug used with azithromycin especially uh it's being

00:36:55.920 tested in new york city and i think they'll have enough patience and enough experience that they're

00:37:02.480 gonna have a solid idea about this drug in about a week is my guess because that's about how long

00:37:08.160 it would take to be pretty sure that it's making a difference if it does it looks like the president

00:37:14.080 uh so he did a tweet um last night in which he he said in all capital letters you know we need to get

00:37:20.960 back to work and that he would make a decision at the end of our two-week period which i believe is

00:37:26.000 one week issue from now so in one week the president says we're going to make a decision

00:37:32.880 what's that sound like to you if the president believed that the most likely result is that it's

00:37:40.480 going to be a few months of lockdown would he have tweeted last night you know it's important to

00:37:46.720 get back to work we don't want the the cure to be worse than the thing we'll make a decision in a

00:37:51.680 week does that sound like somebody who has a serious intention of locking you down for three months

00:37:58.880 it does not now we know that the president can get a little ahead of the experts we know he can get

00:38:06.480 ahead of fauci's at least public optimism we don't know what he says privately but his fauci's you know

00:38:13.920 public optimism is that you know you ought to be a little cautious but the president is clearly

00:38:20.240 signaling some good news ahead now does the president know more than you and i know i hope so

00:38:27.760 right does he know more than dr fauci knows of course not but it makes sense that they're doing the

00:38:34.640 dance you know sort of good cop bad cop but in the form of optimist and pessimist

00:38:40.080 yeah i would say not pessimist fauci is more like a realist i would say he's not a pessimist

00:38:46.720 he's a realist and he's saying it's just a fact that that drugs need to be tested it's just a fact

00:38:54.400 that we can't know how dangerous it is and it's just a fact that scientifically according to the rigors

00:39:00.320 of science it can't be demonstrated that it works so you know fauci's sticking to the facts i won't

00:39:06.000 call him a pessimist that's just facts but then trump is sticking with optimism so he's he's over

00:39:12.480 there but i feel like they're signaling that a plan is coming together and i think it's going to look

00:39:18.240 like this um the president has pretty good instincts and i think he knows sort of like my captain

00:39:25.120 kirk and scotty the engineer analogy yesterday it's like give me warp six scotty i cannot give you warp six

00:39:32.800 it'll come apart you can do it scotty give me warp six all right and he gives you warp six and

00:39:38.960 it looks like the ship's going to fall apart but it doesn't so you know in those stories the mythical

00:39:44.640 captain kirk has just some kind of magical intuition that he can he can just feel the right answer

00:39:50.480 somehow without without the details and we have seen that our president seems to demonstrate

00:39:59.360 uh a weird kind of instinct that's been right a lot you know what his instinct to close the

00:40:06.160 airports early being the the most obvious example so you know i'm not saying every one of his hunches

00:40:12.880 will always be right or always has been right but he does have a track record that's that's not

00:40:18.800 inconsequential that should give you a little confidence and he's clearly signaling that there's

00:40:24.640 something like a get back to work plan brewing now here's what i think uh using the greg gotfield

00:40:30.960 model don't don't be trapped in the prison of two ideas in all likelihood it's going to be something

00:40:37.840 between let everybody go back to work and don't let anybody go back to work in all likelihood it will be

00:40:44.400 some middle ground that gets us moving in the right direction and movement and direction are the

00:40:51.040 important things for confidence for psychology for the the markets and everything else so getting

00:40:56.320 some movement in the right direction no matter how small your president understands how important that

00:41:02.160 is i mean he i mean that's especially really so he knows that direction matters i would expect that at

00:41:10.240 the end of the two weeks that they will announce something even if it's small that is directionally

00:41:17.280 positive meaning for example i'm going to let these jobs or these industries go back to work but only

00:41:22.880 under these conditions so it might look something like that and then you say ah finally at least a few

00:41:29.440 people got back to work how about next week well next week we'll see how that week went maybe a few more

00:41:35.920 maybe loosen up maybe tighten up the restrictions but basically play it by ear but with a firm commitment

00:41:44.400 that it's a path toward re-employment so i think you're going to see the president say we've looked at the

00:41:52.480 a week of experience in new york city with this hydro hydroxychloroquine and zithromycin cocktail i think

00:42:02.400 he's going to say it looks like it's stopping the deaths and it looks like it's you know speeding up the

00:42:10.000 recovery if we can get to stopping the deaths of the people under 60 with no health problems

00:42:17.680 then i think your president can ask you for the following sacrifice and would be worthy of it

00:42:24.400 would be worthy of the sacrifice if this happens um i think he's going to ask the american public to

00:42:30.480 take a risk and i think he's going to ask the american public to take a risk for the benefit of the

00:42:35.680 the republic and i think he's going to tell us straight this isn't going to be safe i'm going

00:42:42.000 to ask some of you the young the fit the ones especially the ones who have the most critical

00:42:46.880 jobs i'm going to ask some of you to go back to work i don't know if this is next week or soon

00:42:52.960 it's going to be a risk and i'm going to ask the over 60s to stay home and if you can help them

00:42:58.080 do so but i think i think it's going to be very much your president asking you directly to take a

00:43:06.640 risk with your health and your safety for the republic he's a war president this is a war against

00:43:13.520 a virus your war president needs to ask you directly to take a risk it makes a difference it's one thing

00:43:21.760 to say you know i think this is a good idea here's my guideline and we'll probably comply

00:43:28.240 but it does make a difference if you ask directly i know this is going to be hard i know some of you

00:43:34.320 are going to be lost but we have to take the hill you know we're we're at the point where you just have

00:43:40.160 to take the hill now if you're worrying about closing the economy versus opening the economy i have

00:43:46.080 a firm opinion that a two-week closure isn't going to be a fatal flow a fatal blow a three-week closure

00:43:55.040 also not a fatal blow i think we could take a month but this is where the the captain kirk and me

00:44:02.000 start saying okay scotty i'm not going to ask you for warp 10 but i might ask you for warp eight so in in

00:44:10.080 my just feel of the mood of the country my read reading of the zeitgeist my projecting from my

00:44:16.720 personal feelings my lifetime of experience a month is the absolute ragged edge

00:44:25.600 especially if we have this you know a drug that's working so i don't think your president's going to

00:44:30.640 take you a month to get some people back to work i would expect that if you can telecommute that you

00:44:37.760 will be asked to continue that's what i would expect and i would expect that if you have to

00:44:42.800 be physically present there will be some new guidelines for that maybe we've got some extra

00:44:47.680 masks by then but um that's what it's going to look like all right um

00:44:57.680 do do do uh baron ash asked this question this is user on twitter baron ash

00:45:03.200 um so here here's his tweet he says 55 000 deaths from seasonal flu in the u.s

00:45:10.080 i wonder how that has affected capacity so this is a question that says you know is this coronavirus

00:45:16.400 really going to affect our capacity because we've only had you know x hundreds well how many deaths

00:45:22.400 in the united states and how many hospitalized so i think 20 000 are infected most of them won't be

00:45:27.760 hospitalized so this sounds like a good question right if we have 55 000 deaths and you know god

00:45:35.760 knows how many hospitalizations from the regular flu why would we be afraid of this one well here's my

00:45:43.520 answer 10 is bigger than one if the regular flu let's say on a scale of one to ten is a one

00:45:52.480 because we know that this this one the one we're dealing with the coronavirus might be 10 times as

00:45:59.120 viral and therefore 10 times as many people get it so you might have something like uh the normal flu

00:46:05.840 with their 55 000 deaths in the course of a year and it's sort of spread around the country etc

00:46:12.400 is capacity now capacity in this sense means you still got 10 left because in a normal year you

00:46:19.200 don't you know you're not going to use all of your capacity but let's say 90 or 80 of your capacity

00:46:24.800 is what capacity looks like in a normal year we're already higher than that and this is just getting

00:46:31.760 started so the way to look at this is if on a scale of one to ten the regular flu is a one

00:46:37.360 and we're probably designed to handle that plus a little bit more 10 times that is going to be too much

00:46:44.480 because what we're looking at is something like 10 times as bad as a seasonal flu but here's the catch

00:46:51.120 it's on top of the seasonal flu the regular seasonal flu didn't take a vacation the 55 000 deaths are

00:46:58.320 still going to be there this would be 10 times that on top of it so the math of it is 10 to 1 if you're

00:47:06.080 wondering why the the seasonal flu is you know something we can handle but why is this one different just

00:47:12.800 remember the the number 10 yeah if we had to flex up by let's say 30 percent could we do it yeah

00:47:19.920 probably probably if you put a drain on our hospitals of 30 percent more we could get it done it would

00:47:27.040 hurt some people lives would be lost to be big hardship but we can get that done nice 30 percent

00:47:34.000 flex if we had enough time few months to get ready but can we flex by 10 times because that's the

00:47:42.080 proposition if you don't do the shutdown and this is important if you don't do the shutdown you could

00:47:49.280 quite quickly get to 10 times the size of a problem of a regular flu and then the whole system crashes

00:47:56.000 so and then other people are looking at our infection rate at the beginning of an epidemic

00:48:02.320 and while we're all locked down and before we have testing kits and saying this doesn't look like a

00:48:09.520 big problem oh please please people that's not the right way to look at it it's the beginning of the

00:48:18.080 epidemic and we've done draconian measures to the economy making us all stay home just to keep it under

00:48:24.640 that and it's brand new and it's 10 times as viral as the old stuff you know the normal stuff don't

00:48:31.200 look at that little number that we've taken draconian measures to control and it's new and we don't have

00:48:38.400 enough test kits to really know how much is out there don't look at that that number has no meaning

00:48:45.200 no meaning that because we you close the economy the number that you want is the one you don't have

00:48:52.720 access to the number you want is everybody one went just along with their normal business we had big

00:49:00.000 crowds and events what's that look like because that's the number that matters if you're saying

00:49:05.760 we shouldn't have closed down the economy you have to compare it to the number you don't have

00:49:11.520 which is what if we didn't we don't know because we did so you need to up your game of what you're

00:49:18.880 comparing to just don't make those common mistakes all right um here are the here are the little signs

00:49:29.680 i would be looking for and some of these you've heard before if you're looking for good news and

00:49:36.960 you're wondering if the hydroxychloroquine makes a difference by the way i think the plan to go back

00:49:41.840 to work will be once we get enough of that supply once we know it works the young people will go back

00:49:47.520 to work take their chances the death rate will approach zero i think with the drug um so the

00:49:54.720 things to look for are any of our american doctors you know let's say they're under 60 themselves who

00:50:00.880 are dying on the front lines so far i haven't heard of one which suggests they have access to the

00:50:07.440 hydroxychloroquine uh and that might make the difference because you know they're getting infected

00:50:14.400 there's no question that the doctors are getting infected but it's early so that doesn't mean

00:50:20.640 we know anything yet because it might be just early and maybe you'll hear about that later tragically

00:50:26.480 um what i would be looking for is that the infection rate is zooming because we'll be testing more and

00:50:33.120 it's just deeper into the pandemic so you should see the rate of infection just going up like you expect

00:50:38.720 a pandemic uh maybe maybe we'll take the top off it a little bit with the flattening of the curve but

00:50:44.720 you expect still pretty big healthy increase even if we flatten the curve but you should but if you're

00:50:51.360 getting good news you're going to see the infection rate in zoom while the death rate of people with no

00:50:58.800 no underlying conditions approach zero and you should start to see that in new york city starting

00:51:05.840 around this week so here's the most important number you should look for people under the age of 60

00:51:14.240 dying in new york city from this virus i think it's going to approach zero except for underlying

00:51:21.840 conditions that would be that would be an indication that we've got to plan out um that you would also

00:51:28.960 expect that the president wouldn't be quite as optimistic and quite as let's say foreshadowing

00:51:36.160 about what's going to happen at the end of two weeks i don't think he would be giving us this kind

00:51:41.040 of optimism unless he knew a little bit more than we did and and we assume he does um you should also

00:51:50.800 expect and i tell you this a million times because it's always true that it's darkest before the dawn

00:51:55.040 so a week from now as much as we are anxious and complaining and fearful for the fate of the

00:52:01.680 economy and our in our country and ourselves as much as we're afraid of that this week

00:52:08.560 next week's going to be pretty rugged you know let let me not candy coat it psychologically and also

00:52:16.000 financially next week is going to be rough it's not going to be like this week it's going to be tough

00:52:24.160 tough for a lot of people really tough for a lot of people and if we help them out we can ease that

00:52:29.440 but next week's going to be tough and you're going to be saying to yourself and i've been predicting this

00:52:35.280 for a while you're going to be saying to yourself man it doesn't look like we have a way out

00:52:41.520 and i think we hit the wall humanity's in trouble the whole economy is going to crash we can't take much

00:52:48.320 more of this that is exactly how you should feel right before the turn so in other words you can't

00:52:56.800 tell the difference between being on the precipice of really bad news and being on the precipice of

00:53:02.320 the turnaround they would look exactly the same it's going to be way darker next week and that isn't

00:53:10.400 necessarily a bad thing meaning that the best way to take the starship enterprise and in danger is you

00:53:17.600 might have to run it at you know warp speed eight and it's not designed for that so next week we're

00:53:25.840 going to be at warp eight and our economy is not designed to do that for very long so that's why i'm

00:53:33.120 pretty sure it's going to be short because the smartest people in the world are looking at this

00:53:38.160 problem president trump is not making you know decisions in a vacuum all the all the smart people

00:53:43.440 are saying you know do this don't do don't do this i don't believe there are any smart people

00:53:49.120 who are going to tell the president to lock down the economy for three months just i just don't see

00:53:55.120 it happening i think mnuchin was trying to give you a you know sort of a worst case there and he

00:54:02.160 succeeded here's what to look for other countries who are now in the maturity the mature end of dealing

00:54:10.400 with this let's say china and south korea i would expect that even if their infection rates go up and

00:54:17.440 down for a little while that their death rates because i believe both of them have access to the

00:54:24.000 hydroxychloroquine by now china especially i imagine they make it i don't know that but i imagine they make

00:54:30.240 it so i would look for their death rate to approach zero again for the people under 60 with no conditions

00:54:38.080 and that would tell you you can get back to work pretty soon um let's talk about this

00:54:43.520 question of uh i'm kind of interested in this from a psychological as well as a health and economic

00:54:49.520 perspective the uh the masks and i would i would propose this following way to understand this and

00:55:00.240 this is preliminary and speculative but i think i'm right you know bounce against your own opinion

00:55:05.760 that if in normal times the value of a doctor's time is very high and the value of an individual

00:55:16.560 n95 mask is very low compared to a doctor's time so what would be the best way to handle your mask

00:55:26.000 situation in normal times well the best way would be use it once you know or whatever the guidelines are

00:55:32.640 and then throw it away because the value of a mask is trivial the value of a doctor's time is very high

00:55:39.680 you don't want him to get sick and you know you don't want him to take any extra time to disinfect

00:55:44.560 his mask and stuff like that so that makes sense and you would imagine that the people who make the

00:55:49.120 masks would be recommending that because of course it's safer to throw it away so of course the manufacturer

00:55:57.200 is going to recommend the safest thing which happens to be compatible with their profits and i wonder and

00:56:04.080 this is just a question if uh the medical community simply got i'll say hypnotized by uh by routine

00:56:14.720 into thinking that you have to throw the masks away but you know somebody's saying lawsuits yes so you

00:56:21.360 want to drive the risk to zero if doing so is a small expense in those cases you'd always do it

00:56:28.400 but now we're in an emergency and what's happened is that the value of the mask is getting really higher

00:56:35.280 and the value of the um the the time of the uh the physician hasn't changed that much right they're

00:56:42.560 still very important but the value of a mask went from zero to very high if that had been the start the

00:56:49.200 the case from the start i'll bet masks would be reusable routinely so i think what we're seeing

00:56:56.560 is that uh there was a blind spot just guessing right don't don't reuse your mask because the

00:57:03.280 cartoonist says that it's safe right that would be dumb but i'm speculating that what we had was a

00:57:08.960 massive cognitive blind spot about reuse of some types of masks not all of them i think it makes a

00:57:15.840 difference what brand you have and what model but that some of them could be reused with relatively

00:57:21.840 little problem you know hang it on a clothesline for three days or you know you spray it with some

00:57:28.480 you know lysol or something disinfective let it dry out there probably were a number of ways to reuse

00:57:34.320 them but we're cognitively blind to that even being an option because we've always thrown them away

00:57:40.400 and that was always considered the safest thing so i think it's just a cognitive thing and we may be

00:57:47.200 basically if we get past that maybe you quadruple the number of n95 masks just by the realization that

00:57:55.360 they can be reused under the right conditions so that's good news all right um so schumer and

00:58:06.080 pelosi or i guess schumer tweeted this out and as the reason he killed it was part of killing the

00:58:12.800 legislation for the bailouts or whatever it is he says the geo bill gop bill is a slush fund to bail out

00:58:19.440 trump hotels full stop

00:58:22.960 senator schumer you are not worthy of leaving us in this in this uh this thing the very first sentence

00:58:36.480 of why he killed this thing is that it would be good for trump hotels

00:58:43.360 i'm i'm kind of done with you senator schumer this wasn't really the time for that

00:58:49.440 that because here's the thing and let me i'm going to go a little bit stronger on this

00:58:56.320 if you're saving other businesses other hotels you damn well ought to save the trump hotel

00:59:03.280 trump hotels trump business you damn well order because what did what did the trump family do to

00:59:09.760 you not talking about president trump he's turned over you know management and he's a certain age but

00:59:16.640 what you know what did ivanka do to you that that that the business she's associated with doesn't get

00:59:23.440 to live and the employees the employees that that work there don't get to have their jobs what what did

00:59:29.360 she do to you what did don jr well you know what did eric trump you know obviously everybody's political

00:59:36.800 and everybody's insulting each other but what have they done as citizens

00:59:40.800 that makes you want to carve them out for special destruction economically not acceptable

00:59:49.600 absolutely not acceptable chuck schumer if you're picking winners and losers for political reasons and

00:59:56.000 you said it clearly i mean it's right there it's in his tweet the very first sentence the go pill

01:00:02.400 gop is a slush fund to bail out trump hotels now i assume what he means

01:00:06.480 is that some of that money could be used and would expect to be used to bail out trump hotels as well

01:00:13.760 as other hotels do you have a problem with that i don't now of course i want to see the numbers and

01:00:21.680 want to make sure that saving the hotel business is you know a good use of the money compared to

01:00:28.160 whatever else they could use the money for assuming there's some limitation on how much money is available

01:00:33.200 you know i'd like to see the reasoning but if you're going to be looking at saving other hotels

01:00:38.640 because the the um the the recreational and you know uh tourist business is so important to the

01:00:47.120 united states it's a real big part it's a big big big thing why would you exclude the trump hotels i

01:00:53.600 mean really you flew across the country to tell us you're going to be political in the time of a crisis

01:00:58.640 this is so unacceptable so deeply unacceptable chuck schumer you were not worthy you're just not

01:01:06.400 worthy you know every almost every citizen is taking not almost every citizen a hundred percent of

01:01:15.280 citizens are sacrificing right now do you do you think that we want to see you tweeting about your

01:01:21.360 politics about oh i can't make the trump hotels happy you know i don't want to accidentally do

01:01:28.160 something that's good for the trump family and and really that's the first line of your of your tweet

01:01:34.480 this is not acceptable this is not worthy this is not worthy of the sacrifice the public is making

01:01:42.480 you need to increase your game would i listen to would i listen to an argument that says we want

01:01:50.320 to fix this with these tweaks yeah absolutely yeah if democrats have an argument that says if we

01:01:56.960 tweak this we can solve a problem that wasn't anticipated sure no problem but is that is that stated in

01:02:06.080 the gop gop is a slush fund to bail out the trump hotels that is literally mind reading that is mind

01:02:13.040 reading somebody is somebody is imagining they can see other people's all um you know their intentions now

01:02:22.000 do i think that president trump wants to save the trump business and do i think that the people who

01:02:28.160 work with him in the government would be highly biased toward doing that i do i do but you know what

01:02:35.680 else is true we probably need to save some hotels and he's one of them so if he can come up with a

01:02:42.960 reason why he doesn't need to be on the list meaning the business not him i'm open to it i'll listen to it

01:02:49.040 but i certainly don't see that reason it just looks like making politics to me so you're gonna have

01:02:53.200 to do better than that because you just have to do better um and then he goes on and say that uh

01:03:05.120 that about other businesses they got a two trillion dollar tax cut last year

01:03:11.200 when schumer is saying that the businesses that might be helped by this also got a two trillion dollar

01:03:16.960 tax cut last year that's not a reason that's just naked politics because it's a sunk cost

01:03:27.360 the sunk cost is what we did last year you can't take it back it's what happened it's done so schumer

01:03:33.760 comes into town to tell us that he's going to make a decision based on a sunk cost

01:03:39.680 i've taught you what a sunk cost is by definition a sunk cost is something that should be ignored for

01:03:48.080 your decisions today because it's something you can't change it's just history it's something in

01:03:52.560 your mind it's something something in the past you can't you can't time travel so if you're making

01:03:58.560 decisions based on something that happened in the past that can't be changed as your justification

01:04:03.840 that's a sunk cost it's the most basic leadership mistake to make a decision based on the sunk cost

01:04:13.440 and he's telling you he's doing it's he's he's telling you i'm not telling you he's telling you

01:04:17.840 that that's big part of his decision it's in his first sentence it's a sunk cost that's not that is not

01:04:25.600 worthy you are not worthy of our of our sacrifice you need to up your game um naval ravikant uh tweeted

01:04:34.320 around and anything he tweets is worth looking at because he's a a fantastic curator of what your brain

01:04:42.240 needs and when um and it was an article title of at least a pull quote from it is so this was the

01:04:50.080 intention of the article that we should pay almost anything you know almost any price to shorten the

01:04:55.360 shutdown even if it costs you know a hundred times what the manhattan project cost in in those

01:05:01.520 dollars um and it goes on to say that the the you know enormous trillions of dollars of damage

01:05:09.920 have their own expense you know people die when the economy does poorly etc and that um

01:05:17.760 you know it might make sense to go back to work because the economic shutdown if we calculated it

01:05:23.840 smartly we would see that it's much worse than potentially the deaths here's what's missing

01:05:30.640 no mention of the strategy of using the chloro chlor hydroxychlor queen hydroxychloro queen there was no

01:05:41.040 discussion in this article about the more reasonable middle ground which is once you can get the deaths

01:05:47.600 down to zero for the healthy people you know not the over 60s but if you can get the young people

01:05:52.960 death rate down to zero you've got a path out send them back to work in some phased way monitor the

01:06:00.880 situation keep everybody alive yeah you might have to cough for a week and stay quarantined but we'll

01:06:06.240 set you we got lots of people we're not short of people to work i mean the big problem is unemployment so

01:06:12.320 you know we can take the sacrifice and get this done so if you read an article like that and you

01:06:18.960 are fooled into thinking that the economic destruction of continued continuing this is far greater in even

01:06:28.480 death count than just going with the the virus look for this variable what does it say about the strategy

01:06:36.320 of using the hydroxychloro queen to keep the young people at least alive at least alive and you know

01:06:44.720 turn it into a cold basically and they miss some work maybe but that the option is missing so you could

01:06:51.760 you could scare yourself to death about the economic turndown by looking at you know the comparison

01:06:58.240 without the advantage of the drug variable being in there and then here's the thing i think that

01:07:04.720 pausing for two weeks is always going to be seen as the right decision because not too many things

01:07:12.800 break in two weeks not too many people um who lose two weeks of income are going to be disadvantaged for

01:07:22.480 years i mean that would be rare right you know you can if all you've lost is two weeks of income

01:07:28.720 you can you know grind it back after a year or so i mean you'll be back on your feet

01:07:32.640 so two weeks makes perfect sense and then that's where judgment comes in after that

01:07:40.720 after the second week and the president said he's going to make a decision i think the decision is

01:07:45.920 going to be a request and i think the request is going to be i'm going to ask you to take an even

01:07:52.880 bigger sacrifice and risk with your health maybe your lives you know we think the pill will keep you

01:07:59.840 alive but maybe with your life uh to get the economy going and i believe that the citizens of this

01:08:06.160 country will rise as one and say yes um the dow losing a thousand dollars per day on average

01:08:15.120 yeah you know the beauty of owning stock is that if the entire dow jones goes down by 20 percent

01:08:22.960 um you still own about the same amount of the country so the percentage of the economic engine

01:08:32.800 that you owned two weeks ago let's say you own some stock in your 401k you owned you know what

01:08:39.120 whatever tiny percentage of the total economy you owned in stocks you still own about the same percent

01:08:45.440 because everybody else went down with you and i always forget that you know if you have a background

01:08:52.640 in economics things can look less scary than than it can to people don't your buying power

01:09:00.640 you know didn't change as much as the percentage that your stocks went down because now we're all in

01:09:06.320 the same boat you know in theory if the stocks went down and just stayed there which isn't going to

01:09:12.240 happen that's not going to happen but in theory so too with the price of real estate so you know

01:09:18.000 the amount you had your 401k would go further you know your rent would go down etc if if the economy

01:09:24.960 gets depressed now i'm oversimplifying and i'm not expecting things to play out cleanly uh i'm just

01:09:32.560 saying that i wouldn't worry too much if everybody in the stock market has less you know less dollar

01:09:39.040 amount we still have the same percentage when it goes back up you'll still have the same percentage

01:09:44.080 and in the long long run the percentage of the economy you own is is going to be the big thing

01:09:52.480 once you're over you know survival level um yeah gas prices are down that helps yep so uh stock market

01:10:02.320 going down today no that variable gives me no concern none not a single concern because remember

01:10:12.240 i told you a week ago that the next two weeks are going to look worse so if the next two weeks go

01:10:19.280 exactly the way i predicted i don't feel less comfortable because i'm also predicting that after

01:10:26.480 that we're going to start the turn back so as long as my predictions have been spot on i'm also

01:10:33.280 feeling a little bit comfortable about the ones after that that have not been confirmed and so should

01:10:38.160 you uh all right uh stock market will bounce back quickly yeah the stock market just needs to know that

01:10:47.920 things are direction directionally improving so i would expect when the president gives his announcement

01:10:54.320 about his decision that if any of it is to go back to work the stock market wars will respond

01:11:04.880 time to fix the tests yeah it looks like there's something brewing with the technology of testing

01:11:11.680 because right now it's it's a clunky time-consuming process and the president seemed to suggest that

01:11:18.480 somebody had invented a streamlined way to do it some kind of a 45 minutes you get your

01:11:24.080 results kind of a test i don't know what that looks like but uh and i don't know how how quickly

01:11:30.800 we could cramp you know ramp up production of such a thing but it's promising isolation is devastating oh

01:11:40.080 speaking of isolation so one of the problems that congress can't seem to solve and it's just mind-boggling

01:11:46.720 to me here's the problem that congress hasn't been able to solve that you have to be you have to be

01:11:52.560 present to vote and it makes a big difference if people are self-quarantining and you know the two

01:11:58.720 sides are kind of close to each other in numbers it makes a big difference if you can't show up in

01:12:03.680 person you don't get the vote and if not enough people show up because i'd asked the question of

01:12:09.360 uh joel pollack he because he's smarter than i am and all things legal and constitutional and i said

01:12:16.720 how many people actually have to show up in order for the vote to count and you have to get you know

01:12:21.840 i guess a majority of people to show up where the vote doesn't count now because i thought to myself

01:12:30.400 well why can't you just send one person to vote and then just agree that you'll vote offline and

01:12:37.920 then just tell that one person okay the democrats won the vote or the republicans won the vote but

01:12:43.840 whatever it is that that one person would go in and then safely without the without being around

01:12:48.960 other people just vote however the people sat sitting at home told them to vote but that doesn't work

01:12:55.040 because the constitution requires you you get enough bodies in the room but here's what i would like to

01:13:01.280 test we have an emergency and we can test this let's do this for every um who can't make it physically

01:13:10.640 how about they have an ipad so you have somebody come in and say here's here's senator lee's ipad here's

01:13:18.880 senator rand paul's ipad put it you know put it in the room turn it on to facetime and they're live

01:13:27.200 but they're on they're on video and i think you have to push a button to vote so maybe somebody sitting

01:13:32.720 next to them can push their button and you know they can observe it so there's no funny business

01:13:38.000 so here's the thing if you attend and vote live on video have you met the constitutional requirement

01:13:48.880 to be there in person well no right obviously no what happens if you do it anyway remember it's

01:13:58.000 emergency rules we're under we're under crisis rule and the the old rules are all flexible now what if

01:14:07.520 you just said it's an emergency if you appear on a video device we will count you as present

01:14:16.160 it will change that rule if we have to later but for the moment if you're live on video in the room

01:14:24.000 you're present now what would happen well maybe somebody takes it up to the supreme court and the

01:14:30.080 supreme court says you know it's our job to you know interpret the constitution and sure we're we're

01:14:36.720 originalists and we don't want to deviate from the exact word of the constitution but let me ask you this

01:14:43.760 what are the exact words of the constitution well i don't know maybe somebody could tell me

01:14:50.320 but i'm sure it says something like you have to be there in person

01:14:54.400 but here's what your supreme court can do for you

01:14:57.920 no that's not the coronavirus don't worry um here's what you could do this the supreme court could say

01:15:06.240 that what it means to be in person when the constitution was written just doesn't look

01:15:12.480 like that anymore because they couldn't contemplate that you could move your yourself into another space

01:15:18.800 virtually by being on a device so that the framers didn't think of that option so it was never

01:15:25.680 contemplated could the supreme court i know you don't like them making legislation from the bench

01:15:30.960 but could they interpret the supreme court to simply say yeah it's 2020 being somewhere in person

01:15:40.080 could easily just be on a video device because because it beats all the requirements

01:15:45.280 of being in the room in terms of communication right am i wrong that we could just do it you know just

01:15:54.560 replace people with ipads vote as if they're in person take it to the supreme court and what

01:16:02.640 what if the supreme court you know doesn't take it or whatever well who cares because the american

01:16:08.000 people could watch the whole process remember this is fully transparent if you're at home watching

01:16:14.320 ran paul vote you know you're watching at home on tv and you see his ipad say i vote i and then

01:16:21.280 whoever's sitting there pushes his you know i button or however it works i don't know and you're

01:16:26.240 watching it it's fully transparent are you going to be the the dick who says oh no the constitution

01:16:34.080 says you got to be there in person ran paul well that's not good enough for me no you're not you're

01:16:39.120 not you're not going to be that dick you're going to say yeah i mean it's an emergency why wouldn't you

01:16:45.440 makes perfect sense and if it goes to the supreme court do you think the supreme court's going to be

01:16:49.680 a bunch of dicks and just say ah technically technically you got to be physically in that room

01:16:55.680 so no no we're going to let the whole country go to hell because a couple hundred years ago they

01:17:02.640 didn't know that uh facetime would be invented no nobody's going to do that just fix it just just fix

01:17:10.080 it congress you know your your public will support you just make it make it visible make it transparent

01:17:17.680 you know don't don't have any secrets about who's voting and why who's home who's there no secrets

01:17:24.560 your country will support you 100 percent and if there's anybody who wants to be a dick about it

01:17:32.560 later and say oh that wasn't a valid vote because you did not have the actual physical bodies in the

01:17:38.400 seats we'll just ignore that idiot all right i mean there's always going to be one of those just ignore

01:17:43.600 them and if he wants to take it to the supreme court fine fine i think the supreme court is going

01:17:48.880 to say yeah facetime is fine in an emergency that's what i think all right i think i talked about

01:17:54.480 everything i want to talk about let's make sure um just checking my notes bear with me please bear with

01:18:03.760 me oh i'll mention again the uh website if you're uh if you spun up a factory to try to make protective

01:18:12.480 gear for doctors say masks or gowns or gloves or whatever uh and you're trying to find the buyers

01:18:19.520 go to this website project n as a neighbor 95.com project and then n95 the the type of masks.com but

01:18:30.320 they're doing more than more than just masks but they will uh they will match people who are making

01:18:35.600 stuff just sort of on their own they said we can make these and started making them with the people

01:18:41.440 the hospitals and and the buyers um so that was worth saying all right i think i hit my notes um i will be

01:18:52.800 back this after or sometime tonight i'll shoot for the same time in the evening so so uh if you saw

01:19:02.640 that if you're seeing this at 7 a.m california time i'll do 7 p.m tonight or i'll shoot for it can't

01:19:09.440 promise it all right uh that's all i got for now be good to each other we'll be good soon enough bye for now

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 23, 2020

Episode 867 Scott Adams： Sip the Morning Away and Get a Great Start

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