Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 875 Scott Adams： Get in Here for the Sip. It's a Good One Today!

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in.

00:00:12.920 Grab a chair, get a beverage.

00:00:16.060 Some of you are exercising right now.

00:00:18.520 Good for you.

00:00:19.680 Everybody who's exercising right now, when you listen to my voice, you're doing exactly

00:00:24.980 the right thing.

00:00:26.460 We need you healthy.

00:00:27.360 Stay healthy.

00:00:28.500 Get your immune system up.

00:00:30.920 Do your part.

00:00:32.980 All right.

00:00:35.180 Many of you are here already.

00:00:37.500 And so, hey, thanks Omar.

00:00:41.400 And so, it's time for the simultaneous sip.

00:00:44.940 And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug

00:00:48.840 or flask, a vessel of any kind.

00:00:50.180 Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:00:51.840 I like coffee.

00:00:53.920 And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that

00:00:58.500 makes everything, including the pandemic, better.

00:01:02.260 It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.

00:01:05.420 So, let's talk about all the things.

00:01:15.100 We'll talk about all the things.

00:01:16.720 Starting with, so I don't want to get ahead of myself because, you know, I tend toward the

00:01:26.920 optimistic scale of things.

00:01:28.720 So, I'm going to put a little bit of a caveat on this, which is kind of wait and see what

00:01:34.360 happens today.

00:01:36.640 But as you know, I had been predicting that this week would be the week that we saw the

00:01:42.600 death rate, not the infection rate, but the death rate in New York City flattened out.

00:01:49.720 So, and the prediction was based on the fact that they got a big supply of the Trump pills.

00:01:55.180 So, the Trump pills are the hydroxychloroquine combined with the azithromycin and maybe zinc,

00:02:02.760 depending.

00:02:03.880 And they got that big shipment.

00:02:06.660 Apparently, they were starting to give it to people on Monday.

00:02:08.960 And I said that in the next 48 hours or so, you should see the death curve start to flatten

00:02:16.720 at the same time, and this was the key to the prediction, that you would see the number

00:02:21.440 of infections soar.

00:02:23.980 Now, part of that is because of better testing, right?

00:02:26.280 But the other part, the bigger part probably is that it's just an infection.

00:02:30.980 So, of course, there's more.

00:02:32.900 Yeah, we saw that.

00:02:33.740 So, yesterday, the death rate was around 100-ish.

00:02:37.280 But the day before, the death rate was also about 100-ish.

00:02:43.700 Now, keep in mind that, you know, the day that you start administering the drug, you still

00:02:48.960 have a whole bunch of people who should have had it earlier.

00:02:52.580 So, in theory, the first thing you should see is a flattening, because, you know, I don't

00:02:57.480 know any kind way to finish this sentence.

00:03:01.660 So, just assume that I don't have bad intentions here.

00:03:06.020 But you have to kind of work through the backlog.

00:03:08.880 There's just no nice way to say it.

00:03:10.880 The backlog of people who aren't going to make it.

00:03:14.240 And for some of them, the medicines, even if they work, could be too late, especially

00:03:19.420 for the elderly and the underlying conditions.

00:03:21.520 So, what I would expect is a few days of flattening of the death rate, not the infection rate.

00:03:28.300 That's still going way up.

00:03:29.780 But if the meds work to keep you alive, and we have enough to give it to you early, maybe

00:03:35.000 upon your first visit with symptoms, instead of, you know, waiting until it's too late.

00:03:39.860 I think, just to stay with the prediction, again, everything depends on, you know, either

00:03:48.660 the hydroxychloroquine or some combination, it could be another med, but everything depends

00:03:54.400 on some medicine working.

00:03:56.500 And they're doing a few, probably doing enough testing there that they're getting a sense

00:04:00.560 for that.

00:04:01.360 So, don't want to get ahead of myself, but I did call this days in advance, right?

00:04:07.660 And remember, I always tell you, look for the people who make public predictions, and

00:04:12.200 then tell you later if they got it right or wrong.

00:04:15.460 I will also tell you when I get stuff wrong, and I know you'll remind me if I forget.

00:04:22.100 But this one was right on.

00:04:24.620 This prediction was spot on.

00:04:26.720 I said this would be the week if flattened, and I did.

00:04:30.200 Now, that doesn't mean it's because of that.

00:04:32.420 So, you still have to wait.

00:04:33.340 That's why I don't want to get ahead of myself with any optimism.

00:04:35.940 But it is what I would, in the best case scenario, which is that we have some therapeutics which

00:04:42.620 really make a difference, that's the best case scenario, it would look exactly like this.

00:04:48.660 But it doesn't mean it is that.

00:04:51.020 The World Health Organization, I'm trying to figure out whose side they're on.

00:04:56.680 And for a while, because they're human beings, I said to myself, well, it's humans against

00:05:03.460 virus.

00:05:05.000 Obviously, the humans are on my side.

00:05:07.740 It doesn't matter what country you are in, what party, what gender or ethnicity.

00:05:13.520 At the moment, we're kind of all on the same team against the virus.

00:05:18.740 But then I see, you know, but WHO is also saying that face masks were not that important

00:05:24.960 at one point.

00:05:25.940 And there's a new tweet that says this.

00:05:29.800 This is from WHO, P-R-O, I don't know what the P-R-O stands for. 0.95

00:05:36.260 And it's a little public service announcement looking thing.

00:05:39.140 And it says, if you do not have any respiratory symptoms, such as a fever, a cough, or run

00:05:45.020 in your nose, you do not need to wear a medical mask.

00:05:49.500 When used alone, masks can give you a full sense of protection and can even be a source

00:05:55.940 of infection when not used correctly.

00:05:59.980 To which I say, have we not been hearing that asymptomatic shedding might be a

00:06:09.120 big problem?

00:06:10.580 How do people who are not showing symptoms yet, how do they transition from not showing

00:06:18.120 any symptoms to showing symptoms?

00:06:22.420 Does it ever pass through a moment or two of coughing before you put your mask on?

00:06:29.840 In other words, how do asymptomatic people, even theoretically, transmit the virus unless

00:06:37.620 it's coming out of their mouth?

00:06:39.120 Is it coming out of their eyeball sockets?

00:06:42.780 Is that how asymptomatic people spread it? 0.82

00:06:45.780 Is it on their hands, but somehow it got to their hands without coming from their mouth

00:06:51.760 or their nose?

00:06:53.220 Is that what the World Health Organization is telling us?

00:06:56.900 Does the asymptomatic spreading come out of your elbows?

00:07:00.380 I'm not a doctor, but if I had to guess, asymptomatic spreading might come out of your ass a little bit, but probably it's coming

00:07:14.960 out of your mouth and your nose.

00:07:16.120 At the very least, there are some people who will just always be asymptomatic, but if they're

00:07:22.680 spreading, where's it coming from?

00:07:24.680 You don't want to put a mask on those people?

00:07:26.960 Now, some people pointed out that countries who went mask crazy, in other words, they just

00:07:32.400 all wore masks, such as Japan and South Korea, also experienced a flattening of the curve far

00:07:40.920 faster than anyone else.

00:07:42.080 Now, that's anecdotal, because there's lots of other things that are different comparing

00:07:48.160 any two countries.

00:07:49.880 But you'd at least have to raise the question, since we know these masks stop people with

00:07:55.720 symptoms, why wouldn't it stop people who are asymptomatic, but somehow they're shedding,

00:08:01.580 or they're transitioning from asymptomatic to symptomatic?

00:08:04.920 Like, don't you want them to be wearing a mask during the transition?

00:08:09.700 So, I don't think the World Health Organization is actually on our side.

00:08:14.120 I think the virus bought them off.

00:08:16.700 Somehow the virus managed to use cryptocurrency and bribe this organization.

00:08:22.940 That's all I can think of.

00:08:25.420 All right.

00:08:27.660 So, people who are not good at thinking are having a real tough time with this crisis.

00:08:34.220 Now, when I say people who are not good at thinking, I'm talking about specifically two

00:08:39.360 loser-think errors.

00:08:41.480 One is the thought that friction doesn't matter.

00:08:45.680 That it doesn't matter if you put some friction on something.

00:08:48.980 If it doesn't stop it completely, well, why do it?

00:08:53.000 And so, I use this thought experiment, which some people reading it incorrectly believed was

00:09:01.860 an analogy.

00:09:02.420 But it's a thought experiment.

00:09:04.780 You can see it as an analogy, but it's better as a thought experiment.

00:09:07.580 It goes like this.

00:09:10.040 If all Americans were forced to go into a hot shooting war where there are actually bullets,

00:09:17.280 and let's say there's no such thing as the military, where just all the citizens are going

00:09:20.960 to be in a shooting war.

00:09:22.000 And the government said, all right, since every single one of you are going to be in a war

00:09:26.540 zone with actual bullets flying around, we're going to issue you bulletproof vests and helmets.

00:09:32.620 I think what we learned from the crisis is that 25% of the public would say, no thank you.

00:09:41.900 I know I'm going into a war zone with bullets flying everywhere, but I don't need your bulletproof

00:09:48.640 vest and I don't need your helmet because, duh, somebody can just shoot me in the neck.

00:09:54.560 So, what's the point?

00:09:58.300 Why would I need a bulletproof vest and a helmet in a war zone if somebody could just shoot me

00:10:04.860 in the vest?

00:10:05.460 Duh.

00:10:06.320 Duh.

00:10:06.720 So, now, if you're saying, Scott, that's an analogy to wearing masks and doing the smart things

00:10:16.120 during a pandemic, to which I say, you can think of it as an analogy, but it doesn't have to be.

00:10:22.560 I just say it's a thought experiment for you to understand human beings.

00:10:28.440 25% of human beings don't understand that friction matters.

00:10:33.380 That reducing your risk even makes a difference.

00:10:40.160 So, that's the point.

00:10:41.560 It's a point about people.

00:10:42.820 It's not a point about masks or no masks, but obviously, if masks can reduce your risk

00:10:48.880 even a little bit in a pandemic, even just a little bit, of course you should be wearing them.

00:10:57.480 If the only thing it did, as Brian Machiavelli on Twitter pointed out this morning, if the

00:11:04.660 only thing it did was keep you from touching your mouth during the day a few times, it's

00:11:11.360 still worth it if you have the masks.

00:11:13.580 Now, I think the real question might be availability of masks, but it seems like the one thing we

00:11:19.620 could fix, you know, maybe not N95 masks, but don't you think you could get, you know,

00:11:26.340 the 75% effectiveness, you know, just fairly good job, mask for the public fairly quickly

00:11:33.560 in a few weeks?

00:11:35.100 A lot of people are making them.

00:11:36.580 So, I think we'll see a big difference when we get masks.

00:11:38.860 In addition to the virus crisis itself, we're having a major irony crisis.

00:11:46.620 I don't know if you're aware of it, because it kind of flies under the radar, but my nose

00:11:52.840 itches like crazy when I'm on camera now, and it's literally just an itch.

00:11:57.700 It's psychosomatic, and I know it is.

00:12:00.060 Like, I know it's psychosomatic, because the moment the camera turns off, this stops, but

00:12:04.820 right now it itches like crazy.

00:12:06.440 It's crazy.

00:12:07.100 So, the irony waves are coming hard now.

00:12:11.180 Some examples.

00:12:13.120 Mexico is paying for the wall, you know, in the virtual sense that they're, they just

00:12:19.420 moved their military up to guard the border so Americans can't get in.

00:12:24.800 I don't even have to say anything about that.

00:12:26.920 You know, this is just on my list of the irony crisis.

00:12:30.720 It was announced today that Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus after quite publicly

00:12:40.340 bragging that he went and shook hands with coronavirus victims in the hospital, and he

00:12:45.660 wasn't afraid about it at all.

00:12:47.000 And now he has the coronavirus.

00:12:51.420 There's some Instagram influencer type, I don't know how big she was, but it made a story in 1.00

00:12:58.020 which she was bragging that she was not going to do social distancing. 1.00

00:13:01.900 And she tested positive for the coronavirus.

00:13:06.320 In the irony crisis further, we have some news that the southern part of the United States

00:13:16.240 is unseasonably warm.

00:13:18.160 It's sort of a record heat for this time of year.

00:13:22.600 That's right.

00:13:23.940 The only thing that might save us from the coronavirus, and I'm not even joking, this

00:13:29.280 is, this is a straight statement.

00:13:33.180 Global warming might save us.

00:13:35.680 Because remember, with the coronavirus, it's not about finding the switch where you turn

00:13:40.080 it off.

00:13:41.080 It's about a whole bunch of different things that take a little bit of the edge off it

00:13:46.420 and shrink and shrink and shrink it until the replication rate, you know, the R factor

00:13:52.980 is below one.

00:13:54.580 So if one person gives it to two people, you've got a pandemic.

00:13:58.840 But if one person only on average gives it to, you know, 0.8 of a person, well, then that's

00:14:05.620 the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

00:14:07.680 So remember, we're just doing a whole bunch of little things to try to shrink that under

00:14:12.220 one.

00:14:12.680 That's the game.

00:14:13.380 It's not to get it to zero.

00:14:16.420 And I probably had some point I was going to make, but I forgot what it was.

00:14:21.220 All right.

00:14:25.840 So I think it was yesterday.

00:14:27.920 Time is really compressed.

00:14:29.500 Are you having this experience?

00:14:31.240 Your experience of time passing is just all weird now?

00:14:36.160 I don't even know what day of the week it is half the time.

00:14:38.320 But I think it was yesterday when I tweeted that the press needs to tell us today, that

00:14:44.700 was when I tweeted it, who makes this hydroxychloroquine drug, the Trump pills, and where do the raw

00:14:52.140 materials come from and what's the situation?

00:14:55.920 Do we have enough of it?

00:14:57.040 Is somebody making it?

00:14:58.100 Is it an American source?

00:14:59.940 Is anything stopping it?

00:15:02.040 So those are the questions I asked.

00:15:03.720 I'd have to say I don't have the answers, but I have some information that will start

00:15:08.500 filling in some context there.

00:15:10.180 Number one, the source, the base source for these chloroquine and quinine drugs and malaria

00:15:18.260 drugs, and I don't know about hydroxychloroquine, but I think it might be derived also from a

00:15:25.780 certain tree bark.

00:15:28.000 It's the cinchona tree, and it is grown primarily in the Andes mountain range.

00:15:35.040 This stretches from on the west coast of South America, all the way from, let's say, start

00:15:41.920 from the bottom, and the mountain range goes all, it's a tropical forest basically, mountains

00:15:47.020 and tropical forest, all the way up to, oh, Venezuela.

00:15:53.680 Yeah, according to my map, Venezuela, unconfirmed, but I'm just looking at the map and overlaying

00:16:02.520 the country of Venezuela with the length of the tropical forest that has the base source

00:16:10.720 for this drug.

00:16:12.780 It's not the only base source.

00:16:14.160 I'll talk about that.

00:16:15.580 But is that a coincidence?

00:16:19.880 Is it a coincidence that we just put a price on Maduro's head?

00:16:24.600 You know, the United States just said $25 million to basically bring him in.

00:16:29.140 And that's usually what we do before we kill a leader of another country, if we're being

00:16:34.940 honest.

00:16:36.280 By the time we put a $25 million bounty on him, and I think he's being accused of drug

00:16:41.740 trafficking, by the time we do that, we've decided to kill him.

00:16:46.080 Now, we don't know when, we don't know how, we don't know what that looks like, but the

00:16:50.580 decision to kill him has been made.

00:16:52.180 Now, I praise the president and his advisors for making this decision exactly when they

00:17:00.120 did.

00:17:01.180 It's a free punch.

00:17:03.640 It's a free punch.

00:17:05.440 Because we, you know, under normal conditions, it would be a pretty risky proposition to take

00:17:11.280 out the leader of another country, no matter the conditions.

00:17:15.320 It's a super risky play.

00:17:16.980 But today, is it?

00:17:20.620 If you heard today that Maduro got taken out, and let's say America was behind it, or even

00:17:27.220 suspected to be behind it, if you heard that news today, how much would you care?

00:17:33.980 You wouldn't, right?

00:17:35.840 It actually wouldn't even make it to your bottom level of stuff you're caring about this week.

00:17:41.740 Under any normal week, if everything was going fine, it would, of course, be the biggest

00:17:47.360 story.

00:17:48.060 It would, you know, might rip apart the fabric of America, really questioning our values.

00:17:53.460 You know, is this a strategy?

00:17:54.860 What's this going to do?

00:17:55.820 What are the unintended consequences of taking in a leader of another country?

00:17:59.980 You know, that opens a can of worms.

00:18:01.520 It would be the biggest story in the world.

00:18:04.600 Except this week.

00:18:06.640 This week, we could just go and kill him.

00:18:08.580 And it would be a B story, somewhere down in the column.

00:18:13.240 And by the time we got through the crisis, literally nobody would care.

00:18:17.240 So, whoever in the administration decided that this was the week to basically tell the

00:18:24.160 world we're going to kill the leader of another country, because that's what we did, it's really 0.98

00:18:29.160 good timing.

00:18:30.420 It's like it approaches genius-level strategy timing.

00:18:34.980 I mean, it couldn't be better than this.

00:18:37.520 If that's the outcome we wanted, my God, it's just breathtakingly perfect.

00:18:46.060 That doesn't mean it'll happen.

00:18:47.460 It doesn't mean it'll happen soon, etc.

00:18:49.480 But, phew, good strategy.

00:18:51.440 But here's the thing.

00:18:54.900 What does it mean that Venezuela is in part of the zone that might be at least part of

00:19:00.340 the source that the entire world probably wants more of, this tree bark?

00:19:04.000 And I need a fact check on that, because I'm definitely into speculative territory here.

00:19:09.080 So, don't take anything I'm taking too seriously until you get some fact checks.

00:19:13.580 But, if Venezuela is also a source for this tree bark, and we know that the price of oil

00:19:20.840 collapsed, which is Venezuela's lifeblood, what would the, let's say, bad actor head of

00:19:30.820 Venezuela do if suddenly, by this accident of the crisis, they happened to be sitting on

00:19:37.080 a whole bunch of this tree bark that everyone in the world would pay any amount of money to

00:19:42.160 get.

00:19:42.680 Now, I don't know if that's true.

00:19:43.900 Again, depends if there are other ways to make it, which I'll talk about in a minute.

00:19:49.000 Depends if there's really a shortage.

00:19:50.980 I don't know if there is.

00:19:52.100 Maybe it's not a raw material shortage.

00:19:54.820 But, if Madura is even accused of hoarding that tree bark, or, you know, jacking up the

00:20:05.460 price, or selling it to people we don't like, you know, whatever.

00:20:08.500 However, if he's even slightly implicated, and, of course, he has been implicated in drug

00:20:13.380 dealing, but we don't know what the drug is, it's just a free punch.

00:20:18.860 I'm sorry.

00:20:19.920 If you hear that Madura was doing something that might make the crisis worse, it's just

00:20:27.020 a free punch. 0.87

00:20:28.360 You know, he could go this week and you wouldn't care a bit.

00:20:31.340 All right.

00:20:31.840 I'm not recommending it.

00:20:32.840 I'm just saying the timing is perfect.

00:20:34.180 Smarter people have to decide what's right.

00:20:39.060 Here's the other way that you can apparently synthesize this hydroxychloroquine, the Trump

00:20:47.180 pills.

00:20:48.820 Apparently, coal tar.

00:20:51.080 Coal tar.

00:20:53.200 And somebody else said carbon, you know, oil.

00:20:57.700 I don't know if that's true.

00:20:58.600 But somebody said coal tar could be the base for synthesizing it.

00:21:03.900 Now, my limited understanding is that you can, yeah, somebody's saying synthetic.

00:21:09.480 So the other thing you can do is make it synthetically.

00:21:12.020 My understanding is that the only reason you wouldn't make it synthetically is that it's

00:21:16.840 more expensive to do it that way than to just strip some bark and, you know, do it the

00:21:21.420 fast way.

00:21:21.820 But at the moment, and during a crisis, of course, economics get turned upside down.

00:21:28.860 All that matters is that we get it.

00:21:30.840 It doesn't matter that it's expensive.

00:21:32.520 Because remember, it's really inexpensive.

00:21:35.240 It's like $20 for a dose.

00:21:37.500 If you tripled it, most people are still going to pay it and be happy about it.

00:21:41.640 So we can get the expensive stuff.

00:21:43.540 So what I don't have visibility on is how quickly are whoever's making this, American

00:21:50.540 companies or coordinating with offshore companies that are working, you know, for the American

00:21:55.960 companies.

00:21:56.520 I don't know.

00:21:57.680 But we have complete, complete lack of knowledge, the public does, about what that pipeline looks

00:22:04.620 like.

00:22:05.380 Now, just think about that.

00:22:06.580 Think about the fact that we're in a worldwide pandemic, and the news business can't tell

00:22:14.880 you if one of the most promising things that we have in our arsenal, this drug, if we have

00:22:21.940 enough of it, is there a risk we won't have enough of it?

00:22:25.940 How fast are they cranking up?

00:22:27.780 Is there any shortage?

00:22:29.620 Does it, you know, do we have a raw supply problem?

00:22:32.120 Are we geared up to synthesize that much?

00:22:34.860 These are pretty basic questions.

00:22:36.820 Now, we don't need to know every detail, but wouldn't you like to know, is there enough?

00:22:43.660 And the entire worldwide reporting structure, every country, every political leaning, every

00:22:51.700 one of them, has given you no information, none, no information on the most, what could

00:22:58.640 be the most important question of all this, which is, is there a med that works?

00:23:02.660 Do we have enough of it?

00:23:04.760 And if we don't, what are we doing about it?

00:23:07.940 Really?

00:23:08.700 If we don't have visibility on that, or I would settle for knowing that the news organizations

00:23:15.180 are trying as hard as they can to get that information, but it's hard, right?

00:23:20.420 If that's the case, then I'd say, all right, well, they're working on it.

00:23:22.620 It's just hard.

00:23:23.660 I'll wait a little longer.

00:23:24.660 But at this point, can't you determine that there is no such thing as a news business in

00:23:31.780 the sense that they'll go out and find stuff that you couldn't find out on your own?

00:23:36.340 At the moment, the news business is just pointing a camera at our politicians and listening to

00:23:41.440 them mostly lie to us, right?

00:23:44.040 Somebody said, panicking old man.

00:23:49.260 I don't know if that was about me, but I'm going to block you anyway.

00:23:56.520 Somebody says, Breitbart has it.

00:23:58.260 I'll go look for that.

00:23:59.200 So Breitbart has been the, I think, shining star of the entire episode, you know, the crisis

00:24:06.320 so far that I think they've had the best reporting.

00:24:09.280 You know, your mileage might differ, but I feel like Breitbart has had the best reporting

00:24:16.480 so far.

00:24:20.140 So Jack Dorsey, head of Twitter, tweeted at the government that maybe we should be looking

00:24:28.320 at direct cash payments using the Cash app.

00:24:31.720 This is, you know, one of Jack Dorsey's products.

00:24:34.900 It's an app that lets you sell, you know, move cryptocurrency around.

00:24:40.940 Now, that might be a good idea.

00:24:44.900 Well, I'll go further than that.

00:24:47.160 We should definitely be looking into it because there has to be some limitations to how easy

00:24:54.200 it is to get checks to everybody.

00:24:56.100 And then you've got tons of people who don't have checking accounts.

00:24:59.500 What do you do with the people you send a check to and they don't have checking accounts?

00:25:03.220 Well, I guess I can take you to a bank and try to get it cashed.

00:25:06.220 Maybe that'll work.

00:25:08.400 But it would certainly be cleaner and faster just to load up, you know, load up people's

00:25:14.340 accounts.

00:25:15.060 Now, the hard part would be to know you didn't double count because you're still going to

00:25:18.320 have to mail out some checks.

00:25:19.640 You know, did you give somebody some cash that should have been a check?

00:25:23.440 So there might be some difficulties in that, but that's solidly in the category of things

00:25:29.500 that should have been, that should be looked at.

00:25:31.440 I don't think our government has the capability to analyze that.

00:25:36.040 Certainly not in the context of a crisis.

00:25:39.180 So I think the government's going to act conservatively, and that's probably not going to be on their

00:25:43.240 short list of things they can deal with in an emergency.

00:25:46.820 It probably takes a little more considered thought.

00:25:49.960 But I also haven't heard Jack's explanation of it.

00:25:53.440 So if I hear more about that, I will pass it along.

00:25:55.780 So I would like to, speaking on that same topic, can you imagine being in this situation

00:26:02.280 without Twitter?

00:26:05.120 I mean, think about that.

00:26:06.740 Think about how much information you got from Twitter.

00:26:10.760 Think about how many lies from the World Health Organization, from your own government,

00:26:16.780 where you were first notified on Twitter.

00:26:21.200 How many things were just ridiculously bad advice that you wouldn't have known it was bad advice

00:26:27.400 until you saw it on Twitter?

00:26:30.480 If you ask me, having this crisis without Twitter would be a disaster.

00:26:34.620 I mean, it's already a disaster.

00:26:37.920 But it would be magnified much worse.

00:26:41.240 Twitter probably, and social media and the news business, is probably getting people pretty panicky.

00:26:48.600 And you'd have to say that's a cost that you wish you didn't have.

00:26:52.980 But I'll say it as many times as I have to say it.

00:26:55.960 Because everybody has a different panic level.

00:26:58.520 We're all very different about that.

00:27:00.320 What is it that makes you panic is different than what makes me panic.

00:27:03.040 You have to panic 10% of the people to near death to get the other 90% to do what they need to do

00:27:10.820 to save the people who are panicked to death from actually dying.

00:27:16.640 So if anybody has a better way to get the entire country to move in a productive way

00:27:22.800 than scaring the shit out of 10% of us, I've never heard of it.

00:27:28.980 Never heard of it.

00:27:30.300 So if you're complaining to the social media and the news,

00:27:33.040 is making people panic, it's a factual statement.

00:27:38.320 They are doing exactly that.

00:27:40.520 And they're probably ahead of the problem, meaning that the problems they're talking about

00:27:45.300 are future assumed problems.

00:27:48.060 They're not even talking about what's happening at the moment as much.

00:27:51.320 And when they do, it's anecdotal and it makes you think things are worse than they are.

00:27:55.260 But, you know, Twitter as a tool to protect the world against some types of risks, I think, is proven.

00:28:06.520 I think Twitter has proven itself to be essentially the emergency brain of the universe.

00:28:14.080 Well, maybe not the universe, but at least our galaxy.

00:28:18.080 And what I mean by that is during good times, we aggregate, not aggregate,

00:28:23.500 during good times we separate into individual needs.

00:28:27.880 You know, I'm just fighting for what I want in my capitalist world.

00:28:31.140 You're fighting for what you want in your capitalist world.

00:28:34.140 And, you know, we got winners and losers, but overall it works.

00:28:38.780 But in an emergency, we immediately sort of grouped together

00:28:44.920 and spontaneously formed a global brain.

00:28:49.400 Now, I think that much of that will dissipate as things improve.

00:28:54.940 Because when things are good, you can just, you know,

00:28:57.640 retreat from the global brain into your individual brain,

00:29:01.240 try to maximize your life and your family.

00:29:03.060 And that system works well if we're all just pursuing our individual needs during good times.

00:29:10.260 But without Twitter, we could not have formed a global brain,

00:29:14.660 one that is far more powerful than all of the sum of the parts.

00:29:18.860 It's keeping us sane.

00:29:20.240 It's telling us what to think about.

00:29:21.980 It's identifying leaders.

00:29:23.660 It's showing us where resources are.

00:29:25.680 It's connecting people.

00:29:26.580 It's, you know, if there's some kind of award for the greatest asset,

00:29:36.300 you know, maybe it goes to ventilators and N95 masks and doctors and stuff.

00:29:41.420 But Twitter's in the top five.

00:29:42.860 The Henry Ford Health Center put out some guidelines about how to handle,

00:29:51.880 if you have too many people who are in a near-death situation, how do you handle that?

00:29:59.160 Now, most of the advice was just straight up, you know,

00:30:02.740 we've got to make some choices and unfortunately some will die.

00:30:06.700 So it's just basic triage, medical, ethical medical triage.

00:30:11.260 But then they stuck this sentence in there with all the good medical advice

00:30:15.580 that was pretty standard, even though it's scary.

00:30:18.200 It says this.

00:30:19.680 Removing ventilator will not be based on race, gender, health insurance status,

00:30:26.060 sexual orientation, employment, or immigration status.

00:30:30.140 It says, okay, did that need to be said?

00:30:37.780 Because I hope that didn't need to be said.

00:30:42.480 Did Henry Ford Health Center imagine that they have a doctor or a nurse

00:30:47.160 who would be standing in the room and say, you know,

00:30:49.960 I don't think this Elbonian's worth much.

00:30:53.260 I think I'll take this off and give it to a Nigerian or a Norwegian. 0.93

00:31:00.140 Is that happening?

00:31:02.020 Is somebody going to say, you know, this person on the ventilator,

00:31:06.300 I've checked their citizenship and got to let you go. 1.00

00:31:12.300 Looks like you're a Mexican citizen.

00:31:13.860 Was that going to happen?

00:31:15.120 Really?

00:31:15.980 Did they need to tell anybody this?

00:31:18.360 I certainly agree with it.

00:31:21.460 But the most shocking thing I've seen so far is the idea that somebody thought

00:31:27.100 their employees needed to be told that.

00:31:29.080 Did they?

00:31:30.740 I don't know.

00:31:32.000 Next topic.

00:31:35.020 We're all alarmed that 3.28 million people filed for unemployment.

00:31:41.200 Is that an alarming number?

00:31:44.020 You've been told, my God, my God, 3.28 million people filed for unemployment.

00:31:50.300 My God.

00:31:52.100 Is that a lot?

00:31:53.860 Let's do some math.

00:31:55.000 Let's say each of the 3.28 million people who filed for unemployment,

00:32:00.000 now this is on top of regular unemployment.

00:32:03.740 Let's say you gave them all $2,000 per week, you know, tax-free.

00:32:08.060 They don't have to pay any taxes on just $2,000 a week.

00:32:10.360 That's $8,000 a month, which would be way above the average income, especially tax-free,

00:32:18.100 way above the average income in this country.

00:32:21.340 So this is just a thought experiment, not a suggestion.

00:32:25.440 So if you gave all $3.28 million $2,000 per week, you know, for $8,000 a month, what would

00:32:32.840 it cost?

00:32:34.420 Well, it would cost about, I'm going to round, grossly round these numbers, but about $7 billion

00:32:39.600 per week, or $28 billion per month, and let's say we ran this for three months, $84 billion.

00:32:51.520 So for $84 billion out of a $2 trillion package, just $84 billion, big number, but it seems like

00:33:01.220 a small number today, right?

00:33:02.960 For $84 billion, you could pay every one of those unemployed people more money than most

00:33:09.900 of them have ever made in that three months, and you wouldn't even notice it.

00:33:15.820 You know, if the only thing we had going on today was, uh-oh, we suddenly need $84 billion

00:33:21.000 that we didn't know we needed, well, we wouldn't like it, but we'd barely notice it, right?

00:33:27.300 Um, but it's more than that.

00:33:34.180 Is it even $84 billion?

00:33:36.860 So let me delve into economics territory a little bit more deeply than I feel comfortable.

00:33:43.520 So let's put this in the form of a question.

00:33:46.140 If there are any economists out there who have superior economic understanding than me, and

00:33:53.220 that would be most economists probably, uh, fact-check me on this.

00:33:58.580 So here are the things I think are right about this, uh, proposed $2 trillion legislation.

00:34:05.440 I believe that they plan to pay for it by printing money as opposed to borrowing.

00:34:11.360 So that's the first fact-check.

00:34:12.940 Can you make sure that that's true?

00:34:14.440 That they're not going to borrow, which would raise everybody's debt, but rather they're going

00:34:19.520 to print money, which would raise inflation.

00:34:23.340 Now, the way that works is if we have the same amount of goods, you know, everybody who's

00:34:28.340 selling stuff in the United States still has the same number of them, but you add a bunch

00:34:34.000 of dollars into the system, then there'll be more people with money compared to the same

00:34:40.420 number of goods.

00:34:41.940 And that could lead to inflation because people will say, hey, you know, um, I'll pay more for

00:34:47.160 that because there's more money and it just feels like it's free money because of inflation.

00:34:52.560 So here's my point.

00:34:54.440 Inflation is a gigantic, you know, civilization ending problem if it gets too high.

00:35:01.820 If it's low, it's just an annoyance.

00:35:05.880 If it's zero, it's free money.

00:35:10.640 Now I'm exaggerating for effect, but follow me on this.

00:35:13.240 If you're in a situation of a guaranteed recession, which we are for the next three months, it's

00:35:18.680 guaranteed.

00:35:19.900 There's no question there's going to be a recession.

00:35:22.520 Just, you know, mathematically, it's guaranteed.

00:35:25.640 Who can raise their prices for normal goods?

00:35:28.220 I'm not talking about, you know, masks and medical equipment, but who's going to be able

00:35:33.900 to raise their price for, you know, headphones for the next three months?

00:35:38.800 Now, who is selling these little stands that you put your phone in?

00:35:42.180 Can they raise their price in the next three months?

00:35:44.500 Of course not.

00:35:45.460 If anything, they're going to lower the prices to try to get rid of inventory.

00:35:49.200 So in a world which I don't think we've ever seen this before, this is just the weirdest

00:35:53.860 situation, in which inflation is zero or negative.

00:36:00.200 If the only problem of printing money is that it might hurt inflation and inflation is zero or

00:36:06.660 negative, it's free money.

00:36:10.060 Am I wrong?

00:36:10.660 Or, and here's the part that I can't, I don't quite have the background to be able to think

00:36:16.400 through it.

00:36:17.240 Maybe you have to do, you know, complicated computer models.

00:36:19.800 Maybe nobody knows.

00:36:21.180 So it could be that after you get past the three months, you'll wish you hadn't done it.

00:36:25.880 You know, once things get back to normal, maybe there's still too much cash floating around.

00:36:30.200 Is that, is that when it becomes a problem?

00:36:32.140 But check me on this, because I don't know if, I may be talking crazy talk.

00:36:37.300 Usually I could be talking crazy talk.

00:36:39.600 But just check me on that.

00:36:41.640 They're printing money during a time of really no risk of inflation shouldn't be that big

00:36:48.120 of a problem, right?

00:36:49.580 Just check me on that.

00:36:50.460 All right.

00:36:52.800 So I'll just put that out there.

00:36:55.620 I would like to give some credit to one of my disagreeing critics on Twitter.

00:37:03.260 Now, I've often said to you that, you know, this is sort of the loser think idea here.

00:37:11.180 And the idea is that if people disagree with me, usually it's because there's some identifiable

00:37:17.860 piece of loser think involved, that there's just some gap in their understanding of the

00:37:23.120 universe, and I can identify it.

00:37:24.560 So, oh, the reason you're saying that is because you don't have a background in economics.

00:37:29.120 Or, oh, okay, I get where you're coming from.

00:37:31.820 And the reason you think that is because you don't have a background in psychology or how

00:37:36.340 the human mind works, that sort of thing.

00:37:38.420 But when I see somebody who does actually understand how things work and does not engage

00:37:44.160 in loser think, and they disagree with me, I stop and say, okay, what am I doing wrong

00:37:51.280 this time?

00:37:52.060 So there's one of these situations, and I'm just going to put it out there, not as a right

00:37:57.100 or wrong, but just note it, because it disagrees with me, but it's rational.

00:38:04.700 This is the part that's bugging me, right?

00:38:06.940 It goes like this.

00:38:08.480 And I don't know if you're watching, but this is Robert Barnes, attorney, and I would say

00:38:15.620 I know him, but from Twitter.

00:38:17.820 You know, there are people that you interact with so much on Twitter that you feel like

00:38:20.980 you know them personally, and you forget you haven't been in the same room.

00:38:24.920 But Robert Barnes, I know to be, have watched him for years talking about Trump-related stuff,

00:38:29.860 and he's almost always ahead of the curve.

00:38:32.320 He's on the right side of stuff.

00:38:33.660 He's rational.

00:38:34.840 He knows how to pull an argument apart.

00:38:37.520 When he disagrees with me, I usually stop and say, uh-oh, what did I do this time?

00:38:42.200 So here's the disagreement.

00:38:45.560 I'm on the side that says that if we did nothing to aggressively address the pandemic,

00:38:52.500 that the death rate would be way higher than normal flu and, you know, crippling.

00:38:58.320 That if you just, if you sort of didn't treat it seriously, it wouldn't be like a seasonal flu.

00:39:03.260 It would be like a really big problem.

00:39:05.220 But I also think that we're doing a heroic job in the United States, especially a heroic job of

00:39:14.620 assembling our human ingenuity and resources and changing everything from the way we think

00:39:20.580 to the way we act and doing it fairly quickly.

00:39:23.600 So my prediction is that we will also have a low death rate.

00:39:29.260 And I'm going to go uber-optimist.

00:39:34.300 So I haven't seen other people's predictions, but I'm going to make a prediction that the

00:39:39.380 total U.S. death count will stay under 5,000, which would be less than the common flu, but

00:39:45.940 only because we're working on this one so hard.

00:39:49.360 So I'm optimistic that the death rate, even though the infection rate and the sickness

00:39:53.760 rate will zoom, that we'll find a way to keep the death rate from climbing.

00:39:58.780 So that's where I'm at.

00:40:00.620 Could be right, could be wrong, because it's a prediction, right?

00:40:03.740 We don't know if I'm right.

00:40:06.060 We don't know if I'm wrong.

00:40:07.620 We just know it's a prediction.

00:40:09.860 And we know that I've agreed with the worst-case doom predictors under the assumption that you

00:40:16.680 don't do anything about it.

00:40:18.660 So I've agreed with the doom people if you don't do anything.

00:40:22.120 Robert Barnes, and I hope I can characterize his argument accurately, because the parts that

00:40:28.040 I understand, I think I understand it, are logical.

00:40:32.260 And it goes like this.

00:40:34.660 Where are the hospitals that are over capacity?

00:40:38.480 Because we should be seeing it already.

00:40:40.640 And I thought, and I responded to him, my God, are you watching a different news than I am?

00:40:49.580 How could you not see just multiple reports of hospitals that are being slammed, and bodies

00:40:56.860 are being put in refrigerated trucks, and nurses are panicked, and that is supplies, and they're

00:41:04.860 piling people in hallways and stuff.

00:41:06.460 So I'm hearing all these things, and then Dan Robert Barnes, sort of, I forget the exact

00:41:15.560 exchange, but he kind of challenged me to show my sources.

00:41:20.460 And at first, I was just mad.

00:41:23.020 I was just mad, because I thought to myself, my God, am I your Google?

00:41:28.660 You can't see sources everywhere?

00:41:31.220 So I asked people, you know, I tweeted, and said, well, I'll just settle this.

00:41:34.960 I'll just tweet it, put your, you know, reports in the comments of all the places that are

00:41:41.560 already, just already becoming, you know, like morgues and, you know, deathly hellscapes.

00:41:49.820 And I thought, well, Robert Barnes is going to see all of these comments, all the reports

00:41:54.040 and the stories, tweeted at him, showing that there are hospitals that are just being absolutely

00:42:00.800 devastated, except that didn't happen.

00:42:07.080 What I thought would happen is all of these rock-solid reports of credible things that

00:42:13.660 are bad.

00:42:14.820 Instead, there were a lot of reports that all had the same quality.

00:42:19.900 They're not even slightly credible.

00:42:21.680 So, for example, what does it mean that the 13 people died in one day in a major hospital

00:42:36.660 in New York City?

00:42:39.260 Well, if it's part of a tapestry of other bad things, and they're all confirmed, then

00:42:44.280 you say, well, it's meaningful.

00:42:45.800 It's part of the tapestry of all the other things that are similar in other hospitals,

00:42:49.320 and, yeah, clearly this is part of the picture.

00:42:52.260 But you've got to ask yourself, have 13 elderly people ever died in a major hospital on one

00:42:58.980 day before?

00:43:00.920 Maybe.

00:43:02.280 Have you ever had 13 deaths?

00:43:05.520 Or, and let me ask it another way, do we know that this hospital was not a magnet hospital?

00:43:13.040 In other words, and this is just speculating, I'm just saying all the things we don't know.

00:43:16.720 I'm not saying what happened, because I don't know.

00:43:18.400 I'm just saying all the things we don't know are a lot.

00:43:21.700 For example, if you were in New York City and somebody was suspected of having this flu,

00:43:28.460 the COVID, would they go to whatever is the nearest hospital?

00:43:32.720 Or would they quite rationally say, let's take them to the best hospital that still has

00:43:37.140 capacity, because they're the best ones for dealing with a specific problem?

00:43:42.160 Could you imagine, and this is a question, not a statement, could you imagine that the reason

00:43:47.240 13 people died in the same hospital on the same day is that the bad cases were specifically

00:43:52.920 taken to the same place?

00:43:54.840 Could you imagine that if this were seasonal flu, everybody would just go to the closest

00:43:59.360 hospital?

00:43:59.880 Well, 13 of them might have died anyway, but you wouldn't notice, because they were distributed.

00:44:05.560 Now, I don't know if anything like that happened.

00:44:08.020 I'm just saying that if I'm going to take, here I'm being devil's advocate to my own argument.

00:44:13.220 I'm going to take Robert Barham's point of view and say, does it hold up?

00:44:16.440 All right.

00:44:17.780 Did it hold up against that piece of evidence?

00:44:19.720 And the answer is yes.

00:44:21.320 It held up, not in the sense that I know what's going on there.

00:44:24.960 It held up in the sense that I don't know what's going on there.

00:44:28.260 So that's not confirmed to be evidence of anything.

00:44:31.620 It's just a thing that's not explained.

00:44:33.940 So point for Robert Barnes.

00:44:36.120 All right.

00:44:36.540 Let's go on.

00:44:37.180 Robert Barnes, I also said, you know, we've never seen hospitals being pushed as hard as

00:44:44.140 they are, that we're already, I said, we're already over capacity at hospitals.

00:44:50.700 So the question, so the, you know, the debate is over, right?

00:44:55.320 You don't have to wonder, just look.

00:44:59.200 To which Robert Barnes responds with an article with Source showing that in 2018, hospitals

00:45:06.380 were building tents and emergency expanding just for the regular flu.

00:45:13.040 Did you know that?

00:45:14.840 And now I say to myself, okay, so that does look a lot like this.

00:45:22.800 Doesn't mean Robert Barnes is right.

00:45:25.560 Doesn't mean my view of the world is wrong.

00:45:29.140 But it's a good point, right?

00:45:31.340 If I'm going to be honest, that's a fair point.

00:45:33.860 So we can't tell by looking at it today, because there are a little bit too much of the special

00:45:40.420 cases going on.

00:45:42.380 And we also know that, I don't know, 99% of hospitals, based on lots of anecdotal reports

00:45:47.780 I got yesterday, most hospitals don't yet have a crisis.

00:45:52.200 And they've cleared their schedules and got rid of their, the unnecessary or the elective

00:45:57.480 surgeries.

00:45:57.860 So most hospitals are just twiddling their thumbs and trying to make sure that they're

00:46:03.020 ready in case something happens.

00:46:05.300 So, but it's early, right?

00:46:10.320 And then also pointed out that China, South Korea, and Japan seem to have bent their curves,

00:46:17.700 meaning that the curve is bendable.

00:46:19.760 All right?

00:46:21.220 So we know that.

00:46:22.120 We can bend the curve.

00:46:23.460 I don't know if we have good enough visibility about why.

00:46:27.600 Some people say it's face masks.

00:46:29.460 I think that's a good hypothesis.

00:46:31.440 Might be the culture.

00:46:34.140 You know, maybe there's not as much kissing on the cheek in Japan, because there isn't.

00:46:38.760 It could be that there's simply more compliance.

00:46:44.360 You know, maybe Americans are just, it could be that Americans are just going to say, screw

00:46:49.860 the government, I'm going outside anyway.

00:46:51.720 I'm going to, I'm going to go to the concert anyway.

00:46:53.620 That would be a very American thing to do and not in a good way.

00:46:57.280 Whereas in Japan, you know, if we learn anything from the end of World War II, it looks like

00:47:02.960 the population in Japan is very, you know, leader friendly, meaning when the leader tells

00:47:09.060 them to do anything, they seem to comply.

00:47:11.580 How much difference does that make?

00:47:13.000 In South Korea, China, maybe the same thing.

00:47:16.360 And in China, maybe we have questions about the actual data.

00:47:19.600 All right, so here's the bottom line.

00:47:21.500 Robert Barnes, your, your movie exists intact, meaning that your, your view of the world,

00:47:29.720 your filter on the world cannot at this point, you know, today with what we know, that movie

00:47:36.480 is still fine.

00:47:38.300 There's no debunking data.

00:47:41.000 And I will, let me just say as clearly as possible, I agree with you that your hypothesis

00:47:47.740 that this is all overblown and wouldn't have been much more than the regular flu is still

00:47:53.440 alive.

00:47:55.020 I still disagree with it completely.

00:47:57.320 And the reason I disagree with it completely is that the people who have been most right

00:48:03.640 still say, okay, if we didn't do a lot to stop this, we're still going to be in trouble.

00:48:09.080 So I'm still, I'm still biased toward the experts and biased toward the people who have predicted

00:48:14.660 right so far.

00:48:16.720 But that doesn't mean Robert Barnes is wrong.

00:48:18.940 I think we should act as though he's wrong to get a better result.

00:48:24.420 He would disagree with that, I think.

00:48:26.960 But so at the moment, two movies still alive.

00:48:30.700 I think mine will be the winner.

00:48:32.400 But here's the fun part.

00:48:33.460 When it's all over, if what happens in the end is not many people died, we will argue

00:48:39.720 forever if it was because we did such a good job or it was because it was a mass hysteria

00:48:47.440 and it was never that big a problem in the first place.

00:48:50.260 We will never know.

00:48:52.180 And that's where we're heading for.

00:48:54.440 All right.

00:48:55.100 There's big news about Representative Thomas Massey, Kentucky.

00:48:59.820 Apparently, he is the one holdout against a voice vote.

00:49:06.020 Now, I don't know too much about the rules of the House, but this is what I think is right.

00:49:11.080 That the House can call for a unanimous consent, meaning to get to yes without an actual vote

00:49:19.580 where you count everybody's vote.

00:49:21.320 Now, you would do that in a situation where you don't expect disagreement and you don't

00:49:28.120 need to take the time to do the vote and you don't need to get on record about who is for

00:49:31.920 it and against it.

00:49:33.200 So even the people who would want to vote against something, if they know they're going to lose,

00:49:38.500 sometimes for unity and also to hide their vote, they might say, well, let's just agree

00:49:43.900 it's unanimous.

00:49:45.380 It looks like it only takes one person to ruin that plan and that one person has emerged.

00:49:51.740 So Representative Massey from Kentucky is concerned about the legislation having pork and unnecessary

00:50:01.180 things and also calculated on Twitter that it would cost $17,000 per person in debt.

00:50:09.800 Now, here's one of those small world stories.

00:50:13.680 You know, I keep telling you that my experience is just absolutely bizarre because the entire

00:50:20.540 size of the planet, for just my personal experience, has just shrunk.

00:50:25.840 And it feels like if somebody's in the news, I can just talk to them.

00:50:30.780 You know, somebody will be headline news today and I'll just say, huh, I think I'll send them

00:50:34.420 a message and then I'll get a message back from the person who's the most important person

00:50:38.120 in the world.

00:50:39.260 And I think, did that just happen?

00:50:40.580 Did I just send a message to the most important person in the world and I got a reply in, you

00:50:46.080 know, 39 minutes?

00:50:48.020 That's happening massively all over the place.

00:50:50.520 And it's not just me.

00:50:52.200 Your ability to connect to your government representatives is amazing right now.

00:50:59.760 I mean, we'll never be able to completely, you know, know what difference that made and

00:51:06.800 how it helps, but, or maybe it won't last.

00:51:11.100 But at the moment, you can really get a hold of people in a crazy way.

00:51:15.440 So, to round out my story, Twitter suggests people to follow.

00:51:21.240 And I happened to notice that Representative Massey was suggested as somebody to follow,

00:51:26.480 probably because I was reading the hashtags about him.

00:51:29.520 And I looked over and I noticed that he follows me on Twitter.

00:51:32.960 So, I thought, well, what happens if I follow him back?

00:51:38.460 I'll just send him a DM, give him my opinion, see what happens.

00:51:43.880 So, this morning, I followed him on Twitter, you know, while I'm reading the headlines about him.

00:51:49.920 I sent him a message.

00:51:52.180 He got back to me in, I don't know, 15 minutes.

00:51:55.160 In 15 minutes, the most important person for this story in the country right now,

00:52:02.280 for the biggest factor in the world right now is this bill.

00:52:06.760 The person who's the most important person on it got back to me on Twitter in 20 minutes.

00:52:11.920 Now, you should be happy about that, right?

00:52:15.660 That doesn't mean you agree with them, disagree with them, doesn't mean the government does everything right.

00:52:19.840 But man, when your citizens can get to somebody in 20 minutes in the middle of a crisis

00:52:24.140 and get a legitimate personal response, we're doing something very, very right.

00:52:30.100 And again, credit to Jack Dorsey and the founders of Twitter for making this even possible.

00:52:35.200 So, let me just tell you what I told them.

00:52:37.880 So, I sent him a DM and I said this.

00:52:40.000 I said, Representative Massey, the entire country agrees with you that the relief legislation is flawed.

00:52:46.860 I think that's fair, right?

00:52:48.560 Don't you think Republicans and Democrats all agree that this thing is flawed?

00:52:53.480 And I said, but given the psychology of the country, we need fast action on a flawed plan

00:52:58.940 far more than we need a principled stand.

00:53:02.780 So, I don't disagree one bit with his disagreements.

00:53:07.160 I only weigh the priorities different, that we need fast action for the psychology of the country

00:53:13.980 as well as the pocketbook of the country, even if it's not perfect.

00:53:18.560 And then I said the following.

00:53:21.660 My limited understanding is that we are printing money for this, not borrowing.

00:53:26.060 So, remember, he did the calculation of $17,000 per person we would owe.

00:53:31.920 So, I said, we're printing money, not borrowing.

00:53:35.220 And when inflation is this low, and the current downturn makes it impossible to raise prices on most goods,

00:53:42.660 that printed money is closer to free because it won't cause inflation.

00:53:47.520 It's the only time in the world that would ever be true.

00:53:50.760 I can't think of any other time you could print that much money and still be sure it wouldn't necessarily cause inflation in the short run, anyway.

00:53:59.100 And so, he responded back to me, said he's been following me for a while, and apparently he watches these periscopes.

00:54:06.040 So, Representative Massey, if you are watching this, a lot of respect for you, for your opinion,

00:54:13.060 and a lot of respect for you for getting back to a member of the citizens who had a genuine concern.

00:54:20.340 So, thank you for that.

00:54:22.720 And he got back to me, and he said he appreciated my perspective and thanked me for reaching out.

00:54:27.580 And that's all I would ask, right?

00:54:29.980 You know, nobody's asking their government officials to change their mind on the spot, make a new decision.

00:54:36.100 You know, nobody's going to ask him to change his mind just because he got a DM.

00:54:40.140 But I know he heard me.

00:54:43.000 I know he heard me.

00:54:44.880 And his response acknowledges that.

00:54:47.920 And I can't say enough about how encouraging this is about human beings

00:54:53.900 and who we are and how we're going to act in a crisis, right?

00:54:58.280 So, we've got lots of bad examples, but every once in a while you get a good example.

00:55:02.720 So, credit to Representative Massey.

00:55:05.460 I would like to see you get past this in whatever way maintains your principles.

00:55:13.360 All right.

00:55:15.400 Let's see.

00:55:18.240 So, it looks like the government is preparing some kind of a geographic-based plan for taking people back to work.

00:55:26.880 I've got a big question about this.

00:55:31.660 And I'll say this is short of an opinion because I still have a little gap in my thinking.

00:55:38.760 Maybe you can fill it in.

00:55:39.680 It goes like this.

00:55:41.220 Compare these two plans.

00:55:42.460 One plan is to say, okay, this county hasn't had much problems.

00:55:45.780 And, yeah, I know that people can drive in and out of the county, so they might have some problems if they open up.

00:55:52.360 But we're going to open it by geography and then, you know, play it by ear.

00:55:56.020 I suppose you could close them back up if you've got a problem.

00:55:58.880 So, that's the plan.

00:56:00.480 And it has the advantage of simplicity, so it's got that.

00:56:06.660 But let's compare it to an alternative plan that I'm going to describe right now.

00:56:12.320 Instead of making it a geographic decision, could you not make it individual?

00:56:17.360 And could you not make a simple checklist which you ask people to adhere to, knowing that not everybody will?

00:56:26.020 You know, that's the nature of people.

00:56:28.040 Not everybody is going to adhere to even a law, much less a guideline.

00:56:33.080 But suppose the government said this.

00:56:36.200 We're going to test you for genetic risk.

00:56:39.620 We can do it fairly quickly.

00:56:41.340 And if we find that you are at low genetic risk, and I think we can determine that.

00:56:46.960 That's an unknown, but highly, highly likely that we could start testing people who had a bad outcome,

00:56:54.980 test people who had a good outcome, and I think we'd find a reason in their genes.

00:57:00.240 We could do that fairly quickly.

00:57:01.860 We've got lots of resources to do that.

00:57:04.440 Let's say that we find out what the correlation is, but you've also, let's say you've got a 23andMe,

00:57:12.060 and you can just download your data, bounce it against it, and find out what your risk is.

00:57:16.720 I don't know if that'll work, but there's a good indication it might.

00:57:21.700 So, that's just one idea.

00:57:22.940 So, suppose you could say, all right, all right, no matter what geography you're in,

00:57:26.640 if you've gone through this process of actually testing your DNA against, you know, the known risky DNA,

00:57:34.360 and you look low risk, maybe you could go back to work even if you're in New York City.

00:57:40.420 Now, again, I'm speaking hypothetically.

00:57:42.400 Somebody who knows these risks better would have to talk to it, but I'm giving you a framework for a decision based on individuals.

00:57:50.000 The other thing is you could just say, you know, the moment you have enough of this hydroxychloroquine

00:57:55.400 so that the doctor can hand them out like M&Ms to anybody who has a sniffle.

00:58:02.400 Could we not say then, if you have a subscript, if you're in a place that has good supply,

00:58:10.100 so let's say we know New York City has a good supply of this drug.

00:58:14.000 I don't, but let's say we did know that.

00:58:16.160 We probably can know that.

00:58:17.360 But you could say, well, if you're young and you have access to it, you're in a place that isn't in shortage,

00:58:25.440 you could go back to work because the worst case is you get it.

00:58:29.240 You've got to keep yourself out of it, away from other people for a while.

00:58:33.180 Suppose we say it also depends on your job.

00:58:36.900 There are some jobs that are physical separation all over the place by their nature.

00:58:40.980 If you're a truck driver and the only contact you have is on both ends of the pickup and the drop-off,

00:58:48.780 how hard would it be to modify the pick-off and drop-off so that it's not a risk?

00:58:55.140 You know, just people stay away or it's just one guy on a truck lift and when he's doing his work,

00:59:00.780 you back off and stay away.

00:59:03.240 Wouldn't there be lots of jobs where you would be willing to certify

00:59:07.560 that you're not going to be within six feet of anybody?

00:59:09.760 No way.

00:59:10.140 And you'll just make sure you do it.

00:59:12.380 Could that not be, at least on a voluntary basis, a criteria?

00:59:18.720 So here's the thing.

00:59:20.220 And maybe it could also be based on availability of gloves and masks.

00:59:24.180 Suppose you say, I'm 25 years old, I have an N95 mask, it's two weeks from now.

00:59:30.520 You know, we don't have enough of them now, but let's say it's two weeks from now.

00:59:33.500 I've got a mask.

00:59:36.660 I'm a certain age, I'm healthy, no underlying conditions that I know of.

00:59:40.140 And I've got a job where I'm not going to be within six feet of people.

00:59:44.400 Can't I go back to work?

00:59:46.700 Can't I?

00:59:47.240 So, somebody's asking me to block them.

00:59:55.980 Can do.

00:59:57.340 I don't know why, but I'm sure you had a reason.

00:59:59.620 So, these are just a sample of ways that we could decide if an individual is.

01:00:08.680 Now, would people who do not meet these criteria say, well, I need a paycheck, so even though

01:00:15.320 I don't quite meet these criteria, I'm going to go out there because lots of people are going

01:00:19.260 to work and maybe nobody will notice, and would that happen?

01:00:22.840 Yeah, that would happen.

01:00:24.180 But remember, you're not trying to get the infection down to zero.

01:00:28.200 That's not the goal.

01:00:29.860 I mean, we'd love that.

01:00:31.220 But the immediate goal is to get the infection rate of spread below one.

01:00:36.520 One person gives it to fewer than one people.

01:00:40.760 Fewer than one people?

01:00:41.900 Is that even a sentence?

01:00:44.360 Fewer than one person.

01:00:45.680 So, I think that some amount of social pressure, whistleblowing, and maybe the police tapping

01:00:56.260 you on the shoulder, if it's obvious you're congregating and violating, there may be enough

01:01:01.460 social pressure and, you know, government tapping you on the back that could reduce the

01:01:08.480 number of people who are just being stupid and violating the guidelines, probably to a lower

01:01:12.120 number.

01:01:12.440 I mean, look at what happened when they said close everything.

01:01:16.340 When the government said just close everything that's non-essential, it worked, right?

01:01:22.060 It didn't happen on day one, but didn't it work?

01:01:25.300 I don't think there's a restaurant that's open in an area where they're supposed to not

01:01:29.640 be open.

01:01:30.240 So, you can get compliance.

01:01:33.380 So, I think that's a mistake if the only thing they do is by geography.

01:01:38.380 It should be geography, but also individual risk.

01:01:41.820 I don't know that we have enough masks, genetic tests, home tests for easy tests.

01:01:49.300 So, I don't know enough hydrochloroquine.

01:01:52.000 So, we may not have enough assets to judge on an individual basis yet.

01:01:57.060 So, that might be phase two, but wouldn't you like to hear that a phase two is coming?

01:02:01.460 Like, I'd like to hear Dr. Burke say, the best we can do in our current situation is there's

01:02:07.960 some counties that can open.

01:02:09.820 Your state will decide.

01:02:12.520 That would be cool for the first thing they tell us.

01:02:15.680 But I'd like to hear very, very soon after that, we don't know yet, but what we're working

01:02:22.380 on is some kind of a deal where if you meet this checklist, you two individually can go

01:02:28.000 to work in some cases, no matter where you are.

01:02:30.800 Because New York City has to run also, right?

01:02:32.700 So, that's what I want to see for my government.

01:02:35.820 Let's see.

01:02:36.380 Let's see if it happens.

01:02:41.520 Oh, that's about as much as I want to do now.

01:02:44.100 And I will.

01:02:46.000 Let's see.

01:02:46.440 Just make sure I talked about everything I want to do.

01:02:48.440 Hold on.

01:02:49.000 Hold on.

01:02:49.400 Hold on.

01:02:50.680 Yeah, I think I did.

01:02:51.660 That's it for now.

01:02:52.320 I'll try to come back at the same time in the PM for a simultaneous swaddle in a nice

01:02:59.920 warm blanket.

01:03:00.580 Everything's going in the right direction, even if it doesn't look like it.

01:03:05.760 Americans are winning.

01:03:08.420 Humans are winning.

01:03:10.440 And we will win.

01:03:11.900 So, let's keep it up.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - March 27, 2020

Episode 875 Scott Adams： Get in Here for the Sip. It's a Good One Today!

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