Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 910 Scott Adams： Have You Been Brainwashed by the Government？ Find Out Today!

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous

00:00:19.260 sip. Yeah, it's good. It's really good. And then we'll talk about fascinating things.

00:00:26.060 Hey Omar, thanks for the super art. And all you need to prepare for today's episode is a

00:00:34.460 cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel

00:00:37.680 of any kind. I fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled

00:00:43.920 pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including

00:00:48.060 the pandemic. It's called the simultaneous sip. Go.

00:00:52.280 So I got a message this morning from Bjorn Lomborg. You may know of him as a well-known, let's

00:01:14.960 say, voice. I don't know how to characterize him. But he's a well-known voice on climate

00:01:20.940 change. And his special niche is saying that, yeah, there might be a problem with warming,

00:01:35.300 but we're not doing a good job calculating the economics of it. So he's focusing on the

00:01:42.660 risk management part of it, not whether or not it happened. He's not a scientist. And he's

00:01:50.620 got a new book out and I'm going to offer to interview him. But here's my question. I'm

00:01:57.740 considering putting any interviews I do, maybe putting them behind or putting them on only

00:02:08.140 the Locals app so that I'm not so sure I want to do interviews for my regular Periscope.

00:02:16.760 So that's the question. You could either message me directly or tell me in the comments.

00:02:24.540 So the, no, I wouldn't call him a climate skeptic. Somebody is trying to characterize

00:02:29.880 Bjorn Lomborg as a climate skeptic. I wouldn't use that term. I think he's more of a climate

00:02:36.060 analyst. He works with economists as well as people who understand the science. So it's

00:02:44.640 more about taking a more comprehensive look at the business part of it. I think that's

00:02:50.040 how I would characterize him. I wouldn't call him a skeptic in the classic sense of someone

00:02:55.040 who doesn't think there's a problem. All right. So if you think you would like to see me doing

00:03:02.960 interviews in my normal morning Periscope, let me know. But I could also do those offline.

00:03:12.040 And then they would just be available if you wanted to see them. And here's my, here's my reasoning

00:03:17.040 on this. I think that the, the population of people who watch the morning Periscopes and

00:03:25.640 temporarily the evening ones probably are coming for me, right? I mean, I don't know how to say

00:03:33.080 that without, without sounding like too much of a jerk, but I'm just trying to be a market analyst 0.95

00:03:39.920 here and say, all right, well, if people are coming for one thing, why would I change it? 0.95

00:03:46.560 Unless it was better. So I guess that's the question. Would you like it better if I interviewed

00:03:50.380 interesting people? All right. You know what I'm getting tired of? I'm getting tired of the press

00:03:57.300 reporting on stuff without telling us whether hydroxychloroquine is part of the story.

00:04:03.480 And it's starting to get really obvious, isn't it? Well, I'm looking at your comments. It looks

00:04:11.720 like, okay. Yeah. It looks like there's a lot of support for doing it offline, meaning just put it

00:04:19.260 on the, the locals platform. Oh, good. I actually, I'm a little bit surprised because I thought there

00:04:28.380 would be more of a mixed response, but that's actually, my instinct was the same. That, see,

00:04:35.760 see, here's, here's my thinking. The reason that you watch an interview is for the person who's being

00:04:42.720 interviewed, right? So there's no reason to assume that people who were coming to my periscopes

00:04:49.620 also want to see whoever the interview person is. So it just makes sense that you'd, you'd have

00:04:56.860 they're separate. All right, we'll do that. So Boris Johnson, he went from being in the ICU

00:05:05.820 to miraculously a lot better. Did he use the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc?

00:05:16.160 Why don't you know that? Right? Or has it been reported? Has that been reported and I just missed it?

00:05:26.860 Does anybody know the answer? Does board, did Boris Johnson take those meds? Now

00:05:33.900 yeah, I'm, I think I've seen enough people saying no interviews on this platform. So I think I'll take

00:05:42.960 your advice on that. And thank you. Thank you, by the way. One of the things that's really fun about

00:05:48.700 this experience, you know, what we're doing right now, and I think you feel it as well, is that even

00:05:55.240 though it's sort of a mass broadcast platform, it's also personal and, and sort of immediately

00:06:03.300 responsive to the audience. You know, what I do is it's almost like it's a live audience. Well,

00:06:08.940 there's a live audience, but not in person in the, in the sense that I'm adjusting based on the

00:06:14.360 response all the time. So that's kind of makes it more fun because it can evolve in its natural way.

00:06:19.980 Okay. Um, so yeah, press should tell us more about hydroxychloroquine. Um, so I had thousands

00:06:28.300 of people unfollow me this week and all for the same reasons, uh, which is, uh, they, they were badly

00:06:39.180 brainwashed at some point in their life and don't know it. Now that's my hypothesis. Let me, let me support

00:06:47.860 that way of thinking with the following anecdote. When I was in sixth grade, my sixth grade teacher

00:06:54.460 did an exercise with the class that I think changed me forever. Um, it didn't do it right away,

00:07:02.340 but as I thought about the experience, I think it forever changed how I see the world. And here was

00:07:09.400 the exercise. He asked us each, the students to come up one at a time and write on the, right on the

00:07:15.740 chalkboard in front of the class, something we would be willing to die for, to die for. Now remember

00:07:23.380 we're, we're 12 years old. So each of us go up and we're like, uh, I don't know, you know? And so it's

00:07:31.080 my turn to go up to write something that I would die for. But of course I'm kind of anticipating what

00:07:38.100 the teacher is looking for. He was a, he was a military veteran, you know, very patriotic kind

00:07:44.380 of guy. And I think I intuited that what he was looking for, you know, sort of like, yeah, I'm good

00:07:52.600 with, uh, multiple choice tests because I can tell what they're looking for. So I go up there and I

00:07:58.820 think, I think he's looking for freedom as the answer. So I go up to the board and I write, you know,

00:08:03.900 freedom. I'd be willing to die for freedom. And of course, you know, he praised me for my excellent

00:08:10.220 answer, but it wasn't so much my answer as knowing that that was the answer he was looking for.

00:08:17.980 But I've never forgotten that moment. And here's why. Can a 12 year old make a rational decision 0.91

00:08:27.480 about life and death? Can they? Is there any 12 year old whose brain is developed enough

00:08:34.660 that they can look at the whole situation and say, yeah, it does make sense that I would die for this

00:08:41.140 thing? And the answer is no, no, you're not, you haven't developed adult critical thinking. So if you

00:08:49.240 have a firm opinion about something at 12 years old, as everybody in the class seemed to, because we,

00:08:56.840 you know, once I put that answer up there, everybody's like, oh yeah, freedom. We died for

00:09:00.440 that. It's obvious when you look back at it, that it was just a result of brainwashing. Now,

00:09:07.460 when I say brainwashing, I don't mean bad because society, you know, trains its youth to get an

00:09:14.440 outcome that's good for society and ideally good for the youth as well. So when we're training and

00:09:20.340 educating and, you know, teaching people their culture and giving them religion and giving them 0.98

00:09:26.740 patriotism, that's nothing but brainwashing because it happens at children who are far too young to

00:09:32.900 make any kind of critical decision anyway. But really, there's somebody saying no to this?

00:09:40.900 are there actually people who are disagreeing that children are being brainwashed to be patriot?

00:09:49.540 I don't know if you're disagreeing with that thought. How could you possibly disagree with that?

00:09:55.320 Wow. Most of the comments are disagreeing that we brainwash children. I'm amazed. Well,

00:10:03.080 you're completely wrong. So let's just stay with the assumption you're completely wrong. I will,

00:10:09.840 I will default to my expertise in hypnosis and persuasion to say that the Pledge of Allegiance

00:10:18.580 is just brainwashing, but it's very good brainwashing. In other words, if you were the boss and you got to

00:10:24.900 decide, okay, Scott, would you continue doing the Pledge of Allegiance knowing as you're describing it is

00:10:32.560 that it's brainwashing? I'd say, yeah, hell yeah. It's really good. Because there's nothing wrong

00:10:38.680 with patriotism. It's a good system. And although I'm not a believer, I'm very pro-religion. So if

00:10:47.420 children are brought into that religious belief well before they have critical thinking,

00:10:53.400 most of the time it works out great. So don't be thrown by my use of the word brainwashing.

00:11:00.780 You could easily just substitute in educated, right? And then it feels okay. It's like, oh,

00:11:09.800 we educated kids. Just the way you do it for children is you don't ask them for their opinion. You just

00:11:15.420 tell them what to think because that's how you educate kids before they have reason, reasonable skills.

00:11:20.660 All right. So when it, and now these children who were, let's say educated, so it'll make you feel

00:11:29.260 better. They were educated to value patriotism and the other values of our society. And that's all good.

00:11:36.500 I'm glad that they were, and I'm glad I was. I'm glad I was likewise educated. But then you grow up

00:11:44.240 and you've got these reflexes that are sort of designed into you. So once you do develop the

00:11:50.320 ability to do critical thinking, do you use it? Because it's kind of hard to use your critical

00:11:57.800 thinking if you spend a lifetime with just this reflex training. It's like, freedom, I'll die for it.

00:12:04.820 You don't really think that through, do you? It's just a reflex at this point. You know, you love your

00:12:11.980 country, you know, you believe in your religion. It's just a reflex. And so I would say that the

00:12:18.500 thousands of people who unfollowed me, I won't speak for every one of them, of course, because

00:12:23.440 they're different people. But my suspicion is that their early education and reflex thinking

00:12:31.020 was too strong for them to overcome with their sense of reason. Here's why. So the thing that

00:12:37.800 people got mad about was that I said, what if you had an app in which you could voluntarily,

00:12:43.420 voluntarily give up your personal information, and maybe you would find some hot spots based on

00:12:49.540 your reporting of your symptoms. And people said, no way, you can't give up your freedom in the form of

00:12:55.660 personal information in this case. But, you know, don't give up freedom. But not really any critical

00:13:02.020 look at the whole situation. Because if you're arguing that you don't want to give up your personal

00:13:08.860 information, but you have a driver's license, and you have a credit card, and you pay taxes,

00:13:16.760 and you have a smartphone, that ship sailed. You've given up all of your private information.

00:13:26.980 If there's some other little minor thing that you voluntarily give up, say, did I have a cough

00:13:32.680 on Tuesday? Did I have a cough on Tuesday? That's the personal information that you're worried about

00:13:39.600 giving up? And it's voluntary? Really? You've given up all of your financial stuff, all of your

00:13:46.340 preferences, because your financial stuff shows you your preferences. They can find out your

00:13:50.600 browser history. They can find every conversation you made. They know your taxes. They know where

00:13:56.000 you've been. And the thing you're worried about is that some people might self-report that they've

00:14:03.620 got a headache on Tuesday. Are you kidding me? That's the thing you're worried about? Now,

00:14:10.940 the argument is that it's, you know, sure, it's voluntary now, but what if the government

00:14:15.680 requires it? Well, what if they do? They required a driver's license? That didn't kill you.

00:14:22.840 They required a fishing license? You survived that, right? Kids have to go to school even if they

00:14:32.420 don't want to. Somehow we survived. So routinely, the government makes restrictions on your freedom,

00:14:41.680 and if you don't like them. And if you don't like them, the public can, you know, do something

00:14:45.040 about it later. And then, and, but the most controversial thing I said, which there is a, some idiots 1.00

00:14:58.840 on the conservative treehouse decided to take me out of context and misinterpret me. So here's what, 0.97

00:15:11.380 here's what they interpreted. Let's see if I can find their quote. Because, yeah, I can't find it. I thought

00:15:25.780 I wrote it down. But anyway, the thing that they got upset about, wrote a little hit piece on me

00:15:31.320 today, is that I said that the sooner, so here's my tweet, the sooner that the public realizes

00:15:39.220 that they will have to give up privacy to, to beat the coronavirus, the sooner we can beat it.

00:15:47.920 What the conservative treehouse changed that to is should. They actually inserted the word should.

00:15:57.520 My statement is an observation. I observe that, that our concern about privacy and our reflex for

00:16:05.580 freedom is preventing us from the obvious solutions, which would be to know if somebody has it and doesn't

00:16:12.700 have it, to check your, you know, genetics to see if there's anything that makes you especially

00:16:17.260 susceptible, that sort of thing. Maybe, you know, checking your location or something. So I'm not

00:16:24.820 saying that those are, you know, that you have to like those things, or even that they would necessarily

00:16:30.320 be effective. But I'm pretty sure that the solution to the coronavirus will, will involve at least a

00:16:37.860 little bit, whatever that looks like, at least a little bit of giving up your privacy temporarily.

00:16:45.140 Now, you know, could the government keep, keep doing whatever it's doing forever if you give it up

00:16:50.600 temporarily? It's a slippery slope. Well, yeah, they could, but that's the problem with literally

00:16:55.240 everything in life, that somebody could do the wrong thing. Anytime. It's not special. There's nothing

00:17:02.780 special about this. The government can do bad things and try to get away with it anytime they

00:17:07.720 want. Nothing special. All right. Let's see. I made an observation that I'm sure will turn

00:17:20.760 into nothing, but it's kind of interesting, so I'll talk about it. If there's a, if there's

00:17:26.920 a genetic marker for who's more vulnerable, and there's some speculation in the scientific and

00:17:35.080 medical community, there's something about your ACE2 receptors in your lungs, and I think you could

00:17:41.820 genetically test to see if you have that, that characteristic. There seems to be something that

00:17:47.780 in a general way, it might track with different ethnic groups, but that doesn't necessarily mean if

00:17:55.380 you're within that ethnic group that you have those receptors or don't. It's just more correlated

00:18:01.080 as I understand it. Now, that doesn't mean that any of that, if it were actually tested in more

00:18:07.100 rigorous fashion, would be correlated with outcomes. I don't know that that's true, but here's what I

00:18:13.840 noticed. There did seem to be, at least by eyeball, but not necessarily if you really dug into it,

00:18:22.560 at least by eyeball, it seems that people of Germanic background were having better outcomes.

00:18:30.120 So, for example, Germany has a low death rate. Denmark seems to be doing okay, and Sweden is not

00:18:39.140 having a good outcome in terms of their death rate. Their death rate is above 8%, which if you ranked it

00:18:45.400 in the world, it wouldn't be very good. But they also didn't do much mitigation. So, the fact that

00:18:53.220 Sweden is higher than Germany is in Denmark makes sense, because they didn't do as much to stop it. 0.79

00:18:59.240 But then you look at the United States, and you look at the states within the United States that have

00:19:04.580 the greatest population of Germanic people who settled, and they also have, for the most part,

00:19:10.760 you know, it's not 100% correlation. But for the most part, they have also low death rates. Now,

00:19:17.100 they have other things and other correlations, so it would be hard to tease out what's really the

00:19:23.260 cause. What is it? For example, the states that also have the greatest Germanic populations in the

00:19:30.020 United States also happen to be not very dense, and they don't have a lot of international travel.

00:19:35.480 So, it could easily just be that, right? It could easily be that it's just a coincidence.

00:19:40.600 As soon as you studied it, the, you know, any kind of genetic difference would fall away.

00:19:45.340 But, there's certainly enough suspicion that it's worth looking into, especially because young,

00:19:52.820 healthy people do die. Don't you think that if you tested the young, healthy people,

00:19:59.300 it's less likely that you would find they had some hidden health problem, like, oh, they actually

00:20:04.420 had a heart problem we didn't know about. That could be the whole answer, actually. But the other

00:20:10.060 possibility is that there is some genetic thing, and how hard would it be to find it? Some people in

00:20:16.020 the comments on Twitter said, it's really, really hard to find a genetic cause for any disease because

00:20:23.540 we've looked for other diseases, and it's really complicated. It's not like it's, you know, one

00:20:28.680 part of your DNA. It might be a combination of things, etc. And I think, you know, that sounds like

00:20:34.460 that's probably true as a general statement. But, here's my question. Here's my question. If you have

00:20:43.340 a suspicion that it's these ACE2 inhibitors, couldn't you just look at that? Because, given that we know

00:20:51.000 it's a lung-related problem, if you just looked at just lung-related genetic issues that we know are

00:20:59.220 things, would we not at least rule it in or rule it out? So, at the very least, I would think, and I think

00:21:09.180 I've heard that there is some genetic study going on, maybe more than one place. So, I suspect it can't take

00:21:15.380 that long to get that data. Because it's not, the genetic study is, correct me if I'm wrong about

00:21:22.520 this, but if you're looking at the genes for a correlation, you don't have to do a, I don't think

00:21:29.520 you have to do a controlled study. I think you just have to look at the outcomes and then look at the

00:21:35.260 genes and say, oh, the people with these genes had better outcomes. I think, right? So, we should be

00:21:42.120 able to just take a bunch of blood samples from people who have known outcomes. Wouldn't we be

00:21:49.420 done in maybe two weeks? Two weeks if you're working hard? Couldn't you test enough to know

00:21:56.140 if there's something there? So, my feeling is that it's been about two weeks since I first heard that

00:22:02.440 somebody, I don't know who, was going to start looking into that. So, any day now, I'm expecting

00:22:08.280 that we're going to find out if that's a thing. And maybe that gives us a little more information

00:22:14.060 for battling this thing. Now, of course, the things you have to watch out for is that

00:22:18.040 pollution is correlated. We found that out for sure. Obviously, population density, whether there's

00:22:24.460 mass transit, how much they tried to mitigate, when they got it, do they have elevators as an

00:22:30.700 international hub? Do they have a lot of unhealthy people? Do the old people live with the young 1.00

00:22:36.580 people in this town? So, you have lots of different factors. But maybe we could tease

00:22:42.020 out if there's a genetic. All right. So, I'm moving closer to the opinion. I don't have

00:22:52.860 a firm opinion yet about what the exact right go back to work strategy would be. So, anybody

00:23:00.820 who's hating me for suggesting ideas is not really understanding that I'm not promoting

00:23:09.000 ideas. I'm just brainstorming, right? I'm surfacing ideas, see how people react. If the way people

00:23:16.560 react is, no, I will not give up my privacy, it doesn't matter if it's rational or not. If

00:23:24.280 it turns out that you can't convince people they should give up a trivial bit of privacy,

00:23:29.220 such as, did you cough on Tuesday? You know, if that's a problem, and people can't be talked

00:23:35.640 out of it, well, that informs your policy possibilities. You know, because you have to

00:23:41.600 deal with the whole person, the rational part that's small and the irrational part that's

00:23:46.040 gigantic. So, of course, since you need compliance, you're going to have to get people

00:23:50.220 on board. But I'm moving closer to this opinion. So, this is an unformed opinion. You can just

00:23:56.940 see it in process. It goes like this. The big problem about sending some people back to work

00:24:03.880 is not their risk. In other words, we do live in a country in which we sort of generally agree

00:24:12.560 that if an individual has an opportunity to take a risk that only affects them, we're going

00:24:19.800 to be a little flexible about that because that is just, you know, your human freedom

00:24:24.880 to take the risk that makes sense for you. But we get a little prickly as a society, or

00:24:30.520 any society, if your personal risks cost someone else money. So, if the thing you're doing is

00:24:37.260 going to raise my taxes, or raise my health care, or make me pay for more police force, or

00:24:42.940 whatever, if it's going to affect me, you know, then I want to vote on that. Now, here's where

00:24:48.720 I'm going on this. We have situations in society where people have different risk levels, and

00:24:54.940 we compensate for that. Take car insurance. The people who have the highest risk pay the

00:25:02.220 most car insurance. And we mostly are okay with that, even though it seems to be terribly

00:25:09.100 unfair, you know, compared to everything else we do in life. Because, you know, when I was

00:25:14.840 a young man, I was in the category of risky drivers. But I wasn't personally risky. Because

00:25:22.680 I didn't take, you know, I didn't drive especially fast, I had good reflexes, you know, you could

00:25:27.640 do the checklist. So I just wasn't a risky personality. But I was still in that category. And I was

00:25:33.300 still, I complain about it constantly. But I'm not going to, you know, start a revolution

00:25:39.160 over it. Because there is a credible reason that it's done. And the reason is, you kind

00:25:45.440 of do want to move the risk as much as you can, to the people who are the risky people.

00:25:52.620 Because society says that feels better, feels more fair. We don't have to do it. But if it's

00:25:58.940 the only way that society can say, yeah, I hate it. But I get why you're doing it. Sometimes

00:26:06.120 that's the best you can do. And so here's my question. Is there a way that the people

00:26:11.760 who want to take on the personal risk of going back to work, is there a way that we can let

00:26:17.080 them do that, but also somehow wall off that risk, so that they're the only ones that take

00:26:23.100 it? Now, the obvious answer to that is, yeah. Because the people at risk can,

00:26:28.660 in most cases, they can choose to sequester themselves so severely that they're really

00:26:35.760 not taking the same risk. So that's one way. The risky people can go to work, grandma can

00:26:41.920 lock herself in a room for three months if she chooses. She doesn't have to, but she could.

00:26:47.740 But could we go further than that? Could we? Because here's my concern. And it's not the

00:26:53.840 only concern. But as we're working through the options, some things start to rise up as

00:26:59.180 more important than others. I don't want my health care service to be unavailable to me

00:27:05.660 because someone else decided that their risk-reward was sufficient for them to go back to work.

00:27:13.040 In other words, other people's choice about risk will fairly immediately impact me, or could, could,

00:27:21.940 in terms of my health care availability, etc. And that's very important. So is there a way

00:27:28.320 that you could wall off the health care burden so that people who do want to take that risk would be,

00:27:38.180 I'll just throw this out as a possibility. You could say, yes, if you get the coronavirus,

00:27:43.920 you could go to this hospital, but not any of the other ones in your area. So just throwing in an

00:27:50.600 idea here. So you'd have one hospital, you know, it would be, would not be over capacity when you start,

00:27:57.340 but you'd say to the people who want to go back, all right, if you get trouble, the only hospital

00:28:01.780 that's going to take you is the one we've designated. And if you going back to work causes

00:28:07.400 a lot of you to be dying, well, you might have to be waiting in line and dying on the sidewalk because

00:28:13.700 it's just going to be this one hospital. Everybody who's decided not to go back to work and just

00:28:19.400 wanted to sequester, they're going to get, you know, these other hospitals so they can get their

00:28:25.160 operations and their heart surgeries and everything else. Now, I'm not saying that's the perfect answer.

00:28:29.720 I'm giving you an example of how you could creatively shift the risk from the people who

00:28:36.320 say, that's not a risk I want to take to the people who quite reasonably say, I will take that

00:28:42.100 risk. You know, I'm an American. I've got freedom. I take that risk. Can you wall it off and just,

00:28:50.000 you know, find a way to limit it? Now you could do it with financially. That'd be another way.

00:28:55.680 You could just say, you can go back to work. But given that there's going to be such a burden to the

00:29:01.200 healthcare system, would you mind, those of you go back to work, let's say pay 10% extra on your

00:29:09.320 healthcare for six months? You can go back to work. We're just going to move the burden of the risk

00:29:18.320 so that you're the ones taking it. And the ones who don't want to take the risk don't have to.

00:29:23.920 Now, again, I'm not saying that's the answer. What I'm saying, you have the freedom to not earn

00:29:31.160 money, correct? Yeah, everybody would be weighing their physical risk with their economic risk and

00:29:38.100 everything else. But I have empathy for the freedom loving people who say, you know, let us decide

00:29:47.640 if we want to take that risk. That's a strong argument. But I think we could tweak it so that

00:29:56.680 the risk is moved to the people who accept it voluntarily. And then I think society would just

00:30:01.980 be more comfortable with that because all of our solutions are going to be suboptimal. You want the

00:30:06.240 one that's at least a little bit comfortable. Let's see. Why is it that the Swedes... So I've got 1.00

00:30:19.580 lots of questions on comparable countries. I tweeted out, I think it was real clear, politics had an

00:30:26.340 excellent list that looks like it's updated all the time. It's a really good breakdown of the deaths,

00:30:33.200 raw numbers, and also deaths per capita, which is the one I was looking for, per capita, deaths per

00:30:39.860 capita, for each country. So you can rank them and see if there's anything about them that you can

00:30:45.660 learn. Now, since all the countries are handling things differently, it's kind of hard just to eyeball

00:30:51.720 it. But when you do eyeball it, you see some of the correlations. One is the Germanic countries seem to be

00:30:58.480 doing well. So, you know, Germany, Austria has... I forgot about Austria. Austria has a super low

00:31:04.600 death rate. And so does Germany. So it could be that there are some countries that have more

00:31:10.940 hydroxychloroquine, maybe the ones that, you know, have a lot. So there might be other correlations there.

00:31:17.040 But here's the question that jumped down at me. So the Swedes famously did not do aggressive

00:31:24.720 government-mandated, you know, lockdown. Apparently, a number of citizens are taking it upon themselves

00:31:33.740 to work at home or not commute or keep their kids home from school. But in general, the Swedes did not

00:31:39.820 take the heavy-handed government boot process. But here's the data I don't know.

00:31:47.040 What's happening in their hospitals? So I can see the death rate. I can see the infection rate. And

00:31:53.460 that's good. That gives me a little bit of visibility. But the Swedes are deciding to...

00:31:59.660 Well, let me put it this way. Why don't I know if the Swedish hospitals are overrun already?

00:32:07.600 Why don't I know that? Doesn't that come down to, like, the most important thing? Because if Sweden

00:32:13.740 is saying, ah, we'll just play it by ear, and their hospitals are not overrun, that's kind of a

00:32:21.300 really important fact, isn't it? Like, really, really important? Somebody says 40% of Swedes work from

00:32:29.260 home? I think I need a fact check on that. I wouldn't doubt it. I mean, could be.

00:32:37.240 So... And also, there's some evidence that the Swedes are not doing as much testing. So it's

00:32:46.980 possible that their infection rate is higher than reported. But all of that would still end up

00:32:52.760 in hospital deaths. So the key thing is, what's going on in the hospitals in Sweden? And why are they

00:33:01.240 not worried that the hospitals are overrun? And again, what question does the press not tell us?

00:33:09.080 Hydroxychloroquine. Is Sweden using a lot of it? Are all the countries that are having a good outcome?

00:33:15.640 Germany, Austria, do they have a lot of hydroxychloroquine? Now, it could be that it's not

00:33:22.620 important. But I think I'd like that reported, too. So every time we see... In fact, here's what I'd like

00:33:30.280 to see. I would like to see the same chart that RealClearPolitics has that shows the death rates

00:33:37.680 by country per capita. But there should also be a column that says whether, you know, let's just say

00:33:44.140 high, medium, and low usage of hydroxychloroquine. Because it'd be hard to get, you know, too much

00:33:49.600 specifics on that. But you could probably rate the countries in terms of whether they're being

00:33:55.020 aggressive and giving it to people early, or they're playing it by ear, or they just don't

00:34:01.180 have any. You know, those three cases. Is there a correlation? I mean, by now, we should see it in

00:34:09.120 the death rates, right? What would you think was true if Germany and Ireland and Austria, who all have

00:34:19.700 unusually low death rates, what would you think was true if they also had high use of hydroxychloroquine?

00:34:27.780 I mean, that would tell you something, right? All right. Every day on Twitter, people are still

00:34:35.440 asking me what makes this virus special. Now, how do you not know that by now? Right? How could you

00:34:47.760 have gotten this far in the world, and this far into the year, and not know that this virus is not

00:34:56.000 like the other ones? How do you not know that? I mean, it's not even a criticism. I'm just curious.

00:35:02.400 Like, how do you not know that? At the very least, how do you not know that it's having an impact on

00:35:08.960 hospitals? Is that a fact that nobody mentioned? I don't know. It's puzzling.

00:35:20.320 All right. Let's see. So, yeah, all the people who don't want the government to collect their

00:35:29.120 private information, the reason that I say it's probably a reflex that they say that is I don't

00:35:36.740 think they think through that the government has all their personal information, and if the

00:35:41.160 government has any reason to look into you, they just file some paperwork with the courts,

00:35:47.220 and they've got all your information, everything on your phone, everything else. So, your private

00:35:52.700 information, that was gone a long time ago. All right.

00:35:57.020 Well, it looks like I've hit my high points here. Let me just make sure. Oh, here's an idea that was

00:36:08.220 suggested by a dentist. So, as you know, dentists have medical training of a special sort, and they're

00:36:17.540 used to dealing with infected people. You know, the dentist's office worked right through the AIDS 0.72

00:36:23.320 epidemic and still do. So, dentists are very experienced in using PPE and protecting themselves, etc.

00:36:32.420 And here was the idea. Since dentists can't really do their work at the moment, they're closed with

00:36:40.380 everybody else. So, this dentist suggests letting dentist offices test their patients. And I thought,

00:36:49.400 well, that probably makes sense. I'll bet a dentist would be perfectly qualified, you know, with a

00:36:54.320 little bit of instruction, how to work a test and make sure that, you know, the samples don't get

00:36:59.940 spilled on everybody. And then they could also test people. And if you have the kind of test where you

00:37:04.760 get a reaction fairly quickly, you know, the tests that are, you know, five to 15 minutes or even

00:37:10.140 faster, if the dentist says, all right, you're good, 15 minutes after you, after the sample is taken,

00:37:16.720 then the dentist can do the dental work. So, basically, you test them in the waiting area.

00:37:23.460 And if they test fine, you take them in the back and you do your work. And I thought, it's a pretty

00:37:29.360 good idea. So, that would suggest that maybe some of the higher priority places for testing equipment

00:37:36.440 might be dentist offices. Because I can't imagine too many dentists who would say no to that,

00:37:42.180 right? Because their offices are closed, unless they figure out some way to, you know, some way past

00:37:47.600 it. And given that most of them would jump in and help, and maybe people would pay for the test as

00:37:54.220 well as the dentistry, why not? Seems like a good idea. So, I was asked on Twitter to boost that idea.

00:38:00.920 So, that's what I'm doing. I'm boosting it. All right.

00:38:06.480 So, I think that's about it for today. So, oh, somebody says that's a brilliant idea. Well,

00:38:17.060 I wish it had been my idea. It is a brilliant idea, I think. It wasn't mine, but it's a good one.

00:38:24.220 They give infections, I suppose.

00:38:26.520 All right. I'm just going to look at some of your comments. Is there anything that I said today

00:38:35.200 that is bugging you especially? Scott's Health app tells the feds you missed a dose and you get

00:38:42.860 cops at your door to force Trump pills. You know, the slippery slope people are the least rational among us.

00:38:56.520 Are you sticking with your 5,000 net deaths? I am, yes. I am sticking with it, which does not mean

00:39:03.440 that therefore it'll be accurate, but I am sticking with it as being closer than any other public

00:39:11.160 forecast. So, that doesn't mean I'm right. We'll find out. Now, for those of you who knew, when I say

00:39:18.060 net, we know we're saving tens of thousands of lives just by having the economy shut down because we're not

00:39:23.780 having the same kinds of traffic accidents, you'd have to add back in any extra suicides and

00:39:29.560 domestic murders, I guess. So, you'd have to include everything, pluses and minuses. But I think if you do

00:39:36.940 that, we might end up closer to 5,000 net deaths, which would be a gross of maybe 50,000. So, somewhere

00:39:45.020 around 50,000 gross deaths, because I'm thinking that the estimate of 60,000 will probably come down

00:39:52.780 again. But let's say 50,000 deaths, you're probably going to subtract down 40,000 people you saved.

00:39:58.980 That's going to be around 10,000. My estimate of 5,000 would be the closest one in the country,

00:40:05.220 I think.

00:40:09.360 Scott, is the idea that freedom is valuable for its own sake only the result of brainwashing?

00:40:15.380 Yes. Yes, it is. That is correct. Freedom being valuable for its own sake is a ridiculous idea,

00:40:25.760 and you would only have that if you were brainwashed. If you're not brainwashed, you'd say, 0.98

00:40:30.580 well, freedom is one variable. Let me look at my other variables. Okay, I'll balance them all,

00:40:36.880 and sometimes I'll give a little bit of freedom up, but I'll get a big gain. I'll give a little bit

00:40:42.400 of freedom up, but at least I got my operation. So, no, if somebody thinks that freedom is just

00:40:51.100 sort of a universal good, and you don't have to ask any other questions, that would be brainwashing,

00:40:57.800 absolutely.

00:41:02.480 Does the White House monitor my ideas? Well, I don't know what monitor means. I will tell you that

00:41:09.160 my followers on Periscope and on Twitter include lots of people in lots of places from Congress to

00:41:19.020 White House. So, I do know from confirmation from various people that I have high visibility.

00:41:30.500 So, a lot of people are seeing my ideas. I just don't know who and when.

00:41:35.320 Can I try to get Trump on Periscope with you? Yes. Yes, I will do that. I will try to get Trump on

00:41:41.340 Periscope. I think we have to get closer to the election, but there's not a zero chance that I

00:41:50.760 could get him. I don't think the odds are good. I think the odds of getting Trump to do a two-minute

00:41:57.080 connection on Periscope with me are low. The odds are low, but probably 200,000 people would see it,

00:42:09.360 you know, double my normal traffic if he was on there. And having 200,000 people hear your message

00:42:17.120 in an election season, it's not a terrible use of time. And obviously, I would be a, you know,

00:42:23.900 an interesting interview, let's say. Brainwashing or setting social standards, same thing. 0.99

00:42:31.480 Persuasion. Somebody says, you're constantly selling past the sale. It's your main way. Well,

00:42:38.680 people who know persuasion do that just automatically. So, you're right.

00:42:45.300 Is Chris Cuomo on the Trump pills? Well, my same complaint. Why don't you know that?

00:42:52.000 Don't you think that CNN should report whether or not Chris Cuomo is taking the Trump pills? I guess

00:43:00.340 George Stephanopoulos and his wife also tested positive. Don't you think ABC and they would want

00:43:09.160 to tell you if they used the Trump pills? You know, the hydroxychloroquine?

00:43:18.720 Anything more on your prediction from yesterday regarding a big news this week? Did I say it would

00:43:24.580 be this week? I don't know if the news will be this week, but there's some big news coming,

00:43:31.460 but no update on that. Oh, somebody says, start with Don Jr. Yeah, I probably would have a relatively

00:43:41.120 greater odds that he would say yes. That's a good idea. I'll try that, actually.

00:43:50.840 Do you believe we're being told all the government knows about this pandemic? No, I don't. Not that

00:43:57.700 that's necessarily bad. Let's see. He's doing hundreds of calls in a day. Yeah, you know,

00:44:09.280 the president talks to a lot of people during the day, so who knows? Interview Chris Cuomo.

00:44:18.360 I would love to do that. I doubt you'd say yes, but he would be a great interview.

00:44:27.700 Who did you discuss doctors across state borders with in telemedicine? All right, in the case of

00:44:32.680 telemedicine, I did make a direct contact with a staff member of Congress who did confirm that the

00:44:43.420 idea was immediately given to the task force and also confirmed that it got a positive response as

00:44:50.800 soon as it was there. Now, that's very different from saying that my suggestion for telehealth,

00:44:57.780 you know, allowing people to do it across state boundaries, it's very different to say that I

00:45:03.040 suggested it than it is to say that's why they did it. And that would be a big leap. Because the

00:45:10.040 reason I suggested it is that it was obvious. All right? So if you suggest an idea that smart people

00:45:16.900 who are working on a problem should have seen themselves, chances are they did. So I can't

00:45:24.660 make any assumption about anything I did that, you know, ultimately changed any policy decisions.

00:45:30.380 But I do think it's generally productive that if you see something that could be a gap in the

00:45:35.800 thinking, that you're trying to fill it in, you just check and make sure they thought of it. I mean,

00:45:41.100 that has value. You just don't know when it has a lot of value. When should we consider the

00:45:51.180 feat toll? A year from now? I don't know what that is. Do you read the Babylon Bee? Yeah, it's hilarious.

00:45:58.500 They're great. Do you agree with the Patriot Act? You know, I've never spent a lot of time looking into it.

00:46:03.640 Okay. When will a leader be bold enough to set a date? I think that's coming. A few weeks.

00:46:13.380 Which country will most hack our election? We already know that. It's China by far. 0.97

00:46:17.980 They're already working hard, apparently. When will Joe Biden drop out? I don't know that he'll drop

00:46:26.340 out. You know, he might turn things over to a vice president candidate and or vice president if he

00:46:35.020 got elected. But I don't, it's starting to look like he's not going to drop out. It looks like the

00:46:41.560 play is, you know, for the important Democrats to make sure that they've got their vice president in

00:46:48.200 place and the cabinet and stuff.

00:46:50.040 Why can't you pronounce the Trump pill properly yet?

00:46:56.780 Hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, no, azithromycin, and zinc. Takes practice. I'm not there yet.

00:47:07.820 Let's see.

00:47:11.780 Looking at your questions. Is Fauci off the reservation?

00:47:15.480 You know, I can't, I can't find myself getting interested in the Trump versus Fauci stuff because

00:47:22.660 that feels artificial, doesn't it? Like, do you see anything in the way that Fauci talks

00:47:30.420 in public that would lead you to believe that, or Trump, that would lead you to believe that

00:47:36.140 when the two of them are in a room talking about stuff that they have any problem? I don't

00:47:40.780 feel like it. It feels like they're working together just fine. That doesn't mean they have

00:47:44.600 to agree on it and everything. Yeah, the, Fauci is not going to get fired.

00:47:51.460 Do you think Mark Cuban will be on the back-to-work task force?

00:48:01.780 Let's see. That's a good question. Would Mark Cuban be on it?

00:48:04.640 I'm going to say no, but not because he wouldn't be great to be on it. And I think,

00:48:14.680 since I can't read his mind, I'm just guessing, right? So, so Mark can speak for himself. But just

00:48:22.240 guessing, I believe that both he and I have a similar situation in which we probably could give

00:48:29.900 all the input we want and it would get to the right place. So if you could make all the input

00:48:35.320 you want and it can get to the right place, you can do it publicly, you can send messages to people

00:48:39.880 you know on the committee, et cetera. Maybe you don't have to attend the meetings, right? Because

00:48:46.640 I'm not sure I have much to add if I'm one of 25 people around a big table listening to people

00:48:53.580 blather about statistics. I don't know if I have anything to add, but in my special case,

00:48:59.720 maybe I can suggest ideas that people haven't thought of, suggest models of, you know, how to

00:49:05.500 do it in a staged way. And maybe something I suggest, you know, triggers somebody to think of a better

00:49:11.580 version of that. So that's about all I can do. I don't have, you know, I don't have the statistics

00:49:16.500 or the medical background or I'm not going to do a deep economic model. So the total amount that I

00:49:22.720 could add to the process, I could probably do from the outside. And Mark Cuban might, and again,

00:49:29.800 I'm not speaking for him and won't imagine that I can read his mind, but he has a similar setup to me,

00:49:36.640 which is if he wants the task force to hear something, he could do it easily.

00:49:41.700 Let's see. Who will run the task force? Navarro? Maybe. Doesn't it seem like Navarro would be

00:49:55.660 about the right person to do that? Do you think Cuban will run for president this time? I just saw

00:50:01.720 an interview with him where it didn't sound like it. I think he was sort of keeping the option open,

00:50:07.460 which is just smart. But it didn't sound like he had the fire in his belly. And I think you'd have

00:50:12.780 to have the fire in your belly by now. It's just sort of too late. Cuban said he would do it. 0.83

00:50:23.440 I think he would do it under exactly the right conditions, which don't exist. So I don't know.

00:50:31.640 That's pretty hypothetical. I mean, I would do it under exactly the right conditions.

00:50:39.740 But if he asked me if I'm running for president, the answer is no, but under exactly the right

00:50:45.560 conditions. So actually, I had offered myself as the emergency backup in case Trump decides to retire

00:50:53.840 in the next few months. You know, you just vote for me and I'll just appoint some smart people to take

00:51:02.060 care of stuff as your emergency backup so you don't have to. But I think I would have to have done some

00:51:07.600 paperwork by now. So I can't really be, I don't think I can really be in it unless I think you have to do

00:51:14.120 the paperwork to be on the party. But do you have to do the paperwork to be an independent candidate?

00:51:19.740 Probably yes. You have to get on the ballot. Yeah. So I think it's too late. Anyway, that's all for now.

00:51:26.860 Talk to you later.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 13, 2020

Episode 910 Scott Adams： Have You Been Brainwashed by the Government？ Find Out Today!

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