Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 918 Scott Adams： I Evaluate the Economic Reopening Strategies so You Don't Have to

00:00:00.000 Hey, good morning. You came to the right place. Good for you. So far your day is going well.

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00:00:57.920 Hey, Tom from Stockton. Good to see you. So here's the question that I ask. So we've

00:01:14.760 got these hot spots in the country with the virus, but we've got other places where they're

00:01:18.980 laying off staff because the hospitals are empty. They don't have much to do. So here's

00:01:24.840 a basic question that I wonder about. Why do we assume it's better to keep those hospitals

00:01:34.380 at the lowest possible level of activity as opposed to an alternative, which is to allow

00:01:43.100 those places to go back to work until the hospitals start to get impacted, and then maybe you could

00:01:49.040 pull back a little. Let's say you get to 25% capacity and you know that it could very easily

00:01:54.600 hit 75% in a week. Well, then you pull back. You know, maybe do something a little differently.

00:02:01.980 But here's the bigger question. I feel as if we are a country full of people who are not

00:02:08.040 good at evaluating things. And it might kill us all. And by evidence of this, I give you

00:02:20.300 Dr. Phil. So Dr. Phil is getting some heat because he went on TV and passionately compared

00:02:29.160 automobile and other types of normal deaths to how many people have died or are predicted

00:02:35.400 to die with full mitigation from the coronavirus. Now, how smart is Dr. Phil? I think he's very

00:02:46.000 smart, right? Wouldn't you say if you had to measure his IQ, obviously he's successful in

00:02:53.380 his career? Very, very smart, talented guy. But what the heck is up with that? I told you

00:03:01.300 before in my bestselling book, Loser Think, that you could be really smart in one field and

00:03:08.900 be blind to how other fields look at problems. And this is a clear case where Dr. Phil, brilliant,

00:03:15.960 accomplished guy, is blind to how somebody should look at this problem. It's just, obviously,

00:03:22.400 it's just not an experience he has some, you know, contact with. And the way he should

00:03:29.980 be doing, of course, is to looking at the problems without mitigation versus, you know, with mitigation

00:03:37.920 if he wants to compare it to other problems. So we'd really be looking at a one or two million

00:03:42.060 people dying compared to 35,000 dying in cars. Now, you could still say, hey, it's still worth

00:03:49.440 risk, but that's a different argument. Dr. Phil is a perfect example of people who don't

00:03:57.320 know what they don't know. Because he said that pretty confidently and pretty passionately

00:04:04.440 in public. So you know that in his mind that made sense. Doesn't make any sense. It's the

00:04:12.320 analysis of a sixth grader, basically. It's not even comparing the right things. So, and

00:04:20.340 again, no insult intended to Dr. Phil. It is most typical that people have experience within

00:04:26.860 their domain and don't have experience in other domains. It's the reason I wrote the book,

00:04:31.180 because it's the most typical situation. But we need to be careful about who we listen

00:04:38.180 to. Because not everybody is qualified to compare things and make important decisions. I'll give

00:04:45.480 you some more examples of this as we go. So in my question about the hospitals that are in

00:04:53.220 the areas that are not yet impacted. Here's my question. Given that we have nothing that looks

00:05:00.940 like a cure, either now or any time within our planning zone, and it looks like even if we get a

00:05:11.140 vaccine, a vaccine might be 18 months away, far past the point where the economy would have been

00:05:19.640 destroyed if we waited. And if we wait, that's a certain disaster, because that's just too long to

00:05:29.900 have the economy down. And if we wait and then we get there, all we have is a vaccine. Vaccines don't

00:05:37.440 really stop infections. It just sort of slows it down. So whether you have a vaccine or you don't have a

00:05:44.340 vaccine, chances are you really have to get to herd immunity, and there's some question whether that's

00:05:52.820 even the thing, because there's evidence of people getting reinfected. Or you just say, it looks like

00:05:59.360 this is how we live now. So if you think that the question of whether we have herd immunity or not

00:06:07.760 should determine whether we go back to work, you're not good at analyzing. So that's not a

00:06:16.040 difference of opinion or priorities. That's just not being good at analyzing a thing. Because in all

00:06:22.280 cases, most of the country gets infected, no matter what you do. So if we have something that can give

00:06:31.320 you immunity, that would be great. But if we don't, if you can't get immunity, it's the same strategy

00:06:39.740 that makes sense. You just have to live with it. Because it is what it is. The alternative of closing

00:06:46.500 the economy forever, or even 18 months, that's not a real option. It's not a real option. Because sure, it

00:06:54.480 would keep some number of people alive in the short run, but the devastation of the economic meltdown

00:07:00.580 would be far greater. Far greater. So let us not destroy the entire planet because other

00:07:09.540 people are not good at analyzing things. And so that brings me to my other question. Suppose

00:07:16.800 this is more of just a thought experiment. Suppose that the president's policy group for reopening

00:07:28.860 the economy had, now this is just a thought experiment, because this is not describing

00:07:34.040 reality. But suppose he forms this advisory group and has the following professionals on

00:07:41.040 it. Now let's assume that each of these professionals is the best kind of their type. So none of them

00:07:47.460 are dumb. They're all really good at what they do, but they have, you know, their experiences

00:07:51.160 in their domain. So who should be the one among all the experts? Because you need lots of different

00:07:57.340 experts with their opinions. It looks like it's going to be a big crowd. I don't know what good

00:08:02.500 an advisory group is if every Republican except Mitt Romney is on it. Yeah, isn't there a problem

00:08:08.600 with your advisory group got a little too big? Well, that's a separate problem. But back to my

00:08:14.960 thought experiment, let's say these are the job experts. So let's say you had a doctor, a scientist,

00:08:22.120 an engineer, politician, lawyer, CEO, economist, entrepreneur, psychologist, and a theologian. And of

00:08:30.460 course, they'd all be good to give their inputs. But who would be the best one to synthesize all of

00:08:37.520 their different expertise and put it into some coherent model? Which job is best for that?

00:08:44.060 Some of you are way ahead of me. Yeah, the correct answer is engineer. Now, of course, this is an

00:08:49.600 opinion. And of course, it's a thought experiment in which, unrealistically, all of the people in my

00:08:56.400 list are very highly qualified, which in the real world is never the case, right? So in the real world,

00:09:03.760 if your best person is any one of these jobs, yeah, you still want to get the best person, right? But

00:09:10.560 you know, if you could imagine that they were similarly talented, I would go with either the

00:09:19.460 engineer and some people said CEO. Now, I'll give you partial credit for CEO. But there are a lot of

00:09:30.100 CEOs who are also technically oriented. So if your CEO is Elon Musk, all right. If your CEO is Elon Musk,

00:09:40.620 okay, I would let him make a decision, because he's an engineer and an entrepreneur and a CEO. And,

00:09:48.060 you know, we know he's smart and seems to have the right instincts. So yeah, somebody like him would

00:09:54.120 be great. So I doubt that the committee is going to be as well organized as, you know, in our minds,

00:10:03.120 we think would be a perfect situation. So it's just going to be sort of a mess of competing,

00:10:08.300 competing opinions. And I don't know how they come up with a coherent opinion out of all that.

00:10:13.420 But I look into the mess. And I see, am I wrong about this? Am I incorrect that the advisory committee

00:10:25.360 includes like just a ton of politicians, mostly Republican? That's true, right? Because I don't

00:10:33.240 know how you could ever come up with a decision with a large group of people of that type. It just

00:10:38.180 doesn't seem like, honestly, it doesn't seem like it's designed to get you a recommendation. It

00:10:45.000 doesn't look like that. It looks like it's designed just to sort of give cover for whatever they decide

00:10:50.560 to do. But I don't know how they could come up with a coherent, you know, agreed upon proposal out of

00:10:57.900 all those people. Now, here's what gives me some confidence. So my understanding is that among the

00:11:07.280 people in the working group are Mark Benioff. Somebody has to fact check me on this. But I

00:11:12.680 think Mark Benioff is one of the people on the advisory group. He's not like other people. I've

00:11:20.180 spent a little bit of time with him. And I got to say, you know, when you spend time with famous or

00:11:25.760 accomplished people, usually you walk away thinking, oh, they're kind of normal. You know,

00:11:30.000 they might be smarter or whatever, but they're kind of normal people. Mark Benioff is not normal.

00:11:36.400 And I mean that in a good way. There's no negative to that at all. Whatever's going on with Mark

00:11:44.160 Benioff, you just spend a little bit of time with him and you walk away thinking, okay, that's not

00:11:48.800 normal. Whatever's going on over there, you don't see that a lot, whatever that is. And I got to tell

00:11:56.160 you that whatever that is, is really good stuff. Because he does have a mix of the technical,

00:12:02.000 technical, the CEO. He's an enlightened being. You know, he's just got a bigger view of what's

00:12:10.560 important. So, you know, having a Mark Benioff in a group makes me feel a lot more comfortable.

00:12:19.680 Likewise in the group is Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban in the group makes me feel more comfortable.

00:12:26.320 Because, you know, he too has been in a situation where he's a CEO of a technical organization.

00:12:33.200 He has business management, entrepreneurial, has made decisions in complex environments,

00:12:39.520 has the best interests in the country in mind. It's great. That's great. So,

00:12:47.840 I don't feel good about the number of people involved, especially the politicians, but I feel very good

00:12:53.200 that there are some specific personalities in the group that I hope will come to dominate the

00:12:59.840 conversation. Peter Navarro. Yes, Peter Navarro. I don't know a ton about him, but my understanding

00:13:07.360 is he's got a good, broad background and would be good at integrating stuff. So, Peter Navarro is

00:13:14.480 somebody who gives me a lot of confidence. So, what we can hope is that the people with the most capability

00:13:21.520 within that gigantic working group, all we can hope is that the other people in the groups

00:13:28.880 recognize who's the most capable among them. And I'd be looking at a Benioff. I'd be looking at a Mark

00:13:36.080 Cuban. I'm sure there are, you know, several others who could be arguably in that class. I don't know

00:13:42.640 them all. But I sure hope the smartest people are making the most decisions. Let's hope that's true.

00:13:49.440 All right. That's weird. My notes are all out of order. So, you're going to get the out of order

00:14:00.560 presentation today. Okay. So, Democrats are eating their own like crazy lately. Have you noticed that?

00:14:10.720 So, David Brooks wrote an article in the New York Times called, The Age of Coddling is Over.

00:14:17.280 The essence of it being that, you know, the millennials have been too coddled and,

00:14:21.840 you know, this would be their first big, big challenge. And as you might imagine, millennials did not

00:14:29.280 appreciate that argument. And so, they went after David Brooks pretty heavily, at least on social media.

00:14:38.800 So, David Brooks, you know, typically associated with the left. He gets attacked by his own people.

00:14:45.360 Then Fox News puts on Dr. Oz. And, of course, that makes him a target. So, Dr. Oz is being attacked because

00:14:55.200 he said something about sending school children back first because it wouldn't change the overall

00:15:00.160 death rate that much because they don't get the coronavirus too badly. And, of course, everybody

00:15:04.480 said, you monster, Dr. Oz. Why do you want to kill children? So, Dr. Oz, of course, you imagined him

00:15:12.080 more associated with Oprah. So, you imagined him more in the left. So, because Dr. Oz said that and Dr.

00:15:17.920 Phil went on and, honestly, just embarrassed himself by not knowing how to compare things in public.

00:15:25.040 So, that, of course, brought the pressure back on Oprah because Oprah is blamed for making Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil

00:15:33.520 famous. And, of course, Bill Maher, you know, is getting attacked for any time he goes,

00:15:40.160 any time he goes just a little bit off the reservation and says anything objective, he gets totally attacked.

00:15:47.920 And I saw Andrew Sullivan on the list. I don't know what he said that makes people dislike him. But

00:15:55.120 if you watch, the left are just eating themselves alive. Now, I saw on social media, somebody said,

00:16:03.600 commented to me and said, can you believe that we live in such a politicized world? Can you believe

00:16:11.440 that even the coronavirus got politicized and people are just taking sides by what political

00:16:18.320 party they're in? To which I said, I don't see that. I don't see that at all. Now, it could be true.

00:16:26.320 But is it? But do you see that? Because let me tell you what I see. I see the distinction between the,

00:16:34.000 you know, the division. There's definitely a division. But the division I see is almost by

00:16:42.160 experience or I don't want to say IQ, but sort of experience. Let's say experience. The people who

00:16:49.920 are the best at analyzing things seem to be all on the same page. The people who are really not good at

00:16:58.080 analyzing things seem to be on their own page. So there's definitely a split. There's a division

00:17:05.200 in the country. But I don't think it's by politics. You know, certainly people are attacking politically,

00:17:12.720 like, oh, the left attacks the right no matter what they say. The right attacks the left no matter

00:17:17.760 what they say. But if you were to take anybody on the left or the right and say, let's talk just

00:17:23.040 privately. Let's get off of social media for a moment. Nobody's looking. Let's just talk privately.

00:17:30.240 And I think that you would find that the only division is people who are good at making decisions

00:17:37.600 largely on the same page. People who are not good at making decisions, they're largely on the different

00:17:43.120 page. So that's what I see. That's what I see. I don't see this as a political division, except,

00:17:49.760 you know, we're sniping at each other. But when it comes down to the decisions,

00:17:54.000 that doesn't look political to me. It really doesn't. But I also could be very wrong about that.

00:18:02.320 So Scott Gottlieb, who is an MD and was, what was he, the prior head of the FDA, I think?

00:18:09.600 And he's saying that the remdesivir trials, at least the early information, might be already

00:18:17.840 strong enough to suggest it should be used for compassionate use, which means that anybody

00:18:23.760 who is in bad shape would be able to get it, even though it's not going through all the correct

00:18:28.480 approvals. I don't know. Now, how many of you made this prediction early on? Prediction.

00:18:37.200 Hydroxychloroquine only costs you $20 to get better. Remdesivir costs you about $1,000 to get better.

00:18:49.680 Early on, how many of you said, uh, I'll bet I know which way this is going to go.

00:18:56.560 And it looks like it's going that way, honestly. You know, if you're, again, we're only based on the

00:19:01.840 anecdotal. But as I've said before, I think if the hydroxychloroquine worked as well as we wish it did,

00:19:09.520 I feel like we'd know that by now, as opposed to having only anecdotal information. I feel like we'd

00:19:15.760 know it. And we don't. So, could be that remdesivir is the real thing and hydroxychloroquine is not.

00:19:23.520 But why did we all know it was going to go this way? Like, that's got to bother you, right? Did the

00:19:30.000 simulation, did the simulation just broadcast this months in advance? Hello, I'm the simulation.

00:19:37.840 You know how this is going to go, right? You got the one that's practically free, the one that enriches

00:19:43.040 the pharmaceutical companies. We're going to do some scientific trials. Guess how it's going to come

00:19:48.560 out. Now, maybe, maybe it's entirely legitimate. Maybe. It could be. I mean, it could be legitimate.

00:20:01.280 But do you trust it? I don't know. We live in a world in which, I don't know if you can trust

00:20:06.880 anything anymore. And when something so conveniently goes in the direction that every cynic in the world

00:20:13.600 said, watch this. Watch this. Let me call this two months in advance. It's going to be the expensive

00:20:19.280 one. Right? Why did we all know that? You know, it could be it's true. But I don't know.

00:20:31.120 All right. China apparently has a commercial on television, which I saw a clip of, that has to be

00:20:40.000 seen to be believed. I'll describe it. But if you know, go look at my Twitter feed, you have to see

00:20:46.480 it. All right. And it's part of the larger picture, which is the anti China sentiment is just going

00:20:53.840 through the roof. And I don't think it's going to reverse. It looks like a one way trip toward

00:20:59.120 decoupling. How many of you thought I was crazy? Two years ago, talking constantly about decoupling

00:21:07.120 from China. And you said to yourself, well, you can talk all you want. I know your stepson died and

00:21:13.280 you feel bad about it. But I'll tell you what's not going to happen. We're not going to stop doing

00:21:18.320 business with China. Come on, Scott. You can do your little hashtags all day long. You hashtag

00:21:26.480 decouple. But we're not going to actually decouple from our largest trading partner superpower in the

00:21:32.640 world. Well, except that we are. Except that we are. That's certainly not because of anything I

00:21:40.960 persuaded. But the simulation offered it up. And I got to admit, I didn't see this coming.

00:21:50.240 So, anyway, the ad I was talking about, there's a commercial in which, and I'm not making this up.

00:21:57.520 There's a young Chinese woman who's doing some laundry. And it looks like she's in some kind of a

00:22:03.440 place where, I don't know, there's a house painter or something comes by. And the house painter is an

00:22:09.120 African-American. Well, he's not African-American because he's in China. He is a black man in China.

00:22:15.400 Now, apparently, there's some number of black residents of China. I don't know how many. Can't be a lot.

00:22:20.920 But, so the black man comes around the corner and he's got some paint on him because he's a house

00:22:27.840 painter, apparently. And he starts, you know, leering at the woman. And she acts like maybe

00:22:32.780 she's into it. And he gets close. And it looks like maybe the guy's going to kiss her. And then she

00:22:39.060 shoves a laundry, one of those laundry pods into his mouth, grabs him by the back of the neck,

00:22:46.820 and miraculously shoves him entirely into the washing machine. His legs and everything go into

00:22:53.760 the washing machine. She shuts the top of the washing machine, sits on it, and the washing machine

00:22:59.540 goes as you're imagining the black guy is now being murdered. But, hey, it's good news. After the end of

00:23:06.360 the commercial, she gets off the machine, opens it up, and she takes out of the machine a Chinese guy

00:23:13.800 who's really handsome. He's not black. Do you believe that? That's like a commercial in China

00:23:22.180 that she washed the black off a guy and turned him into, according to the commercial, a better guy

00:23:30.920 because he wasn't a black guy anymore. Seriously? This is the country where we want to do business with?

00:23:37.320 Now, it's not like it's brand new news that China is racist. But what is the news is that the American

00:23:46.720 public is engaging with this topic more, and decoupling's on the way. Tom Cotton is tweeting about

00:23:56.520 China somehow is using some kind of paperwork approval problem to hold up medical goods that are bound

00:24:03.940 for the United States. So there's stuff in China that's ready to go, but there's some kind of

00:24:08.780 paperwork to hold up in China. It's time to decouple, right? Do you think China can't authorize a plane

00:24:17.660 to take off with some medical supplies to the United States? These are not our friends. They're not

00:24:24.420 our friends. Whatever's going on over there. Not good. Decouple.

00:24:34.620 I've got a proposition I'm thinking about.

00:24:40.460 And it's spurred by two things. There was a story about some student, I believe, asked President Obama

00:24:48.060 if he would give a graduation speech. I don't know if it was like a digital one just for this guy's

00:24:55.400 college, whoever asked for it, or if it was a, if he was asking for a digital commencement address

00:25:00.400 for all graduates. I don't remember which one it was, but it gave me this idea. So I had been

00:25:08.640 scheduled to go record a commencement address, a digital one, and I didn't do it. So because

00:25:23.080 of the coronavirus, why am I, I'm having a blank, for some reason I'm just having a Joe Biden moment

00:25:32.200 here. I'll think of the, I'll think of who I was doing it for in a moment, Prager, PragerU. So Prager

00:25:41.520 University had asked me to do a video with a commencement address, basically, based on one of

00:25:48.080 my books. And I wrote it, but I had some health problems that limited me from travel, and then the

00:25:56.560 coronavirus thing pops up. So anyway, that, that got postponed forever, because who knows when

00:26:02.760 anything like that could happen. It's not going to happen this year for sure. But I've already, I've

00:26:07.080 already written the commencement address. I don't believe that PragerU would be upset if I went ahead

00:26:14.580 and just recorded it, because I don't, you know, it would be next year before I could record it for

00:26:19.980 the next season. You know, everything's different by then. So I'm thinking of doing a graduation address

00:26:26.400 for the country. Anyway, I'll just put that out there. I'm thinking about it. Update on Chris Cuomo

00:26:35.180 of CNN. So unfortunately, his wife got the coronavirus too. And oh my God, what a, what a terrible

00:26:43.440 situation, because now neither of the parents can essentially take care of the kids. But, you know,

00:26:50.540 at least because of the separation issues, and they can't even be with each other. Because even though

00:26:55.280 they both have the coronavirus, it's not entirely clear that, that that makes you safe from each

00:26:59.840 other. So they're, they're playing as smart. But Chris Cuomo was, he likened it to Lord of the

00:27:06.700 Flies because the children are in charge. And I guess his 17 year old basically as being the parent.

00:27:12.440 And I, let me say this about that. And it kind of ties back to the David Brooks comment. Since when

00:27:21.120 did a 17 year old, since when is a 17 year old not capable of taking care of a family? You know,

00:27:28.820 if this were a little, a little house on the prairie, that 17 year old would have three kids

00:27:34.080 of her own by now. So I'm not too worried about 17 year olds handling a household for a while.

00:27:42.360 You know, if it were my own 17 year old, I'd be far more worried about it, I suppose. But

00:27:47.920 let me extend this point. I feel as though the very young have not been asked to step up

00:27:57.760 in our society too often. And when we do ask them, they do. For example, there are lots of

00:28:04.020 young people who joined the military. Do the young people who joined the military step

00:28:09.340 up? Yeah, of course they do. Yeah, the process just turns them into whatever the process turns

00:28:14.500 them into. But you know, most of society does not require them to step up like that until

00:28:20.080 later in life. But if we asked, I think they could. Here's what I'm getting at. One of the

00:28:27.000 strategies we could use to reopen the economy is to let very young people do jobs that normally

00:28:33.440 we wouldn't. In other words, just give a lot more responsibility to 16 year olds, 17

00:28:40.660 year olds. Let's say this summer, there's businesses that need to open up, but a lot of their employees

00:28:50.060 are over, let's say, 50 or 60, and it's not yet safe to come back to work. How many of those

00:28:56.120 jobs that are done by a 45 year old, let's say working on an assembly line, how many of those

00:29:01.540 jobs could not be done by a 16 or 17 year old who's just filling in for the summer? You

00:29:08.280 know, they wouldn't be doing the hard jobs, but you know, the manual stuff, work a forklift.

00:29:14.540 Is there a 16 year old who couldn't work a forklift? You know, it wouldn't be as good as the 35 year

00:29:20.380 old, but I'll bet we could, I'll bet we could get pretty far. You know, would it, would it be the

00:29:27.120 worst thing in the world if the server at your restaurant is 14? Not really. I mean, it's

00:29:36.020 illegal for them to serve alcohol and stuff. So there's some problems with that. But, you

00:29:41.500 know, in the old days, people that age were stepping up all the time. So there's at least

00:29:46.660 some possibility that we have a resource that's underutilized that might be, you know, part of

00:29:52.440 the larger solution. Who knows? The story on CNN about some people in the isolation are

00:30:01.200 doing what's called quarantining. Teaming, as in they form a little team of friends. I

00:30:07.860 guess this is mostly single people. And they just live together. Because if they're going

00:30:12.700 to be quarantined, they don't want to be quarantined alone. So several friends who already know they

00:30:17.920 get along, just say, we'll just quarantine. We'll all just stay at your house. Now, I

00:30:23.480 suppose they could go between homes as long as they're the only ones who associate with

00:30:27.460 each other. And I thought, not a bad idea. But this made me think of an idea that I think

00:30:35.640 is a bad idea, but I want to run it by you. I want to run it by you. And it's based on the

00:30:43.740 idea that if you wanted to inexpensively and quickly test to see how many people were infected

00:30:50.600 in an area, one of the ways you could do it is take all the blood samples and just throw

00:30:55.760 them into one sample, and then test them, say, 10 at a time, instead of one sample at a time.

00:31:02.300 Because most of the time, depending on what you're looking for, most of the time you'll get

00:31:06.060 negatives on all 10 tests, because you're looking for something that isn't that common.

00:31:10.740 So it's a little easier to just say, all right, we'll throw them all in a batch, test all 10.

00:31:16.860 And then if you find a hit, you've kept a little of your sample left. And they say, oh, which

00:31:21.880 one of these 10? But most of the time, you don't have to. So most of the time, you just

00:31:26.320 test the pool. There's nothing in it. You say, OK, everybody we put in the pool is cleared.

00:31:31.800 So taking that concept, and I think this doesn't work, but I'm having trouble thinking it through,

00:31:38.260 so maybe you can help me. Could we form clusters of quarantined people, either around, let's say,

00:31:47.020 around a workplace? And then if anybody in that workplace gets it, you know, then maybe they're

00:31:54.840 already quarantined. Basically, it's a quarantine cluster. So that if you have a cluster with nobody

00:32:01.540 who has it, that whole cluster can interact with each other and can't give it to each

00:32:06.580 other. Now, if you've got leakage, and I think this is the hole in my problem, or the hole

00:32:11.880 in my idea, if there's any leakage, then of course, you know, the whole cluster can get

00:32:15.900 infected. But so I'll just ask the question, is there any scenario in which you could just

00:32:21.920 put people in clusters, keep them just in clusters, and then if one cluster gets a hit, then you

00:32:30.940 quarantine that person or that cluster, or you do your testing on everybody else in the

00:32:35.680 cluster? I'm just wondering if mathematically there's any way that that could give you some

00:32:42.200 advantage? Israelis did the mass testing, somebody says. One family, well, we already do it with

00:32:49.980 families, right? So the families are already a cluster. So could you extend the idea and

00:32:55.340 say, all right, this family's been quarantined really well, and this one's been quarantined

00:33:01.720 really well, and these two get together, or they get along. Can these two have as much

00:33:06.860 contact as they want, as long as they just keep it to the two families? Now, again, everything

00:33:13.340 is imperfect, and there's always leakage. So of course, there would still be infection getting

00:33:17.640 through, but could you slow it down, and would there be any advantage? Just questions. In

00:33:23.900 other words, let's put it in concrete terms. If somebody said you can reopen this business,

00:33:29.840 but the only way you can do it safely is if the people who are the workers only interact

00:33:35.000 with other worker families. In other words, you could see anybody who's a family of the

00:33:41.180 same business. But then, of course, you've got two workers in the family. It doesn't work.

00:33:47.020 Okay. I think I talked myself out of it. China raised its death estimate for Wuhan by 50% suddenly

00:33:56.120 on Friday. You know that joke about the cats on the roof? I think China, of course, knows

00:34:03.760 how much trouble they're in with the international community. So they're trying to, like, just

00:34:10.180 slowly, you know, we'll just edge up that estimate so it isn't as obviously ridiculous. Let's

00:34:16.380 just edge it up a little bit. And then next week, you know, hey, we found a few more. Let's

00:34:22.120 just edge it up a little bit so that maybe they can try to close the degree of that embarrassment

00:34:28.620 that will cost them, essentially, their civilization. So you can see them sort of moving in that direction.

00:34:35.440 All right. Now, did I already talk about this or did I think about it? You know, one of the

00:34:47.380 hard things about doing this much talking in public is sometimes you just can't tell, did

00:34:53.780 I just talk about this? Or did I think about it so much in the last 10 hours that I think

00:35:00.120 I just talked about? So I actually don't know. So I'm going to talk about it again.

00:35:09.160 In my opinion, if we are to wait 12 to 18 months for a vaccination, first of all, the vaccination

00:35:16.960 is not likely to be like a kill shot. It just takes a little edge off. So the vaccination

00:35:23.980 is not likely to just sort of work. And if you have the vaccination, you're safe, because

00:35:29.520 it doesn't really work that way with flu type viruses, even if this is not exactly one

00:35:34.800 of those. So I don't think we have reason to believe that a vaccine would just make you

00:35:41.340 safe. I feel as if a vaccine would make some people safe under some conditions, which would

00:35:47.760 be typical to vaccines. Now, vaccines that do work, you know, things like mumps and measles

00:35:54.760 and chicken pox and stuff. Those are more protecting everybody. But I don't see that happening with

00:36:00.560 the viruses, the flus. I don't see us having vaccinations that just wipe it out. So given

00:36:08.520 that waiting for the vaccine is a bad strategy, how would you compare these two risks? So risk

00:36:18.080 one is that we go back to work, but everybody's smart about it. So the people at greatest risk

00:36:23.900 protect themselves the most. And we just do the best we can, but we go back to work. What

00:36:29.420 is the risk of catastrophe under that scenario? And I'll say catastrophe is that the outcome

00:36:36.620 of that destroys, let's say, the economy and a million lives. So you lose both your economy

00:36:44.320 and a million lives and maybe your healthcare too. So let's call that catastrophe. And let's

00:36:50.280 compare that to staying closed down as long as possible, which could be months and months

00:36:55.600 to get as close as we can to the vaccination, which probably is not a be all end all. Let's

00:37:02.560 rank those two risks. I'll give you my opinion first. My opinion is if we play for the vaccination,

00:37:10.660 in other words, that's our big play is like hoping the vaccination is just what we have

00:37:15.540 to stall as long as you can to get closer to the vaccination. I believe that would be

00:37:21.340 a hundred percent chance of global economic meltdown. Now, these are just opinions because

00:37:28.320 there's no way to really model this stuff in the way anybody would believe, right? It's

00:37:32.380 just my feel of things, my experience, et cetera. Doesn't mean it's right. That's just where

00:37:37.700 my head's at, is that if we wait for the vaccine, it's ensured destruction.

00:37:46.040 If we were to go back to work, let's say earlier than the experts want, but we do it as carefully

00:37:51.280 and as smartly as possible. We reconfigure things, do everything we can do. I think the risk of

00:37:58.560 destruction, let's say of catastrophe, where you lose your economy and you lose a million people too.

00:38:03.900 And by the way, in both scenarios, you're going to lose a million people. Just one is slower. So

00:38:10.020 you're going to lose a million people either way. I think the risk of catastrophe if we go back to

00:38:15.340 work soon is 50%. That's my guess. If we go back soon, which most people would consider too soon,

00:38:25.660 I think there's a 50% chance of total catastrophe. I think if we play it for waiting as long as we can

00:38:35.860 to get close to a vaccination, my feeling of it is that's closer to 100% catastrophe. So the adult

00:38:44.780 decision is to take the 50% chance of catastrophe. That's my opinion. All right. Now, as you know,

00:38:54.900 the children in the conversation will say, Dr. Oz or Scott Adams, you ghoul. I've actually been called

00:39:03.920 a ghoul this week, several times. You ghoul. How can you be so happy about all these deaths?

00:39:12.460 Well, nobody's happy about it. You ghoul. How can you say it's okay to go back to work when you know

00:39:18.800 it means more people dying? How would you feel if it were somebody you knew? These are all stupid

00:39:25.360 questions of children. Adults just have to make the tough decision. Just before I signed on,

00:39:32.780 somebody on Twitter challenged me this way in the comment. Somebody said, Scott, if you personally

00:39:39.040 had to decide which 300,000 people were going to die, and it was on you, and you had to personally

00:39:46.580 decide, would you be okay with that, Scott? Would you be okay if you have to decide who personally

00:39:52.380 dies? To which I said, yes. Yes, I would. If the assumption is it's still the best path,

00:40:02.360 they're all bad, but on one of the paths, 300,000 people have to die, and somebody has to decide.

00:40:09.100 Yes, I will do that. I will unambiguously and without hesitation decide which 300,000 people

00:40:17.000 die. Now, when I'm done, somebody's going to kill me right away, right? Because I will have decided

00:40:23.960 somebody dies. So my life expectancy would be about 10 minutes after I made the decision.

00:40:28.580 But I would still do it in a heartbeat. So I would be dead at the end of it, but I would have saved

00:40:36.460 humanity by being the adult in the room who said, you know, there's no right answer. Here's the best

00:40:43.740 I can do. I'm going to be dead too. I'm going to be just as dead as these 300,000 people, but I'm going

00:40:50.420 to do the best I can for those of you who will remain. So that's the setup. So yes, yes, I take that job

00:40:58.220 with no hesitation. I take that job with no hesitation. Somebody says, yes, you first. Well,

00:41:04.300 how do I go first until I've done the job? Now, if you're saying go first, as in once I've decided

00:41:12.640 who the 300,000 are, then I'm immediately killed. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I would be

00:41:19.420 immediately killed as soon as I made the list, well before any of those people were dead. I'd be the

00:41:24.620 first one dead. That would be guaranteed. It's, you know, if you get to decide, well, you know,

00:41:30.780 unless you live with 100% security forever, of course you'd be dead. And yes, and yes,

00:41:38.880 if I would be dead immediately, the first one of the 300,000, I'd take the job with no hesitation.

00:41:46.280 No hesitation. It's an easy trade-off. If you wouldn't do that, you're a ghoul. I say a ghoul.

00:41:51.900 All right. Let's see. What else we got here, going here? Who has done the modeling between these two

00:42:05.260 opinions? I saw in the comments, somebody was reminding me to talk about Naval Ravikant's solution,

00:42:13.740 well, his proposition that he put in a tweet. And it looked like this. If you just sent to work

00:42:20.520 the people under 45 who don't have health conditions, or bad health conditions, if you

00:42:27.160 just did that, you would end up with a death rate for coronavirus that wouldn't be too different than

00:42:33.400 the normal flu death rate. So why not start today? Say if you're under 45 and you don't have any

00:42:40.300 health condition, go back to work. Everybody else, keep hiding. You know, stay out of the trouble.

00:42:47.860 Now, of course, the young people coming back would be bringing some disease back to older

00:42:53.700 people. You couldn't stop that. But the older people would have some control. I mean, you

00:43:00.180 know, they could do a lot. And we could probably get better and better and better at protecting

00:43:04.780 them. You know, however good you are on day one, you're going to be a lot better at protecting

00:43:09.460 people on, you know, day 90, right? We get better at everything.

00:43:12.840 So here's my question. Who is capable of, or who has done, and who would believe it anyway?

00:43:21.200 Who has modeled those different scenarios? Let's call it the Naval model, where everybody

00:43:26.740 under 45 who's healthy just goes back to work today, or soonish. You know, you could argue

00:43:32.960 that there's a modified version of that. If we're really close to having an answer on, you

00:43:38.780 know, one of the therapeutics, or we're really close to knowing if convalescent plasmas works,

00:43:45.000 you know, if somehow we had a vaccine that looks like we could have it in a month. You

00:43:49.240 know, if we have something that really, really could matter, and if you just wait a little

00:43:53.740 bit longer, you'll know the answer, well, that would be an argument for risk management

00:43:58.520 saying, well, let's at least wait for this stuff. That's only a few weeks. Can you just

00:44:03.500 wait for this stuff? You could have that conversation. But generally speaking, let's just

00:44:07.600 compare sending the healthy under 45s to work today, ish, today-ish, versus the current

00:44:17.080 plan, which is all the governors are going to decide, and it's going to take months, and

00:44:21.260 whatever. Without saying that I prefer one of those models over the other, who can tell

00:44:29.300 me that we have studied them? Right? Do you believe that anybody's modeled those two things,

00:44:36.520 and more importantly, do you believe anybody could? Do you believe anybody could model the

00:44:43.480 difference between those two things? Because there's so many unknowns, right? You don't

00:44:46.800 really know how it's going to turn out. I would say it can't be modeled. In other words, you

00:44:52.440 could never reliably know if the Naval under 45 and healthy plan goes to work now is the best

00:44:59.600 one. Or this patchwork, governors decide, every situation is different, etc. How do you know which

00:45:08.060 one of those is better? Here is my decision-making process in the face of unknowns. So if you don't

00:45:18.320 know which one's better, but you have two paths and they're very different, how do you decide

00:45:22.800 without the right information? You still have to decide. You don't get to not decide. You have to

00:45:29.800 decide. And you couldn't possibly have the right information, but you still have to decide. What

00:45:35.520 do you do? Number one, you ask yourself which one has a catastrophic downside. And it turns out

00:45:42.240 they both have a catastrophic downside, sort of in different ways, and it's sort of hard to

00:45:48.440 calculate. So if you can't tell which one has the best upside, and you can't tell which one is the

00:45:54.920 most catastrophic, but you can tell which one opens the economy sooner, that's it, right? Isn't that the

00:46:05.720 end of the analysis? I would add to that that you also have the option of pulling back if it doesn't

00:46:13.720 work, right? So those are the things you would look to. Given that there's great uncertainty,

00:46:19.580 two paths, you cannot tell, you cannot model which one is better. It can't be done. And if you cling to

00:46:26.920 the childlike fairy tale that experts can model the future, you just shouldn't be part of the

00:46:33.500 conversation. It can't be modeled. So if you have two plans that can't be modeled, one of them keeps the

00:46:40.760 economy closed to a potential catastrophe. One of them opens it up, at least partially right away. And we

00:46:48.200 could pull back if we need to. Which of those two plans makes sense? Don't ask Dr. Phil. He's not equipped

00:46:57.300 for this. Brilliant guy. By the way, I love Dr. Phil. Brilliant guy. You know, you could criticize specific

00:47:03.800 things he's done, and I have too. But overall, he's a positive force, successful, smart guy who's good

00:47:10.800 for the world. I don't mean to mock Dr. Phil. He's far more good than negative. But it is just a fact,

00:47:19.060 as we observe him talking about this topic, he doesn't have those analytical skills. It's a special

00:47:25.140 kind of thing. Now, let me put it this way. You've got a choice. Let's say Dr. Fauci comes out. I'll

00:47:33.460 just give you this example. Dr. Fauci comes out and says, well, he did. He's obviously backing the

00:47:40.180 president's plan of the three phases and letting the governors make individual decisions. So you've

00:47:46.040 got a Dr. Fauci says this is the way to go, but it can't be modeled how it turns out. It can't be.

00:47:51.480 And let's say you've got a Naval Ravikant who has a different skill set. Brilliant guy who has succeeded

00:48:01.340 in lots of different fields and specifically has shown success over and over again of being able to

00:48:08.700 integrate lots of different highly technical opinions and possibilities into businesses because he's done

00:48:16.440 just that, both in his investments and in building up his own company and companies.

00:48:23.040 So, or let me give you another example. If you're not as familiar with Naval, let's replace that with

00:48:28.960 Elon Musk. Let's say, I don't know if this is the case, but let's say Elon Musk agreed with Naval and said,

00:48:36.720 yeah, this is the plan I would do. And Dr. Fauci says, no, I would do it this way. Which one?

00:48:42.620 Which one would you prefer? Given that it can't be known, you just can't know. You have to pick,

00:48:50.300 but you can't. Oh, there's a good answer. There's a good answer. Somebody in the comments just said one

00:48:57.060 word, freedom. That is a good analysis. If you can't tell the difference, which one is good,

00:49:06.080 you pick freedom. Now the kicker to it is that the freedom option also gives you a little bit

00:49:14.300 ability to pull back. You know, if you wait a year, it's just going to be too late. You know,

00:49:19.360 there might not be anything left if you wait a year. But if you start now and say, all right,

00:49:24.160 so let's send these young people back to work. Let's see what happens. Hospitals start to get

00:49:28.920 impacted. You pull back a little bit, make an adjustment. But let me just say this. If you

00:49:36.920 would pick Dr. Fauci's recommendation over an Elon Musk, a Naval Ravikant, I'll throw Mark Cuban in

00:49:47.640 there. If you would pick, if you would pick Dr. Fauci's recommendation over whatever Mark Cuban

00:49:53.260 comes up with. Are you good with that? Are you good with that? I'll tell you, if it comes down,

00:50:00.360 if we get to a point where Mark Cuban is saying, look, this is the way to go. And Fauci is saying,

00:50:06.760 no, look, this is the way to go. Whose side are you going to be on? For me, it's a slam dunk.

00:50:11.980 Because I know Mark Cuban is going to listen to the, I'm just using him as a stand-in, as a rational

00:50:17.560 player. All right. You know Mark Cuban is going to listen to all the medical advice and risk and reward.

00:50:23.260 But he's also going to have the bigger context and he's, he's a more skilled decision maker. I would

00:50:29.560 say. I would say that any of the people I mentioned who are not Dr. Fauci are, are world-class proven

00:50:37.980 decision makers in the context of not having all the information. There you go.

00:50:43.560 All right. And there's some people who would still go with Dr. Fauci. I would argue that

00:50:51.960 anybody who has that opinion probably doesn't have a great breadth of experience. You could be

00:50:58.160 brilliant and nice. So it's not an insult. I'm just saying that people with a breadth of experience

00:51:03.960 are far more likely to say, yeah, I'm going to go with, you know, Elon or Naval or Mark Cuban because

00:51:12.460 you know they've integrated all the, all the risk management into the decision. You can't be so

00:51:17.820 sure about a doctor. Let me, let me give you a little insight. When I was, when I was a banker,

00:51:24.360 I was a lending officer for a while and I was in the headquarters and I had to approve loans from

00:51:31.020 the lenders in the field. So I was, I was allegedly an expert and they would, they would send me their

00:51:36.360 loan applications from the branches. And I specialized in professionals, meaning in this case, doctors,

00:51:44.860 doctors and dentists and stuff. Would you say that doctors are good credit risks? Probably you would,

00:51:53.200 right? Because a doctor has almost a guaranteed good income and they're very smart. So if you've

00:51:59.820 got somebody who's very smart and they have a guaranteed high income, that's a pretty good

00:52:05.900 credit risk, right? To give them a loan to start a practice. It doesn't work out that way. It turns

00:52:11.940 out that doctors are bad at credit risks as a group because they tend to be real good at the

00:52:17.840 doctoring stuff. And they tend to be almost childlike at the economic stuff. It's, it's such

00:52:25.360 a pattern, a consistent pattern. And of course, it's not true of every doctor, right? You know,

00:52:30.820 I'm just saying as a, as a generality that, that my bank, where I worked, we actually had them

00:52:37.620 segmented in their own class for special evaluation by me. You know, I was one of the two people who

00:52:45.820 evaluated their loans and the, and the filter that we would put on it is, okay, if this were anybody

00:52:52.340 else, this would look like a good loan, but it's a doctor. So it's not, you would automatically say,

00:52:59.240 sorry, doctors are just not as good alone. Now, one of the things we would do for dentists in

00:53:05.700 particular is we would require them to have insurance against suicide. And no, I actually,

00:53:13.180 you can't get insurance against suicide. So we had, we would calculate the suicide risk

00:53:19.100 with dentists, but you wouldn't calculate that risk when you made a loan to somebody who was just

00:53:25.160 a business person in general, because business people in general have some risk of suicide,

00:53:30.460 but dentists have an unusually high one, or at least that used to be the case.

00:53:33.900 So anyway, the point is that in my experience, which actually is, is pretty extensive in which

00:53:42.420 I've seen doctors operate outside their domain. So I've seen doctors do doctor stuff and they're

00:53:48.620 great at it, you know, in general, but I've also seen them try to navigate economics and business

00:53:54.360 and it doesn't work out. And it's very, it's very consistent. So I'd rather have a, a brilliant

00:54:02.260 engineer take the input from a doctor and then integrate it into a larger decision. Then I would

00:54:09.500 like to see a doctor try to understand what the engineer is saying and have the doctor integrate

00:54:14.620 that into a larger decision. That's probably the wrong way to go.

00:54:18.160 So, um, how much, how much do we know about convalescent blood plasma treatment? Apparently

00:54:25.620 there are a number of trials. I think one is approved and a number of them are submitted

00:54:30.240 for approval, but how long does it take to do that? How long does it take to do a convalescent

00:54:38.060 blood plasma trial? Because are we really worried about, um, are we worried about, uh, side effects?

00:54:46.880 So here's, here's my question to any, uh, experts who might be on here. If there's any, any doctors

00:54:52.340 watching this, is there, would you do the same kind of, uh, trial with blood plasma? So this is the

00:55:01.280 taking the antibodies out of the blood of people who've already had it and recovered. Um, if you're

00:55:07.440 putting that into somebody else, do we already know from enough work in that kind of area? Do we

00:55:15.260 already know that there's no special risk? Do we know that? Because if we know that, so that's the

00:55:21.720 question for the experts, if we know there's no special health risk of trying it, then the only

00:55:26.660 thing we need to know is if it's working. And given that the entire virus only lasts, you know,

00:55:32.520 two weeks from the moment you start the trial, shouldn't it be only two weeks before you know

00:55:39.720 you have something? And, and it all depends on that question of, do you also have to monitor it

00:55:45.460 for a longer period to find out if there are any weird side effects or interactions that you know

00:55:50.620 about? So that's my question to the experts. Is there any medical risk? There's always some,

00:56:00.520 but is there a medical risk that's big enough that you would even care to test it? Is it,

00:56:05.580 is it beyond even worrying about testing it? I don't know. Yeah. So let's get an answer to that

00:56:11.880 because it does seem to me that the, um, blood plasma thing might be one of the good wild cards that

00:56:17.620 could be ramped up. Uh, but given, uh, given the uncertainty of whether, uh, there is even any such

00:56:25.020 thing as, um, you know, what would you call it? Immunity? Uh, I guess I'm not smart enough to

00:56:32.860 finish this sentence. So somebody needs to help me. If, if somebody gets the blood plasma

00:56:38.220 treatment, so they've got some antibodies, there's some suspicion that antibodies don't protect you

00:56:45.540 because people who have antibodies are in fact getting reinfected. We don't know at what rate or

00:56:51.340 those are special conditions yet, but it's certainly a big, big, big, big, big red flag

00:56:56.760 that, you know, lots of people, lots meaning over dozens at this point have been identified as

00:57:03.660 definitely getting the virus again. But one must ask yourself, did the people who got infected the

00:57:10.440 second time have a bad, um, problem or did they simply become carriers? We don't know that, do we?

00:57:19.360 So the people who got reinfected, did any of them end up in the ICU or did all of them say,

00:57:27.100 well, I barely, I didn't even know I had it. My antibodies were so good. I got reinfected and

00:57:31.760 sure. I got a little reinfection in there, but that'll be gone in a week because my antibodies are

00:57:36.420 all charged up. We don't know the answer to that. So therefore we cannot, uh, guess whether the,

00:57:42.780 that treatment will have a big impact or not. All right. Um, did you see that, uh, so Mike,

00:57:54.840 Mike Cernovich has been tweeting about Amazon kicked his documentary hoaxed off of, uh, Amazon's platform.

00:58:03.380 And since that happened, I believe he's still on iTunes. I think that's where you can get it.

00:58:10.540 Uh, but you could Google it and find it. It's called a hoaxed. I'm in it. And apparently, uh,

00:58:16.540 it has risen to become the second best selling documentary. Here's the good part. It's the

00:58:23.540 second part of the sentence. That's the fun part. Uh, Mike Cernovich's documentary hoaxed is now the

00:58:30.480 second best selling documentary of all time of all time. It's the second best selling documentary

00:58:44.040 of all time. And, and Amazon kicked it off its platform. Now that probably helped, right? Cause

00:58:51.120 it helped him get a little publicity. Uh, obviously Mike knows how to navigate publicity better than,

00:58:56.500 you know, most people in the world. And so he's capitalized on that to, to crank it up to the

00:59:02.140 number two best selling documentary of all time. Now, what does this tell you? What does this tell you?

00:59:11.220 Well, first thing it tells you is that the number of people who watch documentaries in general

00:59:15.560 is probably not a gigantic number, right? You know, the, the biggest documentary is going to be

00:59:21.100 small compared to a movie. It also tells me that he's in striking distance for number one.

00:59:30.700 And if I can ask you one favor, I don't usually ask you favors, right? So this is a favor. It's not a

00:59:38.840 recommendation. It's just a favor by the, by it. Cause let's see if we can push it into number one.

00:59:46.840 So my, my experience has been the, being the second best all time of something is terrific

00:59:54.180 for, you know, bragging rights and you can make more money and all that.

00:59:59.000 But the difference between being number two and being number one, it's a galaxy of difference.

01:00:06.720 Now, I learned that when I had a book, my first number one bestselling book,

01:00:10.240 sat at number two for weeks and didn't really make much of a ripple in the universe.

01:00:14.680 The day it went to number one, the heavens opened and my whole life changed. So going from two to one

01:00:21.700 in any category like this is not just one unit. It's the difference between the heavens open

01:00:29.700 and the heavens don't. Now, given that Amazon kicked this off their platform

01:00:36.900 and they did it without offering even a reason. And it's a good thing they didn't offer a reason

01:00:45.000 because there wasn't one. I mean, I've seen it. Lots of people have seen it. Obviously it's the number

01:00:50.500 two bestselling documentary of all time. So a lot of people have seen it. How many of the people who've

01:00:56.720 seen it would say there's something in there that should cause anybody, anybody of any type,

01:01:03.520 to think it should not be viewed by the public? There's nothing in there. There's nothing in it

01:01:09.440 that even comes close to crossing the line. There's no line that gets crossed. And I'm not even,

01:01:15.460 I'm not being generous. There's just nothing in there that should be considered controversial at all.

01:01:21.280 Somebody says how to buy, I think it's on iTunes, but if you Google it or just, you could just ask Mike

01:01:27.560 or just go to his, I'm sure if you went to his Twitter feed or his webpage, there must be links.

01:01:32.440 So here's what I'm asking for you. And it's a favor. This is just a favor. If you got a few extra bucks,

01:01:40.040 see if you can push it up to number one. Because I feel like just putting a thumb in Amazon's eye

01:01:47.880 over this, it's got to be worth a few bucks, right? You know, be part of something, push it up to number

01:01:54.420 one. And many of you have heard my review of it. It is exceptional. I mean, there's a reason it's the

01:02:03.600 number two documentary. It's exceptional. It really is special. And if you watch it, I'll give you this

01:02:09.880 watching advice. You have to watch it all the way through and you have to do it in one sitting

01:02:15.940 because it's, it's designed so cleverly as a full experience. You know, you don't want to watch 10

01:02:22.800 minutes and come back and do the rest, et cetera. You want to watch it as one entity with one sitting

01:02:28.160 and it'll just blow the top of your head off. So go do that. See if you can push it up to number

01:02:35.200 one. All right. That's about all I have to say, except I would like to change the word.

01:02:42.740 When we talk about minimizing infections, I would like to change that word to managing

01:02:48.680 because I don't know. Somebody's saying you can rent it on Google Play for $3.99.

01:02:57.120 So I don't know, but that's what somebody says in the comments.

01:02:59.720 I would like to say that we should manage the infection, not minimize it because minimize it,

01:03:07.000 minimize it tells you to keep the economy closed forever. Managing it tells you that there's a

01:03:13.660 balance and words matter because our brains get tuned by their choice of words. So just,

01:03:20.640 it seems like a small thing, but I don't know if it is. It might be a bigger thing than you think.

01:03:24.700 If every time we think about infections, we replace the word minimized with managed,

01:03:32.060 it gets our mindset closer to understanding that there's a balance and that the number of people

01:03:37.180 who die can be on either side of that seesaw. All right. There's a new model from the University

01:03:45.020 of Washington saying 68,000 deaths, but I'm a little confused because at one point we had 60,000.

01:03:52.620 Was that a different model? And there's some thought that it would come down even less. We'll see.

01:04:02.680 All right. I think that's all I got for today.

01:04:08.400 Thank you. Thank you to those of you who are doing that.

01:04:12.680 I can't think of anything that would make me happier, you know, in a small way than to see Amazon

01:04:21.100 kick that off the platform and it become the number one best-selling documentary of all time.

01:04:28.420 I mean, anything short of that is just not going to be pleasing to the simulation.

01:04:33.020 The simulation requires this to be number one. You know it does. You know it does. You know the

01:04:42.900 simulation requires that movie, Hoaxed, to be number one. It's just because it's too perfect.

01:04:49.880 All right. Number two just suggests where it's heading. But number one,

01:04:54.880 the simulation requires it. All right. It's called Hoaxed. Go take a look. Somebody says Hoaxed

01:05:03.640 just became number one on iTunes. I think that's number one for current sales, which it should be.

01:05:09.780 But if it stays number one on current sales, it won't be long before it's number one of all time.

01:05:17.860 Let's see if we can make that happen. All right. I'll talk to you tonight. You know when.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - April 17, 2020

Episode 918 Scott Adams： I Evaluate the Economic Reopening Strategies so You Don't Have to

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