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March 3, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
58:00
Episode 838 Scott Adams: Biden's Brain, How to Stop Coronavirus, Bernie's Math

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Biden in a home and someone else running the country Biden Beto after your guns Regulations, emergency situations and coronavirus Paul Singer and Twitter Helping Bernie explain his health plan economics --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Hey everybody, come on in.
It's time for a coffee with Scott Adams, and you came to the right place.
Especially if you have your coffee.
DJ Dr. Funk Juice, good to see you.
Good to see the rest of you.
Is it my imagination?
Or are all of you more attractive than yesterday?
I think it's true. Smarter, wiser, more attractive.
Excuse me. Not coronavirus, I swear.
Well, if you'd like to enjoy this simultaneous sip, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask or a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. I can feel it protecting me from the coronavirus.
I believe it did.
Alright, let's talk about the news.
Some of it's fun, some of it's not.
Chris Matthews of MSNBC went on air yesterday, apologized for his past comments about the appearance of women, and then he quit.
And they left, I guess.
And so there's a...
I guess I call it a rumor, but there are people on the internet, shall we say, who believe that there are other NDAs out there, multiple NDAs, and stuff was going to come out.
Now, I don't know if that's true, but I always have this question when one of these situations comes up, and it goes like this.
How many NDAs would it take for you to stop your bad behavior?
So imagine you're the host of some national TV show.
Not like this hasn't happened before.
Or you're a big movie producer.
And you get called up by your management and they say, hey, we've got this complaint.
And you work it out and there's an NDA. The company pays some money.
You settle. How in the world do you do that again?
How in the world do you do it three times?
How in the world do you do it four times?
How in the world do you do it five times?
Which is the sort of thing that's being alleged.
So, there's something about the personality type that just doesn't stop pushing, apparently.
So, I don't know what that's about, but I feel as though it would only take me one warning before I said, oh, I get it now.
I'm doing stuff that's bad.
You know, the first time, I honestly think that the first time, you know, a guy like Chris Matthews or, you know, could have been Matt Lauer, I always feel like the first time this sort of thing comes up, that they're actually surprised.
And they say something along the lines of, oh, I was just kidding around.
I didn't realize you were taking it that way.
I'm so sorry. You know, I had no idea.
It was having that effect.
That's the first time.
But after that, how many warnings does it take?
All right, enough of that. The funniest line from your funniest president is this one, and I've been laughing about it for two days.
He's used it a few times.
He says, essentially, Trump does, he says they'll put Biden in a home and someone else will be running the country.
Now, there are a million ways to express this thought that Biden's losing a step.
You've heard that one before, right?
People say, well, he's losing a step.
You know, he's aging.
Maybe he's got some dementia going on.
There are a million ways to say the same thing.
And out of those million ways, Trump picked the best one.
Out of a million. He reached in and said, I think I'll say that he's going to be put in a home and somebody else will be running the country.
Now, remember what I told you about Trump does visual persuasion?
As soon as you say he's going to be put in a home, don't you see it?
You see it, right?
You can see the people with suits and clipboards and stuff and their cell phones wheeling them into the old folks' home.
And then you can see it's like a movie.
You can almost see the people behind the We're running the show, you know, through his vice president, who may or may not be Kamala Harris.
So I could not be more impressed with just the way he picks out of a million ways you could say something.
He picks the best one. It's visual.
It's unforgettable. It's a movie in one sentence.
Because you can almost see the whole movie.
About the people behind the curtain.
Anyway, it's just beautiful.
President Trump also suggested...
God, he's having fun.
It must be a great time to be Trump right now.
Because he sort of beat back all of the big hoaxes.
It looks like he's a favorite to win re-election.
And all he's doing is dropping bombs on his critics.
And it could not be more amusing.
So yesterday he said, he suggested that Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, that they may have dropped out to endorse Biden because they were promised jobs in his administration.
And then Trump says, that's called a quid pro quo, right?
Quid pro quo.
And I have to admit...
I don't know if that's illegal.
Do you? Because my first instinct is, well, of course it's legal to promise somebody a job.
And in the world of politics, everything's, you know, you do this, I'll do that.
But is it legal in the context of politics to get somebody to drop out of a race and endorse you with the promise of an administration job?
I'm looking at your comments because I actually don't know.
Somebody says it's not illegal.
Somebody says it's legal, legal.
Yeah, I believe it's legal, but it's hilarious.
Right? Because even though it's legal, we, the public, look at it and we say, well, okay, it's legal, but should it be?
You know, am I happy that that's legal?
Because sometimes things are legal just because you can't prove them or it would cause some other problem.
Things are not always legal because they're right and good and moral.
Sometimes it's just hard to make things illegal.
I think this is one of those cases where you wouldn't want to know this is happening.
If I had to guess, I'm sure it's completely legal.
But I love the fact that Trump just dropped that little troll bomb in there to make you think about it.
I tweeted yesterday a little cryptic tweet that I'm not sure if everybody understood the full meaning, so let me unpack it.
I tweeted that I pray to the simulation, you know, just joking, that we see a Biden-Harris ticket, Kamala Harris as the vice president, in which Joe Biden attracts the black vote and Kamala Harris attracts the white vote.
Think about it. What's really interesting about Joe Biden, he is kind of the Bill Clinton thing about him, which is that he's an old white guy who's very popular with black voters.
So Biden actually doesn't need anybody to help him with the black vote, right?
There's a fun point coming up.
It's not as obvious as you think.
So I think Joe Biden doesn't really need to pick a vice president to help him with the black vote.
So why do I think that he would pick Kamala Harris?
To help him with the white vote.
And here's the thinking.
The thinking is that black voters are more, let's say, black voters are more flexible and independent than the white voters in the Democratic side.
So this is my starting assumption.
Could be wrong.
Could be wrong.
But I'm just telling you why I'm thinking of it this way.
It seems to me that we're at a point where black voters are going to vote for whoever they think.
They think the Democrats will do best, they'll vote for them.
I think a lot of them are going to vote for Trump because they think he now is doing a little better job.
But the white Democratic voters They're going to need somebody on the ticket who's not an old white guy.
Because I think it's the white Democratic voters who care the most about having a diverse ticket.
Think about it. I'll bet they care the most.
And it would actually make it safe for your generic white Democrat to vote for a ticket that at least had a woman and a person of color on the ticket.
It just makes it safe.
So here's the weird simulation reversal that Biden, the white guy, would be really good at forgetting the black vote.
Kamala Harris, female person of color, would be really good at getting the white male Democrat vote.
Am I wrong about that?
And people have said that Kamala will not help with the black vote.
I don't think it matters because Biden's probably got that.
So here's the good news.
What a wonderful time to be alive that everything you just thought about people in the world just turned inside out, which is black voters, far more flexible and open-minded than maybe most of you assume, are going to look at Joe Biden and say, I don't care what color he is.
Can he do the job?
And then they vote for him. Apparently, that's what they're thinking, because why would they vote for him if they didn't think he could do the job?
And at the same time, you've got white voters who are probably more interested in having a diverse ticket than even the black voters, who apparently seem to be comfortable with Joe Biden.
So, honestly, could that be better?
Could it, really? I mean, seriously.
Could you live in a better world Where the black voters are supporting the white guy and the white voters are supporting the person of color.
It's kind of a perfect situation.
Honestly, it is. I don't want them to win, but it would be great if they could run.
All right. How's my prediction looking that Kamala would be chosen as the candidate to actually run against Trump?
Well, of course she suspended her campaign and she won't be the top of the ticket.
But what if Joe Biden is the top of the ticket and picks Kamala?
Don't you think at least half of the world, the conservative half, that half of the world is going to say, more figuratively than technically, they're going to say that she is the candidate.
Because people are going to say that Joe is so weak And mentally unstable that you're really voting for the vice president.
You know the Republicans are going to say it.
So, how is my prediction that Kamala, let's say she becomes the vice president pick for Biden, it's going to look a lot like she's the top of the ticket.
And it will be the greatest prediction I've ever made.
You're welcome. Of course, he could pick Stacey Abrams and the whole thing goes to hell.
That could happen too.
Michael Malice, if you don't follow Michael Malice on Twitter, you really should, because he's one of the funniest people there.
And he had a tweet yesterday, I think.
He said, it's a pretty glaring red pill to realize that someone sat down, someone with a capital S, someone sat down with both Klobuchar and Buttigieg and told them to fall in line.
And I'm thinking, well, who is someone?
Well, we did hear that Obama called and kind of talked to Buttigieg right after Buttigieg dropped out.
I think after. So there's speculation, you know, Obama is the hand behind the curtain and he's engineered this current situation.
Maybe. Could be.
But here's my question.
And I think it's everybody's question.
What's in it for Elizabeth Warren?
Because if Elizabeth Warren dropped down today and threw all of her support, well not today, it's Super Tuesday, but if she dropped her race and threw her support behind Bernie, wouldn't he get over the finish line?
Or he'd be close.
And Why would she do that?
So here's the mystery part.
Bernie, by far, has the closest policies to Warren.
And in fact, Warren borrowed Bernie's health care plan.
I mean, it's that close. So if you knew you couldn't win, but you really cared about your policies, if you're Elizabeth Warren, how could you morally, logically justify staying in the race and almost guaranteeing that the policies you care so much about will not be implemented?
Because Bernie will lose if she stays in the race.
So what's in it for her?
Well, of course, the speculators will say, oh, she's getting bribed somehow.
It could be that she's holding out for a sweet job, Secretary of State.
Could be. What about Supreme Court?
I think Supreme Court is ruled out as somebody...
She responded to me on Twitter yesterday, and I think that was a good point, that she's too old to get as many years out of a Supreme Court justice as you'd like.
Ideally, you want somebody who's seasoned but young enough to be there for 50 years.
So she's sort of aged out of that window.
So I don't think it's the Supreme Court.
But there must be something.
There must be something she wants.
We'll find out. Joe Biden, in his Continuing quest to lose the election, promised Beto O'Rourke that O'Rourke could be kind of his guy to control guns.
And of course, Beto is famous for wanting to take away your assault rifles.
I shouldn't call him that.
But he wants to take away your guns.
And I'm thinking to myself, that doesn't even feel like trying.
If you're Joe Biden, isn't the whole point you're trying to win this thing?
I thought that's the whole point of being the moderate, is that a moderate can attract enough people to win.
But as soon as he throws in this Beto O'Rourke thing, that doesn't even look like trying to win.
That looks like trying to lose.
No, does he need Texas?
What's up with this? It doesn't make any sense that he would do that.
President Trump's getting some Heat for continually saying that a coronavirus vaccine might be available, quote, in a few months.
But then the expert goes up six seconds later and says, no, we won't have a vaccine that can go through the tests and the trials for a year to 18 months.
And then the president gets up and says, yep, we'll have a vaccine available in a few months.
And then the experts say, well, more like a year to 18 months.
Now, is the president wrong?
Is the president lying?
What's happening? So how can you explain that the president...
It's been more than once, right?
He's obviously heard the experts, because it happened right in front of him the other day.
So he knows what the experts are saying.
There's no mystery there.
And yet, he says, we'll have it in months.
How do you explain it?
Well, here's my hypothesis.
It goes like this.
Because the coronavirus is an emergency global situation-ish, we're not calling it a pandemic yet, I guess, but it's certainly a global emergency.
Under a global emergency, the rules and the risk management are different.
So we're all so conditioned that you can't have a drug unleashed on the public without it going through all of the rigorous testing.
But that's in a non-emergency situation.
In an emergency situation, and you already see it happening, you see regulations immediately being dispensed with because it's an emergency.
We saw that with, apparently there were some regulations around What type of profession could test somebody for coronavirus?
And that was limiting the number of people who could go out and test.
Normally that would be okay.
You'd want your most qualified people to be doing the tests.
But it's an emergency.
So the first thing the administration did is say, oh, that rule is in the way.
Let's just get rid of it.
So they just got rid of the rule.
And now other people can do testing, and that'll be good.
So we know that in an emergency, rules are dispensed with.
Now, could you imagine that we would ever dispense with testing a vaccine?
I mean, that seems crazy, right?
I mean, just on the surface, we're not going to inject 300 million citizens or whatever with a vaccine that didn't go through testing, are we?
Maybe. Maybe.
And so here's some questions slash comments on that.
Number one, suppose another country, let's call it Israel, developed and fast-tracked the approval of a drug so it was legal in Israel.
But we knew that it would never be legal in the United States unless it went through our testing system, and that could be 18 months.
Can you imagine Can you imagine a situation in which the president, the leadership of the country says, okay, I know this is a risk.
Nobody's going to kid you.
This is a risk.
Israel believes that they have tested it.
This is just hypothetical, right?
Israel believes they've tested it sufficiently.
We would test it way more than that.
But we don't have time, and it's an emergency.
So we're going to make this available.
You don't have to take it.
It's optional. Nobody's going to force you.
But here's the deal.
It's not tested up to American standards.
It has been tested to X other country standard that's a modern country.
We trust them. They have real scientists.
Can the President say, it's an emergency.
We're just going to allow people to take this?
I think he can.
I think he can.
So could it be simultaneously true, because apparently Israel is claiming that they will have some kind of a vaccine in 90 days.
So is the president correct when saying that in a few months we'll have a vaccine?
Sort of yes.
Sort of yes.
I think what we'll have is a vaccine option.
Meaning that we can take on more risk than we've perhaps ever taken on.
But we'll have the option.
Now, you would never have that option if it were not an emergency, but it's an emergency.
And then here's an open question.
So my question to you is this.
All of our normal flu vaccines go through a testing process.
Can somebody tell me how many of those vaccines, just the normal vaccines for regular flu for years that we test, how many of those vaccines We're found in human tests to cause harm to humans.
Can anybody in the comments tell me that off the top of their head?
What percentage of all the vaccines we've tested for flu virus?
And again, I'm going to limit it to flu virus.
That's the important part. Just flu virus.
Those tests, how often do we do a test and we say, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop the test.
People are getting cancer, that sort of thing.
Somebody says 45%, but I think you're wrong.
I think, and again, fact check me please, I think that when a vaccine doesn't work, it's because it's just not stopping the virus.
Somebody says all of them, 100%.
My guess is that every flu vaccine we test comes back safe enough.
But some of them...
But some of them probably are not effective.
In fact, the best flu vaccines are sort of like 50% effective sometimes.
So could it be, and I'm just going to put the question out there, could it be that the nature of the way scientists do flu vaccines is that it's always a small tweak from the last one, and the thing they're tweaking is not the thing that's dangerous?
Suppose scientists came to you and said, look, We haven't tested this one, but we've tested 25 of these that are just like it, and out of 25, not one of them hurt anybody.
Oh, okay, well, we did have this one case where people were hurt, but we knew it was because of this one element, and we took that out 10 years ago.
Suppose that's the story you hear.
We didn't test it, but it's so close to the things we have tested, we think it's worth the risk.
I think that's what's happening.
I think the president is simply keeping the options open.
And I heard people say that his usual hyperbole is misplaced because in a medical situation you really, really need to play it straight.
I don't know.
Because the president is dealing with the psychology of the country, and that's very important.
And when the president says we might have a vaccine in a few months, I feel better.
than when the expert says now it's 18 months.
But does the way I feel about it change whether or not it will be available in a few months?
It doesn't. My feelings are disconnected from the stuff that matters.
So if the President is making me feel more comfortable by giving me a little over-optimistic view of the vaccine, but there's nothing I can do about it either way, I mean, you know, what can I do?
I kind of prefer it.
I think I'd prefer a little happy talk as long as they're doing the right stuff.
I don't want a happy talk that leads me to do the wrong stuff, but if it leads me to do the right stuff, eh.
What the hell is up with a one-term president for the Democrats?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Democrats are intentionally running, if you're looking at Bernie or Biden or even Bloomberg, Are they not one-term presidents by definition, just because of age?
I'm not being ageist, right?
Don't you think that none of them believe they're two-term presidents?
Now, here's the thing.
That's a big deal.
Because if you have a one-term president that everyone knows is a one-term president, that's the real trick.
Everybody knows it. How much work is that president going to get done in the fourth year of his one-term presidency?
And the answer is nothing, because that's the lame duck year.
You could argue that the whole four years is lame duck, but certainly the last year, Congress is going to say, we'll wait for the election.
Maybe we get a different president, get another result.
So you lose that one year, and that's 25% of the administration.
But what about the first year?
You saw what happened with Trump, right?
And I don't know, maybe it was the same with Clinton and Obama and others.
It takes about a year to get up to speed.
Get new people in there, they're getting up to speed.
So the first year is just getting up to speed.
The fourth year is lame duck.
You're only getting half a president.
There's two years in the middle, and I'm not even sure that that's not a little bit lame ducky, if you know what I mean.
So Democrats are proposing a potential...
One-term president, no matter who it is, the top three vote-getters right now.
How do we accept that?
How do we ignore that?
To me, the math of that is unavoidable.
Whether it's a Democrat or a Republican, if you can get an eight-year president, then the percentage of setup and downtime is small.
I want the least amount of time that I have a president who's ineffective on the job.
And a one-term president is just a bad, bad deal.
All right. What else we got going on here?
I asked this question on Twitter, and of course it seems trollish that I asked, but it's actually a real question.
Which of the Remaining top candidates for president could survive a coronavirus infection.
In other words, if Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and President Trump all got the coronavirus on the same day, what would you expect of the outcomes?
Well, of course, my non-scientific poll, as I imagine, Bernie got the most votes for most likely to not survive coronavirus.
And that's not funny.
So I guess so.
I was laughing at something else.
I thought of a joke. That's why I laughed.
It's not funny at all.
But the point is, anybody who says that's not a legitimate variable to consider, I don't think they're serious.
I don't think they're serious.
At their ages, and given that this coronavirus does look like it's going to get at least everybody who's in public, and they're out there shaking hands and meeting lots of supporters and stuff like that, I think they're all going to get it.
I think all the Democrats are going to get coronavirus.
I do think that President Trump has a good chance of avoiding it because the president can be protected.
Don't you know that there's somebody who goes in and, you know, bleaches off the Oval Office about every ten minutes?
Don't you know that the President has probably stopped shaking hands?
I don't know. Or maybe he's got some Purell in there every time he does.
But the point is that the President at least has the option of, you know, doing a far better job of staying away from the infected public.
And he'd have a lot of help doing that.
He'd be surrounded by a cocoon of people trying to keep him away.
But not the candidates.
The ones who are running for office, they kind of have to get out there.
And I think they will.
I don't think they'll stay home because of this.
So I think they're all going to have the coronavirus.
So if you tell me that a 78-year-old candidate for president who has the coronavirus, you tell me that doesn't matter?
I'm sorry, that matters a lot.
I wonder how long the traditional mainstream media will not talk about that.
Because I think it's just so...
It's sort of a grotesque topic to talk about somebody's potential future health problems.
We got into this with Hillary.
So I don't know if respectable people will ever even take this on as a topic, but it would be a disservice to voters because it's a big variable.
When I say it's a big variable, I would say if you're looking at all the things that would make you decide to vote for one candidate or another, Coronavirus risk, that's a solid 5%.
Wouldn't you say?
Is that too high?
Too low? I think it's a 5% factor of who you should vote for president this time.
Here's a counterintuitive thought about coronavirus.
This comes from Peter Stimes, who sent me this thought on LinkedIn.
So, Peter, I'll credit you on this.
And it goes like this.
So we're doing a whole bunch of stuff to protect us from the coronavirus.
Almost all this stuff we're doing to protect ourselves also has this weird, unintentional impact, which is that it makes us safer from other things.
So you probably all saw the satellite photos of how China's pollution just dropped to practically nothing because everything shut down for a while.
Well, that's one factor.
If pollution is less, fewer people will die from pollution.
So there are some people who may have actually had a better day that day.
But that's not the big factor, not the pollution.
The big factor is just staying home.
Suppose, let's just pick a number.
Suppose 30% of office workers find a way to work from home.
That's probably high, but let's just go with that number.
Let's say 30%.
So they stop commuting and they just work from home.
How much traffic does that reduce?
A lot! Tens and millions and millions and millions of miles of traffic.
How many of that people who stayed home would have died in a traffic accident?
Probably quite a few.
And you also have people who are washing their hands more.
Probably people will exercise more or eat better.
There's a whole bunch of stuff that people are going to be doing that could have the weird unintended effect of protecting them from unrelated risks.
So you might actually have this weird situation where the coronavirus kills X number of people with the coronavirus, But simultaneously protects X number of people who didn't know that they had any risk, but they would have been in a car accident that day.
It's just food for thought that we're really bad at counting up this stuff.
So, yesterday I asked this provocative question, and I thought I'd have an answer by now, and I'll tell you what I know.
It's really interesting.
And I asked this question, why does any virus ever stop...
Before it infects basically everybody.
In other words, why would the normal annual virus, just an ordinary one, why does it stop in the summer?
And the reason I asked is because if I knew the answer to that, wouldn't that tell me how to prevent the coronavirus?
Assuming that a virus is a virus for the most part.
And I thought that was some well-known thing.
And let me tell you all of the confident answers I got that are different.
So when I tell you these are confident answers and they're different, what I'm telling you is that apparently we don't know.
Or let me say this more clearly, I don't know.
So I don't believe, and Dr.
Drew kind of backed me up on this, we talked offline, that there are studies that suggest different factors are the reason that a flu dies off.
But we don't know.
Can you believe that?
Now, I know some of you are going crazy right now because you're saying to yourself, Scott, we do know.
We do know.
And you see us coming out in the answers.
People say, Scott, we know. It's the humidity.
Humidity. Because we know that there's something about the droplets in the air that suppresses the transmission of the virus.
So we do know. Nope.
No, we don't. All of you who said humidity is the answer, you're wrong.
Well, let me not say you're wrong.
Let me just say science does not agree with you.
In other words, science has not confirmed that that's the reason a virus stops.
Now wait, you're saying, yes it has.
Oh yes it has.
We've seen the studies. The humidity absolutely suppresses The transmission of viruses.
You're right. Somebody says, did anyone check the sun?
Clever bastard. Yes, I'm going to talk about the sun.
But I understand that joke.
So here's what we do know.
Apparently, humidity does suppress the virus, but it doesn't eliminate it.
It doesn't eliminate it.
And here's the thing.
Half of the planet...
has different humidity.
So if one place goes from a good place for a virus to a bad place for a virus because the humidity changed seasonally, someplace else on the Earth, it just went the opposite, from a bad place for a virus to a really good place for a virus.
And we're traveling all the time.
There should be no effect whatsoever of your town suddenly having the right kind of humidity to suppress the virus because the people with the virus have already traveled to the other town where it's a perfect place for a virus.
So the humidity question does answer the question of maybe why there's less of it.
It does not answer the question why it just stops.
Did that make sense?
That the humidity is absolutely a factor, science agrees.
But it's not anywhere near enough of a factor that it would explain why the virus just stops.
Alright, here's some other suggestions people have given me that are equally confident, but it doesn't mean they're right.
One is that the...
I heard some people say the sun, you know, the rays of the sun kill the virus.
To which I say, how much of the virus is spread outdoors?
I'm no scientist, but I have to think that the virus is not spreading in the woods.
If you take a walk in the park, are you going to catch the virus?
I don't think so. I think it's using the bathroom and interacting with your coworkers and being indoors.
So even if the sun's rays, we'll talk about vitamin D in a minute, but even if the sun's rays are killing virus, In my mind, that shouldn't make any difference at all because it's mostly transmitted indoors.
Other people said that vitamin D is a big factor in protecting yourself.
So if it's a sunnier season, we're getting more vitamin D. We're in the sun.
And it's not that the virus is different.
It's just that we're more immune to it because we have all that vitamin D. Do you think that makes sense?
I don't. Because here's what's missing.
Wouldn't the CDC be telling us to get out in the sun?
I mean, really?
If that worked, wouldn't the CDC know it?
Wouldn't the CDC be telling you to do more than wash your hands?
Wouldn't they be telling you to get a humidifier?
Wouldn't they be telling you to get more sun, take vitamin D? Wouldn't they be telling you that?
So I don't believe that the vitamin D explanation gets it right.
Here's another theory, that the virus mutates.
So whatever got it into humans in the first place was some kind of a mutation that went through animals, presumably.
And the thought is every time somebody passes it to someone else, it gets a little bit mutated until eventually it mutates to the point where it's not dangerous.
Is that real? I have no idea.
Again, let me say, if anybody's tuning in late, everything I mention as a reason that any kind of virus eventually stops infecting people, none of them seem solid.
There's something wrong with all of these explanations.
And I'm going to go with Dr.
Drew's Overall summary, which is, it's a little unclear.
We just don't know why they stop.
We know what can influence them, but we don't know why it stops.
That's a whole different question. But here's the most provocative thing I saw, and I want to say as clearly as possible.
What I'm going to say next is unlikely to be true.
Please hear that, because I'm going to give you a little conspiracy theory-ish thing that is interesting.
I think it's worth putting out there.
But don't assume that this is true.
It's in the category of things that if you had to bet on it, you'd bet against it.
But it's interesting.
It goes like this.
Apparently, and again, you'd have to fact check me on this.
Maybe this is true?
I don't know. That the antivirals are not having much effect on this coronavirus.
So I'm just going to give you some data points.
So why would it be a virus The antivirals are not working.
Well, maybe they're just not targeted for that virus.
That makes sense. But here's the part that's confusing.
Apparently there has been some success with antibiotics.
Why would an antibiotic help you with a virus?
It wouldn't. But it is.
See where I'm going here?
Alright, so there's some suggestion that it's not a virus.
And the specific, let's say, hypothesis is that it's a form of tuberculosis.
And here's the interesting part.
And so was the Spanish flu.
So, you know, we keep comparing this to the Spanish flu because it seems to have some qualities like that.
But apparently there is some scientific question about whether the Spanish flu was a flu.
Because apparently there's a form of tuberculosis that can mimic the flu and then give you the lung infections.
And here's the other interesting part.
Apparently, and again, if you had to bet, you should bet that nothing I'm saying right now is true.
I'm just telling you it's interesting and I'm reading it on the internet.
It's really interesting.
There's a weird aspect of this weird tuberculosis, which is that kids don't tend to get it.
Do kids tend to get the regular flu?
They do. But kids do not seem to get coronavirus.
Do you know what else kids did not get?
Spanish flu. Again, I don't know if that's true.
It's just something I read today. So And then apparently the tuberculosis can somehow be paired with a virus, such that every time you look for the virus, you would find it. Because it came paired with the tuberculosis.
But it's not the virus that's actually the problem.
The problem is the underlying tuberculosis, which in this hypothesis would not be identified.
Here's another thing.
Didn't you always think that if you got the flu, you had an immunity, and then you couldn't get it again?
Right? Isn't that the whole point of vaccination?
The vaccination is sort of like the flu, and so it's enough to give you antibodies, and then you can't get the flu again?
Now, nothing's 100%, but we're hearing stuff about this coronavirus.
Maybe you could get reinfected.
Like maybe that's a thing.
Not confirmed yet, but there seem to be some reports that you can get reinfected.
Do you know what other flu had that quality?
Because it's different than the flus we see every year.
There was one other flu that had that quality that you could get reinfected.
Spanish flu. So, Spanish flu and this coronavirus have these qualities.
Well, this was before the antivirals, so this particular one allegedly responds to antibiotics, which would make it more of a bacteria or some other tuberculosis-y thing.
Kids don't get it.
Doesn't make sense for a regular flu.
You can get reinfected fairly easily.
Maybe not true, but there's some suggestion to that.
That would say not a flu.
So, I would say that the thing I'm looking for to find out if this is completely BS, I think it is.
I think it's completely BS. The thing I'm looking for is to see if any of the vaccines work.
Because if somebody comes up with a vaccine and it works, well then it's a flu.
It's a virus. Because you don't make a virus vaccine that works on a bacteria.
So we'll know. But it's an interesting thought.
So, China has a coronavirus app.
I don't know how it works, but apparently it'll tell you what you can and cannot do.
It'll tell you whether to quarantine yourself, etc.
And I was wondering how long it would take for an app to pop up.
Because if an app can, let's say, identify people...
You've heard of the Clearview app, right?
You can take a picture of somebody's face, and it will tell you who they are.
Well, if it can tell you who they are, it can also tell you where they've been, in theory.
Maybe not today. But in theory, there will be enough information about everybody in China, certainly, that they'll know where they've been.
They might even know if they've been near somebody who had it.
So, it's a great idea, I think, an app to Keep you away from people who have the virus?
Might be a great idea.
Apple is paying half a billion dollars to settle a lawsuit for intentionally slowing down their old iPhones so you would buy a new one.
They did software updates that would make your iPhone so slow that you'd say, I can't live with this, I've got to buy an upgrade.
Now, I remember when that happened and my iPhone slowed down and I thought, damn it.
I think this is intentional.
And I was sort of beating myself up for it.
Because I would beat myself up and say, no, it's not intentional.
Technology just slows down.
It's got too much software in there now.
But it was intentional.
The company that you respect the most, well, maybe you don't.
But if you think about it, Apple is probably one of the most respected companies in the whole country.
And they intentionally slowed down their product to make you think it was dying so you'd buy a new one.
That's like one of the worst things.
That's just horrible.
But apparently they got caught doing that.
It's amazing. You really can't trust anybody.
Are you following the story about Elliott Management looking to oust Jack Dorsey from Twitter?
And install, I guess, some of their own board members and maybe a friendlier CEO or a CEO that they prefer.
Now, here's what's interesting about that.
So Elliott Management is run by this billionaire named Paul Singer.
You should Google him to find out how big a story this is.
Now, in my opinion, I've called Twitter the brain of the planet.
You know, Facebook is sort of like the heart.
You know, it's where you see your family and, you know, things you feel emotionally about, that you care about.
I would say that Instagram is sort of like your eyes and maybe your sex drive.
It's sort of about the visual.
But Twitter is your brain.
And, you know, collectively we've become this sort of global brain, forming sort of a godlike entity, which, in my opinion, runs the government.
So I've said this before, that we used to be a republic where we elect people and they go off and make laws for us.
But today the system is that social media says what they can and cannot do, and then they respond to it.
Because if everyone on Twitter said, no, no, no, don't do this policy, it probably wouldn't happen.
I think social media is now the dog that's wagging the tail.
So this is why this is important.
I would say that Jack Dorsey gets a lot of heat for people who say he leans left and therefore there's some bias in the company.
I think he's admitted that the employees lean left and that bias is sort of part of life.
So I don't think there's any secret or dispute that Twitter has a lot of left-leaning employees and probably has some impact on how they do business.
But Paul Singer...
Famous for being sort of an anti-Trumper Republican.
His job, if you think of it that way, is interfering with politics.
It's actually what he does.
So the thing that Paul Singer is most famous for is directly and monetarily interacting with politicians and the political process to get a result that he wants.
How in the world Do you let that guy control the board of Twitter?
I mean, can you think of a worst idea for the Republic?
I can't. I can't.
Because Twitter is sort of the...
In a way, I think Twitter protects the Republic.
Because it's the freest speech in the purest, most efficient sense.
And I think Twitter drives politics.
So if somebody whose intention is to influence politics, somebody says in the comments, somebody says, is it true he hired Fusion GPS? I believe it's been demonstrated that he paid for it.
So the guy who paid for the most famous fake news that's ever been produced wants to have more control over Twitter than The primary entity that gives us information and opinion, etc.
Can you think of a worse idea for the Republic?
It's hard to imagine what would be a worse combination.
But anyway, we'll watch that story.
Who knows if he'll have any success?
Let me give you an idea about what Bernie's doing wrong with selling his plan.
I watched him fall into this trap that...
Poor Bernie.
I've said this before in my book, Loser Think, is about this.
Bernie is spectacular at doing his rallies and getting people to be excited and all that.
So there's a part of Bernie that is just spectacular.
He's really talented, and you can't take that away from him.
But one thing he doesn't know is economics.
And he's terrible at explaining it, which is a problem, because he's primarily proposing economic changes.
And if he can't explain them, I don't know how he can beat Trump.
And here's the problem. Here's a trap that Bernie keeps falling into and can't climb out of.
His critics keep taking the cost of his proposals and multiplying them by 10.
And he lets them do it.
And I mean that literally.
So when I was just watching Tucker Carlson talking about Bernie's plans and using Bernie's own numbers from Bernie's own website, if you were to add up all of his proposals, And then you do it for 10 years.
That's the multiplied by 10 part.
It comes to $100 trillion.
Now, do you want to sign up for something that costs $100 trillion?
And then Tucker does this.
He compares it to the GDP. So the GDP, like one year of the United States GDP, is somewhere in the $20 trillion range.
So our entire GDP is $20 trillion.
But Bernie wants to spend $100 trillion.
Did you see what I just did there?
I compared one year of GDP, $20 trillion, to 10 years of Bernie's plans and made it $100 trillion.
What I should have compared is $10 trillion per year to our current GDP, which is $20 trillion.
Now you say to yourself, well that's still way too much.
We can't take our budget from It's still too much, right?
The GDP and the budget are different things.
But it just seems like it's too much.
Here's what Bernie should be doing.
What he should do is they say, are you going to raise my taxes to pay for health care?
He should say, if you're in the working class, I'm going to give you five times more savings on health care costs than you will pay.
That should be his answer. You're going to save money because I'll save you five times more on health care than you will pay extra in taxes.
Done. That should be the whole argument right there.
And he throws in limits and dollar amounts and if you're over $29,000 and he just totally botches it.
People's eyes glaze over.
Just say this. For every dollar you spend in extra taxes, you'll save five on health care.
That's pretty compelling, isn't it?
If you can afford it.
I don't know if the plan works. So the first thing Bernie should do is he should refuse to deal with 10-year estimates.
He should say, let's do apples to apples, one year in one year.
Then the second thing he should do is express it in a percentage if he can.
Now, to do that, there's one other thing he has to fix that he never gets right.
Here's how it goes. Right now, employers pay gigantic amounts of money to insure their employees.
If Bernie gets his way, those employers suddenly save $100 million a year because they don't have to pay...
Let's just say it's a big company.
So they save $100 million a year on health care because the government's going to pay it all now.
So where's that $100 million go?
The $100 million they were spending for health care, what happens?
Do they bank it?
Does that company just say, yes...
Profits just went up $100 billion a year because we don't have to pay for healthcare?
Well, they could. It would be completely legal to do that.
But what would happen?
What would actually happen?
Let me tell you. The employees of that company would say, excuse me, didn't you just take away a $100 million benefit from the employees?
And the company would say, well, it's not us, that's Bernie.
Talk to Bernie. And the employees would say, excuse me, excuse me.
The company down the street took all of those savings and put it into raises for their employees because it had been a benefit.
So they just changed it to a different kind of benefit and it was still the employee benefit.
So why don't you do that?
Well, we're not that other company.
That other company is doing that.
We're not going to do that. So you leave.
As long as there's high...
High employment, like now, people can change jobs.
So companies would not be able to bank it and keep it all.
They'd kind of be forced to share it with the employees.
And so what that means is, when they say Bernie's plan costs $30 trillion extra, which again I think is a 10-year number, it's probably $3 trillion extra a year, it's really not that.
Because those employees probably would get that back from their employer.
And if they were paying it themselves, they would get it back directly.
So Bernie is doing a terrible job of explaining his plan, but it doesn't look like he's going to be the nominee anyway.
All right. I do not make financial recommendations, but I will tell you, because I think it's useful...
I'm thinking about this as I'm talking.
I think it's useful for people to quell, let's say, concerns when possible.
So if you're concerned about the stock market melting down, I will tell you I don't recommend that you do anything.
I don't recommend that you get in or get out or stay.
No recommendations from me.
But I'll tell you, I put all of my cash into the market Monday morning.
So most of my money was already invested, but all the cash that I had that was available, I just threw it in the market and I put it in Amazon.
And the reason I put it in Amazon is that although, obviously, Amazon's business would suffer from any kind of global slowdown, what are you going to do if you don't want to leave home?
Suppose you don't want to go to the grocery store because of all that coronavirus.
What are you going to do?
My guess is that there will be an enormous amount of people who either didn't use Amazon before and are starting because they want to avoid crowds and people and shopping, and there will be people who were using them who will double their use for the same reason, to avoid going into public.
So I don't think there's a cleaner play Than Amazon.
In the long run. And again, I don't care what happens this week or next week or even this year.
It's a long run play.
Anyway, that's not a recommendation.
Amazon is like every other company.
If you buy individual stocks, you are a bad investor.
You should be diversifying and that is the one and only advice I will give you.
Diversify. So if you went and bought Amazon because I just mentioned it, you did the opposite of what I recommended.
Because I recommend diversify.
Alright, that's all for now.
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