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March 3, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
48:58
Episode 837 Scott Adams: Talking Turkey, Democrat's "B" Team, Coronavirus Predictions, Twitter Takeover
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Pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum pum Hey everybody!
Come on in here!
You're all still alive.
Coronavirus hasn't gotten you yet.
Stay strong. Stay with me.
We will get through this.
Alright, before we begin, shall we begin on a good note?
A positive note? The best note there ever was?
Yes, it's called the Simultaneous Sip and all you need, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, 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 absolutely everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
Go. Prospects are rising.
Stock market is getting stronger.
Coronavirus is getting handled.
Yes, that was a good sip.
Turkey seems to be getting rid of bad people.
Yeah, pretty good sip.
Let's talk about the news.
All the news.
So, yesterday I tried By new equipment that you see behind me.
It's called Wirecast Gear.
And it's meant to allow me to do split-screen livestream broadcasting.
But it has so many options for doing that that it's taken me literally months to figure out which ways to do it.
There are several ways to do it, and they all have one thing in common.
They don't work every time.
So I spent $9,000 on this gear to solve one problem, which is that I could not reliably have two people up and hear them and see them and do an interview.
So $9,000 and three months later, I have determined through trial and error and documentation and working with tech support that none of the at least three different methods for doing that work every time.
So you can't really set up an interview and schedule it with anybody who's notable if you have a technology that doesn't work every time and we can't really say why.
Maybe it's because the version change or Skype upgraded.
It used to be compatible, but now it's not.
So that was $9,000 of wasted money.
So we probably won't be doing any interviews with that technology.
Anyway. But, let's talk about some other things.
There's a little update on the Eddie Gallagher story.
He's the SEAL who was convicted for taking a picture with a dead soldier and posing with it, which is a big no-no in terms of military professionalism.
But, independent of the events in the story, which are less interesting to me, I would like to make the following Let's say, philosophical line in the sand.
And it goes like this. Eddie Gallagher took part in a photograph that the public should never have seen.
But, Eddie Gallagher did not show the photograph to the public.
He showed it to, I don't know, a friend or something like that.
He did not. I don't believe he posted it on social media.
I believe his intention was that somebody personal to him would see it.
Now, would the person who he sent it to be offended by the picture?
Probably not, because he would have picked somebody who he knew would not be offended, presumably.
Now, that was his total crime, in my opinion, at least in terms of the photograph part of the story.
The total crime was that he sent it to one person, I think one person or a few, Privately.
I think that's the only thing he should be accused of.
And would it have any impact on the world if one friend saw an inappropriate photograph?
And the answer is no. So what Eddie Gallagher intended to do, he did it poorly because the photograph got out, but what he intended to do was harmless.
Relatively. You don't want anybody taking that kind of picture.
Obviously, it could have had an impact on the people who were local when it happened, the other military, etc.
So it's not trouble-free, but it's a small problem.
Once that photo became public, the small problem turned into really quite a serious one, and one that somebody should go to jail for.
And I think the person should be the person who released the photograph.
So I think the person who should go to jail is the person who put that in the public.
And I'm going to say this as a general statement about photographs and quotes and jokes.
We should develop this standard.
It doesn't exist. Right now, we allow something really, really stupid to happen and destroy lives every day.
And it's just stupidity.
And it goes like this.
Two people are having a private conversation.
One of them says something that doesn't offend the person they're talking to because they understand the concept and maybe they're just not easy to offend.
But then they tell somebody.
They reprint the text.
They post the meme.
They tell you what somebody said.
And suddenly the context has changed.
And now that innocent statement made by the original person Innocent in the sense that it was never intended to hurt.
It was intended to be private.
But once somebody makes that public, I feel super strong about this point.
They have to take responsibility for what happens from that point on.
The person who broadcasts it should go to jail.
Not the person who sent it to one person privately.
That's just bad. That's bad.
You don't want it. Discourage it, you know, depending on the message.
But it's nowhere near, it's not anywhere near the amount of evil and badness of the person who produced the picture for the public.
That's a level of evil that I can't tolerate.
All right. So, with that said, I'm 100% in favor of President Trump's, let's say, generous treatment of Eddie Gallagher.
All right, let's talk about Oprah.
I swear the simulation just keeps giving us little gifts.
You probably have all seen the viral video of Oprah falling down on stage.
I guess she had some heels on that were poorly designed and she actually tripped just over her own feet or slipped on them somehow and fell.
Got a little bit injured.
She has to ice her leg. It doesn't look bad.
There's nothing funny about somebody falling on stage, because you've seen a lot of people who've had serious injuries falling on stage.
There's nothing funny about it.
Unless, the moment you fall, the topic you're talking about is balance, because that's what happened.
Oprah was literally walking on stage, alone, just her on stage, talking about how important it is to have balance, and then she lost her balance and fell on her face on stage.
Now again, she was a little bit hurt.
And that's not funny.
Unless, unless she was talking about balance at the time she fell.
I'm sorry, Oprah.
I love Oprah.
No offense intended.
I'm sorry, Oprah.
Really, I am. But it's a little bit funny.
Right? I mean, let's reverse it.
Let's do the Let's do the thing where you say, okay, if that happened to me, if I had been talking about balance and fell on my ass on stage and hurt myself, you know, but not badly, you know, just need a little ice, would I think that was funny if people were laughing at me?
And the answer is, yeah, I would.
I would totally think that was funny.
I would retweet that myself, because that would be pretty hilarious, actually, even if I were hurt.
As long as it wasn't that bad, you know, just a bruise.
I would like to introduce a new law I call the Adam's Law of Amazon Book Reviews, and it goes like this.
That if there's a book, now this might not apply to other goods, but this applies to books.
If there's a book that has over a hundred reviews, which means there are enough reviews to assume it's not just trolls, right?
So over a hundred means it's probably real people, most of them anyway.
And over half of the reviews are five stars, meaning that a lot of those hundred people think it's a terrific book.
And I'm not talking about my books.
I'm just talking books in general.
If over half of them think it's a five-star terrific book, every one-star review comes from a troll, an idiot, or somebody with an agenda, which could be the same.
They could overlap. But I've never seen what I consider a legitimate one-star review For a book, it could be for other things because tools are different for different people, etc.
But a legitimate one-star review, I've never seen it on something that also had more than half of them five-star reviews.
So just keep that in mind.
Now, is it true every single time?
Probably not. But it's close.
If you look at one-star reviews of books, a lot of times it's obvious they haven't read the book.
And sometimes they even say that.
There are one-star reviews that I get all the time.
All the time. From people who say in the review they haven't read the book.
And they say there's something about me that they hate.
So they give me a one-star review.
Happens all the time. Now, they don't last because people complain and get rid of them.
But a lot of the reviews are just fake.
You should know that. In other news, big rich guy, hedge fund guy, Paul Singer, is trying to Oust Jack Dorsey from his CEO role at Twitter.
The stock market seems to like that because Twitter stock is up 8%.
Now, I always wondered how long it would last that Jack could have two CEO jobs, you know, simultaneously CEO of Square and Twitter.
And I guess as long as things are going well, that's fine.
But... People are complaining that Twitter's not making as much money as they think you should.
So at this point, that becomes a target.
And I guess Jack Dorsey has said that he's planning to spend six months a year in Africa while running two companies in the United States.
You had to see a little trouble coming, right?
I don't have any opinion about whether Jack could pull that off.
In other words, could he successfully run Two American companies while spending six months a year in Africa?
And the answer is, maybe. I don't know.
He started up two of the most important companies in the country successfully.
Would you bet against him?
You know, if Jack had been part of one gigantic billion-dollar company, you'd say, well, maybe he got lucky.
Maybe he worked with good partners, which is getting lucky.
But if you're part of two, that you were part of the startup, and they're both billion-dollar companies and doing pretty well, well, maybe there is something about you, right?
I mean, I wouldn't rule out that Jack has some talents that maybe Paul Singer is blind to.
But I'm not sure that Paul Singer is entirely about the money in this case.
Because if you don't know, Paul Singer is, and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe he's one of the wealthiest, most active anti-Trumpers.
So I believe he's Republican anti-Trumper type.
Would you want somebody who's anti-Trump, but conservative in this case, to have more control over Twitter?
I don't know. Is that better or worse than whatever the situation is now?
It doesn't sound good, but I don't know necessarily it's worse.
So that little fight's going on.
We'll keep an eye on that.
You know, Twitter is not like any other product, in my opinion.
And I don't use Facebook, so maybe...
I mean, I use it just to look at other people's photos, but I don't really look at any political stuff there.
It seems to me that Twitter is like the brain of the planet.
Meaning that if Twitter doesn't like something, it's probably not going to happen.
Meaning the majority of Twitter users...
And if the majority of Twitter users do like something, it probably will happen.
I think Twitter...
Twitter is the dog that's wagging the tail at this point.
I don't think Twitter is any longer just people talking about things that are happening.
That's how it started. But at this point, I think Twitter is what's making things happen.
That's a big difference.
So Twitter isn't like any other American company, and at some point we may have to recognize that in terms of what the public is comfortable with in terms of their board of directors and everything else.
It wouldn't be bad to have some diversity on the board of the political type.
I don't know if that's the case, but it would be good to have it.
Jack Welch died today at age 84.
Here's why that's more important than you would think.
Of course, it's important when a business icon dies.
It's always big news. But he died at 84.
Here are the ages that these candidates for president would be if they finished a second term.
And a second term is really the only reason you should elect the president, in my opinion.
Why would you ever vote for a president that you believed would be limited to one term?
Wouldn't that be just a terrible choice?
Because if you want your party to really make a difference...
You can see with this president that you can do a lot in four years, but eight years is a big difference.
Almost double, some would say.
You have that lame duck thing, so it's not quite double, but it's more.
Why would anybody nominate a candidate for president who couldn't reasonably be expected to finish two terms if that person did well?
So here are the ages of...
Biden, he would be 85 if he finished the second term.
Bloomberg, 86.
Bernie, 86.
Jack Welch died at 84.
Now, do you think that Jack Welch was 100% mentally capable of, let's say, being a president at age, I don't know, 82?
I don't know. Probably not.
Probably not. So this is the sort of thing that adds context to what you are already thinking.
And this Jack Welch death might mean more than you think, because he has a very coincidental age, and he's, let's say by, not by association, but let's say by importance and gravitas and weight, there's something about Jack Welch which is similar to a president.
He was the CEO of one of the biggest companies, most famous business person.
So in our minds, we sort of put him in that same category as a president of the United States.
Different job, but same high-level kind of dude.
In this case, a dude.
And I think it does matter to our sense of context and contrast, because those are very influential, That you see somebody that reminds you of these other people.
They're sort of old white guys who run stuff.
And that he died at 84.
I think it matters.
I think the ages of the candidates are going to be a real big issue.
Alright. There is a little bit of disagreement about whether Jack Welch was the greatest business person in the world.
Or... Bastard.
I have a little mixed feelings about it.
I usually don't talk poorly of people on the same day that they die.
But I'm going to make an exception for Jack Welch.
And I'm going to make an exception for him because part of his management genius was cruelty.
Cruelty. The GE method was to fire your 10% worse workers no matter what every year.
He was probably the cruelest leader that We've seen.
He also shipped a lot of his jobs to China with no apology.
And I believe that a lot of his success...
This part, I'm going to say I don't know this to be true, so fact check this, because I don't want to libel him on the day that he dies.
Can you libel somebody if they're dead?
I don't even know if that's a thing.
But... There's at least some suggestion that he destroyed the company.
In other words, that he built up profits through the financial part of the company, and they weren't as real as they needed to be.
So somebody needs to fact check me on that.
But be very, very skeptical of anything you see today that says he was great for this country.
Just be skeptical about that.
Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't.
And again, I wouldn't say this about somebody on the day that they died.
Except that the reason he's famous is for being a bastard.
So, you know, I just don't have any sympathy for him, frankly.
I saw a video, Don Jr.
tweeted around, in which Joe Biden promised some people at some gathering he was speaking to that he would raise their taxes.
And here's the funny part.
I couldn't tell if it was a gaffe.
He looked at the crowd and he said he promised them he would raise their taxes.
Was that a gaffe?
Because I can't tell.
Because I'm pretty sure he wants to raise taxes, but I thought he was talking about the rich.
And here's the interesting part.
If I had to guess, I would guess it's a gaffe.
Unless he's saying, I'm being honest with you, I'm going to raise your taxes a little bit so we can have universal health care?
But here's the funny thing. I can't tell.
Somebody says, watch the whole clip, and then it would be obvious to me.
But here's the point.
The point is that you can't tell.
That's the funny part.
The funny part is you don't even know if it's a gaffe or it's real.
If you can't tell if somebody is gaffing or telling you what they really intend to tell you, that's not a strong candidate.
It's not. So as Kyle Caffrey noted on Twitter, probably other people have had this idea, but I like it, that Bernie, Biden, and Bloomberg, who seem like the three most likely candidates, they're literally the B team.
Bernie, Biden, and Bloomberg, all with a B. Now, of course, Sanders starts with an S, but we call him Bernie.
So they're literally the B team.
Again, Oprah falls down when she's talking about balance.
And the last three candidates for the Democrats, who don't look that strong, are literally the B team.
I love this simulation.
How many times have I told you, in different contexts, that in hypnosis class we learn that people tell you exactly what they're really thinking by their choice of words?
So they can be telling you A is true, A is true, A is true, but sometimes the choice of words in which they're telling you A is true It's really telling you they mean B is true.
And you can see this a lot.
So you look for the words they choose, not just the message that they're communicating.
And you see this with Buttigieg when he dropped out of the race.
You all know that. Buttigieg dropped out.
And his argument is that he says that Fairly directly, that it's to consolidate support with a candidate who's not Bernie, basically, so that they can beat Trump.
So Buttigieg talks about beating Trump.
Biden says beat Trump.
Bloomberg says beat Trump.
If you ask them why they're running for president, they say we want to beat Trump.
What if that's what they mean?
What if you actually took their words and said, okay, what...
If there were no context here, and I were just looking at these words, what if I just looked at the words and said, okay, they mean exactly what they're saying.
This is the hypnotist trick.
And what they're saying is that that's their top priority, is beating Trump.
What's missing from that?
Anything that's good for you?
Where's the part where they're going to help you?
Where's the part where they're going to make you richer?
Where's the part where they're going to make you safer?
Where's the part where they're going to make you happier?
Where's the part where they're going to improve the military, reduce crime, give you more health care?
Now, at least Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are actually famous for their specific policies, and I give them that.
That has a lot to do with why at least Bernie is doing well, is that he's got very bold policies.
Even people who absolutely don't want him to be president...
The people like Tucker Carlson, I just saw him somewhat complimentary say, Bernie Sanders is bold.
Whatever else you want to say about him, his vision is bold as hell.
Can't take that away from him.
We like that. We like bold.
But... It's clear that the more conservative side, the Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg part, without the Bernie part, that they really do only have one goal, which is to beat Trump.
Do you want to vote for somebody whose philosophy is, we know that Trump is a monster who will destroy the world, but here's the weird part.
It doesn't happen in the first four years.
For some reason, there's a timer on it.
First four years, well, those are free.
But wait till he gets re-elected.
Oh, we told you orange man bad, and we meant it.
But what we meant was not the first four years.
Because if the Democrats were running against Trump's record, they would run against his record.
Wouldn't they? If that's the purpose of trying to get elected is to help you and run against his record and run against the things he's broken and fix them, I believe they would say those things if they thought the public was ready to accept them.
But instead, and this is the hypnotist trick, they say over and over again as clearly as possible their top priority is to beat Trump.
Do you want a president whose top priority Was simply to beat the other guy?
I can't think of a worse president.
That would be among the worst reasons for anybody to ever be a president.
Complete waste of time.
Bloomberg is going to spend a billion dollars or whatever just to beat Trump.
That just feels personal, doesn't it?
Doesn't it just feel personal?
It no longer even looks like They're even trying to be political, even.
It just looks personal. Buttigieg quit, gave his little speech.
I really enjoyed his husband Chastin's little introductory speech.
I thought that Chastin was very likable, and I would give him, well, maybe this is too bold.
Nah, I'll say it anyway.
Chastain Buttigieg for Nobel Peace Prize.
Think about it. Think about it.
Now, if you didn't see the speech, that's pretty confusing.
But according to Chastain, I believe it, that part of the reason he encouraged Pete to run for president was because of what it would say.
What it would show the world.
And so the two of them, and I think Chasten was a pretty big part of this, was showing the world that Pete could be an out, proud, married gay man, could run for president, and that the public would support him, and that it would change the world.
Did it? I think it did.
I think it did.
I watched Chastin go up on stage and kiss Pete on the lips in front of the public on national TV, and I actually clapped.
I was home.
I was alone, and I actually clapped.
Like, literally clapped. Because in losing...
I think Buttigieg still won.
Now, he might come back.
He might be a good president someday.
I think his closing speech, peace anyway, I think showed why he's not president, or won't be, at least this time.
Because it was lacking passion, but it sure had lots of smarts in it.
It was lots of jargon, sounded more like a consultant.
Pete never really spoke to me on any emotional level.
But, I would say that the end result of his campaign was exactly what Chasten hoped it would be, which is changing the way the world looks at the LGBT community.
I think that was accomplished.
And if you were to ask me what would be one of the greatest ways to make the world more peaceful, well just look at all the countries that are literally murdering gays.
Nobel Peace Prize.
It's not crazy. It's not crazy.
So, let's just put that out there.
I was reminded when Buttigieg quit that the President had one of the best kill shots I've ever seen.
Alfred E. Newman cannot become President of the United States.
Now, that's a kill shot in a sentence instead of a nickname, although the Alfred E. Newman part is the strong part.
But just the construction of this sentence is so wonderful.
It's such a good construction.
Just, Alfred E. Newman cannot become President of the United States.
It's hard to understand how beautiful that sentence is until you try to imagine how you would have said it.
Now, I would have said something like, he looks like Alfred E. Newman, which would have been kind of powerful because it would make you think of him for a while.
He could have started calling him Alfred, which he didn't, interestingly.
He never really gave a nickname to Mayor Pete.
He sometimes played with his last name, as it's hard to pronounce, but never really gave him a nickname beyond that one sentence.
But try to think of a better sentence structure than this one.
Alfred E. Newman cannot become President of the United States.
It's just kind of perfect!
Right? And I don't think the president ever gets credit for his simple, perfect statements because all the concentration is on whatever he says wrong.
In Selma, at a black church, Bloomberg appeared, and I guess there were some protesters who were standing up front, there were nine of them, who turned their backs to him because they're not happy about his...
probably about stop and frisk, I think, is what they're That they're concerned about.
And I thought, well, that's probably the end of Bloomberg.
Because that's so visual.
And if you were, let's say you're a black citizen of this country, and you're thinking about voting, and you're just starting to get serious about figuring out who's left to vote for.
You don't know much about Bloomberg because you didn't grow up in New York City.
So you're finding out about him for the first time through the news.
And you find the news that Black churchgoers turned their back on him?
That's sort of the end, right?
I would say that the odds of a Bloomberg presidency just went to zero.
Now, I've said that before, and it's never been more obvious than now.
There's this slow realization that the only thing that matters is the black vote.
Now, of course, everything else has to happen roughly the way we expect it to happen, and it usually does.
Most Democrats vote Democrat.
Most Republicans vote Republican.
Turnout will be something in that range that we can kind of predict.
But the black vote, congratulations, guys.
You're in charge this year.
So if the next president doesn't do what you want him to do, Let me say this to my fellow black citizens and teammates.
It's on you this time.
It's kind of on you.
Because the black vote will determine who's the next president.
There's no doubt about it.
Interestingly, it's the most flexible part of the voting public on this topic, for some reason, the topic of the presidency.
So you're in charge.
I hope you choose well. Here's some fun.
You know, I jumped on this coronavirus hoax thing early.
So the hoax part was that the hoax was claiming that President Trump had called the virus itself a hoax, which never happened.
He had talked about how the Democrats were politicizing it and the press, etc.
So he said that part was a hoax, not the virus itself.
But Politico and others Tweeted around and wrote stories claiming that the president called the coronavirus a hoax.
Here's the fun part.
Facebook, with its new policy of labeling fake news, labeled it fake news.
So on Facebook, Politico's story that the president called the virus a hoax is actually just labeled fake news.
Congratulations, everybody.
I believe that Twitter did this.
And I believe that because we are also primed and alerted for these hoaxes now, because we've seen so many, and we see exactly how they're done.
It's always a misinterpretation.
We hope they don't check the original.
They're going to see the story, but they're not going to see the transcript, that sort of thing.
And we all jumped on it quickly.
And we just hammered that thing when it was still in its crib.
And I think we killed it.
Maybe. I mean, it might pop up again.
But I think that one got killed by fairly aggressive counteraction, and now Facebook is labeled it fake.
So good work.
All right, we'll get to the coronavirus, of course.
Let's talk about Turkey first.
I don't know what's going on in Turkey.
I'm trying to figure it out. I feel like the reporting is failing me.
So what I can make out is that there's this Idlib is a city near the border of Turkey.
It's in Syria. Turkey's pounding the Syrian forces.
But here's the part we don't understand.
Russia has decided to just get out of the way, which allowed the Turks to just pound the piss on the Syrians.
I guess the Turkish military is far more capable because it looks like they really slapped around the Syrians.
But what's happening with Russia?
Is Russia going to leave?
Are they just sort of staying out of the way?
Where's NATO? It's a hot war with a NATO... With a NATO ally, why aren't we in it?
And if we're not in it, why don't we kick Turkey out of NATO? Or something?
Shouldn't something be happening?
Now, it could be that the Russians know that if they attacked Turkey, that NATO is involved.
So it could be that the Russians are saying, you know, risk-reward, we're just getting out of the way.
All we want is a warm port.
We don't really care about anything else.
Let's just get out of the way.
So I feel like that story, we are not being served well by the press.
We need a little extra talking about that.
North Korea launched some short-range rockets, which feels like sort of a look at me, look at me.
Now, a lot of time has gone by since Kim Jong-un said he's unhappy about where the Don't you think he would have done more if we did not have a President Trump who at least made some inroads in conversation and opening up the dialogue?
I think so.
It feels like North Korea has turned into a weirdly stable situation, meaning that we've got sanctions on.
Obviously, North Korea has figured out how to get around them.
And as long as they believe we're not prepping to attack them, and I think President Trump has convinced them that we have zero interest in ever invading North Korea or regime change.
It's just not what we're into.
I think Kim Jong-un is just going to mind his own business for a while.
And I think these short-range rockets, in this case, it might not have even been a message.
It might have been just a test, because short-range rockets weren't that scary anyway.
All right. Let's talk about the coronavirus.
Here's my prediction for where things are going to go, and I'll give some context first.
I asked the question online because it's scary that we don't all know the answer.
Whatever stops the flu from getting everybody?
Excuse me. Might be a few more of those sneezes coming.
But what stops any flu, just the seasonal flu, what stops it from eventually affecting everyone?
Now, many of you are going to say, well, I know the answer to that.
It's the weather.
When the weather gets warm, then it doesn't go around as much.
But how does that make sense?
Let me ask you this.
Where do you spend most of your time in the summer?
Indoors, right? I live in California.
In the summer, you really can't spend that much time outdoors.
Most of us, most human beings, spend almost all of our time indoors.
Very few of us are even outdoors except to go to the car.
Maybe you go for a run.
One hour a day, maybe, outdoors, tops.
That would be typical.
So if you say the only difference is that people are going outdoors, I don't buy that at all.
That doesn't seem like a reason.
If you say it's because of the temperature, I would ask you, what is the temperature indoors?
Because that's where we all are.
It's the same year-round.
Now, I'm seeing in the comments, and I'm getting to that.
So some people are saying it's humidity.
So I've heard the theory.
I don't know how true this is.
Somebody fact-check me on this.
The whole point of what I'm saying is that I don't understand what's going on.
Let's say it's humidity. If it were humidity that makes a difference, wouldn't we be pumping humidity into our indoor spaces?
It's not that hard.
Humidity is easy.
Water, little heat, humidity.
So, if this coronavirus is this gigantic, deadly thing, and it is, and if it's true that the summer is when things are I don't think people get it just because they went outdoors.
I would guess that nearly all of it is transmitted indoors, wouldn't you?
And if indoors is the problem, and it's the difference of humidity indoors, that's the main factor between Rampant spread in the winter versus not rampant spread in the summer.
Wouldn't we be adding humidity?
Dr. Zhu, it's about time you got here to answer this question, if you know the answer.
I'll ask this to Dr.
Zhu. I'm hoping you're listening right now.
Why don't all viruses eventually affect just about everybody?
Couldn't we add humidity to an indoor environment if it's the humidity that makes a difference?
Why wouldn't we be doing that?
Anyway, so that's the point.
Most of our time is spent indoors at exactly the same temperature, no matter where you are in the world, no matter what season it is.
So it can't be the temperature, and I don't think it's just because the kids are not in school, because we're still all socializing massively all the time.
There's nothing about summer that makes you socialize less, or even make you be indoors less.
I mean, honestly, the difference between being indoors 24 hours a day except going to your car...
Versus being indoors 23 hours a day, but maybe you go for a run for an hour?
It's just not that much difference.
And as somebody's saying in the comments, and I said on Twitter, it's always winter someplace.
So here's what I would expect based on what the media has informed us, which means that there's something missing.
It's something important.
I don't know what it is, but it's something important because all those other flus do not seem to infect 100% of the world, and I don't know why.
Now, I can get why maybe 10% would have some weird immunity, or 10% coincidentally don't interact with somebody, but how does it not get 90% of the public eventually, right?
Given all the travel and connections we have.
So, that's an open question.
Dr. Drew, if you know the answer to that, I would love to see a tweet on that.
Now, I've heard one speculation, is that the virus mutates.
And the idea would be this.
If I get it from patient zero, I've got a version that's pretty close to the one I got.
I give it to you, and yours is one little bit different from the other one, patient zero.
And if enough people give it to enough people, one theory is that it mutates enough so it's not quite the same thing anymore and maybe not as viral.
Is that true? If it is, then this virus would be just like every other.
So here's where I'm getting at from my prediction.
Unless this virus is, let's say, man-made, and I don't think it is, or even if it is human-made but it's made to mimic the natural ones.
It's going to have the same quality, which is, for whatever reason, it goes away, just like every other flu.
I don't know the reason, and I'm not entirely sure that science knows it.
There's just something in the math.
There's something I'm not understanding that doesn't smell right.
But the point being, here's my prediction.
Coronavirus will come under control.
That's based on the theory that it's not so different from other flus that always come under control.
100% of every past bad flu has come under control.
And that was before we had good medical treatment, etc.
So, the first part of the prediction is there will be an end to this.
The most likely scenario is that it happens within the year.
So that's the first good news.
But the bigger issue is, and then the second part I would say is, if nobody had ever told you there was anything called a coronavirus, and you just thought that everybody getting the flu were just getting regular flus, would you ever notice that the coronavirus had swept through the planet?
Now, if it's like Iran, where people seem to be dropping in the streets, Yeah, you'd notice.
The hospitals would be full, etc.
If it's like the United States, and I don't know what the difference is, but so far it seems that it's not dropping people in the street.
If it becomes like that, you're going to see that it just runs its course and you wouldn't have even noticed if, let me put it this way, if the number of 80-year-old plus people that you know dying in a year When from seven to nine, could you tell the difference?
Well, it's a big difference to the people who died, obviously.
But would you know the difference?
I don't think you would.
Because you don't know if seven people you know over 80 were supposed to die that year, because that's when people die, or if it was a little extra.
You actually wouldn't know.
So there's a good chance...
That the coronavirus will just run its course.
I do think people will die.
So far, they all seem to be in the age where people are dying anyway.
Not that that makes it better.
And here's my prediction.
At the moment, the best thing that the world can do for health is take a step back and close some factories, which closes all the supply lines.
If supply lines stayed closed, there would be a massive depression in the world.
And it would kill far more people than the virus.
So here's the balance, and here's the basis of my prediction.
At the moment, in the short term, the highest risk is the virus.
In the medium term, which is, I'm just talking about a few months, in the medium term, the biggest risk of death will be the economy going bad.
There's a crossover coming.
It's just a few weeks away.
The moment the biggest risk to the world is that the economy is crumbled because the supply lines fell apart, at that point, people will consciously make the decision to risk the virus to save the economy.
Because that's how you save the most lives.
When the economy goes bad, people die.
I mean, they die a lot.
You know, people will starve, it will be massive dislocation and risk.
So I think there's an inevitable crossover point where China is going to say, yep, if we open these factories, 2% plus of the people who go to work are going to die.
But if we don't open the factories, 10% of our population will die.
There's no contest.
There's no contest. China will open the factories because it's the way to save the most people, even if 2% of them are guaranteed to die.
Now, there's nothing to be happy about, right?
But, given that we've seen that mostly non-compromised people are recovering, what I expect is that the factories will open, but not until Not until the people who have been checked out to be older or may have some underlying illness, they might be relocated.
In other words, there might be some special consideration for people who are a certain age or have any kind of underlying condition.
They probably wouldn't go back to work.
You have to keep them safe.
But if you're 30 and you're in good shape and you're Chinese, And the worst case for getting the flu is probably a few days off of work, a couple weeks off of work.
I think the factory is going to open.
When that happens, your stock market will zoom, of course.
All right. Does anybody disagree with that?
I think we're in the eight weeks away from the supply lines being reopened.
And we can probably get by for eight weeks.
We probably have a month of supply for everything.
There's probably a month where things will be rough, but we'll still figure it out.
And then I think we'll be back in action.
That's what I think. So yeah, there's a report that they're sending the Uyghurs to work in the factories.
Unfortunately, that might be part of the recovery, which is just the worst thing in the world.
Somebody says, if I can't work, even at home, I can't pay my mortgage.
That is correct. And that's why you will see people going to work and risking the virus, because it will be a smaller risk than risking the economy.
So, does that feel like good news?
Because there's really no chance that the economy will go to depression because the risk is going to flip.
It's just that obvious.
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