My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Black voters just saved America Rigged Super Tuesday results? Bernie appeals to voters least likely to vote Coronavirus, facemasks, air pollution, genetics --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
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| Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody, come on in! | |
| It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| That would be me. | |
| And you already know who you are, and you know why you're here. | |
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| Ah, I feel my immunity building. | |
| Coronavirus. I would like to take a page from Jesse Waters, who was absolutely hilarious yesterday on The Five on Fox News, in which he said, and I'm paraphrasing, if the coronavirus attacks me, I will beat it. I will beat it. | |
| He's right. He probably will. | |
| I was looking at my odds of dying from the coronavirus, because it's that kind of a day, and my odds of dying from the coronavirus at my age, so it's age-adjusted, about 4%. | |
| Not bad. | |
| But that's 4% if I get it. | |
| And it probably also is people who have more health problems than I have. | |
| So there's probably a 50% chance I'll get it. | |
| So that cuts it in half down to 2%. | |
| Probably the people dying are sicker and older. | |
| I'm on the early end of the 60s. | |
| So I'd say my chances are 1%, something like that. | |
| 1% of a problem. | |
| And I've probably got a greater chance of dying from, well, just about everything else. | |
| So if you break it down, my personal odds are pretty, pretty good. | |
| Alright, let's talk about the big news from last night. | |
| Super Tuesday. Yay! | |
| I would like to take this opportunity with no irony whatsoever. | |
| I know you're going to suspect that I'm saying this for humorous purposes. | |
| I'm not. It is kind of Interesting in a light and amusing way, but that's not why I'm going to say it. | |
| Thank you to the black voters of the United States for saving the country from Bernie Sanders and disastrous social policies. | |
| And I don't think that's too much of an overstatement. | |
| The black voters of this country The ones who voted on Super Tuesday, I believe did a really solid service to the United States. | |
| Because keep in mind that because of differences in socioeconomic situations, a lot of black voters were voting against transferring money from other people to themselves. | |
| Because you have to think that a lot of people who voted against Bernie... | |
| We're voting against a direct transfer of money from other people to themselves. | |
| Now, if that's not good work, I don't know what is. | |
| So, thank you, teammates, black citizens who saved the country. | |
| That's literally true, right? | |
| Is there any hyperbole in what I just said? | |
| I don't think so. I think black voters just saved the country, literally. | |
| So, thank you. | |
| And I mean that. So, let's see what else happened. | |
| There's a question about whether the results have so far been rigged by the democratic machine. | |
| And it's kind of an interesting question because What is the difference between, let's say, the important Democrats all met in a room and they made phone calls and they all talked to each other behind the scenes and decided, hey, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and Beto, if we all drop out, the ones who haven't dropped out, and endorse Biden, we'll get Biden over the finish line and we'll get to keep power and all that. | |
| Now, that would be rigging it. | |
| I mean, people would... | |
| It's all legal. | |
| I mean, anybody can talk to anybody and make any kind of a legal deal. | |
| But it would feel rigged. | |
| But what if it didn't go down like that? | |
| What if everybody just knew what to do? | |
| Is that different? I mean, do you process that differently? | |
| Did anybody need to tell... | |
| Amy Klobuchar that this was exactly the best time to quit and endorsed Biden because she wasn't going to win and because he was the closest to what she wanted for the country. | |
| I don't think anybody had to tell her, right? | |
| And after Buttigieg made his move, it was pretty obvious. | |
| It was pretty obvious what the move was. | |
| So is it rigged if everybody simply does what they know is good for their team? | |
| If they don't have an actual conversation and somebody didn't call them and say, do this, or I'll give you this, I think it's kind of all the same. | |
| Bloomberg is reportedly considering what he's going to do. | |
| This is a more interesting question than you think. | |
| Because, we'll talk about this in a moment, but Biden's speech did not suggest... | |
| He could necessarily make it all the way to the election. | |
| Or even really all the way to the convention. | |
| There is something so wobbly about Biden that you actually have to ask yourself can he make it all the way to the convention without having either a health issue or the public turning on him because he seems wobbly. | |
| And Bloomberg actually still has a path. | |
| Doesn't he? If Bloomberg limped into the convention with his one delegate or whatever he's going to have, and he was simply just hanging out as a person who's in full control of his faculties and has a conservative, let's say, a moderate Biden-like position, what would happen if we got there? | |
| Biden had the most votes except for Bernie, but Biden didn't look viable anymore. | |
| Because we just watched them a little too closely since today. | |
| And maybe people say, you know, I wasn't seeing it before, but I'm not as comfortable as I was even a few weeks ago. | |
| It looks like things are going bad quickly. | |
| So Bloomberg actually has a play, which is just hang around and not be crazy and not be Bernie. | |
| And not be Elizabeth Warren, I suppose. | |
| Now, that would probably make the candidates who backed Biden... | |
| Angry, but... | |
| So Bloomberg has to play. | |
| If I had to guess, I would guess he's going to drop out. | |
| Maybe today? But soon? | |
| So my prediction will be Bloomberg drops out. | |
| But the reason he hasn't done it already is he's probably mulling the fact that there's actually still this tiny little channel for him to get through. | |
| It's hard to imagine, though. | |
| All right. The youth vote did not show up for Bernie. | |
| So NBC was reporting that the turnout among young voters, the ones Bernie attracts the best, they didn't really turn out. | |
| Somebody says Bloomberg just dropped out. | |
| Oh, so while I was talking about it? | |
| Did that happen while I was talking about it? | |
| Let me just call up CNN here and take a look. | |
| Should be in the top story. | |
| But it's not there yet, so it might be so new that it's not even online yet. | |
| Alright, we'll look for that. | |
| So anyway, Bernie has this strategy of attracting young voters. | |
| And I remember from the very first that I realized that Bernie's strategy was to attract young voters. | |
| I said to myself, who would have a strategy of attracting the people least likely to vote? | |
| Now I suppose if you did something miraculous you could get them to vote, but it would require changing their basic nature or changing something about the way you're doing things that's so different that you could motivate them. | |
| But just being a good candidate And having policies that young people like, I think we know doesn't make them go to the polls in large numbers like the elderly. | |
| So, would you want Bernie to come in and re-engineer the entire economy if the one thing you knew about him for sure, his plan to get elected, was to appeal to the people least likely to show up? | |
| Doesn't that tell you there's something wrong with his System thinking right there. | |
| He's not a system thinker. | |
| He's a goal thinker. | |
| A goal being, you know, we'd like everybody to have health care. | |
| We'd like everybody to show up to vote. | |
| But what's your system to get there? | |
| It's the system that's the broken part. | |
| Well, we've got to talk about Biden's victory speech. | |
| So he has his victory speech because he won most of the states. | |
| And took the lead from Bernie and delegates, although the race is still very much on, but he's got the lead at the moment. | |
| And he gets up there, and you probably all saw the clip by now, so his wife and his sister are standing slightly behind him on either side, and he confuses which one is on which side, and he goes, this is my wife, and he starts to hold her, or no, this is my sister, and he starts to hold his wife's hand, and then the wife is like, no, I'm not the sister, and then Biden realizes it, and he goes, This is my wife. | |
| No, this is my sister. No, they switched on me. | |
| And then he's trying to explain why the very first thing he says in his victory speech is old man nonsense. | |
| Confused old man nonsense is how he started his victory speech. | |
| Then he used the word which he's been busted for before. | |
| Instead of saying exponentially, he says exponentially. | |
| And he says it so clearly, you know he doesn't know what the word is. | |
| Because he's said it in the past lots of times. | |
| He says exponentially. | |
| He actually says that word very clearly. | |
| Then he was talking about Amy Klobuchar, who he called Amy Globuchar. | |
| Yeah, Amy Globuchar. | |
| And of course he was slurring words and stopping in the middle of sentences and confused and shouting and Glenn Greenwald is hilarious on this topic. | |
| I retweet him a lot. | |
| And I'm not a big fan of Glenn Greenwald's personality, or at least the public version of it that we see. | |
| He's pretty unforgiving and unpleasant, but he's really good at what he does. | |
| Can't take that away from him. | |
| And you should follow him on Twitter because his tweets are spectacular. | |
| But even Glenn Greenwald is saying, you know, what are you Democrats seeing in Biden that makes you think this is okay? | |
| I mean, I'm paraphrasing. | |
| He didn't say it with those words. | |
| But he put up a poll on Twitter to literally ask Democrats, what the hell are you seeing here? | |
| What is your... | |
| So his curiosity, which I share, is what are Democrats thinking when they vote for Biden? | |
| Now, of course, they think he can win, so that's obvious. | |
| They think his policies or whatever, and that's obvious. | |
| But what do they think about his mental acuity? | |
| I'm actually curious. | |
| Do Democrats not see what's going on? | |
| And part of the curiosity is, do they look at Trump and it looks the same? | |
| I don't know. That's an actual question. | |
| I'm not saying that to make a point. | |
| I don't know. Do Democrats look at Trump and see him as mentally incompetent, even though the experts who are both left and right-facing have unanimously finally come to the same conclusion that That Trump's style of communication is super good. | |
| Super good. But are the Democratic voters not seeing what the experts see? | |
| And they say, well, he uses simple sentences and he doesn't complete his sentences. | |
| He'll start something and then he'll turn left and he'll turn right. | |
| And the experts have all agreed at this point, it totally works. | |
| So there's no confusion anymore among experts on the left or the right that President Trump really, really is good at this. | |
| This meaning communicating and persuading. | |
| But nobody's saying that about Biden. | |
| Are there any communication experts who are saying, oh ho, you public, I know you're laughing at his gaffes, but look at his technique. | |
| If you would look at his technique, you would see that he's really good at this, but maybe you don't understand because you don't understand the right technique. | |
| Nobody's saying that. | |
| 100% of people are saying it about Trump. | |
| Everyone. Every good communication expert, left and right, says Trump is great. | |
| Zero people have said that about Biden. | |
| What are they thinking about his mental ability? | |
| I don't know. It's a great question. | |
| All right. Trey Gowdy, apparently, I didn't hear this live, but I think it was Martha McCallum who quoted him, he was on her show, I think, and said that Trey Gowdy had the greatest line about watching Joe Biden give a speech. | |
| And just listen to it, just feel how visual this is. | |
| I always tell you that good persuasion is visual. | |
| Trey Gowdy on Joe Biden, he says, it's like watching a chain smoker fill a gas tank. | |
| Now, could that be any better? | |
| That is so visual, and it tells... | |
| It's not only visual, but I make this point often, too. | |
| It's one sentence, but it's a movie. | |
| You can see the movie. | |
| It's got a beginning, it's got a middle, it's got an end, which doesn't end well. | |
| And it's just spectacular. | |
| Now, I don't think... I don't believe Trey Gowdy invented that folksy saying. | |
| I think that was an existing saying. | |
| But boy, does that fit! | |
| Because it does feel exactly like that. | |
| Let me ask you if you've had this experience yet. | |
| Prior to a few months ago, the only politicians that I would watch were ones who were really interesting. | |
| So if Trump was giving a rally, I would actually watch that for a while, just because he holds my attention. | |
| He's just so interesting all the time. | |
| Same with AOC. I might be disagreeing with her, but boy, can she hold attention. | |
| Same with Matt Gaetz, just to use another example. | |
| He can hold your attention like nobody. | |
| I mean, these are really good people at holding attention. | |
| But I've recently started really enjoying watching Joe Biden speak. | |
| Are you with me? | |
| But I'm not looking at him because he holds my attention in the classical way that the others do. | |
| He holds my attention because I'm waiting for the chain smoker who's filling his gas tank to blow up. | |
| And I'm very aware of it while I'm watching it. | |
| The whole time I'm watching it, I go, come on... | |
| He starts a sentence. | |
| Every time Biden starts a sentence, I have the same feeling. | |
| I'm like, okay, this is a good one. | |
| It's a complex sentence. | |
| Let's see where this is going. | |
| Oh, okay, he landed that one. | |
| Here's another one. Another complex sentence. | |
| And, okay, he took a left turn and just missed going all over the cliff. | |
| Here's another sentence. | |
| I'm fascinated by Biden now. | |
| I can't stop watching him. | |
| I watched that whole speech last night. | |
| Some people are saying that Bloomberg wasted his half a billion dollars or whatever it was because he proved that money doesn't make the difference because Biden won with practically no spending in a few states where Bloomberg spent a lot. | |
| But is that really what we found out? | |
| I'm not so sure that's what we learned. | |
| Didn't we learn that money plus no personality whatsoever doesn't work? | |
| I think that's what we learned. | |
| Was there anybody in the world who was saying, you know, if Charles Manson were still alive and he had enough funding, he could become president of the United States? | |
| Was anybody thinking that? | |
| Because I would say no. | |
| There was nobody in the entire planet who was thinking, you know, if you had enough money, it doesn't matter who you are. | |
| Nobody was thinking that. | |
| No, folks, the lesson that we got from Bloomberg is not that money doesn't help. | |
| It was the opposite. | |
| The lesson we got from Bloomberg is Is that you could look like a desiccated turd with no charisma whatsoever, no game plan and no policies that people can even remember, and you can still get 18% of the vote without even running in most of the primaries. | |
| Bloomberg proved money works. | |
| Unambiguously. So everybody you see who's saying that Bloomberg proved money doesn't work is an idiot. | |
| Thank you. Usually I don't like to say somebody's an idiot if they disagree with me. | |
| But sometimes there's not really room for opinion. | |
| Sometimes it really is subjective. | |
| This isn't subjective. | |
| Because there's nobody who disagrees with me on my characterization of Bloomberg as low charisma with nothing exciting to say. | |
| I believe even the people who voted for him would say that. | |
| I mean, that's not too subjective. | |
| That's kind of describing him. | |
| And it's also true he got 18, yeah, whatever, some percentage in the teens of votes with no skill at all. | |
| No skill. And he got that. | |
| No political skill. | |
| At least a presidential type. | |
| Bloomberg does have considerable management skill, which is more appropriate to a mayoral job. | |
| I think Bloomberg's probably a perfect personality to be mayor of New York City. | |
| So it's no accident that worked out. | |
| All right. Bloomberg also said yesterday that he's not upset with many Trump policies. | |
| It's just his style. | |
| Now, I didn't want to crow about it. | |
| But, thankfully, a number of people who have been following me for a while crowed on my behalf. | |
| Because long ago, I predicted, and I'm going to say that I got the prediction wrong because there was a time window on it, and the time window was completely wrong. | |
| And I said that by the first year, the end of the first year of the Trump administration, I said that the dominant opinion would be that he was effective, but we don't like him. | |
| Bloomberg just said, Now, three and a half years in, Bloomberg said, I'm not upset with many Trump policies. | |
| I don't like his style. | |
| That doesn't sound too far off from his effect of, but we don't like him, does it? | |
| It's not exactly the same, but it's pretty close. | |
| A lot of people notice that. | |
| And he didn't get a lot of pushback, which is the other interesting thing. | |
| So Bloomberg got pushback for not being different from Trump, He got pushback for maybe not being as critical as Trump or not being as novel as you should be if you're going to run against him. | |
| So he got pushback for that. | |
| But I don't think he got pushback for the fact that he didn't disagree with Trump's policies. | |
| Think about that. | |
| A major candidate... | |
| A major Democratic candidate just came out and said he didn't have a problem with his opponent's policies, and the Democrats... | |
| Yeah, Bloomberg's out. | |
| It happened while I was on here, I guess. | |
| And nobody pushed back on the fact that Bloomberg said Trump's policies are okay. | |
| Nobody pushed back. | |
| What's that tell you? | |
| All right. Apparently, Tulsi Gabbard... | |
| She qualifies for the next debate because she got one delegate from America's Samoa, which is where I guess Bloomberg got his delegate. | |
| And I guess she was born there. | |
| I didn't know she was born in America's Samoa. | |
| But I wonder if she'll be in the debate. | |
| Because you probably have been wondering why is Tulsi still in the campaign at all? | |
| You're probably wondering. | |
| And I think that's a good question. | |
| She doesn't seem to be playing for vice president, does she? | |
| It doesn't look like it. I don't know who would be the best fit with her as a vice president, but I don't really see that as the motivation. | |
| It doesn't seem like it. | |
| So I'm not sure exactly what her motivation is. | |
| So it's hard to predict whether she'll stay in or get out when you don't know why she's there in the first place at this point. | |
| If I had to guess, it's because she thinks her message is important. | |
| Which would be a good reason. | |
| And wants to take the opportunity to keep that message out there. | |
| That'd be good. Alright. | |
| Let's talk about coronavirus. | |
| Because I know you want to. | |
| I know you want to. | |
| And I'm going to give you my predictions for things. | |
| But we're also going to be amateur... | |
| Investigators. So before I start this next segment talking about coronavirus, let me say what you're all going to be thinking. | |
| Scott, Scott, Scott. | |
| Let me do this in Dale's voice. | |
| This is just to save you time in your comments later, because you're all going to make the same comment, and it's going to go like this. | |
| Well, you're not all going to make this comment, but many of you would. | |
| It goes like this. | |
| Scott, Scott, Scott. | |
| Leave it to the experts to talk about expert things. | |
| You're just making things worse. | |
| You're a cartoonist. | |
| Stick to cartoonings, cartoon boy. | |
| Don't confuse things with the expert scene. | |
| With that said, let us talk about the coronavirus with our complete lack of expertise. | |
| But let's talk about what we know. | |
| I'll try to call out the things that I think are true, but I don't know. | |
| You can keep me honest with your fact-checking in real time. | |
| Let's talk about the face masks. | |
| As you know, the CDC has not recommended that citizens use medical face masks to protect themselves. | |
| That was misinterpreted as Face masks don't work. | |
| That misinterpretation was accentuated by medical professionals coming in and saying, no, the reason that face masks are worn by doctors is to protect the patient from the doctor's own germs. | |
| So that's what all the officials and professionals have been telling us. | |
| And a lot of people adopted that view, and online people are reminding me of that. | |
| So, but I have some questions. | |
| I have some questions. | |
| And it goes like this. | |
| A lot of smart people are telling me that the reason the doctors wear the mask is to protect the patient. | |
| So, how does that work? | |
| Is this one of those masks that only works in one direction? | |
| Is it the sort of mask That will stop a virus or whatever bad bacteria or germs or whatever else we're talking about from getting out of the mask, but it would not stop anything from coming in the other direction? | |
| Is it a magic mask that only works in one direction? | |
| Now, it turns out that the actual high-end medical masks actually are They actually do work differently in and out. | |
| So they've got a little filter on them and they're closely fitted by professionals and stuff. | |
| And those are allegedly 95% good at stopping a virus from getting in. | |
| And so, should you get a face mask if the professional masks, the ones you probably can't buy anyway, that the medical professionals use and they fit carefully, That protects them 95% from virus. | |
| Should you get one? Well, suppose you couldn't fit it as well as the professionals. | |
| Would that be a reason not to get one? | |
| No! No! | |
| We're talking about air. | |
| If you can reduce the amount of air that's coming in from the outside, and it's the air that's got the virus, of course it would help even if it's not perfectly fitted. | |
| Of course! | |
| If 10 or 20% of the air is sort of coming around, are you still more protected by having... | |
| If 95% protection is good enough, I think I would still settle for 75%. | |
| What if it's just 50% because I didn't put it on right? | |
| Don't I want 50%? | |
| So I think what's happening here is a case of loser think in which people are conflating different things and they've taken the suggestion that they don't work all the time or they're not 100% effective. | |
| That's turned into don't get one. | |
| And those are not the same thing. | |
| Not 100% effective does not say, don't get one. | |
| Because you know what else is not 100% effective? | |
| Washing your hands. | |
| But we don't tell people, oh, don't bother washing your hands. | |
| That's not even 100% effective. | |
| At best, 25%. | |
| But we don't do that. | |
| We say it's 25%. | |
| Go ahead and do it. What about people coughing into their elbow? | |
| We tell people to cover their cough. | |
| But why? Because people are still going to get it. | |
| So shouldn't we tell people, ah, don't bother covering your cough. | |
| People are still going to get it. | |
| No, but we don't. We say, well, it might help a little. | |
| It might help 10%. | |
| Go ahead and cover it. | |
| So anybody who's arguing about these face masks, don't get one if you're an individual because it doesn't work. | |
| That is not smart! | |
| Let me tell you what I think is true based on everything we know. | |
| I do think that the non-professional medical masks are way less effective. | |
| I think we all agree on that. | |
| I think that if the virus is airborne and you can trap a little bit more of it close to your face, because at least the air itself is not going out past your face mask, and you have it, Certainly makes sense that if you have a cough, you should wear a face mask, whatever kind you can get. | |
| Because at the very least, it's going to stop most of the air from expressing itself in the furthest possible way. | |
| And the other thing is, so I did a little googling and found out that there have never been tests. | |
| To find out if non-medical people, there have been tests about medical people, so we know masks work in the medical environment, but it's never been tested to see if a citizen wearing a face mask can avoid a virus. | |
| Never been tested. | |
| Now, what would you think is the common sense likelihood that having some kind of a barrier that's not 100% over your mouth would make some difference? | |
| 1%, 10%, 50%? | |
| We don't know why. | |
| We don't know how much difference. | |
| But I would say that it is absolutely... | |
| It's just dumb to imagine it doesn't work at all, or that it isn't worth a shot, given the size of the risk. | |
| Now, some have suggested that what the CDC and the government are really telling you is not exactly what they're saying. | |
| In other words, what they really mean is that If the citizens start hoarding face masks, the professionals won't have them, and the country as a whole is definitely better off if our medical professionals are healthy. | |
| It is way better for a common citizen to get the virus than for a doctor to get it, because the doctor is helping multiple people, obviously. | |
| So certainly it does make sense not to hoard the good ones that the doctors would use. | |
| I agree with that. Makes sense. | |
| It's better for the whole. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be protective for one individual who happened to have a mask. | |
| So don't lie to us. | |
| Don't lie to me and tell me that a citizen with that mask, even if they don't know the right way to fit it on their face, don't tell me that's not going to make a difference. | |
| Because you don't know, and all logic and sense tells you it would make some difference. | |
| But I also think that it might be wise for the government Not to say that the masks do work because it could cause a panic and there aren't enough masks. | |
| Don't be surprised if sometime in the near future we find out that, let's say, production of the good kind of masks ramps up. | |
| You could get to the point where we have enough of them for everybody. | |
| Do you think that the government of the United States would tell us not citizens not to wear the good N95 masks that the medical professionals wear? | |
| Do you think that the government would say, don't try those if we had enough? | |
| You know the answer to that. | |
| You know the answer. If we had enough for everyone, It wouldn't matter that we're not really good at fitting them to our faces. | |
| The government would say it's better than nothing. | |
| You know that, right? | |
| So when you hear them say the masks don't work or that they're not recommended, put that in context. | |
| You don't want to take them away from the medical professionals. | |
| That's real. | |
| And that's probably really important. | |
| And you don't want to start a panic of people killing you for your face mask because you have one and I don't. | |
| You don't want that. So I think the government is lying to you, and I'm not sure I appreciate it in this case. | |
| I mean, I can see the utility of it. | |
| I can see the utility of the lie. | |
| And I do think that sometimes you need to lie to the public. | |
| I don't reject lying to the public if you have a legitimate greater good purpose for it. | |
| I just don't know if this is it. | |
| It's an edge case. | |
| All right. I've noticed something that could be just a coincidence, but it might be a correlation, and I want to run it by you. | |
| Now, here's the part where Dale warned you that I'm not an expert, and anything I say from now on, or anything I've ever said, really, should be subject to expert fact-checking and correction. | |
| But this is kind of interesting and kind of fun. | |
| Watch this. So here's a correlation. | |
| What do these places have in common? | |
| Iran, China, Italy, South Korea, And a cruise ship. | |
| Alright, if you watch me on Twitter, you know the answer to this. | |
| So I'll say it again. What do these have in common? | |
| Iran, China, Italy, South Korea, and a cruise ship. | |
| Now, of course, you immediately know that's where the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus are. | |
| But what are the other coincidences? | |
| Are there any? Well, it turns out there's one very big one. | |
| You've got an airborne... | |
| A lung-related respiratory virus. | |
| And the places where it's worse are the places where air pollution is the worst. | |
| Did you know, and I just tweeted around a source for this, that the air pollution on the deck, even if you're outdoors, on the deck of a cruise ship, I just read an article from USA Today, that the air quality on the deck of a cruise ship in the ocean is is worse than the air quality in Tehran. | |
| And believe it or not, this story was a few years old, and the story actually compared it to Iran. | |
| Coincidentally, that was the exact comparison they made. | |
| So there's something about whatever is bubbling around in the bowels of the ship that is causing the air quality on a cruise ship to be worse than Tehran. | |
| So, all of these places, and by the way, if you didn't know, Italy And I didn't know this. | |
| Italy is the most polluted air in Europe. | |
| Did you know that? I bet you didn't know that. | |
| South Korea has terrible air quality. | |
| Did you know that? Some of you did. | |
| I didn't know that. I didn't know it until yesterday. | |
| I looked this stuff up. So, Iran, China, Italy, South Korea, and cruise ships have the worst air quality and the worst problems with the coronavirus. | |
| Is that a coincidence? | |
| Well, there are other correlations that might be the coincidence. | |
| For example, as other people mentioned, it could be that many of these countries have different standards for social behavior. | |
| Maybe there's more hugging and kissing when you greet people. | |
| Maybe there's just more touching or sharing. | |
| Could be. I mean, that could be the correlation. | |
| As people are saying in the comments, there's a high level of smoking in all of these countries. | |
| And that should mean something, right? | |
| That's a high correlation. It has something to do with the lungs. | |
| It would make sense that that would have a correlation. | |
| Here's another correlation. | |
| They're all dense places. | |
| So maybe it has nothing to do with the air. | |
| They're just very populated places. | |
| And we'll see other populated places having exactly the same reaction. | |
| That's possible. We'll have to wait and see. | |
| And another correlation is that those are the only places that are being tested. | |
| So it could be that we only think those are the worst places because once discovered there was a lot of testing there. | |
| It could be, you know, just hypothetically, it could be that there's some clean air place in Aspen where there's a ton of it and we just haven't tested it yet. | |
| Could be. So here are the reasons, potential reasons, and we'll just speculate now. | |
| So there's no scientific backing? | |
| Well, a little bit. But not enough. | |
| So one of the reasons that air pollution might be hurting people is the obvious. | |
| It degrades people's lungs. | |
| So if your lungs are already degraded and you get a virus that hurts your lungs, could that more likely hurt you? | |
| The answer is yes, of course. | |
| If you add the air pollution to the fact that there are heavy smokers, well now it's twice as bad. | |
| You've got air pollution and you're smoking. | |
| So of course you get a virus in your lungs that's going to be bad. | |
| But there's some other more interesting things. | |
| Apparently vitamin D is, I think this is not 100% confirmed, but there's a lot of science that would suggest vitamin D is protective. | |
| And vitamin D you get from sun. | |
| And something you don't get when you're in a polluted place is enough sun. | |
| So could it be that high levels of pollution are making it more difficult for people to get their vitamin D, and you have entire populations that are more susceptible Because of the pollution and the vitamin D connection. | |
| Maybe. There's also a little bit of science but not enough to suggest that one of the ways that viruses travel is on dust. | |
| Now, does pollution operate the way dust does? | |
| Can a virus hitch a ride on some pollution and then travel further? | |
| Did you notice that the Chinese got things under control? | |
| They say I don't know. | |
| Do you believe it? It's hard to know. | |
| But China says that they're at least reducing the number of new cases, if you believe it, recently. | |
| But what else happened recently? | |
| All the traffic stopped because everything shut down in China. | |
| Enough so that the pollution went away. | |
| So you've seen the aerial photos. | |
| The pollution cleared up. | |
| So at the same time the pollution cleared up, The virus stops spreading at the same rate. | |
| Coincidence? I mean, it could be. | |
| Remember, everything we're talking about is probably a coincidence. | |
| So we're peering into lots of coincidences to see if there's anything that should be looked at a little bit further. | |
| Certainly we're not going to know anything, but we could know what to look at. | |
| There's also some indication that pollution directly lowers your immune response, whether that's from vitamin D or something else. | |
| So you've got several mechanisms by which pollution could be a big factor, which is really important to you. | |
| It's important to you because I'm going to make a prediction. | |
| And here's my prediction. | |
| That if you're in some place that is not that dense, Or has cleaner air, and you're not a smoker, you're going to be in a lot better shape. | |
| I think your odds of getting it if you live in a clean air environment are probably going to be a lot better. | |
| Now, this is speculation, but it's my prediction as well. | |
| It's my prediction that this is not an accidental correlation, that the air pollution probably has some impact. | |
| Now, as some people said, hey, what about... | |
| Well, I think most of the people in Seattle are from the cruise ship, right? | |
| So the cruise ship is bad air quality. | |
| And also, I imagine there are more elderly people. | |
| Now, I saw a video by somebody who is not credible, so I won't say that this is true, but we are not yet seeing full reporting on the genetic and or ethnic background of the people who are suffering the most. | |
| As far as I know, no African American has died from the coronavirus, as far as I know. | |
| There's at least one person who believes that 98% of the deaths are ethnic Chinese. | |
| Is that true? Even the ones in other countries appear to be ethnic Chinese who are having a bigger problem with it. | |
| Is that true? I would say that is an unknown at this point. | |
| It could be that it just seemed that way because of where the source was in Wuhan and people who were coming back and forth from there were more likely to be ethnic Chinese. | |
| So it could be a false correlation. | |
| But here's my prediction. | |
| You will not see a major outbreak unless there's some kind of a special case such as a nursing home or Some kind of weird cluster of people who are susceptible. | |
| So not counting special cases, I don't think you're going to see a major outbreak where there's low pollution and where the density is less crowded. | |
| I think those two factors may have something to do with it. | |
| All right. And if it's true that China is getting a hold on this and the number of new cases is reducing, if that's true... | |
| I mean, that is really good news. | |
| Because that must be the hardest situation. | |
| And if they can do it, it means we're probably in pretty good shape. | |
| Here's more of my prediction. | |
| I believe that the world economy... | |
| We'll figure a way out. | |
| So if you've looked at the range of predictions about the coronavirus, it goes from, hey, people, it's just a bad chest cold. | |
| Grandma was going to die anyway. | |
| You won't even notice. | |
| So that's at the lowest end of worry. | |
| At the highest end of worry, the economy suffers and civilization falls apart. | |
| I don't think that's going to happen. | |
| And here's why. At most, in the United States, I would expect that no more I don't think we'll see a point where any given company will have more than 20% of their employees sick at the same time. | |
| Can business go on if 20% of their employees are out sick? | |
| And the answer is, yeah, easily. | |
| Because Business can go on with 20% of the people out sick because we do it every summer. | |
| Every summer, 20% of the people are on vacation and business just goes on. | |
| So it's actually fairly easy to run a business if 20% of the people are home sick. | |
| So I think you're going to see a situation where people are going to realize that it is more important to prevent a depression and it's more important to have an income and to eat and pay taxes I think we'll probably put more resources into protecting them. | |
| But if you're 35, I think in a few weeks you're just going to go back to work and take your chances. | |
| And, you know, get a little chest cold for a week, probably that's your worst case. | |
| So, I'm also going to suggest that there might be some kind of genetic marker. | |
| It might not have anything to do with your ethnicity. | |
| It could be independent of ethnicity. | |
| But it could be that not everybody is equally at risk. | |
| I think we're going to know that pretty soon. | |
| Because we're certainly testing enough people, we could get their DNA... It won't be long before we know who is the most susceptible. | |
| And then you can plan accordingly. | |
| You can say, okay, if you're most susceptible, you do this stuff. | |
| The rest of us will keep the economy running because we're less susceptible. | |
| I think we're going to work that out. | |
| I think we're going to see an end of large outdoor events, but I predicted that a long time ago based on drones. | |
| I thought terrorism would become so good in terms of effective that outdoor events with large gatherings would probably become a thing of the past. | |
| And I think we're getting closer to that. | |
| This is just one more step. | |
| I do think the travel and entertainment industry is just going to get devastated, of course. | |
| But that will be the worst of it. | |
| I don't think the virus is going to travel on packages. | |
| And that means that most companies can, you know, make things and mail them to you and you're not going to worry about accepting them. | |
| So, you know, I guess the virus can live for, I don't know, up to a day on a package, but if it's been in the mail for a while, you're pretty safe. | |
| And I think we'll have a vaccine in a year or so. | |
| So, here's my prediction. | |
| We're going to get through this. | |
| There will be casualties. | |
| The odds of those casualties Casualties being you personally, really, really small in terms of death. | |
| The odds of it affecting you financially, 100%. | |
| 100%. | |
| It will affect you financially. | |
| But it's affecting us all financially. | |
| We're all in it together. | |
| And I would like to make this offer. | |
| If civilization breaks down, don't think it will. | |
| But look for me and I will be your benevolent dictator just to get us through the emergency and then we'll set up a constitution after that. | |
| Totally serious offer, by the way. | |
| Totally serious offer. | |
| Almost no chance you're ever going to need to take me up on it. | |
| But if the government fails, if civilization crumbles, you've watched me long enough to know that I'm just going to be helpful. | |
| I'm not going to become a dictator. | |
| Dictator's a bad job. Somebody always kills you. | |
| But if you need a benevolent dictator just to get you through a civilization crumbling event, which I don't think we're going to have, look for me, and I'll take you through it. |