My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Biden is racing cognitive decline to the DNC convention President Trump's coronavirus leadership Bill Mitchell's coronavirus tweets --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
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| Hey everybody, come on in here. | |
| It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| And because this is a special day, a Wednesday, I wore my finest sweatshirt. | |
| Yeah, I don't put this on every day. | |
| Not for everybody, but I did it for you. | |
| And if you would like to enjoy the simultaneous sip, all you need, you know what you need. | |
| Probably. You need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. | |
| Fill it with your favorite liquid. | |
| I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes absolutely everything, including coronavirus, better. | |
| It's a simultaneous sip. | |
| Go. Good morning from Seattle. | |
| Sanctuary Seattle. | |
| Sounds like you're locked in. | |
| If you go out in the streets, Antifa will beat you up. | |
| And you'll get the coronavirus. | |
| So stay down. | |
| Hunker down. Let's talk about some coronavirus stuff and some politics stuff, etc. | |
| I've come to a conclusion that President Trump's tool set is best used against people. | |
| In other words, if you say, hey Donald Trump, President Trump, I've got a person that you need to defeat, or you need to negotiate with them, or you need to win them over, and then the President says, ah, a person, I know how to deal with people. | |
| And then he goes and he does it, and he does it very well. | |
| The president is really, really, really good at getting a result with people. | |
| But I don't know that he's exactly the right person to have a battle with a virus. | |
| Because you can't really insult a virus. | |
| You can't beat a virus with getting more attention on TV. You can't reframe a virus. | |
| Pretty much the president's entire toolset is people-oriented. | |
| So he's struggling on this, if we're being honest. | |
| I mean, I wouldn't expect you to believe anything I say good about the president if I can't also say, well, in this area, this area is not ideal. | |
| And I don't think he's nailing it on the coronavirus, but as I've said, I don't think it'll make any difference because it's a weird kind of crisis. | |
| In which the president's involvement is the least important part. | |
| I mean, if you think about it, the president always has to be the one in charge and takes the blame and gets the credit. | |
| But how much is the president actually doing? | |
| Really, the only thing the president is doing is he assigned the right people. | |
| He's done. He closed the airports early. | |
| Pretty good. No question about that. | |
| Closing the airports early, good move by the President. | |
| But once he's got Pence on board, I'm sure he gets briefed a lot, but mostly his job is just talking to the public. | |
| And this isn't his best topic. | |
| Anyway, I was watching Jeopardy! | |
| last night and apparently I was one of the questions. | |
| Jeopardy has had me as or one of the answers or questions, whichever it is. | |
| So I can't tell you how weird my life is to turn on television and watch a Jeopardy question about myself. | |
| But that was fun. Van Jones is warning that because of the primary last night, and it looks like Biden's got a commanding lead, that if and when Bernie fails, There are going to be a lot of people who are really wound up who lost their champion. | |
| And I like the way he put it. | |
| They're losing their champion, meaning that they have an emotional connection to this thing. | |
| And that's really unpredictable. | |
| And as he points out, there's a lot of energy there and there are emotions, and you don't know where that's going to go. | |
| So it's very dangerous for the Democrats. | |
| Somebody is reminding me in the comments. | |
| I was saying yesterday that whoever cancelled... | |
| Well, I was saying yesterday that the big rallies should be cancelled. | |
| Now apparently the president doesn't have any scheduled. | |
| So the president didn't have anything to cancel. | |
| He was just obviously smart enough not to schedule anything. | |
| Whereas Bernie had to actually cancel something and then I think Biden followed on and cancelled some other thing. | |
| And I thought to myself, Oh man, the president missed this too. | |
| He's so good at picking up free money. | |
| You know, I say this all the time. | |
| If the president walks by a table and there's some money laying there, and he looks around and doesn't seem to belong to anybody, he's usually the smartest one, and he says, does anybody have this money? | |
| Does this belong to anybody? | |
| No? Nobody? | |
| Well, I guess I'll pick up this free money. | |
| And he does it in lots of different situations, and he had free money sitting on the table For this situation of canceling big events. | |
| Because whoever went first looks like the leader. | |
| And whoever goes second looks like a follower. | |
| So the free money is if you know you're going to cancel your events anyway, you might as well announce it. | |
| Go first and be a leader. | |
| It forces everybody else to be a MeToo player who doesn't get as much attention. | |
| And when they do, it's for being a follower. | |
| So the president should have very early said, I'm canceling all my events, even if he didn't have any scheduled. | |
| He should have just said, you know, I'm not going to have any more rallies, I'll go first. | |
| It would have immediately forced Sanders and Biden to do the same, but it was going to happen anyway. | |
| Didn't everybody know that the rallies were eventually going to get cancelled? | |
| If it's going to happen anyway, take the free money, go first. | |
| Again, the president missed this opportunity, I think. | |
| But Bernie took it. | |
| Now, I've said, provocatively, that Bernie is having one of his best weeks. | |
| Now you say to yourself, Scott, Scott, Scott. | |
| Why do you say that when he just got hammered in this latest series of primaries? | |
| So Biden took the lead. | |
| He's got a commanding lead. | |
| It looks like the states that are upcoming are favorable to Biden. | |
| And all the smart people are saying Biden's just going to lock it down. | |
| But... But... | |
| Here's the thing. | |
| There's sort of a contest going on. | |
| There's a race within the race. | |
| There's one race that's the candidates against the other candidates. | |
| That's the one we talk about. | |
| But there's another race that's happening right under our eyes, and we all see it, but we haven't talked about it this way. | |
| And it's the race to get Biden nominated before his mental decline becomes so obvious that it can't happen. | |
| And if you've been watching the clips lately of Biden, it's looking like he's fading fast. | |
| And that's confirmed by the fact that his campaign is keeping him away from the stage. | |
| You don't put your candidate on the stage for only seven minutes. | |
| If you think he's got the goods. | |
| Nobody would do that. | |
| So it's obvious that the campaign knows he's failing, and failing fast. | |
| And it's probably, to me, to my eyes, to my non-medical eyes, and I'll put the caution on that everybody should put on this, which is we're not doctors. | |
| We can't diagnose things by looking at people on TV. Unless it's so obvious that even a non-doctor could see it. | |
| And I think we're at that point. | |
| I think we're well beyond the point where you'd have to have a medical degree to look at Joe Biden and say there's something wrong. | |
| Now, I don't know specifically what's wrong. | |
| I don't know how to treat it. | |
| I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I'm not blind. | |
| I have eyes. I have a brain. | |
| I can see what's happening. Anybody can see it. | |
| If it were your relative, you could see it easily. | |
| So here's the real contest. | |
| The real contest is that Biden's support is growing while his mental acuity is declining. | |
| If that crossover happens before the convention, and it looks like there's a good chance that could happen. | |
| There's a good chance that could happen. | |
| Because there's nobody who doesn't see it at this point. | |
| Anybody who says they don't is sort of lying. | |
| I think it was, was it from Congress? | |
| F-R-U-M, I forget his first name, David, who tweeted that people pretending they can see Biden's mental problems are kidding themselves. | |
| But that's sort of a desperate last move. | |
| It's pretty clear that the Democrats can see it at this point. | |
| So, if Biden crashes and burns before the convention just because of his own decline, Do you look at Bernie? | |
| What if Bernie is still in the race, still has the most votes without being Biden, and Biden's mental faculty has declined to the point where the Democrats say, okay, okay, we've got to stop this. | |
| It's going to be really close, isn't it? | |
| Am I wrong? | |
| So what day is the convention exactly? | |
| But it looks like it's going to be close. | |
| He might completely fall apart before he actually gets on the convention stage. | |
| Now, if he gets to the convention, I think he'll get nominated. | |
| And then it's all about the vice president. | |
| So we'll see. All right. | |
| President Trump keeps being asked whether he's going to be tested for the virus because he shook hands at CPAC or something. | |
| And His answer is just the worst answer. | |
| I mean, he's just not performing at his usual level for this crisis. | |
| And Trump answers that he feels fine. | |
| And I just cringed. | |
| I was like, oh, that's not why you get tested. | |
| You don't get tested just because you're not feeling fine. | |
| You get tested because you're the commander-in-chief and you've been exposed and it's just a test. | |
| Do you think somebody in the country could maybe give up a test so the president could get tested? | |
| I think that would be a worthy trade-off. | |
| We do put resources into protecting our leader greater than the resources we put into protecting any individual and most of us think that's a good idea. | |
| Because the leader influences all of us. | |
| So here's what the president should say instead of that terrible, terrible answer that he feels good. | |
| Oh my God. | |
| That's just so bad. | |
| Here's what he should say. | |
| He should say, I delegate that decision to my doctor, you know, the White House physician. | |
| If he wants me to get tested, I will. | |
| But I'm not the expert, so I'm not a doctor. | |
| I'm going to let the expert tell me when to be tested. | |
| He hasn't told me to do that. | |
| Now, if he said that, wouldn't you feel a little bit more comfortable? | |
| But when he comes out and says, I'm not getting tested and I feel great, that makes you feel like he doesn't understand the problem. | |
| Because there are a lot of people without symptoms. | |
| And that's really the biggest part of the problem. | |
| If the only people who could spread it Were people who showed symptoms, we'd be in good shape. | |
| Because we'd just say, ah, symptoms. | |
| Stay away from that one. | |
| So, I don't know. | |
| I don't think the President could have done much worse in answering that question, but he should just defer to his physician next time. | |
| Let's see, what else is going on? | |
| I feel as if people don't quite understand The strategy for dealing with the coronavirus. | |
| And here's the main thing you need to know. | |
| That if we can slow it down enough, it won't overwhelm our systems. | |
| And that we're not exactly trying to save lives compared to other flus or other problems. | |
| And if we're doing that too, you would of course try to save lives. | |
| But that's not the strategy. | |
| Saving lives is just sort of what you do. | |
| You always try to save lives. | |
| But the strategy is to spread out the impact. | |
| So we're trying to do our social distancing and hand washing and closing events and stuff. | |
| That's not supposed to stop it. | |
| We don't have a problem we can stop. | |
| We do have a problem that we, with great confidence, we know we can flatten out the problem. | |
| And if we flatten it out and spread it out enough, then the hospitals will not be overrun, the businesses could potentially stay open, and we can get through it with some predictable amount of pain. | |
| So it's all about the flattening of it. | |
| I didn't want to do what I'm going to do now, but I feel like it's a public service, so I'm going to do it. | |
| I've been watching Bill Mitchell tweeting all week, various different ways. | |
| He's saying that the panic is overdone on this virus. | |
| And that really the panic is indicative of a political process, not scientific or medical. | |
| So here's one of his tweets today. | |
| So this is Bill Mitchell. | |
| He says, H1N1, I guess that was, was that the swine flu? | |
| It's a fancy name. | |
| In 2009 infected 61 million Americans. | |
| 61 freaking million. | |
| COVID-19, he goes on, has infected 1,000. | |
| COVID-19 has received 10,000 times the media coverage that H1N1 received. | |
| And then Bill Mitchell concludes, he says, yes, folks, it's all political. | |
| Now, I ignored the first few times he did this, because I like him. | |
| I've been on his show and stuff. | |
| But at this point, it's sort of a public service that I stop this right now. | |
| Don't you agree? Because the problem here, and I think most of you can tell, is that he's comparing an apple to an orange during an emergency. | |
| And if you compare an apple to an orange during an emergency, what are the odds you're going to make the right decisions? | |
| None, right? | |
| It's just a faulty comparison. | |
| And the reason that you can't compare this coronavirus to any prior flu is that the experts have told you unambiguously it doesn't act like those other ones. | |
| So those other ones were plenty scary, and it was with great effort that we got them under control. | |
| But the experts, Bill Mitchell, do not say this one is like those other ones, except in name. | |
| You know, they're viruses, I guess. | |
| But otherwise, the curve and what it does to you is different. | |
| For example, the other ones affected children. | |
| This one affects children far less. | |
| This one is far more deadly to old people. | |
| And maybe more viral as well. | |
| Well, I think some of the differences are like if you're looking at Ebola, for example, people died pretty quickly so they couldn't spread it. | |
| So these are just completely different problems. | |
| So when Bill Mitchell compares coronavirus, which with all of the effort of the United States has been so far in the earliest stages held to a thousand people, He's comparing a full national effort in the very beginning of a problem to a mature problem that's a different problem that happened some other time. | |
| That's not a good comparison. | |
| It's just not a good comparison. | |
| And if you try to draw a conclusion from that comparison, that therefore it's all political, you are really damaging the country, in my opinion. | |
| Because the country needs to know that this isn't like the other ones. | |
| Because knowing that is what causes you to modify your behavior. | |
| If you don't modify your behavior, this is going to be like Italy. | |
| So I use the example of Italy and Iran because their hospitals are already overrun. | |
| So we've got some social media reports from doctors in Italian hospitals to say that they're already canceling optional surgeries. | |
| And if it continues to get worse, they're going to be canceling mandatory surgeries because they only have so much resources and they're filled up. | |
| So we don't have to wonder if this virus has the potential to overwhelm our healthcare system because we can watch it. | |
| We watch it happen in other countries who are not doing as good a job. | |
| Now the fact that we're doing A better job than, say, maybe Italy was in the United States might have to do with the fact that we got an earlier start. | |
| Maybe they got infected before they knew as much as we did. | |
| There are a lot of differences. | |
| They have older people. Maybe there's more smoking. | |
| There could be lots of things that are different. | |
| But when you're watching that, the one thing you do know is that it can kill enough people to overwhelm your medical resources. | |
| That's not in question anymore. | |
| We don't have to question whether this virus, if we let it, would kill more people than our healthcare system can handle. | |
| We don't have to wonder. That's an answered question. | |
| Because Italy has already demonstrated that. | |
| And I think Iran, too, but we have less information. | |
| So, Bill Mitchell, please stop comparing this to any other flu. | |
| Because while we don't want to panic, we do want people to know that if they don't modify their behavior... | |
| This one is not going to be as kind as the other ones. | |
| That's a known fact. | |
| All right. And I don't really see this politically being a... | |
| I just don't see it a political thing. | |
| All right. What else we got going on here? | |
| I'm going to recant and take back everything I said about Russia and oil prices and Saudi Arabia. | |
| You all know the story that Russia lowered prices and Saudi Arabia lowered prices and there's an oil price war that could drive our American shale business into bankruptcy because shale costs more to produce Then both Saudi Arabia and Russia can produce. | |
| So if they pump more oil, nobody buys our shale oil because there's plenty of cheaper oil to buy instead. | |
| So what I said was that Russia was attacking basically Saudi Arabia and the United States to take out our shale business. | |
| But I read another opinion from somebody who seemed pretty smart. | |
| Who said that's backwards. | |
| It's actually Saudi Arabia who's taking out Russia and the US shale business. | |
| And I think, well, maybe both are true. | |
| So whatever's happening there is a little bit opaque, at least to me. | |
| Maybe somebody understands what's going on. | |
| But I think the USGL business is in a lot of trouble. | |
| Somebody says, every flu you hear the same thing. | |
| Apparently, there's somebody who's still not convinced that this flu is different. | |
| Let me just take it down to one element for you to check. | |
| If you think this flu is not as scary as the media is telling you, then you'd have to explain why Italy is having so much trouble. | |
| Now, sure, I get it. | |
| Italy has fewer hospital beds and They don't have the facilities of South Korea or even maybe China, I don't know, or the United States. | |
| But Italy did not have their healthcare system crash with prior flus. | |
| So you have to explain why it did. | |
| If you can't explain that, you have to stop saying it's the same as prior flus. | |
| If you can explain it, please tell the rest of us because nobody else can explain it except that the flu has a It has a nastier nature for extra old people. | |
| Alright. Just an update on me because it ties into this COVID stuff. | |
| I've got some medical procedures upcoming and I'm really concerned because I don't want to be into a situation where I've got a surgery scheduled and I don't know if our healthcare system is still working. | |
| But today I'm going to go get my head examined, literally, with an MRI to see if my sinuses can be operated on. | |
| And I don't know about scheduling the surgery now. | |
| It seems like a dicey time to even have something scheduled. | |
| I suppose if I get through the surgery and I get my pain meds, I'll be okay because I just have to recover. | |
| But it's just a terrible time to have some unrelated medical problem that you need the healthcare system to deal with, because you just don't know if it'll be there in a month. | |
| It'll at least be there and available to you. | |
| It might be crashed by then. | |
| Will coronavirus kill the job market? | |
| Well, the entire economy is getting depressed because anything that requires people to leave their house and spend money is at risk. | |
| So there are tons of people who are going to lose a lot of income on this. | |
| I don't know what's going to happen. But it's a weird kind of crisis because there are a whole bunch of businesses that will do better. | |
| I mean, certainly the grocery and the Toilet paper business are just doing better, right? | |
| They're not doing worse. | |
| So it's a weird crisis in that some things will do better while some things will be completely whacked. | |
| Somebody says have them test for TDS while in there. | |
| Looking in my head, that's a good idea. | |
| We'll see if there's any in there. They'll have it removed. | |
| Yeah, somebody says, is it possible for you to wait or is it better to get on with it? | |
| I'll make that decision pretty soon. | |
| But it's going to be close. | |
| The last thing I want to do is walk into a medical facility. | |
| Because at some point there's going to be a crossover. | |
| We're going to the medical facility to get something fixed that was dangerous, so you've got to get it fixed. | |
| It might be more dangerous than staying away from... | |
| It might be more dangerous to go to a healthcare facility and be exposed to God knows what. | |
| Because it isn't yet. | |
| I mean, at the moment, I wouldn't worry about it. | |
| But we're getting close. | |
| A month from now, do you think you would go to a hospital for a regular problem? | |
| Maybe not. Maybe not. | |
| All right. People who have cabin fever after this. | |
| Yeah, I'm starting to get a little squirrely myself because I keep forgetting that I'm not supposed to leave the house. | |
| And I find that I'm keeping score. | |
| I don't know if you're doing that yet. | |
| But I'm keeping score of how many social contacts I have. | |
| So if in a normal world I would have, you know, ten social contacts, I'm trying to cut that down to, you know, two or three. | |
| Because I don't have to eliminate my social contact. | |
| I just have to get it down to a number where the coronavirus can't spread as quickly as it would. | |
| So here's my count. | |
| I've shaken one hand in total since the coronavirus started, or two, maybe two. | |
| I'm going to go to zero. | |
| Both of those cases where I wasn't thinking, but in other cases where people have offered to shake hands, I've refused. | |
| And even walking down the sidewalk, I took a walk yesterday and somebody was just walking on the sidewalk in the other direction. | |
| And we did this like really wide passing. | |
| So I would think I've got my social contacts down. | |
| If I had to guess, I think I've reduced my social interactions by 80%, the personal ones. | |
| Somebody says their FedEx guy has coronavirus. | |
| Well, that's not good. | |
| Somebody says there's going to be a baby boom in nine months. | |
| Maybe. All right. | |
| All the bleach was caught at the market. | |
| My supermarket, my stores have everything except cleaning supplies. | |
| So all of the Clorox wipes and stuff, they all disappear pretty quickly. | |
| But plenty of food. | |
| I don't think we're going to run into food. | |
| Alright, that's all I've got for now. |