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March 14, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams

01:12:20

Episode 850 Scott Adams: #WuFlu and Coffee

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Joe Biden attempts to do a live stream US coronavirus strategy...herd immunity Less testing increases herd immunity President Trump still shakes hands? Did John Bolton close a pandemic handling department? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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	Hey everybody, get in here.
	It's time to talk about the coronavirus.
	Are you sick of the coronavirus yet?
	Now we have to talk about it because it's affecting everything and it's the only thing happening.
	Of consequence. So we'll be talking about that, but I am so sick of the coronavirus, and we've got a lot more coming.
	So, let's do our best.
	Join together, try to make this a perfect day.
	DJ Dr. Funk Juice, good to see you, as always.
	And before we get started, I think we need to do a little thing called the simultaneous hip and all you need.
	Here's a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or 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 of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the coronavirus.
	It's called the simultaneous hip and it happens now.
	Go. Someone says, what if it's all a hoax?
	Well, That was a good question a few weeks ago.
	It's not a good question anymore.
	The ratio of people who are saying it's just the flu and it's a hoax and it's all overblown, I'd say that ratio went from half or 80% or whatever it was down to, well, there's not much of that anymore.
	But let's talk about what we've learned.
	I didn't watch Bill Maher last night, but he makes so much news that you could always read about it the next day.
	And I read some of his quotes when he was talking about Biden.
	And I guess I have the answer to a question that I've been wondering for a long time.
	And it goes like this.
	And I know you've probably had the same question, right?
	And it goes like this.
	When Trump was first running for president, all the Democrats were saying some version of this to me.
	Scott, can't you see it?
	Can't you see the problem here?
	Are you blind?
	Why are we all seeing there's something wrong with Trump, but you don't see it?
	What's wrong with you? Why can't you see it?
	Now, I of course thought the answer was, That they were having TDS, and I was not, and that he would be good for the economy and trade deals and stuff like that.
	And I think largely that has been true, if you don't count the coronavirus.
	But that gets to my question, which is, don't the Democrats see what's happening with Biden?
	Can't they see it?
	I mean, it's not really subtle anymore, is it?
	Maybe a year ago you couldn't see it.
	Maybe a year ago you'd say, oh, maybe that is his stutter or something.
	But what about right now?
	Is there any Democrat who's been watching any of the videos of Biden recently who doesn't see it?
	I mean, actually, it's not a rhetorical question.
	I'm actually intensely curious about this.
	I don't know what they're seeing, because they're not going to tell you exactly.
	But I think Bill Maher came pretty close.
	And I'm going to paraphrase and read his mind and all the things that you shouldn't do, so Bill Maher will have to give you his own opinion if you really want to know what it is.
	But in context, and I've talked to other people who have a similar kind of vibe to them, I told you that my one friend said that he would vote for a pile of old magazines before he would vote for Trump.
	And I thought, haha, that's funny.
	And then I thought, no, he means it.
	He would actually vote for a pile of old magazines over Trump.
	He would vote for anything. It doesn't even matter what it is.
	I think we've actually gotten to that point where the candidate isn't even part of the question anymore.
	Is it? Because if Biden were part of the decision in any way, it'd be, oh, I guess we've got to have another four years of Trump.
	At least he can function.
	But it's not even part of the question.
	We've gone so far into ridiculousness that whether the candidate has a functioning brain, will be alive or dead after election, will Doesn't even matter.
	I mean, that's actually what's happening.
	And I believe I'm not exaggerating.
	I believe that people are saying, you know, we don't even care if he survives a week after he gets elected.
	We don't care if, you know...
	They're feeding him with a spoon and he doesn't know his name.
	I think we're being told that directly at this point.
	So Bill Maher seemed to clearly understand there's something wrong with Biden.
	So again, I don't want to read his mind, but I will say that he did indicate that he is aware that it's pretty obvious something wrong with Biden and still wants him to be elected.
	So he's saying it kind of directly.
	It's an amazingly absurd situation that you could only get there gradually.
	You know, the old thing about how to boil a frog, you know, you do it gradually.
	But, you know, if we'd started from nothing and said, okay, hey, everybody, we're thinking about running some Democrats against President Trump.
	We don't have any names in mind.
	But we've got this idea.
	We're going to run this guy who will be in his 80s if he gets elected.
	He's not very competent.
	He's not very accomplished.
	He's not good at talking to people.
	And by the way, there's something seriously wrong with his mental acuity.
	But that's who we're going to run against Trump.
	Now, if somebody had said that on day one, you would say, oh, that's pretty funny.
	No, you're kidding, right?
	That can't be serious.
	You're not actually going to run this shell of somebody who used to have a brain against Trump.
	The one person who will not pull any punches because your brain's not working?
	You don't expect Trump to pull any punches.
	So the only way you can get to this place is by this gradual series of events where it's sort of slowly building there to the point where people are actually willing to vote for a brain-dead guy over the current president.
	Truly amazing. It tells you a lot about people.
	None of it's good. All right.
	Did anybody see Biden's attempt...
	Attempt at doing a live stream, some kind of a town hall situation.
	Oh. My.
	God. If you haven't seen it, go look for it.
	It's in my Twitter feed and it's all over Twitter.
	It's pretty easy to find. So the basics of it are that since the physical rallies in person were cancelled, Biden was trying to do the best he could.
	He used Zoom, a technology for sending out your stuff.
	And was Zoom live?
	I think they tried to do it live.
	And they just couldn't make it work.
	The sound didn't work. And then the worst part, Biden didn't seem to understand that he needed to look at the camera.
	Because he starts wandering around.
	He actually wandered off the camera.
	He was holding his phone in his hand.
	Now this part is not his fault, exactly.
	But it kind of is. So the sound didn't work the way it was supposed to with whatever kind of microphones they had set up.
	So because it's Zoom, you have a second way to do it.
	You can use your telephone as your microphone, basically.
	So you had Biden standing up there holding his phone like this and talking into it.
	But if you were watching it, you'd say to yourself, because you wouldn't know why he was doing that, you'd say, is that an old man who doesn't know there's a microphone and he thinks he's talking into his phone?
	Now, it turns out he had to do it that way because of the technical problems.
	But if you were just tuning in to watch it, it would look like he didn't understand how anything worked.
	Now, that wasn't his fault, exactly.
	But he didn't make it any better.
	So I really don't see how anybody under the age of 70 could see that video and say, well, there's the guy.
	Got to get more of that.
	That's what we want, leading us in an emergency.
	All right, let's talk about China.
	So there's...
	And I guess I need a fact check or a logic check on this.
	Because I have a point of view that I'm pretty confident about that doesn't seem to make any sense, which bothers me, of course.
	And it goes like this. China's strategy against the Wuhan virus, not a racist, it looks like they're trying to eradicate it.
	In other words, just stop it.
	And they've done one heck of a good job, it looks like.
	I mean, from the outside, you can't really tell.
	But from the outside, it would look like they've done an amazing job, given the size of the challenge and the size of the country and all that.
	Slow clap, amazing, great job, rising to the challenge, etc.
	But there's just one problem.
	Their strategy seems to be to try to stop it.
	But our strategy is to just slow it down.
	How does our strategy live in the same world with their strategy?
	Because our strategy is not to stop it.
	And our guys say that pretty directly.
	You have to let enough people get infected Until it's hard for it to spread after that point.
	So you protect the old people, you slow it down so the hospitals are not overwhelmed, you let the young people who don't suffer too much from it get it, and then the old people can leave the house because all the younger people who might have infected them, you know, enough of them have gotten it and gotten over it and have some kind of immunity that the old people would be safe.
	So our strategy, I'm no expert, but based on what the experts say every day, it looks like our strategy is not only completely reasonable, but it's doable.
	It's really hard, but it's doable.
	We're just going to protect the weak, build up a herd of immunity.
	But how in the world is that compatible with China's problem?
	China's strategy is to stop all of it.
	They can't have one person in China who has this flu and doesn't get immediately quarantined because it's going to spread.
	So, correct me if I'm wrong, but because our strategy is guaranteed to work with some amount of extreme pain, but it's guaranteed to work, we don't have any doubt That when we get to the end of it and enough people have been exposed, that we'll be okay. That seems to be a solid assumption by all the experts.
	Now, there's a rumor going around that you can be infected and reinfected, and I would say that the experts are not saying that.
	It was a rumor on the internet, but when you listen to the experts talk, they talk about herd immunity, which means that it's not a case of once you get it, you can get it 100 times again.
	So there must be immunity.
	So I wouldn't believe the internet rumors that there's something unique about this particular one, that it's the only one you can't get an immunity to.
	That doesn't seem to be demonstrated.
	But the point is, the only way that China's strategy of eradicating it would work is if the rest of the world did the same thing and succeeded, but they can't.
	So China has a strategy that can't work.
	What are they going to have to do when they realize that their strategy can't work?
	There isn't any chance it would work.
	There's none. It's not like it's a long shot.
	It's a zero shot.
	And I think every expert would agree with me on this.
	I think everyone, 100%, would agree that it can't work.
	So here's what's going to happen, I think.
	I think the United States is going to get ravaged, but We'll pull through.
	Because we're pretty good at pulling through.
	And when I say ravaged, I mean most of you won't even have anything except a few weeks off of work or whatever, some inconvenience.
	But old people might be dying at a higher rate, and it's going to press our medical staff and inconvenience us and whack our economy for a while.
	But I think the United States has decided to pull off the Band-Aid.
	You know what I mean? We have to get it to get past it.
	I think the United States said, alright, that's our plan.
	If there's only one way to get there, that's the way we're going to go.
	China seems to have picked a plan which, for political reasons, looks terrific.
	So if you're the outside world and you're looking at China, you're saying, wow, that's terrific, China.
	Look at what you've done, the sacrifice you've done, and that's protecting the world.
	And it probably is. And by the way, thank you, China.
	Again, I'm not loving the government over there, but it can be said that the individual Chinese citizens fighting hard to stop this thing have done a solid service for the rest of the world.
	It wasn't their fault. The average Chinese healthcare emergency person, it's not their fault the virus got out.
	They're just sacrificing their life to stop it.
	So thank you, sincerely.
	The government's another question, of course.
	But it seems to me that China is going to have to adopt our strategy.
	And when they do, let's do some numbers.
	Let's say, best case scenario, they can get it down to a 2% death rate.
	Now, in other countries, we have hope it could be under 1%.
	South Korea, maybe that will be our experience.
	Italy is higher. Let's just pick a number.
	Let's just say that China could get it down to 2%.
	But eventually they're going to have to let people get it, because that's the only way they're going to get past it.
	So they'll have to give up on their trying to eradicate it and locking down everything.
	They have to open for business eventually, or else everybody will starve to death.
	When they open for business, it's going to go right back to where it was, because it has to.
	There isn't really any possibility China won't go right back to where it was.
	Right? I mean, seriously, there's no possibility that it won't ravage the country as soon as they stop locking people down.
	So, if it does, they've got, what, 1.3 billion people over there.
	What's 2% of 1.3 billion?
	Yeah, we're talking about World War II-level casualties just in China.
	And I think that's inevitable.
	Because again, you know, somebody says vaccine, but the vaccine's probably 18 months off, and I don't know how effective it will be, and I'm not really sure we can make one.
	Maybe we can. So is China trying to eradicate it until the vaccine comes out?
	Because they can't wait 18 months.
	There's no way they'd wait 18 months.
	I think they're going to have to loosen things up in a month or two, and then it's just going to ravage the country again.
	So I think the U.S. is going to come out better because our strategy is better than their strategy.
	Now maybe they had to do it the way they're doing it just to sort of slow it down and get a handle on it, but ultimately they're going to have to adopt our strategy, and when they do, Because of the size of the population, it could be 40 million people dead just in China.
	Now, we might get it down to, say, 1%, and then we might have half a million, 1.5 million at risk here as well.
	But it would be the older people who we already know are at risk.
	Now, here's some good news.
	If you can call it that. You know, good news is relative.
	But the world is...
	a lot of countries are handling things differently, which means that we have massive A-B testing.
	So we can look at South Korea and all the other countries and say, all right, what worked and what didn't work?
	Now, that's a rare situation.
	You don't normally have this many laboratories working simultaneously.
	And some of these laboratories are going to come up with good results and some are not.
	So it's very likely that the result of all these different approaches is that we'll find one that works best, people will know it, you know, because everybody's communicating, and they'll quickly adopt the best practices.
	At the moment, we have pretty good practices.
	But clearly, given that everybody's doing things a little bit differently, there is something that's a best practice.
	We just don't know what it is yet.
	We're getting close. Let me give you some examples.
	So in China, some of the things they're doing differently is they have portable CT scanners.
	What? Where's my portable CT scanner?
	I just had a CT scan.
	I had to go to the office and get on this big bed, and it's got these things that pass over you, and it's a big operation.
	But China apparently has lots A portable CT scan equipment, which apparently is really helpful because they can scan you and I guess there's something visible in the lungs that can confirm the virus.
	So if you have a portable CT scan, as they do in China, that's one of several ways that they have of testing.
	Now, why is it we don't have portable CT scans in the United States?
	That's a question for you.
	Why don't we have them?
	Or do we? Do we?
	I don't know, but I did a little bit of research into medical expenses some time ago when I was trying to understand for myself why everything is so expensive.
	Where are all the costs in this big budget of healthcare?
	Where's all the cost? One of the things I found Is that there was a story of somebody who had, and I'm just operating from memory here, so I probably get some of the facts wrong.
	I believe there was somebody who invented an MRI machine that was like a tenth of the cost.
	And red tape prevented him from building it and selling it.
	That's right. Red tape in the United States prevented a guy from building and selling a device he'd already invented.
	We know it works. He built it.
	He built it and it works.
	It was like a tenth of the cost.
	And he just couldn't do it because of the red tape.
	Now, China's got all these portable CT machines that don't work as well as the big ones.
	But in a pinch, they can at least tell if you've got some visible signs in your lungs.
	And my guess, I have no reason to believe this is true from facts, it's just experiential, I would guess this is true, I'll bet we couldn't get that built in this country.
	Somebody says define portable.
	That's a good question. I was assuming it was, you know, hand-carried, but portable might mean something else.
	You're absolutely right. It could mean you put it on the truck and take it somewhere.
	You know, it could be a bigger unit.
	I don't know. But the point is they have lots of them and they're portable.
	I don't think we have that.
	I would bet that that's something that the president could fix with an executive order, meaning that there's something stopping those from getting built Probably.
	And it's probably the government.
	Alright, so that's one thing.
	The other thing that China's doing is temperature testing every time you exit or enter a building, apparently.
	So they must have lots of access to portable temperature-taking devices.
	I don't know if we have enough of those.
	And they're doing that.
	We're not doing that. But it makes more sense that they're doing it because they're trying to eradicate it, it looks like.
	And we're not. We're actually not trying to stop it.
	That's such an important distinction.
	If you don't understand that in the United States we're not trying to stop it, just slow it down, then nothing else will make sense to you.
	Because you'll say, well, why are some kids still, you know, why are we people going out in public if we're trying to stop it?
	And the answer is we're not. Here's another one.
	In Germany, Apparently, and this is information from Ken on the internet and some sources, so everything I say on this should be subject to fact-checking.
	But apparently Germany is recommending or pushing pneumonia vaccines.
	Because if one of the reasons that people die is that the virus causes pneumonia, and that's the pneumonia that's the cause of death, Germany seems to think That the pneumonia vaccine is helping.
	Now, I don't know if I've had a pneumonia vaccine.
	That might be another one of the variables.
	For example, how many of the Italian senior citizens have taken the pneumonia vaccine?
	I have no idea. How many people in South Korea have had the pneumonia vaccine?
	No idea. How many in the United States?
	I don't even know if I've had it.
	Because I'm over 50, so I'm a candidate for the vaccination.
	I think my health care provider would have given it to me.
	No? Or do I have to ask for it?
	I don't even know how that works.
	So it's a big question.
	Then the other thing that China does is, if anybody has symptoms, they separate them from family immediately.
	Could we do that?
	Do you think we could put children in cages in this country?
	I'm saying it in a provocative way, but you see what I'm getting at, right?
	If the United States started separating parents from their kids, it's going to look like kids in cages pretty quickly.
	But China's doing that.
	If you've got the flu, you're not going to see your family for three months.
	They take you immediately to a quarantine type of place.
	But again...
	We're not trying to stop it here.
	We're just trying to slow it down.
	Now, I tweeted around a great article talking about the difference in the old people in Italy versus South Korea.
	And apparently Italy's big problem is they just have lots of senior citizens.
	So, you know, it's no surprise that they had more deaths and problems in hospitals, etc.
	That might explain the entire difference between Italy and everything else, but there might be one other difference.
	In this country, one of our biggest problems might turn out to be one of our biggest lifesavers.
	Which is, in this country, if you're a senior citizen, you're likely to be turned down to pasture to go live in isolation by yourself and die in loneliness.
	Maybe you have a partner, maybe you don't.
	But in this country, we kind of isolate senior citizens.
	They often have kind of lonely, lonely lives.
	Is that the same in Italy?
	so I don't know.
	In Italy, are you likely to be living with your family if you're 80?
	Let's delete that guy who's talking about my dead stepson.
	I don't know how that was appropriate.
	Somebody says, no visitors to nursing homes.
	I wonder if in this country we are socially so, let's say, hostile to our elder citizens Which could not be more obvious than the fact that the boomer remover is a hashtag that's trending.
	Literally the idea of culling the herd of all the old boomers.
	The young people are sort of celebrating a little bit, sometimes privately, sometimes not.
	We have a weird culture where old people are disrespected and therefore put out to die in isolation.
	Could that help us?
	I mean, it's a horrible situation.
	Horrible. But it might have something to do with why Italy has so much problems, and maybe we would not.
	We'll see. The schools in my area closed.
	Have your schools closed?
	So here's my question.
	So yesterday I was saying what I really, really, really need, just as a parent slash step-parent, is I really need the government to issue some guidelines about what to do with the kids who are not going to school, because the schools are closed.
	Can they play with friends?
	Can they play with one friend?
	If one friend comes over the house, is that okay?
	Because remember, we're not trying to stop it, just trying to slow it down.
	So, My current thinking is that kids can play with friends while they're not at school, but we should limit the number as if you could really do that.
	Because once they leave the house, if a kid leaves the house and goes to a friend's house, you have no control.
	All of their friends could meet at that other house.
	So it's probably going to be a lot of kids getting together, but not nearly as much as if they were in school.
	So it definitely makes a difference.
	But what is the guideline?
	How many should you let your kids leave the house?
	I need some guidelines from my government.
	I saw a suggestion going around the internet which I embrace.
	Restaurants are just going to get just absolutely killed.
	Because restaurants seem like the kind of place you don't want to go when there's a flu epidemic.
	Peggy Noonan tweeted, and I think other people had this idea as well, that you should buy gifts if you're in a position where your income is not going to go down because of all this stuff.
	A lot of people will be in that position.
	So a lot of people, if you work for a Fortune 500 company, you work from home, but otherwise your income would be about the same.
	So if your income is about the same and you are going to eat at restaurants, but you're not, It would be really helpful to the restaurant if you bought a gift certificate.
	Because it could help them through the tough times.
	But in order to buy that gift certificate, you have to walk into the restaurant in most cases.
	So, yeah, that's sort of a trade-off there.
	But it's not a terrible idea.
	If we can find ways to help the local businesses, you should do it.
	So... You know, Ivanka Trump retweeted me yesterday, my tweet about, we'll see more human ingenuity in the next two weeks than you could imagine.
	It will be breathtaking.
	You know, you're seeing it already, but the level of genius that is being applied to this is a global level that we've never seen before.
	I mean, this is similar to the Manhattan Project on a global scale.
	You know, the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb It worked because the smartest people we could find were put in one place to do it.
	But now the smartest people on the entire globe, at least smart in this specific way, are engaged in this one task.
	We've never had this before.
	And it looks to me like the inventions, the thinking that comes out of this is going to be just amazing.
	We could easily come out of this with a solution to coronaviruses, which seems even impossible.
	I guess four people at Mar-a-Lago have tested positive.
	Four people have been there at one time or another.
	The president's doctor has now said that the president should not get tested.
	And the reasoning from the doctor is that the The people that the president had contact with, which were known to eventually test positive for the virus, that those people were not showing symptoms at the time that the president interacted with them.
	I don't know. Maybe we need to get rid of the president at this point.
	I'll just complete the thought.
	The entire expert community is telling us that people can carry the virus before they are symptomatic.
	The doctors...
	I'm sorry, the president's doctor...
	I sounded like Joe Biden there for a moment.
	The president's doctor is saying in public, in the middle of the crisis, the opposite of what the experts in this virus are telling us.
	Now... I don't know how you can have confidence in your president if he doesn't get tested under these conditions.
	Because the whole point is he's trying to lead us to take extra precautions.
	And he's modeling the opposite behavior.
	It's the opposite of leadership.
	I can't pretend he's doing a good job on this.
	Somebody says, Scott, did you block Bill Mitchell?
	Yeah, I did. Bill Mitchell is damaging the country with opinions that are so dumb that they're dangerous.
	I hate to say that because I like Bill, but until recently he was still saying it's just sort of the common cold, or he was downplaying it.
	I think that was the wrong move for the country.
	Here's the thing. If the president got a test, some people are saying, Scott, Scott, Scott.
	If he gets the test, somebody's going to say, the tests are limited, and so an old person couldn't get a test.
	How selfish of you to take the test.
	No, they wouldn't.
	No, they wouldn't.
	If the president of the United States gets tested, we're all just happy.
	Sure, critics will find anything to complain about, but even they won't mean it.
	I'm not worried about complaints when you know that people complaining don't even mean it.
	Of course we want the Commander-in-Chief to be tested.
	Is there any question about that?
	No. Now, you might say to yourself, but Scott, I agree with his doctor that the odds of him having it are so low that he's in the category that you should Not get tested.
	And that's actually modeling it correctly.
	If you don't have symptoms and you don't think you're going to have symptoms, you're not immediately dangerous, you don't want to test.
	But that's just not exactly what the experts are saying.
	At the moment, the president's own experts are saying if you came in contact with somebody, you should probably get tested.
	And he's not.
	And he's still shaking hands in public.
	So, if your president is shaking hands in public while telling you not to, and your president is not getting tested while telling you that if you were in the same situation you should, meaning his experts are saying that, I don't have confidence in him as a leader during this crisis.
	I hate to say it.
	I mean, I've been his strongest supporter for a long time.
	Well, no, I'm not his strongest supporter.
	I'm sure there are stronger supporters.
	But there's a point where the country is more important, and you've just got to call it like you see it.
	And it's hard for me to be political at the moment, because it's life and death.
	And at the moment, he's not getting it done.
	He's telling us stuff that just isn't true.
	And normally, I'm completely supportive of the president saying things that are not true.
	Nobody said that more than I have.
	Because it's usually hyperbole and salesmanship and you know what he's doing and you know it's not important that he exaggerated something.
	I don't care about any of that.
	None of it. But if he gives you information about what to do or what the government is doing during an emergency and it's not accurate, well, that's a problem.
	You know, once or twice you'd say, If that happened once or twice, you'd say, okay, it's an emergency.
	We're going to make mistakes.
	We'll quickly correct.
	I wouldn't even be bothered by a few mistakes.
	But at this point, it looks like he just can't do it.
	Sorry. It looks like he's not up to it.
	Now, does that have anything to do with the fact that he's a certain age?
	You know, before President Trump ran, I said...
	Clearly and often, we should not be electing leaders of this age.
	Because even if they look pretty good at the beginning of their term, you don't know.
	Somebody says in all capitals, wow, Scott, Trump is getting tests in all capitals, shouting at me.
	Does that matter?
	How does that matter to my point?
	So, The president's doctor just said today, it's news today that his doctor said he doesn't need the test.
	So he at least needs to fire his doctor.
	Which, by the way, would give me confidence.
	If the president fired the White House doctor and then took a test, I would be so down with that.
	Completely down with that.
	Now, I don't know if the doctor is to blame.
	My guess is that the doctor is taking orders and not giving them.
	And again, If it's true that Trump is telling his doctor what to say, hey, just say this, and it's not what the doctor actually thinks is the best thing, well, then the doctor should be fired.
	Right? Wouldn't you agree?
	If the doctor is making a political calculation and not a medical one, he should be fired.
	I don't know if that's the case.
	I'm just saying as a hypothetical.
	So, but, because it's an emergency, this next part is important.
	I am quite confident in the experts.
	I'm quite confident in our medical community and responders, etc.
	They're going to have tons of obstacles, but I'm very confident in our general capability as a country.
	And I don't think that the president is making bad decisions.
	That's important. If you look at the actual decisions, put Pence in charge, throw money at it, try things, communicate, close down travel.
	If you look at the decisions, they all look pretty good.
	I've got to admit, the decisions look pretty good.
	Somebody says, Dr. Drew disagrees with me on this.
	You mean on the testing of the president?
	Well, here's the thing.
	I think Dr.
	Drew would agree... That the President falls into the category that the experts...
	And Dr.
	Drew, if you're listening, you can contact me later and tell me if I'm wrong.
	But I think it's true that what the experts are recommending is different from what the President is doing.
	That just needs to be fixed, however you do it.
	All right. Let's see.
	You know, I have this suspicion...
	You know, we're all...
	We're all drowning in conspiracy theories and our minds, our imaginations are going wild.
	But this whole issue of not enough testing in this country, I'm not sure it's exactly the way it's being explained.
	Now I do believe that we wish we were doing more testing and we don't have enough, we weren't prepared and all that.
	So there does seem to be some mistake at the base of it.
	But I wonder if the reason we weren't so prepared is that it doesn't make as much difference as you think it should.
	Let me say it this way.
	If you have enough cases to determine that there's a virus and Let's say it's Ebola or something like that, and you've got enough tests, you probably don't need that many tests.
	Because things like Ebola, apparently, we learn now, you can kind of isolate them and kill them entirely.
	But the coronavirus is not like Ebola.
	And your odds of isolating it and killing it entirely are basically zero.
	So in that situation, which is different from other situations, Are the tests as useful as they would be?
	Now, of course you need tests.
	But, does everybody need to get tested if your strategy is for everybody to get it?
	I don't know. I've got a feeling that the more tests we had, the worse off we would be.
	Follow me on this. You need some tests.
	So there's some amount of tests, and it could be a lot, and it could be more than we have.
	So you need some tests.
	That's not in question.
	The question is, imagine if you could test everybody.
	Imagine if you had 400 million tests immediately and everybody could test one and throw one away and test again.
	You could all test. It was free and it was immediate and everybody could know.
	Would you want to do it?
	Not if the goal is to get it.
	If the goal is to avoid it, which is not a reasonable goal because it can't be done, Then having a test for every single person all the time would be great.
	If your goal is simply to track it and manage it and flatten the curve and take care of the important cases, take care of the vulnerable, do you need a test for everybody, even if everybody wanted one?
	You're probably better off with some amount of testing but not universal testing.
	Because the government can't say directly too many ways, hey guys, we want to infect your children because that's how we'll protect these senior citizens.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe some of them will get sick and die.
	But we don't have any other way to do it.
	Everybody has to get infected.
	So this is my semi-conspiracy theory thought, which is there definitely was a problem I think that's clear.
	So we needed more tests than we had, but I don't know if we want everybody tested.
	If your goal is for everybody to get it.
	You don't want anybody hiding and saying, I'll be the last one who doesn't get it.
	I'll just put that out there.
	So yesterday I was asking about ventilators and the access to them.
	We've learned a lot since then.
	But one thing I have not learned, and maybe somebody can tell me in the comments, what's the difference between a ventilator and a respirator?
	Because I see both words being used as something that is necessary equipment for people who are in the worst situation with it.
	Are they the same thing?
	Is a ventilator and a respirator the same?
	So I don't know that.
	But I asked about ventilators, because I'd heard that word.
	And I asked this question, why had there been no reporting on how many ventilators we have available in this country?
	Well, as luck would have it, Joel Pollack over at Breitbart did some investigative reporting on that very question.
	And you can see his article in his Twitter feed, or mine, or at Breitbart.
	And here's what we learned.
	about ventilator companies.
	So they're companies that make them in different parts of the world, but the United States has manufacturers who make ventilators.
	And when Joel called one of the big ones in the United States and said, do you have enough ventilators?
	Here's what they said.
	This is mind-boggling and I don't even know how to interpret this.
	But the company that makes ventilators in the United States During the middle of a crisis in which ventilators are a shortage, said that they're getting lots of calls and no extra orders.
	What? What?
	I don't understand that.
	How could the company that makes them in the United States, and they said, we're ready to ramp up.
	We expect to.
	We're all ready to go.
	There are no orders.
	I mean, beyond the normal amount of orders.
	What? What's happening?
	I don't understand that.
	Now, another thing I found out, which might actually explain the other thing, is that the United States is way better in having this kind of equipment.
	So apparently part of the And here's my problem that I don't know if ventilator and respirator are really the same thing.
	So I guess I need to know that.
	Respirators incubate, ventilators need intubation.
	Ah, okay.
	So it looks like the ventilator, maybe they need to stick something down your throat?
	And the respirator is just the mask?
	Is that it? So apparently the executive order, or the emergency thing, allows a lot of ventilators that might have been in holding for military and other purposes to be available.
	So, and then I guess Trump said that we ordered some more, but perhaps not from this one company.
	So it could be that there's some other source, and Joel talked to somebody who didn't get the big order, but why not?
	So it could be that our experts have looked at the lay of the land and said, you know, the ventilators in this country won't be our big problem.
	Maybe? We're going to find out pretty soon.
	So thank you for the answer that the respirator seems to be the mask, and the ventilator, I think they're putting a tube down into your lungs, a more aggressive approach.
	I think that's right, but again, you'll need to check that with me.
	So that's a big question, but I also saw that there was some data that 31 out of 32 people somewhere, it might have been Italy, died after ventilation.
	So the thinking was that they're using the ventilators to keep people alive a little bit longer, but they actually just die anyway.
	So it could be that we don't need that many ventilators because they don't work.
	That's possible. And I don't know if the president ordered respirators or ventilators.
	I thought he ordered respirators, but I might be wrong about that.
	So there's some uncertainty here, but the point is That we appear to have capacity.
	So in this country, at least smart people seem to think that we can get enough ventilators and respirators because we're starting early enough to do that.
	Might be right. Could be right.
	But congratulations to Joel Pollack, who I believe is the only person who reported on this.
	I've not seen any other report That actually talked to the manufacturers and said, can you do this?
	And apparently we can. All right.
	This other question that is nothing but gray area and bad reporting.
	So help me out with this.
	Why is this story not clear yet?
	We've had plenty of time.
	And the story is this. That apparently there was some kind of pandemic team or pandemic office in the administration.
	That under Trump's administration was closed.
	And then there's the thought, well, if we had that pandemic department still up and running, we would have gotten going faster and communication would have been better and we'd be in better shape.
	And I think it was John Bolton who might have been in charge.
	Now, the president acted like he didn't know anything about the story.
	Which, again, makes him look like he's not up to the job of managing this crisis.
	I'm just going to be honest about it.
	It's one of the biggest stories in the country that this department was closed under Trump's administration, and when he was asked about it, he acted like he didn't know the story.
	Maybe. I mean, if he didn't know the story, that's a problem.
	And if he did know the story and he lied about it, that's a problem.
	So that's not good.
	But I don't know the answer to the story either, and I haven't seen reporting.
	Here's what I'm going to guess.
	So the way it's reported is that there was this department that would have been useful in the pandemic, and it got closed, presumably for budget reasons.
	Now, in the real world, let's say if you've had any experience in the corporate world, what do you say about that?
	What is the context of That is probably missing, but we don't know.
	So without reporting, we don't know.
	But don't you think there's a little context missing about the department that got closed?
	Don't you? All the people who have big company experience know where I'm going with this.
	It probably wasn't closed.
	Just guessing. If it's like every other corporate situation in which I've been involved, it probably wasn't closed.
	It was probably replaced.
	Or those duties were taken on by another group.
	Or it was merged and their name disappeared and maybe some of the staff left because they didn't want to work for the new group or whatever.
	But do you think it was as simple as they decided they didn't need a pandemic team?
	Maybe. I mean, that's possible.
	I'm not going to rule it out.
	But don't we think we need some reporting that tells us why John Bolton made that decision?
	We can find John Bolton, right?
	All the news sources in the world, we can find John Bolton, and we can say, hey John, were you in charge of that group?
	The president isn't up to date on it, but why did you make that decision?
	Why is that not in the news?
	Are you telling me that there's no Democrat who wants to track down John Bolton and embarrass him by asking that question?
	Of course there are. Why don't we know that?
	What's going on here?
	Why don't we know that?
	That's really worrisome.
	So, with Joe Biden being the likely nominee, you have to ask yourself, what would it take for President Trump to lose an election to a man who is obviously brain-dead?
	That's an exaggeration.
	A candidate who obviously has severe mental decline.
	How could you possibly lose an election to that?
	Well, I think we might find out, because so far the way Trump has managed the crisis, and I'm only talking about the communication part.
	I'm still happy with the decisions, actually.
	Even with mistakes.
	I'm fairly forgiving in emergencies about mistakes if we quickly adjust and correct.
	So I think the president's decisions, as far as I can tell, seem to be really good and maybe better than other countries, especially closing the airports early.
	But his communication on this is so astoundingly bad, he's just mismatched for this specific task, that it could cost him the election easily.
	It could easily cost him the election.
	I would recommend he take himself off the field.
	Wouldn't you? If I could recommend to the president how to handle this situation, I would tell him to just stop talking in public about any details of this situation.
	He should stand up there so we know he's engaged.
	He should say, Mike Pence is doing a great job.
	He should say, we'll get this done.
	He should tell us what we should do.
	But he shouldn't answer any questions about tests or China or pandemics.
	He shouldn't tell us he's a super genius because he's genetically similar to somebody who learned it in school.
	You've got to just maybe stop talking in public about this.
	So I would like to see him get tested.
	And say, I didn't think I needed to get tested.
	My doctor said I didn't need to get tested.
	But the public is asking for it.
	And for the benefit of the public's peace of mind, I'm going to get tested.
	And then, just sort of remove himself from the communication channel.
	But stay as the leader.
	We still need to see him every day.
	Still need to say, no, he's engaged.
	But he communicates so poorly on this, I think he needs to take himself off the field.
	And you can imagine how difficult this is for me to say, right?
	I've spent three years of my life saying he's the best communicator you've ever seen in your life, and I stand by that for all of the political stuff.
	But this very unique situation, he probably needs to take himself off the field for just the communication part.
	All right, that's all I've got today.
	The Dunning-Kruger effect is high here today.
	Yeah, it really is.
	I certainly don't exempt myself from that criticism.
	Just looking at your comments, I want to see how this went over.
	You are depressing to listen to anymore.
	Maybe you should be president.
	Yeah, you know, it's a tough balance, isn't it?
	You can't really be happy during the middle of a crisis, but we're also human and sometimes things do strike us as funny and sometimes we just have to laugh and sometimes a little gallows humor is what you need.
	Now, I want to reiterate, and I'm probably going to say this maybe every day.
	I might say this every day during the crisis.
	My personal crisis management system And by the way, I recommend that you have a system, not a goal.
	If your goal is to not get it, you're thinking about it wrong.
	You should have systems in place.
	And the systems could be, what do you do if there's shortages of food?
	So, you know, build a little system, put in some stockpiles, etc.
	There should be some systems in your house.
	For example, I have implemented the wash your hands when you enter system.
	That's a pretty obvious one, right?
	When you enter a house, it doesn't matter if it's my house or some other house, whenever you enter a space, you wash your hands as the first thing you do when you enter the new space.
	That's a system. The other system I have is for building up my immunity, because my assumption is I have a high likelihood of coming in contact with it, and I'm going to be ready.
	So I'm building up my immunity and doing a heck of a job, I must say.
	Pardon me while I pat myself on the back.
	Good job, Scott. I would recommend that you build a system for your own immunity.
	So here's what I do.
	I'm never going to skip a day of light exercise.
	Even if I have to do it at 9 o'clock at night.
	I'll never skip a day of light exercise.
	Emphasis, light exercise.
	During this next year, I'm not going to try to build muscle.
	I'm not going to try to run a marathon.
	Because when you do those things, there's at least some part of your day where your immunity is low because you're sort of exhausting yourself to get to the next level.
	Don't exhaust yourself.
	A key thing you need to do is get plenty of sleep and don't exhaust yourself.
	So that's part of my system.
	Every day, light exercise, little light weights, sometimes every other day.
	And eating right, and I'm even staying away from foods that have inflammation properties.
	Somebody says, you're obsessed with this.
	It's nuts. Well, that's a block.
	When people say that somebody is obsessed or they're panicking, we don't need that.
	Because you don't know my state of mind, and I don't need you characterizing it as obsessed or panicked or depressing or anything else.
	All you know is what I say.
	So I would recommend to you, because my state of mind, I have to tell you, is quite excellent because I've done such a good job taking care of my body That my mood and my sense of well-being is maybe higher than it's ever been.
	Which is weird.
	So I feel, just in a normal way, just sitting in a chair in any given moment, I feel great.
	And it's because I've done everything right.
	You know, sleep, exercise, eating right, avoiding stress, just doing it all right.
	That's my system.
	So I plan to get the coronavirus, and I'm not joking when I say I'd like to get it over with.
	I'd kind of like to get it over with.
	So, you know, I'll give you some herd immunity if I survive.
	I'm in the high-risk category because I'm over 60 and I've got some asthma.
	But I plan to beat it.
	And I plan to be part of, I think, Naval Ravikant was tweeting that we may see, what did he call it, the immune core.
	So he coined a temporary name for it, the immune core.
	The people who got the coronavirus recovered have some immunity.
	They will be like gold in the future.
	Six months from now, Which would you rather be?
	Somebody who got it and recovered six months from now, or somebody who didn't get it yet?
	You know, you know what I'm talking about, right?
	You'd rather be the one who got it and got over it six months from now.
	Because if you're still hiding in six months and worried about it, it's just not going to be fun.
	So, the president's strategy, the CDC's strategy, Dr.
	Fauci's strategy I'm fully embracing.
	Get really healthy.
	And by the way, Fauci says this too.
	This isn't me talking. This is the best experts in the country telling you to take care of yourself.
	It's never been a national priority.
	Any other time that you selfishly took care of yourself, it was a little bit selfish, wasn't it?
	Wasn't it? Looking out for your own health, getting enough sleep, it's a little bit selfish.
	But not today. Today it's not selfish.
	You are all part of this giant experiment.
	Well, it's not a test.
	This is the real thing.
	You are all part of this fight against this virus.
	And you need to be as strong as possible.
	So build up your immunity so that you're not one of the ones overloading the hospitals.
	Build up your immunity.
	Do it. Somebody says, you can have opinions but not us?
	Well, let me clarify.
	You can have all kinds of opinions, and I welcome them.
	And I like the opinions that have reasons.
	The opinions that will be unwelcome are mind-reading.
	If you have an opinion about what I'm thinking, you're welcome to it.
	Certainly. If you have an opinion, a private opinion, about what I'm thinking internally that you couldn't possibly know, you're welcome to that opinion.
	But if you say it in public, I'm going to block you.
	Because it's stupid. You're totally allowed to have stupid opinions privately.
	I just don't want to be exposed to them.
	If it's a stupid opinion about what's in my head.
	You can have stupid opinions about other things, as long as you show your reasons.
	I'm okay with that. Alright.
	Do we know you can't get it once you've had it?
	I mentioned that earlier, but it's worth mentioning again, because other people have come on here.
	The experts are talking about building up herd immunity.
	The only way that you could have herd immunity is if, in general, you can't get it more than once.
	Now, is it true that somebody could get it more than once?
	Maybe. Could be.
	But, in general, that's not a thing.
	Otherwise, we would not be trying to build up herd immunity.
	It wouldn't make sense. Somebody says, why not get the flu now before hospitals get overwhelmed?
	Well, you're reading my mind there.
	You're reading my mind.
	You don't want to be the last person who gets it.
	Well, the last person would be fine.
	You don't want to be the one in the middle because there's going to be a wave.
	So you want to be one of the first or one of the last.
	And one of the last would be pretty good because then they've figured it out and they're past the bump.
	Thank you. But, for the benefit, and let me be really clear about this, if I were being selfish, I would actively infect myself.
	That's the most selfish thing I could do.
	Get it over with. You know, maybe I die, maybe I don't, but I'm going to get infected anyway, I figure.
	And I would rather do it now before the hospitals are overwhelmed.
	So if I were going to do it for selfish reasons, I would actually be looking for it I'd be hanging around those nursing homes.
	Not really, but you know what I mean.
	But, if I am being a team player, what is best for the team is that all of us fight like mad weasels to avoid it.
	Because that's really just slowing it down.
	And slowing it down is what we're really trying to do.
	So for the benefit of the country, I'm going to try to avoid it.
	But that's not what's good for me.
	So if it makes you feel better, Don't be the one who's afraid of getting it.
	Fight for the country, the world, really.
	Fight for the country to not get it right away.
	Fight hard to not get it right away.
	But what's good for you is to get it, honestly.
	It's the best thing that could happen to you is to get it and get over it.
	So don't worry about getting it.
	That's sort of the good news in this bad news world we're living in at the moment.
	The last thing I'm worried about is actually getting it, but I'm going to fight not to.
	Alright, somebody said, should I postpone dental cleaning?
	Well, I've got a few very minor, you know, surgical things coming out, really minor, and I think they'll be postponed, but I don't know yet.
	I'm going to check on that today. Have you stopped smoking?
	Well, I don't smoke tobacco, never have, but I do smoke marijuana.
	For medicinal purposes.
	I have not yet heard the impact of marijuana smokers and the coronavirus.
	We may never know that because I doubt anybody will study that for a while.
	Maybe someday. But here's what we know.
	And Dr.
	Drew, if you're watching this, you might want to turn this off.
	You probably want to turn this off.
	You'll never talk to me again.
	Marijuana has different effects on different people.
	So there's nothing that anybody tells you about their experience with marijuana that you should generalize to yourself.
	It could be good for one person, bad for another.
	I don't recommend marijuana under any situations except a doctor.
	So if a doctor tells you it's a good idea to take it, you should.
	My doctor did. I have a doctor for this, and it's a real doctor.
	And I do it I don't do it to party.
	I don't do it for fun. I do it because it has benefits.
	And here's one of the things...
	I don't know how irresponsible this is to say.
	I have to pause for a moment and check myself.
	Because there are things you would say when it's not a coronavirus emergency that...
	But it's a different situation.
	You have to modify your communication a little bit.
	I'll just say this.
	I'll just say this because it's true.
	So this is not an opinion.
	Just some facts and do what you will with it.
	Marijuana is a vasodilator.
	It reduces inflammation.
	It has a lot of health benefits.
	That's why people do it, in part.
	The studies have shown...
	The people, and I think only one study I know of, studied people who smoked marijuana every day versus people who didn't smoke it at all.
	And the paradoxical finding is that the people who smoked marijuana regularly had healthier lungs than people who didn't smoke at all.
	And of course, people who smoked tobacco were the worst of all.
	Now, could you rely on that?
	I don't think so.
	I don't think you could rely on that.
	But it is a fact.
	It does make sense, if I were a doctor, and let me be more responsible here.
	If I had to give you advice, and I won't, because I'm not a doctor, it doesn't make sense that you would put any smoke in your body during a coronavirus situation.
	So probably, if I were a doctor, I'd say, don't go anywhere near any smoke.
	Don't go anywhere near any pollution.
	Keep your lungs as clean as possible, because you're going to need it.
	So that's what I'd tell you.
	But nonetheless, it is true that in at least one study, marijuana smokers had better lung function than non-smokers.
	Take that with a gigantic grain of salt.
	The odds of that being reproducible...
	50% at best.
	So it's sort of a coin flip there.
	Alright, so if you're playing it safe, don't smoke marijuana.
	Boom. There's your medical advice.
	If you're playing it safe, don't smoke marijuana.
	Alright. How is that possible?
	You are cherry picking? Yeah, no, I am cherry picking.
	I'm cherry picking one study.
	But there aren't any other studies.
	Is that cherry-picking, if there's only one study?
	Because there are other worries about health consequences of marijuana.
	They just weren't as relevant to the coronavirus conversation.
	Somebody says that counters all logic.
	Yeah, you know, it counters all logic that a marijuana smoker would have better lung function.
	One of the hypotheses that was given is that The act of smoking, because with marijuana, you inhale it and you hold it, that you're actually doing lung exercises by inhaling deeply and holding it on a regular basis.
	If you've ever heard of the William Hoff method of breathing, it's not like that, but there's certainly good evidence that doing breathing exercises in which you take deep breaths and hold them And then release them slowly might have medical benefits to your lungs and elsewise.
	Now here's the trick. The CBD and the unique quality of marijuana has some weird combination of things that are probably bad for you and things that are weirdly good for you.
	And science, I think, is still a little bit confused about that mix because if you're saying, hey, isn't smoking your lungs bad for you?
	I would say, well, I would think so.
	I mean, logically, but yet marijuana smokers don't get cancer at a rate that's higher than anybody else.
	Why not? They're filling their lungs with smoke, but they don't seem to get cancer.
	So explain that. It probably has something to do with this CBD. All right.
	Andrew Gillum.
	Yeah, I'm not talking about that story too much because that's more of a personal situation.
	So Andrew Gillum, I think his political career is over.
	That feels safe to say.
	But he's got a personal problem.
	That's not our problem.
	Stop this craziness.
	Which craziness in particular?
	Scott, did experts say get tested if you come in contact with somebody with virus and showing symptoms?
	Well, my understanding is that your doctor gets to decide if you get a test.
	And so you go to your doctor and you say, hey, I was hugging somebody who had the virus, but they didn't show any symptoms.
	I think your doctor would probably say get a test.
	I think if you came in close contact, and there are lots of variables.
	Let's say you have elderly parents living at home.
	You go into your doctor and you say, you know, it's a gray area here.
	I was in a room with somebody who later was confirmed to have it.
	I didn't shake hands, but I was standing within six feet.
	Doctor, should I get a test?
	Doctor says, do you have any elderly people at home?
	You say, yeah, my grandparents are 85 and 86.
	I think the doctor would say, well, you know, normally I'd say no.
	But you've got a special case, a little extra risk because of the seniors.
	So let's test you. So if you're asking me, should you test in this concrete situation versus this concrete situation, I would say there's no such thing as a concrete situation because we're all in different circumstance.
	And your doctor...
	can help you sort that out, I would think.
	You know, I've seen more bad thinking about this crisis than just about any other topic in the world.
	It's kind of crazy.
	Yeah, I guess we're starting to see it in Africa.
	There was some thought that heat was killing it.
	Maybe that's why Africa was going to do okay.
	I had a nagging suspicion that Africa was fully infected, or was in the process of getting fully infected, and maybe they just weren't testing for it.
	So they didn't know.
	So my guess is that it's going to be plenty bad in Africa.
	I hope not, but that's my guess.
	All right, all I've got for today.

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