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March 16, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
58:25
Episode 853 Scott Adams: Simultaneous Sipping, #Coronavirus, The Nursing Home Pillow Fight

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Human ingenuity rising to the coronavirus challenge Beware of disinformation The Vice President and Supreme Court disqualifier Memories of the future --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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Hey everybody, come on in.
It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams, and I hope that although your normal schedule is probably altered a little bit, I hope that you have made time for this most important, important, critical really, Almost emergency.
Simultaneous sip. And it's going to happen now because I think you need it.
I think we all need it.
There's nothing we need but a little bit of normal behavior amid all the craziness.
And all you need to enjoy the simultaneous sip is a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that will make everything better, including the coronavirus.
We're going to get this thing.
Oh yeah, we're going to get it.
And when I say get it, I mean beat it.
Not necessarily get it.
Although you might get it, and then you'll beat it too.
Because if you've enjoyed the simultaneous sip, you're stronger than most people.
You know it.
Sip now.
Ah.
Well, I continue on my system.
You know, I talk about systems being better than goals.
My goal is to stay alive.
My goal is not just to stay alive for myself, but to not be a burden on the healthcare system.
And if I can take myself out of that, well, there's one more ventilator for somebody else.
So my system is a nice long walk every day.
Mild exercise, light weights, eat right, really clean.
I just took sugar completely out of my diet.
I'm eating clean, clean, clean.
I'm sleeping right. And I'm taking time off from social media.
Now, because it's important to stay connected, I'm not taking an entire day off any time.
But I find, and you might find this too, that there are periods in the day where I just have to not look at anything for an hour.
I just have to exist in my space without the outside world intruding on my thoughts, just for an hour, a few times a day.
Keep your stress down.
I'm helping. Doing it right now.
Don't you feel more relaxed listening to me?
You know you do.
Do you think it's intentional?
Of course it is.
I do this intentionally.
To make you more relaxed.
And I guarantee that most of you are a little bit more relaxed when you listen to me.
It's not an accident. There is technique everywhere in the world and sometimes you don't recognize it.
Alright, the stock market is doing its stock market thing of trying to scare us.
Because it always does that.
I'm not worried whatsoever about a generally falling stock market.
Do you know what really bothers me?
When the stock market is going up and I'm not in it, that really bothers me.
When the entire stock market goes down, my share of the world, if you will, stays about the same.
And when it goes back, my share of the world will go up with the share of the world, because I'm broadly diversified.
The world has to do well for me to do well.
There's no exception to that.
So I'm not worried at all about the stock market.
And if you're in the stock market and you think you'll be alive for more than two years, I think most of you will.
You should not be too afraid either.
Because the big companies are not going to go out of business, and that's mostly where your money should be in the top 500 companies, or at least widely distributed.
So don't worry about the stock market.
The stock market will do its thing, and it will be back.
I've got lots more good news coming.
And my good news is sort of the good news that's coming, as opposed to the good news that's here.
Because this will be a tough day.
Tomorrow will be tough. Somebody says, I'm starting to lose it.
I even woke up angry.
Exercise. If you're physically angry and you know that it's something you need to get into control, go wear yourself out.
And get outside. Ideally outside.
Being in the house when you're stressed is not helping.
Get out. Take a long walk.
That's what I say to you.
Alright, let's talk about the food supply.
I tweeted an article from Joel Pollack who looked into the food supply pipeline.
Because if you see empty shelves on your grocery store, how do you feel?
Ah, you know, society is collapsing.
Exactly the opposite.
Exactly the opposite.
Society is doing anything but collapsing.
It's evolving.
It hurts, but, you know...
Sometimes growth does, right?
Sometimes it's hard to do the thing you need to do.
But society is not collapsing.
Society is evolving, and it's hardening, and it's getting smarter, and it's getting more connected.
What you don't notice is that.
You don't notice that.
But I'll talk about that.
So, first of all, your food supply is the last thing you should worry about, and here's why.
There's no risk to it.
The hoarding is a super short-term thing because it had no effect on the supply.
The total supply of farms and farm goods and products, exactly the same.
Well, no, that's a lie.
It's not exactly the same. It's way more.
Right now, our pipeline...
According to all information we have, we're not hearing any stories of a farm closed or a trucking company can't ship the goods.
We're not hearing any stories like that.
Which, by the way, if we can't cross state lines, I don't know how that's going to work, but probably there will be exceptions for food.
And so the point is, when you look at the scary shelves, just understand that the entire weight Of civilization's successes, the entire capability of the United States is still just as strong for producing and delivering it to you.
The harder part will be if people can keep their incomes up.
And I think you'll probably see something like a universal basic income, something like that.
Now, restaurants, poor little restaurants, are going to get whacked.
But I think this might be another situation where we're evolving more than collapsing.
Because for every server, every hostess, every server at a restaurant, Surely we need another delivery person, right?
So here's what I'm doing for my local restaurants.
So I'm door dashing.
Now, yes, yes, yes, yes, I get it.
It's a rich person thing.
You can't all afford to door dash.
I get that. It adds a cost on top of a cost on top of a cost.
But I can. And, you know, even though my income will get whacked percentage-wise as much as the rest of you, maybe more, I'll still have enough to DoorDash.
So during these times when it makes more sense to try to think of all of your actions in terms of how they affect other people, this is a time to think about that.
I'm going to DoorDash the hell out of my area so that my local restaurants are getting at least that much business.
And here's the other advantage.
Let's say you, and again, this is only for people who have the wherewithal to do it.
I'm not recommending You know, if money's tight, I don't recommend this at all.
But one way that I can protect your food supply is by door dashing.
So, you know, if you've got some extra food and you're saying, oh, I hope this is enough, well, one of the ways I can help make it be enough is I'll get my food directly from the restaurant, who apparently have plenty of supply.
That's partly what Joel Pollack found out in his article in Breitbart.
You can find that at Breitbart or you can find it at my Twitter feed.
So, food, don't worry about it.
And I would say the same with paper goods and stuff.
There's just some temporary craziness, but the pipeline has plenty of paper.
Nobody stopped cutting down trees, as far as I know.
You should be aware that in this time of great uncertainty, etc., and when the news is we're in this continuous fog-of-war situation, you should expect a lot of disinformation.
Some of it will be just dumb people saying dumb stuff.
That's bad enough. But you should expect that countries which do not love us are going to be spreading some disinformation.
And there's reason to believe we've already seen it.
So there's a rumor going around that the government has already talked about or decided to do some kind of martial law situation with a total lockdown where you can't leave your house.
That's not true. But apparently people are getting strings of text messages about it.
So here's my suggestion.
Don't believe anything you hear from an anonymous source during this situation.
It's true all the time.
You should never believe an anonymous source.
But just know that we're in a situation where we're perceived to be vulnerable by our enemies.
And if they're on their game, they should be seeding us with bad terror stories so that our civilization will be destroyed.
So just don't believe anything on its face value that looks like it's coming from some unknown source about somebody who talked to somebody.
So that's a caution, which is really important.
I saw some photos that Disneyland was packed this weekend.
Is that real? Because, again, fake news is going to be so prevalent now that you just have to distrust every photograph, every tweet.
I'm also seeing tweets from what appear to be individuals or doctors at hospitals talking about how bad things are at their hospital.
I've seen at least one from Italy.
I've seen one from Seattle.
There's reason to believe those are not real.
Now, we do think that Italy's in bad shape.
But if you see anything that looks like, I'm a doctor, here's my thread of how bad things are in my specific hospital, we're piling bodies in the street, it might not be true.
And indeed, that happened recently.
There was a Seattle doctor who had one of those threads about how bad it was.
And when people checked in on the hospital, they said, it's bad, but not like that.
So we know that those can be either misleading or outright false.
So watch out for those. So any individual that doesn't have a second source, such as a news source that says, oh my god, yes, we're seeing the same thing, just don't believe it.
Yet. Or at all.
Here's a question for you.
What are you doing about playdates?
So, I talked to Dr.
Drew yesterday online on the Ask Dr.
Drew livestream.
And, you know, kids are going to be a real problem.
But here's a potential way to go if you're wondering what to do about it.
It's almost cruel and unusual to lock up a kid in a house for three months.
Adults, maybe we can handle it.
It's going to be tough. For a kid, it's going to be really tough.
And what I suggest is that maybe they find one special friend with a family that you know is doing good virus protection stuff as well.
Talk parent to parent.
Make sure you've got a similarly strict situation in both households.
You know, wash your hands when you come in, that sort of thing.
Parents staying home from work, whatever.
And then say, alright, you can play with your friend Timmy as much as you want, but that's it.
Or maybe a few houses like that, but one at a time.
Because you can get a kid to agree to one friend, but getting them to agree to not seeing a friend for three months is going to be nothing but a terror in your own household.
So you've got enough of an external threat.
You don't want to turn your own children into an internal threat, because...
They're going to get on your nerves too, and you don't want your nerves to be broken in this situation.
So stay strong. All right.
Here's the situation on ventilators.
There's still a little bit of lack of clarity here.
And here's the situation.
And again, Joel Pollack reported on this, that U.S. ventilator manufacturers, at least one of them, had received a lot of inquiries But not a lot of orders.
And I wasn't sure what was going on with that.
Like, why would it make sense that there are not a lot of orders for new ventilators, especially since all the parts apparently are available in the United States?
And one of the answers, but I think it's an incomplete answer, is that as Dr.
Drew explained yesterday on his show, The hospitals actually, in the United States, we can flex better than other places.
And in particular, apparently every operating room has a ventilator that they use for the operations.
And if, you know, given that we'll probably be postponing a lot of elective surgery, we can repurpose them.
So, first of all, there's a bunch of unused ones that will just be sitting there that we can put into production pretty quickly.
Secondly, Apparently the military has a lot of them, and they could temporarily be used for this purpose, because we're not at a major war, except against the virus.
So that would give us a little flexibility that other countries clearly don't have.
I mean, there's no other country, I would imagine, who has any kind of military healthcare gear that's anything close to what the United States would have.
But I also hear, and I don't have confirmation on that, that The United States might be looking to put some orders in for ventilators.
Now, I don't know who does the math on this stuff and says, well, how much is enough and how much is not enough of ventilators, but I think we're in a do-everything-and-do-it-hard situation.
I don't think we're in a situation where we should be saying, you know, we might have enough ventilators, or we probably have enough, We're almost certain we have enough ventilators.
That's not the place we're in.
We're in the place if there's any chance we need ventilators, any at all, get some ventilators.
So I hope the government is looking to do that.
I have a question I'm going to put out here publicly.
I think I can find the right person in the government.
But I've been asked, and it's weird how this world works.
Every citizen is sort of entering the fight if they can.
So I'm in the fight with all of you.
And people have asked me, one person in particular, who shall be temporarily not named, but probably later.
Asked who in the government can make the decision to buy more masks, more gloves, more equipment, because an individual is actually just spontaneously organized with others to look at some factories to convert them, like a wartime footing, to emergency produce masks and gloves and other, you know, sanitizers, other things that one might need.
So here we have, you know, American individuals who are starting to build factories without the government's help.
Oh my God!
The capability in this country is just incredible.
But here's my question to you.
So you can join in if you know how to help.
Who in our government can say yes to writing a check For more masks, more equipment, more anything.
Is there anybody in the government who's the emergency budget person who gets to say, okay, that's in the budget, that's not in the budget, we got eight or nine billion dollars, that's in, that's out.
Well, somebody says Congress, but I need a name.
I need a name and phone number, basically.
So, if you can DM that to me, if somebody has some contacts, just send them my way.
Most of you know how to contact me.
I'm pretty easy to contact. Go to LinkedIn if all else fails.
All right. So, in Italy, here's an inspirational story.
Italy was running short on ventilators, but they had three ventilators that were missing a part.
I think it was the same part.
It might not have been. But it was missing a part.
It's pretty hard to get a part.
These days, for a ventilator, I would guess.
So they brought in a local company with a 3D printer, and the local company looked at the part, engineered it, and 3D printed it.
Right there. Oh my God!
Humans! You know, it's like watching...
I hate to say it because there's so much death and misery...
But it's like watching a sporting event where individual players are making great plays.
And bringing in the 3D printer people to make you an emergency part for your ventilator, that's like Curry passing behind the back under the legs of the opponent for the layup.
These are serious people doing serious things, and I'm amazed and impressed.
And, of course, Google has stepped up to do the coronavirus website.
We can complain about whether it is or is not on time or what the president said, but it's people doing the things they need to do.
At least 35 companies and academic institutions are rushing to create a vaccine At least four have tested it on animals already.
This is amazing.
We've never seen anything like this.
And, let's see, Moderna, a biotech company in Massachusetts, has already shipped the first batches for testing, I guess.
And, you know, here's my take.
Human ingenuity, I'll say this a thousand times until you all have this picture in your head.
We all know the virus has this curve where it's going to start slow and we're not worried and then, oh my god, it's a panic.
We're sort of in that dangerous part of the curve.
But human ingenuity looks just like that.
Just like that.
And our curve...
We'll be faster than the virus because of the things we're doing.
And I heard somebody smart say, we're not self-quarantining and shutting everything down because it's a crisis.
It is a crisis. It's not because of the virus.
It's because we want to avoid the virus.
It's sort of the positive way to look at it.
The reason we're doing the shutdowns is because we're going to avoid the problem, not because we have the problem.
It's a small change, but I like it better that way.
And you're seeing human ingenuity at the, maybe I'd call it the elbow.
You know, our curve is going like this, too.
We're gathering and gathering information.
We're A-B testing. We're testing.
We're testing. We're building labs.
We're building factories. We're testing.
We're building factories. We're trying stuff.
We're right in the elbow.
We're right in that little U-shaped part where we've been flat for three months.
Because, you know, we've known about the virus three months, four months, however long.
We've known about it, but so little information, and it's wrong information, and you're not sure, and China's not telling us stuff.
But now the information's coming in.
The fog is starting to clear.
Human capability is being put on this thing like nobody's business.
Somebody passed around a quote attributed to To me, but it's not really my quote.
I quote somebody else, but I don't know who said it first, so I'm mistakenly credited for this quote, but I'm only a fan of it.
And it goes like this.
If you want something, find out the price, and then pay it.
Now, as basic as that sounds, we so often don't do that that it sounds startling to hear that that's a way to success.
This coronavirus is presenting people all over the world with this proposition.
What do you want?
I want to get rid of this coronavirus for the world.
Really? Is that what you want?
Do you really want it?
Yeah. Before, I was a little ambiguous.
A little ambivalent, let's say.
But right now, 100%.
That's what I want. Once you know what you want, and you're not wondering anymore, and that's where we're all at at this point, that's a decision.
It's one thing to want the virus to go away.
We have passed wanting it to go away.
We are in deciding to make it go away.
And that's different. Because once you decide, you'll do anything.
And you see that happening.
People will do anything. We're watching our healthcare professionals, some of them getting infected.
I guess there were two emergency doctors just reported were badly infected and having some problems, pretty bad ones.
And when you see our medical professionals run toward danger, these people are better than us.
They are your standard.
You should look at the doctors who are doing this stuff, the nurses too, And they know they're not completely protected.
They know their risk, and they're doing it anyway.
They are our best heroes right now, by far.
So use that as your standard for what to do as a citizen.
Because you might be asked to do something that hard.
Maybe you already are, but not that hard.
You will be asked to make that kind of a tough decision.
Just remember, we're not at wanting.
Wanting was before.
We're at deciding.
Get yourself out of wanting and get into deciding.
Because it's easier.
It's more effective. Let's decide to kill it.
The virus, that is. One way or another.
Alright. Here's an ugly truth that I tweeted.
And this is related to human ingenuity.
But it's also related to deciding versus wanting.
What I'm going to describe is possible.
In any other world, you would never even consider this.
So what I'm going to suggest right now is ugly, and you don't want it.
But we're past the wanting phase.
We're now at decision phase.
Imagine if the government demanded that anyone who sold a ticket to any large event for this weekend had to give the government their data.
We want to know the names of anybody who was, let's say, unwise enough to take themselves into a crowded situation.
Now, some places don't have tickets, let's say a crowded bar.
But there probably are credit card receipts, because we're a credit card kind of a world.
It wouldn't get everybody.
Some people are cash, some people don't buy drinks, but the credit cards would get a lot.
Now let's say you compare those lists of names of people who clearly were in large groups recently.
If you add to that facial recognition, something like the Clearview app, Somebody says, absolutely not.
We're just talking here, so I don't have a decision on any of this.
So you don't need to complain to me.
I'm just telling you what we could do.
What we could do is have an app in every citizen's hand by the end of the week.
It's possible. In which you could just take a picture of your kid's Your kid's friend, before they come over the house, you say to your kid, who's the friend that you want to hang out with today, just one-on-one?
And they say, that's my friend Timmy.
Show me a picture of Timmy.
Boop. Timmy's family just came back from Disneyland.
Nope. Sorry.
Timmy should have told you that, but Timmy did not.
Timmy's a kid. He didn't know to tell you that.
So... I don't even have to look at the comments to hear you say, no, no, big brother.
We're past that.
You want privacy.
We're past that.
We're past wanting.
We're into deciding.
If we decide to get rid of the virus, we have tools.
They're grotesque tools.
They're expensive tools.
They're tools we may have trouble getting back in the, you know, the toothpaste back in the thing.
The tube, I guess.
It's a tube, a toothpaste.
But we have tools, so just know that.
All right.
So a poll that said, who do you think would be the best pick for vice president?
It was an Emerson poll.
And Harris got the most votes, 20%.
Second most votes was Yang.
Aww. So, Andrew Yang, of course, a very capable person, exceeded expectations in the race, but dropped out.
But he was learning, apparently, with the rest of us, that his penis disqualifies him for public office.
And how would you like to be Andrew Yang?
You joined a team, Team Democrat.
You fought for months and months.
You lost sleep. You worked hard.
You fought and fought for your team, and then your team said, thank you very much, Andrew Yang.
Thanks for being part of the process.
Now we're going to pick a vice president, but we're only going to choose from among people who do not have a penis like you do, Andrew Yang.
So the Yang Wang, I call it, hashtag Yang Wang, has disqualified him for a potential.
But, you know, thank goodness...
If he can't be vice president because he has a penis, at least he can be nominated for the Supreme Court.
Okay, he can't be nominated for the Supreme Court because he has a penis and he's not black.
Because that's what Joe Biden said.
He said it's going to be a woman, it's going to be a black woman.
Now, I applaud the attitude.
I applaud the attitude.
That we should have a Supreme Court that looks like the country.
That's not a bad thing.
In fact, it's a good thing.
But, how does Andrew Yang feel about that?
You know, the thing about being liberal is that it's a great idea until somebody comes for your stuff.
Until somebody comes for your stuff, it's easy to be liberal.
Because you're giving away other people's stuff.
But Andrew Yang, they just came for your stuff.
How does it feel? And while I don't think you're ready to be a Republican, the Democrats did throw you under a bus, ran over you, and then backed up over you to make sure the job was done.
Because it's not enough that you have a penis, you also have the wrong ethnicity for your own party.
Sorry. Let's see.
Now, what else we got going on here?
I watched much of the debate last night.
And I'm wondering if you had the same response that I did.
Which is, I don't care.
Because the coronavirus is so big In terms of the mental load that it puts on me, that my normal high level of interest in presidential politics was maybe, I don't know, 25% of normal.
I couldn't get interested.
Now part of it is, I don't think either of them can beat Trump, so I'm not sure that it matters.
I don't know if it matters what they say.
But did you also have the same experience?
That it didn't draw you in?
Didn't feel like it was important anymore?
Which is weird. Now I hope that we get back to a point where that feels like it's important.
But here are some of the comments I saw online.
And I plan to keep my gallows humor...
Through the coronavirus.
So I'm just telling you right now.
Sooner or later, you know, somebody's going to try to come at me with the pitchforks and torches because I made a joke and, oh, it's an emergency and you made a joke.
But I'm telling you right now, I'm not going to lose my sense of humor during the coronavirus.
So if you don't like it, this would be not the place to be.
But here are some things that people said about the debate last night.
This one made me laugh out loud.
Somebody just said, dentures were flying.
Dentures were flying.
That's such a clean and crisp visual that captures so much of the situation.
Yep, dentures were flying.
Somebody else said, I think Don Eller, I forgot who said the first one, but Don Eller on Twitter said, Final score.
Aneurysms and dementia 9?
Heart attack 8. Which is funny because the candidates were starting to see them by their medical conditions.
Right? If you look at Trump, what do you think of?
Well, his haircut. Billionaire.
Think of his personality or whatever.
But when you see Bernie and Biden together debating...
Don't you kind of think about their health, especially during the coronavirus?
So we've got two candidates who are being defined by their health problems running against the most capable politician in our time.
With that said...
I have to be honest about this because we're in an emergency situation.
I've criticized the President's messaging on this, you know, being muddled and getting some facts wrong and stuff so it wasn't building confidence.
He has the wrong personality for this situation.
He's just a natural salesperson and politician and all that, but just doesn't fit the problem.
And I've been hoping to see him adjust.
Because everybody's adjusting, right?
That's what we do well as a species.
We adjust. We're really good adjusters.
And the president apparently has adjusted.
Apparently he has adjusted.
And I didn't see it, but I understood the president at yesterday's event where they were just updating the public.
I think he just sort of...
Made some introductory comments, and then let the experts talk.
Exactly what I wanted to see.
It's exactly what I wanted to see.
So the country needs to know that the government is hearing it, and that it's responding in real time.
I think the country spoke as one.
Of course, there were some hardcore Republicans who were just in the president's camp.
But those of us who are just trying to be helpful, I think we spoke as one and said, all right, Mr.
President, with all due respect, your messaging on this is just not a good fit.
Maybe you could let the people who are the experts on this be more of the messaging.
And it appears he's done that.
It appears he has done that.
So, do you feel more confident when your public has a concern, your government hears it, you can see a response in real time that seems to be the rightest response?
You should feel good about that.
And I'm going to remind you over and over and over again that the normal way civilization creeps forward is by making mistakes and quickly correcting them.
In an emergency, you should see more mistakes, because, you know, for all the right reasons, you know, timing is compressed, etc.
You should see an enormous amount of mistakes in the beginning.
But you need to see fast correction.
Are we seeing fast correction from our government?
Yeah, we are. We're seeing it really well, I would say.
So, you know, you can always argue something should have been faster, and I wrote about that in my book, Loser Think.
That you'll just always can say that.
There's nothing that's good that you can't say should have happened faster.
So if you hear the people saying, here's my criticism of something should have happened faster, they're not legitimate players.
That's not a legitimate comment.
Could be true. Could be true.
Because everything could be done faster.
But it's not a legitimate criticism because it's a universal truth that everything could be done sooner.
So let's focus on the future and fast correcting our problems.
Shout out to Representative Gillum, who went into alcohol rehab.
I have a little rule. It goes like this.
Roughly speaking. If somebody does bad or embarrassing behavior in public, I'm not above having a good time with it and thinking, well, it's their own damn fault.
And in a political world, of course, we're more likely to make fun of the side that you're not supporting.
But when somebody goes into alcohol rehab, and I think this is legitimate, I'd be surprised, very surprised, if this is some kind of an act in which he's pretending to be an alcoholic or something.
But when I see somebody make that move, he did it publicly, and by the way, I don't believe any of his story about what happened.
I don't believe any of that, but I also don't care.
Do I care? I mean, that's between him and his family.
I care about his family.
But I don't care about it personally.
It doesn't affect me. But he went into alcohol rehab, and here's my rule.
I always praise people who make that step.
No exceptions. Doesn't matter what you did before that.
If you can make that step, and you're willing to take the heat of admitting it in public especially, although in this case it probably helps them, I just say congratulations.
And thank you.
Congratulations, and thank you.
Good work. Now, that's all I want to say about Andrew Gilliam, and now he needs to go work on himself.
But I want him to know, at least from one person, that at this moment, and in that decision, I'm completely supportive, and I appreciate it, and I have full respect for that.
How many people have died, how many doctors have died from past flus?
Now, as we're trying to figure out how much is the right amount of being worried and how much we should not be worried, one of the questions I have is, is this typical?
That in the past we were having doctors who were dying from treating just regular flu?
Because that had to be happening somewhere, right?
Because the regular flu can also take people out.
And some doctors would be older, you know, over 60, etc.
But I think these are actually younger doctors.
But is this a reporting phenomenon?
In other words, is it true that every year we lose a few doctors actually dying to the flu?
Does that happen every year and we just don't report it because it seems more like the baseline?
And are we over-reporting some specific things That are certainly worrisome, and it doesn't mean we should treat the situation any less seriously.
But I'm just wondering if when we hear about the doctors who are dying, if any of this is because there's more reporting about it.
It's just a question. But the seriousness, of course, should not be underestimated.
And the reason that matters, the reason it matters to us is Is that I would like to know the odds of dying if I get it.
And the only way I would know that is to know how many infected people are not having problems.
So if you tell me, Scott, it is very normal for doctors to be dying during the flu season from catching the flu.
It's just, you know, it's low percentage.
We don't report it.
It's just sort of baseline badness.
If I knew that...
And I knew that what I was seeing about these doctors dying was just more of that, then that would give me a little more comfort that if I get it, I'm not going to die.
So it has to do with our national state of mind, which is important, because this is, in a way, what we're having is an information and psychology problem, and you have to treat it that way, as well as a health and physical problem.
But I'd like to know if more doctors, more young doctors especially, are dying from this flu than from last flus.
Because that would give me some information, you know, should I contract it from that point on, what are my odds?
That would give me some information.
Alright, what about...
What about...
Maybe, I've already talked about this one.
Let's talk about Bernie and Biden.
Again, you just watched it happen in real time.
I'm so uninterested in Biden and Bernie Sanders that I just forgot to talk about it.
It was like the big news that wasn't the virus last night, the biggest news.
I literally just forgot to talk about it here, but I'll go back to it.
What I saw, I refer to it as a pillow fight in a nursing home.
And the reason I called it that is that there was a lot of activity.
You know, they were loudly, passionately talking about his stuff, but it felt like two old men just going, and they were punching as hard as they could, but it was sort of like a pillow fight punch.
It felt to me that there were no real blows landed.
Now, if you were a partisan, you would look at it and say, oh, yeah, there was that time that Bernie cornered him on that lie.
Eh, nobody cares.
Or that was the time Biden did that good thing and he really showed he's presidential.
Eh, yeah, maybe.
Nobody cares. Here's my summary of it.
My summary is that because Biden didn't lose, he won.
Biden looked better than I've seen him.
I have to admit, Biden looked healthier than I've seen him.
Wasn't there... I missed the first part, but somebody said he coughed.
Did that happen? Because he didn't cough for the rest of the event, but I was waiting to see if there was a video of it.
I saw that hashtag BidenCough was trending, and then I looked for it, but I haven't seen the video yet.
So can anybody tell me in the comments Did that cough look like it was a problem cough?
Or did it look like, you know, just a dry throat, I've been talking all day kind of cough, which we all have.
So I don't know. So I would say Biden won because Bernie probably wasn't trying to win.
It looked that way. Bernie was pretty clear that if he didn't get it, he would help Joe Biden.
And that's a lot easier because Joe Biden apparently is stealing Bernie's platform.
Which was a good play.
Apparently, you know, so Biden wants to do some kind of free college for some kinds of people situation, and he's basically just stealing one of Bernie's biggest things.
Now, here's an interesting thought.
I just want to put this in your...
Oh, it was a cleared throat cough.
Or he coughed off camera.
I heard some throat clearing coughing off camera, but I thought it was Bernie.
Because I think it happened when Biden was talking.
So that's just an open question.
I don't think there's any reason to think there's a specific risk because of that, but we should watch that.
So, does it seem interesting to you that Elizabeth Warren is out of the race?
She has not endorsed anybody.
And Biden just picked up one of her major signature pieces, which is the student debt forgiveness.
Is there any possibility that Elizabeth Warren will be the vice presidential pick for Biden?
Because it feels like he's at least considering it.
Because if you were going to negotiate with Elizabeth Warren to be your vice president, could you bring her on the ticket if you had done nothing that she wanted?
Probably not. It could be that Biden is prepping the nation for bringing Warren on as a vice president.
That's possible. Now, I think it's a losing ticket, if you ask me.
I think that that would cost him too much of the black vote.
I think she's unlikable in a number of ways.
She's too old to be a vice president, in my opinion.
I don't think we should be picking vice presidents that are going to be in their 70s.
That makes no sense at all.
And especially in the In the middle of a situation where a virus is killing older people, can you really have a vice president who's going to be in her 70s?
Really? Is that how you protect the country?
By having a vice president who's 70 years old?
I think she's 69 now.
And so I don't see it.
I don't see it as a good strategy, but the fact that Biden took one of Warren's signature things, it could be he was just trying to kneecap Bernie, but give something to Bernie's supporters, which would also explain it.
But Elizabeth Warren is suspiciously silent lately, so can't rule it out.
I'm still going to say Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris has always been my first prediction, and I'll stay with it.
Alright. Anything else happen?
For those of you who stayed to the end, I'm going to tell you a story I've never told before.
And the reason I've never told it is because it couldn't be told.
There's a category of stories that can never be told until the situation is just right.
And this is it.
And I wouldn't tell this story unless I thought it would help some people.
So I'm going to tell this story with the advanced knowledge that maybe 80% of you are going to say, um, Scott, are you losing it a little bit?
I'm not buying any of that.
I'm not even sure that's true.
Scott, did you just make up that story?
So 80% of you are not going to have the experience that I'm trying to give the 20%.
Know that in advance.
But it won't hurt you. You're not going to be worse off for it.
And you will be interested.
20% of you don't operate on a strictly rational, logical basis.
That's who I'm going to talk to.
20% of you live in more of a, let's say if it were your own words, you'd probably say it was a spiritual world, you know, where all things are possible.
Maybe there's a new age part of you.
I'm going to speak to you.
The people who still allow some mystery about how things work.
Those of you who think we live in a mechanical cause and effect world and you've got a good grasp of all of that, this won't be good for you.
This is for the other 20%.
It goes like this.
The only thing I'll promise you, and I'm going to look right in the camera and promise you this, I'm not making up any of this.
I could be wrong.
I mean, I could have some facts wrong.
I could have some false memory.
But I promise you, none of this is made up.
At least consciously made up.
For most of my life, I've seen my future in advance.
Right? 80% of you just said, Oh God, I don't like where this is going.
I don't know why.
I don't have a theory on it.
It's just an experience.
I'll give you an example.
In my early, early youth I saw myself as a famous cartoonist.
Now, I became one.
What are the odds of becoming a famous cartoonist?
Well, the odds of being a successful cartoonist are pretty low.
The odds of being a famous one Are really low.
How many famous cartoonists can you name, right?
Maybe 20. And the other 19 of them probably started way before I did.
They're already sort of just famous people from the past in many cases.
So to become a famous current cartoonist, what are the odds?
Now, if this were the only part of my story, I would say, okay, Scott, Scott, that's easy to explain.
It's the thing you wanted, you had the capability, you worked for it, you got it.
And if you had not succeeded, we wouldn't be listening to you.
So there's also a survivor bias thing built into there.
But it's not the only part of my story.
I also had a vision of a house I would live in years in the future.
And then I did. I lived in the house that was, for all practical purposes, the exact house I imagined for years.
And like most of my dreams, I don't remember.
I can't tell you I remember much in terms of any dream I've ever had.
I don't think I have.
But these visions, I call them, were not dreams.
They were a solid, almost like a memory of the future.
That's how I experienced them.
And, of course, I always thought to myself, that doesn't mean they're real.
I mean, I have this thing that feels like a memory, but of the future.
That doesn't mean it's real.
And I wouldn't expect 80% of you to even, you know, most of you are probably checking out before I get to the good part.
There's a good part coming.
In college, in my freshman year, was it freshman?
I don't know which year it was, but in college, one day I was sound asleep.
And I woke up in bed, sat up in bed, wide awake, and I saw myself living in San Francisco.
Now, I had no connection to San Francisco.
I was in college in the East Coast.
I had never traveled here, never been to California, and didn't even know any people.
I didn't know a person who lived in San Francisco.
And I saw, again, like it was a future memory, a vivid picture of me in San Francisco.
A few years later, I landed in San Francisco, having sold my car for a one-way ticket to San Francisco.
Actually, to California, and then I drove up to San Francisco.
And I lived there for years and built my life here.
I had another vision at around the same time.
Again, it was a future memory, meaning not like a dream, because I don't really remember my dreams and I don't put any importance in them.
But the other vision was me standing in front of a large audience, a physical audience, and talking to them.
And somehow I was a celebrity.
Now this was weird, because at the time I was having that I saw myself standing in front of large crowds and they were listening just to me.
And I didn't know what I was saying or why I was there.
Years later, When the Dilbert thing happened, I embarked on a speaking career.
And I would find myself quite frequently standing on stage alone, doing essentially stand-up comedy, to a group of a thousand or five thousand.
I think five thousand was the biggest.
Now, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in my early life that would suggest that my personality and my ambitions, anything, would put me on stage As a celebrity in front of a giant crowd of people.
And it happened.
It happened. I have one other premonition that I've had since I was very young.
It's my strongest one.
Now, these other ones were all good news.
Good news that I would become a famous cartoonist.
That's great news. Good news that I would be able to live in this cool house that I imagined, and then I did.
Not the house I'm in. I built this one.
And it was cool news that I would stand in front of big groups and entertain them or something.
And it was good news that I'd move to San Francisco because it's a nice place, or it used to be.
But there was one premonition, really, really strong, And it has weighed on me like one of the worst parts of my life.
It was my hardest premonition, my worst one, and it has weighed on me for decades.
And it went like this.
In my early 60s, which is now, there would be a national disaster that people didn't see coming.
In the vision, I never knew the nature of it.
And in that world, I would become important in a different way.
Different than cartooning, different than that.
And that I would know my role when it happened.
And I think it's this.
Because as much as this is a health problem, it's a psychological problem.
And somehow, by complete accident, meaning I didn't plan it, I have studied my whole life for this.
This moment.
All of my skills, all of my talent, all of my celebrity, you know, let's say, capital, is sort of coming together at this moment.
Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly. As I have expected for decades.
It's my clearest, cleanest, scariest vision of the future.
And it's this.
But here's the good news.
It works out.
Because in this vision, We get through it.
And we get through it by sticking together.
And we get through it because we can.
Because we're Americans.
Because we're humans. 99% of the species on Earth have gone extinct.
Not us.
Not us.
99% of the species of the planet Earth have already gone extinct.
Not us. That fucking virus doesn't know what's coming for it.
Human ingenuity is starting to kick in.
Hold on. Two weeks.
Two weeks. In two weeks, you're gonna see news coming from your fellow citizens, the best among us, that is better than anything you've ever seen in your life.
It's gonna be breathtaking.
It's gonna be hard. This next year is going to be hard.
It's going to be very hard. But, for the 20% of you who live in a world where cause and effect isn't everything.
Maybe we're not a mechanical world.
Maybe there's something mysterious, something spiritual, something extra.
Maybe we're a simulation. Maybe God has a plan.
Any of those things.
But if it helps you, if it helps you even a little bit, These visions of mine have not been wrong yet.
I'm not making this up.
We are where we were going to be if these visions mean anything.
But we're in a good place that looks like a bad place.
We're going to beat this, and we're going to beat it hard, and we're going to be fine.
And I hope I can be part of that.
And I will talk to you probably this afternoon, give you a little A little extra free entertainment because our sports are gone.
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