My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Positivities and feel-good stories in war against coronavirus --- 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. | |
| Hey, Jack. Good to see everybody. | |
| You know, I can't tell you how much I look forward to doing this every day. | |
| I think it shows. | |
| I mean, you probably figured it out by now. | |
| But I wouldn't do any of this if I didn't want to. | |
| Well, maybe I would, but in the emergency I probably would. | |
| But I do enjoy seeing you all. | |
| That is genuine. It is by far, you know, not counting family Christina stuff. | |
| It's the best thing I do in the day. | |
| And I'm trying to be useful. | |
| I think we're doing a good job here. | |
| And now, would you please, if you please, join me now for the simultaneous sip. | |
| If you're not prepared, you've got a moment to get prepared, and all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein. | |
| A canteen jug or flask. | |
| A vessel of any kind. | |
| Fill it with your favorite liquid. | |
| I like coffee. And join me now for the dopamine hit of the... | |
| No, what is it? | |
| The... Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. | |
| How could I forget it? | |
| The dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the coronavirus. | |
| It's coffee. And you're about to have it simultaneously with people all around the world. | |
| Go. That coronavirus doesn't have a chance. | |
| I pity it. | |
| I pity the coronavirus. | |
| It's trying to attack Earth, doing its best, but we're pretty, pretty good at this. | |
| It's amazing how much the standard war analogies work with this virus. | |
| Literally, our strategy against the virus is a strategic retreat, which is what we're in now, Divide and conquer. | |
| That's part of what the strategic retreat is buying us. | |
| We're building weapons. | |
| There are literally labs all over the world building weapons against a virus. | |
| And the worlds have coordinated, allies have formed, the entire power of humanity, the highest level of power it's ever been. | |
| Smartest, more capable, most connected, most determined. | |
| And we are focusing on one problem right now. | |
| If you were that one problem, and the entire world The power of humanity formed over 15 billion years, outlasting 99% of species dominating the earth. | |
| I wouldn't want to be on the other team, because we're going to kick their ass. | |
| And it's not going to happen yet. | |
| Wait for the weapons. | |
| Weapons are being formed right now, and there are going to be a lot of them. | |
| We're going to have our test kits. | |
| We're going to have our treatments for people who get it. | |
| A little bit later, we're going to have some vaccines. | |
| So hold the hill. | |
| Hold. And when I say hold, I don't mean just stay healthy. | |
| I mean the economy. | |
| Hold it together. I mean the psychology. | |
| Hold. This is different than a lot of types of crises. | |
| If this were a real world war, you might have some question about who's going to win. | |
| On this one, we don't have a question who's going to win. | |
| We have questions of when and how and what the casualties will be. | |
| But we're going to win. | |
| That part's not a dispute. | |
| So, we had an earthquake today in Utah. | |
| I guess it just happened to 5.7. | |
| That's pretty big. I haven't heard anything about damage. | |
| I'm hoping that because it's in Utah, maybe there are fewer large structures, less damage. | |
| But good luck to the people in Utah who did not need another problem. | |
| Here's something that nobody's complaining about this week for a good reason. | |
| Nobody is complaining this week that they don't have meaning in their life. | |
| Think about that. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. | |
| There's somebody out there who says, oh, my problem this week is I don't have meaning in my life. | |
| I don't see that. | |
| And it turns out that my discovery after living enough years is that the only time you have that internal sensation that you have meaning is if you're helping somebody else. | |
| Now, it could be that you're building your own power up, you're going to school to be a doctor or something, and you're going to be useful, so that gives you meaning. | |
| You're just not helping people yet, but you're preparing to help people. | |
| I don't think there's an exception to that. | |
| I don't believe that you can find meaning in life by pursuing, I don't know, Your sculptures that nobody's going to look at. | |
| Your paintings that nobody buys. | |
| I don't think you can find meaning in life just as an individual. | |
| The meaning is the connectivity. | |
| It's what you're doing for other people. | |
| And one of the things this What crisis has reminded us of is what that feels like. | |
| Because I don't know about most of you, but were you really engaged in trying to make sure that your fellow humans were surviving, were doing okay? | |
| Probably not. Probably we were all just involved with our own selves, and there was really nothing wrong with that. | |
| In good times, Take care of yourself. | |
| That's actually good for the public, too. | |
| But I think this crisis has just flipped everybody's thinking. | |
| Let me read something that I found very inspirational. | |
| This was from Representative Max Rose. | |
| He tweeted that,"...absolutely amazed by the number of emails I've gotten from retired doctors, nurses, and medical professionals looking for a way to help." Then it goes on to invite more of them. | |
| Now think about that. Retired medical professionals. | |
| These are not young people. | |
| And they're actually overwhelmed with volunteers. | |
| So I would, you know, there's no doubt about it, the most at-risk person would be a medical professional, you know, working with patients in any way, who's also older. | |
| And that's what retired medical professionals are. | |
| So these are people who are volunteering in waves to attack the beach. | |
| I mean, these are people who are just signing up for Normandy. | |
| Normandy was a little rougher, percentage-wise. | |
| But you get the point, right? | |
| We don't have a shortage of heroes. | |
| We actually have an excess of heroes. | |
| Just think about that. | |
| We have an excess of heroes. | |
| That's pretty amazing. So, I've got some other positivity that I'll get to, but I'm going to jump around a little bit for a few different things. | |
| Sometimes the simulation plays games with you. | |
| You know, coincidences and such. | |
| And, you know, today's one of those days. | |
| Last night, Christina told me a story that I was going to tell today. | |
| Just sort of a feel-good story. | |
| And then there was a headline, unfortunately a sad one today, that Kathy Griffin's mother died. | |
| I think she was very elderly. | |
| But if you follow Kathy Griffin, and for a moment, just hold your comments about what you think about her. | |
| These are emergency etiquette. | |
| You know, we're in a crisis, so it's a little different etiquette. | |
| We're not going to chew up the enemies. | |
| You know, you're political enemies. | |
| They're not real enemies, but political enemies. | |
| We're on pause for that, right? | |
| Just let me finish my story and just hold your opinion of Kathy Griffin for a moment. | |
| So she's got a tragedy on top of a tragedy today. | |
| It must be just horribly hard for her today because she was very close to her mother. | |
| She was part of the act, etc. | |
| So I sent her a little message of condolence. | |
| But here's the coincidence. | |
| Last night, Just randomly, Christina said, did I tell you the story about Kathy Griffin? | |
| And I said, no, I don't think you did. | |
| And here's her story. | |
| I think it was 2018. And so Christina and her daughter and her sister were in New York City for recreational reasons, and her sister had tickets to Kathy Griffin, who had a show that night. | |
| And on Instagram, you know, Christina just happened to see that Kathy Griffin was promoting her show, and she knew her sister had tickets to the show. | |
| So Christina just sent a direct message through Instagram to Kathy Griffin, who she doesn't know. | |
| And as far as I know, Kathy Griffin is not aware of her connection to me. | |
| So I'm not part of the story, as far as I know. | |
| And she sends a message to Kathy Griffin and says, you know, I'd love to go to your show. | |
| But too bad, you know, I'm with my daughter and, you know, I have to watch her. | |
| And Kathy Griffin replied back to Christina, who's a random fan who says, I wish I could go to the show, you know, big sold-out probably show. | |
| And Kathy Griffin says, maybe we can help get a babysitter and offer free tickets. | |
| Think about it. No, Christina does not have an adult daughter. | |
| She has a very young daughter. | |
| And so Kathy Griffin offered to help babysit, or find somebody to help babysit a complete stranger's kid. | |
| Just offered. So, you know, I'm going to give you some feel-good stories. | |
| That's one of them. So, you know, Sandra, condolence today. | |
| The least important news in the world happened last night. | |
| There was something called the Democratic primary for several states. | |
| And Biden continued to widen his lead on Bernie. | |
| Bernie continues to stay in, we think, to push his policies, which is not a bad reason to stay in, because he's been successful in getting that to happen. | |
| But I've never been less interested in a political event, have you? | |
| Thank you. | |
| Have you ever been less interested in such a major political event? | |
| You know, I tried to watch the news, and maybe it's because we just figured Biden was going to win, so there's no surprise. | |
| It could be that. It could be that. | |
| But in normal times, I think it's all we'd be talking about. | |
| I'm talking about it because I know some of you will be interested, but I don't think I've ever been less interested in a major political event than that. | |
| Because we're in this situation, I just can't care. | |
| But here's what's interesting about this. | |
| The two most influential Democrats Right now, in terms of this crisis, so influential of the moment, I would argue are Andrew Yang, because of the UBI thing, which certainly is going to get a test, and Bernie Sanders, who has been a very capable and loud voice for the working families, and definitely part of the productive Part of this crisis. | |
| I think Bernie and Yang are the two most influential people and they lost to Biden. | |
| Now, tell me what Biden's done. | |
| I'm not sure it's necessarily his job to do anything except run for president. | |
| It's not a criticism. | |
| It's more of a compliment to Bernie and to Yang. | |
| In losing, it didn't stop them from being patriots. | |
| It didn't stop them from being useful. | |
| Didn't stop them from helping. | |
| Didn't stop them from being powerful voices for our upcoming inevitable victory over the virus. | |
| So, thank you to Bernie Sanders and thank you to Andrew Yang. | |
| And, you know, I mentioned this yesterday when I did my special evening periscope. | |
| Maybe I mentioned it yesterday, but Dana Bash, well-known, one of the most prominent pundit voices on CNN, pointedly and directly complimented the president for his new leadership style, his revised current one. | |
| And I really appreciated that. | |
| As a citizen, I appreciated that. | |
| Here's some more stuff. I wanted to give you some more good news, but I had my notes out of order, so here you go. | |
| Joel Pollack is reporting today that stores are already restocking as hoped, delays in a few things, like certain meats, but eggs are back and plenty of produce. | |
| I told you that produce will never be a problem. | |
| If you're worried about starving, there's no worry at all because you can't hoard fresh fruit and broccoli. | |
| The worst case scenario is you might have to eat your vegetables for a week. | |
| Even that's not going to happen because the meat's already coming in too. | |
| So the grocery supply chain, as Joel says in his tweet, is amazing. | |
| I have a little bit of experience because I had a food company startup for a while. | |
| So I got a little bit of exposure to the whole food distribution plus my restaurant businesses. | |
| So I have a little bit more vision on that world. | |
| And the thing that I knew early is that it would perform no matter what. | |
| Because the nature of it is that people can stay away from each other physically I still get all the work done. | |
| If you're picking the vegetables, you can have lots of space from you and the other people picking vegetables if you plant it that way. | |
| If you're in a processing plant, I'm sure you can get enough distance. | |
| So it's the nature of the problem that it would be easy to find people to substitute. | |
| It's a very mature, lots of backups, lots of, you know, if this goes wrong, if that goes wrong. | |
| Probably our most mature and solid pipeline is our food. | |
| And so, you know, knowing that and having a little bit of insight into that world, I've been telling you since the start, it's the last thing you have to worry about. | |
| So don't worry about food. | |
| We're going to be okay. Toilet paper, you know, we're starting to see people realize that there wasn't any reason to hoard that in the first place. | |
| If nobody had hoarded it, yeah, we'd be fine. | |
| It's only the hoarding that caused the problem. | |
| And I think the hoarding just caused the stimulus to the toilet paper companies. | |
| And they'll catch up pretty quickly. | |
| Probably already are. Oh, good. | |
| I'm going to read you a whole bunch of at least positive-looking trends. | |
| So they're on a list. | |
| I'm not going to tell you the source only because I haven't asked permission. | |
| But I think, and normally I wouldn't read it because I haven't asked permission, and it was in email, it wasn't public. | |
| But because it's the emergency, I'm going to read you the good news. | |
| Because you need the good news. | |
| More than I need some minor old world etiquette about not telling you something that wasn't an email, okay? | |
| So we're in emergency etiquette. | |
| I wouldn't do this normally. | |
| It's just good for you. So without mentioning the source, because that's not important at the moment, here are things that are relatively good. | |
| It's a relative world, right? | |
| This is not winning the lottery good. | |
| This is just better than it could have been. | |
| So China's closed down its last coronavirus hospital. | |
| Because there are not enough new cases. | |
| That's pretty big. Indian doctors successful in treating coronavirus with a combination of drugs. | |
| So they're using these drugs called lapinavir, ritonavir, oseotimavir, along with chlorophenamin. | |
| So the Indians now have a body of experience. | |
| It may or may not be the answer, because I don't know if I'd heard of most of these drugs, but very valuable. | |
| So you're seeing humanity with pockets of knowledge starting to bring that knowledge into one unified, you know, meta-brain, if you will. | |
| And when that happens, it's going to be amazing, and we're really close to it. | |
| Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center claim to have found an antibody against coronavirus. | |
| I'm not a scientist. | |
| I don't know what that means, but sounds good, right? | |
| A 103-year-old Chinese grandmother made a full recovery. | |
| After being treated for six days. | |
| Now, China has also released to us all the things they tried. | |
| So they've released to the world, this is what we found out didn't work, this is what worked. | |
| Very valuable. And when the president tweeted a thank you to the Chinese people and to President Xi for their transparency and all the sacrifice they've made, I think it was genuine. | |
| And, you know, I certainly am Maybe the world's biggest critic of China. | |
| There might be people who make more noise about China than I do, but I don't think anybody hates them as much as I do. | |
| I'm talking about the government, not the people. | |
| And, you know, because I lost a stepson to fentanyl. | |
| So, for me, it's personal. | |
| But it is nonetheless true that That I think China has done the world a solid favor by working as hard as they have and by compiling that information and sharing it. | |
| So we're way ahead of them because we know what they tried. | |
| And that's a gigantic advantage. | |
| Apple is reopening all 42 stores in China. | |
| I don't know what that means economically so much as what it means psychologically because Apple has a hold on our Our global consciousness, they're just more important than other companies. | |
| So when you see Apple make any move, the first thing you say is, well, they're the smartest people we know. | |
| So it's probably the right move. | |
| And they have a de facto leadership role in the world, whether they wanted it or not. | |
| So Apple, good leadership. | |
| Thank you. Cleveland Clinic has developed a A COVID-19 test that gives results in hours, not days. | |
| How big a deal is it that somebody has hacked a way to do a test in hours instead of days? | |
| Really, really big. | |
| Now, I don't know that this can be immediately put into production anywhere else and then scaled up, but it's big. | |
| There's good news from South Korea, where a number of new cases is declining. | |
| So, good job, South Korea. | |
| Italy still hit hard, but the explanation is the elderly population there. | |
| I don't think that's the full story, and we'll find out more about that. | |
| So Italy, the good news, bad news is there's something special about them that makes them in the worst situation, but I don't think that's the whole story. | |
| Let's see. Scientists in Israel are likely to announce the development of a vaccine. | |
| I thought we knew that was coming, so that's good news. | |
| Three Maryland coronavirus patients fully recovered and able to return. | |
| Well, I don't know. That's just three people. | |
| Two more Filipinos have recovered. | |
| A network of Canadian researchers are making excellent progress. | |
| Again, I don't know the details. | |
| The San Diego Biotech Company is developing COVID-19 vaccination, working with Duke University and National University of Singapore. | |
| Good. It's all hands on board. | |
| There's nobody on the sidelines now. | |
| I've been saying from the start, this is not a spectator sport. | |
| If you're not in it, get in it, one way or the other. | |
| All seven patients who are getting treated in a New Delhi hospital have recovered. | |
| Here's the most interesting thing. | |
| Plasma from newly recovered patients can treat others who are infected. | |
| So if you got it and you got over it, they can take your blood serum, your hemoglobin or whatever the hell. | |
| I'm no scientist. And they can take it down to somebody who had it and recovered. | |
| Recovered being the important part. | |
| And then give it to somebody else, and apparently the early indications are that that could make a difference. | |
| Now, that's the good news, bad news. | |
| Somebody says plasma, not hemoglobin. | |
| Thank you. So, just assume that anything I say about the medical technology is probably wrong, but directionally accurate. | |
| Here's the good news. | |
| The more people that get it, The more people will recover, and the more people are available as candidates for giving blood to be part of this newly recovered people giving blood serum to other people to protect them. | |
| So, in the beginning, there are not that many people that you could even get to volunteer, but as the crisis worsens, so too will our weapons improve. | |
| Not for a good reason. | |
| In this case, you know, the good reason is that so many people got it that now we have a lot of recovered people and they become the, you know, at least potentially, you know, everything I say about what might work, just put a big caveat in your mind. | |
| We don't know anything right now, but we have strong indications of some things that are really promising, and that's worth noting. | |
| All right, I put the slaughter meter, the election slaughter meter at 60%. | |
| I did have it at over, I think my last slaughter meter was around 500 or 600 percent, basically saying that Trump was going to win easily no matter what. | |
| So that's what the slaughter meter records. | |
| Now, it's just my opinion. It's not based on anything. | |
| And I marked it down to 60 percent. | |
| Because the uncertainty of the coronavirus takes what would have been otherwise a fairly slam-dunk re-election for Trump and just introduces variables that can't yet be fully seen. | |
| So I'll put it at 60%. | |
| There's a 50% greater chance that Trump would get re-elected than Biden would win, but you have to put some uncertainty back in there. | |
| And, of course, the slaughter beater gets updated, so it doesn't tell you what's going to happen at the end. | |
| It just tells you, artificially, if nothing changed, this is what it would look like. | |
| But something always changes. | |
| Something always changes. | |
| What if we can't go to the polls? | |
| We'll figure it out. | |
| Between now and November... | |
| I have great confidence that the full weight of the United States' power and energy and focus can figure out how to have an election that doesn't look rigged. | |
| I suppose we're going to yell that it was rigged no matter what happens, but I think we can do this. | |
| That feels well within our capability. | |
| In a wartime footing, which we're in now, November is a long time away. | |
| In a normal world, if you said to me, Scott, can we redesign our voting system by November? | |
| I'd say, whoa, what have you been drinking? | |
| The world can't do anything that fast. | |
| We're not going to redesign our voting system before November. | |
| That would be crazy. It would be reckless and we couldn't get it done. | |
| But that was yesterday. | |
| We're on war footing now. | |
| Friction has sort of disappeared in terms of political friction and people just carping about what would be the best thing to do. | |
| At this point, the time it takes between now and November to figure out how to have a legitimate election in the United States, that's a lot of time in a crisis. | |
| If we can't get that done, well, I'll be surprised. | |
| I'll be surprised. There's very early indication that people with blood type A might have a greater risk than blood type O. And so I immediately went to my online health records to find out what my blood type was. | |
| And I couldn't figure it out, so I sure wish I knew. | |
| I think I would already know if I were a blood type O, right? | |
| If you're blood type O, your doctor taps you on the shoulder. | |
| Maybe I'm wrong about this, but this is just an assumption. | |
| If you're blood type O, I think somebody taps you on the shoulder and says, you know, it'd be nice if you donated blood, because I think O is the one everybody that is in most demand. | |
| So you'd probably know if you had blood type O if you're an adult of a certain age, and I don't know that, and so I'm guessing I'm probably A. We're getting information that conflicts about whether you can get the coronavirus from a surface, as opposed to somebody breathing on you in some fairly intensive way. | |
| The conflicting information is that, scientifically, the virus can live for a while on surfaces, you know, a day or two, depending on the surface. | |
| I think wood is safer than something else, etc. | |
| But basically, the scientists say, oh, it can definitely live on surfaces. | |
| So, in theory, you could get it from touching something that somebody else touched. | |
| But they also say that there are no confirmed cases where we know somebody got it from that. | |
| In other words, everybody who has it has a story of a direct connection with a human being that they were close to, physically close to. | |
| So there's no case of somebody who says, you know, I don't have any connection with anybody. | |
| I've just been, you know, living my life, keeping my distance, but I haven't washed my hands that much and I got coronavirus. | |
| Now, I don't know how easily we can tell. | |
| How easily can we tell That somebody got it from a person versus got it from an object. | |
| I don't know that we can tell, and that's why there's some uncertainty, but there are so many cases that have been exhaustively researched because that's the main thing you do. | |
| When somebody gets it, you say, all right, who did you talk to? | |
| Where were you? And you deconstruct their recent history to find out who else is infected. | |
| So we should have kicked up At least some people where you could say, you know, maybe they got it from the surface. | |
| Because even if somebody got it from close contact with a human, how do you know you got it from, you know, the air droplets flying through the air versus somebody touched a glass of their spouse who had it? | |
| How do you know? So, at least there's some reason to be a little bit optimistic. | |
| The surface is are not going to be the main source of infection, and I think we can probably confidently say that's true. | |
| I think we can confidently say that the main problem is not going to be surfaces, but of course it still exists as a risk, so wash your hands, use your hand sanitizers, and keep your hands away from your face. | |
| So I think there's no question that it's a potential problem, so treat it like it's a full problem. | |
| So Democrats are trying to blame Fox News for the slow response by the president, or at least not taking it as seriously as soon as they think he should have. | |
| They've got some very clever but misleading memes showing the Fox News hosts downplaying it while the virus was getting worse. | |
| Now that certainly happened. | |
| So in terms of describing what happened, we all watched it. | |
| So there's no question about what happened. | |
| But here's the thing. | |
| Was this some kind of weird, isolated, conservative, Republican, Fox News watcher problem? | |
| Can anybody tell me that there weren't any Democrats in the country or Democrats on TV who also were saying, well, looks like it's just the flu? | |
| Does anybody think that? | |
| Now, I'm not excusing anybody for anything. | |
| That's not my job, and I don't want to look back too much. | |
| But I would note that I think we were sort of all in this together of people slowly realizing that this wasn't normal. | |
| You know, a lot of us went through that phase where we were trying to figure out how bad it was. | |
| But I was thinking to myself, who were the earliest voices saying closed travel from China? | |
| Were they Democrats? | |
| You know, who was the first person to say close the airports from China? | |
| I think it was me. | |
| I'm not a Democrat. | |
| Now, I'm putting that out there provocatively because I want somebody to prove me wrong. | |
| But is there anybody in the public, you know, I consider myself a public figure, but was there anybody in the public who said loudly, And I was pretty worked up about it on January 24th to close the airports from China immediately. | |
| Figure it out later, but close the airport now and then figure it out. | |
| I don't think anybody said that before I did. | |
| Am I right? Who was telling you that the supply line problem could be as big, if not much bigger, than the virus itself? | |
| Who was saying that really early? | |
| Mike Cernovich. Mike Cernovich. | |
| Is he a Democrat? | |
| No. Don't think so. | |
| I think he's independent, but he can tell you what he is, but he's not a Democrat. | |
| Who are the biggest hawks on China really early? | |
| Names like Gordon Chang, Lance Bass. | |
| I don't know what their political affiliations are. | |
| But I don't think either of them are necessarily, you know, classic Democrats. | |
| I don't know what they are, so I'm just putting that out there. | |
| But these are the strongest voices I heard. | |
| The people who were on this, thank you, Tom Cotton was the next one I was going to mention. | |
| Tom Cotton, who had never been on my radar before, you know, I've heard the name and, you know, sometimes he was against the president on issues. | |
| I don't really even remember what they were. | |
| But I would say Tom Cotton is showing tremendous leadership on how to think about this, how to be aggressive, how to deal with China on this. | |
| So Tom Cotton, he's no Democrat. | |
| So I hear what you're saying, Democrats, that Fox News has some explaining. | |
| That conversation can happen later, and I invite it, because I think it's actually a useful conversation. | |
| You always want to audit. | |
| You always want to do an autopsy on anything that worked and anything that didn't work. | |
| So let's have that conversation. | |
| But let's not pretend this is the conservatives got it all wrong and the Democrats were smart. | |
| Because nothing like that happened. | |
| Nothing like that happened. | |
| So I don't think it serves the country to be trying to frame it that way at the moment. | |
| Let's have the conversation, but let's have it later. | |
| I cancelled two surgeries For myself. | |
| So I had two upcoming minor Surgeries that... | |
| I don't know when I'll ever have them. | |
| You know, one was so minor it's not worth mentioning. | |
| You know, it just would have been stitches and getting rid of a cyst wall. | |
| You know, the cyst already is cleared up, but I guess they leave a little... | |
| They leave what's called a wall, a little structure beneath the skin that I can't even feel. | |
| So I had the most minor surgery planned for that. | |
| That was going to be, you know, 10 minutes and walk out with some stitches to get rid of that. | |
| That's canceled until further notice. | |
| Then I had a far more important surgery that I was going to have on my sinuses that is just postponed forever until further notice. | |
| So that one, and interestingly, I was contacting my health provider at the same time they were contacting me. | |
| Both of us were canceling the surgeries at the same time. | |
| Because even if my health care provider had said, yeah, you know, we're not in an emergency yet, Let's just keep your surgery on the books and we'll do it next week. | |
| I wouldn't have gone ahead because I can. | |
| My surgery, the nasal stuff, is optional in the sense that I could push it off better than somebody with a heart attack or something. | |
| But it would have been really hard. | |
| Well, it is going to be. | |
| So if my symptoms return, It's going to be a tough time for me, but I was going to cancel the surgery anyway, because it's optional. | |
| And it's an emergency, and if people like me can just get our business out of the healthcare system and wait, we should do it. | |
| So I canceled my stuff. I should tell you that, this is just a personal note, because I feel like we have a personal connection. | |
| I hope you do too. | |
| That I had a big worry that went away yesterday. | |
| The reason that I had an MRI on my sinuses was not just to get the lay of the land so that they could plan the surgery. | |
| It was because there was a suspicion that there was a problem with the brain barrier to my sinus, which would have been a pretty big problem. | |
| And the CAT scan showed that it might be a problem. | |
| The MRI said, no problem. | |
| Once it could be seen clearer, the brain barrier was intact. | |
| I'd never even heard of this as a problem before, but apparently if your sinus problem gets to the extreme level that mine did, in some cases the brain barrier is at risk. | |
| I'd never even heard of that. I guess from the infections over time. | |
| But mine is not. | |
| So as of yesterday, I found out I had a gigantic thing to worry about that just went away. | |
| And I've got to say, it made me feel good. | |
| I wasn't sharing that with anybody, but it's all good news, so I can tell you now. | |
| All right. New Gingrich said in a tweet, a reporter asked me today why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus, which many of us were, at least in some ways. | |
| And he said, I tried to explain that one of the dangerous consequences of having a totally dishonest left-wing news media was that most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony. | |
| And, you know, Newt, once again, one of the keenest observers, I think that's true. | |
| I mean, I don't think it's complete, because it's not as if the left-wing news was the only one that got things wrong. | |
| Certainly nothing like that. | |
| But it's part of the question. | |
| I think the news business in general has some questions to answer, left and right. | |
| But Newt is right. | |
| The extraordinary disservice that our news business has been serving up really hurt us in this case. | |
| It really hurt us. | |
| Because there was no trust whatsoever. | |
| And I'm not sure there should have been. | |
| I don't think that's a problem of the public. | |
| If anybody's blaming the public for not taking it seriously as soon as they should, I think that's misplaced. | |
| I believe that The news destroyed its credibility to the point where we had trouble believing it until it was impossible to ignore. | |
| Looks like the government is thinking seriously about sending out direct checks. | |
| Not really UBI, but sort of looks like that. | |
| Maybe propping up airlines and small businesses. | |
| Trump seems to be aggressive about this, which is good. | |
| I told you yesterday, so last night I gave an update, that I sent a direct message on Twitter to the FCC Chair Ajit Pai, I hope I pronounced his name right, I don't know if I did, about the question of doctors practicing across state borders. | |
| And he said basically he's on the same page, and has been for years, and the government is working toward that. | |
| I don't know the details. I offer to help persuade if there's some person who needs to change their mind. | |
| But I'm a little disappointed that that's not already done because I can't imagine anybody at the federal level disagrees. | |
| It seems to be the local state licensing boards are being little tyrants or something. | |
| I don't know what's going on. | |
| That's my guess. But certainly at the federal level, I'll bet you couldn't find one person who doesn't think this is a tremendous idea, to temporarily get rid of the state restrictions and let U.S. doctors practice anywhere for the emergency, for telemedicine especially. | |
| And I just need to know who's saying no. | |
| Is there anybody saying no? | |
| It could be a case of just, it takes a while to say yes, because you've got to get your ducks in order. | |
| Maybe you need to research some things before you say yes. | |
| But if anybody is resisting this, can you get me that name? | |
| If there's any entity or person that can be identified who's on the other side of that? | |
| At the federal level. | |
| I don't care about the states. | |
| But if anybody at the federal level is saying no to this, first of all, I'd like to hear the reason. | |
| And if I'm not satisfied with the reason... | |
| I'd like an opportunity to persuade, because I don't think it would take me more than 20 minutes. | |
| You give me 20 minutes with whoever is the problem, and I will change their mind. | |
| I don't usually use persuasion at, let's say, weapons grade, but it's an emergency. | |
| So I would pull out all the stops, assuming there was no good reason for delaying, but there's nothing I would... | |
| I would get that done. | |
| Give me 20 minutes in a room with whoever needs their mind changed and I'll make that happen for you. | |
| I promise. Let's see. | |
| What else we got going on? | |
| Oh, this is really interesting. | |
| I don't know how many of you will remember this, but correct me If I didn't say it, but I'm pretty sure I talked about this some time ago on Periscope, that if we have a ventilator shortage, I asked, is there any way to just make additional tubes so that two people can use a ventilator instead of one, and then you've instantly doubled your capacity? | |
| So that was the first thing I said, which is, is there any way to Have a T-connector and have two people use the same ventilator. | |
| The other thing I said was, we need some kind of a tutorial to train the untrained in how to use a ventilator. | |
| Now, I learned a lot about that since I made that ignorant suggestion, because it was an ignorant suggestion, because I literally don't know enough about that world to be smart about it. | |
| But in the emergency, I feel it's good for us to float any idea that needs consideration, and that was one of them. | |
| And smart people told me this. | |
| They said, oh, Scott, it's two to four years to learn to be a respiration therapist, which is the job that manages the ventilators. | |
| There are different kinds of ventilators. | |
| You know, you couldn't quickly train somebody to operate a ventilator. | |
| And then I asked somebody who actually does that job. | |
| So, you know, you don't want the people who don't do the job telling you how hard it would be to learn. | |
| So somebody who actually did the job weighed in on Twitter and said, you know, I do this. | |
| I'm a respiration therapist. | |
| I work with ventilators. | |
| And in my opinion, two weeks. | |
| Two weeks. So here are the things you need to know. | |
| There are lots of different ventilator types, but they are somewhat standard in the sense that if you learn to use one, you would know how to use the others. | |
| You know, you'd find the on button, and there would be enough in common, sort of like driving a car, If you learn to drive one car, you probably could drive any car. | |
| So that's the first thing. | |
| You don't need much extra learning for the other types of machines. | |
| The second thing is that if you skip all the stuff that you know you don't need during an emergency, you're in good shape. | |
| So in a normal world, presumably your respirator, people would need to be as smart as a doctor on that narrow topic. | |
| Right? I mean, you do want your respiration therapist to know everything a doctor would know, but in that narrow respiration world. | |
| But we don't need that. | |
| We do have doctors. | |
| They're going to be nearby. | |
| And in an emergency situation, at least one individual thought that you could take somebody who had medical training Let's say an EMT or a nurse. | |
| And you could convert somebody who had already got a head start on the medical stuff. | |
| You could convert them in maybe two weeks. | |
| Now that's just one person who does the job opinion and feels right. | |
| Kind of feels right, doesn't it? | |
| But here's the good part. | |
| And I continue to be impressed at ordinary heroes stepping up. | |
| There was a woman who was a doctor who Apparently it was part of a study in which they studied the exact question of whether in an emergency you could use one ventilator for more than one person. | |
| Turns out, she did a video that she just whipped together for the emergency, and it was very well done. | |
| It was just done on the cheap, I think probably done with an iPad or something. | |
| And she showed very easily How you could convert a one-person ventilator into a four-person ventilator using stuff that's already at the hospital. | |
| So in other words, I guess they already have parts. | |
| There's one part that you cut in half to connect two things, but it's a common element. | |
| And she showed it. She did a tutorial. | |
| It looked pretty simple. It looked like I could have done it, really. | |
| And it was a connector for four. | |
| One, two, three, four. | |
| Four hoses from one ventilator. | |
| Now, does that work? | |
| Can one ventilator safely work on four patients? | |
| Turns out it's been tested, unfortunately. | |
| Unfortunately, there was a reason to test it. | |
| It was the Vegas shooting. | |
| So there was a Vegas doctor Who had been familiar with the doctors who did the study. | |
| So he had some personal connection to the people who did the study. | |
| And suddenly his emergency room is overrun with shooting victims from the Vegas shooting. | |
| And he needed more ventilators than he had. | |
| And he knew about the study, and so he put that into practice. | |
| He had never been tested on a human. | |
| It had been tested, you know, mechanically, but nobody had ever tried it on a human. | |
| He tried it on humans, because he had to. | |
| It was an emergency. It worked. | |
| So, that's not a, clearly, that's not any kind of a, you know, long-range FDA test, but it worked on humans, and it quadrupled the number of respirators. | |
| Now, there's a wild card here. | |
| If you have four people who have a virus, and they're on the same respirator, You're sharing air, or at least there's the potential for sharing air, and you would probably reasonably ask yourself, you know, is that going to make anybody worse? | |
| Well, as the doctor who did the video said, you would only be using it on people who are confirmed and very sick from the virus. | |
| So it's unlikely that they would give each other the virus. | |
| I still have that question of whether you could get somebody else's virus, could it make it worse? | |
| Only a doctor can answer that. | |
| But it was a doctor doing the video, and she said, as long as you already have the virus, and it's an emergency, it's not the safest thing in the world, but if it's an emergency, you can do this. | |
| So, one doctor in one place, being a hero, said, what can I do? | |
| And she made this video, and she shared her special knowledge about And now the ventilator capacity of the United States just quadrupled. | |
| Now remember when I told you that when geniuses get together, and that's what's happening with this coronavirus situation, when geniuses start sharing information, you form a meta-brain that will be more powerful than anything we've ever seen. | |
| And then when the results start to happen, That they're going to happen really quickly, but it's going to take a while to get to the elbow. | |
| This is one of those examples. | |
| Did you think, before today, did any of you think that you could quadruple ventilator supply in the United States in one day? | |
| Did anybody think that? | |
| Was there anybody in the world who said, yeah, you know, I think we'll quadruple ventilator supply in one day? | |
| Nobody thought that. | |
| But we did. We did. | |
| Now, I'm giving you the optimistic view there that everybody can do this, and they all saw the video and things, and I hope I'm part of spreading the idea. | |
| Now, I think I tweeted it, so you can find it in my Twitter feed from yesterday, but I imagine you could Google it. | |
| Something like, you know, Google, ventilator, shared hose, T-connector, coronavirus, it would pop right up, I'm pretty sure. | |
| So anybody looking for that would probably find it easily. | |
| So that's good news. | |
| Let's talk about some other technology. | |
| There's a report that Palantir, that would be, I believe that's Peter Thiels, he invested in that, and they I don't know exactly what Palantir does. | |
| It's sort of a mysterious company, but they do something with data and digging through large amounts of data to find stuff. | |
| And so the report says that Palantir and Clearview AI, that's the app that law enforcement uses to take a picture of you and then they know your name, are among the tech firms now in discussion with the government about implementing widespread surveillance tools in response to the coronavirus. | |
| Now here's another one you didn't see coming. | |
| Did you ever see coming that we probably could slap together the technology from existing systems that you could find out who somebody came in contact with by taking a picture of them? | |
| It might bring up, you know, I don't know how they would do it, bring up their social connections, find out where they were. | |
| I don't know exactly how that works, but it seems promising. | |
| Because identifying people and knowing something about them is the primary thing we need to do to get a handle on this. | |
| I've said before that the coronavirus is an information problem disguised as a health problem. | |
| Because if we had enough information, it wouldn't be a health problem. | |
| And we're watching the amount of information that we have expanding exponentially. | |
| Did you see the Biden live stream? | |
| You know, of course the candidates are staying home as they should. | |
| And Biden did a live stream in which he looked presidential in front of some flags with a background at a podium. | |
| And he gives his serious little address that I don't know if it was written or not. | |
| But then he's done. | |
| But they don't turn off the camera. | |
| And so there's this weird, awkward thing where his wife walks onto the camera to, I think, convince him to get off camera. | |
| Because he's just sort of standing there awkwardly on camera like he doesn't know what to do, like he's old. | |
| That's what it looked like. | |
| So his wife comes in, and then I don't think Joe Biden knew why she was coming in, because he didn't know that he should get off the stage because he was looking weird and awkward and old because the camera was still running and he wasn't doing anything useful. | |
| And so he thinks she's going in for the hug, so he gives her a hug, and she goes along and gives him a kiss, and they sort of walk off. | |
| And I'm thinking to myself, that could not have been a worse look. | |
| That really looked bad. | |
| We're going to see a lot more of that. | |
| Governor Cuomo, who has been quite a critic of President Trump, is changing his rhetoric a little bit. | |
| And he's saying today, quote, his team is on it. | |
| So this is Governor Cuomo talking about President Trump. | |
| His team is on it. They have been responsive late at night, early in the morning. | |
| And thus far, they have been doing everything that they can do. | |
| And I want to say thank you, and I want to say that I appreciate it. | |
| And I think he has some other good words, too. | |
| Now, of course, you know, when the dust settles, everybody will be finger-pointing and we'll get political again. | |
| But thank you to Governor Cuomo. | |
| Thank you for, I think, exactly the right tone at exactly the right time for a little bit of healing when we need it. | |
| There was a report today, anonymous sources of course, That Mnuchin was warning in some kind of a private meeting with Republican senators, I think it was. | |
| Or senators, anyway. | |
| And he warned that the U.S. could see a 20% unemployment meeting with Republican senators yesterday. | |
| And somebody there told the media about that. | |
| Think about that. | |
| There was somebody in that meeting... | |
| Who thought that the well-being of the country was not nearly as important as being a little bitch and tattling about what happened in the meeting. | |
| This is some of the worst behavior I've ever seen, honestly. | |
| Because the first thing is, what does the word could mean in this context? | |
| Do you know when other times we could have 20% unemployment? | |
| Any time. I mean, anything could happen. | |
| To say something could happen is sort of also saying it's on the high side. | |
| He's not putting a percentage on it. | |
| But if you take that number out of context, which is what happened, that's a number that could tank the whole economy. | |
| This is the kind of rumor that works against the psychology of the economy in such a grotesque way that Whoever did this needs to wake up today, and this is what Joel Pollack said in his tweet about this. | |
| I'll just read his tweet, because I think he captures it right. | |
| He says, journalists have a duty to report the news, obviously. | |
| So it's not the journalist's fault for reporting this. | |
| Even when it's bad for the country, we kind of accept that the news business has a special place. | |
| They can tell us good news, they can tell us bad news, we have to figure it out. | |
| But once it's news, it's news. | |
| So The reporter has a different responsibility than other people, especially in a crisis. | |
| And then Joel goes on, he says, but whichever Republican senator leaked this conjecture, because it is just conjecture, and it's the high end of conjecture, which is what makes it so bad. | |
| Which can only have been made as part of a plea for unity. | |
| I'm sorry, let me read it again. | |
| But whichever Republican senator leaked this conjecture, which can only have been made as part of a plea for unity. | |
| In other words, what Mnuchin was doing was trying to rally people, saying, you know, this could be bad, so we need to be on the same side. | |
| A plea for unity in action. | |
| Ought to wrestle with his or her conscience this evening. | |
| It's not about politics. | |
| This is war. Hashtag pulled together. | |
| Totally, totally agree. | |
| You know, normal business, when people are tattling on these closed meetings and running to their sources, in normal times, I don't like it. | |
| In normal times I think it might be damaging, but it's also just part of the baseline political weasel process, and so I don't care about it that much. | |
| But we're in a different situation. | |
| If whoever did this Doesn't know how to modify their behavior in an emergency. | |
| They don't deserve their job. | |
| Period. So, later, when the dust settles, should we ever find out who this was, I think we've got to ask if we want to keep them on the job. | |
| And this is Republican, so let me be as fair as I can. | |
| I don't care what party they're in. | |
| I would say this about a Democrat. | |
| I would say this about an Independent. | |
| I would say this about a Republican. | |
| And I am. Whoever did that You really hurt the country. | |
| There's no two ways about that. | |
| That was a private conversation for private professionals to know what to do. | |
| It was not something you tell the public because it's not the way to frame it for the public. | |
| The public needs the truth, but let's frame it properly if you're going to give it to them. | |
| This was despicable. Despicable behavior, and we can do better. | |
| Pretty sure we will. I remind you that Even though it's impossible to not talk about what's happened, you know, you can try as hard as you want, but you sort of have to. | |
| We don't have to focus on it. | |
| So that's my last word on that topic, because I'm not going to focus on it. | |
| Going forward, my expectation for you senators, my expectation, that's higher than wanting. | |
| You know, if you had to rank it, you know, there are things you wish you had. | |
| And then there are things that you expect. | |
| I don't want you to stop leaking to the press. | |
| It's not something I want. | |
| This is an emergency. | |
| I expect it. | |
| I expect it. | |
| That's all I'm going to say. | |
| It's not a want. | |
| I expect it. | |
| Get on board. Let's see. | |
| What else we got going on here? | |
| Here's one that snuck up on me. | |
| So you know the company Zoom, which is a tremendous product, by the way. | |
| You know, I don't glow about too many products. | |
| I glow about this one. | |
| This is the Apple Air Buds. | |
| This is like one of the best products ever invented. | |
| I could quibble about a couple things, but mostly that I lose it. | |
| But, you know, because they're small items, that's my fault. | |
| But man, this is a good product. | |
| Zoom is like that. So Zoom is a video conferencing product that you can very easily send somebody a link. | |
| They don't need to know anything or have any special software. | |
| They click the link and you're in a video conference. | |
| It's got all kinds of features and stuff. | |
| Great, great product. | |
| And I've been testing a lot of different video conferencing things because I do podcasts and the podcasters, as a guest, and the podcasters all use different software and stuff. | |
| No doubt about it, Zoom is the good product. | |
| I mean, it's really solid. | |
| I love that product. I wish it could do live streaming, but what it does, it does well. | |
| But here's the thing. | |
| It's an American company. | |
| That's good, right? Aren't you glad that Zoom is an American company? | |
| So first of all, they're doing well. | |
| That's great. It's good that anybody's doing well. | |
| Maybe that can partially compensate, at least in terms of stimulus to the economy, for the people who are not doing well. | |
| So you need some people to do well, and that's great. | |
| And it's an American company. | |
| But here's the thing. Their engineers are Chinese in China. | |
| So they've done the smarter thing, which is they've lowered their cost of labor tremendously by using offshore experts. | |
| So the main engineers for the biggest, most important business communication tool in the United States are Chinese engineers living in China, Chinese citizens. | |
| If you were the person who owned Zoom, in other words, you were the company and you were the engineers who worked there, could you see or capture every bit of high-level business and political conversation that goes across that platform? | |
| Because I assume the way it works is that when I have Zoom on my side and you've got it on your side, the traffic is going through their servers, is it not? | |
| Now, it might be encrypted. | |
| I hope it's encrypted. But how hard would it be for them to unencrypt it? | |
| Not hard, right? | |
| Now, here's what I hope. | |
| I believe the top guy, the founder of Zoom, I believe he was born in China, but he's an American. | |
| So he came over here early in his life. | |
| So he's just an American. | |
| So none of this is about the entrepreneur. | |
| Let me be as clear about this as I can. | |
| The guy who started Zoom, I don't care where he came from. | |
| He's an American. Let's just put a period on that. | |
| He's an American. He was doing what Americans do, build great companies. | |
| It's a great company. It's really a great company in terms of the product. | |
| But he had a vulnerability that was an advantage until now, I think. | |
| And the vulnerability is that he was using Chinese engineers. | |
| Now, can we trust that the Chinese government cannot co-opt engineers who live in their countries? | |
| No. You can't trust that at all. | |
| You can't trust that at all, unfortunately. | |
| Could the Chinese government twist an arm of some engineer who lives in China and works on the Zoom product? | |
| Yeah, of course they could. Of course they could. | |
| Now, here's my request to the American owners of Zoom. | |
| See what you can do. | |
| See what you can do. | |
| My assumption, and I'm going to be as firm on this as I can, that everybody who is working on this product who is American wants America to do well and knows how to do the right thing and will do the right thing. | |
| Now, I don't know what that is. | |
| It could be a case of diligently watching your code to make sure that if anything is changed by somebody in China, you can tell. | |
| I'm not smart enough to know what that entails, but in the short run, watch it carefully, please, because the rest of us are going to be watching it. | |
| In the long run, you kind of need to bring your engineers home. | |
| You know, you kind of need to bring that home. | |
| Because I think that that's a security, a potential security flaw. | |
| I don't know if it is a security problem, but it's a potential one that has enormous consequences. | |
| You know, all the most important business in the United States is going through that platform. | |
| Could they put on a sniffer that could pick out keywords and know what to listen to? | |
| Yeah, they could. They could. | |
| Technologically, they could. But again, the founder is an American. | |
| I have every reason to believe he's going to do the right thing. | |
| Every reason to believe he's on our side completely. | |
| So let's assume that they'll take care of that. | |
| That's a request from the public. | |
| All right. Here's a question I don't know. | |
| Does the coronavirus... | |
| And this is like a scientifically ignorant question. | |
| I would just like to understand this. | |
| And it's a general virus question, so it's not specific to the coronavirus, but maybe there's something different about it. | |
| It goes like this. If you get a small exposure, let's say you get it on your fingers and then you touch your mouth, and the virus comes in that way, a little just trace bit on your finger, trace bit got on your lips and got into your mouth, | |
| and then it grew. Compare that to, let's say, somebody who was on a cruise ship or in a confined space such as a nursing home, where their exposure might be, I don't know if we know this yet, but more of an aerosol, sort of in the room, as opposed to something you touched once and put on your lip and then it got in your body. | |
| Do both of those affect you the same way? | |
| Here's why I ask. Psychosomatically, I had to scratch an itch on my face. | |
| I will wash my hands the moment I turn this off. | |
| So physically, do you have the same outcome if you've got a small infection that worked its way into your body, Versus you were sort of marinating in virus. | |
| It was sort of coming in your ears and your mouth and your skin. | |
| Maybe you're getting it in multiple different ways at the same time. | |
| Would you have a better outcome by getting something that grew slowly through one opening Because your body would get the warning faster and have more time to build up a defense. | |
| Versus you're just overwhelmed and it's coming from everywhere and then you're dead. | |
| Because the reason this is important is it would tell us a lot about mitigation. | |
| It would tell me that if I simply stay six feet away from people and don't stay in the same room with people for too long and that sort of thing, that perhaps even if I caught it, Perhaps I would get the slow-growing kind that maybe gives me a little time to build up my defenses. | |
| So it's just a question. Somebody says our bodies have no defense. | |
| Well, that's not true. We build the defense. | |
| So we recognize that your body kicks in. | |
| I would say that's a defense. | |
| People recover from it. Somebody says it's not the same. | |
| I don't know if any of you are experts. | |
| I'll just read some comments. Somebody is speculating that the size of the viral load matters. | |
| And I've heard that, but I'd like to hear it from somebody who's an expert. | |
| Because it could be one of the main determinants of where things are going to go. | |
| Well, everybody who's answering is saying yes, but I don't know if any of you are experts. | |
| So put an asterisk on that. | |
| Maybe we'll find that out tomorrow. | |
| Those are the points I wanted to talk about. | |
| I see the traffic is dropping. | |
| You've got other things to do. | |
| I hope I'm being helpful. | |
| And I will... | |
| I don't know when, but I'll probably try to pop on again tonight. | |
| We can't get enough of this, can we? | |
| All right. I'm just looking at your comments now because I've been sort of looking at my notes until now. | |
| Well, I love you too. | |
| Stay safe. Dad got it, but only one of three kids did. | |
| It happened in my city. | |
| Yeah, that's good news. | |
| If a family member gets it, and only one other family member gets it, and you can sense it and separate it, then that's pretty good news. | |
| Alright, everybody's saying goodbye, so I guess it's time to go. | |
| Thank you so much for joining me. |