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March 22, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
37:40
Episode 864 Scott Adams: Pls I've Thoughts Before Bedtime While Self-Swaddling In a Warm Blanket
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Hey everybody.
Come on in. It's time for Self-Swaddling in a Warm Soft Blanket with Scott Adams.
Still working on the branding.
I know. It's not catchy.
It's not crisp.
It will never be a famous international brand.
But it sure feels good.
Alright, how many of you have tried it?
Be honest.
When I told you it just feels good to wrap yourself in a nice soft blanket and you'll just feel better.
How many of you tried it?
If you did, you have already realized that it works.
Somebody's saying that Greg Galfeld is on.
Well, you should record that or Watch me on recording after you watch that.
That is the beauty of technology.
You can have it both.
You can have it both ways.
But one of us has commercials and the other doesn't.
If I were going to record one, I would record the one that had commercials.
Sorry, Greg. But Greg's got the number one show in his time slot in addition to his other number one show in his time slot, so I think he's doing okay.
I would like to give a special shout-out.
To the people who are going to work.
The ones who are running the essential services.
Because there are a lot of us, and if you're being honest about it, the first several days of the staying home, not so bad at all.
Not so bad. A lot of people will admit that staying home for a few days, if they can afford it or if they're still getting a paycheck, it's a pretty good deal.
But there are other people, and we should not forget them, not just the medical professionals at the front line, not just the first responders who have their own job plus this on top of it, but just the people we're keeping the lights on.
There are people who are still going to work, still taking the chance, and they don't really have much of a choice about it because you need your water, you need your electricity, you need your essential services.
And so a special thank you from all of us who got to stay home and be safer because of your good work.
So thank you. So I'm seeing lots of people prognosticating about where it's all going.
And I feel as though they're all making the same one of two mistakes.
So I haven't seen anybody make both of them, but maybe I have.
But they make at least one of these two mistakes in the analysis.
And it's a mistake by omission.
In other words, if these two variables didn't exist, then everything they say would be quite sensible.
But the two variables that keep getting left out How effective are the pills?
You know, the, what is it, the chloroxyhydroclone, whatever it is, and the azithrosythin.
I think I said them both correctly.
But we know there's this cocktail.
The president tweeted about it.
The professionals, the experts, Dr.
Fauci's playing it down, as he should.
Because remember, he's a smart guy.
So if you see two smart people, and I would argue that the president is quite brilliant in his field, and Fauci is brilliant in his field, if you see them seem to be on a different page, you have to sort of dig a little deeper.
And I think what's happening here Is that the president wants to give the country hope.
So he's a little biased toward the hopey side of things.
But that he's been told there's reason to have hope.
I don't think he's making it up.
I don't think he went rogue.
I'm pretty sure he's talked to real people who said, yeah, this combination of pills looks pretty promising.
But here's the thing. Everybody in the world wants those pills.
And they want them before they even have the coronavirus, right?
Because, I mean, you know, seriously, if you could, you know, on the down low, get a little batch of that medicine somehow, you'd do it, wouldn't you?
Just to keep your family safe, if not yourself.
And you'd say, well, if I got enough of it, I think I'll just be chopping these for a while because they...
They don't have a gigantic risk unless you take them for a long time, and maybe that's not your plan.
So if you could hoard them, would you?
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
You would be a hoarded son of a beehive, wouldn't you?
Hi kids. Hi children who are awake late and home from school.
Yeah, so here's what I think is happening.
And the media is reporting it like it's some kind of mistake of communication or something.
I think they're missing the whole story.
Which is, the president is sort of playing the good cop.
You're not used to that, are you?
When was the last time that President Trump played good cop?
Right? He usually plays bad cop.
But he's playing good cop.
You know, I feel good about this.
I'm no doctor. Can't guarantee it.
I feel good about these pills.
And Dr. Fauci's playing bad cop.
Productively. Productively.
If you said to me, Scott, you know, I'd really, I'd be a lot happier if Fauci just agreed with the president.
Or, conversely, I'd be a lot happier if the president just said exactly what Fauci said.
There was just no difference. Would you?
Would you? Would you be happier?
I wouldn't. Because I think that they got their act exactly right.
I doubt they talked about it and said, you do this, I'll do that.
I don't think it's like that. But I think it's just two smart people who knew that they had a slightly different job.
So they did their slightly different jobs, did them well.
Fauci kept us from having a run on these things.
President Trump said there's reason to be optimistic.
I kind of like those dual messages, actually.
That works pretty well for me. So here's the first thing.
When people say where it's going to go, they kind of discount the fact that if the early reports are right, the pills are kind of a solution.
It's a way out. Now you'd have to design your path out, but it's the variable you need to complete the design.
Because right now, without the pills and without the testing kits, which is the other variable that people forget, actually, The testing kits, people act as if they exist.
And very smart people will say, people, people, I don't know what you're all missing here.
All we have to do is test like crazy, and then we can all go back to work.
Yeah, with the non-existent tests?
Now, of course, they exist in great quantity, but the quantities we need are even more vast than the tremendous amount that we've been able to put together so far.
So, yeah, there's nobody who has missed that trick.
If you're explaining to us that we need to do massive testing, I don't know what you're really telling me because I think that's what every single person in the world wants to do if we add a massive number of tests.
And I'm pretty sure we're working pretty hard on that.
So, any analysis of where this is going needs to mention those two things that the pills will probably have, I'm guessing, sooner.
How hard is it to print additional pills?
I'm guessing it's something you do pretty well.
I mean, it feels like you could just crank those babies out like crazy, couldn't you?
So if I had to guess, we're going to get enough pills way before we're going to get enough test kits.
So I see it as sort of a two-phase thing, which is phase one, if we're happy that the pills work, Then we can say, okay, if you're young and healthy and under 60, under these conditions and in these places, give it a shot.
Go back to work. And as soon as you get a symptom, boom, go in and get a pill because we have enough of them now.
So that's phase one. Phase two is the tests.
You have to have enough of them.
They have to be used in a statistically wise way, which we can figure out.
And then you can start to free up the over-60s and the people at risk.
You need the tests to get to that last level.
But you can rescue the economy before you get as many tests as you need.
And this is what I think it would take.
I think it would take pop-up tents, Staffed by nurses and maybe retired medical workers who know enough to put on a mask, assuming we have enough, and they know enough to keep a distance from people, and then make them drive up.
And this is just how I would do it, and this is only because it's an emergency, right?
So if it were not an emergency...
This would be way too reckless.
But all the rules are suspended in favor of what makes sense at the moment.
So we're not just going by the rule book, now we're going by what works.
What's my risk balance?
And that might be different at any moment.
So here's what I can imagine.
A set of rules that would be something like this.
You feel like you've got a cough.
You drive immediately to one of these pop-up tents that ideally would be walking distance from a major hospital in case anything needs to be quickly identified for escalation.
You're right there. You drive up.
You get in line behind the other cars so you're not being contaminated by someone who has it and maybe you don't have it so you're not standing near them.
You're in your car. As the cars move up, the medical professional says...
Checklist. Have you filled out the checklist that we put through a crack in your window while you were waiting earlier so you had time to fill it out?
And the checklist would be, you know, prior medical history, trying to find out if there's any reason these drugs would kill you.
Do you have any underlying conditions?
You know, what kind of symptoms are you having?
And then when you get there, maybe you don't even hand the paper to anybody.
Maybe you just hold it up to your closed window and you say, you know, here's my deal.
And if it's just a one-page checklist, the medical professional from six feet away says, all right, looks good, you qualify.
We don't know if you have coronavirus, but here's the important part of the idea.
It doesn't matter if you have enough of the meds and they work.
And we have a good feeling about them being safe enough in short-term doses.
So then let's say that you've held up your thing.
Your checklist looks good.
The medical professional is six footed away behind your glass window.
They don't know if you have it or if you have seasonal flu.
It doesn't matter. Because they have enough pills.
So everything depends on having enough, right?
It's all about that. And then you say, okay, you're qualified.
The checklist works. Pop your trunk.
So without getting out of the car, you pop your trunk.
They throw the pills in the back with some instructions and when to take them.
They close it with their elbow, and you're off.
No physical contact.
Not even a handoff contact.
Nothing changed places.
Somebody says, no trunk?
I don't know why.
I mean, you could just throw it in the back seat.
The point is, you could do it easily without any contact.
And then you could just start cranking it out.
Now, the big variable is, is it safe enough?
Is it efficacious?
Will we have them in large numbers?
And do we know... Who it would be dangerous for exactly?
Do we have enough? So those are some big questions, but they feel very solvable.
The reason that I try to draw the picture this way so you can actually visualize it, because I hope I drew a picture where you actually imagine the cars in line, you saw the pop-up tent, you saw the professionals, you saw the whole scene.
And the reason I do that is that If you have a problem and you can't even imagine how it could be solved, that's just the worst kind of problem.
So whether that's the solution, as I described, or it goes some other path, we're definitely going to get to the other side of it.
That's the only thing that's beyond question.
We'll get to the other side of it one way or the other.
But... If you can imagine this series, it should make you feel comfortable because it's pretty practical.
And then you do that, get the economy back to work at 75%, and a few months later you've got enough test kits to start phasing in the over 60s.
So that's how I see it going down.
And that's all good.
I told you to put some questions in my Twitter feed, and so I'm going to answer some of these questions.
Tesla P90D says, what would need to happen for quarantine to end next week?
Well, I don't know if we're calling it quarantine, but I know what you're talking about.
What would need to happen?
I don't think there's any chance it ends as a complete thing next week.
So I wouldn't want to give you any optimism that next week it's just all off.
Hey, everything's back to normal.
I'd say that's a zero chance.
But I'd say there's at least a 50% chance Then in one week, the medical profession will say, yeah, we don't have the largest, best longitudinal studies in the world for these meds, but darn it, we're seeing such good results, we just have to go with it.
It wouldn't make sense to hold off at that point.
So, then it's a matter of do you have enough pills and pop-up TENs or whatever your mechanism is to get it to people.
It doesn't have to be TENs. Alright, so I'd say 50% chance you'll have really good news next week on a path out.
But really bad news about number of people infected.
That's just going to keep going up for a while.
Let's see. What do you think contributed to New York's current situation the most?
Well, it's probably not one thing.
It would be density.
Would be one. It would be a climate where people are still kind of indoors a lot for another.
It would be more international travel than maybe any place else in the country.
It's a large population, crowded areas.
It's basically everything. Every possible thing that you could have that would make things worse, except elderly, right?
Now, I'm talking off the top of my head, but having been to, mostly Manhattan, but been to New York lots of times, I'm often struck by how young it is.
San Francisco is similar.
So it could be that New York will have just tons of infections, Maybe because they have also the first-class hospitals and I think a lower percentage of elderly.
Somebody's saying true in the comments, but I'd have to see a source.
Alvaro says, is Trump going to be re-elected?
Well, I always like to express that in a, if nothing changed, Which is ridiculous, right?
Because everything will change.
Nobody saw the coronavirus coming a month ago.
But from day one, when people have been asking me about re-election, I always say, if nothing changes, and of course it will.
So it's sort of useless to have a prediction when you know everything's going to change and it will matter.
It's going to be big stuff. But if you straight-lined it and just said what we know today is just exactly the only things we'll know on Election Day, you would win in a landslide.
It wouldn't even be close.
And that's already. And that's before we get any kind of a good result with this.
By Election Day, we'll certainly be on top of it.
So, yeah, I think he'll just...
It's possible it will be one of the biggest blowouts in election history.
It's possible. I wouldn't say that's probable, but it's definitely possible.
Marcia asked me, how do you stay so upbeat during turmoil?
Practice. You know, a lot of it is just being able to see the field.
I talk about this almost too much, which is, you know, the longer you live, the more things you've seen.
So I just have a larger framework of things I've seen.
But on top of that, my actual life experience is really varied.
You know, from corporate, economics, art, marketing, branding, persuasion, communication.
So I'm not like world-class at any of that stuff, but I've done a lot of it.
And I've seen a lot of it.
So when I see our current situation It would be...
How do I say this without making me sound like a genius?
Because there's nothing like that going on.
It would be like a chess player who's experienced versus a brand new chess player.
So I can just see a few extra moves because I've studied economics and a few other things that inform my opinion.
So when you can see a few extra moves and it looks like there's a path out and it's a path out certain...
This is a weird problem, because as enormous as it is, our victory over it is actually not in doubt.
And it's hard to think of any other situation where that would be true.
Almost any situation, we say to ourselves, well, it's a big problem, we're going to work on it, and we just don't know how this is going to turn out.
But this virus is very different.
We actually know how it's going to turn out.
We win. We don't know how long.
We don't know what it'll cost, but we win.
So it helps to know you win, and it helps to know that there are a number of winnable paths.
Beyond that, part of my technique, which I've been recommending all week, is that you treat your nerve management, your own sense of anxiety, that where you used to think that was also important, it's like, well... I've got a lot of things I need to do.
I've got to work, take care of my family, whatever.
But I'd also like to work on relaxing, so I'll spend half an hour exercising that day.
That's not what I'm talking about now.
This is a major worldwide psychological phenomenon.
If you have the time, and a lot of us do because we're locked down, if you have the time Your full-time job should be taking care of your own mental state because we need you at your best and it's also how you stay healthy.
So your immune system will just be better if you keep your attitude good and you're working on your stress reduction and your fitness and everything.
And I've been saying this for several days now and it's actually getting truer every day.
I've never been so healthy.
I'm like crazy healthy right now.
I don't know if you can tell, you know, because I've had a rough several months, just, you know, one little nagging thing after another, nothing important.
But, man, I mean, I'm exercising just right.
I'm sleeping well.
I've gotten rid of a lot of other stresses in my life just because life simplified so much.
I just have less to do.
And I'm just taking it like it's my full-time job.
I talk to you.
I do my cartooning.
But other than that...
It's a nice warm shower, a nice long walk outside, play with the dog.
It's my full-time job.
So if I seem like I'm handling the stress well, that's not a genetic gift.
That's the result of hard work and a strategy and working on it literally every day and putting lots of hours into it.
Somebody says your polyps sound worse.
Well, do they?
Do bipolar polyps sound worse?
uh I feel like I sound a little less nasally to myself, but, you know, you can never hear yourself exactly.
So, what was I saying?
Oh, so in terms of relaxing, so because...
This might be a little bit too much behind the curtain information, but watch out, it doesn't change anything.
Because those of you who are regular viewers of my Periscope have formed a relationship with me, and I don't think that's too strong a word.
I'm always gagging when people on TV say, oh, we're all a family and stuff like that.
But I think you would agree there's something about this medium, the live streaming, and especially the way Periscope does it, their interface is just tremendous, that makes this personal.
This feels like a personal connection.
And because we have a personal connection, that sets up what a hypnotist would describe as pacing and leading.
You've heard me talk about this before.
So because you've paced me, Meaning that you've done the simultaneous hip, you've done what I did, you meet me here in the morning, 7am, my time, whatever your time.
And because it's part of your routine, we formed a connection as if by an invisible string.
When you pull, I go.
And you're pulling as well as I'm pulling, because I'm reading your comments and responding to them in real time.
And you can feel it. You can feel a commenter will pull me and I'll go.
And then I'll pull you, and then you'll pull me.
We're just connected by this invisible string.
And because of that, that created an opportunity that I could relax myself, and it would relax all of you.
And that was actually a conscious part of my strategy.
Now, of course, I would have done it for myself under any circumstances, but I realized, consciously, that because of this connection we had formed, the more relaxed I am, the more you will automatically be relaxed, almost independent of what I say about things, as long as I don't whip you up into a frenzy.
So it's all very intentional, and...
I'm not trying to hide anything.
I am trying to pace you and lead you to relaxation.
And I hope that I'm doing that.
So, let's look at some more questions.
Simon says, are you using your same movie-slash-story-slash-narrative framework?
You know what I mean, says Simon, for understanding coronavirus and how humanity responds.
Well, so for those of you who don't know what that question means, I'll give you a little framework.
I've often said that for reasons I can't explain, and it's entirely most likely confirmation bias, so there's a little bit of sort of an illusion about this.
Or maybe not.
If we're a simulation, maybe it's not a coincidence.
But here's the concept.
That real life, at least the public stuff, the things we watch like elections and stuff like that, Conform to the three acts of a movie.
So often that it's hard to explain how it happens on its own.
Unless, of course, it's just selective memory and confirmation bias.
So there are lots of reasons I can imagine it's happening.
But if you were to somehow scientifically measure it, you wouldn't be able to find it.
But with Trump, I... Early on in the process, I predicted, because I'd seen this pattern so many times in life, I predicted that it was starting to shape up like a movie.
And the way you know it's a movie is that it has three acts, and there's something special about the third act.
And the third act, as they call it in script writing, is where...
The hero is in so much trouble, it's impossible to get out.
And you, the viewer, are watching the movie and you go, well, I don't know, this is going to take some fancy script writing because there's just no way the hero can get out of this mess.
And then it happens.
And that's what makes it a movie.
So when President Trump was running, I had said, there's going to be a third act and it's going to look like it's impossible.
And then somehow, he'll win anyway.
And, you know, you could argue what was the third act.
You know, in the summer before the election, the Democrats and Hillary Clinton started saying, it's dark, it's dark.
And it looked like he was just going to be branded as racist, and he made fun of the Gold Star family, and he just thought, all right, this is the third act.
It can't get worse than this.
And then the Access Hollywood tape came out.
And I said to myself, darn it, I got fooled.
Because I've been telling people also that a good movie has fake third acts.
Things that you think are shaping up to be impossible to solve, but then your hero solves them.
It's not until you get to the real third act that it's really looking insolvable.
And that, of course, was the Access Hollywood tape.
And I remember the day I heard that, I just thought, oh, no.
I'm watching this movie, and there's no way anybody, anybody could recover from that.
But a few days later, I don't know why, but my confidence returned, and I said to myself, you know, I actually think he is going to beat that.
I think the movie is going to be a movie.
A proper movie.
And I feel like I was the narrator of the movie, at least for some people who were watching me at that time.
So, back to your question.
Is the coronavirus taking a three-act structure?
And I don't know what you would identify as the third act, because most of it's been a little bit predictable, I would say.
In other words, smart people were saying early on, this is the way it's going to go, and then it's going just that way.
You could argue about the pace and the scope of it, but it's basically going the way smart people said it would go.
If it were a movie, there would be still ahead of us Maybe in the summer, there would be something that made it look unsolvable.
And I don't know that we're going to hit that.
Because if you ask me, everything does look solvable, and we can sort of see it from pretty far away.
So it would be a crappy movie if you could see how the movie was going to resolve itself from six months away.
And that would do it.
So, I love the question, by the way, and I had been thinking about it in those terms.
But it's not shaping up like a movie.
Favorite NBA player growing up?
What a random question, which I'll answer.
Walt Frazier on the Knicks and Larry Bird.
I was just watching an old, I don't know, some YouTube clips of Larry Bird.
Have you ever watched Larry Bird play basketball?
I'm not even like some big basketball fan, but, oh my goodness, it was like not even possible, the things he did.
I mean, I guess you could say, you know, Michael Jordan was similar, but Jordan looked like he had monstrous talent, you know, in the whole game of basketball, just monstrous talent, and it just looked like talent.
But when Larry Bird played, and I was watching just tons of old clips, and it's just jaw-dropping.
Because it doesn't even look like talent.
It looks like magic.
You know, I guess that's why Magic Johnson got his nickname.
Because his plays look like magic.
But you really get that sense when you watch Larry Bird.
Alright, have you ever met Gary Larson?
I have not. I, of course, know people who have met Gary Larson.
And... I don't know if you know it, but there might be some news about Gary Larson.
There might be some news about you could be seeing a little bit more of his stuff.
I don't know the details, but there's some motion in that direction.
Somebody says, Nico says, if you get a mild case of COVID and recover, are you immune?
I will tell you my non-scientific answer subject to fact-checking.
The answer is, maybe, kinda.
So here's the best I can determine.
I've been looking for that answer myself and asking it and looking at different people's answers.
And I don't know if I've ever talked to, you know, I don't know if I've asked the right expert about this.
But here's my best understanding.
That you do get some immunity, but it's not permanent.
In other words, a couple years later, if you were not re-exposed to it, it might bite you again, and by then maybe it's morphed a little or evolved a little so it's slightly different.
I don't know. I don't know the details.
So you should ignore anything I say on this topic, but my understanding, subject to somebody please fix it, is that you do get immunity, but it might not be forever.
Let's see. All these masks and respirators, it's all based on demand, cases in the future.
Will we need that many? I don't see it happening.
The vast majority of people who get infected recover.
Well, I've seen, anecdotally, I've seen some reports from, in fact, I may have tweeted it.
I'm not sure if I did or I just read it.
But there is a doctor who goes through the math of it, and the thing we don't understand is how often they need to change them.
Because if you're dealing with one infected person, you need one set of protective equipment and masks and gloves.
But as soon as you're done, you have to toss that stuff.
Or whatever you do with it, but you can't wear it a second time if you're doing things properly.
So apparently the number of masks, gowns, and stuff that they go through is just incredible.
We're talking about tens of thousands of them per one hospital in a very short amount of time.
Tens of thousands. Tens of thousands of masks In one hospital in a fairly short amount of time.
I don't know if that's, you know, a week or a month or whatever, but it's tens of thousands.
So, you know, you get the big numbers really quickly because that's just one hospital.
Taylor says, is this the black swan event for blockchain crypto Bitcoin?
You know, it feels like Crypto has to prove itself, and maybe that's what you're asking.
I feel as though if Bitcoin had gone up when the market went down, I would have said, you should never again not own Bitcoin.
If it's the last thing you do, make sure you get a little bit of money in Bitcoin, if it had done that.
But in fact, it did the opposite, and it tracked the market.
So why do I need something that tracks the market?
Unless I want to hide something or I find some other advantage of crypto.
But it did not perform as an asset class in a way that you would want it to.
Let's see. We've got a lot of questions there.
I probably won't be able to get to all these.
Estimate the time of return to normal, if ever.
That will be a phased return.
And if I know human beings, by election day, we're going to want to have it kind of wrapped up, if you know what I mean.
So you have to assume that the administration, being human animals who want to win elections as well as help the country recover, it's not inappropriate for political people to act politically in a political season.
They're doing a An okay job, I would say, of keeping the politics down to an annoying, you know, kind of acceptable, annoying level.
But, you know, if we start getting, let's say, 70% control on it, as if you could measure it that way, if we start getting like 70% control on it over the summer, there's going to be all kinds of push to get it done before Election Day.
Now the excuse, of course, will be so everybody can be safe to vote, but of course the president would have a second benefit from that that you can't really ignore.
So to answer your question, I would expect it's entirely based on what the medical profession says about the efficacy and availability of the meds.
If you get a good answer about those in the next week or two, I think you see people start going back to work in the third week if they're young and depending on where they're going.
Then lots of accommodations.
And somewhere around Christmas time, things looking kind of normal, but on our guard because it could flare up again in the winter.
So that's my best guess.
So I'll say that again.
Serious returning to work in three to four weeks.
Based on the pills being good, that's the big assumption there.
But not over 60s necessarily right away, and we'll phase them in by Election Day-ish.
That's just a prediction, by the way.
And I think nobody will go without food, and we will recover fairly quickly.
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