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March 23, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
51:15
Episode 866 Scott Adams: Wrapped in a Blanket and Answering Your Questions
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Hey everybody, come on in.
It's time for Swaddled in a Cloth Blanket.
You know, I just realized that the best time to do this in the evening, if I'm going to be doing two furs for the remainder of the coronavirus crisis, is I should do them at the same time a.m.
as p.m. 7 a.m., 7 p.m.
on the west coast.
On the east coast, that's 10 and 10.
So I don't know if I'll actually do that, but maybe I will.
So how's everybody doing? Doing okay?
In your isolation?
I'm getting a little bit squirrely.
Not gonna lie. The only people I've talked to who are not on video seem to be my dog and my cat.
Who, as it turns out, are brilliant conversationalists, so not nearly as bad as you thought.
All right. Don't complain what's on Fox News.
Counter-programming me?
There's always going to be something on there.
Alright, so I've got some questions slash assignments for you.
Meaning, if anybody knows the answer to this question, it would be really, really good to tell me.
Or tell the world, I suppose.
And the first question is this.
We've got good feelings about this hydroxychloroquine.
And azithromycin.
So much so that Governor Cuomo is going to be testing some starting Tuesday.
So they'll start a test in New York on that drug.
Now here's the question.
My understanding is we probably don't have enough of it if it turns out to be as good as we think.
That feels safe to say.
But is the bottleneck in the raw materials...
Is there a certain chemical or chemicals that have to be mixed together to make this thing?
Is it the raw materials that are lacking?
Or is it the actual construction of the pill and then the shipping of it?
So I'd like to know the answer to that.
Because there's a really interesting idea floating around that I don't want to tell you because...
People are working on it, but it's just not my business to get you excited about it.
But if you can tell me if the bottleneck is in the materials or the actual construction of the pill, I might have something interesting to tell you.
Alright. Your second assignment is a question was asked on Twitter that I don't know the answer to, and so that's what I'll ask you for.
If you can find an expert to tweet at me, And just answer this question.
It was a very interesting question, and it was, if we know how long the coronavirus can last on different types of surfaces, and it's whatever number of days, depending on the surface, why can't we just take the N95 masks after using them once, stick them in a paper bag, put it on the shelf, and then just use it again in a week?
Because wouldn't everything that could be on it just die?
Because it's dry.
Presumably it would be dry fairly quickly.
And nothing can live a week.
And there's nothing that would degrade in the composition of the mask.
So that was the question.
Please do not take that as a statement of some kind of quackery coming from the cartoonist guy.
I don't have an independent opinion of whether that's a good or a bad idea.
I will say this.
I did talk to somebody who directly knows very well somebody who's in the business.
So there's somebody who's in the business and making these masks at this moment.
And this is what the person who's making the masks, who has some scientific and engineering background, to make this statement.
And this is an exact quote.
So I got back this quote.
Now again, Do not take this as my opinion, and do not take this as true.
It's a question. You know, if there's somebody who could add something to this, does this make sense?
Is it crazy? So this is the response back from somebody who does know what they're talking about.
Quote, I would not recommend reusing disposable gloves.
So that's important, right?
Don't try to reuse disposable gloves.
They're high-contact surfaces.
But certainly face shields and masks can be reused, this is somebody else's opinion, after spraying them or wiping them down on both inside and outside surfaces with a disinfectant and allowing them to dry.
The exception would be if you know you came in contact with a confirmed case, maybe you want to throw that one away.
But if you might see several customers that, you know, or patients that are not confirmed, This one individual subject to your fact-checking and confirming or debunking opinions seems to think this would work.
Now, the question I asked is, well, if disinfectant is also in short supply, what's wrong with the first idea of just letting it age a week?
Now, you'd have to wait longer.
I imagine just spraying them with disinfectant and then allowing them to dry, does that kill everything?
I don't know. But it seems like waiting a week would.
Right? You can just add days until you're happy it's 100% effective.
Is it two weeks? I mean, we're still going to be in trouble in two weeks, so that would be better than nothing.
Someone else asked this sort of a follow-up question on the same topic.
The coronavirus...
It becomes deactivated at a certain temperature.
Somebody's saying 120 degrees.
I've heard 133.
But somewhere in that range, 120, 133 degrees, the virus breaks down.
But can you heat the masks to that temperature without degrading the mask?
And one person and I don't know what background they have.
I'm just going to say that the question is out there.
So this is not a statement.
It's still the form of a question.
And somebody says that they would maintain 95% efficacy if you heated them to 160, and the hospital laundry dryers will reach that temperature.
So, I have a hard time believing it would be that easy.
Don't you? If you could just throw them in the dryer and run them for 10 minutes on the heat cycle and they're all sterilized?
But just because it went through the dryer, it might be a little less...
No, I guess, no, you're saying still 95%, so that would be the same as it was.
So, could it really be that easy?
That doesn't sound right.
So, without the benefit of any scientific...
Insight into this question.
It feels a little too easy, doesn't it?
Well, you just throw them in the dryer, problem solved.
You'll be good to go in 15 minutes.
That just doesn't sound right.
But I'd like you to see an expert opinion on that.
So those are the three situations.
One is heat. One is using a disinfectant and just waiting until they dry.
And oh, and by the way, this is not assumed to work on every type of mask.
So the other caveat I should have said is that it would sort of depend on the mask, and I don't know exactly if we can tell which are the ones that it works on, but there's some thinking it would depend on the mask.
So there's that. There is a website now that brands itself as a medical equipment clearinghouse.
Because if you saw the...
You saw the experts talking.
You know that one of the big problems is there are plenty of people volunteering to make stuff, but there are also plenty of frauds and middlemen trying to, you know, price gouge, and you've got to weed them out.
And then you've got people who want to buy them.
So you've got lots of buyers.
You've got lots of people who said, you know, if I can find a buyer, I'll whip up a factory and start making them tomorrow.
So you need to match them.
So allegedly, and here's my assumption, so when When the need became obvious to a lot of people that there needed to be some kind of a website so people can find, you know, the sources and the buyers can find each other, I'm sure that more than one entity just got busy and built one.
So I don't know that this is the one, but it's the one that I know of.
So if there's another one out there, tweet at me if there's some competing one that does the same thing.
And the website, the URL is Project N95, as in N95 Max.
ProjectN95.com.
So check that out.
So if you think you can make something and you're looking for a buyer, I guess that's the place to try to make a connection.
All right. I see somebody asking about UV light, and we see this question all over.
I'm going to guess, based on just a little bit of skimming I did on the topic, that there may be some specific cases where UV light is better than nothing.
But I don't know that we could get enough of them and that they're the right thing for these particular uses.
You know, do they penetrate surfaces?
What if there are different conditions?
So while I believe it is well known that the UV light kills virus, what is unknown to me is if there are certain situations where using it makes sense and then others where it just doesn't make sense.
So I wouldn't know enough about that.
Just looking at...
Just looking at your...
Yeah, a lot of people have volunteered to make masks.
Alright, so I've been looking at some of my questions that came to me on Twitter.
Robert Barnes says, what if the Black Swan event, for those of you who don't know that term, Black Swan event is the once every 100 years, or the most unexpected thing.
And it's big and it changes everything.
So that's called the Black Swan.
And What if the black swan event is the panic from the pandemic rather than the pandemic itself?
Well, I'm not sure I've seen something I would call panic.
I suppose that's a matter of definition.
But I've seen people taking care of their families.
I've seen people hoarding, but mostly people acting rationally.
And just want to get through it.
So certainly people's nerves are frayed, etc.
But it's not really panic-panic.
This isn't that kind of panic.
So I guess the question would be whether closing down the economy is the real question.
Not the state of mind, but rather the what do you do about it.
And I'll say it again.
The most likely outcome is that things get darker and darker until It looks like, my God, we can't go one more day without opening up.
And if by then we have more tests or more drugs that work, we'll make the decision to open up.
So I don't think there's much risk that there's some point of no return for the economy and you'll go past it.
I don't think that's a thing.
Because it would be so obvious that we're at that point That some adult decision would be made, which is, alright, some of you, maybe only the ones who are young, maybe only the ones who have already had it and recovered, maybe only the ones who have good meds that work, assuming they do work.
But you're going to see some kind of a surge in returns well before the economy breaks.
Somebody says, more movie recommendations, please.
You know, I'm not a movie guy, and I've only watched one movie this year.
Because movies are no longer a form that I enjoy.
They're just too long, and they're self-congratulatory.
It's just not a good art form anymore.
It sort of ruined itself. But, if you want to laugh...
Go to YouTube and start looking for stand-up comedians that are to your liking.
You may have to knock around a little bit, but depending on how dark your humor is, you can laugh for a long time.
So Bill Burr is good.
I was just watching Norm MacDonald.
He's great. Just go Google around some stand-up comedians.
You'll get just tons of stuff, and it's terrific.
When is America going back to work?
Well, I think we will know a lot in two weeks.
So, the New York trial of the hydrochloroquine, I think, personally, that's the main variable I'm tracking.
Now, let me give you some variables to track.
For your own predictive abilities, alright?
Because remember, somebody's saying Giselnik, he's very dark but very funny.
Dave Chappelle, of course.
Jim Gaffigan. Jim Gaffigan's just the funniest person ever.
So you see some good recommendations going by on the comments.
What was I talking about?
I don't know. So, yeah.
Oh, here's the things you should look for.
These are sort of the dogs that don't bark sort of thing.
We're going to be focused on whatever shiny object the news is pointing us to in social media.
But let me point to you something that you haven't heard.
Are you ready? Track the number of frontline healthcare workers, especially the younger ones, Who die in the next two weeks from catching something while they're working, and then things just worsen and they died.
Now, if it had happened today, for example, if even one doctor or one nurse had caught it from somebody and died today, would we know it?
And maybe it happened and I missed it?
So, watch the healthcare workers themselves and see if their mortality rate approaches zero.
Because that's my prediction.
Has anybody mentioned that yet?
I think I'll be the first person who said this to you to watch that variable.
Watch that variable.
And here's why. If there's a shortage of Of the hydrochloroquine.
And if they know it works, who has it?
The frontline doctors, right?
Now, at the very least, they would take it quickly if they saw symptoms.
Which means they would be first to get this drug.
They were still wondering, does it work?
Is it safe? If you hear that zero doctors and frontline medical staff have died...
But you do hear that people got it.
At some point, you're going to have to ask yourself why you have zero mortality among that group.
And I think the answer is going to be that they have access to the hydrochloroquine.
Now, if tomorrow you hear of some tragic death, then...
Then take that as counter data.
And if you see another one, well, then this is falling apart pretty quickly.
But if you just don't hear it for a week, that might be a pretty good drug.
Right? So here's a prediction I'm going to make.
There will be no...
Important, like a senator, Rand Paul, unfortunately, tested positive.
And we, of course, wish him the best.
Now, he's young enough, and one assumes that he would be front of the line for getting some meds that are in short supply.
I hope so. I mean, I don't want to be the person who says, oh, why do the politicians get it first?
No, they work for us.
We need Rand Paul.
To be healthy. If it's a choice between I get the meds or Rand Paul gets the meds, I'll give it to him.
Because he's got a higher leverage in the emergency.
So I would think Rand Paul, the other senators who actually test positive, if any of them do, I think they'll get the drug.
So here's my prediction.
You're just not going to see a celebrity death unless it's somebody who's 85 years old.
But your prediction...
From this point on, you will not see a famous politician, rich person, frontline medical person, celebrity.
Basically, make your own list of anybody you think already has access to the limited supply.
And in your mind, say, okay, if anybody that I think has access to the limited supply, if one of them dies and they're 45 and there's no underlying conditions, Panic.
No, don't panic for the first one.
But I mean, if you saw a trend developing there, then maybe you should be concerned about it.
But I'm just going to put that out there.
That's the one variable that matters the most to me, because it's the canary in the coal mine.
It's the one that's going to tell you that maybe there's something there, which we don't know yet.
All right. I don't know exactly what's going on in Congress.
But I know the solution.
A lot of light.
So, whatever the...
Somebody's saying Harvey Weinstein.
I just don't know if the Harvey Weinstein thing is true.
I think that's a wait and see.
Because I think there was one sketchy source for it.
Would anybody know?
Who knows? Let's see.
It doesn't look like Congress is doing their job.
In the sense that if they can't get legislation passed today because they're arguing about the way to do it, and I'm not sure I have an opinion because I haven't looked at the details yet, but if any of this money is being funneled through companies, the public is going to be pretty angry.
There, of course, will be the controversy of, you know, if we're saving hotels, what does that mean for the Trump hotels?
And I think I'm gonna side with the president on this.
Surprise! I haven't sided with him on everything, but certainly not even involved with the crisis, I haven't.
But I think it would not be right to exclude the president's hotels if like hotels, you know, if hotels in general are going to be rescued.
There are a lot of employment involved.
It's one of our biggest businesses.
I don't know. I think I'd be a little bit flexible on that.
It would be easy to imagine a million ways that that looks wrong, is wrong, could be wrong.
But I don't know. If they get treated, if Don Jr.'s running the company and they get treated the way Hyatt gets treated, I'm not sure if those are exactly comparable, but if they get treated like their peers, I'm actually completely okay with it.
It would be more of a question about whether the whole industry is to be.
But, you know, it certainly wouldn't be fair to exclude somebody for that reason.
Do you think we could build UV light tunnels to disinfect faster?
Sure! I'm not exactly the engineer to ask that question, so I'll just say, yeah, why not?
No, I have no idea if that would work.
Alright. Colorado governor wants citizens to run slash walk less and ration their time outside.
What? Why would you ration your time outside?
Certainly it might make sense to stay away from other people, but why would you ration your time outside?
I don't even understand that.
Well, I don't even know if it's true, so ignore that.
Do you think we need to cure TDS... Before we cure the Wuhan virus.
Well, I'm just going to take a vacation from that question, if you don't mind.
You know, nobody likes talking about TDS and who did what dumb in politics than I do.
But I don't really have the appetite for it right now.
I just don't have the stomach for the small stuff at the moment.
Jennifer says, how bad is this going to be?
I have a bad feeling they aren't telling us the worst.
FEMA guy today was or was not reassuring.
How bad is it going to be?
Well, here's the thing.
It will only be as bad for the bulk of society as we collectively are willing to let it be.
So the government can tell us to stay home, But I think you'd agree there's some point where we're just not going to.
And I feel like the government knows that too, don't you?
You know, there's... Citizens are doing a fairly good job of doing what the government is asking for the greater good.
You know, there's some young people who are ignoring everything, of course.
But we're doing a pretty good job.
But now take that a month from now.
Right? In a month...
If you've saved some old people, but you don't know which ones, it's not like they had names.
It's like, oh, you saved Bob.
You just know that nobody died, or not as many people died as could have.
And I don't know if we could last more than a month.
Even if our government said, you've got to do it, we're going to send the police around.
There are a lot of us. There are a lot of citizens.
There wouldn't be enough police.
And I don't think the police would have the appetite to lock you up for opening your business if you can't pay the bills.
So, I think there's sort of a magic psychological deadline that feels like one month, including the time that we've already been locked down.
It feels like that's just going to be, you know...
A make or break point.
Because people tend to think in terms of these simple increments of time, like a week or a month.
A week, we can handle.
We know we can handle a week, right?
There's no question about that. We just did it.
Two weeks? Yeah, we can handle two weeks.
We can handle two weeks and bounce back, if that's all it were.
Three weeks? Absolutely.
It's going to get a little harder.
But yeah, we could do three weeks.
Four weeks? Well, you're going to start getting defectors at about the fourth week.
And after the fourth week, the public is going to say, look, you know who's vulnerable.
It's grandma. It's your job to hide grandma.
And from this day forward, it's my job to go to work.
And I don't care what the government tells me.
I'm going to work.
We're going to hide grandma.
We're going to get through this.
So there's a point where citizens would disobey.
But I don't think you're going to get into that.
Obviously, there will always be some people who are disobeying anything.
But I think that it will be obvious to all of us what is too long by American standards of How much we want to protect each other versus how much risk do we want to take versus what's good for the economy versus saving a few lives.
I feel like the American, I don't know, just the way we are, the American nature might put up with a month, but man, that's going to be tough after that.
And I don't think we will have to after a month.
I think we'll have Enough of a handle on the testing kits and who's susceptible and the meds and stuff that we'll start taking some chances in a month.
But probably something like that.
I think in two weeks we'll know what it looks like, but we won't be able to execute yet.
So I think in two weeks we'll know what our tools are, we'll know what the plan looks like, we'll have a better idea how to get out, but it's not going to be in two weeks, probably.
How quickly will we know if the meds are effective?
My understanding is it's sort of a several day thing.
I think something like a one week and you could be pretty confident.
Not that they're completely cleared, but that it's working.
And indeed, I think after three or four days, you probably would know it's working on most people.
New York's worse than the rest of the country.
Why? Oh, I talked about that.
They just have different conditions.
More crowding, more international travel, just more people.
They have more of everything except old people, but that's the good news.
Ray is asking about mask reuse.
I talked about that. What do you think about, predicts a quicker recovery?
So there's somebody who, a Nobel laureate, who's predicting a quicker recovery.
Let me see if the whole story's in the headline, and then somebody says, we're going to be fine, we can get through the worst of it.
She just... Okay, she doesn't have a point of view other than she's looking at the same data we are and saying, yeah, it'll be fine.
Totally unrelated question to anything.
Was it fun to be on Babylon 5?
So, some of you know there was an old TV show, sci-fi, called Babylon 5, and I had a guest role with, I don't know, two lines or three lines or something, because I had said something good about the show when I was at the height of my Dilber fame, so they Invited me to be on the show and just play myself and have a few lines.
So the question was, was it fun?
Yeah, it was really fun. It was really fun.
Because I got to hang out with the cast, and I was a huge fan.
So I just get to sit down at lunch, and all of the cast of the show are like...
Sitting with me at the table was just the coolest thing in the world.
I could not have geeked out harder than that.
And they're all friendly. Everybody's chatting with me and stuff.
It just blew me away. Because there were even costumes.
Alright. How long do you think we can sustain?
Well, most of the questions are all about how long.
And I think I've answered that.
Will this pandemic be looked on as the most significant event in world history since World War II? Well, kind of depends.
Kind of depends, doesn't it?
Depends how big it gets and how long it lasts.
I've suggested that for any young children that this is their 9-11, this is their Pearl Harbor.
So certainly the kids who are going through this, it might be...
Like a formative experience.
For those of us who are older, we've gone through, you know, we've had a few of these.
Okay, Vietnam, 9-11, now this.
So we've had a little more experience seeing things get really dark before they get better.
So I think we have a little more.
Yeah, I'd be interested if people my age are generally less worried.
That would be an interesting poll, wouldn't it?
By age, how worried are you?
That probably has more to do with your specific situation.
But I wonder if people have just been here before.
And I feel I have.
I mean, to me, this all looks familiar, even though every part of it is new.
There's nothing like this that's ever happened before.
And it still feels familiar?
Because the feeling that, oh, we humans, how are we ever going to beat this monster?
How will we ever beat the...
The year 2000 bug, you know, how will we do it?
How? And then we do it.
Time after time after time.
We'll never solve this problem.
Oh, it's solved already? Okay.
I was pretty sure that would never be solved.
Do you think the stock market recovery will be graduated or spiky?
I think it will be super spiky and trend up.
But probably not until we hear some good news out of New York.
Meaning the drug trial they're doing.
Alright. Doctors are stockpiling something.
Yeah, I don't want to give any hints to somebody who might try to become a hoarder.
I don't want to do that. What skills and projects do you think knowledge workers could look to focus on during the isolation?
Well, I would say it depends on your existing talent stack and your So look at what you already are good at and then say, what's the most valuable thing I could add to that?
And it might not even be technical.
It could be graphic design, for example.
Graphic design goes really well with technical skills because at some point you're going to have to design the part that people look at and the buttons on it, the user interface.
Does Trump win re-election?
If you just straight-lined it from here, yes.
But of course it will change.
So I tweeted today, I think I mentioned this, that the Joe Biden thing is well beyond being funny.
It's just not funny anymore.
And every once in a while I still laugh at it because it's like, haha.
But this emergency has also reminded us It's good to have backup plans, right?
Now, if something happens to Trump while he's in office, the backup plan is Mike Pence, and I'm perfectly happy with that as a solid spare tire.
I don't think I'd vote for him if he ran for president, but Mike Pence knows where all the jewelry is kept and where all the buttons are, and he's not going to go nuts.
So we've got a backup in that situation.
But what's our backup plan?
If between now and November something happens, because it's a very uncertain time, either it's bad news or whatever it is, and Trump can't win re-election for whatever reason.
We'd have to imagine something new comes out of this, because so far he would win.
But suppose that happens.
Who's our backup? Well, the backup is whoever he's running against.
And it looks like that's going to be Joe Biden.
Is that really a backup plan?
Is there any Democrat...
Who has watched him basically hiding because there can't be any other reason he's hiding that he's not capable.
Can we agree on that?
Can we agree there's no reason in the world that we're not seeing him every day, at least on video, except that he's not up to it?
Right? Can anybody suggest any alternate explanation?
And the longer that goes on, The more obvious it should be, even to his supporters, I would think.
They may be starting to come around.
So I wouldn't mind having a backup.
I wouldn't mind having a Democrat that maybe is not your first choice, but they're not going to break anything.
They're not brain-dead.
So let's get that.
So that's a call to Democrats to maybe make the adult decision there.
Let's see. Old Funkin' Junk asked me this question.
What's this COVID thing I saw today on the TV? Was Trump mocking Romney?
Yeah, it looked like that. So Trump actually made a coronavirus insult on To Mitt Romney, because Mitt Romney is quarantining.
I mean, I hope he's fine.
I'm sure no matter what you think of him, I think we all hope that he does well and there's no bad outcome there.
But Trump actually, he says, oh, that's too bad.
That's just so terrible.
It's funny. All right.
And by the way, I don't think that was smart.
Like, that wasn't his best move.
Normally, I love his put-downs and his insults.
It's just part of the act, and it's very effective.
I'm sort of a fan of the act.
But I don't think that was the place.
I think if he watched it on replay, he might take it back.
He probably knows that.
I don't have to tell him that. I think he knows that.
So it wasn't the time.
But on the other hand, if you're a Trump supporter, You sort of have to accept that it's a package deal.
I could wish all day long that he wouldn't do that sort of thing, but he's going to do it.
So I'm not going to spend a lot of time wishing he doesn't do it because he's going to do it.
And on some level, I kind of love that about him, that he's so committed to it.
But at the same time, I can say, well, it might have been not so good that time.
How's my friend progressing on his treatment?
Better.
water.
So for two days in a row, the symptoms are noticeably improving after several days of getting worse and being really quite bad.
So pretty much immediately upon taking the drugs, he capped out And he's substantially better.
I don't know how many more days before you get to all better, but substantially better.
How many folks have died of seasonal flu this year?
Says, I guess, a Chinese bot.
Because if you're still asking that question, you're really not paying attention.
We're all smart enough to...
Not to compare it to the regular flu, right?
Aren't we past that? Aren't we past that?
And I'll say again, because you see the doubters out there saying, hey, the statistics don't suggest that this will be bad at all.
Why are we closing everything? And the question has to be asked, as I said this morning, look at the hospitals.
If the hospitals do not go over capacity, I'm with you.
The moment we can be sure the hospitals will not be over capacity...
Let's start getting back to work.
But they very quickly reach capacity and the professionals at those hospitals think that it will be exceeded.
What if they're all wrong?
Is that even possible?
Well, I mean, it's possible for people to be wrong.
But people are so skeptical of all experts right now that people are actually asking, what if the whole thing is just nothing?
What if it's all just mass hysteria and the only problem is the panic itself?
To which I say, the hospitals are either full of patients and more coming every day, or that's not happening.
You can ignore every other question and just say, is that happening?
Yes, no. Hospitals filling up wherever there are outbreaks?
Yes. Can you build them fast enough to keep up?
No. Is that a gigantic problem?
Yeah. So that's why the economy is closed.
Can phones ping each other when we are social distanced too close?
When you push a button to say, it's okay, family member.
Yeah, so that you can be close to a family member.
I don't know. Does your Bluetooth allow you to tell the distance?
Is that a thing? I suppose.
I mean, if you could somehow Bluetooth sense somebody and know that it was six feet, maybe.
Maybe that's the thing.
I'd have to ask somebody else.
What about the town in Italy that had 3% infection rate in late February?
Why did it spread so fast there?
Well, we don't know, but it might have to do with people who live with their grandparents in small, non-air-conditioned spaces and a lot of physicality and kissing on the cheek and stuff.
So it could be just as simple as living style.
It could be the way they count We don't know.
It'll take a while to find out.
Let's see what else.
Do you support a UBI during the economic downturn?
Yes. Yes.
If somebody has a better idea how somebody who doesn't have money can eat and at least pay for the essentials, if you get a better idea, I'm certainly open to it.
But what's a better idea than, all right, here's some cash.
See if it can hold you over.
Yeah, we have to work out the details, but I don't see...
Here's what I think is probably the mistake.
We have to keep businesses afloat.
Kind of have to do it because I support a lot of people too.
So there's probably no solution in which some big businesses you wish had not been bailed out are going to get bailed out.
It's probably just going to happen.
But maybe that should be separated from the UBI decision.
So, maybe that's what they're doing.
Alright. What is going to happen to mortgages after three months of quarantine?
Well, you know, I've seen the idea floated, and I haven't spent enough time to sort of think it through to know whether I like it or not.
And the idea is that we just suspend all of those payments.
Just nobody pays anybody for only these categories.
So you can imagine that just nobody pays their heat, utility, Comcast bill, cell phone, mortgage, rent, maybe healthcare if you're paying for it yourself.
So you can easily imagine that people would just stop paying for the duration of this And get $1,000 from the government, and they buy food, and they're just sort of not paying any bills.
You're not driving anywhere, you're not going on vacation, so we're living kind of cheaply watching TV and looking at our phones for a few weeks.
So, I don't see any way you could get around a UBI. It's just how do you do it.
What's Trump planning to do with student loans?
He says there's more than 60 days interest-free.
Well, You know, that's pretty good.
Better than nothing. How do you convince some of you know that this is a big deal, that they need to maintain distance from others?
Yeah, here's the problem, and it's very much like the gun debate.
I think I'm the only one who frames it this way.
The gun debate is not whether guns are good or guns are bad.
We just act like it is.
The real debate is that maybe a gun is good for me, Because in my special situation, you know, I might get more of a stalker's.
So in my case, owning a gun might make me safer.
But at the very least, it should be up to me to decide that, right?
So I'm pro-Second Amendment.
But it is nonetheless true that there are people who probably are less safe because they live in an area where guns are plentiful.
So who gets to win?
Do I get to win because a gun would make me safer, or does somebody else get to win because the guns make them less safe and they're not going to own one of their own for whatever reason, so they just don't want them around?
It's not what's good for people.
It's not really constitutional.
We just pretend it is.
Basically, people have different preferences, different needs, different risk profiles, and they're just acting rationally.
For their own risk profile.
I mean, if you just like shooting and hunting and, you know, you like guns, well, it's pretty easy to convince yourself that, you know, they can't be pried under your cold, dead hands and you support the Constitution.
And if it's the opposite, you don't like guns, you don't want to be around them, you're not going to hunt, they're only bad for you, you're going to make up some argument why your side needs to win.
And it's really just an expression of self-interest That we dress up in these constitutional life and death kinds of answers.
So, I think I was going to make a...
Oh, so the analogy to the coronavirus is that we have different risk profiles.
So the people that you can't convince to take it seriously also, for the most part, know it's not going to kill them.
They just think you'll kill other people.
So if they act dumb, that's probably an act.
It's more like they're acting selfish and they don't want to admit that that's all that's going on.
It's like, well, I really want to go to the bar and I know it might kill your grandma, but I really like going to the bar and I don't know your grandmother that well.
And if you don't think that they're making that exact calculation, you've not met people.
Because they're making that exact calculation.
Exactly like I said it.
You know, I could save your grandmother by not going to the bar.
But I like the bar.
I don't know your grandmother.
Never met her. So, some people are not so good.
I think we can conclude that completely.
Alright. Alright, well, we're seeing all kinds of people invent things, and we're seeing human ingenuity in ways that we've never seen it.
We're seeing some amazing things happening.
We can see ourselves getting stronger, smarter, a little less political.
Still there. Still there.
But we're less political this week.
Kind of feels good.
I've got to say, at least on that level.
So, we are going to be okay.
We're not going to run into food because you can't hoard broccoli.
Right? What would be the point of hoarding something that's just going to rot if you don't eat it all yourself?
So you're not going to run into food.
And my guess is, if you just don't pay your bills...
The people you owe those bills are going to have to work it out.
They're going to have to work it out with you.
They're going to have to extend it.
They're going to have to get something from the government.
So I don't think there will be a time when somebody can't eat or have the basic essentials.
I don't see that. That's a real risk.
Except in little pockets.
You might need to help your neighbor a little bit.
But basically, we have enough to go around and that will continue to be the case.
Something wrong with the China stats.
How did they get to no new cases?
Here's my theory on China.
Just speculation.
My theory is that they do have new cases, and they treat them with the meds that we're testing, and it reduces the risk of dying to so close to zero that they just probably decided, you know, if people die...
Everybody's going to notice, because there'll be a lot of death.
It's hard to hide people dying, even in China.
But if they don't die, and let's say we've got 20 of them a day, maybe we could just give them the meds.
They won't die, and we'll just not talk about it.
See how tomorrow looks.
So, again, it's just speculation.
But if I had to guess, a lot of our mysteries...
About, you know, why does Trump seem to have a different opinion than Fauci?
You know, why is it that we're not seeing a front-line medical people dropping dead, even when they're infected?
And why the China number is mysteriously down in a way that doesn't make sense to us?
It might all be the same reason that there's a med that works, and everybody's responding to it That plus the fact there's a shortage.
Somebody says if you don't have taste or smell, that's bad for me because I haven't had my taste or smell too much.
Will we know more about virus than we ever have in history?
Yeah, you know, I've got a feeling that our toolbox for beating viruses is going to be really good.
Yeah, the number of people walking dogs is off the hook.
You know, I went for my healthy evening walk today, and man, there are a lot of people out there walking around.
And we're all giving each other, you know, 20 feet across the road.
It's fun. Are you allergic to cats?
I'm not. Where can I get a local girl?
Go for social distancing book autograph.
That's actually a pretty creative idea.
So did you see what Nextdoor is doing, the app?
Talk about a great reaction to an emergency.
So the Nextdoor app allows you to see a map of where you are And then if anybody has signed up to help out an elderly or do some shopping, they show up on the map so you can see exactly where they are.
So you can see your house, and you're like, oh, block over there, there's that 20-year-old girl who got sent home from college, and she's going to go do some shopping for you.
And I looked just to see if anybody in my neighborhood had actually signed up to do those things, and there were two of them.
Two of them just really close.
So what a terrific...
I mean, with this tool alone, so if you're worried about going hungry or whatever, imagine you've got this tool and either you're the elderly person who just, I don't know, you ran out of food or you just need something, or you just put it on the app and you're deluged with neighbors saying, I'll take care of that. I've seen that happen.
All right. That's all for now.
I will see you in the morning.
Have a great night's sleep.
I think next week, this coming week, there's going to be a lot of good news.
A lot of bad news, too.
The number of infected will go up.
But watch for the number of deaths to start plunging.
And that's your tell that we're going to get back to work before things go off the rails.
So you're going to be alright.
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