Episode 869 Scott Adams: There Will be Cursing. And Coffee. Let's End the Political Career of Porkers
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
CNN FAKE NEWS by Sanjay Gupta
Whiteboard: Back to Work Risk
Dan Patrick, Texas AG, great attitude but a bad idea
Our crisis situation and a PORK-filled recovery bill
Give me NAMES so we can fire them
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And one of the ways we're going to get through it is by enjoying the simultaneous sip, because I believe all the studies are coming in that the simultaneous sip can protect you from infection by the coronavirus.
Seems unlikely, I know.
But yes, if you enjoy the simultaneous sip with me, you're practically guaranteed to be invulnerable from the coronavirus.
None of that's true, but we're living in a world where half of the things I see on social media are wrong, so take it with a grain of salt.
Hello, Bill.
Good to see you.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a cantine, a jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine at the end of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the pandemic.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. By the way, do you catch that little thing that...
That Trump influenced me to do.
There's a choice of words that I use there that's straight from Trump.
It's one of my favorite little speaking things he does.
He'll assign a nickname or brand somebody, and then he'll say, it's called.
And I started doing that.
Somebody says the Dow is way up.
Let's check on that.
Well, well, well. The Dow is way up.
Oh, there will be cursing, if you're wondering.
If you're wondering if I changed my mind.
Oh, no, I did not.
Because as far as I know, Congress has not yet passed the bill.
We'll check on that in a moment.
I mean, it could happen any moment.
Yes, it seems that our stock market has decided to find a little optimism.
And I believe that the stock market is correct.
There is room for optimism.
This will be your worst week and your best week simultaneously.
That's right. You're going to hear some...
Sorry, I couldn't quite hear you.
Could you please repeat what you speak?
No, I can't. Sorry.
This will be the best week and the worst week.
Meaning that you're going to hear some insanely positive things.
And some really bad stuff.
It's all going to happen this week.
But we're going to turn the corner.
You're in the elbow.
I call it the elbow of the curve, you know, where you're going flat, flat, flat, flat, flat.
But you reach the elbow, and then you know that what's ahead of you is good stuff.
So we're in the middle of the elbow right now, and we are guaranteed to get some good stuff.
Allow me to test The awesome power of social media in a way I've never done before.
It goes like this.
There is an unexpected problem with delivery of some of the protective equipment.
I'm talking about masks and gowns and stuff.
So in an amazing display of not just patriotism, but humanity and ingenuity and everything that's good about people, people everywhere rose up and said, how can I help?
So there are little factories converting in this country and other countries and middlemen trying to find connections to connect the people who are making stuff to the people who are buying it.
And that sounds all good, right?
But the problem is there's too much of it.
And the people who have to vet it Are not capable.
They're not really even experienced.
So if somebody came to you and you work for some government agency who needs to buy some equipment, and somebody comes to you and says, I know a guy who's got a factory in a country you've never been to, and can you give me a bunch of money and I'll make you some masks?
What do you do with that?
Especially if you've got 25 of them.
How can you tell which ones are real?
Because you know there's going to be a certain number of scammers, right?
I mean, that's guaranteed. There'll be people promising things they can't deliver, they get you checked, they disappear after the crisis.
So it's a real problem.
You can't just throw money at people in a crisis because you're going to get a lot of bad actors.
So what do you do? So I have this specific problem that I'm trying to solve this morning.
And it's this. I've got a credible source, somebody I know who I have strong credibility with.
In other words, somebody who's not lying to me.
Who has a source and can put them on a tarmac on Friday.
So in two days, I can have a bunch of N95 masks on an airport in the Northeast.
But we can't.
Because we can't get a check.
And I doubt they're going to ship without a check.
So, the politicians who are looking at it can't make a decision.
It's not their fault.
They're not skilled at this.
They don't know how to vet a sudden spring up of a foreign factory with a stranger.
No track record.
How in the hell is a politician going to make that decision?
So here's what I'm asking for.
I will connect you with a person that, in my opinion, is highly credible, and you can look into it yourself.
I need a check for $3.1 million to guarantee a big load of masks land on Friday and then keep coming from this source.
Now, can I personally guarantee that you would not lose your $3.1 million?
I cannot. I cannot.
So it's a risky proposition.
You could do your own due diligence, find out about the person involved, make sure you get pictures of the factory actually producing them, standing next to the person who shows up in the correspondence.
In a few hours, you could convince yourself that whether it works or not, lots of unknowns, but you could convince yourself that the people are real, there's a real factory, they're really making them, they can really get them here.
If you're a billionaire, and you're willing to take some risky short-term thing, because this is a short-term sort of a bridge loan, if you will, because once the buyers and the supplier are connected, they make their own money.
But they'd like to get it on our soil.
So for $3.1 million, you can put a bunch of masks on American soil from another country.
And then we'll work out how to get them somewhere.
Because if you're the person who's trying to decide who can deliver, you don't have to wonder about the person who just delivered.
I mean, if the crates are sitting on the tarmac in America, at least you can trust that guy can get you some more masks, right?
So that's the ask.
It's a gigantic... Ask.
It's big. If you're not a billionaire, probably don't consider this, because I can't tell you you're going to get your money back.
Can't tell you that. But it's an emergency, and I'll put that out there.
Now I'm going to try, you know, through some private channels as well.
And maybe there are other people having similar problems.
The problem is going to be this credibility thing, right?
So if there's anybody who has a way to short...
To shortcut the credibility problem in any way.
Either maybe you could say, you can imagine that somebody could just guarantee it.
So you don't put up any money, but you say, all right, I'll sign a document today that says if this doesn't get delivered, I'll cover your costs, or something like that.
So you can imagine creatively finding a way to shortcut that.
All right, so enough of that. Here's a problem that I just learned about the other day.
That seems really big.
So your big hospitals have a lot of student doctors.
And by student doctor, I mean somebody who could have graduated in May.
So they're this close to being an actual doctor, and they have essentially all of the doctor skills.
They just don't have that diploma because it's not May.
They had to be pulled out of hospitals.
Because the teaching colleges couldn't support them in the crisis situation because there's an insurance problem.
So tens of thousands of people who are near doctors, just they don't have the certificate, but they've been working in the hospital, got pulled off the front line because of an insurance problem.
Need to fix that, right?
And one can imagine...
That the government could step in and say, okay, temporarily, all those student doctors either can't be sued.
I suppose you could do that.
You could just say, if you're a student doctor, you're called into action for the next three months, no matter what you do, you can't be sued.
I mean, that would be the quickest way to do it.
But I suppose you could also put in money so that there's actual insurance, and then people just act like doctors, and if you do something wrong, maybe you do get sued, but at least you have insurance.
So that's a big problem that needs to be fixed and literally can free up just a lot of human power.
There continues to be just really horrible fake news on CNN. It's still on their website, still a story, and it goes like this.
Here's the actual text from CNN. President Trump continues touting chloroquine, a malaria drug he believes, Here's the problem.
That's not the drug that President Trump has good hopes in.
It's not. Chloroquine is the generic, older, weaker form.
The actual drug is a derivative of this.
I'm not a chemist, so if I'm using the wrong words, forgive me.
But it's hydroxychloroquine.
And it's not by itself.
It's hydroxychloroquine with the azithromycin, and then I think in some cases are all with zinc.
So if you haven't studied those three, it is nonsense to say, CNN, it's nonsense, but To say the president is pushing this other drug that's in the same family, but it's a different drug.
And if you look at it by itself, apparently the evidence is weak, and it's the wrong drug anyway.
So if you're watching CNN say Trump is pushing a drug that's not tested, look carefully for the word they use.
Are they saying chloroquine, which he's not promoting?
Although earlier on there was some suggestion that it worked.
Or is he pushing...
Hydroxychloroquine in combination with the Z-Pak or erythromycin and zinc.
Because there is a memo, I guess, or letter from a doctor.
So here's some new information.
A doctor in New York treated 350 patients, because he's in a hot spot somewhere in New York, 350 patients and wrote up his experience using The recommended, let's call it the Trump pack.
The Trump pack, which is the hydroxychloroquine, not the chloroquine, but the hydroxychloroquine, plus azithromycin and zinc.
And he reported that out of 350 people he treated, zero deaths.
Now, apparently he was getting them early, so he wasn't waiting for symptoms to get bad.
If they came in and said, you know, it looks like it, they got the drugs.
Zero hospitalizations.
350 patients.
Zero hospitalizations.
Zero deaths.
Now, zero hospitalizations means zero ventilators.
Now, Keep in mind, this was not a controlled test.
It's one doctor who treated 350 people.
I think he knew they had coronavirus, I'm guessing.
And he got a result that would clearly indicate that if that's reproducible, it would clearly indicate that we can get back to work.
And we'll talk about that.
All right. The range that I'm hearing, so the medical experts and other experts are weighing in, about how long should we wait before getting back to work?
And I'm seeing estimates of some experts said that in Wuhan, in China, five to seven weeks of lockdown was necessary to really get on top of it.
Five to seven weeks.
But The President has said that at the end of two weeks, he'll have some kind of a decision.
Now, I don't think he's made his mind up, and we'll talk about the options, but it's good to know there's a decision.
Now, let me tell you one of the most important concepts of economics.
Now, the swearing is coming.
Oh, it's coming. But we'll get there.
So here's one of the most important concepts.
Concepts and economics.
Now, you don't need to study economics to get the easy stuff, such as sunk costs you can ignore in the future, that kind of thing.
Here's another one. Economies like certainty.
Now, you say to yourself, well, duh, doesn't everybody like certainty?
But economies really like certainty.
I mean, really, really, really like certainty.
So if you have a situation where you have this choice, saying, I don't know when we'll open up, I'll let you know when we know, very, very bad for an economy.
Even if it's true, completely true.
Gosh, I don't know when we can open up, we're just going to have to wait and see.
That is death to an economy.
Now compare that to...
We're going to be out of this in four weeks.
And it's not true. It's just not true.
But your leader says to you, we're going to be out of this in four weeks.
Now, when you get to the end of the four weeks, might you reconsider?
Well, of course. That's what everybody does.
A month from now, you should reconsider every part of your life.
All the time. You know, everything's changing all the time.
A month from now, do you still want the same job?
Is your exercise routine good?
Markets like and economies like certainty.
Now, you don't want random certainty that you know is just BS. But you're willing to take a little bit of BS because you know everybody else is going to take it, and that gives you the illusion of certainty, and it keeps your economy on track.
So President Trump, master of psychology in my opinion, He's got this interesting balancing thing because I guarantee you that Trump knows what I just said.
Trump knows that certainty makes the economy work.
And here's the key thing.
The economy would rather definitely have bad news than maybe have good news.
If you don't understand that, you're missing the importance of certainty.
Certain bad news that we can figure out how to solve...
is better for an economy, then, well, it could be great.
I don't know. Maybe some good stuff out here.
Can't really define it. I don't know what's going to...
Could be good, could be bad.
We don't know. That's death.
So, at the end of the second week, the president has promised you something closer to that certainty.
I don't know if all observers understand how right that is.
Because if you went too early and said, you know, I'm going to tell you right now we're going to open three weeks or whatever, you wouldn't believe it, would you?
Because you'd say, I don't know, we haven't watched this enough.
We haven't seen enough.
We haven't watched the other countries enough.
We haven't studied enough. We don't know enough.
But at the end of the second week, you're going to be in a little bit more of a gray area.
And you're going to say to yourself, yeah, I feel like given the trade-offs, certainly we have lots of uncertainty, but But let's call it.
Let's call the time we're going back to work, or at least call the phased approach back to work.
But let's add some certainty, which we can change later.
It's not real certainty.
Let's say it's functional certainty.
The real kind is where you really believe it and you're really right.
The functional kind is the kind the economy needs.
The economy needs the experts and the politicians to say, you know...
It's going to be three weeks.
And it's okay if somebody says, and in three weeks, a bunch of people are going to die, we're going to lose a bunch of money.
We're pretty sure about it.
Remember, bad news that you're sure about, and you know how to deal with it, you know how to get to the other side, is not nearly as damaging as, well, we just don't know what's going on.
So get your certainty.
The president has promised that.
It is exactly right.
He is going to have the toughest job in the world, and I hope history understands this.
I hope history understands that our president is going to make a decision with, you know, he'll be talking to everybody, the governors and the experts and everything, but ultimately it's going to be a presidential decision, and he's going to have to peer into this morass of Experts who may or may not agree.
He's going to have to look at the economy.
He's going to have to just feel the zeitgeist of the country.
It's what he does best.
If you wanted one president you thought was most tapped in to the zeitgeist, that's a German word for how people are feeling at the same time, he's the guy.
Nobody's more tapped in It has a direct pipeline of public sentiment than this president.
He's very tapped in. So that's good news.
He has a business background, which means he has overruled experts a lot.
I don't want to tell you all the times I've overruled experts, medical, financial, legal.
Alright, so I don't know how to say this without sounding like a douchebag, so I'm just going to do it anyway.
It's an emergency, so don't mind me sounding like a douchebag for now.
Forgive me in advance.
I operate at a pretty high level of business, because I have to.
The Dilbert Enterprise is a pretty big operation, and has been.
And so I make a lot of big business decisions.
And I've got a lot of expertise, plus my own life, I've made quite a few medical decisions with and without medical experts.
And I've got to tell you that if you're operating at the higher levels, you're not taking the advice of experts on face value.
It just doesn't happen.
At Trump's level, as just operating in the Trump universe and doing his job before he was president, I guarantee you, He had to manage the advice of experts.
And when I say manage it, I mean sometimes take it and sometimes not.
And sometimes have to be the referee of different competing experts.
So he has exactly the right talent stack and skill set for negotiating a situation where you don't understand everything the experts understand.
That's the nature of experts.
But you still have to negotiate a decision.
He's kind of perfect for this.
He really is. His BS detector is as good as anybody's.
And he has just the right amount of credibility, which some people would...
I'm sorry, not credibility.
He has just the right amount of skepticism, which his critics say is too much.
They're going to say he's anti-science, not believing the experts.
But, you know, it's just right to me.
It's just right to me.
Somebody says, Scott's technical IQ, less than 100.
Well, we don't need you, do we?
Goodbye.
And let's talk through some of the factors.
So here's another fact about deadlines.
If your president says...
And I hope he does.
On this day, we're going to start a phased approach back to work.
I don't think he's going to say, everybody go back to work.
That's not going to happen. It's going to be phased.
And here's another psychological fact.
People like deadlines.
Not just in the psychological way that I said, that the economy likes to have certainty.
Even if it's bad news, they like certainty.
But people... Respond to deadlines like crazy.
It's the most universal management fact.
If the president says, on X day, these people are going to go back to work, and the medical community says, as I imagine some of them will, no, there's just no way we can handle that The disease will kill us all or whatever they're going to say.
You will be surprised how much ingenuity and hard work can be packed into whatever time the president says this needs to be done.
So in an emergency and when we're all focused and when the best of us are taking the lead, and I think that's largely the case, in an emergency the best people, they take the lead.
Even if you don't ask them, they just take the lead.
So the best people on earth working as hard as they can to a presidential deadline, even if that deadline is not based on what the experts are telling him it should be, and it probably won't be, watch how those experts work to the deadline.
You're going to be amazed.
You're going to be amazed.
So here are some things that we could do if we're going to phase in the back to work.
And this is just to give you a flavor of it.
I can't say I thought too hard about it.
But here are the different risk factors.
So you can imagine some kind of phased approach in which we take into consideration that we don't have the same risk profile.
Now, everything kind of depends on the hydrochloroquine and azithromycin zinc factors.
Combination being effective as this one doctor with his one study.
Let's not call it a study.
Let's call it his experience.
It's anecdotal. If that bears out, and we're seeing good evidence that it might, then we've got a pretty good plan out.
It looks like this.
People who do not have any kind of an income, they've got to be at the top of the line.
All right? Now, some of them won't have the kind of jobs that they can go back to.
Some of them have an underlying health problem.
And we just got to give them money to get by.
So that's what the government's working on.
Oh, there will be swearing.
There will be cursing.
It's coming. But there are other people, such as myself, such as there might be seniors who have Social Security, but they have a part-time job.
And you can imagine saying, okay, if you have some income, You can at least get a check and buy some groceries.
Maybe you're not the top priority.
But this isn't the only factor.
You want to look at people who could potentially isolate.
Maybe they drive to work in their car that nobody else ever gets into.
They can keep a social distance, depending on the kind of job.
So the kind of job and whether you can isolate has got to be important.
If you're young and healthy, you've got a better chance of not dying.
If you're already recovered and tests have proven that you had it and you're done, I'm still not the expert on immunity, but I have to think it gives you a better chance.
Now, I think we don't know enough about how much or what kind of immunity.
We'll let the experts decide on that.
I'm just putting it up here as the things that will be looked at.
Hospital capacity has to be important.
Let's say you open up in a certain location and their hospital hasn't been impacted yet.
Well, maybe you can experiment a little bit there.
Maybe you can be a little bit looser It looks like outdoors is way safer than indoors.
There's a body of evidence that's coming together from past pandemics as well as this one.
That being inside where you're sharing air is the worst thing that could happen.
And being outside probably helps.
Apparently, before there were antibiotics, pandemics were handled, at least partly, by outdoor tents.
So they would literally just take people out in the sun, put your treatment outside in the air in the sun.
It didn't have to be in direct sunlight, but at least outdoors.
And apparently the outdoors is really bad for viruses.
So it's not a cure, but you can certainly reduce the amount of problems by outdoors.
So imagine, if you will, that the president says, yeah, you can open your restaurant, but tables have to be X feet apart, servers have to wear gloves and masks, and all service has to be outdoors or takeout.
A lot of restaurants could actually open outdoors.
The ones in my town, for example, a lot of them have a little bit of outdoor seating.
But you could easily imagine how we could temporarily say, oh, just extend it to the sidewalk.
People are going to have to walk around in the streets, but there isn't much traffic anyway.
So you can imagine people getting flexibility to do outdoor dining because the weather is starting to change.
Not in your town, maybe, but in California you could start already.
The availability of testing, how much there is and where it is, would be a factor.
Your distance from outbreaks if you're someplace that hasn't had one yet.
Maybe you get a little more flexibility.
I would also factor in your family isolation.
If you're going to work somewhere, are you bringing something back to a family of five in a 2,000 square foot home?
That's not good. Or do you live alone?
Or do you live in a home where you have one senior but they're really in their own part of the house and they're safe?
If you live alone and you drive alone And you can get some separation.
Maybe you're top of the line because you're not even bringing it home.
How replaceable are you?
I hate to say it that way, but if you're a manual laborer and somebody can easily do your job, well, maybe you go to work as long as we've got the good meds that can keep you alive should you get something because you're replaceable.
I hate to use that, but if you're just laborer, We can find somebody to do some just labor.
It's cruel, but that's the...
And then the availability of the meds and the protective gear.
If you live in a town where your hospital doesn't have many patients, but also doesn't have much protective gear or ventilators, maybe that puts you toward the end of the list.
So... I saw...
I forget which senator it was who went on television.
It was on Tucker's show...
And I liked the guy, meaning that I liked his attitude.
And his attitude was, he was just turning 70.
You can remind me in the comments, some of you saw the show, who the politician was.
It was congressman or senator, I can't remember.
And he was saying that the grandparents are willing to take a risk To get the economy going.
So he was saying, hey, you know, if I can be part of the productive economy, I'm 70, I'm at risk, I'm going to take the risk.
And he was making the argument that grandparents would rather die than ruin the world for the young.
And he was saying, look, if I've got to die to keep the economy going so that my grandparents have a place to live, or grandkids have a place to live, I'll sign up for that.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Yes, it was Texas AG, Ken Paxton, people were telling me in the comments.
Here's my comment. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Everything about that is wrong.
I love the attitude. I like the guy.
Dan Patrick, I guess, in Texas.
So my appreciation of the person is sky high.
Because literally, he just said, I will risk my life for other Americans.
I love the guy.
But it's the wrong strategy.
Do you want your 70-year-olds clogging up the ICU rooms and ventilators because they were brave?
Let's be honest.
How much are the 70-year-olds adding to the economy, including Dan Patrick?
Dan Patrick can work from home.
It's that kind of a job.
I don't want him to go into work.
Do you want Dan Patrick to take up an ICU room if he can stay home and work from home?
No, you don't. So his bravery, his attitude, I love.
I love that guy.
His strategy, dead wrong.
Dead wrong. We should discourage brave grandparents because they're going to be brave.
You know, there's a lot of people who, you know, they're veterans, people who went through the war, people who have done everything.
People not afraid to die.
But we're not going to let them die, which means that they would take up hospital space for other people.
Bad, bad idea to let the 70-year-olds out anytime soon until we get a much better handle on this.
So, Dan Patrick, I believe that was who it was.
Love you, man. Totally love you.
But It's not the strategy we need.
It's not good for us.
All right.
Let's see.
You know, somebody's trying to hack one of my social media accounts this morning, and the reason I know is because I keep getting password change requests.
And I thought to myself, couldn't you fix that by telling me what their guesses were?
If somebody is trying to hack, you know, just guess my password and I keep getting these notices and somebody's trying to do it, shouldn't they also tell me what the guesses were?
Because if the guesses look random, I'm going to be like, maybe somebody thought it was the wrong account or something.
But if the guesses are anywhere in the neighborhood of like something that looks like somebody knows me, I want to shut that crap down right away.
So this is just a message to social media people.
If you could, tell me what the guesses were so that I know how much risk.
All right. So the Chinese seem to be going all in on blaming the U.S. for the coronavirus or at least escaping blame.
I've been saying since the beginning that I don't like the phrase Chinese virus, because if it even raises the question of are you being racist, why cause that trouble, right?
Why cause that trouble?
Why would you do it?
But then I revised my feeling about that when I realized China was trying to blame the US, and then the president was just branding them back.
No, it's your freaking virus.
It's the Chinese virus. And I've decided to just go all in.
I'm all in on Chinese virus until China stops.
If China decides, okay, it was us, we'll stop blaming you for that.
That's the last time I'll ever use that phrase.
Because I find it a little bit offensive.
And I don't see any reason to offend Americans who have some Chinese ancestry.
I see no reason to offend Chinese citizens who are just trying to do the best they can.
But man, your government, if you're going to brand us with this, it's coming back.
So it's the Chinese flu.
It's the Chinese virus to me until they stand down.
All right. Let's talk about some of the options that the government is talking about for phasing in.
Now, I'm going to do something obnoxious, and only the people who are new to this periscope will see it as obnoxious because you don't have the context.
I'm going to brag about telling you something before other people told you.
Now, the context is, that's specifically what I do on these periscopes.
I make predictions, and then later I say, oh, I was totally wrong, or I got that one right, and see if we learn anything.
So when I brag about getting something right, just know that if I got it wrong, I would also tell you.
And that's part of the process.
So don't judge me as being an egomaniac or anything.
It's just part of the process.
You should be watching to see if I can predict better than other people.
And part of that process is me telling you when I got it right.
Who else told you that this was not yes, no, go back to work, but that it would be a phased process in which we would intelligently assign risks to different categories, and that we'd start going back to work, but probably the seniors and at-risk people will be the last to go?
Who else told you that that was going to happen?
I think I was the first, right?
Now, just keep that in mind and add it to your tally if you're keeping track.
So I can see this coming from a mile away.
If you didn't, maybe you should listen to my periscopes more.
So here are some of the options being discussed.
Let's see if we have a favorite.
I took this off of, I guess, Fox News reporting.
One option is phasing in younger people, people under 40.
And keeping other people out.
So that would just be simple.
Under 40, go back to work.
So that's one option.
Another option is to keep in place restrictions only on the vulnerable and the seniors, like nursing homes, but allow everybody else to return.
So the other option is you can go back to work unless you're clearly in these, you know, vulnerable nursing homes or you're older or you have, you know, underlying conditions, I guess.
A third plan would say that Trump would lift the federal guidelines, but let the governors work it out.
Lift the guidelines, maybe give some extra guidance, but let the governors decide what makes sense in each county, etc.
Not bad. A fourth idea is to keep in place some federal guidelines, but change others to give states more leeway.
So there's all kinds of hybrid And one or the other idea is to specific types of workers to return to work, including people who have risk profiles, you can say.
I'm going to weigh in.
So here's how I think we should go.
I think our federal government, in working with the experts, should categorize our risk in the cleanest graphic way they can.
I need a one-pager.
Here's your checklist.
Do the checklist and then add up the numbers and maybe they're weighted.
So if you check that you're 85 with lung cancer, that's 100 points and you just stay home.
So imagine they're weighted answers, but it's just a checklist.
You say, okay, I'm under 40, I'm healthy, etc.
And you just say, if you filled out this checklist, And you've got a score under five or whatever it is.
You're cleared. Now, keep the checklist with you.
If somebody comes into your place of business and says, can I see your checklist?
Be prepared to show it to them.
Might be police or health authorities, etc.
Be prepared to show it.
But it's not a license.
You're not going to go to jail.
Everybody's making individual decisions.
But I think you're...
Police and officials might want to flag you and say, you know, you don't have a checklist, go home and get one, or we would encourage you not to do it, etc.
But I think the federal government probably should only go so far as to categorize risk and then maybe let the governors decide which counties are appropriate, etc.
So I think it's going to be some kind of a hybrid where the federal government It changes its guidelines, but keeps them in place.
There's guidelines in place.
And then the states get to choose a little bit from the guidelines.
So I think it'll look something like that.
But I think we need a little more gradation on the checklist.
I don't think you can just say under 40, over 40.
You need a little extra gradations there.
And we can get there.
Been a lot of discussions about what you can do to sterilize a mask if you had to reuse it.
And the most current thing I saw is some actual testing was done of, you know, putting cleaning agents on the mask, etc.
And apparently some of the cleaning agents, I'm no expert here, just giving you a high overview, some of the cleaning agents will break down the integrity of the mask.
But I think it was isopropyl, maybe something else, Maybe not as quickly, but you also don't know if they do over time.
So the chemical treatments have a risk that has been identified that can break down the integrity of the mask, sometimes quickly, maybe over time, depends on the chemical.
But it is suggested that the one thing that has not been debunked is heating it To a temperature that doesn't hurt the structure of the mask, the same way the chemicals do, but kills all the bugs.
And the suggestion, I'm not a scientist.
I'm not recommending it.
Don't try it at home. I'm just passing it along so you know what people are talking about.
That heating an oven at 150 degrees for 30 minutes would remove any risk from the mask, except that I don't know exactly what it does to the integrity of the mask.
You know, do we know that 158 degrees for 30 minutes in an oven, do we know that doesn't affect the integrity?
So apparently it was tested, and the initial reports are that that would be the one that would be the highest probability of giving you the safest reusable mask.
But don't take my word for any of this.
These are all preliminary.
I don't think any of the studies Meet scientific rigor yet, but these are just indications.
All right. Let's talk about...
Oh, the government is looking at backstopping businesses who might otherwise go into business.
And here's the question I would ask.
I saw it described as loans, but then I also heard some talk about...
The government taking equity.
Now, shouldn't we always take equity?
Why would we ever do a loan?
I guess each situation is different.
Maybe some don't have...
It could be that some don't have stock, so you don't have that option.
But for any large-ish company that is public and has stock, why would the government not take stock and own equity on behalf of the public in return for taking a failing company and turning it around?
Now, what's interesting about the government investing in something is that when the government puts money into a business, it's probably going to make it, especially if the government is making other changes to the economy and the world that would make it successful.
So having our government take equity, I'm a big fan of that.
Because do you know where the stock market is right now?
Yes, you do. It's very low.
If our government had saved any of these stocks that are in the toilet and just said, We'll take 5% of your stock, but we're going to keep you alive.
What would that stock be worth two weeks from now?
Double? I'm pretty sure the government could double its money, right?
Maybe not double it, but let's say 30% in a year.
I think the government could make 30% in a year simply by taking equity in these bigger companies that have stock.
So if we're not doing that, I'd need an explanation why.
Let's talk about the bill.
I'm going to check the news and see if there's a headline that says we've got a bill that's passed.
Because, you know, I'd hate to be cursing for no reason at all.
Because taking an equity stake creates an irresistible moral hazard.
I believe that we've tested it, right?
Did the government not take an equity stake in Chrysler?
And maybe some economic historians can give me other examples, but I think it's already been tested.
And for a short-term use, I don't think anybody's seen a problem with it, but fact-check me on that.
It looks like...
It does not look like our Congress has acted.
So... Yeah.
Is that right? Looks like our companies have not acted.
Alright, so here's my opinion on this.
So you've seen the news that Democrats apparently have tried to add some pork to the bill.
Republicans say that's what's killing it.
But at the same time, Democrats are saying that Republicans are making this big slush fund and it doesn't have enough controls on it to know where it's going.
Let's say both of them are right, because I think they probably are.
I think both sides are right, meaning that neither side is acting responsibly in terms of the construction of this bill.
Now, even the president said, I don't want to give money to people that are just going to do stock buybacks.
Basically, that's just transferring it to management, the benefits.
So, you know, even the President isn't seeing the Congress as giving him a bill he can sign.
So, let me say it as clearly as possible.
Under normal times, non-emergency times, I can put up with quite a bit of pork, and I can put up with, you know, shenanigans and stuff.
Because, you know, if you haven't heard the argument in favor of pork, there actually is one.
There's actually an argument in favor of pork, which is that the senators from the states are trying to maximize what's good for their state.
That's our system. Each of the representatives get to maximize what's good for their state and fight for funding for their defense industries and fight for funding for their stuff.
So it's supposed to work that way.
And under normal times, if you've got a funding bill and there's some clever senator who can get some pork in there to fund a military base in their property, we kind of say we don't love it, but we can put up with it.
So that's in normal times.
We're not in normal times.
We're not in the time where waiting a day is okay, because we'll get to it tomorrow.
We're not in those times.
We are in a crisis situation in which every minute makes a pretty big difference.
It's a very unusual situation.
Most problems are kind of long-term, nagging, chronic problems, and I'll get to it tomorrow.
We don't have a get-to-it-tomorrow kind of a world at the moment.
At the moment, we have politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, who are not giving us What everybody knows we need, which is immediate financial relief and checks to people who don't have a paycheck this week.
And as I watch this, I say to myself, well, surely the people behind this will pay some price for so grotesquely and obviously not doing the people's bidding.
And so I look to the news and say, okay, who are the names of these people?
Give me some names.
Because these people need to lose their jobs.
They need to be fired because they're not doing the job of the people, not even close, right?
And so I look to the news and it's like, Democrats say this and Republicans say that, and I say, well, okay.
That helps me a little, but I don't like either side at the moment.
Give me a name. And then, you know, you see tweets and, you know, Representative Crenshaw You know, saying, you know, look at what these Democrats are trying to do.
And I look at that and I go, okay, that's great.
That's good context.
I'm glad you told me. What are the names?
If the only name we're going to get is McConnell, Schumer, and Pelosi, that's not good enough.
That's not good enough, because even if they lost their jobs, there are a lot of assholes left.
So let me put it in the starkest possible way.
This would be the time to send your children away.
If you have children who are home, I would ask you to either turn down the sound, put on your headphones, or send them out of the room.
I'll give you a moment.
The people in Congress, whose names we don't have, we need.
If the press doesn't give us names of people who are going to vote for this pork or who tried to put the pork in there, by today, by today, our press is absolutely fucking worthless.
Because this is an emergency.
I don't need to know the name of the party.
I know what a Democrat is.
I don't even need to know the name of the leader, Schumer, Pelosi.
I don't give a fuck about them right now.
I want to know...
Whose ass I'm going to get fired?
I want to know who's the fucking asshole trying to put this shit in there and fucking the country as hard as they can for whatever game locally.
Whoever it is, you don't have your fucking priorities straight.
And we're going to straighten them out for you.
So, as I said from the very beginning of this crisis, this is not a spectator sport anymore.
You're in the game.
You might not want to be in the game.
Nobody does, I don't think.
But you're in the game.
And if your leaders are not doing the job, this is not a spectator sport.
You need to target them for destruction, and it has to happen today.
So, let's create a list.
Give me the names of people.
Tell me what state, what leader.
Put that in the bill.
Don't give me a fucking list that there's pork in the bill.
I don't care about the fucking pork in the bill.
I want to know a name.
I want to know who put it in there.
Tell me who put it in there.
Let's make a list and let's target them for destruction.
I don't care which party. Republican, Democrat, Independent.
They gotta fucking go.
These are people who are not patriots.
They're not servants of the people.
They're not even human fucking beings.
They're assholes right now.
They're assholes, and they need to go.
And they need to go right away.
Now, you know, don't need to fire them this week, but we need to make a list, and we've got to make a point.
And like I said, you know, A million times voters have been mad.
Oh, I'm mad about this thing because, you know, you didn't get me the tax cuts.
I will target you for destruction.
And some people care and some people don't.
And then the incumbent gets elected usually.
This isn't like those situations.
This is a situation in which we all know we need to be a little bit flexible and that we have to have one goal and Which is to keep us alive and keep this economy moving.
If you need to feel like you'd have to add some pork to that bill, well, fuck you.
Fuck you and fuck your job, because you're not going to have it very long.
Give me the list.
Press. If you can give me the list, I will set these fuckers on fire, figuratively speaking.
We're not going to hurt anybody. But figuratively speaking, we are going to torch these fucking assholes.
Do it today. This is not tomorrow business.
This is today business. Today, if this is not past, we have to go nuts.
Alright? Find out your representative.
But first, let's get some names.
I need a list of assholes that we can torch.
Because this is no longer...
I'll just say it again. This is not a spectator sport.
You all need to...
Contact whoever it is who's holding up the ball and just say, look, fuckers, do the fucking job or you're fired.
No doubt about it.
Let's remove the question of whether they're fired.
You're fucking fired.
You're fired if you don't get this done today.
And if we can't figure out, you know, who it is who can't get it done, Well, then we've got to go after all the incumbents.
That's harder, but we've got to take a run at it.
All right. I'm going to relax the cursing for a moment, but I hope you join with me on this.
This is not normal business.
Your Congress is failing right in front of you, and you have to take it to them.
You've got to take the fight right to them, and not the Democrats, and not the Republicans.
Give me names.
Fucking assholes.
It's not Democrat and Republican anymore.
It's Democrat, Republican, and fucking assholes.
I like Democrats.
I like Republicans.
I like anybody who's helping.
But not assholes.
All right. Just looking at my notes to see if I covered it.
Let me read what this doctor who had the good results with 350 patients said specifically.
So this is what he did.
All right. So given the urgency of the situation, these were his guidelines.
Number one, any patient with shortness of breath, regardless of age, is treated.
So in other words, he didn't wait for a test.
He just said, okay, those symptoms look dangerous.
I'm not going to wait for a test.
I'm going to treat you.
Any patient in the high-risk category, even with just mild symptoms, is treated.
Again, not waiting for the test.
Treat them. Young, healthy, and low-risk patients, even with symptoms, are not treated unless their circumstances change.
So in order to preserve his supply, I guess he didn't treat people with mild symptoms and who were also young.
And then his outpatient treatment, after he sent him home, so not hospitalized, was hydroxychloroquine, 200 mg, twice a day for five days, azithromycin, 500 mg, once a day for five days, And zinc sulfate, 220 milligrams once a day for five days.
And she said, since last Thursday, my team has treated approximately 350 patients in here, yes, Joel, I guess that's the town, and another 150 nearby.
And of this group, so that's 350 plus 150, 500 people.
Of this group, zero deaths.
Zero hospitalizations.
Zero intubations, meaning needing a ventilator.
In addition, I have not heard of any negative side effects other than 10% of the people had nausea and diarrhea.
Which, for some of us, that's just every day.
And that he urgently treats people.
So, Here's what I think is going to happen.
I think we've got to wait until the end of the week and confirm that this doctor and other doctors who are trying this stuff are really getting the result, they say.
We won't have full safety information, but I think it will become rapidly clear that the trade-off of the risk of taking the drug versus the risk of not taking the drug is going to be 100 to 1.
I don't think anybody's going to have any doubt about anything.
Okay. So that's all I got for now.
Is this enough to drive you to vote, Scott?
No. No it isn't.
I'm a special case because I don't want to be influenced by being a member of a party or even voting for a member of a party.
But the rest of you should.
You should all vote.
Somebody says, $35,000 per super sick person is cheaper than ruining the economy.
Well, I don't know if that estimate is correct, but it's the wrong fucking thing to compare.
Because you're comparing people dying to the economy.
If you're saying how much does it cost per death, you're not in firm territory there.
