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March 29, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
57:52
Episode 878 Scott Adams: The Simultaneous Swaddle is Not Clinically Proven to Cure Coronavirus, But I Feel Good About it
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Time Text
*Humming* Hey, come on in here, Jeff.
Do you have your blanket? It's time to swaddle.
Self-swaddling is in the house.
Yes, we're doing a little social distancing.
It's not easy for anybody.
Well, come on in here and we'll answer your questions and talk about it.
Yes, Greg Gutfeld's on, but so is your DVR. Or you could watch this later, after you watch Greg Gutfeld.
That's a good idea, too.
Yes, we're in our soft blankets.
We're feeling better about the coronavirus situation.
I was just watching a video from a doctor who was in the front lines in New York City.
And it was very interesting.
So he had some tips and information that I had not heard before.
And I forget his name, but he's an actual doctor working on the front lines.
And he's intubating people and putting them on ventilators and all that stuff.
So he seemed to know what he was talking about.
And here are the things he said that you sort of suspected were true, but you wondered in no particular order.
One was that he's not seen anybody under 14 who's having a problem.
But he's definitely seeing people like in their 20s.
So he says it's affecting all age groups, but the older you are, the worse.
But under 14, basically he's saying we're just not seeing it.
So that's good news.
The other good news is that he recommends wearing masks more than More than the recommendations you've been seeing up to now.
Primarily so you don't touch your face, which is a good point.
I think the other point is if you happen to be asymptomatic shedding, it would be good to have a mask on too if you're going outside.
But he had a very sort of an upbeat opinion of how we could manage this if we modified our behavior.
And his take was that the primary, primary, primary He said if you could just take that part out, you'd remove so much of the transmission that it would basically be done.
But how easy is it to not touch your face?
I tell you, you watch a video about not touching your face, and you're going to have the same problem I'm having right now, which is really making me want to touch your face.
But anyway, he suggested that if you wore masks, and that's just common sense, it might help train you to do that.
So that's encouraging.
The other thing he said, which directly counters one of the bad pieces of information I've seen somewhere on the Internet, I read somebody said that when people go on ventilators, that it's basically just the beginning of the end, and that once you're on a ventilator, well, you're not going to make it, you know, except dead.
It's just sort of stalling the inevitable.
But this doctor said directly the opposite.
Directly the opposite. He said, we put you on the ventilator with the intention of getting you off the ventilator, and most of the time it actually happens.
So directly opposite...
What I had heard from non-credible sources is that if you get put on a ventilator, even as bad as that is, apparently the strong majority of people who get on a ventilator also get off and get better.
Now, he didn't seem to...
I don't remember him mentioning the hydroxychloroquine, which seemed conspicuously missing.
He also seemed to think that any kind of mask was better than none, you know, which we're hearing.
So are you following the weird disinformation coming out of the World Health Organization?
Apparently, you know, the people say that China is, you know, they're a puppet of China or something.
I don't know if any of that's true.
But they certainly don't seem like a health organization to Even up until today, they're telling people that masks don't help.
And every person who's not even an expert is just saying, it's not even slightly believable that they wouldn't have some impact.
Nothing's 100%.
So at this point, we're being lied to by health organizations.
We're being lied to by our own government organizations.
Although I don't mind it so much if the intention of the lying is to prevent hoarding.
I think that would be allowable in my ethical judgment of things.
Because sometimes you do need to lie to your public for their own benefit.
If that was the intention, I'd be okay with that.
But nonetheless, we're getting disinformation from other countries.
We know China is lying to us.
We don't really trust anybody's numbers.
We're not even sure our own numbers are good or our own recommendations.
So, don't trust anybody for a while.
There is a group of people who are the heroes of the moment that I don't think are getting enough attention as a group, and that's the engineers.
If you think about it, the body human...
All of humanity together is banded together and everybody's sort of spontaneously filled their little areas of expertise and doing what we can.
But I would say the two biggest forces in the military, if you will, are the scientists and doctors on one side, but then the engineers.
And here's what the engineers have done already, if you're keeping score, right?
So the engineers have figured out how to modify ventilators to double or quadruple their effectiveness.
They've figured out how to shrink tests down to a little kit that you can spit in, swab yourself, your own nose.
Engineers have figured out how to make a tabletop thing that'll give you a result in 15 minutes.
What else have engineers figured out?
Done. Engineers have figured out how to 3D print parts for ventilators.
Engineers have figured out how to make masks.
They're building. Engineers are retrofitting buildings to produce all the PPE and the other stuff.
Dyson completely reinvented a ventilator.
So engineers I'm really killing it right now.
And if you're waiting for the scientists to do their thing, that probably just takes a little longer.
But the reason that, my guess is that the reason you don't have plenty of the malaria drug, the so-called Trump pills, is that the engineers need to probably re-engineer and expand the production.
I don't know if we can get all the All the meds we need just by running the pill printing press, more hours, maybe we can.
But my guess is that engineers are actually just building brand new production facilities out of nothing, just all over the world for various things.
You saw engineers build all kinds of websites for people to connect.
If you think about it, Engineers are killing it.
Oh, and apps? What about apps?
You know, all the various apps people have suggested, etc.
So, if you look at what engineers have already contributed to the war, it's really shockingly, amazingly, excitingly impressive.
Somebody says, my video stream keeps stopping.
Well... I can't do much about that.
Yeah, there's lots of news about Zoom.
I have such conflicting feelings about Zoom because as a product, it's amazing.
Zoom is just one of the great products.
It just is really well made.
It's bulletproof. It does everything you want it to do.
But they have that problem that they have a lot of Chinese engineers in China and some of the traffic goes through China to their servers, I guess.
And that's a pretty, pretty big security risk for businesses who are using it.
Normal periscope just sucks.
I don't know what that means.
Alright, I'm going to take some...
Oh, you know what? I forgot to turn on the question mode, which means I can't actually take some questions.
So I did a tweet just before I got on here, so I'm going to read the questions.
Yes, that's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to read the questions that you're putting in my Twitter feed, because I'm sure you did that.
Let's see. Hold on.
Alright, so...
Some questions.
David Angel says...
I think you left out a word, but I think what you're trying to say is, at what age did you realize you were smarter than average?
Well, you know, what's funny about that is if you ask people, if you did a poll, and you ask people if they're smarter than average, I think something like 80% of people say they're smarter than average.
So, just thought I'd give us some context there.
The answer to that question is five-ish.
By five, I was learning to read and slowly I became aware that other kids my age were not reading as well.
So I think that's when I noticed it, is around five.
I was just learning things a little faster.
Somebody says they're having a more fulfilling life, going on walks and relearning the piano.
I don't want to go back.
There are going to be some people who believe that.
I mean, I feel the same way.
There are going to be some people who, if they didn't get crushed or sick, or the people who somehow avoided economic or health problems, are going to look back at this and say, it was kind of some good time off to myself.
But other people are going to be suffering mightily.
Alright, is the death rate flattening in New York?
And that is a good question.
Did anybody see the New York mortality rates for today?
I think it was flat for two days, but then somebody said it spiked again today.
I don't know if that's true.
You know, there's going to be a little bit of noise in it, so no matter what direction things are moving, you should expect there'll be an up day and a down day.
But if I look down, 222 deaths.
That was today. And I think yesterday was much less than that, right?
Well, I'm getting different numbers today.
So I'll have to look at that. Somebody says there's a big surge today.
So I don't know if every day tells you something.
Because you could just have a coincidental good day, a coincidental bad day.
So maybe a few more days will have a trend.
Has COVID mutated to several strains, some more deadly?
Well, I'm not exactly the right person to ask that question, but I read.
So I'll tell you what I read, which is that there's at least two strains, and one is more dangerous than the other.
But beyond that, I don't know.
They're supposed to mutate and become weaker over time, allegedly.
Oops. Let's see.
Just looking at your questions.
Most of your questions, or a lot of them, are about hydroxychloroquine.
All right. What is the recovery rate for those sick enough to be put on a ventilator?
Oh, well, that's what I just said.
So based on the doctor whose name I don't remember, so, you know, judge the credibility accordingly.
Will you adopt me?
Brandon says. Yes, yes I will.
Consider yourself adopted.
I don't have to fill out paperwork, do I? Can a person get the seasonal flu and COVID-19 simultaneously?
I have no idea.
But don't you think it's happened to somebody?
If it's possible at all, you know it's happened to somebody.
And that's got to be a bad day.
But on the other hand, I don't know if it's possible because if you get the seasonal flu, does your immunity rise to the challenge and then it gives you some immunity against something else?
I don't know. I'm no doctor.
Do you think anything bad will happen to the World Health Organization?
Well, I think all their credibility is gone.
I don't know what they did before they decided to shamelessly lie in public in the most obvious way.
So I don't know enough about what they were doing before, but I hope it didn't depend on being credible, because that boat sailed.
Shouldn't we have early results from New York City about the...
The hydroxychloroquine.
The answer is yes, we should.
But if they still have a shortage problem, and we don't know about that, but if they still have a shortage of the meds, they might not want to tell you any preliminary stuff that looks a little too positive, not only because they want to make sure and wait longer, but probably wouldn't want you to get too worked up in trying to hoard it.
So, in theory, we should know some stuff by now.
In reality, I don't know.
Now, the other thing I don't know is what kind of test it is.
Because apparently there's a big difference between giving it to somebody at first symptoms.
It's like, ah, I don't know if it's a flu or a cold or a COVID. We'll just take the malaria drug, the Trump pills.
Now, apparently, at least anecdotally, if you get it early, it makes a big difference.
But then there's also the thought that people on ventilators are getting benefits from it.
So I don't know which one they're testing.
It seems like they would get very different results from them.
Can social distancing and handwashing reduce the R factor to below one in a hot zone?
I would think yes.
You know, but of course everything's friction.
That doesn't mean...
That doesn't mean it's easy.
But in a theoretical sense, could you just do enough hand-washing and enough social distancing?
And also, if the weather is warmer, would those three things be enough to get the spread rate below one person giving it to one person?
Theoretically, I just don't know how practical it is to get people to be that well-behaved.
But theoretically, yes.
Yeah, so there's news that you literally will have to escape from New York.
You know, Paging Snake Plissken was that the character in Escape from New York.
So, did you think you'd live to a day when you couldn't leave New York?
I'm hoping this is temporary.
But, and I'm sure that these things are well thought out.
Now, something that I tweeted that I probably just am going to remind you every single time I see you, nobody is really smart enough to know exactly what to do and when is the time to do it.
The moment you think that you know what's the right thing to do and the right time to do it, that's when you should discount all of your own opinions forever.
Because that's just a crazy opinion.
You don't know.
I don't know. Do you think there's anybody in the administration who knows what to do and also when to do it?
No. But I guarantee you there are a variety of different opinions.
And whatever happens, somebody is going to look back and say, well...
You should have done what I said, or they're going to say, well, you did what I said and it worked out right, so I guess I'm a genius.
But the fact is, as long as there are lots of people with different ideas, and I think the spectrum is from go back to work soon to keep the lockdown in place longer, somebody's going to be right.
But that doesn't mean it's because they're smart.
And I would argue that there isn't anybody smart enough to know what is even right.
So it's already bothering me in advance that people are going to claim genius for being on the right side of the right amount of alarm or not.
Somebody was going to get it right doesn't mean it was because you were smart.
It just means because everybody was all over the map.
It just has to be that some people get it right.
So it's already bothering me in advance.
So is Trump running unopposed at this point?
Basically. Yeah, basically Trump is running unopposed.
You know, in the virtual sense that Biden has disappeared and there's not much left of him.
If you were to plot the curve, I was actually going to make a graph of this, but it seemed too mean to show the time to the convention and You know, plot Biden's likely, you know, decline, and whether he can even make it to the convention.
It's actually going to be kind of close.
Because at this point, there's not much left of him.
He's sort of a, you know, stack of old magazines, as my friend once said.
So, you know, then people are talking about drafting Cuomo, right?
I would have to say that Cuomo is charismatic and he does a really good job of empathy and fighting for his people and taking responsibility, very leaderly things.
So I would give Cuomo quite high marks, if I'm being objective, quite high marks for how he's handling You know, the public communication and probably even the decisions because nobody's perfect.
You know, he's not going to get every call just right.
That's not a thing. And then people are talking about drafting him, but I thought, what would happen?
You know, what would have to be the publicly and generally recognized reason that you would do that?
Could the Democrats at this late stage, and it would be even later than this because Cuomo's not going to do anything while he's in the middle of this.
I mean, even if Cuomo got drafted, he's kind of busy, right?
If he started running for president next week, he's not the guy you want for president because that's not what he ought to be doing in the middle of an emergency.
So it doesn't seem to me there's any practical way That it could be done, you know, given the timing, the emergency, the fact that it would be, you know, how do you explain that Biden got this far?
How would the Democrats possibly explain that they let it get this far?
And you know what I'm talking about.
You know, they can see it the same as you can, that Biden, you know, just doesn't have the juice.
And At some point, if they have to admit that they knew all along, I mean, it's just so damning.
It's like, well, yeah, we knew there wasn't much left there, but we didn't want to, you know, change horses.
There's just no way to, just can't be explained.
All right. Who has impressed you the most during the pandemic?
Yeah, this is Adam Cornelius, and he says, I've liked a VP all around.
Any others? I say this all the time because I'm always impressed by it, but Mike Pence is like the most solid utility sixth man.
He's really solid.
Not my choice for president.
I certainly don't agree with him on some of his social opinions.
I'm not religious, so I don't I don't map to his point of view, but if you're just being fair and saying, okay, but he's not expressing his points of view, he's adopting the president's point of view and doing a job, how is he doing?
If you ask me that question, the answer is pretty solid.
Pretty solid.
I would say that Pence looks strong, actually.
I think Trump...
Trump is just being Trump for all the good ways and all the bad ways.
You know, everybody's tolerance for the personality parts of Trump that really make him special, frankly, and make him interesting and all that, make him funny.
I think just everybody has a little less tolerance for that in this situation.
But we also like the fact that he's always him.
So it's sort of a mixed bag.
It's like you know what you're getting, so you know you get some of that.
But if you think past that, if you can think past the fact, oh my goodness, is this the first time CNN ever fact-checked him and decided he said something that wasn't true?
So if you get past the little stuff, has he made the right decisions?
I think history is going to be pretty kind to him.
And I, you know, I think nobody knew when is soon enough or what to do, but the polls are clearly moving in his favor, so his support is clearly growing in general and also in regards to handling of the crisis.
So whatever he's doing is clearly working politically, you could say that.
I said from the start, I'm going to be super forgiving of mistakes that get made and have been made in how to deal with this thing.
Because anybody who says they know how to do it is the least credible person in the room.
Nobody knows. So if they're acting boldly, trying to reassure the public...
They can rapidly correct.
They're not doing anything that's a dead end and would kill you if it's the wrong decision.
If they're getting the basics right in terms of let's talk to everybody, make a decision, try it, do it fast.
If it doesn't work, measure what happened, correct it, fix it, adjust.
If they're doing stuff like that, I'm completely forgiving for any mistakes.
Because this isn't a, you know, take a good aim and shoot a bullseye kind of a situation.
This is very much of a...
This is a cage fight, and it doesn't matter if you have a strategy.
If the opponent doesn't know what your strategy is, you know, you're going to have to improvise when things get interesting.
All right, so...
Focus advice. How to build a new skill.
Well, I would say with micro steps.
So if there's a skill that you think fits well with your talent stack, do whatever is the smallest thing you're willing to do today.
It might be Google something, talk to somebody, write a note to yourself.
What's the smallest thing you're willing to do toward that skill that would fit well with your talent stack?
Then do it. And then the next day do whatever is the next small thing.
If at some point it doesn't start pulling you along, then maybe it's not for you.
But you can prime the pump pretty easily.
All right. Damn it.
Dang it. Let me look for some more comments here.
All right. Question.
Question. What are credible examples of lockdowns working?
Why are so many countries using this blunt tool instead of more precise, strategic ways, blah, blah?
Well, it's a good question.
And I'm very suspicious of anybody who can look at the other countries' experiences and be sure they know why something worked.
Because if you take South Korea, you know, is it because of the testing or is it because of the masks?
Is it because they're, as a society, they were more, you know, willing to do what their leaders wanted?
Did they just comply better?
Did they use different meds than we did?
Did they use them quicker? Was there something about the nature of the way they live that, you know, none of their nursing homes got, you know, so you can imagine a hundred variables.
But the one that feels like the one that would be most impactful, so this is the dumb non-scientist, non-doctor.
But if you were to say to me, make a list of all the things, which are the things that mattered the most, was it the amount of testing that South Korea did or the fact that they seemed to massively wear masks?
I feel like You know, just my gut feel, I feel like it was the masks, not the testing.
But the official story is that it's the testing.
So if you want to take the word of the people who actually know what they're talking about and looked into it and all the experts and the people who are smart, they say the testing was the big thing.
But how many people did they test?
You know, I can't make the numbers work in my head.
I don't even remember what the numbers were, but if you look at the whole population of South Korea, and then how many tests they did, I can't square it that it was the tests that fixed everything.
But if it was also true that pretty much everybody had access to a mask and immediately complied and wore them, just culturally, it was just easier and faster, wouldn't that get you to a pretty good place pretty quickly?
I feel like that would be 80% of it, not 20%.
But that's just a gut feeling.
Maybe we'll get some visibility on that later.
Let's see. Good question.
Will one of the good things to come out of this world-changing event be the young people learning how to make their own coffee?
I assume that that's a...
Reference to Starbucks being closed.
In 1918 and 19, that pandemic, the Spanish flu, 675,000 Americans died.
But soon after, we entered the Roaring Twenties.
So just a few years after we were in boom times, can something like that happen again?
And the answer is, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I don't think the likelihood is that it's just going to zoom up to the moon.
I don't think that's the top likelihood.
I think that if I had to handicap it, the most likely thing is that it will be on the better side of predictions.
Meaning, I think it's going to be better than the average prediction.
It'll be stronger, faster than the average person would predict.
But I don't think it's necessarily going to go right to boom times in 12 months.
We've got a lot of territory to catch up.
But yeah, I don't see any reason that we wouldn't come back very strong.
It's just the rate of strength.
When things return to normal, will Americans be more appreciative of everyday life?
Yes. For a little while.
So the nature of people is that when you can finally go outside and do whatever you want, assuming it happens in some sudden way instead of a very gradual way, yeah, we'd all feel appreciative, and man, will we appreciate it.
It might even last a year or two, but eventually it's going to wear off.
So, yes, we would be more appreciative, but it's absolutely not a lasting effect, is my experience.
Let's see what other questions we got here.
Sorry, I'm just looking.
Are all the governors banning the Trump pills Democrats?
Not that I know of, but I haven't looked at that.
Mary Jane says, what makes sense?
This is her question.
What makes sense?
What doesn't make sense?
This is a profound question, Mary Jane.
And so I'll answer it for you.
What is the only thing that you could know for sure?
I'll give you a moment. What is the only thing in this whole reality, in this world, in your life, what's the only thing you can know for sure?
Well, if you've taken Philosophy 101, you'd know the answer to it.
The only thing you can know for sure is that you exist because you're asking the question.
You couldn't be asking the question if you didn't exist.
But beyond that, you actually don't know.
So, The answer to your question of what makes sense is that you exist.
And nothing else does.
Nothing else does.
Everything else is a rationalization.
Alright. Let me look at your comments and I will see if you've got any good questions in here.
You know, a big part of Why I do this is just to bond with all of you and make us all feel better about the news and make us feel a little less lonely.
And I hope that listening to me...
Oh, so somebody says a nurse at Kaiser says it's the people on ibuprofen who are getting pneumonia.
I don't think that's certain enough that we should put that out there.
But the part that is certain is I do think there's a recommendation not to take ibuprofen.
But I don't know the specifics of it.
But that's really interesting.
Think of all the people who take ibuprofen on a pretty regular basis.
If I don't think we're going to find out this is the case, but I'll just put it out there as a hypothetical.
If the only thing that made the coronavirus COVID-19, if the only thing that made it extra dangerous is that it was bad for people who were also taking ibuprofen, it would be the most dangerous virus we ever saw, wouldn't it? Because there are so many people who take ibuprofen that a virus has a very good chance of hitting one of them.
So we know it's a bad idea to be on the ibuprofen.
I guess Tylenol is the safer one, according to the doctor I just watched.
Please don't get your medical advice from me.
I'm simply reporting things I heard with no credibility whatsoever.
So take no medical advice from me, but it's a weird situation because in the emergency We're all kind of deputized to share information.
So I feel a little bit exposed sharing information on a topic that I shouldn't be talking about at all, which is healthcare.
All right. Where are the big trucks spraying disinfectant like China?
Yeah, I still think that that was just for show.
I think China was...
Just showing that they had control and assets and they were really all over this thing.
Will Dilbert worry over COVID-19?
Well, the Dilbert comics that I'm drawing this week do feature Dilbert with face masks and social distancing.
And he's working from home, at least part of it.
Now, I had to anticipate, when is he ever going to go back to work?
And I don't know if... I'm assuming there'll be some phased approach, so at least some people will be back to work.
So I'm going to have to decide.
Probably in the landscaping world.
What? I was told by doc that for respiratory problems, this is always true.
It's not a COVID thing.
I think you're referring to the ibuprofen.
So somebody who is also not a doctor suggests that it's bad no matter what kind of flu virus you got.
Oh, you're very appreciative of me.
I appreciate that.
So, did you see that there's a lot of attacks against Dr.
Fauci now? Predictably, right?
So, apparently Dr.
Fauci, allegedly...
It has some financial ties to Gilead, which is one of the big companies that would benefit if the drug Remdesivir, whatever it is.
But if their drug becomes the favored one, that would be a gigantic financial windfall for a company that he's worked with, he has some kind of financial ties with, I guess.
So we'll see how that plays out, see if anybody cares.
How important is it to have cash on hand?
I think not important, actually.
The things that I thought would not be in shortage was food in general, albeit maybe not your specific thing, but it was obvious that you couldn't hoard vegetables and fruit.
So there's sort of a limit to how much you can hoard.
Of things that go bad quickly.
So I always assumed food would never be a problem.
I always assumed electricity, water, you know, that the basics would all be fine.
And I remain 100% confident that the basics are all going to be fine.
You know, we saw that report that people who weighed more were having more deaths, And I was waiting to hear the doctor I was listening to confirm that, and he did not.
Which, anyway.
Was Elon Musk downplaying the virus wrong?
I'm going to say this so many times.
Nobody was wrong.
People had different opinions, but nobody could know.
In other words, the body of information that it would take for you to actually have an informed opinion just didn't exist.
So in that case, you're going to have people who lean one way and lean the others, and when you're done, you're going to say, well, one of them was leaning the right way after the fact, and one was not.
But, you know, nobody could be right It's all just guesses at first.
So I just reject the notion that in the developing month or two, there was such a thing as being wrong.
I think there were just people who had different guesses, but it wasn't enough to use your brain and reason it out and look at the facts.
It just wasn't an option.
How does the simulation fit in?
Well, obviously this is a software upgrade.
So this software upgrade is changing something about this game we call the simulation.
And it's removing a lot of people from the game, apparently.
That's the bad part.
And it's giving us new challenges, but it's probably hardening us against future pandemics.
You know, think about the next pandemic.
Because I was trying to count up the number of ways we're going to solve this one.
Think about all the ways that we will solve it, and it's just a matter of which one gets there first.
So for example, we have a number of different ways to test, and some of them are these cheap tabletop things and stuff.
So that's a guaranteed way to win.
If we made enough of them, now maybe it takes a while, But if we made enough of them, that's a guaranteed way to win, and we know how to make lots of things.
So if the test was, alright, you're going to have to make 100 million of these tests because you want them everywhere, could we make 100 million of a small electronic unit?
Yeah, we could do that.
I don't know how long that takes, but yeah, we can get there.
So that's one way, and I'm sure at least one of the drugs they're testing will work.
I think the serum immunology thing will work.
I think if we did more DNA testing, we'd know who has more risk than other people.
That would work. So we probably have something like five or maybe six different ways That would totally work.
Like a very high likelihood would work, but they all take some time to implement for different reasons.
So it's sort of solved five different ways.
We just don't know which one we'll get there first.
Let's see. I'm just looking at your comments.
Will we stock up on masks after this?
It seems like it.
Wouldn't you imagine that...
I've always had an emergency preparation kit.
So I've always had, at the very least, I would have a commercial kit of some basic stuff.
And I always have more food and cans and rice and stuff, just in case.
So I'm always sort of semi-prepared.
But look how prepared we're going to be in the future.
We're really prepared.
Am I still feeling the healthiest I've ever been?
Yeah. Yeah.
Because I've been just a maniac about my fitness, just to stay as strong as possible from my immune system, I'm actually the healthiest I've ever felt in my whole life.
Literally true. I'm just bouncing up down the stairs.
I can run all day.
My muscle definition is good.
I think I lost nine pounds since the lockdown started.
For me, it's been great.
Now, I would like to clear up something.
This is maybe too personal, but I thought I'd tell you anyway.
I'm in lockdown.
I'm in quarantine, not quarantine because I don't have any symptoms.
I'm in social isolation actually by myself.
So there's nobody in this house except me.
So Christina has a house of her own nearby, and so she's there with some family members.
And for maximum risk management, I'm the one who's got the biggest risk because of age and asthma and stuff.
And so I'm actually just in isolation, basically.
So if I see anybody, it's from a good distance away.
So... Needless to say, being away from your fiancé is very difficult.
But it's not impossible.
And on the scale of things that people are sacrificing for the greater good, it's pretty small.
I mean, it's bad for me.
It's very bad for me.
But on the larger scheme of things, it doesn't compare to what every doctor is doing every day.
What do I think about the Kennedy Center layoffs?
It's just all fake news stuff that political stuff care about.
So the Kennedy Center gets $25 million and then it lays off some people.
It wasn't the whole idea, not the layoff people.
Here's the thing. If you don't know the whole story, you just don't really know anything.
And the whole story is, how many people did they keep?
Are they going to give them some severance?
It could be that they laid them off with severance and they planned to bring them back.
So you'd have to know a lot more about what their budget is and what they got and when they got it and what their plans are.
I just don't want to even have an opinion on that.
When is the date for the wedding?
Well, I'll tell you when it was.
I won't be specific, but it was going to be in the period that is now, social isolation period.
So without being more specific, that plan is on hold until we know when people can be in the same room.
Which country openly turns on China first?
I don't know if anybody will.
I think the deal with China is you have to act like their friend while you're slowly backing out the door.
I don't think you want to make them mad.
That seems like a bad idea.
Somebody says, do you have a weapon?
Which one? I always answer the same way.
I'm pro-Second Amendment.
But anybody who has a weapon in their house, why would you tell somebody else how many you have and what kind they are?
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?
What would be the point of having weapon or weapons, be they handguns or be they larger, what would be the point of having said hypothetical weapons if you were just going to tell people what you had?
That would be the worst idea ever.
Who taught you home defense?
So let's just say that's the question that shall not be answered.
Get married on Easter?
I don't think so.
So far, somebody says none of their friends have died.
I would say...
Well, I've certainly heard direct reports from people on Twitter saying somebody said they lost both parents.
My God. But I don't know anybody yet.
Why does California have a large testing backlog?
Well, I don't know. But obviously that suggests there's some kind of centralized bottleneck.
So I would say it's the wrong technology or the wrong system or both.
When will we see the study results of the Trump pills?
Well, we're speculating that we would already have some early indications, but maybe the smart people don't want us to know.
So it's entirely possible that...
The scientists and the doctors already have a pretty good idea.
Short of, you know, short of rigor.
but I don't think they're going to tell us it looks like.
How many weeks until crime picks up?
You know, I don't know.
It's a good question. We haven't seen any crime statistics, but don't you assume...
That the number of, let's say, drunk driving deaths and traffic deaths and murders, don't you think almost every crime statistic went way down?
Now, there must be some.
Anything that happens indoors, in your own house, domestic violence, I would think, probably did go up just because of the pressure.
But I'll bet there's a whole bunch of categories that went down.
Will Bernie come back to beat Joe?
You know, I think if the Democrats were even a little bit willing to accept Bernie as their candidate, I think it would have happened.
You mentioned the government is lying.
Any ideas about the specifics?
Yeah, anything that came from our government that agreed with the World Health Organization that masks wouldn't have any benefit.
That was really clearly a lie.
And I think it just had to do with the shortage of masks.
I also believe that there's maybe a lie by omission about what we do or do not know about the hydroxychloroquine.
So there's something going on there.
And again, that might be just managing the hoarding.
You know, I have not driven my car And there's no reason I couldn't.
I can go for a ride.
But the streets are all empty.
Let's see. My wife...
My wife works on the health data team working to verify.
Well, if your wife works on that team...
Are you telling me she doesn't already know?
So in the comments, somebody said that I guess his wife is part of some medical team looking at the effectiveness of the test.
I think you kind of already know, don't you?
Because if the test has run more than two days, you kind of already know.
Because if it didn't work in two days, it doesn't work.
Because everything that we've heard about it is...
That is fairly, you know, rapid results.
How good am I at tennis?
Well, I stopped playing tennis, but at my best I was probably, you know, 4 to a 4.5, for those who know what tennis ratings are.
Which is, you know, not that impressive.
Cuomo says that the testing is going strong in New York.
What do you make of the 21 million deactivated Chinese mobile phones?
Well, I have a number of hypotheses.
Number one, it didn't happen.
So the first most obvious hypothesis is that wherever this report comes out, that somehow there were suddenly 21 million fewer phones, and of course people suggesting that means they died.
My first most obvious thing would be, okay, it's probably just not true that that data point just didn't happen.
So I'd say that's probably at least an 85% chance that that's all it is.
It just didn't happen.
But let's say it did, just for fun.
How else could you explain it?
Well, you could explain it this way.
You might have some kind of a system change that simply made it look like they disappeared.
And I don't know what that would look like, but just for brainstorming purposes, let's say they got rid of an area code or added an area code and there was some massive switch of phone numbers.
And it made it look like a bunch of phones disappeared, but maybe on the next report they would reappear because they just transferred to another.
So you can imagine ways that there would just be some system change that made it look like a whole bunch of phones disappeared for a month and then they come back.
I'm not saying that's likely.
I'm just saying you could imagine other reasons.
Another reason would be, and again, just brainstorming, Suppose that the Chinese were using the phones to track people who were suspected of coming in contact.
So let's say that the Chinese authorities said, hand me your phone, and by the way, you're never going to see it again, because I'm going to use your phone back at the office, and I'm going to track it, and I'm going to take your data, but it's an emergency, and you're just never going to see your phone again.
Sorry. You can buy a new phone, but I'm going to take your phone, and you're just never going to see it again.
And by the way, I'll shoot you if you don't give me the password.
So one possibility is that they confiscated 21 million phones, didn't really have an intention of giving them back, or didn't want to, or they're corrupt, and they just sold them on the black market.
I don't know. But you could easily imagine that they Confiscated 21 million phones just to check who they had been contacting with, right?
So I don't know the answer to the question, but my best guess is it doesn't mean that 21 million people died.
I think it's safe to say far more people died than the reporting, but I think we would know if it were 21 million.
So I feel confident in this statement.
The real death toll is probably a lot more than China is saying.
But not so much more that it's in the range of 21 million, because I don't see there's any way we would have missed that if our intelligence agencies couldn't figure that out.
If 21 million people died and we didn't notice, we'd have to fire all of our intelligence people, I think.
All right. I think that's about all I got for today.
Will I be appearing on the Bill Maher show before the election?
I doubt it. I don't get the sense that I would be invited.
Obviously, it's not up to me.
Could I beat Billie Jean King?
No, I couldn't. Actually, let me take that back.
Only the people who are a certain age know that Billie Jean King played Bobby Riggs.
He was older and she was the champion at the time on the women's side.
And so just as a spectacle, they decided to play and make it the male sexist pig against the feminist.
It was sort of billed as a kind of a cultural thing.
And Billie Jean actually beat Bobby Riggs.
But anyway, if you watch any of the old stuff here, I don't know if this is true.
But it feels like it's true.
The equipment and the training and the way people play tennis today is so different than they did in, let's say, the 60s or the 70s that I think just a really good player might be able to beat like a top 10 player from the 60s and the 70s because the ball was moving so much slower back then and they had wooden rackets and, you know, they just played a different game.
So, to your question, Could I beat Billie Jean King if she played the way she did then with the equipment, you know, the old wooden racket?
And I played her when I was at the peak of my skills, which might have been around age 55 probably.
It was when I was actually playing the best.
And I used my modern equipment.
I think I could have beat her, actually.
But only because of the equipment difference, which is gigantic.
Somebody says you were dead wrong about the tennis thing.
I don't know which part you're saying that about.
I don't doubt that you're right.
I just don't know what you were complaining about.
Oh, that I could beat her?
Well, so here's the thing.
If you watch Billie Jean King, you know, hitting the ball...
In a hard way, back in those days, it's not as hard as just regular people I would play on the weekends, and I could hit it back far harder.
So if I could return the ball far harder, it wouldn't even be that hard, because she didn't hit it that hard.
Yeah, I probably could press her, and I think I could actually, at least it's possible I could have beaten her.
Um... Yeah, alright.
I have not listened to the new Bob Dylan song.
I didn't know there was one. What's your favorite predicted markets for the general election?
I haven't really looked at that too much.
Alright, I don't have much else to say.
I'm going to go do something else.
And I will talk to you in the morning.
You know what time for the simultaneous sip.
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