My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Did Boris Johnson get treated with hydroxychloroquine? Brainwashed children and reflex thinking as adults Shifting risk to people willing to voluntarily accept that risk Sweden's non-mitigating policy --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support
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| Hey everybody, come on in here. | |
| It's time for coffee with Scott Adams. | |
| And the simultaneous sip. | |
| Yeah, it's good. | |
| It's really good. And then we'll talk about fascinating things. | |
| Hey Omar, thanks for the super art. | |
| And all you need to prepare for today's episode is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask of a vessel of any kind. | |
| I fill it with your favorite liquid. | |
| I like coffee. | |
| And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better, including the pandemic. | |
| It's called the simultaneous sip. | |
| Go. | |
| Ah. | |
| Whoa. | |
| So, I got a message this morning from Bjorn Lomborg. | |
| You may know of him as a well-known, let's say, voice. | |
| I don't know how to characterize him. | |
| But he's a well-known voice on climate change. | |
| And his special niche is saying that, yeah, there might be a problem with warming, but we're not doing a good job calculating the economics of it. | |
| So he's focusing on the risk management part of it, not whether or not it happened. | |
| He's not a scientist. | |
| And he's got a new book out, and I'm going to offer to interview him, but here's my question. | |
| I'm considering... | |
| Putting any interviews I do, maybe putting them behind or putting them on only the Locals app. | |
| So that I'm not so sure I want to do interviews for my regular Periscope. | |
| So that's the question. You could either message me directly or tell me in the comments. | |
| Now, I wouldn't call him a climate skeptic. | |
| Somebody's trying to characterize Bjorn Lomborg as a climate skeptic. | |
| I wouldn't use that term. I think he's more of a climate analyst. | |
| He works with economists as well as people who understand the science. | |
| So it's more about taking a more comprehensive look at the business part of it. | |
| I think that's how I would characterize him. | |
| I wouldn't call him a skeptic in the In the classic sense of someone who doesn't think there's a problem. | |
| Alright. So if you think you would like to see me doing interviews in my normal morning periscope, let me know. | |
| But I could also do those offline. | |
| And then they would just be available if you wanted to see them. | |
| And here's my reasoning on this. | |
| I think that... | |
| The population of people who watch the morning periscopes and temporarily the evening ones probably are coming for me, right? | |
| I mean, I don't know how to say that without sounding like too much of a jerk, but I'm just trying to be a market analyst here and say, all right, well, if people are coming for one thing, why would I change it? | |
| Unless it was better. So I guess that's the question. | |
| Would you like it better if I interviewed interesting people? | |
| Alright. You know what I'm getting tired of? | |
| I'm getting tired of the press reporting on stuff without telling us whether hydroxychloroquine is part of the story. | |
| And it's starting to get really obvious, isn't it? | |
| Well, I'm looking at your comments. | |
| It looks like Oh, okay. | |
| Yeah, it looks like there's a lot of support for doing it offline, meaning just put it on the locals' platform. | |
| Oh, good. Actually, I'm a little bit surprised because I thought there would be more of a mixed response, but that's actually, my instinct was the same. | |
| See, here's my thinking. | |
| The reason that you watch an interview is for the person who's being interviewed. | |
| Right? So there's no reason to assume that people who are coming to my Periscopes also want to see whoever the interview person is. | |
| So it just makes sense that you'd have those separate. | |
| All right. We'll do that. | |
| So Boris Johnson. | |
| He went from being in the ICU to miraculously a lot better. | |
| Did he use the hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc? | |
| Why don't you know that? | |
| Right? Or has it been reported? | |
| Has that been reported and I just missed it? | |
| Does anybody know the answer? | |
| Did Boris Johnson take those meds? | |
| Now... Yeah, I think I've seen enough people saying no interviews on this platform, so I'll take your advice on that. | |
| And thank you. Thank you, by the way. | |
| One of the things that's really fun about this experience, you know, what we're doing right now, and I think you feel it as well, is that even though it's sort of a mass broadcast platform, it's also personal. | |
| And... And sort of immediately responsive to the audience. | |
| You know, what I do is it's almost like it's a live audience. | |
| Well, there's a live audience, but not in person. | |
| In the sense that I'm adjusting based on the response all the time. | |
| So that kind of makes it more fun because it can evolve in its natural way. | |
| So, yeah, Press should tell us more about hydroxychloroquine. | |
| So I had thousands of people unfollow me this week. | |
| And all for the same reasons, which is they were badly brainwashed at some point in their life and don't know it. | |
| Now, that's my hypothesis. | |
| Let me support that way of thinking with the following anecdote. | |
| When I was in sixth grade, my sixth grade teacher did an exercise with a class that I think changed me forever. | |
| It didn't do it right away, but as I thought about the experience, I think it forever changed how I see the world. | |
| And here was the exercise. He asked us each, the students, to come up one at a time and write on the chalkboard in front of the class something we would be willing to die for. | |
| To die for. | |
| Now remember, we're 12 years old. | |
| So each of us go up and we're like, I don't know, you know. | |
| And so it's my turn to go up to write something that I would die for. | |
| But of course, I'm kind of anticipating what the teacher is looking for. | |
| He was a military veteran, you know, very patriotic kind of guy. | |
| And I think I intuited that what he was looking for, you know, sort of like, I'm good with... | |
| Multiple choice tests because I can tell what they're looking for. | |
| So I go up there and I think he's looking for freedom as the answer. | |
| So I go up to the board and I write, you know, freedom. | |
| I'd be willing to die for freedom. | |
| And of course, you know, he praised me for my excellent answer. | |
| But it wasn't so much my answer as knowing that that was the answer he was looking for. | |
| But I've never forgotten that moment. | |
| And here's why. Can a 12-year-old make a rational decision about life and death? | |
| Can they? Is there any 12-year-old whose brain is developed enough that they can look at the whole situation and say, yeah, it does make sense that I would die for this thing? | |
| And the answer is no. | |
| No, you haven't developed adult critical thinking. | |
| So if you have a firm opinion about something... | |
| At 12 years old, as everybody in the class seemed to. | |
| Because once I put that answer up there, everybody was like, oh yeah, freedom. | |
| We died for that. It's obvious, when you look back at it, that it was just the result of brainwashing. | |
| Now when I say brainwashing, I don't mean bad. | |
| Because society trains its youth to get an outcome that's good for society and ideally good for the youth as well. | |
| So when we're training and educating and teaching people their culture and giving them religion and giving them patriotism, that's nothing but brainwashing because it happens at children who are far too young to make any kind of critical decision anyway. | |
| Really? There's somebody saying no to this? | |
| Are there actually people who are disagreeing that children are being brainwashed to be patriot? | |
| I don't know if you disagree with that thought. | |
| How could you possibly disagree with that? | |
| Wow. Most of the comments are disagreeing. | |
| That we brainwash children. | |
| I'm amazed. Well, you're completely wrong. | |
| So let's just stay with the assumption you're completely wrong. | |
| I will default to my expertise in hypnosis and persuasion to say the Pledge of Allegiance is just brainwashing. | |
| But it's very good brainwashing. | |
| In other words, if you were the boss and you got to decide, okay, Scott, would you continue doing the Pledge of Allegiance, knowing as you're describing it that it's brainwashing, I'd say, yeah! | |
| Hell yeah! It's really good. | |
| Because there's nothing wrong with patriotism. | |
| It's a good system. And although I'm not a believer, I'm very pro-religion. | |
| So if children are brought into that religious belief well before they have critical thinking, most of the time it works out great. | |
| So don't be thrown by my use of the word brainwashing. | |
| You could easily just substitute in educated. | |
| Right? And then it feels okay. | |
| It's like, oh, we educated kids. | |
| Right? Just the way you do it for children is you don't ask them for their opinion, you just tell them what to think. | |
| Because that's how you educate kids before they have reasonable skills. | |
| Alright, so... | |
| And now these children who were, let's say, educated, so it'll make you feel better, they were educated to value patriotism and the other values of our society. | |
| And that's all good. I'm glad that they were, and I'm glad I was. | |
| I'm glad I was likewise... | |
| Educated. But then you grow up and you've got these reflexes that are sort of designed into you. | |
| So once you do develop the ability to do critical thinking, do you use it? | |
| Because it's kind of hard to use your critical thinking if you spend a lifetime with just this reflex training. | |
| It's like, freedom, I'll die for it. | |
| You don't really think that through, do you? | |
| It's just a reflex at this point. | |
| You love your country. | |
| You believe in your religion. | |
| It's just a reflex. And so I would say that the thousands of people who unfollowed me, I won't speak for every one of them, of course, because they're different people, but my suspicion is that their early education and reflex thinking was too strong for them to overcome with their sense of reason. | |
| Here's why. So the thing that people got mad about was that I said, what if you had an app in which you could voluntarily, voluntarily give up your personal information and maybe you would find some hot spots based on your reporting of your symptoms? | |
| And people said, no way, you can't give up your freedom in the form of personal information in this case, but don't give up freedom. | |
| But not really any critical look at the whole situation. | |
| Because if you're arguing that you don't want to give up your personal information, but you have a driver's license, and you have a credit card, and you pay taxes, and you have a smartphone, that ship's sailed. | |
| You've given up all of your private information. | |
| If there's some other little minor thing that you voluntarily give up, say, did I have a cough on Tuesday? | |
| Did I have a cough on Tuesday? | |
| That's the personal information that you're worried about giving up? | |
| It is voluntary? | |
| Really? You've given up all of your financial stuff, all of your preferences, because your financial stuff shows you your preferences. | |
| They can find out your browser history. | |
| They can find every conversation you made. | |
| They know your taxes. | |
| They know where you've been. | |
| And the thing you're worried about... | |
| Some people might self-report that they've got a headache on Tuesday. | |
| Are you kidding me? | |
| That's the thing you're worried about? | |
| Now, the argument is that it's, you know, sure, it's voluntary now, but what if the government requires it? | |
| Well, what if they do? | |
| They required a driver's license. | |
| That didn't kill you. They required a fishing license. | |
| You survived that. | |
| Right? Kids have to go to school even if they don't want to. | |
| Somehow we survived. | |
| So routinely the government makes restrictions on your freedom and if you don't like them the public can do something about it later. | |
| But the most controversial thing I said which there is a Some idiots on the conservative treehouse decided to take me out of context and misinterpret me. | |
| So, here's what they interpreted. | |
| Let's see if I can find their quote. | |
| Because, yeah, I can't find it. | |
| I thought I wrote it down. But anyway, the thing that they got upset about, wrote a little hit piece on me today, is that I said that the sooner, so here's my tweet, the sooner that the public realizes that they will have to give up privacy to beat the coronavirus, the sooner we can beat it. | |
| What the conservative treehouse changed that to is should. | |
| They actually inserted the word should. | |
| My statement is an observation. | |
| I observe that our concern about privacy and our reflex for freedom is preventing us from the obvious solutions, which would be to know if somebody has it and doesn't have it, To check your genetics to see if there's anything that makes you especially susceptible. | |
| That sort of thing. Maybe checking your location or something. | |
| So I'm not saying that you have to like those things or even that they would necessarily be effective. | |
| But I'm pretty sure that the solution to the coronavirus will involve at least a little bit, whatever that looks like, at least a little bit of giving up your privacy Temporarily. | |
| Now, you know, could the government keep doing whatever it's doing forever if you give it up temporarily? | |
| It's a slippery slope! | |
| Well, yeah, they could, but that's the problem with literally everything in life. | |
| That somebody could do the wrong thing. | |
| Anytime! It's not special. | |
| There's nothing special about this. | |
| The government can do bad things and try to get away with it anytime they want. | |
| Nothing special. | |
| All right. | |
| Let's see. | |
| I made an observation that I'm sure will turn into nothing, but it's kind of interesting, so I'll talk about it. | |
| If there's a genetic marker for who's more vulnerable and there's some speculation in the scientific and medical community there's something about your ACE2 receptors in your lungs and I think you could genetically test to see if you have that There seems to be something that, | |
| in a general way, it might track with different ethnic groups, but that doesn't necessarily mean if you're within that ethnic group that you have those receptors or don't. | |
| It's just more correlated as I understand it. | |
| Now, that doesn't mean that any of that, if it were actually tested in more rigorous fashion, would be correlated with outcomes. | |
| I don't know that that's true. | |
| But here's what I noticed. There did seem to be, at least by eyeball, but not necessarily if you really dug into it, at least by eyeball, it seems that people of Germanic background were having better outcomes. | |
| So, for example, Germany has a low death rate. | |
| Denmark seems to be doing okay. | |
| And Sweden is not having a good outcome in terms of their death rate. | |
| Their death rate is above 8%, which if you ranked it in the world, it wouldn't be very good. | |
| But they also didn't do much mitigation. | |
| So the fact that Sweden is higher than Germany and Denmark makes sense, because they didn't do as much to stop it. | |
| But then you look at the United States, and you look at the states within the United States that have the greatest population of Germanic people who settled, and they also have, for the most part, It's not a 100% correlation. | |
| But for the most part, they have also low death rates. | |
| Now, they have other things and other correlations, so it would be hard to tease out what's really the cause. | |
| For example, the states that also have the greatest Germanic Populations in the United States also happen to be not very dense, and they don't have a lot of international travel. | |
| So it could easily just be that, right? | |
| It could easily be that it's just a coincidence. | |
| As soon as you studied it, any kind of genetic difference would fall away. | |
| But there's certainly enough suspicion that it's worth looking into, especially because young, healthy people do die. | |
| Don't you think that if you tested the young, healthy people, it's less likely that you would find they had some hidden health problem, like, oh, they actually had a heart problem we didn't know about? | |
| That could be the whole answer, actually. | |
| But the other possibility is that there is some genetic thing. | |
| And how hard would it be to find it? | |
| Some people in the comments on Twitter said it's really, really hard to find... | |
| A genetic cause for any disease because we've looked for other diseases and it's really complicated. | |
| It's not like it's one part of your DNA. It might be a combination of things, etc. | |
| And I think that sounds like that's probably true as a general statement. | |
| But here's my question. | |
| Here's my question. | |
| If you have a suspicion that it's these ACE2 inhibitors, couldn't you just look at that? | |
| Because given that we know it's a lung-related problem, if you just looked at just lung-related genetic issues that we know are things, would we not at least rule it in or rule it out? | |
| So at the very least, I would think, and I think I've heard that there is some genetic study going on, maybe more than one place, so I suspect it can't take that long to get that data. | |
| Because it's not, the genetic study is, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but if you're looking at the genes for a correlation, you don't have to do a, I don't think you have to do a controlled study. | |
| I think you just have to look at the outcomes and then look at the genes and say, oh, the people with these genes had better outcomes. | |
| I think, right? | |
| Right? So we should be able to just take a bunch of blood samples from people who have known outcomes. | |
| Wouldn't we be done in maybe two weeks? | |
| Two weeks if you're working hard? | |
| Couldn't you test enough to know if there's something there? | |
| So my feeling is that it's been about two weeks since I first heard that somebody, I don't know who, was going to start looking into that. | |
| So any day now I'm expecting that we're going to find out if that's a thing. | |
| And maybe that gives us a little more information for battling this thing. | |
| Now, of course, the things you have to watch out for is that pollution is correlated. | |
| We found that out for sure. | |
| Obviously, population density, whether there's mass transit, how much they tried to mitigate, when they got it. | |
| Do they have elevators as an international hub? | |
| Do they have a lot of unhealthy people? | |
| Do the old people live with the young people in this town? | |
| So you have lots of different factors. | |
| But maybe we can tease out if there's a genetic. | |
| Alright. So, I'm moving closer to the opinion. | |
| I don't have a firm opinion yet about what the exact right go-back-to-work strategy would be. | |
| So, anybody who's hating me for suggesting ideas is not really understanding that I'm not promoting ideas. | |
| I'm just... Brainstorming, right? | |
| I'm just, I'm surfacing ideas, see how people react. | |
| If the way people react is, no, I will not give up my privacy, it doesn't matter if it's rational or not. | |
| If it turns out that you can't convince people they should give up a trivial bit of privacy, such as, did you cough on Tuesday? | |
| You know, if that's a problem, and people can't be talked out of it, well, that informs your policy possibilities. | |
| Because you have to deal with the whole person, the rational part that's small and the irrational part that's gigantic. | |
| So, of course, since you need compliance, you're going to have to get people on board. | |
| But I'm moving closer to this opinion. | |
| So this is an unformed opinion. | |
| You can just see it in process. | |
| It goes like this. | |
| The big problem about sending some people back to work is not their risk. | |
| In other words, we do live in a country in which we sort of generally agree that if an individual has an opportunity to take a risk that only affects them, we're going to be a little flexible about that because that is just your human freedom to take the risk that makes sense for you. | |
| But we get a little prickly as a society, or any society, if your personal risks cost someone else money. | |
| So if the thing you're doing is going to raise my taxes or raise my health care or make me pay for more police force or whatever, if it's going to affect me, then I want to vote on that. | |
| Now here's where I'm going on this. | |
| We have situations in society where people have different risk levels and we compensate for that. | |
| Take car insurance. | |
| The people who have the highest risk pay the most car insurance. | |
| And we mostly are okay with that, even though it seems to be terribly unfair compared to everything else we do in life. | |
| Because when I was a young man, I was in the category of risky drivers, but I wasn't personally risky. | |
| Because I didn't drive especially fast. | |
| I had good reflexes. | |
| You could do the checklist. | |
| So I just wasn't a risky personality. | |
| But I was still in that category. | |
| And I was still... | |
| I complain about it constantly, but I'm not going to start a revolution over it because there is a credible reason that it's done. | |
| And the reason is you kind of do want to move the risk as much as you can to the people who are the risky people because society says that feels better, feels more fair. | |
| We don't have to do it, but if it's the only way that society can say, yeah, I hate it, But I get why you're doing it. | |
| Sometimes that's the best you can do. | |
| And so here's my question. | |
| Is there a way that the people who want to take on the personal risk of going back to work, is there a way that we can let them do that, but also somehow wall off that risk so that they're the only ones that take it? | |
| Now the obvious answer to that is yeah, because the people at risk are In most cases, they can choose to sequester themselves so severely that they're really not taking the same risk. | |
| So that's one way. The risky people can go to work. | |
| Grandma can lock herself in a room for three months if she chooses. | |
| She doesn't have to, but she could. | |
| But could we go further than that? | |
| Could we? Because here's my concern. | |
| It's not the only concern, but as we're working through the options, some things start to rise up as more important than others. | |
| I don't want my health care service to be unavailable to me because someone else decided that their risk-reward was sufficient for them to go back to work. | |
| In other words, other people's choice about risk will fairly immediately impact me, or could. | |
| Could. In terms of my healthcare availability, etc. | |
| And that's very important. So, is there a way that you could wall off the healthcare burden so that people who do want to take that risk would be... | |
| I'll just throw this out as a possibility. | |
| You could say, yes. | |
| If you get the coronavirus, you could go to this hospital, but not any of the other ones in your area. | |
| So, just throwing out an idea here. | |
| So, you'd have one hospital... | |
| It would not be overcapacity when you start, but you'd say to the people who want to go back, all right, if you get trouble, the only hospital that's going to take you is the one we've designated. | |
| And if you going back to work causes a lot of you to be dying, well, you might have to be waiting in line and dying on the sidewalk because it's just going to be this one hospital. | |
| Everybody who decided not to go back to work and just wanted to sequester, they're going to get these other hospitals so they can get their operations and their heart surgeries and everything else. | |
| Now, I'm not saying that's the perfect answer. | |
| I'm giving you an example of how you could creatively shift the risk from the people who say, that's not a risk I want to take, to the people who quite reasonably say, I will take that risk. | |
| I'm an American. | |
| I've got freedom. | |
| I take that risk. | |
| Can you wall it off and just find a way to limit it? | |
| Now, you could do it with financially. | |
| That'd be another way. You could just say, you can go back to work, but given that there's going to be such a burden to the healthcare system, would you mind, those of you who go back to work, let's say pay 10% extra on your healthcare for six months. | |
| You can go back to work. | |
| We're just going to move the The burden of the risk so that you're the ones taking it and the ones who don't want to take the risk don't have to. | |
| Now again, I'm not saying that's the answer. | |
| What I'm saying, you have the freedom to not earn money, correct? | |
| Yeah, everybody would be weighing their physical risk with their economic risk and everything else. | |
| But I have empathy for the The freedom-loving people who say, let us decide if we want to take that risk. | |
| That's a strong argument, but I think we could tweak it so that the risk is moved to the people who accept it voluntarily. | |
| And then I think society would just be more comfortable with that because all of our solutions are going to be suboptimal. | |
| You want the one that's at least a little bit comfortable. | |
| Let's see. | |
| Why is it that the Swedes... | |
| So, I've got lots of questions on comparable countries. | |
| I tweeted out, I think it was real clear, politics had an excellent list that looks like it's updated all the time. | |
| It's a really good breakdown of the deaths, raw numbers, and also deaths per capita, which is the one I was looking for, per capita, deaths per capita, for each country, so you can rank them. | |
| And see if there's anything about them that they can learn. | |
| Now, since all the countries are handling things differently, it's kind of hard just to eyeball it. | |
| But when you do eyeball it, you see some of the correlations. | |
| One is the Germanic countries seem to be doing well. | |
| So, you know, Germany, Austria has... | |
| I forgot about Austria. | |
| Austria has a super low death rate. | |
| And so does Germany. So it could be that there are some countries that have more hydroxychloroquine, maybe the ones that have a lot. | |
| So there might be other correlations there. | |
| But here's the question that jumped down at me. | |
| So the Swedes famously did not do aggressive government-mandated lockdown. | |
| Apparently, a number of citizens are taking it upon themselves to work at home or not commute or keep their kids home from school. | |
| But in general, the Swedes did not take the heavy-handed government boot process. | |
| But here's the data I don't know. | |
| What's happening in their hospitals? | |
| So I can see the death rate. | |
| I can see the infection rate, and that's good. | |
| That gives me a little bit of visibility. | |
| But the Swedes are deciding to Well, let me put it this way. | |
| Why don't I know if the Swedish hospitals are overrun already? | |
| Why don't I know that? | |
| Doesn't that come down to like the most important thing? | |
| Because if Sweden is saying, ah, we'll just play it by ear, and their hospitals are not overrun, that's kind of a really important fact, isn't it? | |
| Like really, really important? | |
| Somebody says 40% of Swedes work from home? | |
| I think I need a fact check on that. | |
| I wouldn't doubt it. | |
| I mean, could be. | |
| And also, there's some evidence that the Swedes are not doing as much testing, so it's possible that their infection rate is higher than reported. | |
| But all of that would still end up In hospital deaths. | |
| So the key thing is, what's going on in the hospitals in Sweden? | |
| And why are they not worried that the hospitals are overrun? | |
| And again, what question does the press not tell us? | |
| Hydroxychloroquine. Is Sweden using a lot of it? | |
| Are all the countries that are having a good outcome? | |
| Germany, Austria, do they have a lot of hydroxychloroquine? | |
| Now, it could be that it's not important I think I'd like that reported too. | |
| So every time we see, in fact, here's what I'd like to see. | |
| I would like to see the same chart that Real Clear Politics has that shows the death rates by country per capita, but there should also be a column. | |
| That says whether, you know, let's just say high, medium, and low usage of hydroxychloroquine. | |
| Because it'd be hard to get, you know, too much specifics on that. | |
| But you could probably rate the countries in terms of whether they're being aggressive and giving it to people early, or they're playing it by ear, or they just don't have any. | |
| You know, those three cases. | |
| Is there a correlation? | |
| I mean, by now, we should see it in the death rates, right? | |
| Right. What would you think was true if Germany and Ireland and Austria, who all have unusually low death rates, what would you think was true if they also had high use of hydroxychloroquine? | |
| I mean, that would tell you something, right? | |
| Alright. Every day on Twitter, people are still asking me what makes this virus special. | |
| Now, How do you not know that by now? | |
| Right? How could you have gotten this far in the world and this far into the year and not know that this virus is not like the other ones? | |
| How do you not know that? | |
| I mean, it's not even a criticism. | |
| I'm just curious. How do you not know that? | |
| At the very least, how do you not know that it's having an impact on hospitals? | |
| Is that a fact that nobody mentioned? | |
| I don't know. It's puzzling. | |
| All right. Let's see. | |
| So, yeah, all the people who don't want the government to collect their private information, the reason that I say it's probably a reflex that they say that is I don't think they think through that the government has all their personal information and If the government has any reason to look into you, they just file some paperwork with the courts, and they've got all your information. | |
| Everything on your phone, everything else. | |
| So, your private information, that was gone a long time ago. | |
| Alright. It looks like I've hit my high points here. | |
| Let me just make sure. | |
| Oh, here's an idea that was suggested by a dentist. | |
| So as you know, dentists have medical training of a special sort, and they're used to dealing with infected people. | |
| The dentist's office worked right through the AIDS epidemic and still do. | |
| So dentists are very experienced in using PPE and protecting themselves, etc. | |
| And here was the idea. Since dentists can't really do their work at the moment, they're closed with everybody else, so this dentist suggests letting dentist offices test their patients. | |
| And I thought, that probably makes sense. | |
| I'll bet a dentist would be perfectly qualified with a little bit of instruction, how to work a test and make sure that the samples don't get spilled on everybody. | |
| And then they could also test people And if you have the kind of test where you get a reaction fairly quickly, the tests that are 5 to 15 minutes or even faster, if the dentist says, all right, you're good, 15 minutes after the sample is taken, then the dentist can do the dental work. | |
| So basically you test them in the waiting area, and if they test fine, you take them in the back and you do your work. | |
| And I thought, that's a pretty good idea. | |
| So that would suggest that maybe some of the higher priority places for testing equipment might be dentist offices. | |
| Because I can't imagine too many dentists who would say no to that, right? | |
| Because their offices are closed, unless they figure out some way past it. | |
| And given that most of them would jump in and help, And maybe people would pay for the test as well as the dentistry. | |
| Why not? Seems like a good idea. | |
| So I was asked on Twitter to boost that idea. | |
| So that's what I'm doing. | |
| I'm boosting it. | |
| All right. I think that's about it for today. | |
| So... Oh, somebody says that's a brilliant idea. | |
| Well, I wish it had been my idea. | |
| It is a brilliant idea, I think. | |
| It wasn't mine, but it's a good one. | |
| They give infections, I suppose. | |
| Alright, I'm just going to look at some of your comments. | |
| Is there anything that I said today that is bugging you especially? | |
| Scott's Health app tells the feds you missed a dose and you get cops at your door to force Trump pills. | |
| You know, the slippery slope people Are you sticking with your 5,000 net deaths? | |
| I am, yes. I am sticking with it, which does not mean that therefore it'll be accurate, but I am sticking with it as being closer than any other public forecast. | |
| So that doesn't mean I'm right. | |
| We'll find out. Now, for those of you who knew, when I say net, we know we're saving tens of thousands of lives just by having the economy shut down because we're not having the same kinds of traffic accidents. | |
| You'd have to add back in any extra suicides and domestic murders, I guess. | |
| So you'd have to include everything, pluses and minuses. | |
| But I think if you do that, we might end up closer to 5,000 net deaths, which would be a gross of maybe 50,000. | |
| So somewhere around 50,000 gross deaths, because I'm thinking that the estimate of 60,000 will probably come down again. | |
| But let's say 50,000 deaths, you're probably going to subtract down 40,000 people you saved. | |
| That's going to be around 10,000. | |
| My estimate of 5,000 would be the closest one in the country, I think. | |
| Scott, is the idea that freedom is valuable for its own sake only the result of brainwashing. | |
| Yes. Yes, it is. | |
| That is correct. | |
| Freedom being valuable for its own sake is a ridiculous idea, and you would only have that if you were brainwashed. | |
| If you were not brainwashed, you'd say, well... | |
| Freedom is one variable. | |
| Let me look at my other variables. | |
| Okay, I'll balance them all, and sometimes I'll give a little bit of freedom up, but I'll get a big gain. | |
| I'll give a little bit of freedom up, but at least I got my operation. | |
| So, no, if somebody thinks that freedom is just sort of a universal good, and you don't have to ask any other questions, that would be brainwashing, absolutely. | |
| Does the White House monitor my ideas? | |
| Well, I don't know what monitor means. | |
| I will tell you that my followers on Periscope and on Twitter include lots of people in lots of places from Congress to White House. | |
| So I do know from confirmation from various people that I have high visibility. | |
| So a lot of people are seeing my ideas. | |
| I just don't know who and when. | |
| Can I try to get Trump on Periscope with you? | |
| Yes. Yes, I will do that. | |
| I will try to get Trump on Periscope. | |
| I think we have to get closer to the election. | |
| But there's not a zero chance that I could get him. | |
| I don't think the odds are good. | |
| I think the odds of getting Trump to do a two-minute connection on Periscope with me are You know, low. | |
| The odds are low. | |
| But, you know, probably 200,000 people would see it, you know, double my normal traffic if he was on there. | |
| And having 200,000 people hear your message in an election season, it's not a terrible use of time. | |
| And obviously I would be, you know, an interesting interview, let's say. | |
| Brainwashing or setting social standards? | |
| Same thing. Somebody says you're constantly selling past the sale. | |
| It's your main way. | |
| Well, people who know persuasion do that just automatically, so you're right. | |
| Is Chris Cuomo on the Trump pills? | |
| Well, my same complaint. | |
| Why don't you know that? | |
| Don't you think that CNN should report... | |
| Whether or not Chris Cuomo is taking the Trump pills? | |
| I guess George Stephanopoulos and his wife also tested positive. | |
| Don't you think ABC and they would want to tell you if they used the Trump pills, the hydroxychloroquine? | |
| Anything more on your prediction from yesterday regarding a big news this week? | |
| Did I say it would be this week? | |
| I don't know if the news will be this week, but there's some big news coming, but no update on that. | |
| Oh, somebody says, start with Don Jr. | |
| Yeah, I probably would have a relatively greater odds that he would say yes. | |
| That's a good idea. I'll try that, actually. | |
| Do you believe we are being told all the government knows about this pandemic? | |
| No, I don't. | |
| Not that that's necessarily bad. | |
| Let's see. | |
| He's doing hundreds of calls in a day. | |
| Yeah, you know, the president talks to a lot of people during the day. | |
| So who knows? Interview Queer Suomo. | |
| I would love to do that. I doubt you'd say yes, but he would be a great interviewer. | |
| Who did you discuss doctors across state borders with in telemedicine? | |
| In the case of telemedicine, I did make a direct contact with a staff member of Congress who did confirm that the idea was immediately given to the task force and also confirmed that it got a positive response as soon as it was there. | |
| Now, that's very different from saying that My suggestion for telehealth, allowing people to do it across state boundaries, is very different to say that I suggested it than it is to say that's why they did it. | |
| And that would be a big leap. | |
| Because the reason I suggested it is that it was obvious. | |
| So if you suggest an idea that smart people who are working on a problem should have seen themselves, chances are they did. | |
| So I can't make any assumption about anything I did that ultimately changed any policy decisions, but I do think it's generally productive that if you see something that could be a gap in the thinking, that you're trying to fill it in, you just check and make sure they thought of it. | |
| I mean, that has value. | |
| You just don't know when it has a lot of value. | |
| When should we consider the Feet Toll? | |
| I don't know what that is. | |
| Do you read the Babylon Bee? | |
| Yeah, it's hilarious. They're great. | |
| Do you agree with the Patriot Act? | |
| You know, I've never spent a lot of time looking into it. | |
| When will a leader be bold enough to set a date? | |
| I think that's coming. In a few weeks. | |
| Which country will most hack our election? | |
| We already know that. It's China, by far. | |
| They're already working hard, apparently. | |
| When will Joe Biden drop out? | |
| I don't know that he'll drop out. | |
| He might turn things over to a vice president candidate and or vice president if he got elected. | |
| But it's starting to look like he's not going to drop out. | |
| It looks like the play is for the important Democrats to make sure that they've got their vice president in place and the cabinet and stuff. | |
| Why can't you pronounce the Trump pill properly yet? | |
| Hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc. | |
| It takes practice. | |
| I'm not there yet. Let's see. | |
| Looking at your questions, is Fauci off the reservation? | |
| You know, I can't find myself getting interested in the Trump versus Fauci stuff, because that feels artificial, doesn't it? | |
| Like, do you see anything in the way that Fauci talks in public that would lead you to believe that, or Trump, that would lead you to believe that when the two of them are in a room talking about stuff that they have any problem? | |
| I don't feel like it. It feels like they're working together just fine. | |
| That doesn't mean they have to agree on it and everything. | |
| Yeah, Fauci's not going to get fired. | |
| Do you think Mark Cuban will be on the back-to-work task force? | |
| Let's see. | |
| Would Mark Cuban be on it? | |
| I'm going to say no. | |
| But not because he wouldn't be great to be on it. | |
| And I think, since I can't read his mind, I'm just guessing, right? | |
| So Mark can speak for himself. | |
| But just guessing, I believe that both he and I have a similar situation in which we probably could give all the input we want and it would get to the right place. | |
| So if you can make all the input you want and it can get to the right place, you can do it publicly, you can send messages to people you know on the committee, etc., maybe you don't have to attend the meetings. | |
| Because I'm not sure I have much to add if I'm one of 25 people around a big table listening to people blather about statistics. | |
| I don't know if I have anything to add. | |
| But in my special case, maybe I can suggest ideas that people haven't thought of, suggest models of how to do it in a staged way. | |
| And maybe something I suggest... | |
| It triggers somebody to think of a better version of that. | |
| So that's about all I can do. | |
| I don't have the statistics or the medical background. | |
| I'm not going to do a deep economic model. | |
| So the total amount that I can add to the process, I could probably do from the outside. | |
| And Mark Cuban might, and again, I'm not speaking for him and won't imagine that I can read his mind, But he has a similar setup to me, which is if he wants the task force to hear something, he could do it easily. | |
| Let's see. Who will run the task force? | |
| Navarro? Maybe. | |
| Doesn't it seem like Navarro would be about the right person to do that? | |
| Do you think Cuban will run for president this time? | |
| I just saw an interview with him Where it didn't sound like it. | |
| I think he was sort of keeping the option open, which is just smart. | |
| But it didn't sound like he had the fire in his belly. | |
| And I think you'd have to have the fire in your belly by now. | |
| It's just sort of too late. | |
| Cuban said he would do it. | |
| I think he would do it under exactly the right conditions, which don't exist. | |
| So... So, I don't know. | |
| That's pretty hypothetical. | |
| I mean, I would do it under exactly the right conditions. | |
| But if he asked me if I'm running for president, the answer is no. | |
| But under exactly the right conditions. | |
| So, actually, I had offered myself as the emergency backup in case Trump decides to retire in the next few months. | |
| You just vote for me and I'll I'll just appoint some smart people to take care of stuff as your emergency backup so you don't have to... | |
| But I think I would have to have done some paperwork by now, so I can't really be... | |
| I don't think I could really be in it unless... | |
| I think you have to do the paperwork to be on the party, but do you have to do the paperwork to be an independent candidate? | |
| Probably yes. You have to get on the ballot. | |
| Yeah. So I think it's too late. | |
| Anyway, that's all for now. |