Episode 994 Scott Adams: Convalescent Blood Plasma, Biden, Golf, and Scarborough
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
President Trump, Joe Scarborough and an intern
Special Guest: Ian Hilgart-Martiszus @IanFelipeSays
Convalescent Blood (Plasma) Therapy
cure-hub.com for antibody testing
Gaffing and decomposing in your basement is gold for poll numbers
Alyssa Milano's crochet mask...it was a trap!
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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I'm two minutes late. Couldn't get my Wi-Fi working.
Had a little power outage last night.
Messed things up. But I'm good now.
We're back. And that means it's time for a little thing you call Simultaneous sip.
I call it that too. And all it takes is a cup or a mug or a glass or a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
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 damn pandemic.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip and it happens now.
Go. Now, if you joined us last night, I had a little technical difficulty.
I was trying to bring on a special guest to talk about convalescent blood serum.
And as soon as he's ready, we're going to try that again this morning.
So I'll wait to see when Ian gets on.
Alright, let's tell him we're good now.
In the news, my favorite story is that President Trump apparently wanted to go golfing this weekend, but he didn't want it to be the biggest story.
So what do you do if you want to go golfing and you're the president and you don't want it to be the biggest story for three days?
Well, on the way out the door to golf, what you do is you send a tweet that accuses Joe Scarborough of murder.
Now, you have to appreciate how much fun that is.
Now, of course, not for the family of the victim who died many years ago, but the fact that Trump would accuse somebody of murder before he goes golfing is beautiful.
So I see Ian has joined, so let me just finish this story and then I'll add him on.
Now, here's my take on that.
Now, on one hand, it's completely outrageous and inappropriate that the President of the United States would accuse Joe Scarborough of murder when there's no indication that he actually murdered anybody.
There was some young woman who hit her head and died in his office years ago.
Now, that's all we know, and she had some health problem that suggests that she just passed out and hit her head.
But the fact that the President would say that Now, you say to yourself, well, that's all wrong.
That is so wrong. That is wrong on a level that's deeper than any wrongness.
Except, except, we are talking about Joe Scarborough, who did lie about the President in the worst possible way for years.
I believe he accused the President of suggesting people should drink bleach.
That never happened.
I think he suggested the president had called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville fine people.
That never happened.
So, is it fundamentally different to accuse somebody of being pro-Nazi versus saying you murdered your girlfriend?
They're not that different, really.
Because once you've accepted that you can say absolutely anything in the political context, there's just no penalty.
You can say absolutely anything.
The president just took the rules and said, what are the rules?
Oh, the rules are you can say anything?
Really just anything.
I can just make up anything and I can just say it in public and it's a headline?
All right. How about Joe Scarborough's a murderer?
We'll see how that goes. Went pretty well.
All right, let's see if we can get Ian on the line.
This will be a test of the technology.
I think we got it. I think we got it.
Oh, seriously? Because I know we had a Wi-Fi problem yesterday.
And it looks like we got a Wi-Fi problem today.
Well, whatever the problem is, doesn't look like that's going to get solved.
I'll try it one more time, but then I think...
We should maybe give up on this if it doesn't work this time.
Ian, we'll try you one more time.
Ian? Hey, let's make this work.
This is the first time the technology has worked more than five seconds, so I feel good about it.
All right. That's a good sign. All right.
Good, strong signal. All right, Ian.
First of all, let me see if I can pronounce your name correctly.
Ian Hilgard-Martisas?
Pretty close? Yes. Yes, you nailed it.
Alright, can you tell the audience what your background is and how that relates specifically to the convalescent blood plasma testing situation?
Give them a little background on you.
Okay, so my background is that I worked in bioscience for about 10 years and then I ended up kind of leaving academic bioscience and taught myself to program and become a data analyst and I started working for a corporation as a data analyst.
And when the COVID stuff started to hit, I would figure out ways to harvest public data to do public data analysis that I could publish to help people understand the situation a little better.
And then through that process, I started to, you know, think about different answers that I thought we needed that maybe we weren't getting from the media.
And one of the things I thought about as well is, you know, what can we do now?
What can we do before there's a vaccine?
Because there's going to be people who can't wait that long.
And The development of new therapeutics, it takes so long that a lot of people would end up dying while they wait.
And so, you know, we've got to figure something out in the meantime.
So tell us what you did, because I was sort of following along early on, and you put together your own tests, right?
It wasn't necessarily my own test.
I bought a commercially available test kit.
I just happened to Become aware of its existence pretty early, I suppose.
And the way that I became aware of it is that I just got like a spam email.
Because, you know, when you buy something from a vendor, they put you on a mailing list and then they always blast out these kind of spam advertisements.
And so I got one of those that said, oh, hey, we have these COVID-19 antibody tests.
And so I thought, well, shit, I want to buy one of those.
And my friend and I were just going to test ourselves.
So I bought one, and then it had space for 40 tests.
And so I thought, well, I might as well just fill this whole thing up and run 40 tests and kind of get a better sense of how many people are positive.
Because at the time, it was unclear of how far spread the virus had been.
So you were really, I think you might have been the first person who did an amateur or professional test How many people had antibodies?
Do you know anybody tested before you did?
No. As far as I know, I did publish the first report on a community serum survey for COVID-19 antibodies.
You've been paying attention to the whole serum antibody thing.
I know there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that said they had some small 39 people or something.
How did that go?
Are we positive on this convalescent serum?
The idea of taking blood from somebody who's been infected and recovered and putting their antibodies in somebody else.
What's the state of that in terms of I know you're surveying the field there.
Yeah, so on Friday, I believe, the first convalescent serum therapy clinical study was published, and the authors claim it was the first in the world published, or at least the largest.
And so they did treat 39 patients, like you said, with convalescent serum therapy, and it was controlled, so there was a group that did not receive that treatment.
And there was a significant improvement in survival with the group that did receive the convalescent serum therapy.
There was about 12.8% death rate for the convalescent serum therapy group, but it was 24.4% for those who didn't receive it.
So that means that the serum therapy cut the death rate in half.
And that was for people who were pretty close to death to begin with.
And I think I saw in the article that they just assume it would work better if you had it earlier, but it hasn't been tested, I guess.
Now, is there any reason to think that any of this would ever be dangerous?
It doesn't have to go through...
It wouldn't have to go...
I know this is sort of outside your area, but I don't think this would have to go through a whole FDA, would it?
The whole FDA approval?
Because it's... Are there antibodies?
Is this something we know well enough that we don't need to go through the whole testing?
Well, it is actually FDA approved now, at least with an emergency use authorization.
So that was one of the first things that became approved as a treatment for COVID-19 because it is generally safe.
There's a couple different things people generally test for, like ABO blood typing.
You want to match the donor and recipient and then RH factors.
But other than that, it appears to be safe.
So what would happen if you didn't match?
Would it hurt you or would it just not help you?
Suppose you had the wrong blood type match.
Yeah, it could definitely hurt you down the road.
I'm not... You know, it has been done without ABO blood type matching.
In fact, when it was first used, or the reports I've seen when it was first used were from the early 1900s, and they were not doing ABO blood type matching at that time.
But all those reports showed significant improvement.
Well, if you had to guess, based on, you know, There are two other cases where they've used this convalescent blood serum approach, right?
HIV was one?
Well, I don't think it was used, or I'm not aware of it being used for HIV, but the treatment for HIV is monoclonal antibodies, and same with Ebola.
And so it's similar in a way because Convalescent serum therapy is basically using antibodies.
It's more of a kind of gross product of antibodies where you're just taking everything under the sun that's in somebody's serum and giving it to somebody else and you're not selecting for one specific antibody.
But it has been used in SARS. There is actually a guy who got the 1901 Nobel Prize for the development of serum therapies, and he solved a diphtheria epidemic in Germany in the 1890s by using serum therapies, and that's kind of where it started.
And so he's the pioneer in the field.
His name's Emil von Bering.
Now, do you know...
What it would take to scale this up?
Let's say that in a few weeks we said, yes, this is the thing.
We need more of this. Given that you have to actually take it from people, unless you're using machines to clone it, I guess.
I know you did some calculations on how quickly you could scale up.
What would you guess?
I know this is an unfair question off the top of your head, but let's say if we were to say start today And said, alright, we want to get everybody convalescent blood serum therapy.
How close are we to being able to do that?
Is that something that scales up very well?
I think that it is generally reserved for the people that are in poor condition, you know, in the hospital.
So not everybody is going to need it.
But for those people, it would be possible.
It is obviously going to be dependent on your area.
New York got hit so hard that I don't know if they would have been able to keep up with demand.
Generally speaking, you have about 5% of cases who end up in the ICU, and those are the people that would be candidates to receive the therapy.
Would they really?
Because why wouldn't you give it to people even before they had it, so that if they did get it, they could handle it more easily?
Just because of scalability, it is tough.
You need to do plasmapheresis to get the plasma from donors.
You also have to be checking people ahead of time to make sure that they actually have an antibody response against the virus.
Let me ask you some sort of detailed questions.
If you're going to draw blood from one person and turn that one person's blood into antibodies, how long would the whole process take?
From putting the needle in to draw the blood to having it in your hand and ready to give somebody else.
I think that you can do plasmaparesis in a couple of hours.
It depends on, obviously, how much you're trying to harvest.
The amount that the FDA allows, I believe, for a donation is a liter per week or two liters every two weeks.
And then in the study that you were talking about, they used about 500 milliliters, which is a half a liter per patient.
So it looks like Go ahead.
To simplify that, each donor giving one donation could handle how many people?
Four. It looks like over a two-week donation period.
I offer one donation.
If I donate blood once, how many people would that handle?
Two. That's kind of hard to scale, isn't it?
Yes, exactly.
And so that's why I say it should be reserved for only the people that are in poor condition or in the hospital.
Have you looked into the...
I don't understand the differences or the nuances of monoclonal Where you're just taking, you know, the best antibodies you can get from one real person and then you're cloning it with machines to scale it up.
Is there a limit to how quickly you can do that if you just keep building machines?
I mean, could we do a ventilator type thing where we just say, all right, everybody's building monoclonal devices?
Have you looked into those?
Do you know if that's a path or not?
Yeah, those are the first therapies that will come online For COVID-19 is the monoclonal antibody therapies.
It takes a little bit of time to develop because of the process.
You build what are called hybridomas, and that's a fusion between a cancer cell and an antibody-creating cell.
And the cancer cell makes it immortal, and then the antibody-secreting cell is fused, and it starts just producing antibodies en masse, and then you can...
Create a ton of those cells that are all identical and make a bunch of antibodies in a bioreactor.
And that's being done now.
It just takes a little bit of time to identify the specific antibody secreting cell that you want to use that's making good antibodies.
Now, once you've identified the antibodies, isn't it just a question of making more of those machines and more of those facilities?
Couldn't you just keep scaling it up indefinitely?
Correct. Yeah, you could.
Especially if, you know, somebody identified a good antibody secreting cell and then made the hybridomas and if they were to share those with other people and kind of decentralize the production and make it scale faster, that would maybe be a good way to do it.
There's also, you know, you should be probably combining a lot of different hybridomas to get good coverage for your antibodies.
Make sure that they're There's a good, strong protection there.
Have you heard?
I haven't seen any news coverage of the monoclonal anything.
Do you know if anybody's getting any traction in actually doing that?
I haven't seen anything that's become available yet with those.
I've seen some anecdotal reports about I think last week there was a report from a company that said they had a good candidate, but, you know, it's still a little early.
And the other thing is that there's a difference between having an antibody that you can see, recognizes COVID-19, and then also Whether that antibody neutralizes the virus.
So I've actually seen some evidence in my hands where somebody can test positive for antibodies that recognize the virus, but those antibodies don't necessarily neutralize the virus.
And then conversely, somebody could have a low level of antibodies that, you know, recognize the virus, but those antibodies are very strong at neutralizing.
So there is nuance there.
And do we have any more visibility on how long antibodies would last?
Let's say you got them either naturally by having it and recovering, or you got it from the plasma from somebody else.
Do you know, is there any difference in how long they would last?
You know, that's a good question.
You might expect there to be a shorter window for Donor antibodies because they might start to get marked as non-self by your immune system and then kind of removed.
But it's a tough thing to study because you start to get this mix of potentially antibodies made by yourself and antibodies from the donor and how do you differentiate which one came from which.
But... I think generally like two years is what a lot of people say.
If you look at data from the original SARS patients, two years of protection is what people were getting at least.
Some got protection out to 17 years though.
Now would you say that it comes down to Literally just how fast we can make this stuff?
I mean, that's really the gating factor, right?
Because at this point, we kind of know it's safe and we kind of know it works, or all common sense says it works, right?
I mean, it would be hard to imagine it doesn't work.
Yeah, yeah, it definitely works.
One of the limitations is just getting access to the people who are producing those antibodies so that then you can kind of identify those antibodies secreting cells and scale this.
So I would encourage anybody that's ever had it and recovered to look into getting tested for antibodies and look into donating their serum for convalescent serum therapy because you could donate every week or every couple weeks and That serum can be banked for the future where maybe in the fall we have a second wave or something.
So I think we should be stockpiling serum now in anticipation for the fall and winter time.
Interesting. So there's an idea I had never heard before, which is we have all these strategic stockpiles of everything from oil to PPE and ventilators.
It would make perfect sense to have a national stockpile temporarily.
I don't know how long you can store this stuff, but that makes perfect sense to have a national stockpile of convalescent serum.
That's actually a great idea.
I hope somebody's watching this who can do something about that.
Yeah, go ahead. It requires people who have had it to get tested for the antibodies and be kind of active participants.
I think that a lot of people are looking for something that they can do to help nowadays and that's one pretty easy way to do it.
I think that those people should Get paid to donate their serum.
A lot of them have probably accrued pretty significant hospital bills along the way, and this would be a way to offset those bills for them.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, now you're—this is interesting.
So you're talking about how this might be a money-making thing.
Are you aware of anybody who's ever charged for their antibodies for any kind of situation?
Has that ever happened? I'm not aware of a specific instance where somebody's donated their antibodies because they just had the greatest antibodies out there.
But, you know, there's plasma donation centers all across the country.
I don't know the name of one offhand, but I know there's national chains of plasma donation centers, and they pay people.
This is very interesting because, you know...
I think that the patriotic mood in the country at the moment is so high that you could get all the blood you wanted.
Basically, if the President of the United States said, here's the deal.
If you've tested positive, I need you to do this.
Go in and offer your blood.
We're going to try to see how much we can get.
I believe that patriotism alone would give you all the blood you wanted.
But, if you really wanted to take it to the next level, People are people.
And if you could offer more money to, let's say, go in a second time or a third or a fourth time, as you're suggesting, I would imagine that a monetary incentive would probably have a gigantic benefit.
I mean, I like that as well. Yeah, and I've talked to some people about, you know, the monetary incentive, and people get a little bit uneasy sometimes about that, but my perspective is that, you know, it's going to be administered in the hospital, and is the hospital making money?
Yeah, so why shouldn't the donor?
Exactly. Now, so we've got safety.
It's really just a production problem, it seems to me, and it's almost like Gosh, it feels like this is such a big deal.
You know, the biggest deal, of course, is wearing masks.
But I would think that the second most promising thing, you know, if we have to wait for vaccines for months and months, but the things that we can do now, the second most promising thing is probably this, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, in terms of things that we know that work and not having to wait around for something that, you know, may never actually happen, right?
There's no guarantee that we'll have a vaccine or anything like that.
But we know this works.
And so, you know, why not embrace it while we also pursue other avenues to solve the problem?
Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to point out, so I started a company that we're going to be doing antibody testing as well, and I'm specifically doing neutralization tests, which means we're not just testing for the presence of antibody.
We're testing to see whether your antibodies neutralize the virus, and we plan to take that data and Kind of publish it on publish the de-identify data on open source dashboards for anybody to check out just so everybody can get a general sense of where their community is in terms of relative protection and then I plan on Creating an avenue for people who test positive for neutralizing antibodies to be sent information on how to donate their plasma,
right? So we'll be identifying those candidates and so then they should be told, you know, here's what you can do if you're interested in helping other people with your unique situation or unique set of antibodies.
Ian, I've been watching the comments, and I just want to call out something that I always talk about winning attitudes and losing attitudes, and I'm watching a lot of losing attitudes in the In the comments.
Specifically, people who don't quite appreciate, and I'm going to make them appreciate it now, the power of your talent stack.
Because people are sort of saying, oh, data analyst, what's that got to do with this?
But the whole point is that you knew how to draw blood, you knew how to get these tests, you've got, what did you say your background was?
Biological what? Bioscience.
Yeah, so he's got a bioscience background.
So we basically compiled a whole bunch of skills together, including starting a new business initiative to try to help with the coronavirus.
So when you see Ian jumping in, and I was watching this from the beginning, and on day one, Ian was saying, all right, I have this set of talents.
How can I help in this coronavirus thing?
And then I've been watching as you've grabbed, you know, like one piece of One piece of it at a time and try to assemble it into something that would be bigger than the parts.
I've been completely impressed not only at the early data visualization stuff you were doing, because initially you were doing data visualization, some of the best ones I'd seen on the internet, and then you found that your talent stack could get you all the way to here.
Next thing you know, it could be one of the pivotal, at least informational, parts of what would be the second most important thing we do after masks.
I'm very impressed at what you've done.
For those who maybe don't have the winning mindset, what the hell did you guys do?
Let me just say that while you're on the line, Ian.
To your critics, because there's always going to be somebody on here, blah, blah.
I hear this all the time.
Hey, you're a cartoonist.
Why are you doing this? But all of those people, you're not very successful, I'll bet.
Because if you're worried about staying in your lane, and you're worried that people only have one talent, Ian's got more than one talent.
Sorry. If you only have one talent, maybe you don't understand how that works.
But if you put enough talents together, you have a superpower.
And I think this is a perfect example of it.
So, Ian, thank you for being, A, a patriot.
And I mean that, seriously.
Because in times of crisis, not everybody runs toward the fire.
And you did. On day one, you were running toward the emergency.
What can I do? And we need more of you and less of the people who are nitpicking on here.
I really appreciate that, Scott.
And I just want to point out before I go that I can't do it all by myself.
I have a lot of help from Mikhail Staten and Brianna Knight.
They've been helping me get Cure Hub going.
And, you know, everything's, you know, about being on a team and winning team.
We're all in this together, and no one person can make anything work, and I think you've got to treat life like a positive sum game, and then you'll start to find success all over the place.
Well, that's America in a nutshell right there.
So thank you so much.
Do you want to name a URL that you want people to look at?
Yeah, you can go to cure-hub.com and we have a system in place where you can sign up and get reserve your spot in line to get antibody tested and then you don't pay anything but you'll get on our mailing list and then as soon as we have the antibody tests approved which should be a couple weeks then we'll let you know and then you can Join the study and donate a sample to get tested.
We'll test you. All right.
So thank you again.
Thanks for being a great guest.
I'm going to go on with the rest of my program and I'll catch up with you.
Can I do one thing?
I missed a simultaneous sip.
Can I get another one live?
I got to do it. All right.
I will give you the first ever The second simultaneous sip.
And all you need is a cup or a mug, a glass, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
You ready? Cheers.
Cheers. The second simultaneous sip, even better than the first.
All right. Thanks, Ian. Thank you.
Bye. All right.
As much as the topic is interesting, because in my opinion it's probably the most important topic besides masks, but I also wanted you to get a feel for Ian.
Just get a feel for what your fellow citizens, if you're American, and I'm sure it's happening in every country around the world, people are just jumping into the breach.
People are running toward this thing like crazy.
When this is over, you're going to be really proud that you were a human because humans are pretty awesome.
Humans have done remarkable things in the past several months and there's a lot more to come.
We're all lost in the details and just trying to get through life and make it to the next time you can buy groceries.
I know that that's got to be the focus.
But when this is done, when this is done, there are going to be some real things to be proud about.
All right. Let's talk about some other things.
I got a suggestion on the Locals platform, where I've moved a lot of my non-delivered stuff, from Ann Holt.
I don't know. That's one name.
Ann Holt, A-N-H-O-L-T. Anyway, I don't know his real name, but he started referring to people who watch CNN and MSNBC as the poorly educated.
How much do you love that?
I'm going to adopt that concept.
What I used to be saying was, it's two movies on one screen and some people are siloed in their news and they don't see the news from the other side.
And I used to sort of describe it as, you know, in engineering terms, but I thought, this is so much more powerful.
Just say, oh, you only watch these networks?
Well, you're among the poorly educated.
Because it's literally true.
Literally poorly educated.
Which I think is hilarious, because you know how much they're going to hate that.
So apparently, In the polls, including a Fox News poll, Biden is ahead of Trump by way more than even Hillary was ahead of Trump at the same time.
So apparently Biden is doing great by staying out of public and just gaffing himself and decomposing in his basement.
Now, I don't know what could be more ridiculous or more funny The fact that Joe Biden is in his basement literally just decomposing and he's doing great.
Who knew? Honestly, are you ever just at home and you just start laughing about the whole Joe Biden in the basement situation?
Because the Biden in the basement thing sort of It was like, hey, I think there's this virus in Wuhan.
It looks like it might be coming this way.
Maybe we should stay from public a little bit.
The next thing you know, a major candidate for president is living in his basement and babbling nonsense.
Because we got there gradually, we've accepted it.
Go on. Are you sure?
Can you tell me that you were just sitting there by yourself and suddenly you just sort of realize the situation we're in with Joe Biden decomposing in his basement and leading in the polls to be the next president of the United States and have his fingers on the nuclear button?
If that's not funny to you, I don't know what is, but here's the thing that's funniest.
I'm not positive, so you can't, don't hold me to this later.
I'm not positive, but I think, I just think, we might be witnessing the greatest practical joke of all time.
And what I mean by the greatest practical joke is, I think, I can't prove this.
I think conservatives are massively lying to pollsters because it's funny.
Right? Tell me I'm wrong.
Don't you sort of suspect?
Because if you were saying to yourself, okay, I get that President Trump's not popular and all the Democrats are going to vote for whoever the Democrat is.
I get that That's going to explain most of what you see, right?
But the fact that Biden's down there decomposing and leading the polls strongly suggests that what we're seeing is a really large national scale practical joke.
Because if the polls still say Biden by eight points, And then Trump wins by eight points.
It's going to be the greatest troll of all time.
Honestly, it will be the most epic practical joke ever played in the history of practical jokes.
And I think that's what's happening.
Am I wrong?
Am I completely off base?
Because I'm seeing a lot of people in the comments who are saying, I think you're right.
I think you're right. I think the Republicans are just lying to the pollsters because it's funny.
Speaking of funny pranks, Alyssa Milano got photographed wearing a crochet mask.
And you can imagine how the internet reacted to her crochet mask.
They of course said, hey, there are holes in your crochet.
Therefore, you fool!
You idiot! You dumb Democrat!
You Biden-supporting fool!
You fool! How could you wear a crochet mask?
And worse yet, if you're going to wear a crochet mask, don't get your photograph taken, if you're famous.
And so, of course, Twitter went on fire.
It's like, ah, it doesn't know anything.
You idiot! Your crochet mask!
Ah! And then Alyssa Milano waited.
Wait. Hold.
Hold. Hold.
And then Alyssa Milano tweets to one of her critics, carbon filter inside, love.
It was a trap!
It was a trap!
Do you think she knew that people were going to get on her about her crochet mask, which she says, and, you know, I think it's probably true.
She says it has a carbon filter on the inside.
It probably does. Probably does.
Because if you've got those good N95 masks, they're the ugliest of the masks.
So if she figured out a way to put a, you know, a more pleasant cover over the ugliest mask, which is also the best kind of mask, maybe.
Maybe. I don't know if it was an N95, but she said a carbon filter, so maybe that's good too.
All right. If you're not watching...
I've said this a million times, but if you're not following Mike Cernovich on Twitter, you're missing one of the best shows.
It's like a TV show that just goes on all the time.
It doesn't have a beginning or an end.
Every time... Every time I get on Twitter, I'll see like five Cernovich quotes, and every one of them makes you stop and go, huh.
But this one, if you want to understand how to operate on the next level, this tweet from Cernovich has made me laugh for two days.
This is the whole tweet.
He goes, self-confidence triggers mediocre men.
Now, of course, the beauty of it is that you can't complain about it without being labeled a mediocre man.
So it's like this perfect little trap.
It's like, I want to complain about that because I'm really mad about your self-confidence.
But if I do complain about it, Does that make me a mediocre man?
So, watching Cernovich build these little Twitter traps for mediocre men is one of the funniest things I've seen on the internet.
Telehealth has taken off.
I said this before, but there's even more signs of it.
Have you seen all the commercials?
Telehealth is basically just huge.
Now, we thought that might happen, but apparently it is happening.
The lasting benefit we're going to get from telehealth is going to be gigantic.
The ability to practice across state lines, which I think will become permanent, would be huge.
Again, thank you to all of you who helped make that happen.
I'm just checking in on that because it's such a big topic and it's going in the right direction.
It's always good to hear some good news.
What else we got going here?
There's some kind of drug called Ivermectin that's getting some good reviews.
I guess it can interact with other medications and has some side effects and stuff, but there were some initial trials that sort of looked good.
Ivermectin, there's another one.
I think that over the next few weeks, you're just going to hear one therapeutic after another.
And it's just going to be all positive news.
Now, if you've done the math, I did this last night in Periscope, I was talking about all the things which have cut the risk down.
So masks are supposed to be 75% effective.
Distance, of course, is completely effective.
Maybe vitamin D, maybe summer will make a difference in the warm weather.
Maybe what we've learned about nursing homes and how to protect them.
Maybe what we've learned about ventilator use, not to kill people with ventilators.
If you take each of these many pieces of good news, each of them individually, Reduces risk by some percentage, from 75% with masks down to maybe vitamin D makes a difference, or maybe it's just correlation.
We don't know if it's causation yet, but maybe hydroxychloroquine and zinc, if you get them early, is 20% benefit.
Maybe there's some people we can get with this convalescent blood serum.
We now have, off the top of my head, maybe 10 to 12 different Things we've either developed as a tool or learned, which also allows us to reduce risk.
I feel like we have all the tools to, within a few weeks, we're going to have the risk down to, it's going to approach zero.
I mean, it's almost going to disappear, I think.
Monoclonal antibody is almost ready, somebody says.
Yeah, and that could be huge.
The monoclonal antibodies just could be huge.
All right. Then somebody says, primarily immune system strength.
Let me ask you this.
I want to see this in the comments.
When this whole thing started, I was advising everybody to just make sure they took care of their immune system.
In other words, get out, get a little light exercise, get some sun, get some sleep, eat right, all the usual things.
How many of you have done that?
In the comments, it'll take a little time lag here, but in the comments, tell me if you feel that you've done something that would boost your immune system.
Have you intentionally boosted your immune system?
Look at all the yeses.
Wow! Almost every person.
So far, every person who's answering is saying yes.
Think about that.
What kind of What kind of change does that make in your life and in civilization if suddenly 370 million people just decided to get serious about boosting their immunity and their health?
Oh my God! I am so impressed.
For those of you who are listening to this, it is a non-broken string of yeses.
I've never seen so much agreement.
Somebody lost 20 pounds.
Bicycle riding outdoors, yes, definitely.
Yes, yes, yes. CE, yes.
Immune system, way up, yes.
Oh my goodness.
I am so, so impressed.
Very impressed. I've never seen anything like this.
Are you as impressed as I am?
Take a look at these comments going by.
They're still absolutely, solidly yes.
Holy cow. This is one of the...
This is the most underreported story of the year, isn't it?
Wouldn't you say this is the most underreported story?
If we had not had a coronavirus and suddenly you found that 370 million Americans, and I'm guessing other countries are doing something similar, if you found that hundreds of millions of people suddenly took seriously their health, what did we just do to the entire healthcare cost of this country?
How much of this is going to become habit?
I'm wondering if you think that you'll be able to turn this into habit.
The trouble is, you know, a lot of us are not going to work in the normal ways.
We don't have the normal schedule.
So it's going to be harder when you're trying to work it in with your normal schedule.
But, wow, I am so impressed with all of you.
Genuinely, somebody stopped smoking.
Congratulations. Congratulations on stopping smoking.
That is hard. Well, that might be the good news for this.
Maybe our healthcare costs just took a 20% hit simply because we're in better shape and we know how to do this.
Where can you outdoors shoot?
I don't understand that question.
I'm impressed with you all and I'm going to leave you on that note.