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May 24, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
22:26
Episode 993 Scott Adams: CDC Blunders, Biden DNA Test App
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Hey everybody, come on in here.
Tonight, nothing but optimism.
Nothing but optimism.
It's going to be optimism all over the place.
Once you all get in here, we're going to have some interesting updates.
And while I'm waiting for everybody, I don't know if you've seen the new Joe Biden DNA app.
Has everybody seen that?
There's a new app.
I guess Joe Biden's campaign made it.
And it's like a 23andMe competitor kind of thing.
So it'll test your DNA. And I was just going to finish the inputs here so we can get a result while you're waiting.
Let's see, it's just got one question.
It says, do you plan to vote for Joe Biden?
No. Enter.
And then you get the Joe Biden DNA result that says, it says, you ain't black.
Well, that's sort of racist.
Kind of creepy.
Well, that's the Joe Biden DNA app.
No, it's not a real thing.
But if it were, wouldn't it be funny?
So let me talk about some of the things that are going right.
I'm going to give you the most optimistic view of the future and then in a few minutes I'm going to bring on a special guest to talk about, convalescent Plasma-slash-blood serum therapy.
And that's going to be Ian Hilgard-Martizis, who's probably queuing up right now to be brought on.
But before we do that, let me show you all the good news.
Now, I'm not saying that anything on this list is true.
This is just pure optimism.
But some of it's true.
Look at all the ways we've cut the risk.
So these are the ways we know and the ways we suspect we might get lucky.
But we know the masks seem to cut the risk by 75%.
And I was just out at Lowe's Home Supply.
100% of the people have masks because, of course, they can't get in without them.
So at least where I am, the actual compliance is 100%.
Distance, of course, is going to work.
How could distance not work?
There's lots of stuff we're going to be doing to make sure we maintain distance.
Of course it'll work.
I'm just going to say it'll reduce risk by 50% compared to not doing distance.
What about convalescent blood serum therapy?
We're going to hear a little bit more about that in a bit.
But do we know yet how well it works?
We don't. So I'm just going to put my optimistic, and maybe it's even better, but I'm going to put an optimistic middle ground and say there's a 50% reduction of risk once we get this cooking.
Then, of course, we know what to do with the rest homes now.
We knew the wrong thing to do.
And now we know the right thing to do.
So I don't think we'll be repeating those mistakes.
So that probably takes a good 20% right off the top of risk because we finally, I think, I think we finally figured out how to do the old people care facilities right.
But we got some other wild cards.
So the things on the left are things that we're pretty sure about, at least in the general sense.
But the things on the right could be good too.
There's something about summer that seems to make viruses lessen.
Is it the humidity? Is it the sun?
Is it the heat? Is it the vitamin D? We don't know.
But there does seem to be something about summer.
I'm going to give summer a 50% reduction.
These are just my guesses.
I'm just being optimistic if you're just joining us.
I called out vitamin D already.
Maybe that's the only reason this summer makes a difference, but probably not.
Probably the other factors matter too.
So I'll call this out by itself.
What if vitamin D is everything that people say it's cut out to be?
We don't know that, because there's a strong correlation it seems, but we don't know about the causation.
But let's say it is.
We'll just be optimistic. Let's say good vitamin D levels cut your risk by 20% and let's say that the country, especially because it's summer, is going to go out and get their vitamin D because now they know it matters.
Cut risk by 20%.
What happens if we get really lucky and the hydroxychloroquine and or in combination with zinc or azithromycin or something else, what if it works?
I don't think it's going to be a magic kill shot, because if it were that good, we'd already know by now.
It would just be so obvious.
If it just eliminated the virus, we'd know that by now.
But it might work.
I mean, it might make a difference.
And if it's not these, well, maybe there's something right behind it.
So I'm going to give that a 20% reduction of risk.
What about herd immunity?
Well, it's worth something.
I don't think we're going to get to 60 or 70%.
But if you've got, let's say, 10% of your public, maybe 20% at some point have it, well, that certainly makes a difference.
It's not enough to stop it, but these things are going to all add up.
And then what about the ventilator situation?
We know that, well, I think we can say we know it at this point.
It's short of being confirmed.
I just whistled again.
It's short of being confirmed, but it does seem that we were overventilating and killing people with ventilators, right?
It seems like we know that now.
That's not guessing anymore.
And now we know. So there's a gigantic gain just from learning what to do and what not to do and when to do it and when not to do it.
But the thing I'm most excited about in the short term Besides masks and distance, is this convalescent?
And I don't know yet.
I'm going to ask Ian when I bring him on whether I should call it blood or plasma.
We'll get the skinning on that if Ian is ready to join me.
There he is. All right.
If our technology works, this is going to be really interesting.
Ian, can you hear me? I'm doing great.
Terrific. So make sure that I pronounce your name right.
Ian Hilgard Martizas.
Close? Martizas?
Did we lose you?
Oh. So did I say your name right?
Ian Hilgard Martizas?
Am I losing the... I lost the connection.
Well, I know he's going to come right back, so let me keep an eye on that.
And we hope he will go find a place where his cell phone works a little bit better, I think.
There he is. Ian, come back to us.
Come back to us, Ian.
Oh, wow.
This isn't going to work at all, is it?
All right, well, it looks like we are going to have to try to do this some other time.
You know, it's funny when I have lots of guests, most of them work, but when you have one special guest, the technology sneaks up on you.
I'm going to see if my guess is that he will be looking for a place for a better connection, so I'm going to keep an eye on that.
And if he finds it, we'll go with it.
Let me talk about, speaking of rest homes, while I'm waiting for, to try that again.
Let's try it one more time. If this doesn't work, then we'll probably just need to do it a different day.
And it looks like it's not going to work.
I wonder why. Anyway, let's talk about rest homes and New York.
So Ian, I don't know if you can hear me, but it looks like this isn't going to work for today.
I'm not quite sure why, but we will definitely do this again.
So here is a really interesting development.
In the Cuomo, New York, did he put people in rest homes and then they all died?
It turns out that the CDC recommended that.
So even Fox News was reporting on that today, that apparently the CDC guidelines were that you should put them back in the homes that they came from when it's safe.
Now, of course, the one is safe part is the wild card.
I guess nobody knows. I'm watching your comments.
Somebody says, that is BS. He blames the CDC? Well, the CDC gave the guidelines.
So, apparently there were a dozen states that did the same thing that Cuomo did, and the reason that a dozen states did the same thing he did is that they all had the same guidelines from the federal government.
Now, how did we not know that?
Right? Why is it Why is it today we learned that the CDC recommended exactly what he did?
Now, I know you still want him to be a terrible person.
People are saying it's not true.
It's not true.
Well, I read it in the news minutes ago.
If it's not true, maybe the news needs to fix itself.
Did you see that coming?
That kind of came out of nowhere, didn't it?
Now part of the question is, why did other governors do it differently?
That's a good question, right?
There were other governors who did not do what Cuomo did and yet they all had the same guidelines.
So would you say that the ones who played it correctly were the smart ones and the ones who followed the guidelines from the CDC were the bad ones?
I think at worst, the worst case scenario is if the governors were actually following the CDC guidelines.
Worst case scenario, it was the CDC's fault.
Best case scenario, there were some governors who, for whatever reason, played it a different way.
But here's what I suspect would be true.
This is not based on any information.
This is based on living in the real world for a long time.
If you live in the real world for a long time, there are just certain patterns you see.
One of those patterns is, if you're looking at specifically the nursing home situation, probably there were different situations in each state.
I'll just give you an example.
I'm not saying that this is what happened, but it's an example of how you could be missing the bigger picture.
One possibility is that the rest home situation is just different in different places.
It could be, for example, imagine if you will that a lot of rest homes in one state were centrally run and organized.
If you had one entity that ran a whole bunch of rest homes, you could say to that entity, hey, can you move stuff around?
So that one of them is completely emptied and you'll just move them in to the other places and then you'll have one that you can use just for the COVID patients.
Now that would be kind of easy to do if you had one owner who owned a chain of rest homes and they were geographically not too far apart because you could always drive grandma to the other one.
Now imagine you're in a state where that's not the case.
Imagine every rest home has an individual owner and what you want to do is empty one of them and use it just for coronavirus patients.
It's harder, right?
Now suddenly you've got to get somebody who gives up their entire rest home and just turns it into a coronavirus place.
It's not a chain That's just moving everything around and nobody feels too much pain.
It's just one person that's just going to go out of business, basically, for a while.
I don't know how the money would work.
But the point is, it's a lot to ask of one operator.
It could be that the individual operators were smaller in one state.
Maybe there are some states, such as Florida, where they have so many old people, they have massive infrastructure, far more professional management.
Because it's more of an industry in Florida to keep old people safe.
So the point is, you can imagine a whole bunch of things that are sort of the details of what's different about the rest home situation, where it would be easy to imagine that only in a few states it was easy to make the change that was the smart change, which is to use one facility just for coronavirus patients and keep everybody else safe.
I'm going to block you for saying I sound like a Cuomo apologist.
If something's true, you're not an apologist.
In fact, if you call anybody an apologist, well, I'll just speak for myself.
If you call me an apologist, you're not paying attention.
You're missing the whole show, if that's what you're getting out of it.
Why would I be an apologist for Cuomo?
Why? Really?
Can you think of any reason I would go out of my way to be biased in favor of a governor of a state I don't live in?
There's no reason. I'm just telling you what I see.
If you don't like it, if you don't like it, I can't do much about that.
I'm just explaining what I see.
Alright. A physics apologist.
Because you fell for the folksy brother routine.
Did I fall for it?
I'm just going to block you too.
I generally block people for when they tell me my opinion.
I'm happy when you tell me your opinion.
You never get blocked for telling me your opinion.
But if you tell me my opinion, you have to get blocked.
There's nothing productive that I can do with you.
All right. Now, somebody's saying it's not the CDC, it's the CMS. And I believe that they also had guidelines.
But if you are the governor of New York and there's a...
It's a crisis and it's a virology crisis and there are two entities telling you what to do and one of them is the CDC, it doesn't matter what the other one was.
Right? I'm hearing you when you say there were two entities because I saw that as well.
One was the, what is it, Medicare, blah, blah, blah, I don't know, it doesn't matter because one of them was the CDC. It just doesn't matter what the other one said.
It's a virus crisis.
People are going to do what the CDC tells them to do.
Alright, let's see if Ian is back.
Ian may be back and let's see if he has a different phone or a different technology.
Oh, this is looking better.
Ian, are you there? Alright.
Alright, do you have different technology or are we going to cut down again?
What do you think? Same technology, but I like...
And he's gone.
Okay. Alright, that technology isn't going to work, Ian.
We will have to find a new technology and try it again.
Alright, I swear that we will make that work one of these times.
But I think it's just his cell phone didn't have a signal where it is.
So, anyway, just to finish up on the CDC stuff, whoever saw that the story would go there, that the CDC would be...
Now, of course, there's going to be questions whether he interpreted them right, whether he acted soon enough, whether he adjusted quickly enough.
And by the way, if you would like me to say something bad about Cuomo, and it turns out, because I don't know the details yet, If it turns out that he knew there was a problem for a long time and he didn't adjust, then I would blame him for not adjusting.
But getting it wrong in the first place, if the CDC had a guideline about that, I can't hold that against him.
But absolutely I would hold it against him if they quickly knew there was a problem and it took him a long time to adjust.
It looks like it took him a long time to adjust, but I'd need to know the details in there.
But if you want a criticism, Hell yeah!
If it took too long to adjust, why would I ever defend that?
Who could defend that?
But I don't know the details there, so I can't make that claim yet.
All right.
It's okay not to blame.
And he ordered a lot of hydroxychloroquine.
Let me finish up with the CDC. Let us look at their records.
The CDC said, don't close the airport.
They're wrong about that. They said it wouldn't transmit between humans.
Of course, they heard that from China, but they got that wrong, I think.
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.
I'm just spitballing here.
They were wrong about the masks.
And now they might be wrong about, there was something else they were wrong about.
They were wrong about how likely it transmits on physical surfaces.
They were wrong about, and now probably this, you know, this Restone thing.
So, yeah, and the CDC was wrong about the tests, the test kit.
The test kit was the biggest.
The test kit was the biggest mess-up.
Well, I don't know, maybe these were all big mess-ups.
Right, so there was the, didn't want to close the airport, wasn't transmittable, people to people, masks will kill you, rest homes.
Basically, every major problem was the CDC, wasn't it?
If you think about it.
It looks like the CDC probably is responsible for, I don't know, 50,000 deaths, I would guess.
Explain my retweet on the ivermectin study.
I didn't understand. I don't remember that retweet.
What was ivermectin? Ivermectin.
I don't know what that is. There's so many new little studies that are coming out.
Yeah, so the surfaces, etc.
So, I think the CDC is sort of I know.
Who do you trust less, the World Health Organization or the CDC? I mean, even the poor Surgeon General.
I mean, he was saying, don't wear masks.
He was taking advice from the other experts, but still, come on.
Somebody says, what is more toxic, hydroxychloroquine or the CDC? Yeah, I don't think we can get Ian back on.
He's going to need a different phone or a different location, I think.
One of those two things.
So, yeah.
Alright, well I don't have anything else to say.
So, let me check one more time.
See if Ian came back.
It looks like he's back.
We'll see if he's got a new phone or he's...
Ian! Ian!
Hey, let's see if we can keep you on for more than five seconds this time.
I'm doing my best. And are you in the same place with the same phone?
Same. Sounds like he's in the same place with the same phone.
All right. Well, no matter how many times we try exactly the same thing, it's not going to work.
But we'll make this work some other time.
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