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May 25, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
35:41
Episode 996 Scott Adams: Freedom Breaking Out Everywhere, China Behaving Badly, Hydroxychloroquine Fake News

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: CNN coverage of freedom breaking out in America Joe Scarborough gives but can't take? Alan Dershowitz and mandatory vaccinations Rachel Maddow and the truth Hydroxychloroquine confusion ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/scott-adams00/support

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All right, here's a quick question.
What's the best part of the day?
I'm waiting.
I'm waiting. That's right.
It's now. It's now.
And you don't need much.
To enjoy the best part of the day.
No, not much at all.
All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine 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. Mmm, I can taste the infection rates decreasing.
Yep, yep, it's working.
Well, let's talk about all the things.
Are you ready for all the things?
Well, let's start with China.
There's talk about a Cold War breaking out with China over their increasingly strong grip on Hong Kong as their Those are closing the vice on Hong Kong.
To which I say, we're not already in a cold war?
What is a cold war?
If we're not already in one, is it because we're in a hot war?
I mean, how many Americans have they killed this year?
At what point has China killed so many Americans with both fentanyl and viruses that we have to stop calling it a cold war?
Because it's kind of hot over here.
Maybe it's not hot over there, but here's what I would suggest.
So I don't know what it means to be in a Cold War.
I guess it means whatever you want it to mean.
But given the fact that they're squeezing Hong Kong, which would be violating a business agreement, a political agreement, but it's kind of a business agreement as well, And they're shipping fentanyl, and their phone equipment is spying, and they're taking IP, and they're doing unfair trade deals, and blah, blah, blah.
I've said this before, but it's time to say it again.
Rather than a cold war, we should do an international rating of China and other countries, and we should simply rate them not suitable for business.
And I would think that would matter if you raided all the countries for their suitability to actually do business with them.
Because the problem with China is not so much that we think they're going to attack us militarily, it's that we think their business will get so strong that it will just eat up the civilization with Chinese money and influence.
If that's what we're worried about, let's just call it what it is.
China is not safe for business.
It's just not a safe place to do business with them.
It's not a safe place to put a company.
It's not a safe place to even accept their mail.
I'm not even sure we should accept their mail because it's full of fentanyl.
Alright, so actor John Krasinski, I don't know if he knew this, but during the pandemic he was doing a little web show, I guess he was doing it himself, called Some Good News.
So unbeknownst to me, he was doing kind of the same thing I was doing, except not as well, obviously.
And it got picked up by CBS News, CBS All Access, not CBS News.
So they're going to pick it up and turn it into a show.
Except the show will not involve John Krasinski.
Now, there was one good thing about the John Krasinski show, which was John Krasinski.
So somehow he managed to sell CBS on a concept that only had one good element, and he said, but, well, there's just one thing.
I'm going to sell you this great idea, but there's just one little change.
I'm going to take out the only thing that made it work, which was that it was John Krasinski who was hosting it during a coronavirus pandemic.
You take that part out, and what exactly did he sell?
But of course, in a world full of stupid people, how did people take it?
His fans rebelled.
That's right. John Krasinski's Probably, you know, probably one of the nicest guys in the world, if you can base it on what we see on TV. You know, even not just his roles, but when he's just talking in interviews and stuff, he looks like a nice guy.
But his fans are very angry that he gave his time for nothing during the coronavirus and entertained them and millions of others like them for free.
For free. And then he sells the concept to CBS. He's not even involved in it as an actor.
He's not even going to be in it. He sells the concept, and then his audience is all mad at him for selling out.
And I thought, selling out?
Selling out? CBS bought from him something that probably has no value whatsoever.
Personally, I would have sold that.
Somebody says they didn't like his show.
Well, he sold it anyway.
So I was having a good laugh at the CNN coverage today because I wanted to see how they'd handle freedom breaking out in America over the Memorial Day.
So lots of people were crowding together and ignoring the medical guidelines and not wearing masks and doing everything that the experts say they're not supposed to be doing.
But On the plus side, it was outdoors, and they tended to be the younger people.
There wasn't a lot of senior citizens running around on Memorial Day.
So, how dangerous was it?
Well, we don't know. That's what we're going to find out probably in about 10 days.
But CNN's coverage was hilarious.
Here's the first one.
This is the headline, one of CNN's headlines.
It says, A 17-year-old Dies in Georgia.
Now, why is it important that a 17-year-old died in Georgia?
Does that feel like national news?
Let's read on.
In Georgia, one of the first states to begin reopening, officials reported that the state's youngest coronavirus death was a 17-year-old boy who died.
And I'm thinking to myself, is the only thing that made this a story...
That a Republican state opened early, and they had to find some bad news.
One 17-year-old died, and that became the headline.
What about, let's read further, where it says that Georgia overall is doing great, reading, reading.
Oh, I don't think they mentioned that.
They found one tragedy in the state that is, by any measure, A huge success story.
And they reported the one tragedy.
Alright. Okay.
Here's another one.
Brian Stelter.
The headline on one of his articles says, Twitter remains silent about Trump's appalling attacks against Joe Scarborough.
So it says, Twitter remains silent about it.
And then you read the article, and it shows the quotes from people like Brett Hume, etc., doing exactly the opposite of staying silent, just excoriating the president for doing it.
And I'm thinking, if your title says, Twitter remains silent, maybe the body of the article should not have all the examples in which it isn't the case.
Just a suggestion.
Did anybody see Twitter remaining silent about that?
Has Twitter remained silent on anything?
Twitter doesn't know how to remain silent.
It was the opposite. And by the way, does anybody think that there's one Republican or a conservative who thinks that the President Trump about murderous, alleged murderer Joe Scarborough, there's no evidence he murdered anybody, But the president's blaming him.
And I would say the conservatives have basically one opinion, which is, number one, Scarborough had it coming, because he's been lying about the president for years.
And certainly worse lies than that.
Because the president's lie was just sort of silly.
I don't think anybody took it too seriously.
Except, you know, maybe some nuts.
But Scarborough has been calling the president a traitor to the country and a Russian puppet for years.
Isn't that way worse?
Because that was sold as a real news.
That's way worse than the president doing this offhand tweet before he goes golfing that nobody really took too seriously.
Um, So that's the first thing, is that I don't think there are any conservatives who think it was unfair to go hard at Joe Scarborough with some fake allegations, because it just feels like it's a political season, and it's going both ways, and everybody's just DEFCON 10 at this point.
But I also don't think there are any conservatives who thought it was kind to the family members of the deceased.
So I haven't heard anybody say, oh, you know, that's no problem.
Pretty much everybody has the same opinion.
Oh, that's kind of bad for the family members.
At the same time, nobody cares how hard he went at Scarborough.
So, I don't know, there's much to that story.
Alan Dershowitz found a new way to cause trouble by writing an opinion that mandatory vaccinations...
Would be constitutional.
Now, what happened to Alan Dershowitz when he gave a legal opinion about the Constitution?
He was called many anti-Semitic things, to which I think to myself, how in the world do you get from a constitutional opinion from a constitutional scholar all the way to an anti-Semitic attack?
I don't even connect those things.
You've got to try pretty hard to make it an Alan Dershowitz problem.
So when I saw the pushback on that, I thought, oh, it's people who don't understand how lawyers work.
Lawyers will get a guilty person off if it's their lawyer job.
Lawyers will, if they're doing their job, they'll argue what is or is not constitutional independent of what they would like it to be.
That's the job. They're not talking about their own opinion.
That's the job.
They're talking about what the law is.
And I even saw that Sticks Hexenhammer 666, you all know him, replied back to Alan on the topic of the constitutionality of vaccinations.
And he said to Alan, you're rich, Alan.
Why not Why not just have a luxury bunker built and stay in there since the world scares you so badly?
And I thought to myself, I didn't see anywhere in his opinion where he was scared of the world or scared of anything.
It just wasn't there.
He wasn't not afraid.
He wasn't afraid. It just wasn't even there.
He simply talked about what the Constitution does and does not allow with some context historically.
I You know, is that something you should attack Alan Dershowitz for?
Is it personally Alan Dershowitz's problem that he interprets the Constitution to be objectively allowing this?
Now, I'm not giving you my opinion because I know I'm going to get attacked next.
Somebody's going to hear this and say, the cartoonist, he wants to line us up and give us these unproven vaccinations.
No. You also have not heard my opinion.
Have you? You know that I'm going to be accused of having an opinion that people don't like, but I have not expressed my opinion, have I? I have expressed no opinion on that.
I will talk about it, and it goes like this.
As I understand it, President Trump's reservations about vaccinations in general...
Have to do with the fact that they're given to very young kids and that they're combined.
So it's not one vaccination, it's a bunch of vaccinations put into one shot.
And there's some question about that because it has never been tested as a totality.
Individual things have been tested, but it hasn't been tested if you give it to a kid all at once.
So there are reasonable adults Who say, hey, is that good enough?
Is it good enough that we've tested them individually?
Because I've got some questions.
Now, I don't know the answer.
I don't have any insight into that.
So, I don't have an opinion of how safe or unsafe that is.
It's certainly a question I'd like to know the answer to.
How safe are they?
We'd all like to know that. But, this shot would be for adults, primarily.
I don't know that young kids would get it.
Probably not, right?
But it's going to be voluntary.
It would be for adults and it would not be combined with other shots.
Now if your primary concerns are children and combining it with other shots, neither of those apply.
So it would be more safe At least, we don't know it's more safe.
Let me say it more... I'll be more technically accurate.
We don't know how safe it would be, but the two concerns, children and combining it with other stuff, don't exist for this one.
Just saying. So if you're assessing your personal risk, just take into consideration that this is not like other vaccines, because the two biggest risk factors are not present with this one.
It might have its own risks.
So I'm not telling you you should or should not take it.
That's different. Bill Gates said everyone should get it.
Well, the whole point of it is that you should try to get as many people to take it, right?
There wouldn't be much point in having it if you didn't try to get a lot of people to take it.
So I get that.
Single vaccines often use multiple adjuvants.
Make a single vaccine problematic for everyone.
So the question would be, I will accept the general statement that every vaccine has risk.
But would you also accept the general statement that the more things you combine that with, the more your risk goes up?
That's all. So even an individual vaccine is a combination of things and you can't really drive the risk to zero.
But it's less than if you combine it with even more stuff, I would think.
That would be common sense.
Alright. So, enough on that.
So, the Rachel Maddow court case came out in the funniest possible way, which we wish that it would.
So, I forget what the claim was, but Rachel Maddow was accused of saying something.
But their defense was that Rachel Maddow is full of shit.
So the defense was that the show is opinion and rhetorical hyperbole, and that Maddow engages in, quote, exaggeration of the facts.
So as long as she has a show which by its nature does not tell you the truth, it's okay that she didn't tell the truth that time.
Because the context of the show is not the truth.
Now, how would you like to be a person who's been believing MSNBC all the time you've been watching it?
And you thought that when you were watching Rachel Maddow that it was something like the news.
And then you find out in an actual court case where people are under oath that the Rachel Maddow team said, No, we're not attempting to tell you the truth.
Because if you think about it, by branding themselves as opinion and rhetorical hyperbole and exaggeration, exaggeration of the facts, they're saying directly, it is not our intention to give you the truth.
Think about that.
They're not saying that we made a mistake sometimes.
That would just be normal.
I wouldn't hold it against any news organization to make a mistake.
That's got to be just routine.
If they corrected it, I'm okay with that, probably.
But imagine telling your audience we don't intend to tell you the truth.
Because that's what it says, right?
They're not saying we used to be an opinion and hyperbole show, but we're not going to do that anymore.
They're saying directly that's who we are.
And therefore, presumably, it means we'll keep doing it.
And people will still watch it, and they'll still interpret it as true.
It's a funny world.
Alright, let's talk about...
How would you like to be Joe Biden?
And watching the discussions on social media and in the news, they seem to be focusing on how he will be removed.
Have you noticed that? I always tell you about making you think past the sale.
The sale in this case is, will Joe Biden be removed or confirmed as the nominee?
That's the question.
But people are no longer asking that question.
Have you noticed that? People are asking the question past that, which is, how is it going to be done?
Will it be done before the convention?
Will it be done during the convention?
Will it happen after the convention, and then the vice president can kind of slip in there more easily?
If you're talking about how it will be done, and you've already accepted that, oh, it's going to be done, we don't know when that's going to be done, that's not a good place to be, is it?
It's not a good place to be at all.
So let's talk about hydroxychloroquine.
Now, I'm interested in hydroxychloroquine.
80% of it is because of the psychological, political part, which I find fascinating.
20% of my interest is because, hey, it might work.
But there are a bunch of other things that also, hey, those might work too.
So I don't have a special obsession with hydroxychloroquine.
In fact, my estimate is There's no more than a 30-40% chance that it makes a difference.
We don't know yet.
But, some interesting things.
The first interesting thing is that it's clear in the comments as I'm reading through Twitter that the people who only watch the news on the right believe it's a fact that the drug doesn't work and that it's dangerous on top of it.
So people who watch CNN, MSNBC, read the New York Times, they think that's actually a fact.
But they're having trouble understanding the news if that's a fact.
Because in my world, it's simply not a fact.
It's something we're still trying to figure out.
So my world makes sense.
Because if we're still trying to figure it out, what would that predict you would see in the world?
What would predict you'd see that trials are still underway?
And indeed, there's a story.
Scott Gottlieb, MD, was tweeting about this.
It's something called the Recovery Trial.
I think that's the name of the trial, Recovery.
Like a brand name.
Or just the name for the project, I guess.
And they thought that they would take a look at it before they were done to see if there was any danger and if they'd had anybody die because they'd seen the other warnings and the Lancet, etc.
So they looked at their data and they found that there were no particular side effects that were deadly, so they decided to continue on with the trial.
So how do the people who believe it's a fact That it doesn't work and we know it's dangerous.
That's a fact. They believe.
How do they understand their world when they see a professional medical organization that has all the information they have, they have all the same access to information, have looked at it all and decided it's not a fact?
How do they explain their world?
My world doesn't need any explaining because everything's playing out exactly the way I expect.
Oh, we don't know. Therefore, it makes sense.
We are still testing. If your world is not compatible, meaning that you have a belief that doesn't explain what you're seeing, maybe rethink your beliefs.
Maybe rethink them.
Let's talk some more about hydroxychloroquine.
One of the reasons that it's so hard to figure out what's going on with this thing is that, first of all, they have tests of only people who are near death.
That doesn't tell you as much as it should.
They also have the test without using the zinc That doesn't tell you if it works with the zinc, because they didn't test it.
Now we're hearing that azithromycin might be the dangerous part, so maybe you should leave out the azithromycin.
I just read that today for the first time.
I don't know if it's true. I just read it today.
So nothing is apples to apples, but if you read it quickly, it sounds like it is.
So people are acting like it's apples to apples.
But all of our information It's just a different set of information with different variables that doesn't compare to the other information.
So we have lots of it.
It just doesn't work for making decisions yet.
One of those is Costa Rica.
So there's an account online that is promoting all the good news about hydroxychloroquine.
I don't know if it's just a citizen who's trying to help I don't know if there's any kind of sponsorship behind it or anything, so I don't know anything about the account.
But I fall away because it has lots of information.
But I don't assume that it's all true or accurate.
So one of the things that was tweeted is that Costa Rica apparently is doing an amazingly good job at controlling their virus and their deaths.
Amazingly good. It's also true that in the beginning of the crisis, they called China and said, what do we do?
China told them several things to do, including hydroxychloroquine, and give it to people early on first symptoms.
And so they started doing that.
Turns out that Costa Rica is a producer of hydroxychloroquine.
So they make it in-country.
So they had enough. So they had enough.
They decided to use it.
And the result is one of the lowest curves.
I mean, it basically didn't even curve up.
They flattened it before it was even up.
Basically, they flattened it on the ground.
Just this total flat line when everybody else was going up.
Now, does that mean hydroxychloroquine works?
Well, our little brains make us think that, right?
Because, well, here's the situation.
They used it. They got the best result.
Boom. Done.
No, unfortunately not.
You want it to be true.
I'm seeing in the comments somebody saying it's also an island.
Costa Rica's not an island, people.
It's not an island.
It's connected to a land mass.
It's not an island. I've been to Costa Rica, and I promise you, I drove there.
No, I didn't drive all the way, but there was no need...
For going across water.
Alright. So here's the thing.
Costa Rica is also in a warm place, right?
Yeah, Costa Rica is Central America.
Costa Rica is warm.
What is the other country that's also warm that's having terrible problems?
It feels like the warm countries are doing better, right?
Africa, not so bad as we thought it would be.
And somebody said Mexico wasn't so bad.
I don't know if that's true.
I'd have to do a fact check on that.
But here's the problem.
If the only countries that are doing well are also the warm ones, and we know that the weather probably has a big impact, you can't really tell.
There's just too much that's different.
So you've got that going on.
And so I asked this question.
I tweeted it. I said, are there any countries that are routinely using hydroxychloroquine for first symptoms, the way Costa Rica is?
Is there anybody else who's doing it just as much as they're doing it, but getting a bad result?
So I was looking for the counter example.
I'm looking for any country, ideally in a not-so-warm climate, And not an island.
Island doesn't count.
Brazil just started using it.
I believe Brazil only just started hydroxychloroquine.
So they're not an example.
But I don't want to do the warm countries.
So forget about Central America.
Give me something above Central America that doesn't have the warmth, that use hydroxychloroquine early.
Now it wasn't Brazil.
Brazil did not use it early.
And is doing poorly.
So the test is, give me this on Twitter, the test is they used it early, it's not one of these hot countries toward the equator, and they did not get a good result.
And did not get a good result.
So give me that example.
So there's, of course, big news about the president not wearing a mask to golf.
And then, of course, Great Britain is all buzzing about Dominique Cummins, aide to the prime minister, who apparently did some traveling and saw his parents or his kid or something.
And I have the same feeling about all of these leaders who are not doing what they're telling the underlings to do.
I don't really care. Do you?
Do you really care if Dominic Cummings took a drive and cheated a little bit?
I mean, I don't know if he did cheat, but do you care?
Do you care? I don't care.
Do you care that the president didn't wear a mask while golfing?
I don't care. I don't care at all.
Because I assume that every person who was with him had a test that day.
And they weren't that close.
I mean, it's outdoors, it's warm.
I don't care at all.
So, I think all of these looking for the hypocrite stories are not landing, because frankly, well, let me ask you this question.
Because you will not be arrested for your answer.
How many of you have violated the guidelines since you knew what the guidelines were?
So, from the moment they said, alright, don't do this kind of socializing, stay six feet away, etc., tell me in the comments how many of you have cheated at least once.
How many of you have cheated in the comments?
While we're waiting for those comments to come, here's my assumption.
I think most people have cheated.
Not everybody. I'm going to say 75% maybe.
I think 75% have cheated.
At least once.
And here's my feeling.
If people only cheat when nobody's watching...
That's probably fine.
Because if you cheat in a way that you had, let's say, 100 people over to your house and you had a house party, everybody would know.
So people are not cheating in these big group ways without getting caught.
I mean, that's a whole different story.
But if somebody saw one person, somebody snuck away to be with their girlfriend or boyfriend, I don't know.
I don't know. I'm just not going to worry about that.
And this goes back to my theory about friction.
There was never any thought that...
Yeah, I'm looking at all the comments that are coming in now.
There have been a number of people who say, not once.
I'm looking at the ratio, let's see.
So we've got about 50-50.
Not bad. A lot of you have not cheated even once.
Very impressive. Those of you who have not cheated, do you have kids?
Because if you had kids and you didn't let them play with a friend, I would be surprised, but I'd be impressed.
I won't admit it, somebody says.
At my doctor's office, no one wore masks.
Yeah. Well, it looks like you've all, not all of you, but many of you have cheated, but I'm surprised how many of you have not.
Somebody got a massage.
Wow, that's a little bit of taking a chance there.
Or maybe not. I suppose if the massage therapist wore a mask and Washed his or her hands, you'd be fine.
All right. I guess my only point is that I don't expect my leaders to be any more perfect than the citizens that they lead.
That whole hypocrisy thing, I never get on board with the hypocrisy thing.
But, you know, I agree that maybe it's better if they do a little role modeling.
But aren't we way past that with President Trump?
Is there anybody...
Left, right, or center, who looks at the president and says, I'll be more like that?
I don't think so.
I think we all realize that he's such a unique character, that we look at him as he's just doing his thing, and we make our own decisions.
I just don't see people saying, I'm going to be like him, and I just don't see it.
So Jonah Goldberg, somebody is prompting me in the comments to comment about that.
So I guess Jonah Goldberg is not too happy about Kayleigh McEnany and her job as spokesperson thinks she's a little too, I don't know, maybe aggressive or combative.
But the funniest thing about that is that Jonah Goldberg, he looks like a werewolf now.
Because he hasn't cut his hair.
It looks like he's letting his beard get a little scruffy.
And he just turned full werewolf.
And the whole time I was looking at the interview, that's all I could think is, I think you're a werewolf now.
Well, I think a lot of us are going to turn into werewolves if we can't get haircuts.
If you've not cheated, you're a Karen.
Okay. Okay. Alright, that's all for now.
I will be doing a few more of the evening periscopes.
As the country is opening up, and I'm feeling that our spirits are lifting, and things are getting back to normal, and I'm going to declare that this weekend is victory.
Victory. And what that means is that if we get, let's say, several days from now, and there's not a gigantic spike in infections, not so large that it crashes the hospitals, we're back.
We're back.
I think that's where we're at.
So as we get back, the evening periscopes were really to fill a need, and I may open up my evening's At some point.
Not tonight. Tonight I'll be back and I'll talk to you tonight.
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