Episode 1058 Scott Adams: Talking With Bjorn Lomborg About His Book False Alarm, Plus Ridiculous News
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Special Guest Bjorn Lomborg on his new book False Alarm
Why the Green New Deal is racist
Safety suggestions for reopening schools
Ivanka Trump's alternative career paths
Professional non-fiction writers with limited talent stacks
The data analysis mistake that caused all the protests
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
Oh yeah. I always say that, but isn't it always right?
Yeah, you know it is.
I always say it's gonna be the best one.
And then it is.
So... I guess you got that going on.
If everything works out, I'm going to have author Bjorn Lomborg on here today, but I'm terrible on follow-up, so if that doesn't work out, we'll make sure it works out soon.
But before I see if I can connect him, I'll give him a few minutes if he's up and around to connect on Periscope.
Before we do that, what do we do first?
Always the same thing.
Always the same thing.
The best thing ever. It's a simultaneous sip.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, 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 coronavirus, global warming, climate change, you name it.
It's all better. With a sip.
Join me now.
I can feel the earth begin to cool.
I can feel people's fevers beginning to go down just a little bit.
Now, Bjorn is here.
Yes. Let's make this work.
Please, technology.
All right. First try did not work.
Bjorn, if you can hear me, it's not unusual for the first try not to work.
So make sure that you're on a mobile device, such as your smartphone.
I think you're back.
Let's try again. All right.
Bjorn, please work.
Oh, the technology is not working.
I never know what the problem is when it doesn't work on the first few tries, but we'll get this.
Watch this. I'm gonna make this work, so I can see him continuing to try to connect.
Hey, Bjorn!
Are you there? I can hear you!
Success! Wonderful.
Bjorn Lomborg.
You are the author of False Alarm, this excellent book that I'm holding up right now.
And can I describe you as the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Think Tech?
You certainly can.
Yes. And I'm looking at your Twitter profile in which you say that that involves smart solutions through economic prioritization, which is...
You're talking my language now, Bjorn.
And this is your new book, False Alarm.
When is this out? Is this out now?
This is out from yesterday.
So just fresh off the press.
All right. And your topic of primary concern, at least in terms of this book, is climate change, correct?
Yes. And before I start asking you some questions, I have to tell you that you and I have a weird thing in common that you don't know about.
And correct me if this is wrong, but I think I have a pretty good memory of this.
The first time I ever saw you was on an appearance on Bill Maher's show.
Do you remember the first time you were on his show?
It was actually my second time.
I remember that I contacted you afterwards.
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the thing I remembered was that you put Bill Maher into cognitive dissonance because, of course, he's a big climate change doomer.
And normally the doomers are talking to scientists, not business people who are looking at both the costs and the benefits and know how to project things into the future, as people like you do.
And you completely destroyed his world view.
To the point where the only thing he could do was act like you didn't just say something.
It was the damnedest thing. I was watching and I said, what just happened here?
Then I realized it was just cognitive dissonance.
He couldn't process how logically and obviously right you were, because it didn't fit any of his worldview, so he just pretended it didn't happen and went on.
Enough about me. So, in your book, False Alarm, available everywhere, so I'm sure you can get it in everywhere that books are sold.
You're basically going through the – would you call it the skeptical argument on climate science, or do you have a – Well, I would tend to think of it as the rational point of climate, the rational climate argument, because look, what I'm trying to say is it's actually a real problem, but the way that we've been presented with this is it's the end of the world.
And if you are being told this is the end of the world, and remember, this is not just a vague little sort of claim.
Yeah.
The survey showed that 57% of all American kids now are afraid of global warming.
And if you ask adults, if you ask adults around the world, it turns out that almost half of all adults in the world now believe that it's likely that global warming will lead to the extinction of the human race.
This is just outrageously out there.
This is way beyond reasonable concern.
This is a fault alarm.
And so I try to say, look, that's not what the UN Climate Panel is telling us.
It is a problem, not the end of the world, and we should fix it.
Now, we're having a little bit of connection problem.
I hope that'll resolve itself, but walk us through.
My understanding is that even the IPPC, the ultimate international body that tells you what's going to happen with climate change, that if you actually look what they say, the impact on the GDP in the future is trivial.
Is that true? It's, well, perhaps not trivial, but it's very small.
So to give you a sense of proportion, they've done estimates of what is the negative impact on climate change in about 50 years.
So half a century from now, the net impact of all climate change if we do nothing...
Will be equivalent to each person on the planet losing somewhere between 0.2% and 2% of his or her income.
That's not nothing.
Wait, but hold on. Let's add a little bit of context to that.
When you say losing it, that's an economic term, right?
You don't actually start with more and then you end up with less.
I think what you're saying is that instead of making $100 over 50 years, you only made $98.
Exactly. Which means you wouldn't even know it.
There would be nothing in your environment or your experience which would tell you you didn't get that extra 2%, right?
Well, it would be very hard for anyone to notice.
Just to give you a sense, the UN also expects that by 50 years time, the average person on the planet will be 2.63 times richer than we are today.
So to just point out, that means in the worst case, instead of being 2.5 times rich by 2005, we will be 2.5 times less rich.
So that's a little problem.
Not the end of the world. Bjorn, if you have someplace in your, wherever you are, that you've got a little stronger signal, that would be good.
Your signal is coming in and out.
But for the viewers, let me just...
The point is that you'll be 2.6 times richer by then, so that little bit you didn't get that maybe you could have gotten, you won't even know the difference.
And the big problem with the climate change argument is that there are not enough people like you Who are looking at not just the science of it, because people get stuck on the science, because it's not really a scientist who can tell you what the problem is going to be.
And people don't get that.
The person who can tell you what the problem is going to be is the person who can tell you what's going to happen to the economy.
Because if the economy is still strong, you can fix almost anything.
Would you say that's true? That's absolutely true.
But I think we also need to recognize it's not like this is an unheard of argument.
So the only climate economist to get the Nobel Prize is Bill Nordhaus from Yale University.
And this is exactly what he points out.
He says, look, global warming is going to be a problem.
It's going to cost us $2 million.
Yeah, and by the way, as far as I know, I've never heard a scientist argue with what you say, because you're sort of a slightly different domain than science, but I don't think scientists say you're wrong, do they?
Well, a lot of scientists are not comfortable with this not being alarmist, so I think a lot of them will say, that doesn't sound right.
But what we forget is we're talking about Real world impacts.
One of the things that drive me up the wall, and that's what I use pretty much as the first start of the book to talk about, is how you're being scared to stories that are technically true, but often dramatically misleading.
Let me give you one example. Last year, Washington told us how, because of global warming, people see 187 million people being flooded by the end of the metric.
This way... Bjorn, because there's a little bit of problem with your connection.
I might break in and just summarize what I'm hearing you saying so the audience hears it clearly.
So you're saying there was 187 million people projected to be victims of flooding?
Is that what you said? Yes.
Sorry, I'm just trying to move to another part of the house.
Does this work better? That's better, yes.
Okay, good. 187 million people would get flooded.
This was the Washington Post headline and everywhere on the planet.
What that required was that nobody would do anything in the next 80 years.
So basically, people could still see first lap off of their knees, and the hips would eventually be Yeah, we're having more audio problems, but I think what you're saying is that the assumption is that nobody will do anything about it.
There would be no remediation over 80 years, when in fact, what's the country that's already underwater?
Yeah. So we can see that the ability to remediate against flooding is pretty good if you have 80 years and you've got lots of time.
What the study actually showed was, if you allow people to adapt, which of course they will, you will not see 187 million people having to move.
You'll see 305,000 people having to move.
So it was 600 times exaggerated.
And of course, remember, every year, more than twice that number move out just of California.
So it's not something that the world can't adapt and handle.
We're simply being told stories that are very scary, but end up being very little representative of the real world because we forget adaptation.
Is... Give me an idea of what's behind all the exaggeration in the sense that the obvious thing is that the news model requires you to get worked up in order to click on things for them to get advertising income.
Aside from the media, which has an incentive to exaggerate things for their business model, is there anything else behind the wrongness?
Well, I think the media part is an incredibly important part of it.
And we tend to forget that media exaggerates on all kinds of things.
It's just that global warming turns out to be such an incredibly good generator of really scary stuff.
But of course, it's also because politicians love this setup.
Look, you can't really make a better setup than what you're seeing with global warming.
Politicians get to say, the end of the world is made.
But I can save you.
And also, we get to say, I can save you, and the cost will only come in the next election.
I used to do financial projections and stuff in my corporate job long ago, and the perfect situation for any corporate person is that you get to spend money today and be a hero for what you're fixing.
But nobody will know it will work until you've already been promoted or left for another job.
In other words, what you want is spend money today, because that's how you get power and influence, and yay, look at all these things I did.
And then you will never be responsible for the outcome, because that's in 80 years.
Oh, absolutely.
And the fun thing is to see we've been doing this for 30 years, so you can actually look back and see how little we've achieved.
So last year, the UN actually released a very surprisingly honest review of what we've achieved over the last 15 years.
And what they said was, we cannot tell the difference after all the work up from Obama and everybody else around the world You know, this feels like a subset of a problem that is plaguing basically every big public decision, which is our data is undependable.
And the people who are analyzing the data are not qualified.
It feels like it's everything from coronavirus to you name it.
It just seems to be the same problem.
The data is bad and we don't know how to look at it anyway.
I'll probably analyze it slightly differently because I think we spent in the order of, what, $50 billion on climate research.
So it's not like we don't have a lot of good data.
I think there is a lot of organizations that want to convince you this is the end of the world because then they can get you to support really, really expensive policies.
And I think we as taxpayers need to fight back and say, look, I'm happy to spend money on solving real problems that will actually have dramatic impact to better the world in the future.
But I'm not just going to spend my money to do almost no good and waste most of it.
And what do you think of, if you had a moment to look at, I don't know if you follow American politics enough, but Joe Biden's $2 trillion plan, which I had to dig really hard.
I had to look through multiple articles to find out if nuclear energy was even part of it.
So, $2 trillion, and most of the coverage didn't even mention nuclear energy.
But I found one article that suggested he wants to go strong at nuclear, and especially the new designs, which the Trump administration doesn't talk about it, but they're doing all of that stuff.
They're pushing for the new test facilities, etc.
Is that a productive way to go?
Is nuclear on your good list?
Nuclear is definitely one of the solutions that we could envision for global warming.
I think the big problem about nuclear is that right now, nuclear is much more expensive than most other power sources.
That's why we need a lot more research and development into the fourth generation nuclear power plants.
So, for instance, Bill Gates and many others are spending lots of resources To get that next generation that's going to be safer, cheaper, and also much more dependable.
If we can do that, that'd be amazing.
But again, this is just one of the many ways that we could fix climate.
Innovation fundamentally is going to be the way that we will fix this problem.
Like basically every other problem.
Exactly. When I look at the nuclear situation, and it's too expensive, I don't know if you've dug into the details of that enough to answer this question, but the things that are stopping us is, number one, it's hard to iterate.
If you try something, it's really expensive to build a second nuclear energy plant and see if the second one is better than the first one.
It's not like building an iPhone where you can just do it in the lab until you get it right.
That's one problem. The other problem is that We don't standardize the big ones.
So we've got multiple models.
And if you just built the same damn thing one after another, even using current Generation 3 technology before you even get to the super safer, safer stuff of Generation 4, could we do Generation 3, let's call it, current technology, which has had zero deaths Historically, is that true?
Zero deaths? Very, very low deaths, yeah.
I think it's zero, actually, depending on how you count it.
And are those the two problems you see?
Iteration, I guess, government regulation and how long that takes.
But iteration and standardization, are those the two things that will change the economics?
My understanding, again, from nuclear technology is that that's really what's been lacking.
We've been building masterworks, each one of them, instead of actually building just a long stream of them.
And indeed, that is one of the points that they're trying to do with the fourth generation, to say, if we can standardize this and basically build it like a...
What do you say?
A factory of...
A 4T sort of assembly plant.
Sorry, that was what I was looking for.
An assembly plant where we just churn out all of these and you just assemble them like Lego on the spot, and then you run it.
That will be enormously much cheaper.
But again, it requires a lot of research and development because we're not there.
You know, when you look at the new power plants, nuclear power plants that have been built around the world, They end up being fantastically expensive.
And one of the reasons, as you just pointed out, is because there's all this regulation.
And I just find it's going to be very hard to imagine that that regulation will go away.
Yeah, and the secondary problem I understand is that if the nuclear power plant are these one-offs, then you don't have something that you can export to other countries.
If you're not, let's say, the big brother of the smaller nuclear program in the smaller country, then somebody else is going to be.
That could be China or Russia.
Simply by not having a robust nuclear energy program in this country, We're giving up influence over a lot of the planet, but worse, when you go to space, it's going to be nuclear power.
And if you don't own space, you might as well just give up, because whoever owns space owns the planet.
That's the end of it. That's my opinion.
I think the fundamental point here and the insight is to recognize that unless we get cheap green energy, we're just not going to switch over because you're not going to convince most people around the planet to say, all right, I'll get the same power, slightly less effectively, slightly less dependably, and much, much more expensively.
That's just not a selling point, except for, you know, a few percent for people who are very, very engaged in climate.
And so the reality is we need to invest a lot more into green energy research and development to do that.
And actually, you know, to his credit, that is part of Biden's plan.
So, you know, at least there's a lot of things in Biden's plan, and a lot of them, I think, are going to be a waste of money.
But that actually turns out to be a really good idea.
Yeah. There's also a weird thing that I can't get over, which is the people who are most concerned about climate change.
They tend to be focused on the political left.
I don't think that they understand how racist it is, because that's their other biggest issue.
Let's reduce racism.
But if you say to the developing countries, you can't use what we used to get here, because it's too polluting.
Then are you basically just telling all the brown people that they can't have what white people have now?
It's like, no, no, no. We got here this way by using oil and coal, but you can't do that.
You're going to have to wait.
Why don't you just wait, and we'll find something clean for you.
We don't know how long it'll take, but until then, you'll have to starve.
Would you mind waiting? It's the most frickin' racist thing you've ever heard.
There's nothing There's no Black Lives Matter thing.
I mean, this is on a level, literally, with slavery in terms of how prejudicial it is against people of other colors.
I mean, it's massively destructive, and yet the same group are in favor of both of those things.
And we think this all the time.
We're basically telling poor countries, no, you can't have coal power because It is going to make coal power worse, which is true, but of course that coal power is going to make that country much, much richer.
So we worked together with the Bangladesh government to look at what would it take to put in extra coal-fired power plants.
It would dramatically increase life quality in Bangladesh.
The average person in Bangladesh is best, 16% richer.
But, create overwater problems, but just to give you a sense of proportion, for every hundred dollars you produce for Bangladesh, you create 20% of climate problems.
Yeah, we're having a little audio problems again.
So let me just do one more topic here and then we'll let you get to the rest of your day.
I'm sure with the new book out, you've got a lot to do this week.
My guess is. I'm really interested in the super storm and the natural disaster story, where every time there's a hurricane, somebody on television will tell us that climate change is what caused that darn hurricane.
What's the more reasonable, rational view of the big storms and natural disasters?
So we're certainly not seeing more storms hitting the U.S. Actually, if you look at landfalling hurricanes and strong landfalling hurricanes, they've slightly declined over the last 120 years for the U.S. But in general, much, much more importantly is that many more people live much closer to harm's way with much more stuff.
So fundamentally, the reason why you see dramatic impacts of hurricanes now is because there's many more people.
You know, look at Florida coastal counties.
Florida's coastal population has increased over the last 120 years a 67-fold, whereas the U.S. population has only increased four-fold.
So clearly, they also have much more expensive homes, so clearly you're going to get a lot more damage.
And again, if you want to help these people, the way to do so is by getting better building code and also by paying some of these buildings.
We're going to get, I doubt, every five of you.
These are very simple things, not climate change.
Yeah, and you know, I always look at that situation and I ask myself, who is it that lives on Because it's not the poor people, right?
In the United States, it must be different in other places, but in the United States, it feels like there's a pretty strong correlation between being rich and being able to have a house on the beach.
If I were to say, what would be the best thing for the economy of the United States?
I'm just joking here, but just to make a point.
The best thing for the economy of the United States would be for a big storm to come by about every three years, knock down all the rich houses and give the poor people, not poor people, but the middle class people who do construction, more work.
Because the rich people have insurance.
Insurance is priced to pay for itself.
The rich people live in their other house while the beach house is being repaired.
I mean, you could imagine that it would be a plus To wipe out rich people's houses every few years just so people have enough to do to rebuild them.
I'm just kidding on that.
Yeah, it would certainly teach them to be better at producing their houses well.
And one of the big problems, of course, is that we're subsidizing rich people because we're subsidizing much of their insurance.
So we should definitely not be doing that.
And that, of course, would get fewer people to build close to harm's way.
Right. Yeah, subsidizing people to build.
That's just crazy. Alright, so what is it that I, I'll give you the question that every author hates, but since you're toward the beginning of your book tour, I'll get you ready for it, okay?
So this will just be practice.
The worst question everybody wants to hear as an author, what is it I forgot to ask you?
In other words, it's just a chance to mention something that maybe you wanted to mention.
Sure. So I think the rest of the book really is about two things.
It's first of all talking about all the things that haven't worked.
So, you know, we promised the Paris Agreement.
It's going to cost $1 to $2 trillion a year, and it'll do almost nothing to actually fixing climate change.
We're telling people We're losing you a little bit.
Bjorn, we're losing the audio a little bit.
I think we got the gist of that, though.
Would you mind if we end now?
Just because the audio is kind of sketchy.
Sorry about that.
I can hear you perfectly.
Oh, okay. You're cutting a little bit in now.
I'll make sure everybody knows your book.
I'm holding it up. I'll tweet about you.
And I thank you very, very much for coming on.
You're exactly the kind of author that my audience likes to hear from.
So thank you very much, and good luck with the book.
Hey, thank you very much, Scott.
All right. Take care, everyone.
Alright, Bjorn is one of my favorite public figures, has been for years, because he is one of the few people who look at the costs and the benefits and know how to do it.
It's refreshing.
Alright, a few other things.
Yesterday I was trying to change a light bulb.
I ended up tweeting about it because it was so hard.
It was one of those compact fluorescents.
In theory, you just pull it out straight and push it in straight, but it didn't work.
I'd spent over a month trying to change one light bulb.
I'd ordered different bulbs thinking maybe I had the wrong one.
I tried everything. The funniest part about it was listening to the other people's comments.
Because when I tweeted it, people weighed in with their comments.
But the funny part was how many people have thrown away perfectly good lamps and light fixtures to change the light fixture because they couldn't figure out how to change the light bulb.
Now, if you've never tried to change a compact fluorescent light bulb, you don't know how hard it is.
And again, let me explain.
This is the entire process.
Here's a hole. Here's the light bulb.
Push it straight in.
If you want to take it out, pull it straight out.
And I spent a month not being able to do it, even trying that exact thing, and apparently other people have just thrown away their lamps, changed their fixtures, hired a handyman to just change the entire light fixture because they couldn't change the light bulb.
And here's the point of this.
This was not just to complain about my personal inability to do things.
The larger point is this, and I'm going to hit this a lot.
Who tested that?
This is a gigantic national standard.
Who tested that?
How many times did they have an average person come in and say, hey, can you see if you can change this bulb?
And then watch them...
Now, if you try to remove a compact fluorescent, you'll find that it breaks in your hand about half of the time.
It breaks. The glass part just breaks off in your hand when you're trying to just change the bulb.
Nobody tested that.
And so, I submit to you that we have a gigantic problem in this country and the world of products that were never tested and yet are now standard in all of our homes.
Never tested. Have you heard a lot about Mary Trump's book?
No. You know, Mary Trump, the niece of Trump, who wrote an anti-Donald Trump book, and apparently the worst thing that came out of this, because it's the one that they pull from the book, is that she alleges that Donald Trump paid someone to take his SATs.
That's it. Now, first of all, I doubt it's true.
I mean, anything's possible.
It wouldn't change my opinion of anything, because I have that 20-year rule.
I just don't care what people did when they were 18.
Do you care what anybody did when they were 18?
Would you say, we've got to impeach this president, because when he was 18, he did something clever that worked out well?
I'm sure it wasn't, you know, if it happened.
And by the way, I would say the odds of it being true are not really that high.
But even if it is true, that's it.
That's the best you have.
You're an insider.
You've got all this access to the family.
And the best you have is that when he was 18, he did something that any 18-year-old would have done if they could have gotten away with it.
Ah, that's pretty empty.
Apparently, Kanye is out.
He's out of the race.
But here's what's interesting. He actually did try to get on the ballots.
So there is documented evidence that he put real money into trying to get on the ballots.
So he was serious. Some of you wondered if he was serious, but I think that's been answered.
He was serious. Now, what do you make of the fact that he was in the race for less than two weeks?
Do you say to yourself, well, that proves he's a flake, and he was never really that serious, and what kind of a president is he?
Would he be if he didn't even plan getting nominated and all that the way it should be?
Here's my answer to that.
He played it perfectly.
I think Kanye played it Perfectly.
Because here's what I always say.
There's nothing better for improving your odds of becoming president than having run in the past.
Right? Trump had sort of flirted with running in the past, and therefore, because every time there was an election, for several elections before the time he actually got elected, Trump's name was always in the top ten.
Because he put it there.
Trump put his name in the top ten for every future election by simply making noise but not going very far in initial attempts or initial flirtations with running, initial talking about running, etc.
Kanye is using the same play.
People who have lost elections and went on to win were quite a few, right?
Nixon, Reagan, Trump himself.
It's fairly common.
Biden has run before, and that has a lot to do with why he's where he is, although being vice president was more of it.
And I would say that Kanye's play of reminding us of Kanye for president, letting us wrestle with the idea for a little while, and then waiting until 2024 was exactly, exactly the right play.
Exactly the right play.
Because he didn't really have a chance of winning, and everybody would have been mad at him if he changed the election result, which he would have.
It probably would have caused Trump to win.
Sorry, my cat's in the way.
So I don't think he could have played that better, honestly.
The get in and get out in 2020, if I could have advised him, and I didn't, by the way, but if I could have advised him on the best way to play this, I would have said this.
I always said flirt with it, get in there, get some noise, but really you're getting ready for 2024.
Perfect. I am entering a voluntary coronavirus quarantine.
Starting today, I believe, which is not because I have coronavirus, as far as I know.
I do have a test scheduled.
But it's not because I may or may not have coronavirus, it's because I have some minor surgery scheduled.
So the current process, in case you didn't know, for getting a surgery in this environment, and by the way, I expect the surgery to get cancelled.
It's in two weeks, and I expect it to get cancelled.
Because of capacity.
But, at the moment it's scheduled, and that means that I have to quarantine for two weeks, and that means no Christina, right?
I mean, I'm talking about the serious kind of quarantine, so that starts today.
I might get a little squirrely, and I might do some evening podcasts just because I'll be here all alone for two weeks.
Now, the process is, they'd like you to quarantine yourself for two weeks before surgery, and But one week before surgery, I'll have the actual test that takes about two days to get a result.
So something like, you know, five days before surgery, I'll have presumably a negative test, and then I will go into my surgery.
I think they test again just before you go into surgery, but I'm not sure.
All right. There's a lot else going on today.
Okay. I always talk about Stefan Collinson, who's an opinion person for CNN. And I start to think of him as Triumph the Insult Dog.
So Triumph the Insult Dog was on...
What's his name?
Tall, red-headed guy.
You know. You know the thing.
Oh my god, I just turned into Joe Biden.
You know the thing.
Tall, redhead, night show, give me the name.
Why the hell am I blanking on his name?
You know what it is.
All right. And he writes that this is a president who has tremendously failed to beat back the virus and has long since stopped trying to lead the country out of the darkness.
He's saying that the President has failed to beat back the virus and he's stopped trying to lead the country out of the darkness.
Now, here's my question for CNN because they have a lot of commentary about the President doing everything wrong.
Here's my question.
Conan O'Brien, thank you.
Okay, I don't feel bad that I can't remember a person named Conan because it's not exactly Bob.
All right. And...
Here's my question for CNN. What is it that the President should have done differently?
Whoever asked that question, if the President is doing everything wrong and as Triumph the Insult Dog, Stephen Collinson says, that he's stopped trying to lead us out of the darkness and he's failed to beat back the virus, what exactly should he have done differently?
Because all of the decisions about closing and opening are local, right?
The president, I think, did all the things that a president could do.
He closed international travel from China and Europe, so those are things a president can do.
He made sure that we had enough ventilators, something a president could do, and he, you know, People did, I think, a good job, or the country did, or somebody did, in getting the PPE and the protective stuff, although we may be running out soon because of the new stuff.
What exactly is it that the President should have been doing?
Should he have followed the experts' advice?
Well, if he'd followed the experts' advice, he wouldn't have done the things that were right.
Right? He wouldn't have taken the virus seriously.
He wouldn't have closed travel from China.
He wouldn't have done those things if he had listened to the experts.
And then what about the mask situation?
Well, that was complicated because there was an effort to save the masks for the healthcare professionals, which I agree with.
I don't know if that was the best way to do it, but I'm not going to criticize.
I'm not going to criticize Fauci or others for lying about masks.
If the purpose was it was just the only way to protect them for the healthcare people.
And I don't know another way.
If you said to me, no, Scott, the obvious way to do that would be tell the public the truth and just ask them not to hoard these supplies.
Well, in the real world, that doesn't work.
In a pandemic, people are going to hoard.
You can ask them not to hoard.
Oh, but people are going to hoard.
So if you can tell them they don't need to hoard, there's no purpose to it.
Maybe it's a better play.
So did Fauci and other experts, the Surgeon General, for example, did they intentionally lie to us about the value of masks?
I don't know if all of them did.
Some of them might have believed the other experts and just parroted them.
But if they did lie to us, but the purpose of it was for our own good, I'm actually okay with that.
I don't know if you are.
But I do not mind my leaders lying to me under the very unique circumstances that is in my best interest.
Now, usually, that's not the case.
So you don't want lying to be approved.
I just don't know that there are too many cases like this one where, unfortunately, lying was maybe the only good play.
For the benefit of the country.
I hate it. I mean, you could hate it, but if you don't have a better idea, just keep that in mind.
All right. And was there some expert who knew all the right answers and didn't tell the President?
Was there some smart thing that smart experts knew that if they'd only told the President, then he would have maybe implemented?
I haven't heard of any.
Have you? So, when they say the president is failing, don't you have to ask yourself, at what?
Are not other countries also having problems?
And is the president to blame for what happened with nursing homes?
Not really.
Now, where you could have room for disagreement would be the president advocating going back to school at the same time that...
Others would say that's a bad idea because it will increase infections.
I am solidly on the president's side on going back to school.
But here's the thing. We live in a world where you're not allowed to tell the truth in public.
But I can. Watch this.
I'm going to tell the truth in public.
Ask yourself if you've ever heard this.
Going back to school will kill teachers and it will kill kids.
I'm in favor of it.
Okay? That's the first honest opinion you've ever heard in public.
Going back to school will kill teachers, some of them, will kill some students, probably not too many as a percentage, will spread the infection, will kill grandma when the kid comes home.
All of that's going to happen and It's almost certainly better than the alternatives because we don't have a better alternative.
We just don't. So, I think our best play is to do the best we can of protecting the teachers, etc.
Here's my suggestion.
I understand that teachers are far less enthusiastic about opening schools than parents are.
Big surprise, right?
Who is surprised that the teachers, many of them older, many of them susceptible, who is surprised that they wouldn't want to go to work in a crowd, you know, even with some social distancing?
It's kids, they're not going to be that disciplined.
Who would be surprised the teacher doesn't want to go back to that environment?
You shouldn't be too surprised.
And I don't think that we should abuse one professional class, teachers, who did not sign up for danger duty.
People who decided to be teachers did not wake up one day and say, I think I'd like to be on the front line of a dangerous situation.
No. No.
I have a different opinion about the military and about healthcare professionals because they did sign up for that.
They did say, I am going to intentionally put myself into infectious and or dangerous situations.
This is the career I choose.
There's a bigger benefit.
I take the risk.
If that's what we were talking about, I'd say, all right.
We'll send the kids back to school and you've signed up for it.
But teachers did not sign up for that risk.
It is completely unreasonable, completely unfair for the rest of the public to try to force them back to work into a situation that at least half of them think is too dangerous, given the costs and the benefits.
Here's what I would suggest as a workaround.
Are you ready? The benefit of a teacher in the room, as opposed to remote teaching, is that first of all, it's a way to get the kids out of the house so the parents can go to work.
So there's certainly a child-watching process that you need a physical school for.
Secondly, you need to hand out things and discipline people and say, stop doing that, etc.
Here is my hybrid solution.
That the teacher only appears remotely, if they prefer.
Let's say the older teachers don't want to take the risk.
They can appear on a television remotely to their class, but you would have a much younger person, let's say a college-age type person, who is the in-class manager, if you will. So let's put a name on it, because they're not teaching.
The young person who is the physical presence and the authority in the room would simply be a manager of the situation.
But the teaching would still come from the teacher, who would be in a big old TV screen right in front of the class.
They could still hear the teacher, the teacher could still see the class, and anything physical that needed to be done could be done by the younger, less risky, you know, person who's sitting in.
Or how about, let me give you another suggestion.
Let's say you build separate entrances and exits and bathrooms for teachers.
So they have a situation where the teacher is just behind plexiglass the whole time.
Just behind plexiglass.
And you never actually or physically could touch a teacher.
You couldn't even get close to them if you wanted to because the teacher's in the front of the class and there's just a big plexiglass thing here.
They couldn't get there if they wanted to.
Now, you don't need plexiglass if you have enough space from the first row of desks to the teacher.
I mean, it could be just a fence so that nobody gets close.
But you could probably figure ways around it.
Now, one of the things I heard is that it's impossible to open up the schools with social distancing.
In other words, the desks being six feet apart, there's not enough physical space.
I would challenge that assumption.
Because I think that in an emergency situation, you would use all of the space.
You might not use the gym for gym class, because maybe it's too dangerous to have an inside gym class anyway.
So you might use some of the gym floor.
You might use some of the cafeteria floor.
And while it's warm, you make people eat outdoors.
You probably want to do that anyway.
So probably, you could get pretty close.
Now, some students might want to still stay home.
And they could just tune in digitally just like anybody else.
So I think that the president's instinct to push toward reopening is absolutely correct if you take all the pluses and minuses of the economy, etc., into consideration.
But you have to protect the teachers.
You have to protect the teachers.
That is completely unreasonable to send them back into this virus petri dish.
I do not support that.
So if we don't have a solution that the teachers are okay with, I say don't do it.
Keep the kids home.
Because you can try harder.
If your district hasn't figured out a way to keep the teachers safe, They should boycott or strike or something, and I would be on their side because we do have enough ways to keep them safe.
If we're not using it, then they should not go to work.
That's my opinion, but we do want to solve that.
All right, so Ivanka Trump is not getting enough attention, in my opinion, for her alternative career path effort.
She's working on a deal, I don't know all the details, but I think she's working with big corporations to try to train and hire people who do not have college degrees so that you could say, well, I want to learn this specialty.
I don't need an English degree to do this job, but if this corporation will teach me, that's a good solution.
I think that's one of the best things happening in the country right now in terms of it makes sense on every level and it's just so obviously good for minority people, it's obviously good for low income people, it's obviously good for anybody who doesn't want a college debt.
This is just one of the best things that's happening in the country and it gets this little bit of coverage and then people mock it because it's Ivanka.
I mean, it's a crazy world when the best things are ignored.
Joe Biden had one of the most classic gaffes I've ever heard.
And this one, he didn't even stop to correct it.
And he said in a sentence, we have to get our kids back to school.
And then he said in the same sentence, we have to get our kids to mark it swiftly.
We have to get our kids to mark it swiftly.
And he didn't even stop to correct it.
He just went on. What?
What? Are you kidding?
Are you kidding? So just add that to the list.
Now again, I remind you that the hilarious thing to me is watching Democrats act like there's nothing wrong with Biden.
I don't see it. Yeah, yeah, he misspeaks now and then, but nothing wrong.
Of course, the larger context is the Wayfair rumors.
Are you aware of those? All right, the most ridiculous fake news, or fake, I guess it's a rumor, it's not news, that the actual news people are not covering this because it's not true.
Which is strange for the news business.
Usually they cover things whether they're true or not.
But in this case, I would agree with them not covering it.
And the rumor on the internet is that the big company Wayfair that sells furniture, it's a gigantic entity, has been secretly using the pages of their website to sell children instead of products.
Okay, I could stop there and you'd say, okay, that doesn't sound true.
And you'd be right. Because Wayfair is not really selling children.
But people have these fake pages and they've got their argument because it uses children's names on the products and has a price that doesn't make sense and I don't know if they're photoshopped or mistakes or what.
But what I can tell you with complete confidence, Wayfair is not selling children.
They're not selling your children.
But in the context of these Wayfair rumors, which are all over the internet, and again, I say it, Wayfair isn't doing anything.
None of that's true.
It's ridiculous.
If I'm wrong on this, you should never listen to me again.
If I'm wrong about this Wayfair thing being ridiculously stupid and not true, if it turns out I'm wrong, never listen to me again.
That's your deal. You have permission to never listen to me again.
But I'm pretty confident about that one.
I've decided that non-fiction writers are the most dangerous people in the world because they don't know what they don't know but they think they know a lot and so the more I see writers writing stuff and they don't know what they're talking about they are seriously leading the world in the wrong place.
If you saw my Bjorn Lomborg The conversation just now, you know that the information that you and I receive about climate change is from writers, mostly, because I don't talk to scientists too much.
I just read what is written.
Really, I'm reading the opinion and the framing from a writer.
It's so dangerously bad and Unable to look at costs and benefits and incapable of analyzing anything.
I want to give you an example of that.
Well, yeah, okay.
I got a good example of that coming up.
It's in a Bloomberg opinion piece.
There's a thread on it today that I tweeted, but listen to this one This one sentence by an actual professional writer who gets paid by Bloomberg.
Or actually, I don't know, if it's an opinion piece, do they get paid?
I don't know their business model, but it's an opinion piece in Bloomberg.
It said this. This is one comment in a larger piece about all the rich people complaining about cancel culture.
So this is a piece in favor of cancel culture.
So we could stop right there.
You don't even need to know what the writer said.
If they're writing in favor of cancel culture, maybe you shouldn't listen to them.
But let me read this ridiculous sentence.
Quote, could it be that increasingly diverse voices and rich conversations are a threat to their free speech?
And she's talking about the rich people who wrote, some 30-some people who signed a document against cancel culture, so that's the context.
Could it be that increasingly diverse voices and rich conversations are a threat to their free speech, or more accurately, The prerogative of famous and powerful people to speak at length on all sorts of things without interruption or disagreement.
So this writer is asking the question, If there's really a problem with cancel culture, is there really?
Is this really a bad thing, all you rich, famous writers?
Or are you just complaining about it to get more space for your own ridiculous comments without any counter-comments?
Now, I'm not even going to tell you what's wrong with this opinion because it's so stupid I don't need to, right?
I'm pretty sure that the people railing against cancel culture do not have a secret Agenda of silencing the rich and diverse voices and conversations.
I'm pretty sure that zero people have ever had that thought in their head.
Zero. Zero people on the whole planet.
Seven billion plus people.
Not one person has ever had the thought, because it's a stupid one, that this writer has assigned it to them.
Could it be that they don't like Diverse voices and rich conversations?
No, it could not be that.
And this is someone who's paid.
Bloomberg actually prints this stuff.
Amazing. Amazing.
Speaking of writers, writer Barry Weiss, Barry, B-A-R-I, a woman's name in this case.
Barry was, until recently, she just quit, a staff writer and editor for the New York Times.
And she describes herself as a centrist.
And in the world of New York Times, a centrist means far right.
That's my own framing, not anything that anybody else said.
And although she does call herself a centrist, but that means that she has some...
I would say a centrist would be somebody who has a little bit of appreciation or empathy for the opinions on the right.
May not share them all, but would have a little bit more appreciation for them, but also for the left without necessarily agreeing with them all.
So that's my understanding of a centrist.
Somebody who's a little bit open to both sides, but doesn't necessarily agree with either side on all things.
She quit because she said, That it was just an unfriendly place to work and that because she was not as left as the other people, I'm paraphrasing, this is not her words, that she was basically, it was just such a toxic environment that she just had to get out of there.
But here's one of her comments in a lengthy resignation letter, which is worth reading, is that she said, Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times, but Twitter has become its ultimate editor.
Weiss said, and she goes on, stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.
Then she says, I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history.
Now history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.
Well, Barry, the first thing you got wrong is to assume that history was ever objectively written by anybody.
History is not objective.
History is written by the winners and whoever gets to write about it.
So she was wrong on that, but I love this framing of the In this case, the New York Times, the most, let's say, prestigious of all news organizations, we might say, that even they, according to this insider who just quit, are basically just parroting Twitter.
Now, who is the first person who told you that influential people on social media are actually the new government?
I did. Right?
So social media has effectively become the new government because the media has to parent social media.
I don't know if they have to, but their business model sort of influences them in that direction.
And once the social media and the media have formed an opinion, the politicians fall in line.
So the politicians, they may suggest a new idea, But that is sort of up to social media and the public and then the regular media to support it or not and then the politicians know what freedom they have to either go with it or not.
And of course, when I say the public supports it or not, I mean their side.
So there are only things in our world that are supported by the left and only things supported by the right and the few things in the middle we don't hear much about because it's not fun.
All right. Here's some more cancellations.
ViacomCBS decided to can, what's his name, Nick Cannon, because they allege he made anti-Semitic comments in his podcast.
And here's the funny thing about it.
When I read the comments that he made, at least I didn't hear the details, maybe it's worse if you hear the full thing, but just the surface reporting of the things he said, I don't know.
It just sounded like an opinion to me.
It did not sound like he was intentionally doing anything anti-Semitic, and indeed, he considers himself Semitic.
In other words, and even he said this, how can I be anti-Semitic when the whole thing I was saying was that I'm Semitic?
So you can't be anti-yourself.
And I thought, well, okay, you could argue whether he's Semitic or not.
But you can't argue the point that if he includes himself in the group that he's criticizing, then it's more like criticizing your own group.
It's a weird hybrid because who is it that gets to say that Nick Cannon is or is not Semitic?
He's got some story about black people being the real Semitic people.
I don't know if it's true or false, but whether it's true or false or has any historical backing, I have no opinion.
I don't care. Doesn't matter.
Doesn't sound right. Doesn't sound right, right?
I mean, it doesn't sound right, but that doesn't mean it's not right.
I just don't have any knowledge or information to argue it one way or the other.
But because he did not apologize, he got canned.
And I ask you, should you apologize for insulting your own group as you see it?
Somebody says it was anti-white, is what it was.
Could be. I didn't see the details.
Did not see the details.
And there was something about the Rothschild in there that makes your eyebrow go up.
What? What did he say about the Rothschild?
Because there might be a little conspiracy theory in there.
So I don't know what he said, but I just note that that happened and he didn't apologize.
And I'm not sure that you should apologize if it's your actual opinion.
Do you apologize if it's your opinion and you still hold it?
Because that doesn't seem like an apology situation.
That seems like I just have an opinion and somebody didn't like it, so they fired me.
I don't know. I'm not supporting his opinion and I'm not attacking it.
It's just a weird hybrid that he did not have bad intentions whatsoever, I think.
I think. Can't tell what people are thinking really, but it looked like that.
Alright. Here's something I did that hasn't gotten me cancelled and I think that that is hilarious.
I tweeted this yesterday and wait until you see how much attention it got.
I tweeted this. I said, have you ever seen an engineer, scientist or statistician argue that police are killing black citizens at an alarming rate?
Ask yourself why.
Now do you see what I did there?
Let me explain it, because I think you see the general idea, but there's a little bit more to it.
The natural frame for our conversations about big stuff, and the Black Lives Matter stuff is big stuff.
Our natural frame is either the left versus the right, or maybe black versus white, or black versus non-black.
But our natural inclination is to just put things in this group versus that group.
Which is terribly unproductive and also makes you stupid because you're not really using reason.
You're just saying, well, what team am I on?
So I guess I support the team.
But what I did was reframe that.
Instead of thinking of it as black versus non-black or left versus right, how about people who know how to look at data versus people who don't?
How about that?
That's my frame. People who are trained to understand data and to analyze it Versus people who don't.
And so I put this on here, and you would think that I would get cancelled immediately for this.
But unlike Nick Cannon, I think people are afraid of me.
Meaning, afraid to give attention to this point of view.
Because, you know, if you gave attention to the point of view that the Black Lives Matter protests...
The primary trigger, not the only topic, they have general topics about systemic racism, etc., but the trigger, the primary thing that the protests have been about, the George Floyd situation, is complete bullshit.
It's complete bullshit.
And I gave myself enough freedom by setting the groundwork in the things that I've done up to this point I might be the only person in the world who can say that out loud.
Do you know anybody else who's saying this?
That the Black Lives Matter, the trigger of it, I'm not saying racism doesn't exist.
I'm not talking about the larger questions.
That's another topic.
But just the question of police killing black people at an oversized, alarming amount, it just isn't true.
Now, when I change the frame to why is it that you don't hear any engineers, scientists, or statisticians being on the same side as the Black Lives Matter protest?
The reason is these are all the groups that know how to look at data.
And there's a very simple data analysis mistake which caused all of these protests.
And it's this. They looked at the percentage of black people killed versus the percentage of white people killed by police.
And that's just a data analysis error.
Because when you look at the percentage of black people killed by police, you're not really looking at police violence against black people.
What you've done is you've accidentally studied how many black people commit crimes.
Or how many black people live in a neighborhood that's a high crime neighborhood.
You've accidentally looked at the wrong thing.
Because police are stopping black citizens at a higher rate.
Why? Well, most of it, because the neighborhood they live in is higher crime.
It's a separate issue of whether too many black people are being stopped and frisked.
The stop and frisk part is, I think, its own topic.
But the correct way to look at it is in the total number of stops, police encounters, what percentage of them, either black people who were stopped or killed, versus the percentage of white people killed, When they were stopped by police.
Now that would be the correct way to look at the data, and when you do, there's not much difference.
In fact, white people are killed a little bit more often, but not statistically.
So the entire protests are built on this weird little lie that can only be supported so long as you never have in the news an engineer, a statistician, An economist or what's the third thing?
A scientist. Somebody who actually knows how to look at data.
You will never see somebody who knows how to look at data talk about this data because it would ruin the whole thing as soon as you talked about it.
Now, what that means and if you take this to the larger thing compare the issue of black people being killed by police Which I think we'd all agree we want less of it.
So if there's anything we can do to make less of that, I'm all on board.
I'm completely on board with looking at new ways to do policing without police.
I think that's actually a really good path to explore, but the only way I would do it is by testing it small to make sure it doesn't blow something up.
So if you wanted to replace police, And the way that you wanted to do it is with some alternate methods.
Let's test them. Totally.
Let's test them. See what happens.
But do it small. Find out if it works.
But here's my issue with the Black Lives Matter protests over police killing.
Police killing might be, not might be, probably is.
Not probably is. Absolutely is.
I'm going to go for full certainty on this.
The smallest problem in the black community.
It's the smallest problem.
Why are they protesting over their smallest problem?
The total number of people killed by police in general.
That's your smallest problem.
Do you know what's a big problem?
How about health care for black people in general?
How about that?
Yeah, that's a way bigger problem.
Health care for black people in general.
On a scale of 1 to 10, that's like a 10.
If you were to say, on a scale of 1 to 10, where is the number of people killed by the police, black people killed by the police during police stops, that's a 2.
1 or a 2, on a scale of 1 to 10, just because there's so few people involved.
How about a good education for black people?
You know, better education, especially in the inner cities areas.
Where is that on a scale of 1 to 10?
10. Ten.
That is ten, and if the scale was higher, it would be higher.
It's not anywhere close to the problem of police killing black people during stops.
Not even close. That one's a two.
Education is a ten.
What are the Democrats trying to do?
Reduce the ability of black people to get a good education by removing school choice, which is literally the only way to fix it.
Nobody even has another idea, really.
It's the only way. So, the black population has, and I think that the illegitimate press is largely to blame for this.
Imagine a world in which the protests were happening just the way they're happening now, but if you turned on CNN, they would say, you know, this is actually your smallest problem.
Statistically. If you're just to look at the numbers, this is by far your smallest problem.
Because all of the crime, etc., is coming from the same one thing.
Bad education.
There are questions about family structure, etc., which I don't fully understand what's behind all of that.
I've got some real questions there about what is exactly behind the number of single parents, etc.
I'd like to know more about that.
But... Anyway, if the news accurately reported things in the size that they should be reported, the protests wouldn't be happening.
Because every time they turned on the news, they'd be watching their own news source, and their own news source would say, okay, they're working on the smallest problem and ignoring the big ones again.
And then all the protesters would say, well, that's not any fun.
Why are we out here working on our smallest problems again?
Did you know this was our smallest problem?
You didn't know either?
Okay, but now we know, because it's on both the left and the right news sources, which is usually more dependable if it's reported both ways.
So in my opinion, the protests and all that come with it, including the extra coronavirus, if in fact there is any, that comes out of it, It is entirely the illegitimate press's problem.
When I told you that nonfiction writers are the biggest risk to the country, I mean this.
This is all nonfiction writers who are writing fiction, ironically.
The news business is just nonfiction writers.
That's what they do.
They write about nonfiction.
And if they wrote correctly, and if they were good at their job, In other words, if their talent stack included the ability to look at data, they would not be putting us in this position.
Do you know what they'd be doing?
Supporting things that would give black people a better education.
Right? Because that would be the top priority.
Not even close.
Not even close to any of this other stuff.
All right. We found out recently that Mark Levin...
You know him from Fox News, and he's got a radio show, I believe, and other things.
And apparently a former Wikipedia editor, and if you know the model of Wikipedia, you have all these volunteer editors.
So for every topic, you could have multiple editors who have been sort of approved, I guess, to be able to change things.
But the editors can get in battles.
So somebody could change something, and then another editor could come in and change it back.
But they do have rules about what is right to change and what is not right to change.
And one of the rules is if you point to a source, then you can keep it in there.
Like you don't want to remove something that has a legitimate source.
But if you put something in there that's a claim without a source, then another editor can successfully get rid of that.
But apparently there was this huge battle over Mark Levin's page in which somebody kept filling it with untruths and the other editors would try as hard as they can to scrub it out.
But I guess it was just like a raging multi-year battle in which somebody continued to put smears on there and other people continued to try to get rid of them.
I don't know where it ended up.
I'm not sure if it's back to the smear or back to gone.
All right. Oh, I accidentally talked about that before.
All right, there's a tweet that says that from Dr.
Kulvinder Kaur.
So Dr.
Kaur, I think I'm pronouncing it right, K-A-U-R, tweeted that there are 53-plus published hydroxychloroquine studies for COVID-19 Showing strong efficacy as a prophylaxis and as treatment in early COVID. So that's the claim.
The claim that there are 53-plus published studies showing that hydroxychloroquine works and that the government is sort of blocking it from being used.
And then on top of that, Dr.
Zelensky, who most of you know, he was the doctor who was using hydroxychloroquine with all of his patients in New York and claimed a much better rate of recovery than other people, like much, much better.
So he's one of the leading proponents of hydroxychloroquine.
Now here, the first thing you need to know is, in my understanding, there is no gold standard test of this drug yet.
So you can fact check me on that But I don't believe there's any controlled clinical gold standard study using it as a prophylaxis.
But there do seem to be studies showing that if you give it to people when they're almost ready to die, it doesn't help much.
So we've seen those.
As someone suggested, and I think I have to agree, it has the look of intentional failure.
The studies on hydroxychloroquine Look to the untrained eye, just an observer looking on, like they were designed to fail.
Because from day one, the potential of the drug was always about giving it to you early.
That was always the claim.
But what got tested first?
What got tested first is giving people toxic doses, more than you would ever give somebody, When they were at the end of their life and it was just too late.
Now, if you were going to design a study to test the claim that a drug given early as a preventative prophylaxis, or at least to catch things early, if you were going to test that claim, would you do it by a toxic dose given to people who were near death?
You wouldn't. But suppose you were a big drug company And you wanted to make sure that people did not think hydroxychloroquine would work.
What kind of study would you fund if you wanted the public to think hydroxychloroquine, which is cheap and widely available, is not the way to go?
Well, if I were a drug company, I would immediately fund a trial that I knew wouldn't work.
And it would look exactly like the trials that we saw.
Now, I'm not claiming That's what happened.
I don't have any information that would suggest that that happened.
But I'm saying that if you're looking at it from the outside and you're even a little bit objective, it looks like, doesn't mean it happened, looks like it was designed to get you the wrong result.
I know what a trial would look like if somebody's trying to get an accurate, good, useful result, and it's the opposite of that.
Yeah, I'm seeing in the comments that you say it sounds like that's exactly what happened.
We can't say that's what happened, but we can say it looks exactly like it.
But I want to make a comment on Zelensky as well.
He tweeted out recently some data showing the different outcomes, the death rates for various countries, and he had them sorted by whether they used hydroxychloroquine early or they didn't.
Now, at the bottom of the list was the United States, where it is not commonly used early.
It's only used too late.
And the death rate was very high.
And then the one at the top of the list, they were using it early, and the death rate was very, very low compared to the United States.
Not even close. I mean, way, way different.
And then, as you go down the list, you get down to countries that also use hydroxychloroquine early.
They also have way lower death rate than the United States.
So far, that's consistent, right?
So all the people with hydroxychloroquine are having good results, according to this one chart, and the United States isn't.
It's getting bad results.
But here's the problem.
If you look at the best people using hydroxychloroquine, compared to the ones who are getting the worst results, but are also using it in the same way early, There's a gigantic difference.
It's like a 10 times difference.
So even the countries that reportedly are using it early, there's something like a 10 times difference in their outcomes.
What does that tell you?
It tells me it's not the hydroxychloroquine.
But that chart was supposed to tell you that it's hydroxychloroquine.
Which one of us is right?
So Dr. Zelensky obviously knows more about all of this than I do.
But the chart that he presented to make his case, to me, because I spend more time looking at data, you know, I used to do it for a living.
I've got an economics background, etc.
But when I look at the data that he presented, it says to me it's not the hydroxychloroquine.
It says that if you can have a ten times difference using it, there's something else going on.
There's probably something that Some of these countries have in common beyond that.
That doesn't mean it doesn't work.
I'm just saying that I'm not convinced.
I'm going to stick with my 30% chance it's a game changer, which is a strong chance.
30% is a pretty solid chance, but it's less than half.
I'm still on the side that if we were to do a controlled clinical style, a gold standard scientific test, That there's a 2 to 1 chance you won't find it works.
But a 30% chance you will.
Now if it turns out that it works, will you say that I was wrong?
You should not.
Because you should remember that I just put odds on it.
And if something goes the 30% way versus the 60 something percent way, it doesn't mean I'm right or wrong.
Because the only thing I could be right or wrong about was assigning the percentages.
And I've given room for it to go either way.
All right. I've talked too much.
I've gone too long. So I think I'll end it here.
Somebody says, you messing up, bro.
About what? Yeah, I see in your comments you're asking about whether zinc is included or not included.
I've seen lots of contradictory studies.
I've seen studies that say it's not the zinc.
I've seen studies that say, no, no, it's not the zinc, it's the azithromycin.
And so there are studies that have both zinc and azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine.
And then you say, well, that worked, but was it the azithromycin that some people say is the active ingredient, or was it the zinc, or was it the combination of the two, or the combination of the three?
Those are all the things we don't know, and it's a lot.
