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Aug. 10, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
46:21
Episode 1087 Scott Adams: What I Think is Bullshit About Coronavirus Opinions. Biden's Rotting Brain, Election Predictions

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com Content: Adding President Trump to Mount Rushmore 59% say Biden won't finish a 4 year term Breaking the habit of watching sports Emergency budget situations and Congress My revised opinions on coronavirus and HCQ Blood serum antibody therapy 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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Time Text
Hey Everybody.
Come on in. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Is it gonna be a good one?
No. It's gonna be a great one.
So great that you'll be wondering why I held back until now.
Yes, that's how good it will be, just like every morning.
The simultaneous sip is the highlight of the day, and all you need to enjoy it, I think you know, but just in case someone is new, you need a cup or mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stye and a canteen jug or 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.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go! I feel the herd immunity level dropping.
Yes, we'll have herd immunity probably at 1% now.
If you all did the simultaneous sip.
If some of you decided not to do the simultaneous sip, well, I make no promises.
See, that's my out.
Alright, let's talk about the news.
Chicago is falling apart.
It's being looted. And I still don't care.
I'd love to. I want to care.
But I don't feel like I should care about people more than they care about themselves.
So I'd say that Black Lives Matter is completely discredited, which is sad because it was only a month or so ago that they were riding high and looking very credible in their claims.
But time goes by and now Black Lives Matter has morphed from a sincere concern by most people who are marching into some kind of a Marxist The looting opportunity based on bullshit.
So I feel sorry for the people who are trying to make a difference because if you've associated with Black Lives Matter, the organization, not the idea, but just the organization, you have chosen a bad horse to ride.
So the highlight films from the looting in Chicago, the big game, Big game in Chicago.
We're fun to watch, and that was all I cared about it.
I just can't care about Chicago more than Chicago cares about itself.
I don't think it works that way.
If they really, really cared about themselves, well, they might act differently, and then I would see what I could do to help.
The fake news story of the day is that President Trump was trying to figure out I think it is.
Face on Mount Rushmore.
Now, when I say fake news, you know, we live in a world where nothing's quite as clean as it could be.
Is it possible that the president had once mentioned to the governor of North Dakota, South Dakota, whichever Dakota, that all the Dakotas are alike?
I mean, do you really need a north and the south?
It's a little bit overkill.
How about just one Dakota?
We don't need two.
But anyway, is it possible that the president ever asked about what it would take to get on there?
Yeah, it's possible.
Totally possible. But how serious would he have been?
Well, maybe you look into it.
Now, the thing that I like most about President Trump, other than he's just damn entertaining all the time, is that he doesn't seem to have any limits on what he thinks is possible.
To a large degree, that's what makes him successful.
He has that anything can happen.
I can be president. I can build a building.
I can become a billionaire, even if I've lost all my money.
So he has this sort of indomitable Why not?
Attitude. So if you take the person who won the presidency against all odds, did some amazing accomplishments, in my opinion, even already, would that personality at least ask the question?
I'm just asking.
Hypothetically, what would it take for a president who did a really good job You know, just for example, to get an extra head up on there.
What would it take?
Is it possible that President Trump ever asked that question?
I hope so.
I really do.
I hope he did.
Because that's the guy I like as my president.
I like the guy who might say, I'm not saying it's likely, but Let's just feel it out a little bit.
If you can tell me that you genuinely don't appreciate that, that that's who he is, I don't know.
I think you're missing the best part of him, is that he literally thinks there's nothing out of bounds in terms of possibilities in terms of good things, specifically.
Is it possible that a staffer wants...
Contacted somebody to ask what the process is.
Could be. I mean, it's as likely fake news as not, right?
Whenever you hear the anonymous person did something.
So when the president says it's fake news, that's probably true.
That's probably true. It's probably fake news.
But things are not always yes or no.
Is it possible that a rogue staffer could have asked about the process?
Here's why that makes sense.
If I were, let's say, on the campaign staff or just the staff in the White House, wouldn't you want to know if there's a process?
Because if there is a process, how hilarious would it be to start it going?
You see where I'm going?
So CNN reports it like it's a case of trying to get on there.
Maybe. Who knows?
More likely, you just ask the question.
Because, hey, you never know.
But if a staffer contacted to ask what the process is, the calculation you should do in your head is, how would it look if he was already in the process?
And obviously you could get enough Republicans to vote for it, to sign a poll, do a petition, fill out some paperwork.
So if there is a process, wouldn't it be funny If he were in the process, even if he didn't think it would necessarily culminate with him being on there, it would just be sort of delightful.
It would be sort of like being nominated for the Nobel Prize.
You know, it's better than nothing, right?
It doesn't mean you're going to get it, but it would be kind of hilarious to have that process going.
Could a staffer have done that as sort of a strategic thing because it would look good and it would be funny?
Maybe. Maybe.
But I think fake news has got to be your first go-to on likelihood.
Now, I could give you a sneak peek of some information that's going to come out in a few hours.
So Rasmussen will be reporting this morning.
But have not yet.
I got permission to tell you this in advance.
But they're going to show the Rasmussen poll that 59% think Biden is unlikely to finish a four-year term in the White House.
59% think he won't finish a four-year term.
Now, as you know, CNN has quite hilariously I think the Washington Post and some other anti-Trump outlets have hilariously decided that their defense of Joe Biden will be the Monty Python defense.
If you don't know the Monty Python defense, I'm not going to do a Monty Python scheme or sketch, because it's been done to death.
I will, however, bring in Dale, To give his full-throated defense of why it is that Joe Biden is clearly, clearly mentally competent.
Dale, could you come over here?
We've got some questions about President Biden.
What's the question? Well, the question is, why do you think he's mentally competent?
Because we're all watching him talk, and it's not looking good.
But you're pretty sure he's mentally competent.
Dale, can you come over here and explain this?
Sure. It's obvious.
Have you seen the man ride a bike?
Proof. I don't want to get all science on you because I know you're a denier, but when you see the science of the bicycle riding, I think that pretty, pretty much puts the lid on those rumors about Joe Biden's competence.
And moreover, I think you would agree.
He didn't just ride it in a straight line.
He took corners and he took a well.
He took corners on that bicycle like, I don't know, like a 25-year-old man could barely make a corner like that.
It was almost 45 degrees.
He took it with no trouble at all.
And you know that you can't have a mental incompetence and ride a bicycle.
What? Okay, I'm being told that you could totally ride a bicycle if you were mentally incompetent.
But that's not what's happening.
You can tell by the way he's riding it.
The style of his riding, the capability, the competence, the corners, the way he turns.
That just speaks mental competence, I think, pretty clearly.
And scene.
So the hilarity of, if you didn't see Brian Stelter's defense, and now there's a hilarious blog post on CNN saying that Biden has just driven a stake through the argument that he is mentally incompetent.
You know, before that bicycle riding thing, yeah, you can see why people might be saying it, but now that he rode a bicycle for, I don't know, 50 yards, now that we've seen that, well, case closed!
Case closed!
No, no, he's not dead, he's just resting.
In fact, CNN went so far as to say that President Trump's attack on Biden for being sleepy Has now been completely discredited because he rode a bike for 50 yards.
And they said that with like a straight face, if you can have a straight face while you're writing something.
You know what I mean? They sold that as a serious commentary.
So that was pretty amusing.
The simulation continues to amuse, just as we're wondering if Kamala Harris is...
Could it be the vice president of choice or if that choice is dead?
There was somebody with the same name, Kamala Harris, who apparently is a professional wrestler, who tragically died yesterday.
That's right. Somebody named Kamala Harris died yesterday at the same time we're wondering if her political career is alive or dead.
In the sense of the vice president pick.
There's some speculation that if she is not chosen as the vice president pick, that maybe they're holding her out for the presidential spot.
Now, if people ask me, Scott, Scott, Scott, it doesn't make sense that they would pick somebody else for a vice president.
Because that person would be the obvious person to become the top candidate if Joe Biden dropped down.
So it doesn't make sense that they would put in somebody else at the top when the whole point of a vice presidential pick is that they're ready now to take the top spot.
So you'd have to ask yourself, well, if somebody else is the top spot, why did you pick this vice president in the first place?
And the answer is...
What if they already know they're going to get rid of the top spot before Election Day?
What if they know they want to replace the top and put in the vice presidential pick at maybe the same time?
What would that look like?
Well, what that would look like is you would absolutely have to pick somebody for the top spot who had been recently running for president.
I think you would be limited to that, because the public would just sort of insist that somebody who put in the work is considered.
So that would be your Elizabeth Warrens, your Kamala Harris's, your Cory Booker's, etc.
But Kamala is probably the strongest of that group.
If you ask me. And if she doesn't get picked, or let's say the longer you go, every day that we go without a VP pick suggests that they're looking to change out both candidates.
So that doesn't mean it's true, but it's very suggestive of the fact that there's a bigger decision than just the VP. Now, if today they announce the VP and it's You know, Bass, then I think you have other problems in terms of the Kamala Harris theory.
And would it be possible that you could make the change after Biden had picked some other vice president?
And the answer is, yeah, you could.
Work with me on this.
Just think this through.
Let's say Biden picked Karen Bass for vice president.
You might say to yourself, well, you know, not really tested at the highest level.
You kind of want a governor or a senator or something.
Wait, what is Karen Bass, a representative?
So you might say to yourself, okay, that's as good as a vice presidential pick needs to be.
Now, the whole point of a vice president pick is that they need to look less good than the top of the ticket.
If you don't get that right, it's a bad look.
You don't want your vice president pick to be clearly a better candidate than the top of the ticket.
So, what happens if Biden drops out before Election Day and Bass is the vice presidential pick?
Do you feel her as the top of the ticket?
I don't. Because it would feel like she hasn't been quite tested enough.
But you could easily see Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.
So I do think that in this weird case of replacing a candidate before the election, if it happens, it does open the possibility that Kamala could be slotted into the top slot without ever having been picked as the vice president.
Completely possible, in my opinion.
But every day that goes by, people are saying, I don't think It's Kamala.
Maybe like Willie Brown said recently, she'd be a better attorney general.
To which I say, strong argument.
Strong argument.
She would probably be a strong pick for attorney general.
So maybe. We'll see.
Let's see what else is going on.
I think we've got to talk about coronavirus.
But before we do that, let's talk about sports.
I did a tweet in which I asked people if they've lost interest in any professional sports that they used to be interested in.
And man, did people lose interest.
People lost a lot of interest.
And I don't know if it's just because the way they're doing it without the crowds, because it's a late season, so it doesn't look like it really counts in the usual way, or if people just got out of the habit.
And here's the thing I'd like to inject into the conversation.
If you're looking at what is the future of sports, I would suggest that breaking people from their habit of every Sunday I sit down and I watch my sports, or Every evening I watch a basketball game in the fall.
Whatever your habit was, your habit probably got broken.
And when a habit gets broken, it's hard to get it back.
Because you just can't beat a habit for locking in a product.
It's one of the reasons that comic strips can last for 30 years in the newspaper, whereas a TV show typically can't, etc.
And it's because people are very habit-driven for their newspaper Habits, which is why newspapers can even still be a thing years after you think people should be watching it on their devices.
So habit is incredibly strong, and the coronavirus broke it.
It broke the habit. So once that habit is broken, I don't know that sports can ever recover back to where they were.
I'm sure it'll be a viable business, but I don't think it's getting back to where it was.
Alright, let me talk about the coronavirus.
Oh, yeah, one more thing.
So the president did his executive orders, which he can't create money that doesn't exist.
You need Congress to do that in terms of creating a budget.
But he can move things around and he can delay things and he's using that power.
For the coronavirus relief stuff.
Now, here's my question.
Or maybe it's a statement.
Doesn't Congress seem like the wrong place for budget authority in an emergency?
Now, Congress is exactly the right place for budget authority in normal times.
Even as dysfunctional as they are, it's still the right place.
You still need it to be there.
But in the very specific case of a national emergency...
That affects the economy as well as the well-being of the people.
I'm feeling like that's a commander-in-chief job.
My perfect situation would be the commander-in-chief, in an emergency, could just simply allocate funds as if it were Congress.
And you'd have to constrain that so it doesn't get out of control.
It has to be an emergency.
Maybe Congress needs to say it's an emergency.
I don't know. Then I would also suggest that if you have that system and you just say, you know, our homeland defense is inseparable from our economic health.
They're inseparable. So the only way to protect the country is to protect the economy.
The only way to do that right is also by protecting the people, the health, etc.
And therefore... Since the economy and the public health and homeland security are really all just one big ball, in the specific case of an emergency, I'd rather have the Commander-in-Chief have complete control of the budget.
With this control, that the Supreme Court could line veto anything that doesn't meet the test of being applicable to the emergency.
So in other words, if your president tried to push through, I don't know, border wall funding, just because, ah, the commander-in-chief has all the power now, it's an emergency, I'll use the emergency to get this other stuff.
And he makes a case and goes, well, you need border security, because then, you know, people don't get in with the virus.
And then the Supreme Court looks at it and says, yeah, I hear what you're saying, but you only have authority for immediate stuff.
So the border wall is out, but the bill can continue.
So nothing gets delayed.
The Supreme Court would look at it 24 hours and say, no, not this one.
The payments to the people, that's good.
The delay of this, you can do that.
But you can't build a wall.
That's not what this emergency stuff is about.
Would that be a better system?
I'll just put that out there.
Because I don't know that when the Constitution was created...
This sort of situation was really contemplated.
Because in those days, you just had more time for everything.
So that's a tweak I would make.
Make it the Commander-in-Chief's job under the emergency situation with the Supreme Court as kind of a check.
All right. Because, you know, depending on Congress for money in an emergency, it's just not a thing.
It's just not a thing.
All right. I've come to some new revised opinions on the coronavirus and let's go through that.
Hydroxychloroquine estimate.
I have been at 50% chance that it's real and it works if you combine it with the zinc and azithromycin and you give it to people early when they first have symptoms.
So I've said, based on what I've seen, Sort of a coin flip.
Sort of a 50-50.
You just can't tell. And I've revised that down to 30%.
And I'll tell you why.
So it still might work.
If it's a 30% chance of working, I'd still want to get the prescription.
Just in case.
Because the downside is so low.
And the upside is really high.
So it doesn't change whether you should get a prescription.
But let me tell you why I've lowered my estimate.
I've been saying since the beginning that we don't have the good, you know, the RPT, you know, what do you call it, the placebo-controlled randomized study, the gold standard study.
So we don't have that kind of study for the appropriate use of the drug, which is early and with the zinc.
We have studies that show it without the zinc, they're worthless.
We have studies that show it when you use it at the wrong time, when it's too late, they're worthless.
So there are lots of high-quality studies of the wrong stuff.
So we've got good studies of the wrong stuff, worthless.
We have, I think the number was 56 or more, studies, if you will, but not the RPT gold standard studies that suggest it works.
And it's been asked, what are the chances that you'd have all these studies that, sure, they're not gold standard, but they're different ways of looking at it, And they all point in the same direction?
It's a pretty good point.
But, it's not evidence.
It just doesn't rule it out.
So I wouldn't put too much weight on that, because first of all, if somebody had a study that was different, would we have ever seen it?
I don't know. So there's lots to be asked about that.
And then, what I thought was going to be the most persuasive Was comparing countries that used hydroxychloroquine to countries that didn't.
How many of you have seen the chart that shows that the countries not using hydroxychloroquine or like their curve is way high, lots of death, lots of infection, compared to the ones who used it early and it's like nothing.
It's like it just wiped out the virus practically.
How many of you have seen that chart?
I think Laura Ingram added on the show...
I've tweeted it a bunch of times.
You've all seen it, right? And Dr.
Zelenko had tweeted it himself.
So I tweeted his tweet that included that chart in the study, and I asked the smart people on the internet to say, does this look right?
And what do you think they said?
Not even close.
I think Gummy Bear has run that chart as well.
And when you open it up to people who are sort of good at finding problems with things, which is most of my followers, it just doesn't hold up at all.
So here's what's obviously wrong about it.
It leaves countries out.
Now if you say to yourself, yeah, but so what if you left some countries out?
The ones that are in tell the whole story.
If it's true, That these countries used it early and they got this result.
And it's true that these countries didn't use it and they got a wildly different result.
Does it really matter that you left out other countries?
Because that's enough, right?
No. That's how you fake it.
The way you create a fake chart is by leaving out the other countries that don't show the pattern.
Now, let me ask you this.
Does every country...
Have a chart that goes up, and then there's some point where it goes down.
You all agree that every country has one of those charts, right?
They don't all use hydroxychloroquine.
Some of them just go, and the United States has sort of that double dip thing.
But they all have a point where there's an inflection.
Now, the inflections are all compressed in, let's say, just a month or so, right?
There's like maybe two months, but something like one month Where every country that had an inflection point, it was around about that same time.
How many of them also made some kind of a change with their hydroxychloroquine that just coincidentally lines up with when that was going to happen anyway?
Doesn't take many.
If there were only, let's say, 25% of them coincidentally were doing better with, let's say, social distancing...
At about the same time, they were also saying, hey, why don't we use this hydroxychloroquine?
You could draw the chart, and it would look like 25% of the countries coincidentally lined up.
That you've got something that looks like a correlation.
It's like, hey, at about the same time they did this hydroxychloroquine, things got really good on their curve.
And then you look at it and you say, well, but there were lots of countries that were having that same curve thing.
A quarter of them lined up with your hypothesis, and those are the ones that ended up on the chart.
75% of them you either didn't know or didn't line up, and so they're not on the chart.
Now, I don't know if I'm explaining what happened in this specific case.
What I'm trying to do is open your mind to the understanding that that chart has no credibility whatsoever.
And when you look into who produced it, who is the original source, How they put it together, you find mumbo-jumbo and bullshit that is clearly somebody trying to hide their identity, so you don't even know where it came from.
They use words like it's randomized when it's not, which is a big red flag.
And the whole thing looks super sketchy, to the point where the chart producers look more like foreign interference than they do like good helpers who just want to be anonymous.
Now, does that mean that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work?
It does not. I'm still at a 30% chance it works.
I'm just saying that what it would take to convince me has never happened.
So that chart, complete bullshit.
All the 56 studies that are not the right kind, not confirming anything.
The studies confirming it doesn't work, complete bullshit.
They studied the wrong stuff.
So, There's a weird situation here in which why is it that studying the right thing is so darn hard?
I mean, we've had several full month periods that have passed.
It's been five months since the beginning, and from the very beginning we were talking about this drug.
Are you telling me you can't do a one-month trial in five months when it's an emergency?
Nobody pulled that off?
I'm just not buying it.
Here's the other challenge I had.
I have not yet heard of one case anywhere in the world in which somebody got the drug early and then later died.
Now that doesn't mean it didn't happen, but why have I never heard of one?
Couldn't I get one anecdote?
One anecdote of somebody who took it at the right time, didn't have some horrible, obvious comorbidity, and then went on to die.
If your fake news really wants to embarrass the president, give me some of those anecdotes.
Sure. I'll know it's just anecdotes and it won't really mean anything because even the proponents don't say it saves every person in every case.
They're just saying that's an amazing difference.
But just show me one anecdote of somebody who took it and died anyway.
You can't find one? You can't find any?
Must be one out there somewhere.
All right. Let's talk about Sweden.
Let me check the news on Sweden.
Let's see. Here's a story in which the person writing about it says, it's absolutely true that Sweden did the right thing.
Okay, scroll down. Here's another news story that says, I've looked at Sweden and they did all the wrong things.
They sure lost. Really nobody knows what's going on.
But let me give you some insight as to how bad the analysis of Sweden is.
Check me on my math, but see if I'm in the neighborhood here.
So Sweden has a population of 10 million.
To reach herd immunity, and we'll talk about whether this number is too high or not, let's say 60% infection would get you to herd immunity.
So if 6 million, which would be 60% of their total population, if 6 million people had it, Already, and that's what's happening because Sweden seems to be doing well, and the thought is they've reached some kind of herd immunity.
Last I checked, the fatality rate was 3.75%.
So 3.75% of people who get it would die.
That includes elderly, etc.
So that would imply that for Sweden to be at 60% herd immunity, Which would be enough, that they would have 225,000 deaths.
We'll get to those who are screaming at me in the comments that it would be much less, right?
So if Sweden got to herd immunity at the 60% level, which is what most experts say you need to get to, we would have seen 225,000 deaths.
What's the actual number?
Six. Right.
So if you think that Sweden reached that 60% of herd immunity, you're off by a lot.
Because they would have 225,000 deaths, not 6,000.
So they're nowhere near anything like traditional herd immunity.
But let's get to the second part.
So there are smart people arguing that We don't need to get anywhere near 60%.
In fact, the number could be as low as 35%.
It could be 20%.
And the reason being that's offered is that there are so many people who have had some related kind of coronavirus that has some markers that are similar enough that your body is sort of prepped for it.
But it wouldn't show up in specific immunity.
So if you tested somebody who was resistant to it because of other exposures, you wouldn't be able to test for it.
They would just have some markers, but not immunity per se, but that in reality they just wouldn't get it.
So that you would have to include them, and then if you did, the real herd immunity could be closer to 20% or something.
But, Sweden's still more at like 3%.
So even if you went all the way down to say 20% gives you herd immunity, Sweden's not even close to that.
They're nowhere close.
They're not even in dynamiting distance from even the lowest 20% herd immunity.
But yet they seem to be doing okay.
What's going on? And the answer is we don't know.
We don't know. We don't know.
We don't know if they're doing well.
We don't know why they're doing what they're doing.
But there are some other big differences in Sweden which are worth noting.
One is that we talk about them not closing their economy, but that's not exactly what happened.
The voluntary social distancing, etc., were pretty well maintained So they weren't that different from somebody who closed their economy.
They did have a better economic outcome.
They took a hit too, but not as bad as other countries.
Then you'd also have to ask yourself, why is it that Sweden is doing so much better than the UK? Why is Sweden doing so much better than the UK? Because if this herd immunity thing is really, really low, and Sweden somehow hit it, how did the UK zoom right past it by a lot?
So why would herd immunity in Sweden be down here, but herd immunity in the UK would be up here?
Doesn't work, does it, right?
Because unless there's something genetic or something about where they live, what they've been exposed to in the past, I suppose, But it seems inconsistent to me that anybody would have a higher death rate than anybody else if Sweden is hitting herd immunity.
If you can get herd immunity at that lower level of death, wouldn't everybody be there?
Or just about there?
I don't know. And then it has been mentioned that the Swedes have a different lifestyle.
They might spend more time alone, naturally.
And that they might be healthier.
They do better on vitamin D because they supplement, because they don't get enough sun.
So they supplement, which might make a difference.
And apparently they have much lower rates of diabetes.
I don't know if that's true.
But if you assume that the Swedes have a low African-American community, That alone would put their death rate lower, would it not?
Because the African-American community in, well, no, if it were in Sweden, it would be just the black or the African-Sweden community, I guess.
So the fact that we have a larger minority population who are tragically more susceptible to it, that's part of the story, too.
So maybe Sweden is just being Sweden and And there's nothing magic happening there.
Alright, so here's what's not credible so far.
These studies which proclaim they have debunked hydroxychloroquine are not credible.
Even the RPT ones, because they studied the wrong thing.
Studied it not with zinc, they studied it on deathly ill people when it's too late.
So there's no good study that shows it doesn't work.
Likewise, there's no high quality gold standard that shows it does work.
And The country comparisons seem completely garbage, and I forgot to mention this, but nobody really knows what different countries are doing with hydroxychloroquine.
Nobody really knows, because it's up to the doctors.
We don't know if the doctors are really using it.
Do they really have supply?
How are they using it?
We kind of don't know. So if you think you can compare countries, good luck with that, because you'd have to talk to a lot of doctors in every country to get some kind of a representative sample.
Alright. So here's what I think is our best hope at this point.
That the blood serum antibody treatment will become a commercial market.
That is our best hope, I think.
Now, my understanding is that if you take the blood from somebody who's had it, and you find out that you've got the better blood, some blood is better than others for the antibodies, and You put those antibodies in somebody, it will confer some immunity in them, but it might not last forever.
But it also doesn't need to.
I don't think it needs to last forever.
And just to give you an idea of what a commercial market for this would be, as opposed to just working through the normal healthcare system, if there were a commercial market where somebody could offer me right now, literally today, they could say, if you come into my clinic, I've already got some antibodies that I've harvested.
Put them in your body.
It's safe enough.
I would need some evidence that it's safe.
But if it's safe enough, what would you pay for it?
And here's my answer.
Five thousand dollars.
I would personally, because I'm rich, Right?
So you don't need to throw that in my face.
I'm rich. So I would pay $5,000 to get that antibody treatment.
Now why would I pay $5,000?
Two reasons. One, it'd be worth it.
If you have the money, it'd be worth it.
But two, and this is just important in my particular case, that's what makes it a market.
When the dumb rich overpay, and that's actually a market segment, if you've ever worked in corporate America, you know that the dumb rich are actually a market segment.
The people who will buy the new expensive thing regardless of price, because they want the new expensive thing.
So you sell it to the dumb rich first, because they'll buy it no matter what, if it's expensive and good in some way, and then that drives the price down eventually.
So that people who can afford it would be able to afford it.
So if it came out today and they said, hey, it's going to be $5,000 for one treatment and we don't even know how long it'll last, I would say, first, first, partly for the immunity and partly to help drive down the price.
Because the more money we shovel at it, the more they can lower the price so that those of you who can't afford it would be able to.
And I mean that seriously. I would be in line in one minute because it would be part of a larger good, I think.
Plus, you know, it might work for me too.
So in my opinion, that plus maybe rapid testing are the two things that could help us the most.
You probably need both.
The rapid testing, meaning if we could get FDA approval for the little paper tests, which is basically a spit test, you can do it at home.
It won't pick up. If you just got the virus, it won't pick it up.
But if you're already infectious, it will pick it up.
Quite reliably. And so that's enough, given that it might only cost a dollar to do the test.
That's enough to really, really push on a bunch of tests.
You know, people could test themselves twice a day and it wouldn't be too expensive.
And... So, I'm putting the odds of the vaccine making the difference at...
Odds of the vaccine making all the difference?
30%. 30% that the vaccine is the answer.
The likely answer is a war on every front, where we're just doing everything that works.
And I think the blood serum thing is clearly going to be in that category.
That's the one thing nobody doubts will work, right?
I don't think there's anybody smart who says that the...
That the blood serum thing wouldn't work.
It just might be hard to scale it up.
But I think we can figure that out if people like me are willing to overpay for the service.
I'm seeing percentages go by, but I don't know what you're speaking about.
A game changer is not 30%.
I think there's just a 30% chance that the virus vaccinations will make all the difference.
Somebody says the vaccine will be a home run.
I like your optimism.
But keep in mind that we haven't been successful with these vaccines in the past.
So it would be kind of remarkable if it worked.
And even if it works, it might only work for 50% of the public.
And that's according to Fauci.
So Fauci is warning us that getting the shot doesn't mean you're immune.
It might mean you're more immune.
50% of the people, maybe.
Something like that. Monoclonal antibodies.
I have a big question about why we don't know what's going on with that.
The idea is you take somebody's antibodies from their blood, and instead of just making them give more and more antibodies, you clone it in a machine.
I don't know, whatever kind of chemistry you have to do to do that.
But I don't know why we're not doing that already.
So that feels like a big black hole of knowledge where we should really know what's going on because that could be easily the most promising thing.
Ivermectin.
Yeah, I'm reading about ivermectin, but I need to figure out what's going on there.
All right. A meth house blew up in Baltimore, somebody says.
How did I miss that story?
Yeah, flu shots, regular flu shots don't always work.
Feed your mitochondria.
Ha ha ha.
I like that comment.
Feed your mitochondria.
Look it up. Are you saying it will be an annual shot?
Oh, I don't know. I doubt it.
Your death rate percent seems high.
Yeah, you know, you should check that.
Check my death rate estimates.
Because it feels like 99% of the people survive, right?
I think the 3 point whatever death rate includes people over 80.
And there are a lot of them.
Somebody says, wrong, Scott.
Regeneron is doing a trial on antibodies.
They're doing a trial on it, but what part is wrong?
Was there something I said that violates the fact that there's a company doing a trial on antibodies?
I don't know. Dow is up.
Alright, that's all I've got for now.
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