Episode 1151 Scott Adams: Why the Trump Slaughtermeter Just Got Pinned at 100%. Swiss Coronavirus Mystery. Who Reversal
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Content:
Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters...vote integrity
Why the Trump Slaughtermeter is at 100% (currently)
WHO does NOT favor lockdowns of the economy
Science is often bullshit...that's just a fact
Switzerland: 3 cultures, 3 COVID experiences
Democrat strategy: Keep Black voters uninformed
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That's bad form. Instead, you need a cupper, a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask or a vessel of any kind.
See them on my back shelf there?
That's your visual cue.
And join me now for the dopamine hit of the day, the The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it's gonna happen right now.
Go. I dare say that was siptastic.
Yeah, it was.
Oh, we got a lot of fun stuff to talk about today.
I'd like to start by telling you about my dream.
No, no, don't turn it off yet.
I know there's nothing more boring than hearing about somebody's dream, but watch how cleverly I fold this into my story.
Hold on. When I was a kid, I had a recurring dream in which I could fly.
I could actually just float and levitate and fly.
And I would have this dream maybe once a year, and it was my favorite dream, but there was one catch.
Even though the dream itself was spectacular because, as I said, I could fly.
Imagine a vivid dream where you could just float around the house and you could be up at the ceiling and you could go outside and you could float over the town.
It was great.
There was only one problem with it.
And it was this.
For whatever reason, my dream always included the following element.
Other people were not impressed.
It was always in the dream.
I'd be floating literally at the ceiling, and I'd say to the people below me, say, hey, do you see this?
I'm literally flying.
And people would look up, and then they'd just continue their conversations.
And I'd say, no, I don't think you understand.
I am above the ground, defying gravity, literally the first human being who has ever flown, and I'm doing it right in front of you.
And nobody cared.
And they would just go about their business.
And I would keep saying, are you serious?
I'm flying!
I'm flying!
Look at me! Why can't you see me?
Every year. Once a year.
And so I was reminded of that dream when I was reading A piece by Andrew McCarthy.
In which he says this.
This is just one part of what he said.
That is that Clinton, meaning Hillary, actually did what she accused Trump of doing.
She colluded with Russians through yet another foreigner she recruited to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign, the ludicrous former British spy Christopher Steele, in order to damage Trump's campaign and cinch the election for herself.
Now, I believe that that is so well documented by the handwritten notes, etc., coming out of the disclosures, that this is just a fact, right?
And I feel like Andrew McCarthy is having my flying dream right now.
He's saying, okay, people, it's the biggest story of all time.
The whole Russia collusion thing was literally opposite.
It was actually an example of Of Hillary Clinton colluding with Russians to overthrow the legally elected government of the United States.
So, how about that?
And all the people on Earth say, yeah, uh-huh, checking my stocks.
How's the weather today?
And then Andrew McCarthy says, um, okay, I don't think you heard me.
Because your reaction is not really matching what I just said.
So let me say it again more clearly.
We have now proof...
No doubt about it.
Proof that Hillary Clinton colluded with Russians to overthrow the legally elected government of the United States.
Anything? Does anybody care?
Seriously, you're just going to ignore this.
I don't know what to say about it.
It is so mind-bogglingly, it's exactly like my flying dream.
Why can't people pay attention to this?
Why does it seem like it's happening and not happening at the same time?
Why is it the biggest story of all time that's not being reported on at least the mainstream media?
It's mind-boggling.
Anyway, moving on.
I've told you about something I call the Adam's Law of Slow-Moving Disasters, and it goes like this.
When humanity can see a huge problem coming from a long ways away, we have a 100% track record of handling it.
For example, we could see far in advance that it would be hard to feed all the people if the population kept growing.
But we figured out how to make more food and, you know, we did a pretty good job of it.
We thought we would run out of oil, but we figured out how to frack and how to find more oil and build solar panels, etc.
So, looks like we'll get through it.
Likewise with climate change.
Looks like it's the end of the world if the scientists, the consensus of them are right, but I'm pretty confident that we'll figure out workarounds and we'll be fine.
But as the time that you have to fix a problem gets compressed, the shorter and shorter you have, well then it gets a little more uncertain.
The more time you have, the more likely you'll figure it out.
But what about voting this year?
The question is whether the voting mechanisms will be secure.
Will it be Will the mail-in voting give us a credible result or a non-credible result?
Will there be so many problems that we can't fix it?
Well, we're seeing already a whole bunch of misprinted ballots that we're scrambling to fix.
You see states moving their deadlines for when you could have a postmark on your mail-in ballot.
So you're seeing people scrambling to adjust.
And you could argue that they might have started a few months ago, and they've got a few more weeks, and they're probably working around the clock trying to fix problems and monitor for problems and everything.
It's going to be close.
It's going to be close.
On one hand, I always bet on humans if there's enough time.
On the other hand, if there's not enough time, I bet against humans every time.
Because humans are not good at doing complicated things correctly the first try.
It's almost not a thing.
In fact, when it happens, it becomes the stuff of legends.
For example, the first time we actually launched a rocket with the attempt of putting somebody on the moon, it worked.
That's one of the reasons it's such a big deal, because it was a really big chance.
But it worked, so that's the one we talk about more than anything else.
So, if I had to guess, let me put this positive filter on it.
I think the voting will be better than it should have been.
In other words, I think that humanity is really going to try to rise to this challenge because the stakes are so high.
And we do have some time.
It's not like a hurricane, you know, where you have maybe a few days.
We had weeks.
There should have been enough time to print things, reprint things, check things, scrub databases as much as possible.
So we might be in a little better shape than we thought.
So that's my positivity on there.
So yesterday I shared with you my conspiracy theory that you shouldn't take too seriously, that Kim Jong-un shows up on video not talking, and then separately you hear the audio of him talking, but you don't see him talking on video, which at least opens up the possibility that you're looking at a body double on video and somebody who can do a good impression on audio.
So CNN ran another piece on Kim Jong Un's big celebration thing in which he showed up in public, and it teased that it was going to show Kim Jong Un being emotional during his speech.
So I said to myself, I guess that conspiracy theory fell apart, because CNN is going to show me a clip of Kim Jong Un giving his speech, It does look like it's something current.
And he'll be emotional while he's talking.
And then I will see him physically, the video, and I'll hear him talking at the same time.
And then there's no doubt about it.
If you see the emotion and you see him talking, he's alive, he's well.
And then they show the clip.
And they show Kim Jong-un in front of the microphone, and he's got some tears.
He's emotional. And then I'm waiting for him to talk.
And they cut away.
They don't show him talking.
I don't know if that video exists.
Probably it exists.
Because I don't believe my own conspiracy theory.
But it's getting increasingly interesting that the thing you'd most expect of video of him talking currently, the only thing that I would find completely credible...
It doesn't yet exist. So that's why it's a conspiracy theory.
Don't take it too seriously.
Andres Backhouse, who keeps me honest on all things data.
When you're on Twitter all day, you see a lot of bad data.
And Andres often comes in to the comments And it clears up my misconceptions.
So he did that a couple of times today.
One of the times was he pointed out there's a paper that estimates the trade war costs for China were far greater than for the United States.
So they do the math.
They figured out that China probably cost them $35 billion, which would be about 0.3 of their GDP, whereas the US probably cost us a little under $16 billion, half as much, but we also have a bigger economy.
So it was only 0.08% of our GDP. And apparently Vietnam was the big beneficiary.
Their GDP went up. It's starting to look like Trump's instinct on the trade war was correct, in the sense that it would cost China more than it would cost us.
So if somebody was going to blink, it would probably be them.
You know, all things being equal.
Now, of course, they would put pressure on our farmers, so it's not exactly apples to apples, you know, because they could put a little political pressure on us in a way that we can't put political pressure on them.
Because of the differences in the systems.
But it still suggests that Trump's instincts were in the right direction.
That China would have more to lose.
And if you go into a debate, or let's say into a trade war, with somebody who definitely has more to lose than you do, it's a strong position.
Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead.
Doesn't mean you'll win. Doesn't mean it comes out good in the end.
But it certainly makes it look smart.
Makes it look like a good play.
Alright, so let's get to the meat of this.
I have placed the Trump slaughter meter at 100%.
It has been as low as 50% even last week.
When Trump was still sick with coronavirus and was doing some things that were getting him a lot of negative attention, like driving around and putting at risk his drivers, as the critics say, And he did put them at risk.
I just think it was such a small risk it wasn't terribly important.
But it's at 100%.
Now I remind you for those who are not familiar with the slaughter meter, the slaughter meter is not a prediction.
It's not. The slaughter meter just tells you how the day is going or how the week is going.
It's a snapshot in time This says, artificially, and remember this is very artificial, that if everything kept going the way things went this week, you would expect this outcome.
So if everything went the way things are going today, Trump would win easily.
And let me give you an idea of what's happening today, because the news cycle is just crazy, isn't it?
How quickly you can be whiplashed from, oh, he's definitely going to lose, to, oh, he's definitely going to win, oh, he's definitely going to lose.
It's like whiplash.
So the slaughter meter could change again, you know, 20 times before election.
But as of today, it's pinned at 100%, and here's why.
Number one, well, let me give you some context.
Trump doesn't need to convince you that he did a great job in all elements of the coronavirus.
He doesn't need to make that case.
Now, you think he would, because that's the biggest complaint against him.
It's the one that seems to stick.
So all of the experts seem to agree, Democrats and Republicans, that where Trump is most vulnerable to criticism...
It's the coronavirus because the U.S. numbers don't look good compared to other countries.
So that's gigantic, gigantic weakness because it's the thing in our minds.
It's the thing that most scares us.
It affects the economy.
It affects everything.
He's got to get the coronavirus right or else he can't get re-elected, right?
Wouldn't you say that would just be obvious?
He's got to get it right.
It's the most important thing.
Or does he?
This is what I would like to add to the thinking on this.
Not true. He does not need to convince you that the most important thing happening right now, he got right.
There's another way to do it.
He has to convince you that it isn't that scary.
Because if you're convinced that the coronavirus went from a 10 and a 10 in scariness, let's say in March, and he's reduced it to a 5, maybe?
If Trump can get your fear level from a 10 and a 10 down to a 5, it's not going to matter that much how it was handled.
Because its importance will be less in your mind.
So here's what happened this week that will have the irrational effect of making you less scared.
Number one, Trump is 73 or 74, got the coronavirus, he's got a comorbidity, went into the hospital, and as of today, just, what, a week later or whatever, he looks great.
He looks great.
Now, Should anybody take from one anecdote about one person who had the best medical care in the world and was discovered early with the testing and had a good outcome?
Should you extend that one single person out of seven billion?
Would it be logical or rational to say, oh, well, I guess it's safe because of what happened with that one person that one time?
No. That would be completely irrational, and you're going to do it anyway.
You can't help it. We are story-driven creatures.
You could give me all the data in the world, big mountain of data over here, and that one story about Trump gets the coronavirus and he's 100% a week later.
Those are not equal.
That one story about Trump recovering is bigger than your whole mountain of data.
Because it's visual, we see it, we feel it, we talk about it, It becomes number one in our heads.
It just takes us in an irrational place, which helps Trump.
So that's number one. Trump fully recovered becomes its own little story with power.
And he knows that, by the way.
He's playing it because he knows how powerful that is.
Here's the other thing that's coming.
It's not quite here yet, but I would say it's right on the border of being here.
And it's this. There were 34 people who were allegedly infected who had some White House connection.
34 people.
That's terrible, right?
That's really bad for Trump, right?
Because it would show that he mismanaged the protection element of it and got 34 people infected.
So that's day one story.
But what's the story next week?
Chris Christie is already out of the hospital.
Looks like he'll be fine.
Weren't you worried about him?
I mean, honestly, if you're being honest, you heard that Chris Christie got...
Coronavirus, and you said to yourself, oh, that's not good, because comorbidity city, right?
He's got, I think, two comorbidities.
He's got asthma.
He's got a weight issue.
He's not as young as he could be.
I don't know how old he is, but he's not quite into the danger zone, but he's not a spring chicken.
So he's out of the hospital.
Looks like he'll be fine.
What happens if, and I think this is the most likely scenario, What happens if all 34 people are fine in a week?
Doesn't look as dangerous, does it?
Now, would that tell you anything?
Could you look at 34 people who, again, were tested early, found their symptoms early, got the best treatment in the world, probably?
Can you make any logical inference from 34 people?
No, you can't.
They're all special cases.
But that's not how your brain works.
Your brain is going to say, okay, now I see this pattern.
It feels like everybody who gets it, including Chris Christie, including President Trump with his comorbidities, it feels like everybody's getting better.
Maybe this Trump cure, huh, this Regeneron, and maybe with the Remdesivir, depending on where you are in the infection arc, huh, It's sounding a little bit more like a cure, isn't it?
Now, is that logical?
Nope. Nope.
There's no logic to what I just said.
Because the death rate of the virus is known to be less than 1%.
And if you took 34 people with great health care who got detected early, there's a really, really high chance they'll all be fine.
And it wouldn't mean anything.
Beyond what you already knew, it would just be more of the same.
But because we're going to look at it, because we're focused on it, because there'll be famous people, senators, the White House Spocks, all of these people are people you know.
They're familiar faces.
The weight of those 34 people getting better, and let's hope they do, right?
Nobody's out of the woods completely yet.
But it's going to start looking like that really soon.
It's starting to look like they're all under the woods.
Because if any of them had turned bad, if anybody else had been hospitalized, well, you'd know it by now.
You'd know it by now.
But I'm saving the best one for last.
All right? So before I get to the best one last, the economy is improving, right?
So your economy is getting better.
And we have these anecdotal stories of people who seem to go through the coronavirus fine, and there's a story for why it's better now than it used to be.
And President Trump has provided the story.
The story is that these new therapeutics are the bomb.
They're just really good.
So you've got a reason, and you've got a story.
Way more powerful than data.
Way more powerful. Not even in the same universe.
Very, very unimportant, if you haven't noticed.
It should be the most important, but it's not.
Story? Very important.
And the story is all Trump right now.
You didn't see that coming, did you?
So the economy is approving.
Which you would expect because it's coming off a low base, right?
It shouldn't be any big surprise that an economy coming off a low point would have big percentage gains.
So I think somebody said that on October 29th, just a few days before election, we're going to see GDP results that show that the GDP had a record increase.
In other words, a world record for the United States increased quarter over quarter?
I think. I think it's going to look like that.
It might not, but it'll be a good increase either way.
Now, why should you make from that?
Oh my God, Trump is a genius because we made a record for recovery?
No. No.
It would not be logical in any way.
To attribute that to leadership, per se.
Because we're coming off a low base, and anybody who had been president would have experienced probably a record gain.
Because what's weird about this disaster, it's not like a war, where you have to rebuild a factory before you can get your GDP up.
You just have to turn on the lights.
And say, all right, back to work.
Turn on the lights. Everybody who used to be working here, you're all trained.
Just come back and do what you were doing last spring.
So the economy will, of course, look good.
It won't mean what people think it means, but they will process it as though it's a Trump success.
So irrationally, it all works in his favor.
Still save the best part for last.
Are you ready? This will make this whole Periscope worthwhile.
So as of today, the World Health Organization, WHO, announced that it does not favor lockdowns as a way of combating coronavirus.
Did you know that yet?
Yeah, the World Health Organization, WHO, Experts, if you will.
Indeed, probably the experts in this very thing have come out and publicly said they do not favor lockdowns of the economy.
And the reason given? Reason given?
It's bad for poor people.
Bad for black people.
Bad for brown people.
Bad for anybody who's in a bad economic situation.
And here's what's fun about this.
You might say to yourself, well, Scott, but the World Health Organization has some credibility problems.
That's why we pulled out.
They first said masks are bad, then they said they're good.
They said not to worry too much about the virus, but then it turns out we should worry.
So it does seem as though the World Health Organization is not that credible.
But wait, it gets better.
It gets better. Let's say you're a Democrat and you hear this news.
The World Health Organization says that, well, they don't use these words, but they say in effect that Trump was right when he contradicted the experts and said, let's open up the economy.
That's right. One of the biggest expert groups, and according to Democrats, very credible, the World Health Organization has just sided with Trump, who had opposed most of the experts, or a lot of the experts.
There was a very growing, sizable minority of experts who were saying the same thing the World Health Organization said, which is, ah, you might be hurting people more than helping with these lockdowns.
So if you're a Democrat and your big thing about Trump is that he doesn't follow the science, what do you do now?
What do you do now?
Those of us who like President Trump, one of the things you like about him the best is that he doesn't follow the science.
Because the science is often bullshit.
Right? You knew that.
You knew that.
You knew that the science is often, not always, and certainly we should pay attention to science.
Certainly we should give it the greatest of weight.
But it's often bullshit.
That's just a fact.
And you need a leader who is willing to say, um, okay, I hear what you're saying, but I still think it's bullshit.
And here's why.
That's what Trump did.
From the very beginning, when everybody else was saying, uh, hey, idiot, orange man, lock down.
It's the only way we can defeat this thing.
You gotta lock down.
Why are you being such a moron?
Why don't you listen to the experts?
Why don't you listen to science?
Uh-oh. Science just agreed with him.
Maybe not all of science, but the World Health Organization?
Not exactly President Trump's friend, right?
Is there anybody who dislikes President Trump more than the World Health Organization?
Probably not this month.
They might be the winners.
So somebody says, I'm glad you're finally in about the experts.
I don't think you know my history if you're saying that comment.
I have never been the one who backed the experts uncritically.
I would be closer to the opposite.
I'm very much closer to the person who said, there's a reason the experts are wrong.
Here are all the reasons. I'm the Dilbert guy.
You don't write the Dilbert cartoon and believe experts are right, just automatically.
I think experts are moving fast in the direction of being right.
That's what science does.
Science starts out not knowing the answer, takes a lot of guesses that sometimes don't work out, but it's moving toward truth.
It's eliminating things that they used to think are true and narrowing it down, getting toward truth.
The problem with experts in science in general is that you can't tell where you are in the path.
You don't know if you're 25% of the way to truth, 50%, or 100%, because it looks the same.
You just don't know when you're done, because you think you're done, and then, oh, there's a new discovery.
I'm not done. So if you add these things together, Trump recovering himself...
Anecdotal, but it still is powerful.
34 people recovering, probably, we hope.
Fingers crossed.
Again, just anecdotal.
Doesn't mean anything scientifically, but it'll matter.
It'll matter to how afraid you are.
And then the World Health Organization completely eviscerating the argument that Trump doesn't follow science.
It's the biggest argument coming out of the Biden campaign that's not the crazy racism one.
And it just got eviscerated.
Because now the Democrats have two choices.
They can either oppose science by opposing the World Health Organization.
Do you see how awesome this is?
The Democrats will have to oppose experts by And oppose science to maintain their current view that Trump is wrong.
They can't have it both ways anymore.
They can't say Trump is wrong and science is good and accurate and you should follow it.
It's gone. It's their biggest argument.
It just evaporated. Now, does that mean that the World Health Organization is right?
I don't know.
How the hell would I know?
I have a preference.
If you make me the leader, I'll give you a choice.
I'll give you a confident-sounding choice of what I think we should do.
But I don't know.
That's part of being a leader.
You've just got to take your best shot sometimes.
So this is one of the strongest days that the president has had by far.
I don't know if the rest of the media will recognize this.
Because it's the sort of thing that's just happening in people's impressions.
So going back to my original point, the president does not need to convince you that he got everything right in managing the coronavirus.
He needs to make you less afraid of it.
So it just goes down in your priorities.
The World Health Organization just did that for him.
They just completed it.
He couldn't have gotten there, I don't think, He couldn't have gotten there without their help.
Because people were still going to say, but the experts.
But what about the experts?
I hear what you're saying, but what about the experts?
Not anymore. Now the experts are clearly on different sides.
And what do you do when the experts disagree?
What is the right thing for a leader to do when experts disagree?
The leader makes the choice.
And the leader, if it's a good leader, will make a choice based on the most basic concepts.
In other words, he won't make a choice, or she, the leader will not make a choice based on the science, as in, well, I back this scientist, and I believe this data, and I don't believe that data.
That would be bad leadership.
Because if the scientist can't agree...
It would be absurd for the leader to say, I'm going to look into the science myself, and now I've read all the science, and I pick this one.
Bad leadership. A good leader says we can't know.
That's what we know. What we know is we don't know.
So what do you do if you don't know?
How do you manage your risk if you don't know?
And I think that the president has found exactly the right sweet spot here.
The thing that you can default to is freedom.
Because the one thing we know is that if we were to lose our freedom to anything, screw it.
We're out of here, right?
We'd all just close the planet and starve to death.
If we lose our freedom, we don't even want to be here.
If you say to me, I can give you your freedom back, but there's a 1% chance that you'll die.
I'm in. I'll take my freedom.
I'll give you your freedom back, but there's a 1% chance your grandmother might die a few years early.
I'm in. Sorry, Grandma.
I'm going to talk to Grandma first, but you know what?
She agrees. Grandma doesn't disagree.
Grandma wants me to be free.
Grandma wants to be free.
Will she take the higher risk that she'll die?
Yes, she will. If she doesn't, I'll do everything I can to keep grandma safe.
But if you don't know what's the right thing to do, you have to default to the primary...
Primary human needs.
And we have a primary human need for freedom.
And that affects, of course, the economy, which keeps poor people alive, which keeps us happy, which keeps us from killing ourselves.
All of these benefits.
So Trump has done what Trump always does.
He peered through this impenetrable You know, data science crap that wasn't quite as solid as it ever needed to be.
We wanted it to be good, but it never was.
He peered through it all and he found the essential human part.
And the human part is this.
Day one, coronavirus scares us.
Day two, The coronavirus attacks us, attacks the United States.
Day three, coronavirus seems to be winning, even though our president said it wouldn't.
Day four, coronavirus is kicking our fucking asses.
Week 5, or month 5, coronavirus is just kicking our fucking asses.
Month 6, fuck you, coronavirus.
We're done. We got us some tools.
They're not complete tools.
They're not enough to completely destroy the coronavirus yet.
But we're going on offense.
We're not going to lose anymore.
We're not going to lose to the virus.
We're not going to lose to China.
We're not going to lose anymore.
And your president has made it clear that the losing part is behind us.
Will people die?
Yes. Yes, they will.
Will Americans die in large numbers that should and will alarm us?
Yes. Are we going to back down Because it's risky.
Nope. Are we going to go forward?
Yes. Are we going to beat the coronavirus?
One way or another.
One way or another. Because we're done.
We are just done losing.
Can't lose forever.
We're done losing. And the president has called the term.
And the World Health Organization gave him an assist.
And I think it could be over.
Over in terms of the election.
So, Biden coughed twice in public yesterday, and he coughed the other day while he was giving a talk.
Now, in all likelihood, the coughing is nothing.
He might be on a medication.
For example, there's one blood pressure medication that gives you a dry cough.
Maybe he's on that. Who knows?
You know, at that age, everybody is.
So, probably his coughing is not coronavirus.
But it is 2020.
And in 2020, nothing is off the table.
As Schumer has said, everything's on the table.
So will 2020 deliver the most 2020 thing that could ever happen, which is Biden getting the coronavirus?
Now keep in mind that if Biden gets the coronavirus and either one of these two things happens, either he recovers fine, which would be the best news, which would also make the virus look less scary.
Again, not in a data way, but it would just make us feel that way.
Or he has a bad outcome, and then of course Trump has a better victory, but we don't want that outcome.
That would be the worst of all cases.
But he's coughing.
And if you see the guy that you want to elect president, one of them has recovered completely, the other one's older, and you're not so sure that Biden could recover, and he's coughing.
There's no way that doesn't affect you.
Now, I've said that President Trump should ask to debate Kamala Harris, and I think that would be a good play.
Even though she'd say no, it would...
It would tell you to think past by them, which I think would be good for John.
Alright, here's a really interesting set of facts coming out of Switzerland.
You know, I've been telling you that there's something deeply unexplained about the coronavirus numbers.
In terms of why does the United States have such big numbers compared to other places, it doesn't seem to be completely explained by leadership, It doesn't seem to be completely explained by, you know, we have higher obesity, we have a higher black population, and they get hit harder.
If you put all of that in the mix, it doesn't seem to explain the extraordinary difference.
But then I heard this about Switzerland.
This came from Yasha Mauck on Twitter.
And if you look at Switzerland, what's interesting about it is that it has...
Three sections.
It has a German-speaking section, French-speaking, and Belgian, I guess, Flemish-speaking.
So you've got three distinct cultures in Switzerland.
And here's what's interesting.
The three cultures had tremendously different experiences in the same country.
And it's not even a big country.
Geography-wise, Switzerland's not terribly large.
And in that little country, Switzerland...
The Germans did great.
Germans had a pretty good outcome, comparable to Germany itself.
The French didn't do so well.
They did bad, just like France.
Now, how do you explain that the French people in Switzerland had the same results as the French people in France, and the German people in Switzerland had the same experience as the German people in Germany?
But in Switzerland itself, in the same country, with the same leadership, wildly different results.
And same with the Belgian group.
So they matched each of those three ethnicities, matched very well to what the country that they are associated with, a different country, how they did.
How do you explain that?
Well, one hypothesis is that it's a cultural difference.
It could be that Germans don't touch as much.
It could be that they don't have the same, I don't know, closeness, hand-shaking, cheek-kissing.
I don't know. Maybe something like that.
So that's one possibility, and that was what was suggested by Yasha's tweet.
But, of course, Andres Beckhaus came into the comments and ruined all my happiness because I thought, at last, I understand what's going on.
There's a very big difference in terms of cultural behavior that might be important.
And Andres points out that there's also another big variable that cannot be overlooked, which is commuting.
So in other words, the French-speaking part probably commutes to other French places, the German-speaking part probably commute to work to other German-speaking places.
I assume some of this is over the border.
And that it really might have to do with where the infection gets a hold first, and then where do they travel?
In other words, do the French-speaking people in Switzerland spend as much time traveling to the German and Belgian parts of Switzerland Or do they stick within their own French-speaking part?
Probably a lot of sticking within your own neighborhood.
So it could be that travel and transportation patterns end up explaining the whole thing.
That if you have a certain kind of transportation pattern, you are relatively safe.
Let's say New Zealand.
What is the international travel pattern, or even the domestic travel pattern, within New Zealand?
And if you saw that visually and compared it to, say, the United States, would they look similar?
Just, you know, one is bigger?
Is that the only difference?
I don't think so.
I think our travel patterns in the United States might have a lot to do with our experience, if not the culture.
All right. So that's still an open question, but the fact that Switzerland had such different experiences with one leadership Does that not tell you that leadership is not the overarching variable?
Because Switzerland should have had a fairly uniform experience if the only thing that matters is how well you manage the outbreak.
But in fact, they were so different that you could almost rule out leadership as even being a variable.
Because if it were, you'd get more similar results.
And when you got something that was, you know, an out-sized effect, like an outbreak, it would be like New York City, where you could look at it and say, well, it's New York City.
We had more travel.
There was a problem with the old folks who were put in nursing homes, etc.
So you would identify it if it wasn't, you know, if it was an exception.
You could track it down pretty easily.
All right. More and more people talking about the similarities between the polling this year and the polling in 2016.
And if you look at the swing states especially, and you look at the differences, you can see that the amount that Hillary was leading Trump in 2016, only to lose those same states, It's very similar.
In fact, Biden doesn't even lead as much as Hillary was.
So are we going to run into the same situation because it looks exactly like 2016?
Well, a lot of people are saying, yes, this looks exactly like 2016, so we're going to get the same result.
But here's the counter-argument.
The counter-argument from Nate Silver...
Who I hold now as one of the best follows on Twitter.
So if you're not following him, you really should.
He's tremendous at sticking to the numbers.
Now, does that mean he's always right?
Of course not. It doesn't work like that.
He's not in the kind of job where being right all the time is even a thing.
But he's really right a lot.
So even though he slightly got the 2016 race wrong, it was only slightly.
He was pretty close. So I would consider him a very credible source.
And he says that the 2016 experience won't tell us about 2020 because the pollsters figured out what they did wrong in 2016 and they made adjustments.
So you can't compare them because one is before they knew they had a problem and one is after they corrected the problem.
So now 2020 is good, right?
Accurate now. Okay.
Okay. That's a smart argument, but there's a counter to the counter, which I'll offer now.
Some people say that there were few, if any, shy Trump supporters in 2016 after all.
There's some difference of opinion on that.
But I think there's some unity on the fact that it wasn't gigantic.
It might have been small, it might have made the difference, but it wasn't gigantic, the hidden, shy Trump supporters who don't show up in polls.
But 2020 is not 2016.
We have four years of being vilified for being Trump supporters.
If you tell me that there aren't more people hiding their Trump support in 2020, even from pollsters, if you tell me that's not a thing, you've lost all credibility.
Because, let me tell you, I don't have data, I don't have a way to show you data to prove it, but 100% of experience and observation is compatible with the fact that they're hiding.
Not least of all, I asked in a Twitter poll, which is unscientific, of course, but I still got hundreds of people within a minute who said that they've lied to pollsters this year.
This year, they've lied to pollsters.
So, if hundreds of people who follow me on Twitter in a minute will confess that they did that, I think there's a lot of that out there.
There's a lot of that out there.
All right. I'm starting to think that the...
Oh, and then if you look at some of the other indicators, like there's one indicator that says that if the candidate who gets over 75% in the primaries always gets re-elected.
So there are a bunch of other little weirdo kinds of trends and correlations that favor the president.
So all of the ones that can't be rigged favor Trump.
All of the ones that can be rigged, and we're pretty sure they were in 2016, all of those seem to be against Trump.
So if it's something that can be rigged, it's against Trump.
If it can't be rigged, such as looking at how much anybody got in the primaries in the past, if it can't be rigged, it favors Trump.
Coincidence? A coincidence that the only things that don't favor him Are the things that are easily rigged and were in 2016, as far as I can tell?
All right, here's an annoying, provocative thought.
I feel as though the election could come down to...
You know, it'll always be close.
It could come down to how successfully the Harris-Biden campaign...
That's what I'm going to call them for now.
From now on, the Harris-Biden campaign...
And their corporate lackeys, it might come down to how well they can keep black voters uninformed.
Isn't that awful?
That the election in this country will almost certainly come down to how well Democrats can bamboozle and dupe black voters into thinking Trump is something he's not.
And the key to that The most important thing is the fine people hoax.
The reason that I keep hammering on that one hoax when politics is full of things that are not true, but I keep hammering on that one thing relentlessly, is because that's the key.
I tend to think of the world in a physical analogy quite often.
When I used to do computer programming years ago, I would imagine my program as a pinball machine.
Where the control of the program was the ball, and I was putting bumpers and levers and things to control where the ball ends up.
So I would translate my programs into physical things so I could manipulate them physically when I was not sitting in front of my computer.
So I could do my programming in physical ways.
Like, okay, I need to build a structure down here.
There's going to be a building over here that does this.
I tend to do the same thing with politics.
I translate it into these physical models so I can manipulate them in my head.
And one of the physical models is that black voters are literally in a misinformation jail.
Is that a racist visualization?
It probably is. So just assume that I don't mean it that way.
But I imagine that because they are uninformed, And their news sources, and specifically in this one area, not in general, but in this one area they're under-informed.
Which is they believe the fine people hoax was real.
Because their news source tells them it's real.
And they don't see anything else.
So if you believed that the president really called neo-Nazis and white supremacists fine people, and that he said it in public, and that he said it with no remorse, If you believed that was true, you would believe everything else bad said about him and race.
Because if that thing's true, anything could be true.
So the fighting people hoax is not like the other things.
It's the key to the jail.
And if black people ever get that key, in other words, if the black voters learn how badly they've been duped intentionally, completely intentionally, How badly they've been conned on that one hoax that makes all the other hoaxes look real.
If they ever get that key, they're just going to shove it in the lock and they're never going to vote Democrat again.
Now, what are the odds that that'll happen?
Low. I think the odds of the black population getting their hands on that key and finding out how badly they've been duped by Democrats is low because they have control of the news sources.
But it could happen. It's not impossible.
It's just unlikely. Here's the best, funniest thing that I've heard in a while.
Let's say all day.
There's a sports commentator, maybe you've seen him, he appears on Fox News every now and then, Jason Whitlock.
He's black, which is important to this story.
And I say this every time.
Can we ever get to the place where you can tell a frickin' story...
Without mentioning the race or the gender of the person involved.
Can we get to that point?
Like, I just crave the time when I don't have to add that, and he's black.
Because it does matter to the story.
And what he said was that LeBron James is the black Trump guy.
And the first time I heard it, I thought, no, he's not.
How does that make sense?
How is LeBron James the black Trump?
And then he goes on to explain it, and I go, oh yeah, he is the black Trump.
It goes like this. LeBron, this is Jason Wheelock, quote, LeBron fashions himself as a dignified statesman, role model, political activist, and champion of racial equality.
He is every bit as crude, undignified, inarticulate as our sitting president.
James, meaning LeBron, writes and speaks at a third-grade level.
The athletic privilege he's enjoyed.
That's right. You were not born with LeBron James' physical abilities.
I wasn't.
I wasn't born with his physical capabilities.
He was born privileged, that he's enjoyed since about age 10, has spoiled and pampered him the same way wealth and privilege spoiled and pampered President Trump.
Jason Whitlock?
Argument made.
You are correct.
Now, I would argue at some of his characterizations of our president, But specifically the part about his vocabulary, because I think the president's vocabulary is ideally suited for the way he communicates with the public.
But the correlation and the analogy, analogy accepted.
And so I think I'll be calling LeBron James Black Trump from now on, because it's wonderfully delicious.
All right. That is my program for today.
And I hope you enjoyed it.
So the slaughter meter set at 100.
You should expect that this coming week will be really newsy.
A lot of news is going to come out.
And it could change everything.
So the slaughter meter could be anything by tomorrow.
But as of today...
It's 100%. And that is my show for the day.
All right. Periscope people have been signed off.
And I'm still here with you, YouTubers.
I like to spend a little time looking at your comments.
