Episode 1154 Scott Adams: Mask Science Explained, Preference Versus Orientation, Wolf Blitzes Pelosi, Hunter is Hunted
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Content:
Wolf Blitzer's heated interview with Nancy Pelosi
No charges for all the unmaskings
Amy Coney Barrett confirmation questioning
Hunter Biden's laptop and Burisma email
Whiteboard1: Test
Whiteboard2: Mask Strategy
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I feel my vitamin D levels zooming.
My white blood count.
It's going crazy.
I hope you are just as healthy as I am today.
I feel like President Trump.
Yeah, that healthy.
That's crazy, I know.
Alright, so I've got a little quiz I want you to think about, and then we'll get to it later.
Alright, here's the quiz.
Let's say 85% of the people who got COVID wore masks.
What is the conclusion?
Because you're all rational people.
You all know how to analyze things.
This should be an easy one.
And I'm going to get to this a little bit, but I want to let it just marinate with you a little bit, okay?
So 85% of the people who got COVID wore masks.
What do you conclude about that?
We'll get to that in a minute.
But first, last night I was going to be on MSNBC as a guest with Ari Melber, but I got bumped because the ACB Supreme Court hearings went long.
They offered to tape it, but I decided to decline the offer to tape it, and we'll just do it live some other time.
So I'll let you know when that happens.
I saw that the phrase Black Trump was trending, and I thought to myself, oh, it's a story about LeBron James.
So I went to see what LeBron James was doing, because as you know, who was it who came up with that name?
Somebody's calling LeBron James Black Trump, because he was born with a lot of advantages.
And it turns out that the story is that a lot of black Trump supporters on Twitter were not real black supporters.
They were actually fake accounts.
And a number of them, I guess there were thousands of them, and they vanished.
Now the funny thing is, if you're a Trump supporter, you probably noticed a whole bunch of black Trump supporters that just sort of appeared in the last few months.
I remember seeing them all and thinking to myself, maybe, could be real, but I guess we know the answer now.
Likewise, there are a number of female Trump supporters on Twitter who just sort of appear around election time.
And I'm waiting for them to disappear, too.
So I don't know who's behind that, but it's fairly transparent.
Did you see that Trump tweeted a meme in which it showed Joe Biden at an old folks home, and instead of Biden for president, The P is crossed out, so it's Biden for resident, a resident of an old folks home, and it shows him in his little wheelchair in the middle of the old folks home.
Now, it's really funny.
And of course, part of what makes it funny is that he did it at all.
You know, if I send that to you, you know, you say, ah, cartoonist, send it to me.
It's kind of amusing.
But when the president of the United States tweets that, It just becomes a whole different level of funny, because he's not supposed to.
And he knows he's not supposed to, and that he does it anyway.
That's the joke. The joke is not the meme.
The joke is that he tweeted it, and he's not supposed to.
And he's just going to do anything he's not supposed to until something stops him.
So that's part of the fun.
Now, some smart people noted That being mean to senior citizens might not be the best election strategy when you're already behind on senior citizens or you're losing ground on senior citizens.
But I don't know.
This one's kind of a break even.
Because it's sufficiently funny that he gets some points for that.
You know, it's part of a larger strategy to keep the energy up for his supporters.
But I could see the point.
I could see the point that anything that looks like it's making fun of senior citizens, probably not the ideal time to do it.
But as a person who does humor for a living, I appreciated it.
Might cost them the election.
But sometimes a good joke has a price.
That might be the price on this one.
It was totally worth it.
In fun technology news, there's a new development in solar cells that could double their efficiency fairly easily.
The fun part is that it won't be hard.
So this new discovery is that this chemical or a compound or whatever it is called Paravskites, or paravskites, or paravskites.
Let's just assume there's a word I can't pronounce that's a thing.
I guess I can put it in liquid form and then coat it on top of existing solar cells to make them more powerful, but you could also use them by themselves to make solar cells.
So here's how big a deal it could be.
Current solar cells max out at about 22% efficiency.
And it looks like using current technology, you'd be capped at about 22%, or maybe somebody said 28% or something.
But anyway, this new chemical can bounce that up to 28%, but it can get up to 40%.
So we might be able to take solar from 22% to 40%, And that could be sort of a next, I don't know, 24 months situation.
It's not going to take forever to commercialize this.
So if it works, and there's no downside that we haven't discovered, solar cells could be twice as efficient in two years.
Now I bring you back to the Adams law of slow-moving disasters.
When you look at climate change, If nothing improved and we just kept going the way we were going, yeah, probably a problem.
Probably a problem, in my view.
But how do you account for all the things that will get invented in the next 80 years?
Well, who had this on their list?
Who made their long-range climate model in which they wrote in to their assumptions, and by 2022, Solar cell efficiency will double.
Who had that?
Maybe they did, I don't know.
But I would guess that they do not have technological developments in their models.
Alright, so that's cool.
Did you all see the video of Wolf Blitzer attempting to have a professional interview with Nancy Pelosi?
It didn't go well.
So Nancy Pelosi, for whatever reason, she was in a, let's say, a combative mood.
So we'll put it that way.
You could put other words on her demeanor, but I'll just say she was combative.
And you have to see it.
You could just Google Wolf Blitzer and Nancy Pelosi.
It'll pop right up. And what's funny about it is Wolf Blitzer is sort of a soft-spoken guy.
For a television personality, he looks like he would be an introvert that just also has a television show.
And so Nancy's sort of in her aggressive alpha mode, and he's just sort of in his low-key mode.
And she's talking over him, and he's talking under her, and it's like it's not going well, right?
She's talking over, she's aggressive, he's just trying to be professional, low-key here.
And then the last thing he says, and the topic was the stimulus package, and he was trying to convey the importance to Nancy Pelosi's own district, as well as the country, about getting some relief out there for food fairly quickly.
And he gets to the end of the interview, and he just tosses in a line about seeing Nancy Pelosi's constituents begging for food on the streets.
And he just sort of puts that shiv in there, nice and smooth.
It's like the sharpest little shiv.
You don't even feel it going in.
You're like, what was that?
Oh my goodness, there's a shiv.
It's all the way through my abdomen.
Just to see how smoothly he put that in right at the end before he signed off with her.
It was TV magic.
So good job, Wolf Blitzer.
And as others have noted, it feels like CNN and the anti-Trump people might be feeling a little more aggressive about the Democrats going after them.
We'll see. I guess William Barr and the Attorney General, basically, William Barr, there won't be any charges based on all of the unmasking.
Remember all the big stories about Susan Rice and the unmasking?
Too many Americans got unmasked, which means that they could be surveilled by the government.
Apparently, nothing about that was illegal in any way that could be proven in a court of law.
Here's the thing that bothers me about the entire Russia collusion hoax.
All of the people involved from the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, you know, everybody, they're all high-end operators, meaning they're either lawyers themselves or they've been around lawyers or they're working with lawyers, so they know how to stay out of trouble.
And I have this bad feeling that there will be an actual documented coup against the United States, you know, legally elected government, the Trump administration in the first term, and that it will be proven and known and historical fact, and still...
No real crimes, except for the one lawyer who maybe falsified something on a document.
Might be the only one.
Because everybody else sort of knows where the line is.
And they know they can pretend to know something they don't, and that's not illegal most of the time.
They know they can over-interpret data.
Probably get away with it and just say, oops, oops, I guess we made a mistake, but it's not illegal.
So it's starting to look like everybody's going to get away with it, which is alarming.
So I turned on the Amy Coney Barrett hearings yesterday, and of course it lasted many hours, but I happened to turn it on at an especially interesting part.
I caught Ben Sasse, Senator Sasse, talking to Barrett, and I thought to myself, wow, he's asking really professional, good questions.
He's adding context.
He's so well-spoken.
He's obviously very smart, very well-informed.
And then she's answering And her answers are just like, you know, cracklingly brilliant.
You know, she's super smart.
That's pretty obvious. And these two people who were, you know, one being nominated to the highest court, the other serving in our highest elected capacity as a senator, who is not a president.
And I thought, I'm really proud of my country.
Those two people talking made me feel good about America, honestly, because they were both just so smart and well-spoken and professional, etc.
And then Chris Coons gets up for the Democrats.
And I'm thinking, okay, okay, here's, I guess, the happy part's over.
You expect the Republican will be a little kinder to the nominee.
And then Chris Coons Questions her, and even though it was, I guess you could call it hostile questioning because he's on the other side, but completely polite, completely professional, all of his points well-reasoned, completely rational, even if you don't like where he was going.
And I thought to myself, damn, this guy's good too.
This guy's really good.
He's on the other team, you know, maybe from you.
I've certainly heard him say things I didn't agree with in the past, but he's a smart, capable, really good at what he does.
At least in terms of public presentation, that's all I know.
So there were three of these professionals, and again, you know, Barrett was amazing with their answers, very strong.
And I really, I had this, I had a moment.
I had a moment.
You probably had this experience if you're American.
There are times when you fall in love with America.
Have you ever had that experience?
You can hate America.
You can be a critic.
You can complain all day long about everything that's wrong with the country.
We're designed to do that.
That's one of the things that's good about America is that we complain about everything, which makes us try to fix things.
So it's a positive thing.
I have this great feeling about America.
And I even tweeted about it.
It's like, wow. Really, really strong people.
And if these are the people who are in charge running the country, I'm feeling pretty good about it.
Well, that didn't last.
That didn't last.
So, Maisie Arano gets up there, and I'm thinking, oh, okay.
The kindest thing I can say is, you're no Chris Coons, if you know what I mean.
You're no Ben Sasse.
You're no Amy Coney Barrett.
Whatever the hell that is you're doing, that just looks stupid.
I'm sorry. She just looks stupid.
And she's embarrassing.
And when I see her as a representative of the country, I think, that's not a good look.
I hope nobody's watching this.
And then, who's the other?
Blumenthal. And then Blumenthal goes, I forget which order they were in, And I'm listening to Blumenthal and I'm thinking, oh my god!
Oh my god!
All of those good feelings I had about the competence of our leadership evaporated.
And again, I'm being very careful not to make this about Democrat or Republican.
They just happen to be two extra stupid people.
I don't know how the hell they got their jobs, really.
When you see like a Josh Hawley Or you see Ben Sasse, or you see Chris Coons, you see Amy, you know, Coney Barrett.
You're seeing people operating at a really high level, right?
Really smart people.
And then you see Maisie, and then you see Maisie Hirona, and then you see Dick Blumenthal, and you think, how did they get in there?
How could they be in the same club?
You know, it just doesn't, it's mind-boggling.
And then Booker, Cory Booker.
Now, Cory Booker is someone who, and I imagine this would be true of Verona and Blumenthal as well.
If any of these three people took an IQ test, I imagine they'd do great.
If any of them took, in fact, I think Booker was a, what kind of a scholar?
I mean, he has scholarly academic credentials that are the highest level.
So I'm sure that they, you know, scholastically, these are three really accomplished people.
Don't want to take that away from them.
But they don't act capable.
I don't know what's up with that.
And we know that it's possible, because we just saw Chris Coons do it, we saw Ben Sasse do it.
It can be done. We know it can be done.
But they can't do it for some reason.
Now, it could be that they were the designated attack dogs, so maybe they were They may have been assigned the job of going hard, so you have to be a little careful about how much is their personality and how much is them doing the work of the party.
The funnest, the most fun story, the funnest story is that Hunter Biden's This is just the weirdest 2020 story.
This is just so perfect.
Nothing could be more perfect than this story, except the next one that'll happen tomorrow, because 2020 is just lit.
So, apparently, sometime in the past, Hunter Biden had taken a laptop, his own laptop, in for service, and he never picked it up.
And so the owner of the repair shop ended up figuring out whose it was and giving it to Rudy Giuliani.
Now, as someone on Twitter who was a lawyer said, some legal advice if somebody leaves a laptop at your computer repair store, don't give it to Rudy Giuliani.
That's probably not the most legal thing anybody ever did.
But it happened. So not only is there allegedly photos of Hunter Biden smoking crack and having sex or something, I don't know.
I saw one picture that alleges to be him asleep with a crack pipe still in his mouth.
I don't know if that's real or not.
But that's the story, whether it's real or not.
And I guess in there there's an email That indicates that Vice President Biden, when he was Vice President, did meet with a top executive of the Burisma company that Hunter Biden was working for.
Now, keep in mind that Joe Biden had said he didn't talk to Hunter Biden about Burisma and what Hunter was doing in Ukraine, but now there's an email that indicates that not only did they probably talk, But Biden met with a high official of Burisma and it's not looking good.
It's not looking good.
Oh, somebody's saying it's an abandoned work product in some states.
So there might be a state law that allows the Computer shop operator to do what he did.
We don't know that.
So I will revise my legal advice, because you should not take legal advice from me.
All right.
So that story, I think, is going to be...
I think it will be a lot like the unmasking story.
I feel like the Hunter Biden thing is going to be a whole bunch of things that you're pretty sure should Result in some kind of legal action but won't, or you're pretty sure it should change the election but it won't, I feel as though the election is already past the point where a revelation of this size will make any difference.
You know, maybe six months ago this might have made a little difference, but I don't know if it makes any difference now.
Apparently Trump said out loud, and I'm trying to remember if he said this directly before.
I think he might have. At his speech yesterday, he said that Black Lives Matter is a racist and intends to cause division.
They're racist and they intend to cause division.
Now, of course, he says the Black Lives Matter movement, as opposed to The idea of Black Lives Matter, which, as far as I know, nobody disagrees with the idea of it.
But he's talking about the organization and that they're racist and that they intend to cause division.
This is reason enough to re-elect him, you know?
If you were looking for one reason, like, what's my one reason to vote for Trump?
And I would say the fact that he would call out Black Lives Matter as being a racist organization.
Or a racist movement, as he put it.
I think that that's really brave.
Because you know what the right answer is, right?
Everybody knows the right answer is you need to be fully on board with the movement.
But Trump is willing to say what is obvious to most of us, that it is racist by its nature.
You don't even have to get into the intentions of the people involved.
It is just by its nature racist, because it calls out races for special consideration.
So you could say that's right or wrong, but you can't say it's not racist.
You might like it, but it's still racist.
And I think the president should call that out.
I like that.
And again, nobody is arguing the point of it.
Everybody agrees Black Lives Matter.
That's not the point. So Nielsen ratings are way down.
TV rating for not only the NBA, but things like golf and horse racing.
So, it looks like there's some major shift happening, or not, I don't know.
You would think that sports would be more watched than ever because we don't have as many forms of entertainment, right?
If you don't have as many forms of entertainment, the ones that you do have should get more business.
But the opposite is happening.
And remind me to talk about Kim Jong-un.
I'm being prompted there, and I'll do that in a minute.
Okay. And I wonder if it's just because habits got broken.
I've talked about the book Habit by Charles Newig, and it talks about how you can program yourself into habits.
And one of the things I learned when I was doing the Dilbert TV show for two half seasons back in, I don't know, years ago, one of the things I learned is that once you built an audience in a time slot, even if that audience loved your show, If you move it to a different day or a different time, you're going to lose a big chunk of your audience.
Now, there are cases where you'll gain audience because you're moving to a better time slot.
But in general, people are habit-based.
And you mess with their habit in any way, and they'll lose the habit.
And I think that watching television, just watching television in general, was a habit most of us had.
And then we lost it because there was nothing on TV worth watching except the news.
And you could watch the news on your phone, etc.
So I think that one of the biggest underappreciated effects of the pandemic is that it broke our habits.
And once your habits are broken, then you have to redesign your life.
And it looks like people decided consciously, maybe, to redesign their lives without as much TV. I feel like that's what happened.
And I think that that would be a permanent change.
So there's now evidence that both the Biden and the Trump rallies have spread coronavirus.
The alleged Biden part of that is trivial.
Two people, I guess, or something at one event.
But the Trump, and that makes sense because not many people are at a Biden event, But there are now 16 cases linked to an outdoor Trump event at an airport September 18th.
And then some other one, three people from some other event in Duluth or something.
So what do you make of that?
Does that tell you that we should not have mass events?
Yes. Yes, it does.
It tells you exactly that.
If this data is correct, It does tell you, or at least it's more indication it's not a scientifically locked down point, but it's more indication that mass gatherings are a special problem for coronavirus.
Does that mean that the president shouldn't do it?
Well, that's a different calculation.
It's a different calculation.
Because we live in a world where people take risks.
Suppose none of these 16 people were hospitalized, which is a good chance.
And suppose that, I imagine that they also gave it to other people, and suppose that nobody was hospitalized.
I guess that's possible, right?
So we don't know that, but it's entirely possible that political rallies have killed people.
Would you agree that that's possible?
There's no evidence of it, but just statistically, would you agree that we could conclude now that Trump rallies had a pretty good chance.
I don't know what the odds are.
I don't know if the odds are over 5% or if they're over 1%.
But there's some chance that Trump rallies killed people.
So what do you think about that?
Therefore was a big mistake?
Probably not. Because any time you get 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 people changing what they're doing, There's going to be risk.
Every sporting event has risk.
Every time you get in your car has a risk.
So the question is not whether these caused infection.
I think everybody thought there would be some.
The question is whether it made sense.
Was the benefit equal to the cost?
Well, if you think that the cost of Trump losing the election, the cost was socialism and the destruction of the country, If you believe that would be the natural progression, well, then it's worth it.
If those events got Trump elected and that was the only thing that prevented us from going full socialist and just, you know, destroying the country, yeah, totally worth it.
And even if he doesn't get elected, the risk, you know, the risk might still look like it was worth it.
It just didn't work out. So, You could differ on the question of whether it was worth it, but we now have pretty good indication that it does cause infections, which shouldn't be a big surprise, right?
Webster's Dictionary had a A little rapid change yesterday.
Did you see that story? So when Maisie Hirona, Senator Hirona, was, I guess, talking to Barrett, and Barrett had used the phrase sexual preference.
And Hirona was schooling her and telling her that, no, it's sexual orientation.
And the senator's point is, Is that your orientation is what you're born with, and that's her view of the world, that your sexuality is what you're born with.
It's not something you choose later.
It's like, ah, I think I'll be gay.
So that's what the senator says.
And she says further that saying it's sexual preference is offensive.
And apparently, online Webster's Dictionary updated their definition to add that sexual preference is offensive in real time.
Basically, I think before the hearings were even over for the day, Webster had changed its online definition of the frickin' word.
Does that scare you?
It should. They're changing the definition of a word to make it match the Democrats' preferred narrative.
And it happened in real time.
That's amazing.
Now, it doesn't change much, but here's what I would add to it.
How could you have a sexual preference without the sexual orientation first?
How does that happen?
How are they different?
Now, I'm not the one who's going to argue over which word you should use, because I call that word thinking.
You can't settle an argument by what word you choose to use on it.
That's just talking about words.
It's not talking about the base understanding.
But here's what I would add.
There's no such thing as a sexual preference that is disconnected from your sexual orientation.
In other words, the way you're born gives you all of your preferences.
Why is it different?
I have a preference for certain sports.
I have a preference for certain foods.
I have preferences for certain colors.
Pretty much all of them I was born with, I think, because I had them when I was little.
Green was one of my favorite colors when I was little.
Still one of my favorite colors.
The food I ate, for the most part, you develop some adult food preferences.
But largely the same stuff I liked when I was young is the same stuff I would like now.
I'm just a little better at staying away from junk food, that's it.
But I would add this to the senator's understanding, just to mess up the whole conversation.
Are you ready? People can change their sexual preference.
That's it. People can.
Now, I believe that what I just said is counter to all science.
So let me put that out there.
As far as I know, science is very solid on the fact that you're born with your sexual orientation.
And I believe that that's largely true, that you're born with a sexual orientation.
But I'll tell you, as a hypnotist, I am well aware of situations in which people have changed their sexual preference intentionally.
In other words, they just wanted to see if they could program themselves to have a different sexual preference, and they succeeded.
And then they changed it back.
Now, you could say, well, if you changed it back, it wasn't real.
But it was real when it was happening.
There were people who said, I like this kind of activity.
And now I'm going to see if I can intentionally program myself to be a different person who likes a different thing.
And you can do it.
You can absolutely do it.
And I would argue that there are probably lots of cases in the wild where some charismatic and or bad personality programs somebody to have a different preference.
Preferences are very programmable.
Now, you are still born with a certain bias.
So that's true.
You know, the day you come out of your mother or test tube or father or whoever you come out of in our amazing technological world.
But when you're born, you do have really strong orientation and bias toward things, which looks like a preference later in life.
But what science, in general, Somebody in the comments is saying that I'm lying.
I'm not. Why would I lie about that?
That would be a weird thing to lie about, wouldn't it?
Because I wouldn't be lying to make money.
I wouldn't be lying to be more popular.
What would that lie buy me, exactly?
And what would be the point of me telling a lie on that point?
I don't think there would be any point to it.
So, anybody who is born with a certain orientation and nobody tries to influence it and they don't try to change it, probably their preference and their orientation become exactly the same.
But I'm just telling you that human beings can be reprogrammed way more than you think.
Way, way, way more than you think.
Now, I'm uncertain whether your life experience can change those preferences.
I would think so, in extreme cases.
Probably in extreme cases, it could change your preference.
But I don't think it happens often.
I wouldn't think that's even anything to think about.
It probably is just, in the weirdest case, maybe somebody has a traumatic experience.
This involves their primary orientation, and maybe they talk themselves into a different preference over time.
Possible. So, if anybody is new to my periscopes, let me remind you, I am the most pro-LGBTQ person you've ever met in your life.
I am left to Bernie.
Here's what I mean.
A conservative might say that they have problems with LGBTQ people or problems with what rights they have or something, right?
You can imagine there are people on the right who've got problems with that community.
So I'm not in that group.
Then you can imagine, let's say, Bernie Sanders.
Who would be a good example of somebody who is the most open, the most aggressively wants equal rights for the LGBT community.
Now I'm left to that, in which I think Bernie should suck a dick.
Because I don't think it's enough that he's just okay with it.
I think he needs to spend a couple of weekends living the life.
I'm just joking. I'm just joking.
But the only way you could get left of Bernie would be to make it mandatory, so that's the joke.
But I am left of Bernie on other stuff, such as drugs.
Bernie would legalize marijuana, so would I, but I would go further.
I'd legalize mushrooms, maybe some other stuff.
And if you're over 80, I would say you could do whatever drugs you want.
Because you're over 80, damn it, do whatever you want.
And I'm quite serious when I say I'm the most pro-LGBTQ person you've ever met in your life.
More the better. More the better.
Some of you might not love that position, but you'll get used to it.
All right. Let's see.
So Trump says he's going to be in a, I guess he agreed to do a town hall on NBC on Thursday night.
At the same time, The ABC will have a town hall with Joe Biden.
Is that just the best?
What could be better than NBC and ABC having a town hall off against each other for ratings in which people will watch either Biden or they'll watch Trump?
Who do you think is going to get better ratings?
No matter how much you like Biden, you don't really expect him to get good ratings, do you?
Now, I think a lot depends on what's the lead-in show and what are the ratings of NBC and ABC already.
So whichever one is starting with the better ratings has an advantage.
But that is going to be fun.
The fun part will be switching back and forth.
And by the way, how well do Nielsen and other ratings companies, or whatever you'd call them, can Nielsen determine if you're switching back and forth between two pieces of content?
How would they pick that up?
Do they measure the actual cable box so they know exactly how much time you're spending?
I don't know how they do that, but that'll be fun to watch.
All right, let's talk about...
Oh, it turns out that the new update on Kyle Rittenhouse.
Apparently, the gun he used is not going to be a legal problem.
So remember when all the news was about he had to He illegally had a gun to cross state lines or something like that.
It turns out that there will be no charges related to the gun, it looks like, at least in this one county.
And that still means he has to answer for the shooting itself.
But it looks like he won't be charged with a gun crime, which is new.
All right, let's talk about masks.
I will go back to my quiz.
All right? Reminding you.
How'd you do? A lot of you have been thinking about this quiz.
We'll see what your answers are.
85% of people who got COVID wore masks.
Therefore, the logical conclusion is, if you were watching Tucker Carlson last night, you know that his conclusion was masks don't work.
Or if they do work, they don't work very well, because if 85% of the people who wore a mask got the virus anyway, what's that say about masks, right?
Masks don't work, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
Do you know what this conclusion should be?
Almost everybody wore a mask.
That's the conclusion. If everybody's wearing a mask, which is largely true, right?
If I go out in public, pretty much every person has a mask.
They can't go in a store without a mask.
And people don't wear masks at home, for the most part.
So really, you're talking about going in public, and I'll bet just about everybody wore a mask.
Now, does anybody believe that a mask Is designed to eliminate coronavirus?
No. Nope.
Nobody believes that masks are supposed to eliminate all coronavirus.
Everybody understands that whether masks work or masks don't work, in all cases, whether they work or don't work, people who wear them will get the virus.
You all agree with that, right?
Everybody knows That wearing the mask is not 100% or even close to it in terms of protection.
The only thing you should get out of this is that pretty much everybody in the study was wearing a mask.
And what would you know about somebody who didn't wear a mask?
Well, in all likelihood, somebody who didn't wear a mask under these conditions probably was somebody who knew they weren't around Dangerous situations.
In other words, they were in areas where there wasn't much coronavirus to begin with.
In other words, they were not in a hot spot.
Now maybe they should have worn their mask more often, but they could easily get away with it because there wasn't as much virus.
So this kind of thing is so frickin misleading to people who are not good at...
Somebody says, you are lying?
Lying about what?
What am I lying about?
What a weird comment. Somebody told me there's some trolls who just come in and just say stuff like that.
I'm guessing you're one of those.
All right. I'm going to take it to the next level.
Are you mad at me yet?
You will be. If you're not mad at me yet, it's coming.
Here's the part where I lose about two-thirds of my audience.
It goes like this.
So, we all have to have a mask strategy.
Not just society, but you individually need to know, you know, what are you going to do?
What is your strategy?
And let's say your sure masks work, or you think masks might work, but you don't know, or on this extreme, your sure masks don't work.
What would be the strategy you would apply under each of those beliefs?
Well, if your sure masks work, You should wear a mask.
That's easy, right?
If you're sure they work, wear a mask.
And most medical professionals, the vast majority of medical professionals, are sure they work and they follow this strategy.
They wear a mask. Now, that doesn't mean they're right, and it doesn't mean that masks work in all situations.
It just means that if they believe this, this is the right strategy that's compatible with the belief.
If you think masks might work, but you're not sure, you think there's some trade-off, but you think, yeah, they could work.
Given that it's temporary by its nature, now temporary might be middle of next year, but still temporary, what would be the right strategy?
Well, if you're not sure, I would say you would wear a mask.
That would be the better strategy, because you don't know.
If it works, it could be huge.
If it's true that they make some difference, and let's say the difference was 10%.
Let's say the difference was 20%.
So it mostly doesn't work, but there's a solid 10-20% difference.
Is it worth it? Probably, because there are so many lives at stake.
You're talking potentially millions of lives.
So this would be the most social thing you could do.
Now let me be clear. Could this be a mistake?
Could you say, well, they might work, and then you wear them because that makes sense to you, and then later you find out, studies come out that it was way worse to wear masks.
That could happen.
Totally, right? Someday there could be a study, this is the ultimate final study, it's credible, it's controlled, and it shows for sure that, man, was that a big mistake back in the pandemic.
Everybody who wore a mask They made it worse.
So that's possible.
So what should you do?
Probably still wear a mask.
Because what are the odds of that happening?
Nobody knows. I would say not that high.
Probably somebody's going to have a study like that, but may not be credible.
And then how about this one?
Let's say you're sure masks don't work.
You're really sure they don't work.
What is the strategy?
Well, it doesn't matter. You're irrational.
Because if you're sure they don't work, that's not based on data.
Why would you be sure of that?
Most of the professionals in the world who know things about masks and are in that world, they're doctors, they're professionals, far and away the majority of them think it probably works.
Might be wrong, but that's all we know.
Now you say, you're going to say to yourself, but Scott, Scott, Scott, Will you please look at this link I've got on Twitter and it will clear you up.
You might finally be informed, Scott, Scotty, Scotty, you might finally be informed if you follow my link and you can clearly see from this story that masks have been tested and they don't work.
Just look at this test.
See right here. And then I'll follow the link and I'll look at it and it won't be there.
Meaning that there is no proof that masks don't work at the end of that link.
And so I'll say, well, anybody else got a link?
And somebody else will come in with the same amount of certainty.
They'll say, Scott, you looked at the wrong link.
Look at this link and look at this study.
Clearly shows it's a new study or it's an old study.
Clearly shows masks do not work.
So look at that. So I go open the link and I look at it and there's nothing like that there.
In fact, the actual study says, and this is the important part, we can't really study this the way it should be studied because it would be unethical.
In other words, it would be unethical to send half of your doctors into the hotspot Without masks.
Even if those doctors said, we volunteer.
Look, we need to know the answer.
We volunteer. We know the risk.
And we won't wear masks.
It's still unethical.
Because there's such a strong belief that it probably makes a difference, even if it doesn't, that you can't put together a study that would have a control base or a control group.
If you don't have a study with a control group, you don't know anything.
Because if we've learned nothing, it's that every study that doesn't have a control group is just garbage.
Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, but I think it's by accident or chance or something, but you can't depend on it.
So, everybody who thinks their sure masks don't work, you're in the irrational group.
Could you be right?
Yes. Yes.
Let me say that as many times as you need to hear it.
Could this group end up, you know, someday in the future, could we find out that they nailed it and they were right?
Yes. But there is no evidence of that at the moment, and it would be irrational to act on something that has zero evidence when the stakes are this high.
Okay? That should take care of 40% of my audience right there.
Alright, so I know a lot of you are getting really mad right now and you're having the same experience that the left does when I point out that the fine people hoax is a hoax and all you have to do is go read the transcript and you can see for yourself.
What happens when I point that out?
Do they ever do this?
Oh, really?
There's more to the story? Let me look at it.
Oh, follow that link?
Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
I never saw the second part of the quote.
It is a hoax.
Yes, once you read the second part, it's obvious it's a hoax.
Do they ever do that?
No. No.
Not one time do you see anybody do that.
But... Is that different than this?
All of you who are anti-mask, all of the Alex Berenson followers, etc., all of you who are sure that the mask doesn't work are having a fine people hoax experience right now.
In other words, cognitive dissonance is making you a little bit angry at me.
And one of the things that will happen is that you're not going to be able to hear me right.
In other words, you will reinterpret what you just heard and saw into something different, and then you will angrily send me a tweet after I'm done here that will show you don't understand what I said, but you're really mad at your misunderstanding of what I said.
That's going to happen.
It's probably already happening.
If I were to open my Twitter right now, you would probably already see the cognitive dissonance.
So, this is one of those tests Where you can say, I keep laughing at those fine people hoax people with cognitive dissonance, but is it happening to me right now?
It might be. Oh, thanks for the reminder.
Kim Jong-un, I did see finally, maybe yesterday, a video of Kim Jong-un on talking and on video, and it looks to be a current one.
So my My current, revised, updated conspiracy theory, which was just for fun, I told you at the time, is that he does seem to be alive.
So, good for Kim Jong-un, and I'm kind of glad, because the last thing we want is uncertainty, and one thing he does bring is at least a little bit more certainty, and he does seem to like it.
Or he doesn't seem to like the president.
All right. Let's see.
I'm just going to look at some of your comments here, see how we did.
Hypnosis, somebody's asking me.
Well, you need more of a question than just the word hypnosis with a question mark.
Oh, somebody's asking about peanut allergy.
Is it the The peanut-allergic person who has the responsibility, or is it the rest of society who is not allergic to peanuts, who has a responsibility to keep it away?
I'm not sure that works as an analogy to masks, so I'm not going to go there.
Oh, MSNBC, if you're joining late, that got bumped.
Because of the Coney Barrett hearings.
So that will be rescheduled for another time.
Somebody says that I'm correct.
Oh, so there's a doctor who's watching right now who says that my mask analysis is correct.
Thank you. Mask transcript.
No, there's no mask transcript.
Mask help prevent blah, blah, blah.
We don't, well, I'm not going to talk more about masks.
I've said all I need to say about masks.
So this is one of those loser think situations where I talk about your talent stack being important to being able to analyze situations.
My guess is that there's nobody with an economics degree, or very few, who would have had a different opinion than I do about masks.
So let me put that out there as a challenge to you.
My challenge is that anybody who had the sufficient training to know how to compare things, and I would say, we'll use economists as our measurement.
And economists would know how to compare things.
And I would guess that most of them would agree with what I just said.
I had the experience yesterday as I went into a store and I just forgot my mask.
And I didn't realize that I wasn't wearing it until I got all the way up to pay.
And I felt like, you know, I felt like, you know, patient zero or something.
I never felt more uneasy in a store knowing that the other people are like, ah, he's going to kill us.
What about mathematicians?
Mathematicians are not trained to compare things the way economists are trained to compare things.
That would be a different skill.
All right. Yes, and vitamin D, apparently there is a real, there will be a controlled vitamin D test for coronavirus.
So that's just being organized now.
So I don't know how long that will take.
Maybe three months or so, we'll know if vitamin D is the big deal we thought it was.
The Zelenko Protocol.
You haven't heard much about that lately, have you?
Somebody's prompted me in the comments.
So I'm blocking people on Twitter.
When they say, so Scott, where's your hydroxychloroquine?
Well, you've been pumping that hydroxychloroquine, Scott.
No, I haven't.
No, I've been doing the opposite.
I've been telling you that every day that goes by, and I believe I've been saying this probably since March, I said that every day that goes by where we're not sure that hydroxychloroquine works probably tells you it doesn't.
So, having now gotten all the way into October, without any conclusive, you know, real solid, solid hydroxychloroquine results, the kind that would cause everybody to start using it.
In other words, if you hear that all the major hospitals are just using that as their go-to.
Maybe not hospitals, but doctors will say.
Then I'd say, okay, well, they've looked at all the evidence, they've seen the results, it works.
But my guess is that there is less hydroxychloroquine being prescribed today than there was in May.
Does anybody want to take that bet?
Anybody want to take the bet that the people who are most qualified, the doctors, the researchers, The people who are most qualified to determine, even though we don't have perfect information yet, but the ones who are in the best shape to know what studies are telling you something that's useful, I'll bet there is less of it prescribed.
So my last update was that I think I'd put it down to a 30% chance at most that hydroxychloroquine is some kind of a game changer or it makes a difference.
I think I would lower that again.
So I think I'll lower that again to 20%.
So I'd say there's no more than a 20% chance of maybe 10%, maybe less, that hydroxychloroquine will be the answer.
Now, I think that was a sensible way to go.
Early indications were so strong that optimism was, you know, it was warranted.
But the further we went without confirming it, Because if the signal was as strong as Zelenko said, Zelenko's claim is that basically it eliminates the problem.
If that were true, surely there would be enough other people who were trying it in the same way and they would be reporting the same thing and it would just be so confirmed there would be no doubt about it.
I think at this point we have to assume that the odds of hydroxychloroquine being a big deal Maybe 10%.
I think I'll put it at 10%.
Again, it's not impossible that the entire thing was a big mind effort and really it worked the whole time.
It's possible. I just say the odds just keep plunging every day that goes by without confirming it.
I will offer your bet.
Somebody wants to make me a bet on it.
I don't know how you would prove the bet because we don't believe any studies these days.
Somebody says the fine people hoax is the best analogy for hydroxychloroquine.
Is it? Is it?
I don't know. I don't like analogies for trying to understand the world.
They're good for explaining something the first time.
That's the only thing they're good for.
Do I read the posts on locals?
I do, yes. Now, I can't read every single thing that people send me.
So at this point, I'm getting messages from LinkedIn, email, text, various apps on locals, on Twitter, etc.
So I get far more messages than I can read them all, but I put more effort into reading the messages on locals because those are subscribers.
Did you hear Trump on...
Who is it?
The Johnson & Johnson thing?
Oh, one person got sick, so they put it on hold.
Yeah, I don't know if we can tell anything from the Johnson& Johnson trial, because it's not unusual that one person has a weird illness.
And it might not be related to the vaccine, but it's just good for them to pause things until they can find out.
So I don't know that we know anything.
That's kind of standard procedure.
Somebody says masks equals slavery.
Well, okay.
Somebody says they're pro-mask, but they're anti-mask mandates.
I feel you could make that argument.
I'm not sure that a mandate makes any difference, does it?
Oh, let me give you an update on California.
Most of you know California has been mocked because the state updated its mask guidance to say that you should wear your mask between bites at a restaurant.
Literally, the guidance in California is you have to lift your mask, take a bite, and then put your mask down while you chew, and that's how you will enjoy your restaurant meal.
Well, so I went out to eat last night, and my observation is that exactly zero people in my town are obeying that California regulation, and I like that.
I would be disappointed if my town didn't use masks, because that feels reasonable enough, as I've explained.
But the mask, the part where you can eat in a restaurant, but you have to have your mask on unless you're putting the food in your mouth.
I think everyone in California, as one, looked at that and said, nope.
Nope. You always know when you've gone too far, when 100% of the public just says, nope, at exactly the same time.
I would be willing to bet that I will never see a single person wearing their mask and only taking it off to bite and then putting it back on.
I'll bet I'll never see even one person do that.
And you know what? Every person in the restaurant I was in last night probably would have accepted being arrested to not have to comply with that.
You know, obviously I'm not a mind reader.
I don't know what other people are thinking.
But my sense of it was that you would have to put me and you'd have to put the chains on me.
You'd have to drag me to jail to get me to wear my mask in between bites.
All right? There is such a thing as too far, and that is so unambiguously clearly too far.
Nobody's going to do that.
So California, if you're smart, you will rescind that because it makes you look like freaking idiots.
