Episode 1273 Scott Adams: What Conservatives Get Wrong About Masks, How to Legally Fix an Election
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Content:
Democrats begin to see danger of Teachers Unions
President Trump won't testify at impeachment
Smartmatic sues FOX
Bank of America volunteering info to law enforcement?
Time says secret cabal "fortified" 2020 election?
What conservatives get wrong about masks
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I tweet it every day. So...
How about all the things that are happening?
Let's talk about the news.
All right? Let's talk about...
So Mike Bloomberg is saying that Biden needs to do more to fight the teachers' unions because the teachers' unions are keeping the schools closed.
So Mike Bloomberg now recognizes that the teachers' unions are a source of systemic racism.
Now, he doesn't use that term, but he does talk about how Poor people are deeply disadvantaged with this Zoom school situation because they don't have necessarily even Wi-Fi or iPads or any of that.
And so, having Mike Bloomberg and maybe more Democrats starting to see that the biggest problem in our country, literally the biggest problem, is the teachers' unions.
It's the biggest problem. There's nothing even close.
Everything else stems from that.
So maybe this is a big deal when somebody as prominent as Bloomberg calls out the teachers' unions as being a bad influence on society.
Maybe that matters.
Maybe each of us, a lot of us on here, complaining about that.
Maybe it mattered. We'll see.
I like it when something I've been advocating for strongly happens, and then I can tell myself, well, maybe I was some small, tiny percentage of getting this moving in the right direction.
Because these things don't happen unless lots of people agree.
And getting people to agree is kind of what I try to do.
I tweeted around a video the other day of Tony Robbins making the claim that the overall death rate in the United States hasn't changed in 2020, and therefore that the pandemic is maybe not that real because the overall death rate didn't change.
So I tweeted that around and said, can you give me a fact check on that?
It took about Well, today I saw a good one.
That the 2020 death rate so far, and they're not even done counting yet, I guess some of the data lags, but so far it's up 12% compared to normal.
12%. That's a lot for the death rate.
The overall death rate in the country is up at least 12%.
They're still not done counting.
That's a lot, right?
Something happened.
Now, is that death all from COVID? Don't know.
I think it equated to 300 and some thousand people extra.
So, you know, we do have a question of how well we're counting the COVID deaths.
But it does look like something happened.
That might not be just from the lockdowns itself killing people, although we know there's some of that.
So, when you see people claim that the death rate did not change, there's at least one official U.S. source that says it did change.
It changed a lot.
Now, I think some other people have tweeted this, so just be careful that everything you see has another piece of data that says it's wrong.
Just a general statement about everything.
There's an issue now with people who have had COVID and recovered, but have not recovered their sense of smell.
And I think we don't know at this point if that could be permanent with some people.
But I guess some people do recover their sense of smell.
So we've seen some who did, some who maybe haven't yet.
Is it permanent? And if it were, how much would it affect you?
Well, I can speak to that with...
Great. Yeah. Somebody says, my smell is slowly coming back.
So there will be some people on here who've had this exact experience.
Oh, I'm seeing the comments.
Mine came back fine.
And it sucks, somebody says.
Somebody says they know two people and it's been months and they haven't gotten it back.
It's been over a month for me, no smell.
And then there's some people who get smell, but it makes everything smell wrong.
So things that used to smell good, smell terrible, etc.
My sons came back.
It might have to do with age as well.
It's called congestion, some says.
It's called long COVID. Somebody says it's a psychological phenomenon.
I doubt it.
I doubt that.
Is it that big of a deal?
Well, that's what I'm here to tell you.
So many of you, my regulars, know that I lost my sense of smell, not from COVID, but maybe 10 years ago or longer, 15, I don't remember.
But I lost my sense of smell and didn't really even know it for a long time because food still had the sensation of having a taste.
So my brain just filled in what was missing.
And the biggest change was that I didn't get to smell unpleasant things.
That was it. The biggest change in my life is I did not not smell unpleasant things, which was great.
Now for every pleasant smell, I don't really notice that I don't smell them.
And by the way, I got my sense of smell back temporarily with some sinus surgery, but I think as of today it's probably gone again.
I haven't smelled anything in a long time.
So I think I know I have a sense of smell right now, and I can tell you it doesn't really change much of anything.
I like the same foods I liked before.
They still feel like they smell.
I think that it might be a psychological phenomenon, but I feel as though they have some kind of a taste.
So, it's not that big a deal, but I think for some people it would be.
If you're a foodie, or let's say you're a wine connoisseur, or you really, really care what kind of coffee you're drinking, that doesn't describe me at all.
So for me, it was no big deal.
Some people, it might be a big deal.
But we don't know yet if it's permanent.
So, President Trump has decided that he will not testify at next week's Senate impeachment trial.
Is that a good decision or a bad decision?
It's a good decision.
Yeah. The less that President Trump appears in public for a little while, right?
It'll change over time.
But for now, just for now, the less that he appears in public...
The better for him, I think.
Because he'll have capable people to defend him.
And everything that he does draws more attention.
And I think his very best play is exactly what he's doing.
To just lay low, let the lawyers do the lawyer thing.
And the real big question is, will they put the election integrity on trial?
Because how could they not, right?
Because don't you have two completely different feelings about what Trump did and the attack on the Capitol, etc.?
Don't you feel completely different about it if you assume that the election was definitely good versus if you assume, oh, we got some genuine questions.
We don't know that it was fraudulent.
We don't have any proof of that.
But we've got some questions.
Here's one of my questions.
Remember when I told you that I'd seen stronger evidence than the public had seen about allegations of election impropriety?
Well, the things that I'd seen were statistical, meaning that things that were unlikely to happen unless there had been mischief.
Now, here's my question to you.
Would any of those kinds of claims, just the general kind of claim that says something is statistically out of whack, would any of them have any power in a court of law?
Because I think not, right?
If you did not have something more than a statistical oddity, you wouldn't have anything, right?
Is that fair?
And as far as I know, the statistical oddities...
If they were in fact odd, because some would say they're perfectly explained by turnout and whatever else.
But if those oddities have no court power, but yet they do have, let's say, they're persuasive to you just as an individual, that's probably how we got here.
That's probably how we got here.
Are we not all probabilities?
Power as probable cause for inquiry.
Looking at your comments. Absolute proof documentary.
Look it up after the scope.
Oh, there's something called absolute proof of documentary.
It's probably banned by now.
So, as somebody's saying, yes, statistical oddity can have evidential value.
But, if it's the only evidence...
And there's an explanation that could be true that's an alternate explanation.
That's kind of the end of it, isn't it?
If you bring your statistics in, and then the defense says, well, yes, these are odd statistics, but it was an odd year.
We had lots of turnout, and the coronavirus caused things to be different.
That's it, right?
How in the world could you ever convict or get some kind of a positive ruling As long as the defense has a story that's perfectly plausible.
Perfectly plausible to say, you know, everything about this election was different.
So yeah, statistical oddities, there are probably lots of them.
Doesn't mean anything. It just means it was a different year.
I think that's the end of it.
But that would be in a court of law.
In the court of your own opinion, maybe those things have greater weight.
So I'm just asking the question.
Well, and then there's somebody who says really, really odd statistics like one in a zillion.
The statistics that said that the election only had a...
I think somebody came up with one in a trillion chance that it was natural and fraud-free.
Do you think anybody can calculate that?
No. Nobody can calculate that.
That's not a thing. There's nobody who can calculate what are the odds that the election was real based on a statistical fact or a set of facts.
I don't think that's a real thing.
That just sounds like a statistician getting a little attention.
So, what else we got going on?
So I'd love to see the President put the, let's say, the transparency of the election system on trial.
That would be a good service.
Because right now, the impeachment thing is a complete waste of time for the public.
The public is not being served by any of this.
I think we know that.
It's sort of a revengy kind of thing.
But if the president says, hey, whether or not the election was fraudulent can't be known because the election system doesn't allow you to know it.
That would be really useful if the public learned that.
Rand Paul's getting some heat because he's not wearing his mask during the Senate floor events, and his reasoning is that he already has recovered from COVID, and therefore he has antibodies, and it would not make sense for him to be wearing a mask.
What do you think of that?
Yes, Dr.
Rand Paul. So medical doctor Rand Paul says he's not wearing a mask.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to withdraw my earlier statement that he would be a good candidate for president based on this.
This is such a bad idea From Rand Paul, and I know he's very popular, and a lot of you are loving that he's doing this, but I'll tell you why.
I have a different opinion on it.
I think this is disqualifying for president, frankly, which is disappointing, because he was sort of my top pick, you know, preliminarily.
For a Republican candidate, he would have been my top pick.
But I think that not wearing the mask in this context is disqualifying from my perspective.
A lot of you like it.
Here's my reason why.
While we do know that people who have recovered do have immunity, we know this to be true.
Do you all agree? We all know that a recovered COVID person does have some amount of immunity and that it could last well over a year.
Everybody on the same page so far.
Immunity is a real thing and it can last over a year.
Well, I guess Rand Paul had his COVID a while ago, and the experts are saying that you can get reinfected, possibly with a different strain, but also possibly with the same strain in the amount of time that's gone by.
So, can Rand Paul infect people the same way that other people there who have not had COVID could infect people?
Could he? The answer is yes.
Yes, he could. Now, what are the odds?
Are the odds of him infecting you without a mask any different, higher or lower, than the odds of the other people who have never had COVID or never been tested for it, actually having it and then being spreaders?
Which one is going to spread it the most?
Rand Paul without a mask, with some amount of antibodies, we don't know if it's complete, or people...
Or with the masks who don't know if they've ever had it, might have it right now.
Somebody says their girlfriend got it twice.
That's the end of the conversation.
That's the end of the conversation.
His girlfriend got it twice.
She's not the only one.
We do know, I believe for a fact, I'm sure the medical profession has pretty much agreed that there's no doubt about it, you can get it twice.
If you're not wearing a mask and you get it twice, you're a little bit dangerous, aren't you?
So, here's the thing.
We don't know... Rand Paul's risk of transmitting it compared to someone else's.
We imagine it's lower.
We imagine he has a lower risk.
Probably. Probably.
But as a leader, should he be taking off his mask because he judges, without the benefit of hard evidence, but reasonably good judgment, would say that he has lower risk than other people of transmitting it, but not zero risk.
And in the context of getting people to wear masks, if masks are a good idea, medically, then Rand Paul is displaying terrible leadership.
Really just terrible leadership.
Because he should not be taking any chance.
He should mask up so that other people say, yeah, masks are important.
Even if you've had it once, maybe you need to wear a mask.
Why do I think it's a terrible idea to let people who have just recovered from COVID go maskless?
It should be obvious to you that masks won't work the moment you allow some people to go without them.
That's the end of masks.
Because as soon as some people can go without them, Everybody's going to say, I already recovered.
You'll take it off on the airplane.
The flight attendant will say, we require masks.
And you'll say, no, I don't wear it.
Rand Paul doesn't wear it.
He's a medical doctor.
I listen to medical doctors.
I'm not going to listen to you frauds on this plane.
It's a big problem if you don't just say everybody has to wear a mask.
Now, if you do say everybody wears a mask, it's a big burden.
On people who just recovered and really probably don't have any reason to wear a mask, or at least their risk is so tiny that there's no real reason.
But as soon as you allow it, the whole system breaks down.
And you know that, right? You know that.
You can't let some people just claim that they recovered.
That system would not work.
Day one, people would cheat like crazy.
Alright, so I think that's a bad move by Rand Paul.
He's making news for all the wrong reasons.
It could easily get him the nomination, but it's going to make it harder to win.
Democrats are split on how to cancel student debt.
So it looks like that's going to happen.
One of the weird side effects of running up our national debt so high is that any new thing you want to add to the national debt doesn't seem like a big deal anymore.
Because remember, if you had said two years ago, if you had said, let's cancel $2 trillion, or let's say $1 trillion of student debt, if you had floated that idea a year ago, People would have said, we're not going to cancel a trillion dollars of debt for people who willingly took it on and then make other people pay their debt.
We're not going to do that.
That's a trillion dollars.
Are you kidding me? But now, because we're spending a trillion every few weeks on the coronavirus, it seems like, just mentally it seems like that, you can throw this in the mix.
And people will say, it's just another trillion.
You got $23 trillion debt or whatever the heck it is.
Another trillion? Get rid of student debt?
Why not? It's just another trillion.
So, of course, the big problem with getting rid of student debt is that people who have paid off student debt, they got a lot to complain about, don't they?
If you just paid off your own student debt, and then you find out that your sibling just had theirs cancelled for free, you're going to be pissed off.
I don't know how they're going to deal with that.
I don't know how leadership could possibly deal with that.
Here's the way I think it should be done.
I think the forgiving of the debt should be on the colleges.
Because if you went to a college that accepted your Your payment via student loan and then gave you an education that doesn't allow you to get a job that could pay off your debt?
I feel like the colleges have a little bit to explain, too.
They've got a little bit to explain.
So I don't know any way that this college debt thing can be Handled in a way that doesn't make a big part of the country really mad.
So Marjorie Taylor Greene, you're all following this story, she said provocative QAnon-like crazy things in the past, but she claims she hasn't said any of that since she ran for office, and so it shouldn't count what she said in the past.
But she has been stripped of her committee memberships for being too crazy.
Imagine being too crazy for Congress.
It's just a funny concept.
How crazy do you have to be to be so crazy that members of Congress even say, whoa, we're pretty crazy, but you just crossed even our line.
Now, Is she crazy?
Well, she has said things which I don't think leaders should say.
So I'm not going to be a supporter of hers in any way.
But I think it's interesting to see that the Democrats have successfully made her the poster child of Democrats.
They kind of did that successfully, wouldn't you say?
Because now with Trump off the stage, at least a little bit, they need some new Republican to paint as the face of the Republicans.
So it looks like the least important person in Congress, a freshman representative, is being put forward as their leader.
Now, might be a problem.
Might be a problem.
Because I listened to her speak when she was defending herself.
And I gotta say, I didn't quite understand how she got elected, given that she had this history of conspiracy theory stuff.
And then I heard her speak.
She's actually pretty good.
As a public personality, Somebody who can just say what the base wants to hear.
She's actually pretty good at it.
You know, in terms of just skill.
For giving a speech, connecting with people, she sounded like she has some real skill.
So that's... That's something to look for.
But I don't really care about her story too much.
Her story is mostly a fake story so that Democrats can paint all Republicans as looking like clowns.
They succeeded.
Completely succeeded in painting all Republicans to look like clowns because of this one Republican.
So it was a good play.
Persuasion-wise, the Democrats get the win for that persuasion.
All right. Smartmatics is suing Fox, and it looks like they might have a pretty good case here.
So they're suing Fox and three of the hosts...
Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiroma, and Janine Pirro.
Now, they're also going after Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell separately.
But what do you think of this?
What exactly is the standard for this lawsuit?
Is the standard that these claims are not proven?
Or do they have to prove that the claims are not true?
How does that work?
Would it be enough for smart medics to say there's no proof of the claims?
Or do they actually have to prove that their system has no problems?
How does that work?
So some smart people are saying that Fox News is in trouble.
So they're acting like maybe it's a pretty good case.
Somebody said it was sort of a textbook exact case of defamation.
Maybe. But here's my question.
Couldn't Trump or Trump supporters sue CNN and the other networks for promoting the fine people hoax and the drinking bleach hoax?
Because the claim is that the network knew these things were not true...
Or at least these hosts knew they weren't true, but said them anyway as if they were true.
Because I think you have to demonstrate that they know it's not true.
Because I don't think you can get a defamation...
I'm not a lawyer, so help me on this.
But I don't think you can get a defamation win if it was an honest mistake, if somebody actually just believed what they were saying.
I think you don't win that way.
But... How would you possibly prove that Lou Dobbs didn't know what he was saying?
Or how do you know what Lou Dobbs was thinking?
How can you possibly prove that?
That's weird. Now, if they could win this, why couldn't Trump or even Trump supporters sue over the fine people hoax and the drinking bleach hoax?
Because they both look like they were not said with any honesty.
It does look like the network was intentionally lying about those things.
And they're extremely, extremely defamatory.
I mean, extremely.
Way more than the example with the machines.
Although Smartmatics has a good business case in terms of it hurting their business.
I think they'll be able to demonstrate that.
So, I think either everything has to be suable or nothing.
You have to use the same standard, right?
So, if Smartmatics wins this defamation, I think Trump should sue CNN for the fine people hoax.
And the bleach hoax.
There's talk about Biden wanting to establish a realities R. A realities R. Are you kidding me?
Every time you think that things couldn't get more ridiculous, then they do.
And I guess the reason for this is that they believe there's too much right-wing disinformation and they need somebody to clear that up.
But again, who gets to be in charge of what reality is?
I see a problem there.
Because what they're selling right now is that disinformation only comes from one side.
Just think about this.
The Democrats have created a generalized belief in this country that incorrect information only comes from the right.
What world are they living in?
There are plenty of examples of disinformation coming from the right.
Plenty of it. But there's a lot coming from the left.
And if you were to actually add it up and make a list, do you think there would be more on the right or the left?
I think it would be such a long list in both cases that to imagine that one side is controlling the truth and the other side is not is pretty absurd.
But I think they might actually believe that they have the truth and the other side doesn't, which is scary in itself.
Tucker Carlson tonight reported exclusively that Bank of America apparently was helping law enforcement identify who attended the capital assault or a capital protest, whatever you want to call them.
How do you like the fact that a major bank...
Is giving the, I don't know, FBI or law enforcement or whoever is asking anything they want about who was there and what they spent and how they spent it so they can know who was there.
Pretty scary, isn't it?
On the other hand, it's just basic police work, isn't it?
Can't the police look at your financial records if they have cause and they get a warrant?
I'm not sure...
I don't know if there's anything really different happening here, but just hearing about it happening on a large scale is pretty scary.
And then Snopes decided to weigh in on the story about AOC and whether she was, quote, in the capital when the assault happened because she had her story about how scared she was.
Now, some say, and I guess some say in this case accurately, that her office was a few blocks away from the Capitol building, and therefore, some say, she was exaggerating what danger she was in.
Now, I think that that's subjective.
It's sort of up to AOC to decide how much danger she thought she was in, because it's her story.
So I think she gets to say how dangerous it felt.
It's not for us who weren't there to say how dangerous she felt it was.
But it is nonetheless true that she sold her involvement as being closer to the action than it actually was.
But Snopes decides to have her back and say that it was mostly false that she wasn't in the Capitol because she was in the Capitol complex a few blocks away.
And watching this happen in real time, you know, just watching a fact-checking organization clearly just backing a candidate, it just makes a little fact-checking idea kind of crazy.
Here's the weirdest story.
Tim Pool was calling this out.
Time magazine is doing a story about a secret cabal of people behind the scenes who influenced the election.
They didn't rig it.
Oh, no. No, no.
They didn't fix the election.
Everything that this secret cabal of people behind the scenes did was, as Time magazine calls it, they were fortifying it.
They fortified the election.
And they did a number of things.
They did, here's what Time reports, it was a well-funded cabal of powerful people ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions.
What? What? Influence perceptions.
That's propaganda, isn't it?
So influence perceptions.
Change rules and laws.
For whose benefit?
Weren't all of the rules and laws that were changed for the benefit of Democrats?
Like every single one?
Coincidence? Maybe.
Steer media coverage.
What? Steer media coverage.
There was a secret cabal of well-funded people and powerful people who were steering media coverage.
Completely legal.
So far, this is all legal.
And control the flow of information.
What? Seriously?
There was a well-funded cabal of people changing the election rules Influencing our perceptions and steering media coverage and controlling the flow of information.
But Time says this.
The very next sentence wants to make sure that you're very clear on that, that although they are working behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information, next sentence, period, they were not rigging the election.
No, they were not rigging the election, semicolon.
They were fortifying it.
So all of you people who think that sounds like rigging an election, you're also wrong.
That's fortifying it.
Now, why do you call it fortifying it?
Because, in their opinion, they made the outcome the one they wanted and the one they expected.
So it was the one they wanted and the one they expected, so therefore it must have been fortified.
Not rigged. Because when things go the way you don't want them, that's rigged.
When things go the way you do want them to go, well, that's fortified.
That's pretty fortified.
Now, I've been telling you for a while that democracy is an illusion, but a useful one.
It's a useful illusion that your vote matters.
And the reason that's useful is that it allows you to buy into the system and say, oh, my candidate didn't win, but at least my vote counted.
It was a fair process, so I guess I'll live with this leader that I didn't choose.
So we need a system that's credible, of course.
And here we have a situation in which According to Time, their reporting is telling us that the outcome was influenced by a secret cabal of powerful people.
In other words, while they did everything they did was legal, there's no accusation that they broke any laws.
But they're saying very clearly, the article, it changed the outcome of the election.
So what kind of a democracy is it In which the election, which was legal before, in other words, the way it was before any of these things happened, was completely legal.
It was changed to another situation which was also completely legal.
Because they used legal processes to change laws, etc.
But that's what made the election outcome, was these changes.
It wasn't your vote.
Now, we live in a country in which our Our media can tell us right to our faces that we didn't have a real election.
What we had was a number of people working behind the scenes whose collective actions determined who your president is.
But not rigged.
Fortified. I don't even know what to add to this story.
Usually I'll tell you what's in the headlines and I'll give it my humorous or insightful spin.
There's nothing to say about this.
Everything that needs to be said about this is being said openly, that this group of people behind the scenes determined the president.
Now, he may have also got the most votes.
That appears to be the case.
But what kind of system are we living in?
It's certainly not a republic.
I don't know what this is.
What would you call it? It's sort of a contest of behind-the-scenes, well-funded cabals, right?
So there's your system you're living in.
All right, I promised you that I was going to give you what conservatives don't understand about masks.
You ready for this?
This will be draft one.
All right, so the first draft of this is just to see, to give feedback.
So if I say something that doesn't pass the fact check, you'll get back to me, and then if I get the energy, I'll write this up so it's, you know, maybe one better document.
Starting with this, here's what conservatives tend to not know about masks.
Number one, there has never been a randomized controlled study of mask effectiveness for coronavirus.
It hasn't happened.
So, when you send me a link of all the studies that show that masks don't work, you haven't sent me anything, because it doesn't exist.
There has never been a randomized controlled trial of mask effectiveness for coronavirus.
If you think that's ever happened, You're misinformed.
There has never been one.
So what can you conclude if there's never been the gold standard kind of trial where you've got a randomized control trial and you're comparing it to something?
Now, the first thing you need to know is that there can't be a trial like that because it would be unethical.
You wouldn't send people into a virus situation without masks if the entire medical community, most of them, think that masks can save lives.
So there's no way to test it.
So what are all these studies that people keep sending me saying that masks don't work?
Well, they are studies of other studies, which are none of them being the randomized control type.
So it might be a, let's say, after-the-fact study that says this group wore masks, this group wore masks, let's say, later or differently or didn't, and then you just see how they did.
What would you know for sure if you compared two groups and one had a good result and one didn't?
If it's not a randomized controlled trial, if it's not that, what have you learned by comparing these two situations?
And the answer is nothing.
If you think that those other kinds of trials are telling you something useful, then you don't understand how any of this works.
There are also...
Try this experiment.
Go to Google and do a search on this.
Masks work for coronavirus.
And just see how many studies will tell you that masks do work.
Then do the same study, same search, except masks do not work for coronavirus.
And you know what you'll find? A whole bunch of studies, none of them randomized controlled studies, that say masks don't work.
So now you've got a list of studies that did not study coronavirus specifically.
Did not. Because it wasn't a randomized controlled study that studied coronavirus and masks.
Usually it's something else.
They'll study something in the laboratory, or they'll look at a different kind of study, or some other example from the past, etc.
If you were to add up all of the ones that say masks maybe don't work, but they're not the good kind of studies, and all the ones that say masks probably do work, but they're also not the good kind of study, how do you weigh those?
A whole bunch of trials, a whole bunch of studies that say they do work, A whole bunch of ones that say they don't work.
So that's all you know.
How do you weigh it? Now, I'm not going to tell you that masks work or don't work.
If you think you're going to get that out of this presentation, you're not.
I'm going to tell you how to think about it.
The actual answer of whether masks in the end are better or make things worse, I don't know.
And I would suggest that if you think you know that, that's stupid.
You don't know that.
You don't know for sure that masks work.
You don't know, and you can't know for sure, that they don't work.
It is completely unknowable.
So if one of your opinions is they definitely work or they definitely don't work, those opinions are both stupid.
A smart opinion would be something about probability.
So you can tell right away whether you're stupid or smart, By whether you're talking about absolutes, definitely don't work, or definitely do work.
Those are the stupid opinions.
Everything in between is smart.
Even if you said 95% chance they work or 95% chance they don't work, you're in the smart zone because you're talking about probability.
And that's all we can do because we don't have what?
Randomized, controlled trial.
Don't have it. If we did...
And we had maybe more than one of them, so it could be repeatable.
Well, then we'd have something pretty good.
But we don't. So all we have are studies that say probably they work.
Studies that say it looks like probably they don't.
And none of those studies have any value.
At all. In fact, what would be the value of a study that got peer-reviewed and accepted for publication?
If you were going to put some odds on it being true.
You don't even know what the study is about.
I just tell you there was a study.
It was peer-reviewed.
It was accepted for publication and a major scientific publication.
What odds would you put on it that the result in that study is actually true?
The answer is coin flip.
That's a coin flip.
No better than a coin flip.
The fact that it was peer-reviewed Published and you read it online is a coin flip.
You should put no more odds on it being true than a coin flip.
So those of you who are saying, look at all these studies that show masks don't work, what you don't understand is that all of those studies put together and even analyzed by really smart people know better than a coin flip.
Likewise, the ones that say that they do work.
No better than a coin flip.
So that's what we're working with, with the quality of information.
All right, let me go on. So what about herd immunity?
Oh, here's one that conservatives say that masks don't work.
Because the areas that have the strictest mask mandates and lockdowns, people throw those together like it's the same issue.
I separate lockdowns from masks.
I think there's less evidence for lockdowns being a good idea than there is for masks.
So for me, those are just separate questions.
I'm pro-mask.
I'll tell you why when we're done.
I'm anti-lockdown.
Except for some businesses that make sense.
Maybe gyms can't open yet.
For example. But I'm pro-opening up.
And pro-opening the schools.
In case you want to know where I'm at on this.
Alright, so. Do mandates of masks work?
Because we see that where the mask mandates are the strongest, you also have the worst infections.
So a lot of conservatives have said to me, obviously the masks don't work, because wherever there are the worst infections...
There are also the most mask mandates.
It's obvious. And look at the curve.
Here's where the mask mandate came in.
You see the curve still went up.
Duh. Duh.
If mask mandates happened on this date and the infections just got worse, proof that masks don't work.
That's what conservatives tell me.
But it doesn't work that way.
You've got causation backwards.
The reason there's a tough mask mandate It's because they know the infections are going to be impossible to control, even with masks.
It's the best you can do, but nobody says the masks stop the virus.
Nobody says, oh, we got our masks on, we're all good now.
It's just to slow it down.
So what you don't know is what that curve would have looked like without masks.
There's no comparison.
You know that they did mask, and you know that the infections increased.
But what would the infections have been without masks?
It's unknowable because that was never tested.
So the fact that infections keep going up when mask mandates are in place means nothing about the effectiveness of masks.
Nothing. You should take nothing from that.
Except one thing.
You can conclude that masks do not stop the virus.
Can we agree that we can conclude that a tough mask mandate will not just stop the virus?
Because the curves are pretty clear on that.
But we don't know if they would have been worse.
We don't know.
So you have to make your decision without knowing that.
I've heard also recently that what about herd immunity?
Shouldn't we let the kids get the Well, here's the problem with that.
Kids bring the infection back to the family, and then the old people get it, and they die.
That's a problem. So if you don't want that problem, where the kids get it, bring it into the family, and then old people die, then I hear conservatives say, Bud Scott, personal responsibility.
Let the people who don't have a risk live their lives, or the ones who want to take the risk, And let the people who need to socially isolate just do it better.
Just do it better.
Socially isolate better, and you won't have a problem.
Except, that's not the real world.
Have you seen real people act in the real world?
People don't socially isolate at home.
I'm sorry, they don't.
And when the kid comes home, they're going to interact with the parents every time.
Nobody is... No parent is socially isolating from their own frickin' kid.
That's not happening.
Now the parent has it.
Because of course they're not socially isolating from their own children.
What if the grandparents live in the house?
Then mom and dad talk to the grandparents, blah blah blah, dad dies.
Now if you think that personal responsibility is sort of the beginning and end of the conversation, I would say that's certainly a philosophy that I could get behind as a consistent philosophy.
But you have to know it is a decision to kill lots and lots of old people.
Because that's what would happen.
There's nothing you can do to protect the old people if the kids are running around getting infected.
Nothing. You could say it's their responsibility, but they're not going to act that much differently.
You just have to accept...
That from a legal perspective, saying who's responsible makes a lot of sense.
You have to have a system where somebody is responsible.
But when you're talking about a disease, responsibility is irrelevant if nobody's going to act any differently.
And they're not. So, imagining that letting the kids get herd immunity would not kill millions of seniors is not realistic.
It would. It would kill millions of seniors if you got to herd immunity.
So it's better to prevent herd immunity and hope that the vaccines can make up the difference as opposed to infections giving you the herd immunity.
So herd immunity by vaccinations...
Could be really good.
Herd immunity by people just getting it could be very bad, and here's why.
Not only because of the old people dying, because you can't socially isolate that well, but also because of the long-haul problem.
So a lot of people are not familiar, a lot of conservatives for some reason have not heard that there's a big concern about some kind of permanent or long, long damage from getting the coronavirus.
Now, it doesn't happen to most people, apparently, but there are enough stories of it.
Even some famous people who are having very long-term problems.
Maybe some of them will lose their smell permanently.
We don't know that yet.
But how much weight should you put on the long-haul problem?
Let's look at the randomized controlled study.
Of the long-haul problem, oh, it doesn't exist.
So if we don't have a randomized controlled trial to know what this long-haul problem is, what can you do about it?
You just have to use your judgment.
You're going to have to say, we think this is a risk, but we don't know how big it is.
And that's like the real world.
You have to make judgments without really knowing the risk of each one.
Personally, I think that's a big enough risk that I would be pretty extreme about avoiding that.
Because I don't know if it's a problem, but if it is a problem, it's a problem for the rest of your whole life.
So it's not a risk that I would take.
So if you said, Scott, do you want to just get the coronavirus and get it over with, like Rand Paul, I would say, I don't know if I'm going to be the one who recovers well.
So no, I would rather not get it.
And if you think that getting it is the right play, well, you could get lucky and just get your antibodies and no symptoms.
But it's not a risk I'm willing to take.
The long-haul risk, it's a pretty big risk, at least in terms of If it's real, it would be the rest of your life.
That's a big risk.
People lose limbs to sugar abuse.
Well, of course, it depends on the size of the problem, right?
So if the long-haul problem is 10 people in the United States ever, then I'm not going to worry about it.
If it's millions, if it's hundreds of thousands of people, Which it well could be.
We just don't know. Well, then I'm pretty worried about it.
I'm not feeling the same about people eating sugar, as was said in the comments.
All right. So you don't want herd immunity to happen naturally.
Some people still say that Sweden is a success story, but you should update your information on Sweden.
Apparently, Sweden has decided that they're Their technique of being a little bit loose about this was probably the wrong technique.
And I believe that Sweden is moving closer to the European model, having believed that they did not use the right model.
That's where I think it is right now.
But don't use the Sweden example in your arguments, because that's changed.
All right, how about...
Here's some other things that I notice conservatives don't know.
They've seen studies that say that the holes in the mask, any kind of mask, are bigger than the size of a virus.
So the hole, if you were to go microscopic and look at the mask, there would be, let's say, holes this big, depending on your magnification, and then the virus would be like a little dot going through this big hole.
So then some conservatives say, well, a mask is useless...
Because this virus will fly right through that gigantic hole.
Here's what people who make that argument miss.
Viruses don't travel by themselves.
They travel attached to water particles.
Try this experiment at home.
Go up to your mirror and put on your mask.
And then blow on the mirror.
See how much of a water vapor film is there.
Then take the mask off and do the same thing.
Just go on your window or mirror and see if there's a difference in the water vapor.
If there is, that means that the mask is stopping some amount of water vapor.
We're not trying to stop it all.
I'll get into that.
You're trying to reduce the amount that's floating around.
Now, if you put your mask on and you went into a phone booth with one person, let's say one of you is infected, and you stayed in the phone booth, For a couple of days, would the mask help you avoid infection?
No. No.
Because you went into a phone booth and whatever air got past the holes in the mask would stay in there and you'd be marinating in it until you got it.
So under that situation, would a mask work?
No. A mask would be completely useless if you were trapped in a phone booth for two days with somebody infected.
But that's not the real world.
Most of the real world is small interactions.
Could having a mask that we know stops some amount of water vapor, which we know is what is carrying some amount of the virus, could that make a difference for small interactions?
Well, here's the other thing that conservatives seem not to know, which is that the viral load makes a big difference.
So in other words, if one particle of a virus got on you, You'd probably either not get it, or it would start slowly, because it's starting from such a small number of virus, that your body would have a little more time to organize its defenses, and that although you might get symptoms, they might be more mild because of your low viral load.
So in other words, the person who's marinating in the phone booth with an infected person for two days is going to get a lot of virus, That person is more likely, say the scientists, say the doctors, to get a worse outcome.
Now, is there a randomized controlled trial on viral load to show us for sure that getting more of it is going to make you sicker than getting a little of it?
No. No.
There is not a randomized controlled trial of coronavirus showing you that a greater viral load will give you a worse outcome.
But it would be consistent with what medical professionals know about viral loads.
So it could be that coronavirus is the exception to the rule.
But that's not a smart play.
In other words, if you're doing risk management, again, you don't know, you've got all these unknowns, you would assume the, let's say, the smartest way to approach it is that this virus is similar enough to other viruses that the amount of viral load probably makes a big difference.
Not every time, maybe you can't Prove it for sure, but it's the smart play.
So if the amount of virus you're infected with makes a big difference, we don't know it, but it's a smart play that it would be.
Assuming it's true would be the smart way to think of it, even if it turns out it's not true later.
So therefore, masks stop some amount of moisture.
That means they're stopping...
Some amount of the virus.
And if viral load matters, there's your argument for why masks probably work, even if you can't measure them.
What about the problem of...
Here's some other points.
Somebody said to me, if there's no strong evidence that masks work...
And that's true. There is no randomized control trial to say masks work.
And since we don't have that, and since we do know that masks could cause problems, might reduce your oxygen, fog you glasses while you're driving, give you panic attacks, you can think of a hundred ways that masks are definitely bad.
So here's the argument.
If we don't know they're good, but we definitely know there's a cost to using them, Why would you do it?
Shouldn't you know they're good before you take the harm of wearing them?
And I would say that would be a good point.
It would be a good point under the condition that you don't have vaccines coming and that you don't have basically all medical and scientific organizations telling you to wear masks.
Now, The fact that every modern country is recommending its citizens wear masks if the virus is present, and every medical organization is saying the same thing, and probably 99% of doctors and experts are saying the same thing, does that mean they're all right?
It doesn't. No.
Because, again, we're doing risk management.
We don't know what's true.
It is still completely possible that masks make things worse.
It is still completely possible that masks really, really make a big difference.
We don't know.
And if you think you know, you're in the dumb world.
You don't know. So you have to make your decisions based on these factors.
So when do you trust the doctors and when do you be skeptical?
Because you've seen me be skeptical of experts a lot of times, right?
So what am I looking at to decide when to be skeptical and when to say, yeah, I'm going to go with the experts on this one?
Well, one of my rules is how much complexity is involved.
When you're looking at, say, an 80-year prediction of climate change, that's, first of all, more economic than medical.
It's too complicated to do.
That's just not something I would trust an expert with, a 20-year, 80-year projection of anything.
I wouldn't trust any expert with that.
But when you have a really limited question, which is, do you think these masks Probably help with the coronavirus.
And you have massive agreement among all the people who would understand this field the best, and it's a pretty simple question.
Now, there's a little bit of complexity to it, but well within the expert range, right?
So under the condition that it's a simple question, and you have every country, every major medical organization, all the people who are the smartest about this...
99% of them are on the same side.
I take that pretty seriously.
If it were 50-50, I'd feel differently.
If it were 90-10, I'd feel differently.
But it's more like 99-1, I think, at least observationally.
When you see somebody disagreeing, it's a doctor with weird hair, usually.
Am I wrong? If you see somebody who's like the rebel doctor who's got his own little video on YouTube and he's the rebel and he's saying that the medical community is all wrong, look at his hair.
Hi! I'm the medical community and my hair looks like I've never had a mirror in my entire life.
Right? I'm just saying...
That when you see the doctor with the weird hair, and he's the rogue, like he's the only one who thinks the masks don't work, I'm not going to go with the weird hair guy every time.
I love my skeptics, and I'm completely biased toward wanting to believe the skeptic, because I think half the time at least the skeptic is right.
Somebody says, I don't buy the long hair argument.
Well, don't take the long hair argument to be too serious.
But the majority of medical professionals are on the same side of this.
Here's some other objections I hear from conservatives.
That touching your mask, which people do, is going to reduce the whole point of a mask.
Because I don't know about you, but my hand is all over my face mask when I'm using it.
So does that make it worse?
Well, I think not.
Because when this first started, we thought that surfaces are where you get your coronavirus, like touching a surface.
But we have learned more recently that the surfaces are not nearly the problem that we thought.
It's pretty much an airborne problem.
It doesn't seem to be surfaces related.
It's still smart to sanitize everything and wash your hands, because there's got to be some effect from surfaces.
But I think the thinking is that there's not enough of an effect that touching your mask is going to increase the risk more than having a mask decreases it.
Now, could I be wrong?
Sure, right?
It's risk management.
It's not certainty.
So could I be wrong that touching your mask makes it worse?
Maybe. Maybe it does.
But I would say that my judgment on this is that since touching surfaces seems to be not a big issue, I mean, your grocery store lets you touch everything.
They don't love it, but are a lot of people getting coronavirus from grocery stores?
Because the grocery store is nothing but people touching common items all day long.
It doesn't seem to be a problem.
So, there's that.
I'm touching. All right. Conservatives also say that...
All right.
So, getting back to the point of should you do something where the mask benefit is not proven by a good trial, but there are lots of doctors who say, yeah, our judgment is it's probably going to help.
Because water particles are bigger than the mask holes, etc.
All right. What about opening businesses?
I'm in favor of opening businesses and then just tracking them.
Because I think the only way that we can get opened, given that this coronavirus is going to linger for God knows how long, I think you just have to open businesses and then when people get infected, ask them where they've been.
And as soon as you see a correlation, let's say, we don't think restaurants are going to be the big problem, but let's say they were.
Well, then you close them up.
So I think you just have to experiment with it.
So I'm pro-opening businesses, just in case you wondered.
All right. And kids in school, I think that the harm to kids of keeping them out of school probably exceeds the benefit.
So I'm very pro putting kids back in school with all the safety that we can bring them.
But you should be aware that that does mean grandma is more likely to die.
There's just nothing you can do about it.
You can try to socially distance all you want, but people are going to die if kids go back to school.
I just think that's the trade-off that's worth it.
I think killing...
I'm going to say it directly. I think that getting kids back in school is more important than saving, I don't know, 100,000 old people's lives.
If you can't say that out loud, you probably shouldn't be involved in decision-making.
But I'm going to say it out loud.
Getting kids back to school would be worth 100,000 senior citizens dying.
If you can't say that out loud, you just don't belong in the conversation.
You should be able to say it.
Do I like that?
No. I'm one of the people who might be dead.
I'm sort of rapidly approaching the high-risk category of life.
I don't like the fact that I might be dead, or that somebody I love might be dead.
But yeah, I'm still going to say we should get the kids back to school.
The other things that people say is that the masks are really some kind of a control thing and that really it's the global conspiracy to make us all agree to anything.
So the masks are really just a way to manipulate us into higher control later.
I would call that just crazy.
There are some things that you don't need an argument against.
If somebody says a UFO landed in their backyard, I'm not going to go check.
If somebody says Bigfoot ate the cupcakes that were on the counter in your kitchen, I'm not going to check the video.
I don't think Bigfoot ate the cupcakes.
There are some things you don't need to research.
And I don't need to research that the masks are some kind of a global control conspiracy thing.
That's just crazy.
So, somebody here says, masks don't work.
So, whoever it is who says here, masks don't work, did you hear anything I said?
Was there anything I said that you listened to, or did you just sign on?
Masks don't work. So just in summary, for those of you who signed in later, I can't know, nor can you, if masks work or they don't work.
It's not knowable. We don't have a randomized control trial.
We're not going to have one because you can't ethically do it.
You're going to have to use the information you have, and it's all unreliable.
So how do you make a decision with all unreliable information?
Well, all you can do is figure out which of the unreliable information is the worst.
All those studies that are not randomized controlled trials?
Worthless. Ignore them all.
Size of the whole of the mask compared to the size of the virus?
Worthless. That won't tell you anything.
The real world would tell you something.
But those two different sizes don't tell you anything because of the water vapor, blah, blah, blah.
And then somebody had the argument that the mask would rip off the water vapor and aerosol the virus and it would actually be making the virus more transmissible because the mask would...
It would make it go from larger particles to smaller particles, to which I say, I suppose anything's possible.
Maybe. I wouldn't rule it out, but I don't think we have evidence of it.
So I would throw that in the mix and say, I can't judge that one.
I don't know. But there's certainly a risk both ways.
Somebody says, we found out that COVID is on vapor, not droplets.
Well, vapor is still...
It's got to be on droplets as well.
How can it not be on droplets?
That doesn't make sense.
Are you for tagging people, Scott?
You mean tagging the people who have been vaccinated?
I think we may have no choice at one point.
I think we'll probably have no choice.
But it's not ideal.
You know, I think that we've reached the point where our loss of privacy is largely just guaranteed.
So to me, I tend not to argue the privacy stuff too much because it would be like arguing against rain.
It's going to rain. You could argue against it, but it's still going to rain.
Privacy is like that.
You're going to lose all your privacy.
I don't see...
There's just no way around that in the long, long run.
In the short run, you could claw it back a little bit, but in the long run, there will be no privacy.
Let's see. Somebody had COVID and donated plasma?
Yeah. How about tattoos?
What about tattoos? Oh, tattoos to show that you've been vaccinated.
Somebody says the American Academy of Pediatrics study shows zero child-to-adult transmission.
Was that a randomized controlled trial?
No, it wasn't.
So what kind of credibility do you put on that non-randomized, non-controlled trial?
Coin flip. It's a coin flip.
You shouldn't put any credibility on it.
It's just a coin flip.
Now, this study like that could tell you there's something to look into.
It could tell you that you do want to do a randomized controlled trial.
But if you don't have one, you really don't know anything.
All right. And there's a reason that we require the randomized controlled trials.
It's because without them, you're so often wrong.
We will know who has been vaccinated once the side effects start happening.
Well, no report of bad side effects yet, except people getting sore and tired for a few days.
I'm just looking at your comments today.
There's no randomized control for Bigfoot.
Yeah, there are some things that are just too obvious.
You don't need a randomized control study.
Why do I think the Time article came out?
Well, it could be that the Time article was to tell us something that we would have found out a different way.
So it could have been inoculation, so that they could spin it the way they wanted to spin it, and then the next time you hear it, you already have this framework built, and you go, oh, they already told us about that.
Somebody says, some of these periscopes are good, and others are like this one.
Well, the thing that you don't know...
Is that it's when I disagree with you that is where you find value.
Agreeing with you doesn't help you that much.
Feels good. Feels good.
But I think you'll like it better when I disagree.
Alright. Super Bowl.
Is there a Super Bowl this weekend?
Not paying attention.
Randomized control study, people don't know what it means.
Well, it just means that it's a high-quality study that you could largely trust.
Alright, give me a feedback.
How many things did I tell you that you had not heard before?
So just in the comments, tell me what I said about masks today that you had not heard before.
Now forget about whether it's true.
Because remember, we don't have certainty about any of this.
Let's see. So some are saying none.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Well, you're a smart group.
So most of you are saying that none of it is new.
I guess what I don't know is how many heard nothing new and didn't change their minds.
Okay. Interesting.
So almost universally, people are saying that there was nothing new there.
Now, there may be nothing new in terms of the facts, but the way to think about it, I think, is not common to the way I'm seeing people thinking about it.
All right. So give me some feedback on what points I may have gotten wrong on my mask stuff.
You can send it to me one way or another.
And I will revise, and then we'll see where we go from there.
Bye for now. All right.
Did anyone change their mind?
I doubt it. Usually you don't change a mind on one take.
It's something that has to...
It would take a while to filter in and sink in.
Do any masks stop water vapor?
They all do. Every mask stops some water vapor.
All right.
So I think I made my case.
If somebody has a counter-argument with the same facts, that would be interesting.
