Episode 1449 Scott Adams: Comparing COVID-19 Skeptics to the Experts, Biden and the Wall, The Big Lie and More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
$2B to STOP building the wall
Our current COVID strategy
Belief it's possible to "do your own research"
Alex Berenson supporters and critics
COVID and IQ drop studied
Update: Flipping "The Big Lie"
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Hey, everybody. Good morning and welcome to the best part of the entire day, week, month.
I don't know. It could be that good.
But today will be, well, let's just say provocative.
Are you ready for provocative?
Well, you know what goes well with provocation?
You probably do. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
That's right. Coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes, well, just about everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And it happens now.
Go. Oh, that's so good.
So good.
Well, there was a shocker in the Olympics last night.
The American basketball team lost to France.
I'm supposed to feel bad about that, right?
Is there anybody here who looked at that story that the American basketball team...
I guess they had a 25-game Olympic winning streak, counting prior Olympics...
And this snapped it.
They lost 83-76.
How many people said to themselves, LOL? I hate the fact that I'm rooting against my own country.
But I am.
I am. I'm rooting against our basketball players.
Because they've made such fools of themselves with the protests and stuff.
And by the way, I agree with their point.
I don't have any conflict with what they're trying to do.
I'm all on board.
But the way they've done it has so discredited their sport and them as athletes that I kind of am glad that France won.
And I'm not... I don't know.
Should I feel good about that?
I don't think I should. On the other hand, it's kind of healthy that you're not obsessed with your own team winning all the time.
There's probably something a little bit healthy in that.
Well, the Tokyo Olympics, the broadcasters are trying to curb the sexualization of the female athletes.
Apparently in past Olympics...
It was...
It's funny to even think that this happened just a few years ago, literally the last Olympics, that the camera people would focus on female body parts, just, you know, totally sexualizing the athletes.
And I'm thinking to myself, OK, I get that they want to be less, you know, on the nose about it, but let's be serious.
Can we be serious?
Can we all be serious for a moment?
The Olympic athletes are literally chosen to be the best mating prospects on the planet Earth.
That's not the point of it.
The point of it is the sports, etc.
But the effect of it is you pick the most genetically superior people who have also shown dedication and all these qualities.
They are literally the people you most want to have children with.
If I were a woman and I could have a child with anybody, and you said, well, how about an Olympic athlete, somebody who won a gold medal, how about that?
You'd probably just say, okay, I'm done searching.
I'll take the Olympic gold medal winning person because that's going to be some pretty good genes.
They've all been tested, right?
I mean, tested through sports.
So how in the world can you desexualize an event where all the most sexually desirable people from a mating perspective, you know, not from a purely recreational point of view, but your most basic mating instinct is set on fire when you see the most perfect humans.
That's how it works.
You can't take the biology out of it.
Who in the world...
Can look at the most perfect specimens all within this reproductive age and have no effect?
I mean, really, if you can look at Olympic athletes and not get a boner, good for you.
I'm not sure I've ever done it.
I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, of course.
All right, here's the fake news of the day.
You ready for the fake news?
President Biden is spending more than $2 billion to halt border wall construction.
Apparently it costs $3 million every day to hire contractors to guard the steel and concrete that they're not going to use because he's not going to build the wall.
Now, is that real news or is that fake news?
What do you think? Do you think that Biden is really spending $2 billion to halt the construction of the wall?
It's true news that's fake.
It's the worst kind.
It's probably, I'm guessing, it's probably a completely true statement of fact, but it's also fake news.
Here's why. Everything you shut down costs money.
That's it. Any project you shut down costs you extra money for the shutdown for all the normal things, exactly what you would imagine.
You've got contracts.
Maybe you have to pay people off.
You've got to guard your assets.
You've got to get rid of them. You've got to move stuff.
It's expensive. So why should you think about the fact that Biden is going to spend $2 billion to avoid spending, what, another $25 billion?
Unfortunately, unfortunately, that's how it works.
So to report this as some kind of bad news where he's doing the wrong thing, no.
The story is he halted the wall.
Once you say the story is we've halted the wall, it's going to cost you $2 billion just to stop it.
So pretending that there's something wrong here when the Democrats would say, oh, that's worth $2 billion.
Somebody says the money's already approved, but that's irrelevant.
You can unapprove money.
What exactly is the COVID strategy for the country?
Do you remember, was it a year ago, or plus, a year and a half ago, when the strategy we thought was to flatten the curve?
Now, flattening the curve didn't work, as we all can observe.
But was it a reasonable strategy to give it a test?
I say yes.
I would say that the flatten the curve was, number one, a very clear statement of intent.
That's A+. It was very clear.
It was a guess because we were in a pandemic and we didn't know exactly what was going to work, but it was a logical thing to try.
It didn't work.
But was it reasonable to try it?
Absolutely. See if it did work.
We didn't know what else to do.
So... What is our strategy now, now that that strategy didn't work?
It looks like the strategy is to get to 90% vaccination and call it a day.
But I feel like that's just one off from where it needs to be.
I feel like the strategy should be to get everybody infected after vaccination.
Because we know now that vaccination doesn't stop the spread...
And I think we also know that everybody's going to get infected, but you don't want to get the long haul, you know, the bad version and die from the virus.
So the very best situation would be to get lots of already vaccinated people also infected.
And to get maybe children infected if they're better off that way.
You know, there's some controversy about that, but they might be better off.
Just give them the real coronavirus protection, and maybe the next one doesn't hurt them as much.
So I'll just put that out there, that I believe that the government's strategy is not articulated.
But under the Trump administration, the flattened curve, I think, was well articulated.
Like you knew exactly what that was.
It just didn't work.
Good try.
Smart to try it.
Just didn't work.
I would take no credit away from anybody who tried something reasonable just because it didn't work.
All right, Rasmussen is reporting.
They did a poll on the media's reporting on COVID-19.
And asked this question.
Do you think the media are reporting accurately on safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines?
50% of Republicans said no.
What? 50%.
50% of Republicans said the news is basically lying to them on vaccines.
Now, that's no surprise, right, because it's fake news, but this is a scientific thing, or it should be, as opposed to a political thing.
You'd expect the news to lie to you on political things.
That's just our daily experience.
But on science?
Do you really expect the news to lie to you on science?
Well, half of Republicans say yes.
Even 26% of Democrats say that the media isn't doing a good job on reporting on vaccines.
So I asked this question on social media.
I said, I wonder if the reason that people don't trust vaccinations is that the people promoting the vaccinations are the four least credible entities in the United States.
Who is less credible than, number one, our government?
Nobody trusts the government.
I mean, I'm sure that's true in every country, right?
How about the news, the fake news industry?
You can't trust the news.
The news absolutely can't be trusted.
We don't have many alternatives, but you definitely can't trust the news.
If you've been awake for the last two years, that should be obvious.
How about the social media companies that are deciding what messages get out and which ones are suppressed?
Can you trust them?
No. No.
You can't. It's not like they're scientists in the first place.
And number four, scientists themselves.
Can we trust science?
Well, 50% of peer-reviewed studies end up being bullshit.
50%. And even the things that science gets right, which is lots of stuff.
You know, science is a miracle, and we all love science.
But even when it gets something right, it's the exception.
I mean, most things are bad hypotheses, theories that don't work out, tests that don't quite prove what you wanted them to prove.
Science is pretty messy stuff.
So should you trust it?
Well, you can certainly trust that it's a good process and a good system.
I think that's fair.
But what you can't trust is that you know it got it right at any moment in time.
Because science will conclude things and then find out they were wrong and then change their mind, which it's supposed to do.
All right, I'm looking at a very funny meme on Locals right now.
If you're watching the stream on the Locals platform, you're seeing the comments have images.
As opposed to YouTube where you could just do text.
Somebody's showing a meme of me doing an impression of one of the Democrats on the Texas bus, the ones who escaped.
It's pretty hilarious.
You have to trust me on that.
Anyway, should you be surprised that there are so many people who don't want to take a vaccination when the people telling you to take it are government, the fake news industry, social media companies, and scientists who haven't done so well lately in terms of credibility?
Science is still great.
Science is still great.
We're not anti-science. It's just that it's a messy process, and everybody understands that now.
So let's take this as our major theme, the credibility of our institutions, right?
Because I'm going to talk about this in other stories.
Nancy Pelosi just put Adam Kinzinger on the January 6th committee.
Now, if you don't follow politics...
That doesn't mean much to you.
You just said to yourself, oh, there's a committee to look into the January 6 riots at the Capitol, and you want some Democrats and you want some Republicans to make it bipartisan, and so Nancy Pelosi put a Republican on there.
If you didn't know anything about the backstory, you'd say, oh, well, that looks pretty good.
Got some Republicans, you got some Democrats.
You're all set, right? There is literally...
Nobody in the Republican Party who is less credible on this question than Adam Kinzinger.
Literally, Nancy Pelosi reached into the void of, you know, 300-some million Americans and found the one least credible person on this specific question because he's a Trump hater and he's making his brand as being anti-Trump and talking about this issue in particular.
He's literally the last fucking person you'd want to put on the committee if you're even a little bit serious.
He's the last person you'd put on it.
But, of course, she's responding to McCarthy who pulled all of his five nominees off because they didn't like two of them because they were too political.
And then she goes and puts the most political person on there that you could possibly put on there.
Is she even trying?
Is the government even trying to be credible?
No. This doesn't even show, like, a little bit of effort.
There's no effort here at all to be credible.
And do you think that Pelosi is complaining about people not believing the government that they should take vaccinations?
Of course she is.
Does she not realize that she's the source of the lack of credibility?
Or one of the biggest ones, right?
You can't have it both ways.
You can't do ridiculously non-credible things and then ask people to put a needle in their arm.
No. No.
The person who puts Adam Kinzinger on the January 6th committee can't tell you a fucking thing about your health.
Can we get that clear?
Anybody who would be this ridiculous to put Adam Kinzinger on this committee, completely non-credible thing to do.
And that's the dumbass that's going to tell you what to do with your health.
I'm sorry. You have to be a little bit credible, just a little bit, before we're going to listen to your bullshit.
I'm not telling you not to get vaccinations, by the way.
So, here is a little thread that I found so interesting that I wanted to share it to you.
Some of you know, I've had some back and forth with a Twitter user named Anomaly, or at Legendary Energy is his Twitter.
And he's, I guess you'd put him in, I don't like to label people if they don't label themselves, but for the purpose of this story, let's say a A skeptic of some of the COVID-related vaccines and masks and stuff.
So we'll put him in the skeptic category.
I'm not sure if he would label himself that way, but just for this story.
And he said that...
We're talking about the vaccinations and why there's some hesitancy.
He suggests it's not because of the credibility of the people recommending it, but he says most people are smart enough to do the research...
And how the companies manufacturing them have zero liability for side effects while they quietly take their past products off the market for cancer-causing carcinogens and settle big cases for fraud, foreign bribery, and false marketing.
So the implication here is that you could do your own research, and then when you did that, you'd be all set.
You could make a reasonable decision.
How many of you would agree with the basic...
The basic setup.
How many would you agree that you could do your own research and come to a reasonable good opinion?
I'm seeing in the comments it's true.
Yes, I knew all of that, somebody says.
Over on Locals, where people are much better informed, they're almost all saying no.
So we've got a little dichotomy here.
The people on Locals who have been watching my content more, probably, are more likely to say, no, you can't do that.
And the people on...
Now on YouTube, most people are saying no.
All right, so it looks like we're closer to agreement now, just watching the comments go by.
All right, thank you.
So the people watching me have gotten the message, and what I responded to was zero people are smart enough to do that kind of research.
Now, do you notice the persuasion?
Do you think that zero people in the whole world can do this kind of research?
It's sort of like an over-claim, right?
That's what gets your attention.
Because I thought hard about saying almost nobody could do this research.
And then I thought, no, nobody can.
Like, literally nobody can.
There are people that you think can, but you don't know.
You might say to yourself, yeah, a person with certain qualifications could totally do their own research and come to a good decision.
No, they can't. No, they can't.
Because the things you would need to research don't exist.
You would be looking at unknowns.
So how do you compare one set of unknowns to another set of unknowns, the unknown risk, that is?
What's the risk of long COVID for you?
You don't know. What's the risk of getting the vaccination if it's the Pfizer versus the Moderna versus the J&J? You don't really know.
I mean, you might know some statistics, but it doesn't apply to you.
Right? So everything that you can look up doesn't quite work as a statistic or it doesn't apply to you.
You'd just be guessing. So...
And then I got some agreement from some smart people.
Here's a good recommendation for a Twitter follow.
Machiavelli's Underbelly.
So just Google that, Machiavelli's Underbelly.
And the Twitter handle is at MMM3Ms underscore Machiavelli.
And he says, agreed, agreeing with me that zero people could do this.
And he adds that Google's very existence gave people the wrong impression that they're capable of doing their own research.
For whatever reason, people don't understand that Google is a product where one of its features is making you feel like your search was successful.
Now, when you first hear that, it doesn't quite register.
You have to think about it just for a moment.
That Google wouldn't have a product, like you wouldn't use it, Unless when you used it, you felt successful.
Do you buy that? Then nobody would use a Google search engine unless using it made you feel you got good results.
So the entire product is designed by its nature to make you feel you got good results and that you're a good researcher.
Yeah, it is a good insight.
That's why I read it.
And Adam Dopamine, also on Twitter...
It says Google search equals confirmation bias generator.
Right? When you Google things, how often does it come up with the answer you wanted?
Pretty often. You think that's a coincidence?
Do you think that if somebody who is against masks and thought they didn't work, if they did a Google search on do masks work, what result would they get?
A skeptic would get results to say masks don't work.
Suppose you believe masks do work and then you Google it.
What do you think the Google search would tell you?
It would tell you they work.
You doubt that?
Try it yourself. If you doubt that what I just said is true, just try it.
If you're a mask skeptic and you say they don't work, just Google it and watch how you can prove that you're right.
and then ask somebody who's a masked believer to just separately do their own Google search and simply tell you if they found what they thought was true.
Watch how both of you will say, I Googled it, and I'm right.
Google is a confirmation bias generator.
That's what it does.
Now, if you don't realize that it's doing that in addition to also giving you good information...
I'm not saying it's all like fake information or something.
It's all real. It's just that you can look into any corner of it that you choose and your confirmation bias will tell you you found what you needed.
Now, people who don't understand these human...
Let's say foibles, the way we think and the way we are so easily fooled by confirmation bias, would imagine that you can do this thing called research.
Do your own research. I tell you this example all the time.
There used to be a... A low-cost stock brokerage service that used to...
Its main advertisement, you probably saw it on TV, was that you could do your own research.
And it would show all these really wise-looking regular people, like, hmm, I'm going to do my own research on these stocks.
Ah! Yeah.
You know, because I'm pretty smart.
I've got a four-year degree in marketing, so if I just do my own research, I'm going to know how to invest like Warren Buffett.
Because I just looked for stuff, and I found it, put it all together with my big brain, and then I figured out how to research, how to invest better.
Do you know how many people...
Are capable of doing their own research and then beating the averages over an extended period of time?
None. It's not even a thing.
You couldn't find one investment expert in the world who would tell you that's a good idea.
None. Zero.
Let me say it again. There is no financial expert who would tell you that you can do your own research.
It's just not a thing. Do you know who else can't do their own research and come up with good individual stock recommendations?
The experts. There are two categories of people who can't do that ever.
It's just not a thing. One is people who have no experience.
The other is the people who have the most experience in the world and everybody in between.
It's just not a thing.
You can't just Google up some research on a company.
It's all just a bunch of lies and guesses and probability, and we're not smart enough to do any of that.
So instead, all of the experts, and again, all of them, would tell you don't do that.
They tell you just diversify.
That's the only thing you can do, which is what I'd tell you to do.
All right. And then Anomaly, Legendary Energy, came back at me after I made my comment.
And he said, zero people?
LOL. Okay.
I had to add the attitude to it because I feel that was in there.
Okay. Yep.
Zero people can do their own research.
Now, let me say it again.
Zero people. Zero people.
Literally, if you think you're the one, you think you're the golden child, the first person in the world who was able to do this thing that nobody's ever done, okay.
But you're probably not the golden child.
And you probably can't do magic, just like everybody else.
So that's when I showed him an article in The Atlantic.
Well, first of all, he said, this is Anomaly again, legendary energy, said Alex Berenson, who you know as a well-known critic on masks and vaccines and stuff, he said, Alex Berenson would run circles around you, Scott.
You have possibly the most embarrassing takes on the pandemic, and you've been consistently wrong.
Not sure if it's your ego, your fear, your desperation to justify your decision to get inoculated, or you know you're lying.
Well, at least I have options.
It could be my ego, my fear, my desperation to justify my inoculation, or it could be my lying.
Are there any other possibilities that you left out?
Or we've covered them all.
It's just my ego, my fear, my desperation to justify my decision, or my lying.
It's going to be one of those.
So what have I taught you about how narcissists respond to being shown they're wrong?
How do they respond when you show they're wrong?
They attack the messenger, don't they?
Where in here is somebody...
Where is Anomaly mentioning what I got wrong?
If he did mention what I got wrong, do you know what would be on the list?
I think it's the only thing that would be on the list.
I believe it's the only thing.
The only thing that would be on the list of things I got wrong...
Would be that I said early on that the WHO and the CDC were lying to you and that masks do work.
And now, the top experts of 100% of industrialized nations agree with me.
Now, could I be wrong?
Absolutely. Yeah.
Someday, could we find out that masks made things worse or didn't work at all?
Absolutely. I keep that possibility completely open.
But at the moment...
Every expert in every industrialized country agrees with me.
So if I'm wrong, I'm open to that.
I'm open to it. Could be.
I mean, I've been wrong on things where I agreed with the experts before.
How weird would that be?
Not weird at all. But I believe that would be his only example.
And yet he's sure that I've got all kinds of problems with...
I guess he thinks I'm wrong on vaccinations as well.
But how can I be wrong on vaccinations when my opinion is this?
You can't weigh the risks or the benefits.
Nobody can. So I took a shot at it based on the fact that I couldn't compare the risks, but...
The coward.
I like to call out the fucking idiots when they make comments.
In this case, Tyler...
He goes, the coward Scott Adams.
Try to justify your opinion.
You believe that the vaccinations are dangerous, right?
And you think that I got the vaccination because I'm a coward.
So you believe that I did the more dangerous thing because I'm afraid.
Is that your opinion?
That I consciously took the more dangerous path, according to you, Because of my cowardice.
Make a fucking decision.
Either I'm a coward and I'm afraid of the vaccination, or I'm not.
Just be consistent.
That's all. All right.
Coward. I would say that the lowest level of thinking is that somebody made the decision to get a vaccination because they're a coward.
That is so fucking dumb.
Like, you know, if you were looking at levels of awareness, that would be like...
You know, your face is in the water on the bottom of the street kind of awareness.
But everybody's welcome here, so hang around.
All right. Here are some reasons given by another Twitter user who weighed in on this and said a reason why people might not be getting vaccinated.
He said, yeah, that, talking about the credibility of the people recommending it.
He goes, that and vaccines are still in the third stage of trials.
I don't know if that's true or Is that true?
But I'm just reading the tweet now.
Cannot sue pharmaceutical companies directly if adverse reactions.
Myocarditis, blood clots, thrombosis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and yes, the VAERS received 6,270 reports of deaths to the vaccines.
All right, so this is good.
This is somebody who said, here are a bunch of risks that should be considered when you get the vaccination.
Is that good thinking so far?
Is that good thinking? Elle Green says, your arrogance is disgusting.
It's called show business, Elle.
If I didn't have an opinionated take on this, you wouldn't be watching it.
Let me explain how this works.
It's the irritation that makes you come back.
If I didn't show this level of annoying certainty, you wouldn't be addicted to it.
Maybe not you personally, but...
It's the spice in the food that makes you eat it.
Even though the spice is really an allergy that just makes it hurt in your mouth.
So don't throw away the feature.
You think the flaw is the flaw, but it's the feature.
And I do it intentionally.
Because I could easily present myself in a different fashion.
And then you wouldn't watch.
So just learn what the show is.
And then learn what the facts are and know that they're different.
Sometimes the show is the show.
And you just have to know what the show is.
And then it won't bother you as much.
All right. So how do you compare a bunch of risks?
So Unhoodwinked is the user that said that they're in the third stage of trials and you can't see them and there have been bad reports.
Let's say that's all true.
I don't know if it's all true, but let's say it is.
How could you compare those risks, which are enumerated, with the risks of getting the COVID and long haul and dying on a ventilator?
You can't. These are all unknown risks.
You couldn't put a number on them for the average person, and you certainly couldn't put a number on it for yourself.
Somebody says that 12,000 dead is less than 600,000 dead.
Well, but again, that's not an apples and oranges comparison.
I see what you're saying. So somebody on Local says, Scott did his own research, took a vaccine, and won't stop talking about how he's not an advocate for it.
But don't you understand that a person's personal risk is a separate topic from advocacy?
You get that, right?
Like if one person decides to get an abortion or not get one, how does that affect you?
Like how does my decision about my health become persuasion for you?
Because I will tell you directly, you shouldn't follow my example.
I mean, you can, but you shouldn't.
Because why would I assume that my experience or my risk profile is like yours?
Probably one of the biggest factors is what it does in your head, right?
Like, whatever's happening in your head, about what fear you have, what freedom you want, whether you want to be helpful to other people, potentially, or not, all of those things are big variables, like what your head is doing.
Because this isn't just physical, right?
You're not managing just your physical health.
You're managing your mental health.
So how can I make a recommendation that you should or should not get vaccinated when one of the biggest variables is a thing that's only in your head?
I can't see it. If your head makes you deathly afraid of one of the options and not afraid of the other for irrational reasons, you know what I would tell you?
Do the thing that makes you less afraid.
If you have that fear.
Now, in my case, I didn't have a special fear of the vaccination or a special fear of the COVID, really, because the odds of me specifically dying from it are pretty hard, pretty low.
But the reason that I don't recommend it is because that would be irrational.
And I have a real ethical and moral problem about that.
So I can only tell you what I did, and I can tell you if it worked or not.
Right? Right? So I got the vaccination, and in my opinion, it worked, in quotes.
Now, it worked means that it made me feel better.
So if not getting the vaccination makes you feel better, you might have a different decision than me, and I don't care.
I'd be fine with that. Please make your own decision.
As long as people can get vaccinated who want vaccinations can do it, go ahead.
All right, so when Alex Berenson was mentioned as someone who gets it all right, and I'm mentioned as someone who got it all wrong, I wondered to myself, I wonder if anybody's done a detailed analysis of Alex Berenson to see, you know, if he's more right than wrong.
Have you ever done that?
Have you ever Googled...
Alex Berenson, in criticism, to see if there's somebody who's looked at all of his claims and just sort of evaluated them to see how accurate they are.
Is there anybody who just follows Alex Berenson but has never done that, has never Googled to find out if the critics are saying he's wrong?
Because if you haven't done that, maybe you ought to.
Maybe you ought to. All right, here's what happened when I did that.
One article that came up was from The Atlantic, Well, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
What the fuck? It's an article about how he got everything wrong without mentioning what he got wrong.
So this is making me think, is he getting a lot of stuff right?
And I see you laughing at Vanity Fair in the comments because they're not really a credible publication.
But then I looked for another non-credible publication because it didn't look like any credible ones were writing about it called The Atlantic.
Would you consider The Atlantic a credible publication?
No. No.
I don't think you could consider them credible at all.
So staff writer Derek Thompson went through a bunch of claims that Alex Berenson had made.
Now, I'll tell you in advance that Derek says, you know, here's the claim and how he got it wrong.
Now, what have I told you a billion times if you hear one person making a bunch of claims?
What have you learned? Nothing.
Nothing. If you hear one person making a bunch of claims, no matter what the claims are, you've learned nothing.
Because you haven't heard the other side.
And we don't live in a world where people tell you the truth.
They give you a biased, hyperbolic version of something.
And if you haven't heard the other side, you haven't heard anything.
It's exactly like hearing nothing.
So if you've only heard Alex Berenson's stuff, you've heard nothing.
Likewise, when I tell you what the criticisms are against Alex Berenson, you're going to hear one view of the criticism, and you should give it exactly zero credibility.
I'm going to read it anyway, just so you see both sides.
But don't take sides, because neither the Atlantic nor Alex Berenson by himself is credible.
We don't live in a world where you can say either one of them is just automatically right.
But I'll tell you what the What the criticism is, all right?
According to Derek here, on Tucker Carlson, Berenson predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness in the U.S. And I guess the claim is that didn't happen.
So, first of all, I don't know if that's an accurate statement of what Berenson claimed, and neither do you, probably.
And... I guess Berenson also claimed that we would not reach half a million deaths, and we were well over 600,000.
But is that a big problem?
If somebody said we won't reach half a million, but the real number might be 600,000 or 700,000, that's not a big deal.
Like, nobody was accurate about the death count, right?
I don't think anybody was.
So I'd say, okay, that's a fair statement, but that's not really much of a criticism.
And then they say that Berenson has argued that cloth and surgical masks can't protect against the coronavirus.
And then he links to science that says the masks do work.
Now, what did I just tell you before?
If you believe masks don't work and you Google it, you'll find all kinds of proof that you're right.
If you believe they do work and you Google it, you'll find all kinds of science that says they do.
Try it yourself. I mean, if you don't believe that, just try it.
So... We have two views of this.
We'll leave that there. All right.
Apparently, Berenson, according to Derek, claimed that he blamed the vaccines for suppressing our immune systems and that he did that because he misrepresented some immune system behavior.
In other words, it was just a misinterpretation of how immune systems work.
Who's right? Berenson or a guy who wrote an article in The Atlantic?
Which one of them is right on this scientific question?
Well, aren't they both right?
Because you can just Google and do your own research.
So since they both Googled and they both did their own research, they must both be right, right?
No, they have opposite opinions.
I don't know. Berenson suggested that countries such as Israel have suffered from the early vaccine rollout.
And... Derek suggests that the deaths have plummeted and the vaccines are successful.
Israel's having some problems now.
I'm not sure we have full visibility on that, but that may have changed since this article.
And Berenson implied that for non-seniors, the side effects of the vaccine are worse than the COVID itself.
And Derek points out that, according to the CDC, the pandemic has killed tens of thousands of people under 50, and the vaccines have not conclusively killed anybody.
Conclusively. They haven't conclusively killed anybody.
Well, you're dead, but not conclusively because of the vaccine.
Now, I feel that this is a responsible statement Because it isn't conclusive.
I mean, I don't even know how you would know exactly.
But I do think that you can conclusively say that vaccines in general do kill people.
You know, almost every new medication of any consequence kills somebody.
So it's probably true.
We just don't know how much.
So Berenson claim in country after country cases rise after vaccination.
Do you think that's true?
First of all, did he claim that?
I don't even know if he claimed that.
And I guess on Twitter, the author talked to Berenson and Berenson claimed that a Denmark study, an excellent Denmark study, showed there's a 40% rise in infections immediately after nursing home residents got their first shots.
And so the writer of the article reached out to the author of that study, the reference study, and asked.
And the author of the study said that Berenson had mischaracterized her findings.
Okay. And another claim that the vaccines are...
their own data proves that they don't work.
And according to the author, the reality is that he just mischaracterized the trial data.
So the claim is that Berenson, who graduated from Yale, is a published author of great success, And wrote for the New York Times for years.
So we're talking about a very smart, educated person.
The claim is that he's not educated enough to look at the...
to do his own research, basically.
Because he did his own research and he did it wrong, according to the claim.
All right. Berenson's claim, in Israel, the shots are causing a scary number of deaths and hospitalizations.
The reality, according to the author, is that none of that's happening.
So what do you think?
Do you agree with the Yale-educated ex-New York Times reporter who unambiguously is very smart?
We'd all agree with that, right?
There's nothing wrong with Alex Berenson's IQ. He's a really smart, educated, well-informed guy.
Do you think he's capable with all of those qualifications of doing his own research?
I would say obviously no.
Obviously, no. Because the people who did the research say you misinterpreted our research.
I mean, that's pretty clear.
All right, here's the scariest story that I'm going to say is probably fake news.
So before I tell you this story, and you get all worried about it, maybe you shouldn't worry about it, but I'm going to tell you it smells like fake news, like really hard.
So keep an open mind on this one.
But anyway, there was a study that showed that if you've got COVID-19, especially if you've got the bad version of it where you get on the ventilator and then survive, I don't know how many people that is, but your IQ could drop seven points on average.
Holy shit.
Now, you've heard about the brain fog and the long COVID, and it can...
Maybe make your brain swell or something.
I don't know what the hell it's doing to your organs.
But scientists tested 81,000 people between January and December last year.
This is in Great Britain.
And then they gave them IQ tests.
And there were people who recovered and gave them IQ tests.
And there was a big difference.
There was a big difference.
Somebody says, I just saw that story.
I call it BS. All right.
Why would it be BS? Number one, how many studies that are peer-reviewed end up being bullshit?
Just in general. About half.
About half of all studies end up being wrong.
So you've got a 50% chance it's wrong before you've even looked at the topic.
Right? Right?
Do you agree with that?
That there's a 50% chance it's wrong before you've even looked at it.
But then let's look at it.
Do you believe that they got the causation right?
Do you believe that it was the virus that made these people who got extra sick, it was the virus that made them dumber, or was it that dumb people are more likely to have a bad outcome with the virus?
Right? What do you think?
Now, they did control for factors including age, sex, first language, and education level.
Okay. But within a given education level, there are people who are much smarter and dumber, right?
So even if you've controlled for the education level, there's still a pretty big range, at least a seven-point IQ range, within any educational level.
I think you'd agree with that.
So, I have a speculation that people who are smarter are better at everything.
Would you agree with that?
That on average, just on average, that people who are smarter are better at everything?
All other things being equal.
Would you agree with the basic assumption?
People who are smarter in general are better at everything in general.
Not every person in every situation.
I just mean on average.
Now, if that's true, would it be a stretch to say that the smarter people are going to have better outcomes with coronavirus?
Yes. I mean, it's not a stretch.
Do you think that the smarter people were more likely to take vitamin D? Maybe, right?
Do you think the smarter people got a little extra exercise and got some sun during the pandemic?
Maybe. Do you think the smarter people stayed out of the room...
That had a whole bunch of people in it without masks for a long time?
Maybe. Right?
You can imagine a whole bunch of decisions that all of us are making every day in the pandemic.
Do I go to that place without my mask?
Do I put on a new mask?
Do I get the vaccine?
All kinds of stuff.
And you can imagine very easily that being smart improves your odds of just everything.
So I would call bullshit on the study just because most studies are bullshit and then secondly because I don't know if they got the causation right.
But just a big question.
Now that would be another example.
Let's say you did your own research.
You did your own research and then you saw this study.
What do you do with it? Because you did your own research, right?
Anomaly, legendary energy.
And you saw this, what did you do with it?
With your own research. Did you say that I'll incorporate this into my thinking or not incorporate it?
Which one's right? All right?
Not so easy to do your own research.
All right. There's an update on the big lie.
You know, CNN and the left-leaning anti-Trump media came up with this great brand, the big lie, to refer to Trump saying that the election was stolen.
Trump, of course, flipped it around, as you knew he was going to do, and he says the big lie is that the election was fair.
And this caused Stephen Collinson, the designated CNN anti-Trump troll, to have to write another article.
Another article today in which he mentions the fact that Trump is trying to flip it around and turn the big lie into something else.
To which I say, the more you talk about it, the more you talk about it, The better it works.
So apparently Trump has at least scared CNN enough that he can pull this off, the flipperoo of turning the big lie into the opposite of what they're using it for, just like he did with fake news.
And they should be worried because he does have the skill to do this.
He still has enough of an audience that he could totally make this transition.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it happens.
All right. That is what I wanted to talk about today.
And I know you've got all problems with mask talk, etc.
I get that. But I'm actually surprised at how often there's a new angle on it.
Because when I talk about masks and vaccines, I'm really talking about the human decision-making process.
I'm not really talking about whether the vaccine works.
I don't know. How the hell would I know?
I'm not talking about whether masks definitely work or not.
We'll find out someday, maybe.
Maybe not. I don't know. It seems like they work to me.
But I could be wrong.
And I would further say that if you talk to anybody who shows positivity about vaccines or masks or coronavirus, any amount of certainty is a guaranteed tell for somebody who's not thinking.
If you're thinking about this pandemic at all, You're thinking in probability.
Because we've all been wrong.
Right? Haven't we all been wrong about really basic stuff?
So... Oh, I hear Locals is working very well today.
Even Anatoly.
Somebody's mentioning one of my favorite Twitter follows.
So Anatoly is just great at ripping apart data and studies.
But, yeah, I would say that no matter how good you are, you're just kidding yourself if you can do your own research on stuff like this.
All right. Amazon has no cheap rapid tests for COVID. Why?
Why? Good question.
Why does Amazon not yet have a whole bunch of cheap, maybe not as accurate, but cheap tests?
Because if they're cheap enough, they work anyway.
