Episode 1454 Scott Adams: Trump is in Trouble. Again. Virus Stupidity Rages. And More Fun
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Content:
"Irresponsible" NYT per Biden's Ben Wakana
Vaccinated don't spread like unvaccinated?
President Trump's hand written notes to DOJ
Congress to get Trump's tax returns
Vaccine hesitancy by education level
COVID deaths vs homicide deaths
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Good morning, everybody. It's the best time of the day again.
Yeah. Sometimes you think to yourself, well, I don't know if it's going to be the best time, but today, totally.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank shells, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Not your second favorite liquid.
That would be insanity.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine of the day?
Nay, the week.
It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
Go. Yes, Jostendorf, this is the Dilbert guy.
But don't hold that against me.
You say conscious is good, but pointing out hypocrisy isn't pointing out...
You can point out, somebody asked me a question about hypocrisy versus contrast.
Hypocrisy never convinces anybody.
Because if you say to somebody, hey, you blamed me for doing X, but you did X last year.
Are they going to stop blaming you?
It's never worked in the history of the world.
But contrast works.
They're just different things.
To answer your question.
Well, the New York Times is in the news twice today.
Both for fake news.
Now, I'm not saying it's fake news.
I'll let you judge.
But if you're the New York Times, and you yourself are in the news twice, and both times it's for spreading potentially fake news, that's not a good day.
Washington Post getting a little pushback, too.
I'll tell you about that. So the New York Times had this headline.
Breaking news, I think this was yesterday.
The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal CDC report said.
So that's pretty bad.
New York Times, paper of record, telling us this new variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may spread just as easily if you're vaccinated.
Wow. Pretty bad, isn't it?
All right, here's what a spokesperson for the Biden administration, who's a spokesperson on the COVID stuff, I guess.
Ben Wakanda, not from Wakanda, but Wakanda, He said, vaccinated people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people.
And if you fail to include that context, you're doing it wrong.
That's right. The Biden administration just called out the New York Times for fake news.
And really, really big fake news.
This is the kind of fake news that kills people.
Let me say that again.
This is the kind of fake news that kills people.
Because it's reporting that whether you get vaccinated or not, the difference is less than you thought it would be, because you can still get it and still transmit it.
Now, it turns out that that's just not true.
What does seem to be true is that you could have the same amount of virus in you, in your nose and your mouth.
But apparently the rate of actually transmitting it to other people is not even close.
If you're vaccinated, you don't transmit it.
But how is that possible?
How is it possible that you could be vaccinated, have the same amount of virus in your nose and your mouth, which is presumably where it gets out, and you don't spread it, but the person right next to you who's unvaccinated with exactly the same amount of virus is spreading it?
How do you explain any of that?
Well, I asked this question on Twitter just moments ago.
I haven't seen the answer yet.
But I asked this. One of the things we know about people who have COVID symptoms is that they don't know their lungs are degrading.
And so people just breathe deeper and harder to compensate for the fact that their lungs are as efficient.
But they don't necessarily know they're doing it.
So here's the question.
If you're vaccinated, you've got a bunch of virus in you, but it's giving you no symptoms, presumably your breathing would be the same as normal.
But the person right next to you, who has no vaccination, They have the same amount of virus, but presumably if their lungs are affected, they might be breathing 40% harder than you are and not even know it, because apparently that's a real thing.
People don't know they're compensating.
So I would think that how hard you breathe has some effect.
I don't know if that's the whole story or any of the story, but we do need to know...
Why a vaccinated person wouldn't spread it as much as unvaccinated?
Retracted study from India using a vaccine we don't permit.
Yeah. So then one part of the study was from India looking at an Indian vaccination that we don't even allow in the United States.
So that doesn't count. And then I guess in the one cluster in, where was it, Provincetown or something, zero people died.
Which is pretty important, right?
Zero people died?
That should be the story.
The story should be there was a mass breakout and nobody died.
That seems pretty important.
So that's the first thing that the New York Times reported in a way that's misleading.
I'm not going to say they get a fact wrong.
I'll say that they reported it in a way that's so misleading it's basically fake news, according to the Biden administration.
Now, I don't think the Biden administration calls out the New York Times...
Unless they really mean it, right?
Because it's sort of a friendly publication.
So they must be pretty serious about it.
Well, the other news is that there's some handwritten notes from the time of the January 6th event in which Trump allegedly told Attorney General Rosen, quote, according to some handwritten notes at the time, just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me.
So the interpretation is...
That Trump was trying to get his Department of Justice to claim without the benefit of any evidence that the election was corrupt and that, quote, he would do the rest.
Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
Right here in the New York Times, sounds pretty bad.
But as Margot Cleveland and I think other people, this is just somebody I saw on Twitter, have noted that there's some ambiguity about what he meant.
Surprise! Somebody talking about a conversation with Trump and there's some ambiguity about what he said or what he meant?
Surprise. Right?
And what is the ambiguity?
The ambiguity is, it looks like, What Trump was saying was conditional, meaning look into the allegations.
If you believe the allegations are credible, then call the election corrupt, and that's all you need to do.
Now, is that illegal?
Is it illegal for the president to say, if you find a problem, say it publicly?
What's the problem with that? If you see a problem, say it publicly and then I'll handle the rest.
But the fake news leaves out the conditional part because that's a little ambiguous from the notes.
Was it conditional on them finding something or do you think...
Just ask yourself how likely this is.
Do you think it's likely...
That Trump asked somebody who could clearly talk to the press, somebody who would write their own memoir someday, somebody who was connected to tons of people who would talk, do you think that Trump said to somebody who would clearly leak it someday, I'd like you to lie about the election and say it was corrupt?
Do you think he did that?
To me, that sounds insanely unlikely.
You know, Trump got this far...
Not by telling people who could talk about it later to do illegal shit.
I just don't think he does that.
There's no history of that. Now, there might be history of people doing things sketchily.
God knows what has ever happened or whoever's done what.
But is there any history of Trump telling somebody to do something illegal?
I think no.
No. I think no.
And to imagine that a sitting president would tell somebody who definitely is going to tell other people to do something that illegal, or, I don't know, maybe it's more unethical than illegal.
I don't know what law would specifically be broken by that.
But it's just so unlikely.
You would have to start with the assumption that Trump is, you know, reckless and crazy and lost his mind.
For him to have said that.
So I'm going to say that in all likelihood that's fake news.
And I guess the Washington Post was part of that fake news triad, too.
So... Or duo.
Yes, and now apparently Congress is going to get Trump's tax returns.
You want to make a prediction about what's in Trump's tax returns?
In the comments... Let's see your predictions.
Give me your predictions for Trump's tax returns.
I want to see...
I'll just read your predictions.
Nothing, nothing, nothing of consequence.
Nothing illegal. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Nope. There we go.
One of you got it right.
It's going to be two movies on one screen.
Guaranteed. It doesn't matter what's actually in the taxes.
I think we all know that that's not going to make a difference.
What will matter is what the people say is in the taxes.
And most of the public won't read the taxes themselves because they wouldn't know what they're seeing anyway.
So some part of the press will say we found the smoking gun of horrible, horrible behavior.
Who knows what that is?
But they're going to say they found it.
The people on the right, the people who would support Trump, are going to say, no, you didn't.
We're looking at the same tax returns.
There's nothing there. Or there's nothing clear.
There might be something that's ambiguous.
But there's no clear indication of anything that's a problem.
Do you want to bet against me?
Does anybody want to take the opposite bet and bet that we'll have a clear outcome?
No. There isn't the slightest chance we'll have a clear outcome.
Here's how you can predict this.
You can predict it because it's a complicated subject.
That's it. If it's complicated, you know the public can't check it themselves.
So the press can just say any freaking thing they want about it, and people will say, well, I'm not going to check the tax returns myself, but the Daily Beast said there's something bad in there, so what are you going to do?
Yes, as James is saying here, the appearance of impropriety.
You're going to get all kinds of stories about what if.
But what if this indication of revenue is connected to something bad?
There's no evidence of it.
But what if?
What if this is telling us something bad?
Or how about this raises a red flag?
There's no evidence of anything bad.
But it raised a flag.
There's a flag. So I feel like it's going to be endless options for the anti-Trumpers to just run stories of generalities and vagueness and innuendo and accusation.
So, right, if the IRS hasn't found a problem yet, you know, an illegal problem, and apparently there's no suggestion that they have, Well, what are the odds there is a problem?
What are the odds?
And if there is a problem, it's usually something that the accounting firm takes care of.
What if Trump paid little or no taxes?
Aren't Isn't that baked in?
Would you want a president who did not take advantage of the tax laws the way they're written?
Not really, right?
Would you want a president who paid millions of dollars extra in taxes that were not necessary if that president had simply followed the existing laws of taxes and took the advice of accountants?
So if he paid no taxes, it's just going to look like he knows what he's doing and he has good accountants.
I just don't think that's going to hurt him.
I mean, they'll make something of it, but it won't.
It won't be a difference.
All right, let's talk about hospital risk.
Why are we not seeing evening reporting on how impacted our hospitals are and where they're headed?
Why is that? Is it because it's hard to gather?
It would be hard, but not without.
I think you could check the top ten hospitals and top ten metropolitan areas, and you'd have a pretty good idea what's going on.
So why don't we see that reported?
Is it because that's no longer a goal?
Do we not have a worry about the hospitals?
Because I feel as if, once you have half the country vaccinated, and it's mostly the people who get the sickest are the vaccinated ones, do we have any risk?
Is there any risk going forward that the coronavirus will crash our hospitals for more than, say, a week or something?
I feel like there's no risk, is there?
Or it's so small that it's just not a national problem.
So I don't know the answer to that, but if there's anybody who could put some numbers on that and tell me where we're headed, because I feel like the public should know that.
It's a pretty important thing. Just skipping topics here for a moment.
I guess Iran used a drone to attack some Israeli billionaire's tanker in the Gulf, and it's a retaliation for something that Israel did militarily against Iranian assets.
And I'm thinking to myself, they really pick just the right targets, don't they?
Because it wasn't an Israeli flagship, But it belonged to an Israeli billionaire.
So how much is Israel going to retaliate for something that wasn't really against Israel's country?
And there weren't any Israeli citizens on the ship, probably.
Certainly none got killed.
So it's just the right amount of provocation.
And Iran must be running out of things they can attack...
That will not invite full-scale retaliation.
It's like they have to do something.
We've got to do something.
Not that it would make any difference.
Do you think Israel is going to change their policies because a tanker got hit with a drone?
No. So is it just for show?
Is it just for internal politics?
I don't know why they're bothering to do it.
It doesn't seem to be helping. Well, there's an ER doctor, Alex Busco, wrote an article.
I think this was in CNN. And he notes that, you know, he works in the ER, and he says 40% of Americans still remain unvaccinated, but 99.2% of deaths are among the unvaccinated.
99.2% are unvaccinated.
So, and apparently people in ER, when they're, you know, close to death's door, because I've heard this in another story, so this is two anecdotal reports.
Don't put too much weight on anecdotal stuff, but I've seen two reports of doctors who say that dying patients ask for the vaccine.
And they don't understand that the vaccine is to prevent it, not to fix it.
Although I think it's being tested to fix it, isn't it?
But that seems like it wouldn't work.
I don't know, just guessing. So, do you think it's true that there are people who think they can wait until they're at death's door to get the vaccine?
And that that's why they're waiting?
No. Is there anybody out there who says, you know, I don't want to get the vaccination just in case, but I'll get the vaccination after I'm sick, and then I'll be fine.
I doubt it.
So this doctor says, quote, basically he's complaining about the massive ignorance of his own patients.
He actually used that word, ignorance.
He goes, many of my patients exhibit stunning levels of ignorance when it comes to this disease and the vaccine.
If you looked at a chart of people who say they don't want to get the vaccine even if it's proven to be safe...
What percentage of the public doesn't want to get the vaccine?
Well, if you look at Republicans, at least back in December, so this is several months old now, but back in December, 42% of Republicans said they wouldn't get the vaccination even if everything looked good.
Rural Americans, 35% said no.
Black adults, 35% said no.
But among...
Vast other groups, white and Hispanic, adult males, etc., it's about 25% of the country.
So if you take out Republicans and black adults and rural, about 25% of what's left don't want the vaccination.
Now, is that the way to measure this?
Do you think it's fair to try to figure out how many black people don't want the vaccination versus how many Republicans versus how many anything else?
Does that seem fair, that that's the way we're slicing this?
Because the way you decide to categorize things is going to help you with your decision-making, right?
So if you categorize things wrong, maybe you don't make the right decisions.
Here's how I do it.
By education level.
Yeah, think about it.
Suppose instead of saying how many Republicans or black people got vaccinated or wanted to, you simply reported it by education level.
What do you think would happen?
Do you think you would find, somebody says that, do IQ? Trouble with IQ is that you can't get to it.
You know, people don't know their IQs, etc.
So you could use education level as a rough proxy for IQ. Which it is.
It's a rough proxy. So suppose the only reporting was how informed you are or how educated you are.
Suppose... Let me ask this of those of you who decide to get unvaccinated.
First of all, while I'm doing this, could you tell me in the comments how many of you watching this have decided to not get vaccinated?
So I just want to see how many people who are watching this now are in that category.
Okay, so watch the comments go by.
You'll see quite a few people who are not getting vaccinated.
So this is a question to you.
A question to you.
If you knew that the most educated and high IQ people were getting vaccinated, would it change your opinion?
If you knew the smartest, most informed people were getting vaccinated...
Now, most of you are saying, no.
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
So why is that?
Can you explain? I know it's hard in the comments because the comments are short, but could you explain...
Why you would not be influenced by all the smartest people getting the vaccination.
I'm not saying you should.
I'm just wondering about your thinking.
So I'm not trying to influence you.
I'm curious.
That's not how we make decisions.
You don't want to look at the smart people to make your decisions.
Now, can you give me an example in history where the least smart people made the best decisions?
All right? And that's a...
By the way, that's a serious question.
I don't even know the answer to it.
Usually I ask questions where I kind of know the answer.
But I'm not leading the witness this time.
Give me an example.
Let's say in the United States in the past 20 years.
So, United States, past 20 years.
How many decisions did the smartest people get wrong...
While the dumbest people got it right.
Can you give me some examples?
Somebody says Iraq.
I don't know that the data would show that.
Would it? I don't know.
About Hunter Biden selling art.
I don't know. The war in Iraq.
I don't know that that's ever been studied.
Have we ever looked at the difference between education level and support for the war in Iraq?
I doubt we've seen that.
War on drugs.
Huh. That would be interesting.
Are you saying that the dumb people...
Not the dumb people, but...
Are you saying that the most educated people thought the war on drugs was good?
I don't know that the evidence would suggest that.
Climate change?
Well, climate change is a tricky one because it assumes that you know the right answer.
We don't. I think with climate change you still have to play the odds.
It's not a yes-no situation.
You have to play the odds on that one.
So I don't think you can use that one.
Wokeness? That's a pretty good example.
The wokeness would be an example where the high education people think it's a good idea and it's obviously not.
But I don't know if research would back that up.
Anyway, if Rasmussen or somebody wants to do a poll to show us if the most educated and informed people are getting vaccinated more than other people, I would be interested to know.
Now, I'm not saying you should make your decision based on that, but wouldn't you want to know?
I'd want to know. Food pyramid and trans fats.
No, that's just an example of smart people being wrong.
That's not an example of all the dumb people knew that That the pyramid was wrong.
Teachers unions, I don't see that point.
Alright, so that's just my point.
I just put that out there. When do you believe the experts?
And when do you believe the smart people who are well-informed?
And when do you side with the dumb people?
You know, do you ever feel exposed and maybe a little bit...
Well, let's put it this way.
If you take the same side as the most educated and well-informed people, and you're wrong, because, you know, you could be wrong, at least you don't look dumb, because at least you're on the side of all the smart people, and, you know, you don't get them all right, so that's not the most embarrassing thing.
But suppose the smart people were on one side, and the dumb people were on another side of whatever the issue is, and you sided with the dumb people, and you knew it.
You knew it. And then it turns out that the dumb people were wrong, as you might expect dumb people to be, you know, more often than not.
So how would you feel about that?
If you sided with the dumb people, you knew you were doing it, and then they turned out to be wrong.
Yeah, I'm seeing lots of examples in counter...
Somebody says religion.
Eh... Again, you're assuming you know the right answer.
I guess the problem is that a lot of these issues we don't know for sure or agree on what was the right issue.
Topic where somehow we all agreed what was the right issue in the end.
I don't know if there are any.
So there are two lawsuits very similar happening now in Hollywood.
So Gerard Butler is suing his producers for his movies Olympus Has Fallen for $10 million because he had a deal where he would get money based on the profits of the movie on top of his pay for being in it.
And they allegedly, the Hollywood accounting is making it look like he has no profits, when in fact there are lots of profits, but they're giving him none.
So he's suing him. At the same time, Black Widow star Johansson is doing something similar because her movie would give her lots of money from the box office, but because of COVID, they streamed it instead and And the streaming revenue was not in her contract in the same way.
So because it got streamed, she got cut out of, she says, a whole bunch of money that would have come her way.
Now, here's my take on both of them.
They have really bad lawyers.
Because what kind of a bad lawyer...
Let's a contract go out that says that the producers of the studio could make money in some way, and then she doesn't, the star.
If the whole point was that she's going to share in the profits, you've got to have a bad lawyer to say, my star will share in the profits, but only certain ones.
That's crazy. That's like the worst lawyering I've ever heard.
The lawyer should say...
That my client will share in the profits no matter how they are generated.
That's it. No matter how they're generated.
If he didn't put that in there...
Yeah, or agents, right.
The agents and the lawyers are sort of the same thing, in a sense.
And then with Gerard Butler, let me tell you how this went when I negotiated my Dilbert TV contract.
So I was working with one of the top lawyers in the industry...
Very experienced top lawyer who knows how everything works.
And when I got to the point where I was negotiating the money I would make on the extra profits, my lawyer basically said, it doesn't matter what you put in there, you're not getting a penny.
That's what my lawyer told me.
Doesn't matter what you write there.
They're going to game the accounting so you don't get anything.
So you should make your deal with the assumption that there's no money at the end, even if your contract says there's money at the end.
Because they will find a way to rig the accounting to make it look like there was no profit when in fact there was lots.
Now that's exactly what's happening.
The Dilbert animated show from years ago still runs on a number of platforms.
And how much profit do I get?
Zero. Zero.
Do you think that it really has made zero money?
No, of course not.
It's making tons of money. You know, I mean, not tons, but it's making money.
So the difference between my lawyer and their lawyers is my lawyer told me.
My lawyer said, you're not going to get any of this money, even though your contract clearly says so.
It's never going to happen because they're crooks.
He didn't use those words, but he made it very clear that you're dealing with a criminal enterprise, basically.
Again, those were not my lawyer's words, but he made it very clear.
It's basically a criminal enterprise, and don't go into it unless you understand that.
You will get an initial check, and that's your money.
Basically, you're done. The rest is just a con game, basically.
But there are people like Robert Downey Jr.
who did make lots of money on the profits of the movie.
So how do you explain the fact that Robert Downey Jr.
makes it work, but Gerard Butler and Scarlett Johansson did not?
And the answer is, maybe better lawyer.
Number one, maybe better lawyer.
But number two, they can't make Iron Man movies without Iron Man.
They can make movies without Scarlett Johansson.
If they wanted to replace Gerard Butler in the Olympus Has Fallen franchise or make something like it with a different name or something, I feel like you could make those movies without Gerard Butler.
Just put somebody else there.
And I think you could make movies without Scarlett Johansson in Black Widow type movies.
But you can't really make Iron Man without Robert Downey Jr., can you?
I like the comment.
Somebody's saying Doctor Who.
If you watch the series Doctor Who, British series, they replace the star every year or two so that the star never has any power, which is pretty clever.
It's a fucked up thing to do.
I don't know if that's the reason they do it.
There may be some other reason.
But the Doctor Who series that's been on forever, they replace the main star every year?
Or every two or something.
And that way the star is never powerful enough to take too much of the profits.
pretty clever.
All right.
So Dave Rubin, who got, I guess, limited on Twitter, they limit the account, For saying that the...
I think essentially for saying that the vaccinations weren't quite what we hoped they would be, and therefore we should rethink our strategy because we have new information.
Now, does that sound provocative?
Because it's not.
It's pretty much what the CDC says.
Hey, we've got new information.
Darn it, the vaccinations are not as good as we'd hoped.
People can still get it and spread it and you might need a booster and all that.
So basically what Dave Rubin says was exactly what the CDC says.
Just use different words.
And so he got suspended.
But here's the good news.
Twitter reviewed it and said it was a mistake.
Twitter said they made a mistake and they reversed the suspension.
Now, how do you feel about that?
Do you feel, and I think Dave may have had this feeling, it's like, why does it always happen to the people who have one set of views?
Is it happening to anybody else?
Or is it always people with a certain perspective who are the ones who get even the temporary accidental mistake stuff?
Well, it probably has to do with who's talking about what topic more than anything else.
But I'm going to say I give Twitter a...
I don't want to give it a grade, but I would say Twitter did the right thing.
I don't think I can get mad...
About somebody who makes a mistake, corrects it, tells you they've made a mistake.
It's just a different thing.
To me, I'm never going to treat those the same as some real big problem that lasts.
But you do have to wonder about why it seems to happen to the same people all the time.
All right. Here's a tricky persuasion thing that's happening to us all that just grates me.
When I feel myself being manipulated by the powers that be, it's just a bad feeling.
Here's what I mean. The news treats everything that Trump did around January 6th and everything he said about the election, they treat it as...
Him causing a certain set of problems and, you know, did he want to overthrow the government and everything?
And there's a whole bunch of assumptions you make that are all based on one fact.
The assumption that he's wrong.
Right? All of the reporting about January 6th and Trump's claims, they sort of start with the assumption that he's wrong.
Right? Has that been demonstrated?
Because while it is completely true that no court has found any widespread fraud, and I'm not aware of any reporting from any credible source that would say there was any widespread fraud.
But that has to do with the quality of the reporting and what kinds of cases would make it to the court and what do courts do in the first place?
What kind of things do they rule on?
And so... The only thing we know for sure is we don't know.
Because it's an unauditable election, apparently.
Even the auditors can't get the electronic records.
So they can't get access to the routers, I think, in Arizona.
So there's a bunch of stuff they can't check.
And we don't have any evidence that the audit produced or did not produce any Great surprises.
So it feels very manipulative that the assumption is Trump is wrong, as opposed to the assumption is that he can't prove his case.
Those are really, really different, aren't they?
An assumption that there was no fraud is really different from an assumption that we don't know how to check for it.
Because guess what? We don't know how to check for it.
If you can't get access to the routers, and apparently that matters to find out if there was any access to them, I guess.
If you don't have access to the routers, you don't have access to, say, chain of custody because they don't exist or something, you can't really audit, can you?
So it just bugs the shit out of me that Trump is assumed to be wrong as opposed to has gone too far in making his case because he can't know one way or the other.
Very different. I saw some pushback on Fox News.
Because they reported this, that in Washington, D.C., I think it might have been, I don't know, this week or yesterday or something, there were four COVID deaths but 11 homicides.
Now, Fox News was being mocked by a Twitter user for reporting it that way.
Is that unfair?
To me, that just feels like useful context.
How is it? And I guess this is, you know, mind-boggling.
So Fox News adds context to a story that is true.
Like it's true context.
And I would like to know the relative size of things.
I feel like this is a plus.
I mean, it's not the whole story.
And obviously you have to look at the rates of increase, right?
If the rate of increase of homicide is 20% or 40%, it's pretty alarming.
But it's not like a virus, right?
A virus can go to the moon, whereas homicide up 20% is horrible, but looking at it today, Snapchat can be misleading.
So I think if they wanted to add a little extra context, they would have to say, very much like when we were afraid of AIDS in the early days, it wasn't how many people had it, It was how many people you were afraid were going to get it.
Whereas with homicide, it's really about how many happened.
It's not so much about where you think the rate is going to go in the future.
So it's a little bit apples to oranges, but still that context was good.
So I think Fox was completely justified in showing that.
All right, so here's some numbers so that you can evaluate your vaccination decision.
Here's some things that I think we know.
Give me a fact check on this, okay?
So whenever I give you COVID numbers, there should be a little recording that plays in your head that says, but these numbers could be completely off.
Everything from God knows what.
So, according to this ER doctor, Alex Busco, in CNN, I assume CNN would have fact-checked this and not let it in an opinion article, if it's wrong, but it said that the vaccinations have saved an estimated 275,000 lives in the U.S. alone.
Does that sound about right?
Let's just take the range.
Let's say it was 100,000, might have been 500,000, you know, whatever.
But do you think... Do you think that that's a responsible estimate?
Given, you know, it doesn't have to be exact.
But is that a responsible estimate?
Do you think it's in that range?
275,000 American lives saved.
What do you think? Because that would be less than 1% of the public.
And that's where the death rate is.
All right. So I see a lot of yeses.
A lot of yeses. But I do see some noes.
It feels right. I would say, you know, if you told me the real number was 100,000, I would say, yeah, you know, 100,000, 300,000.
I don't think we're good at estimating things.
But that might be, you know, order of magnitude, somewhere in that range.
Now, how many people died from the shot itself, the vaccination itself?
Well, we don't know, because it's hard to get those numbers.
But the VAERS database has 6,200 people who seem to have died soon after getting the vaccination, which doesn't mean it caused it.
It just means there's a vaccination, and then somebody died soon after, and there's a question.
Maybe it caused it.
You don't know. So 6,200 maybes.
But how many of the maybes do you think you could actually count?
Maybe half?
What's your guess? Of the people who simply coincidentally died after the vaccination, do you think maybe half of them would have died anyway?
What's your guess? It was 12,000.
They knocked it down to 6,200 with different estimates, etc.
So let's say it's somewhere under 10,000.
Would you buy the fact that there are 10 times as many people who were saved by the vaccination as they were killed by the shot?
Would anybody buy that?
There are at least 10 times more people saved...
Then might have been killed and we don't even know if there are any.
Could have been zero because of the way that you measure this.
Okay. So I'm seeing some people say correct.
So I'm not telling you to get a vaccination, right?
Because everybody's...
Your risks are different.
You know, if you're 15, it's different than if you're 60, right?
So there's nothing I'm going to say here.
That goes to your personal risk or your decision.
Can we be clear on that?
Because I know you keep thinking I'm trying to secretly persuade you.
If giving you accurate information or updated information has the effect of persuading you, that's on you.
I'm just telling you the information.
And information generally is not persuasive in the manipulative way, if you do it right, if you keep it in context.
So that's what we know.
But that's not the only variable, right?
If the only variable was how many people died, then it's 10 to 1.
Would you agree with that? Would you agree that if there was no other consideration...
There's a 10 to 1 advantage, statistically, at least.
I mean, it could be 40 to 1, right?
The range is anywhere from, like, 10 to 1 to 100 to 1, but at least 10 to 1 advantage of getting the vaccination based on what we know, right?
Now, that's not about complications.
It's not about what happens down the road.
That's the next question. Now...
How many people who don't get vaccinated but do get the virus, how many of them get long-haul COVID? Well, I've seen estimates of 25%, which I don't believe, but I think it's at least 10% to 20%, probably, and we don't know if any of that's permanent.
So of the long hauls, the people who don't get vaccinated, maybe 10 to 20% of them have some problems, but how many people would have long-haul problem from the vaccination?
What if you do get vaccinated, and although you didn't die or have a long-term problem, how many of those people do get some problem down the line?
And the answer is you don't know.
You don't know. That's a complete unknown.
If you believe that that unknown is a big number, well, then you have a reason not to get vaccinated.
But you would have to believe it's a pretty big number.
Because if 10% to 20% are getting long-haul problems without the vaccination, that vaccination would have to be just a bastard to make it not worth the risk.
Can you agree? That the long-haul risk is really pretty frickin' big...
In the context of these kinds of things, 10 to 20%, that's a really big number for people with long haul that you don't know if it's permanent for some of them.
But do you think that you're ever going to get to the point where you'd get 10 to 20% of the people who were vaccinated who will have some kind of a bad outcome somewhere down the line?
What do you think? It's completely unestimatable, isn't it?
But let's use your life experience.
This is very dangerous, right?
What I'm doing now is completely irresponsible, but I'm telling you that, so you can put it in context.
Use your life experience and just focus on one question.
Which one is more risk?
The vaccination, far down the line, doesn't kill you right away, for sure, but far down the line...
Versus the unvaccinated COVID itself.
You don't know because there's no data.
But just feel it.
What's it feel like?
Which one feels like the bigger risk?
Boy, you got quiet.
There's lots of comments, but they're suddenly not on point, are they?
All right, I'm looking at your...
So people saying the vaccine is more risk.
There's no data, no idea.
Hands down, the jab is more risk.
More risk than...
And how do you determine that?
Well, I'll ask you that in a second.
All right, so you see a lot of people who are quite certain of the risk with no...
I saw something in the comments there.
Shh... You know who you are.
Clever bastard. Sorry, that was funny.
So here we are.
What do you think of the fact that people with no data have certainty about something?
What does that tell you?
People with no data, because you don't know if the vaccination will cause a problem in the future.
No data. And you also don't know if long COVID is a real long-term problem or really just a short-term one.
Don't know. But explain this to me.
Explain what would cause your sense of certainty when you quite...
I think you would all readily admit that there's no data.
So there's no information by which to make a decision, none whatsoever, and yet you have achieved certainty among two choices of which you have zero information.
Explain that. Now, I'm not saying that you're wrong.
I'm only questioning what got you to a point of confidence and certainty with no information.
Because there's something in your life experience that got you there, right?
Right? Examine your own reasons.
Somebody said intuition, and I think you're close to it.
There's a feeling.
You have a feeling, right?
And it's based on your life experience.
You might call that feeling intuition.
It might be a question of trust.
Your life experience gives you a certain amount of trust in the experts, the medical experts.
And your life experience gives you a certain amount of Well, instinct, let's say, about what having a virus would do to you in the long run, this particular virus.
Yeah, I'm saying Dunning-Kruger, and you're not wrong.
If you knew educated people believe in critical race theory, would you believe it?
Well, I think critical race theory has way more to do with how it's being taught than whether it's a good idea or not.
But I see your point. That's a pretty good example.
Of what we talked about earlier.
How do people override failure from life experience?
Reading my book, kind of failed almost everything and still went big.
Backstabbed Scott.
Well, who stabbed you in the back?
So, did you see what happened in the comments as soon as I asked the question, how did you achieve certainty?
In your vaccination decision when you had zero...
There's zero data.
How did you do that?
And everybody just changed the subject.
How many of you had an epiphany?
Typically, in a conversation like this, something like 5% to 10% of you just said, oh, shit.
Did anybody have that experience?
Has anybody, just in the last, like, five minutes...
Did anybody say, oh shit, I just made, I arrived at a certainty with no information whatsoever?
Anybody? Now, I'd expect that the vast majority, you were just hardening your current decisions.
So I'm seeing all no's so far.
There's no certainty.
It looks like there's nobody here who would say that they're...
Somebody says, the big FU says, poor Scott, just doesn't get it.
Get what? I guarantee that whoever said that, that Scott doesn't get it, I guarantee that whatever you would say after that to explain that is something that everybody gets.
You're going to say some dumb fuck thing like, it's about freedom, Scott.
No, you fucking idiot.
Everybody knows it's about freedom and choice.
You fucking jerk.
Right? Let me just insult one of my watchers here.
You're a fucking idiot if you think I don't get it.
Right? Put a reason.
Tell me something I don't know in the comments.
But if you're thinking, well, hold on, hold on.
I've got a request. I've been getting quite a few requests for somebody that you call Dale.
And I'd like Dale to come on and explain to me what I don't understand.
Scott, you don't get it.
You don't get it. You don't understand it's about personal choice.
Yeah, I understand that.
I say it all the time. In fact, every single day I've said it's about personal choice.
Every single fucking day.
Well, what you don't understand is that these have not been FDA approved.
You don't understand. You don't get it.
They haven't been FDA approved yet.
I know that. And I know what it implies.
I know what it implies for risk.
I incorporate that in all of my decision-making.
Well, but you don't get that the VAERS database says people are dying from the vaccination.
You don't get it. You just don't get it.
I just talked about it.
I gave you the number.
And I compared it to the estimate, which I don't believe, of how many people were saved by it.
But it's in that range somewhere, probably.
You just don't get it.
You just don't get it.
Okay, but what? What exactly don't I get?
Is there some fact I don't know?
You don't get it. You just don't get it.
You're trying to manipulate us.
You don't get it. All right.
Now, I don't know how many of you wanted Dale to come back.
But there you go.
So I remind you again that I love disagreements.
If I've got a fact wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just tell me.
This show is not about being right all the time.
Even though I arrogantly act like I'm right all the time, that's just part of the show.
And you should understand that, right?
It just makes it more fun if I show more certainty than I deserve.
Um... But I try to tell you when I'm doing that.
Scott can never be wrong.
I'll tell you, there are two things that I spend a lot of time on.
Number one is telling you how wrong I was.
I spent a lot of time talking in public about how wrong I was and mistakes I made.
I wrote a whole book about my mistakes.
Probably nobody has ever talked more about the things they've fucked up than I have.
So I spend half of my time talking about all the mistakes I've made and where I was wrong.
And I spend the other half of my time dealing with trolls who say, why can't you ever admit you're wrong?
I live in this absurd world where my critics accuse me of exactly the opposite of whatever is happening.
Like, there's no correlation between what I'm being criticized for.
