Episode 1463 Scott Adams: Viruses, Climate, and Other Scary Persuasion
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
CDC: We'll ALL be "exposed" to COVID by next year
Israel's new COVID therapeutic
IPCC climate report
Pfizer vaccine, FDA approval
Mask mandates = school choice
Petition to put unvaccinated people in jail
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Well, well, well, you have come to the right place.
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Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was tremendous.
As good as you imagined it would be?
Probably. Probably.
Oh, good drawing of a robot there in the comments.
Thank you. Well, well, well, let me start with the funniest tweet of the day from Glenn Greenwald.
You all know about Obama having a big birthday party, his 60th birthday party, and he invited a lot of what the New York Times call sophisticated vaccinated people.
So unlike your Sturgis, where there's a bunch of unsophisticated people, Obama's birthday had sophisticated, vaccinated people.
Much safer.
Well, Glenn Greenwald tweeted on this perfectly and said, there was a photo attached, he said, here's Biden's climate crisis czar John Kerry arriving on his private jet to attend Obama's maskless party.
It's all there. Everything you need to know about the world in one tweet.
The climate czar is on a private jet, and Obama's got a maskless mass gathering.
So, how about the rest of you?
How was your maskless mass gathering?
Was it as good as mine?
That's right, we didn't have one.
So everybody's mad about the hypocrisy, and I guess they should.
There's some CDC official, but not all of them, finally said this.
He said that we will all be exposed to the coronavirus by the end of the year, maybe next year.
Now, what does exposed mean?
Exposed. We'll all be exposed to the virus.
Mostly the Delta variant, I think.
Does exposed mean that if you have a vaccination and you are exposed to it, do you carry any of the virus with you?
Still a little bit uncertain.
Because we know that vaccinated people do not only carry the virus, but can have as much viral load as someone who's not vaccinated at all.
At least in some cases that we've determined.
But does that mean that, let's say you're vaccinated and you don't have any symptoms, but you got some virus, are you going to put off as much?
I would think not, logically.
Because if you're not coughing, you're not spreading it as much.
And if you're not gasping for air because your lungs are not working...
Maybe you're not breathing as much, but you'd still be putting off plenty.
I mean, if you had the same full viral load, just breathing would be a problem, I would think.
So I tend to agree with the CDC guy who says we'll all be exposed because I don't see anything in the works that would change it, do you?
Is there anything happening...
That would change the fact we'll all be exposed.
Because it doesn't look like we're even close to something that would look like shutting it down.
And you'd have to shut it down sort of everywhere all over the world for it to make a difference in any country, assuming borders open up again.
So I just don't think we can get there.
And I feel that we should be a little more honest about that.
So the reason to get the vaccination is not to stop the virus, but to stop it from progressing in your own body.
I guess Israel has a new drug for targeting the coronavirus.
It looks pretty promising because the way it works, and they've tested it in a small test, so we don't have any randomized controlled trials yet.
But in a small test, a whole bunch of people who were very sick left the hospital in five days or less.
And I guess 93% of 90 coronaviruses that were serious in several Greek hospitals, the Israelis had to test their COVID drug in Greece because there wasn't enough COVID in Israel.
Israel did such a good job that they couldn't do a test of it there.
So they tested it there, and it was hugely successful.
What it does is it targets the cytokine, cytokine, whatever that is, storm that happens.
The thing that makes you so sick is that your own immune response goes nuts.
So apparently this drug just calms down your immune response, presumably just from the virus.
I don't know. But gigantic potential.
But how long does it take?
I don't think this is going to get some kind of emergency authorization, so maybe it doesn't matter.
It might take too long. I'd like to give you an update on my personal quest to make masks impractical, at least in certain places.
So was it yesterday?
Yeah, yesterday I went to a restaurant and And did not wear a mask.
Now, a mask was required, and if they had asked me to put it on, I would have.
But as soon as you sit down, I think it's probably the same everywhere, as soon as you sit down at the table, and they bring you a glass of water, or even before they do, you take your mask off.
So the only reason for the mask is to stand at the hostess stand for five seconds and then walk 12 feet to where you're going to take your mask off in the same space the whole time.
Kind of ridiculous. So I tried to see what would happen if I just didn't wear a mask and the host had to see me without a mask.
What would the host do? And the answer is the host ignored my maskless state and seated me.
Also ignored the entire party in front of me that checked in just before me, all maskless.
The restaurant just has already given up.
They've given up.
Here's a sign you should put on your gym.
You ready for this? Here's a sign I want on your gym.
It says, masks are mandated by the state.
If you don't wear a mask, we'll ask you to put one on.
And that's all we'll do. That's the sign.
Masks are mandated.
If you're not wearing one, we will ask you to put one on.
And that's all we'll do.
Message received, right?
And then you just go to the gym without your mask and they'll say, hey, put your mask on.
And then you say, thanks for reminding me.
And then you just go on with your business.
Wouldn't that work? I don't know.
We'll find out, I think.
Well, the IPCC has a new report on climate.
Let me guess. Huh.
Do you think the IPCC will say we're doing a great job on climate and everything's getting better?
Do you think that's what they came up with?
Or do you think they waited several years for a new report and said, you know, it looks exactly the same as the last time we reported on it?
You think that's going to happen in our world?
Or, just maybe, just maybe, will the report look like...
Can I bring a special guest in?
I believe some of you know him.
His name is Dale.
Dale, can you give us the highlight summary of the new IPCC report on the climate?
We're all going to die.
We're all going to die.
Die in a giant fireball.
We're all dead.
See? Yeah, that's pretty much what the report said.
We're all dead.
Well, Michael Schellenberger has a different opinion on that in terms of the risk.
He agrees, of course, that humans are a factor in climate change, and he agrees that things are getting warmer, and he agrees that there will be weather disruptions maybe as much as predicted.
But here's what's different.
Do you know how many people have died from the heat in, let's say, the last hundred years?
Well, I don't know the number, but I know the number used to be really big, and now it's really, really small, because we have air conditioning.
As soon as you invent air conditioning, it can get pretty warm outside.
People live in the desert.
It's really warm out there.
But they use air conditioning.
Seems to be enough.
Likewise, for almost everything that would be a real-world problem from climate change, we're really good at mitigating things.
We're good at predicting.
We're good at moving things.
We're good at communicating, transporting, planning, managing.
We're good at stuff now.
Not like the old days.
So indeed, while the planet might indeed get way, way worse, and certainly we should be addressing it, it's very unlikely it's going to make any difference that you notice.
But you need to scare people, or they'll all be dead.
You only have two choices.
If you don't scare people, they won't do much about it, and presumably we just slide into some bad situation where maybe we are all doomed.
But if you scare the pants off of enough people, they'll do something about it, and then you'll probably be fine.
So I'm very much in favor of scaring other people, but I'm not sure how scared you need to be.
You and I don't need to be that scared.
But the scientists?
Let's scare the scientists because they'll work harder.
Try to do something about it.
So here's my question.
What happens to mass suicides and depression when your IPCC report comes out and every news station reports that we're doomed to die in a fireball?
Now I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it sounds pretty bad.
If you just read the report, it sounds like our future is non-existent.
So what does that do to depressions and suicides?
Well, I'll tell you what I felt like.
I felt like...
Taking my own life.
Like, actually, literally.
When I read the report, I was like, okay, well, there's no point.
There's no point in even trying.
Might as well just go out and take your life.
And it wasn't until I saw Michael Schellenberger's tweet thread that I retweeted, so you can find it in my Twitter feed as well, that I started thinking, oh, okay, they're just doing this to me again.
Again. Scaring me again, making it look like life is not worth living.
So thanks for that.
Apparently Pfizer is maybe a few weeks away from FDA approval for the vaccine.
And remember, I asked people if they'd be more likely to take it in a little Twitter poll, unscientific one, and a lot of people said yes, that if it was FDA approved, they would take it.
You know they have all the data already, right?
Did you know that? They have all the data for FDA approval.
And they're telling you that it's a few weeks away from approval.
Nobody is telling you, nobody, that it might not get approved.
Right? Zero people have told you, well, we're not sure if it'll get approved because of the data.
In fact...
The data very clearly says, apparently, or I'm assuming it would be reported if this were not the case, apparently the data says, yeah, it's good.
It's good for approval.
So it's probably just the paperwork and the lawyering and stuff that's going to take weeks.
But if you knew that it was FDA approved effectively, even before it's officially approved, does that change your willingness to get it?
FDA approved...
In all the important ways, because the data looks good.
All right, well, a lot of you were not holding off only for that reason, but I do think this will make a pretty big dent in the number of people who get vaccinated, I would imagine.
This is more the school of unintended consequences.
All right? The school of unintended consequences.
Mask mandates appear to be leading toward school choice because a number of, you know, state school people are putting together plans to say if masks are required, then students should be able to go take their funding and go to another place if they don't want to be in a masked situation.
Now, who saw that coming?
Not me. If you had told me that masks will accelerate school choice, I would have said, well, I don't see how exactly, but it looks like it's going to happen.
Looks like that made a difference.
Well, Biden's approval is down a little bit.
So he was averaging, you know, in the low 50% approval for his first six months.
But now, according to Quinnipiac, he's down to 46%.
And in some, he's 43%, blah, blah, blah.
So he's down in approval, and it appears to me that the coronavirus performance is the reason.
Now, is Biden responsible for the Delta variant and where we are now?
Not really. I mean, I don't know that he could have done something much better.
If Trump had been president...
What do you think we would be looking at right now?
Better or worse? Probably about the same.
Probably about the same.
But here's the weird thing.
I do think Trump lost because of the virus.
A lot of smart people say that, and it feels right, because the virus caused a lot of rule changes, and it was the rule changes that allowed the kind of turnout we got.
So really, I would say the virus determined who the president is.
Is really the first president ever elected by a virus?
Well, as far as I know.
So not only did the virus elect Biden, but now the virus is going to make sure that Biden, or probably his successor, doesn't get re-elected, or doesn't get elected.
So do we have a system in which people get informed and then vote and choose politicians?
Or do we have a system in which a virus determines who's the president?
Because that's what's happening.
The virus is deciding.
It's not even us.
And I would like to point out that the war against this virus is going about as well as the war on drugs and the war on Afghanistan.
It's been a while since we won a war.
Has anybody noticed that?
The United States is warring, not doing so good lately.
Yeah, maybe we did a good job in Syria or something, but we're not really so good at winning wars conclusively, are we?
Yeah, there's no money in winning a war, somebody says.
That's the problem. Yeah, calling everything a war is probably...
Somebody says, Gulf won, you know, the first Gulf War we won.
But did we? If it just led to problems later, did we?
All right.
So, let me go back to that message.
All right, so Mark Dice did a video...
Which you just have to see.
I tweeted it.
And it's on YouTube.
In which he stopped people and asked them to sign a petition to put unvaccinated people in jail.
To put unvaccinated people in jail.
How many people signed the petition without a second thought?
Yeah, just what you thought.
You don't even have to watch the video, do you?
A lot of people signed that petition without a thought.
They didn't do it without asking questions.
They did it without showing any second thoughts.
All they did was say, well, it's good for me.
Go to jail. It's good for me, so why don't you go to jail?
That's it. That's it.
So, are you worried that we will slide into prison camps for the unvaccinated?
Are you worried? I'm not worried about that, really.
But it is true that you can get some portion of the public, around 25%, if you know what I mean, to do just about anything.
Without anything that looks like thought.
I mean, they actually look like automatons.
Would you like to sign this petition to kill everybody in your family?
Why not? I don't see why not.
It is really scary.
Oh, the video is blinking.
I don't know if it's blinking on anybody else's screen.
Yeah. Female camp's coming.
Yeah, now you understand why people accepted Hitler.
You can accept almost anything if it's gradual.
And gradual doesn't have to be that gradual, right?
It just starts as, well, you know, this group of people certainly is a problem.
Then you can talk about that group of people in a bad way and get away with it.
Next thing you know, you're putting little restrictions on that kind of people.
The next thing you know, it's the Holocaust.
You can slide into anything.
You just get used to it after a while.
Yeah, it's the boiling frog situation.
Exactly. And dehumanization.
Well, that's about the scariest thing you'll ever see.
But in terms of entertainment, it's really good.
It's very entertaining. So let's see what we've got here.
That is just about all the news there is.
And I didn't want to be all gloomy today, because it's been pointed out to me that I've been less than my optimistic self.
By the way, has anybody noticed that?
Does anybody think I've been less than my optimistic self lately?
Yeah. And...
Oh, interesting. There does seem to be a mixture of opinions about whether I've been less optimistic lately.
You know, I think that the Trump administration was an optimism-based administration.
And it was easy to be swept up in that, and I think I was.
Now, I still say the golden age is coming.
And I do think things are better than ever and will continue to be better than ever.
I mean, look at the fact that airlines will become electric.
I mean, that's happening. So a lot of the things you're worried about for climate change, I'm not so sure that that makes a difference.
I think that we will invent our way out of climate change, and we will mitigate our way around it, and we'll be fine.
But I'm glad that all the scientists and engineers are worried.
That way they'll do the work.
All right. The most depressing thing is the illegal immigration.
Is it? Is it?
Because if you don't really have a plan to not get the virus, and our hospitals are not overrun yet, I mean, there's some places that they've got real problems, apparently in the South.
But, I don't know.
You know, if you see lots of, whatever you see pictures of and talk about will seem like your biggest problem.
What are the odds?
So here's an experiment for you.
Think about your own life.
Now, just think about yourself personally.
Think about yourself, just your life, the things that will affect you personally.
What are the odds that you, personally, as a resident of the United States, if you are, what are the odds that you will be affected in a negative way by immigration?
It can happen.
Right? But right now, you could probably get a job just about anywhere, because there's more job openings than jobs.
So it doesn't affect your employment at the moment.
It does affect that you can get services and goods from people willing to provide them that are maybe here illegally.
But what are the odds that you will have a worse life, like personally?
Right? It's not really that high.
No, I see crime, right?
But what are the odds that you personally will be a victim of a crime from an illegal immigrant?
Just personally. Now, I'm not saying that you should...
I'm in favor of a tight border, just to be clear.
I'm in favor of tight borders, for all the obvious reasons.
But the odds that you personally will be victimized by an immigrant, and in some direct way, I'm seeing people say 100%.
I guess depending on where you live, that could be true.
If you lived on the border, there's a 100% chance you would be affected in some way, probably negatively.
But if you're not living right on the border, it probably won't affect you at all.
Probably won't. Maybe a little inflation.
I don't know. Maybe your health care goes up or down.
I don't know. But the truth is, you'll probably not even notice.
So very much like climate change.
Climate change might be the biggest problem in the world.
It might be. But it probably won't affect you.
You probably won't know the difference.
You could probably go through your life just doing what you do and live your whole life, and scientists and engineers and the government will take care of the climate change, and you'll just buy products that are more energy efficient, and that's all you'll do.
Who speaks for the Earth?
Who speaks for the Earth?
Well, yeah, the earth has some issues.
So my biggest problem is taxes.
Debt is a problem, but we don't know how much.
So I think that we'll figure our way through this.
Have you noticed that under the Biden administration, are you worse off?
Probably you could do some statistical stuff to find out that you are.
Gas is more expensive.
Yeah, gas is more expensive.
But how about your specific life?
Do you think it's worse off than if you've been under Trump?
Well, I don't know. I mean, you could make a good argument for it.
And the partisans will say, yeah, Trump would be better.
Might be right. But it's probably not that much.
Right? Because every day I wake up, I do this, I eat, I sleep, I exercise.
It feels a lot the same.
I don't know.
I can't think of anything that's different besides the fact that I'm bored.
I mean, I'm bored by Biden.
He just bores the crap out of me.
But besides that, I don't know.
My life looks pretty much the same.
The pandemic probably would have been the same under Trump.
Oh, ammunition prices.
Yeah, I guess that's going up.
But, Scott, you do not reflect the population.
You are correct.
You are correct.
But it is true that people who want jobs can get them, and that your odds of dying from some new crisis, whether it's the coronavirus or climate change, is very small for any one person.
It's very, very small.
And Yeah, inflation is definitely a problem.
Definitely a problem. All right.
Yeah, inflation is probably the biggest problem that has a direct effect on people.
I'll give you that. Inflation is the biggest problem.
And I do think that Trump would have been maybe better on that, but we still had to spend our way out of the pandemic.
So I think there was going to be inflation no matter what.
All right.
Can't get a job if I won't take the vaccine again.
Yeah, well, that's your free market working for you there.
Oh, you're now deemed a racist, so yes.
Yeah, I guess that's worse if you've been deemed a racist.
But you would have been anyway.
Why is oil not going up?
Maybe it already did.
All right. So I'm seeing a lot of comments here about sunspots.
If... Let me tell you...
Oh, God, I just said...
The Locals platform just crashed.
Somebody said it's doing it every 28 minutes.
Oh, yeah, that's right. It did it exactly in 28 minutes.
That is correct.
Interesting. So it's a 28-minute timer, it looks like, on the Locals platform, but it comes right back on...
Alright, so it does look like there's a 28 minute timer on the locals platform and it times out.
Anyway, sunspots.
If you think those sunspots are the thing controlling climate change, you're probably not operating at a high level of understanding or knowledge.
That's the sort of problem you have if you do your own research.
You know I always make fun of people doing their own research?
Because we're not qualified. I've got two college degrees and spent a lot of time doing a lot of data analytics and stuff.
I'm not qualified. You're not either, to do your own research.
But I'll tell you one thing that is the least likely thing to be true.
The least likely thing to be true is that sunspots are the hidden cause of climate change.
That is the least likely thing of anything about climate change.
It's the least likely to be true.
I suppose anything could be true.
You could be wrong. Or I could be wrong about anything.
And the reason is because it's so obvious as a thing to check.
It has been checked extensively.
And the people who are, you know, the consensus of experts say there's absolutely nothing there.
But you can find all over the internet less credible people saying, oh, it's the sunspots, and here's my data, and here's my chart.
And they're all just bullshit.
So yes, you have seen lots of data and charts telling you sunspots are the real cause.
I will bet...
Let's see, I don't know if there's a real way to bet on this, because maybe we'll never know the real answer in a way that people will agree.
But just think of the setup.
All of the scientists have heard this theory about sunspots.
All of them. They've all heard it.
Now you're saying to yourself, Scott, if somebody proves climate change is not real, they would lose their job and all that.
No, if somebody proved that sunspots were the cause of climate change and actually proved it...
They would be the most lauded and famous scientists of all time.
They would be like the Wright brothers.
They would be like Einstein. Their name would be famous forever.
They would write best-selling books.
They would be invited to talk.
You couldn't get richer than proving sunspots were the cause of climate change.
And it hasn't happened.
There is enormous financial incentive to show that sunspots, or anything else...
It causes climate change.
Now, I know what you're saying.
Oh, these scientists don't want to buck the mainstream.
But bucking the mainstream in terms of questioning all their data would be really dangerous.
But showing your own data that doesn't question anybody else's, it's just your own data.
Hey, look, I found out that the sunspots are causing all this.
you would be the most famous scientist in the country.
It would be a ticket to wealth.
And I think anybody would know that.
There are types of things you can't disagree with.
Let's say evolution.
If you came out with a scientific theory that said evolution was bunk, you'd be dead.
You know, your career would be.
If you came out and said we've measured...
Yeah, take the Tony Heller example.
If you came out and said we've measured it wrong, you're dead.
You can't...
You'll never get away with that.
If you said all our ice core samples are wrong, you're dead.
If you say that the sea level rise, we measured it wrong, and the models are wrong, so it's not really going to happen, you're dead.
But if you said that I did a study all by myself, and I found that sunspots are causing all the problems, you'd be rich.
You'd be famous. But your study would have to hold up.
It'd have to be reproducible, of course.
But yeah. If you dealt with somebody else's data, your career is over.
But if you come up with your own new thing that just can stand alone and explain everything else...
Yeah, somebody do that.
So I don't think there's any chance that scientists haven't looked at it thoroughly and they're the right people to look at it and they just haven't found no correlation.
So anything you see on the internet that says there is a correlation is bullshit.
I would bet...
Well, you can't really bet on it because nobody will ever agree on a conclusion ever, anytime.
All right. So let me ask you this.
If sunspots are the cause, then they should be able to predict.
Isn't that right? Because can't we predict sunspots?
Or am I wrong about that?
So you should be able to make a sunspot-related prediction about what the climate will be doing in five years that would be more accurate than the IPCC. And if you could do that, then maybe you'd have something.
But I wouldn't worry that that's likely.
I would say the least likely of all the possibilities is that sunspots are doing it, and science hadn't noticed.
It's the least likely possibility.
But maybe, you know, anything's possible.
The mini ice age, the maunder minimum, yeah, none of that's real.
All of that stuff's been studied and debunked thoroughly.
There's no money tied to sunspots, but there is.
I just told you there is.
If an individual scientist or a team of them could prove that the sunspots were the real cause of climate change, they would be rich.
If you doubt that, you don't understand anything about anything.
But this study would have to hold up.
I mean, that's the catch, right?
If they just say it's true and it isn't, you don't have much there.
Yeah, the worst phrase ever is the science says.
Because science doesn't say anything.
People say stuff.
And the news tells you stuff.
But science actually is silent.
Yeah, I don't... Somebody says there's no money in fixing it if it doesn't exist, but that doesn't change the fact that the scientists would still have a huge financial incentive to find that sunspocks were the real reason, if they were.
So you should assume they're not.
All right, that's all I have to do today, and I will talk to you tomorrow, YouTubers.
