Episode 1488 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About How Well Joe Biden is Doing so Far, And Lots More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Australia returns to its prison island roots
Whiteboard: Personal Responsibility
Venture capital for Black entrepreneurs
Candace Owens stories in the news
Neil DeGrasse Tyson's clever persuasion
Partisan data awareness differences
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the best time in the universe.
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Well, yes, I like to think of myself as the Greg Gutfeld of the morning.
That's right. If you haven't been paying attention, Greg Gutfeld's new show on Fox News, which he's got an evening show competing with the late night shows on other networks, and he's killing them.
I knew that he had beaten Colbert, who had been the top, I guess, before that.
But I didn't realize how much he beat him by.
I saw the actual numbers.
It's actually shocking.
He just destroyed the next best competitor.
But I'd like to say that someday, this live stream will be the Greg Gutfeld of the morning.
Except with me. All right, well, good news.
My next single has dropped.
And by that, I mean Akira the Don's next single, in which there are samples of my voice from the podcast Use In It.
Now, if you haven't seen this genre of music, you need to check it out just for curiosity alone, even if you're not a music person.
You have to see how he's combined the We're good to go.
You know, endorsements in the political world usually don't matter.
You know, some Hollywood person or other makes an endorsement and we largely don't care.
But every now and then there's one that might make a difference.
Here's one. In the California recall election for the governor, there's a new endorsement for Larry Elder.
Who is leading among the candidates to take over for Newsom, if in fact he is recalled.
It looks like it's going to be close, so it might happen.
But the new endorsement is from California's Senate Majority Leader, Gloria Romero, and she's a Democrat.
Right? Yeah, I think that's the story that says she's a Democrat.
So that might be an actual pretty big one.
That could be pretty, pretty big.
And she said she was sick of...
She told Tucker Carlson, I guess, that Elder's the best option to replace Newsom in order to eradicate the governor's, quote, hypocritical and pompous behavior.
Hypocritical and pompous.
So in the end, that's what got her.
It wasn't the having no water.
That wasn't the problem.
So in order to get a Democrat to go against another Democrat in office, it's not the lack of electricity.
It's not the fact that you can't go outside.
Like right now, I can't go outside.
I can't go outside.
That's how poorly managed my state is.
There's so much forest fire smoke, I actually can't go outside, except to walk to the car or something.
So what does it take for Democrats to turn on a governor who has made the state so unlivable?
Let me say it again.
You can't walk outside.
That's pretty unlivable.
But it wasn't any of that that made a difference.
It wasn't the homelessness, the immigration emergencies.
None of that got her.
It was that he ate at the French Laundry when it was completely legal to eat at the French Laundry.
It was hypocritical, but it was legal.
Now, maybe you should have worn a mask or something, I don't know.
But this one might matter.
You ask yourself, who is the bravest human being in the world?
Or the bravest human beings in the world?
No, not me.
Stop it, stop it, it's not me.
No, the bravest human beings in the world...
Might be the Afghan woman activist who just staged a small protest in Taliban-controlled Kabul Friday.
What? What?
That's like the bravest thing I've ever heard of in my life.
Or stupid, as somebody says.
But apparently they got away with it.
But I don't know if they're going to get away with it for long or whatever.
So there's an interesting thing happening over in Afghanistan, which is that the leadership is saying, yes, women will be able to work and go to school and stuff, but the individual fighters, even the leadership admits, the individual fighters in the Taliban may not be so on board with that plan, and so they're having a tough time controlling their own fighters, which, interestingly, they admit it.
The Taliban, obviously I'm not going to be pro-Taliban, but there's something weirdly refreshing about the Taliban.
I hate to say it, but here's the Taliban who have this problem where their individual fighters are just, they can't control them, and then they just tell you that.
Yeah, we can't control our individual fighters.
It's tough. I don't know if an American politician would have said that.
I think an American politician would have blamed Trump.
It's just automatic. Well, at least they say they have a problem and they admit it.
Here's what I think is going to happen.
I think that women have gotten too much of a taste of freedom over there, and I think that women will, in fact, get power.
Slowly, but I think they will acquire power in Afghanistan, and they will change the Taliban, because that's what changes anything, right?
When women get power, everything changes.
And I think they have enough, just enough of a foehold, that if you see some more insanely brave people like the ones who protested, and the Taliban leadership is saying that they're going to include women, So, I mean, if the leadership gets control of its people and they mean it, I don't know. Maybe they don't mean it, but I think they have to.
Because they're not going to get a foreign investment if they don't get right with their female citizens.
So, I think the Taliban is going to have to actually get right with women, and eventually women will change it from the inside.
It might be a 30-year process, but I think that's where it's going.
I would think that Afghanistan is far more likely to become more moderate in time because of the women issue.
Well, here's the CDC with a provocative new update.
They say about 83% of the U.S. population, 60 and up, have some degree of immunity to the coronavirus, either from vaccination or prior infection.
So they're saying now that 20% of the public have prior infection.
20%? Does that sound right?
And apparently it's double what they thought it was.
So if twice as many people have had an infection than we thought before, based on new serology studies...
Does that mean that the death rate, or at least the dangerousness of the flu, is half as much as we thought?
If twice as many people have it than we thought, this is Tim Pool's question on Twitter, does that mean that the danger was half as much as we thought?
Now, the danger is the danger, because we're counting bodies, right?
So the bodies are the bodies.
But... There's something about the numbers we don't understand, right?
Now, how did we get to 83% of adults over 16 are covered with immunity and we don't have any herd immunity?
What? Apparently, 83% doesn't get you to herd immunity.
Now, maybe because the vaccinations are not stopping the virus, they're just stopping symptoms or making it less dangerous.
So maybe you just can't stop it.
So maybe there's no herd immunity because vaccinations don't stop the spread.
So whatever you thought about, oh, if we only get to this percentage vaccinated, we're in good shape, I don't think that is a thing anymore, right?
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Have our experts stopped talking about herd immunity?
Am I correct that they've entirely stopped talking about herd immunity and now they're only talking about getting everybody a therapeutic dose of vaccines?
I'm right, right?
They just stopped talking about herd immunity.
So they were wrong completely.
Apparently. I mean, I don't know how much more wrong you could be.
I thought that the one thing that the experts would get right is the herd immunity part.
Didn't you? I mean, I would have been flexible if the real number had been between, let's say, 60 and 85%.
I wouldn't be too critical if it was somewhere in there, but they didn't get it exactly.
But the fact that there's literally no herd immunity, who was guessing that?
Who was it who guessed the zero herd immunity?
Because it looks like no herd immunity to me, doesn't it?
Because it just turns into a new variant.
Then it just keeps going.
So this is like pretty big news.
I'm not sure we know exactly the implications of this.
Meanwhile, Australia is going batshit crazy.
I guess the government of South Australia has implemented a new policy.
Where you have to use an app with facial recognition and geolocation, and they will randomly contact you, and you have to prove who you are and where you are.
What? This is a real thing.
This is actually happening in a real place on the world, on the planet.
You actually have to check in with the government, and they will randomly contact you.
And you do facial recognition and geolocation and you better be in your quarantine location.
What? You know, on one hand, you can see that this would just be a handy tool.
But on the other hand, oh my God, this is scary.
Oh my God.
So we'll watch Australia and see how that works out.
In our next segment, which I call Perma News, the news that is still news, even though it never changes.
It seems like the details change, but not in any significant way.
And today, I would like to once again see if I can get through talking about the infrastructure bill.
Oh! Oh!
Sorry, I'm getting a little sleepy when I talk about the topic.
But I want to see if I can give you an update about the infrastructure bill.
I know it's the most exciting topic.
So it turns out that Joe Manchin...
Oh, God.
Joe Manchin doesn't want to pass the info.
What were we talking about?
So...
I don't know. Let's go on to the next topic.
That was the infrastructure bill.
Adam Dopamine tweeted today that the experts had discovered, and I didn't realize this was a risk, but a lot of you understand that Trump derangement syndrome, or TDS, was a pretty big problem during his administration, but now the experts have discovered that there's a long-haul TDS. So, apparently, Trump derangement syndrome was not limited to his term in office.
They've discovered long-haul.
Some of the symptoms, I'm adding this part myself, but some of the symptoms of long-haul TDS would be you still believe Trump recommended drinking bleach.
Debunked a long time ago, but you still believe it.
That would be signs of long-haul TDS. Or you still believe that Trump called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville fine people.
Totally debunked. But if you still believe that, that would be signs of long-haul TDS. And as Adam points out, it includes the onset of Biden regret syndrome.
That could be a symptom of long-haul TDS. And a gradual decrease in your anti-Trump smugness.
So if you're finding any decrease in your anti-Trump smugness over time, that could be a sign, too.
CNN has fact-checked Joe Biden who talked about visiting the Tree of Life synagogue after that horrendous shooting.
Except that Joe Biden never actually visited the Tree of Life synagogue.
Oh, he has a story about it.
He seems to remember it quite correctly.
Or no, quite clearly.
Except it never happened.
So even CNN is calling BS on Joe Biden's made-up story.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration, looking for every way to fail the public, has decided to remove certain penalties for fentanyl-related trafficking.
What? Why is all the news something that you just have to pause and then go, what?
Am I reading this correctly?
Like you think you're not even reading it right.
It couldn't possibly be true.
Is he finding just new ways to be a dumbass?
The correct penalty for dealing fentanyl is death.
Because the correct penalty for any terrorist act is death.
The correct penalty for being a mass murderer is death.
And if you're a major, I'll say a major fentanyl dealer, I'm not talking about somebody on the street who sold a few pills, but if you're a major fentanyl dealer, you've killed a lot of people, and you knew you were doing it.
If you kill a lot of people in an illegal way, and you know you're doing it, and you know it's going to happen before you do it, That's the death penalty.
Oh, I know what you're going to say.
Are you saying to me, Scott, what about personal responsibility?
What about the people who took the drugs?
Why do we judge the dealers?
Let's just let everybody do whatever they want and let people take personal responsibility.
Well, you have forced me to go to the whiteboard.
Yeah, I didn't want to do this, but...
Yeah, I'm going to pull a whiteboard on you.
Sorry, sorry, you pushed me to the limit, and now I'm going full whiteboard.
Never go full whiteboard, unless you mean it.
There are two views of the world that I see.
One of them, regarding addiction.
One of them is that we have this thing called free will, and if you've got enough of it and you choose to use it, you can say, no, fentanyl.
No, stay away.
I will use my free will and all of my powers to keep the fentanyl away.
What's wrong with that?
Why not use your free will to keep the fentanyl away, and then it doesn't matter if anybody produces it.
You're not going to take it.
Why not? Well, could it be?
Because free will is completely imaginary.
Yeah, it is.
Free will is imaginary.
People act on their greatest impulses.
That's it. If I had a great hunger for something, I would eat it, even if I knew it wasn't the healthiest food.
It's not how much willpower you have that doesn't even exist.
It's just how much competing interest you have in any given question.
Sometimes something is more attractive than something else.
Sometimes it isn't.
That's it. Free will is an imaginary concept that we get after the fact.
I say, well, I must have used my free will there.
Nope. Your brain is subject to the laws of physics.
One of your impulses was bigger than the other, and that's why you made the decision you made.
That's it. However, there's another concept that must be introduced called addiction.
If you imagine that free will existed, spoiler, it doesn't.
It's only imaginary.
But if it existed, let's say you think it did.
I got some free will.
Well then, if you understood what addiction is, addiction is the thing that cancels your free will.
That's what it is.
An addiction is the thing that cancels your free will.
If you don't understand that, then you're calling for personal responsibility for a person who couldn't have any.
It wouldn't be possible.
It's not medically possible.
It's like asking a person with no arms and no legs to play ping-pong.
You could ask, hey, use your personal responsibility and go play ping-pong, you lazy bastard with no arms and no legs.
Use your free will.
Well, they can't. They can't, because they've got no arms and no legs.
Likewise, if you're addicted, you don't have free will.
That's not a thing.
If you don't understand that an addict does not have free will, then you don't know what an addiction is.
You don't know what the word means or something.
I don't know. If you think that people can just use their personal responsibility to avoid fentanyl, you have two problems with your thinking.
One, that you think that free will actually exists, and two, you don't know what addiction is.
Terrible analogy. There's no analogy here.
There's a drawing, but not an analogy.
Not in the sense that you're thinking of it.
All right. Sorry I had to go to the whiteboard for that.
Sometimes you just got to do what you got to do.
This is another Adam dopamine tweet who's on fire today.
Apparently the British...
Who is it?
The Secretary of Defense or something?
Yeah, the UK's Defense Secretary suggested that the US should no longer be considered a superpower.
So there's another Joe Biden accomplishment.
Joe Biden...
It's actually such a bad president that the UK, one of our strongest allies, doesn't think we should be called a superpower anymore.
Oh, he admits we have lots of power.
Yeah, you have lots of power, but the way you got out of Afghanistan was so lame that it's like you don't even have a superpower.
If you're going to use it that poorly, what's the point of having power?
It's not too super.
It's just power. So thank you, Joe Biden, for making us look bad in the international arena.
Wasn't Joe Biden supposed to improve our reputation around the world?
Is it working? I don't think so.
On the other hand, Trump, who is not even president, is doing great lately.
He had a great week. Because the WTO, the World Trade Organization, ruled in his favor.
So I guess the first thing Trump did was slap some sanctions on China for their solar panel abuse.
And that went to the World Trade Organization for dispute, and they just backed Trump 100%.
Trump's first trade thing, do you remember how much pushback he got?
Don't start a trade war.
No, no, everything will go to hell if you start a trade war.
Who was it who told you that Trump can start a trade war and will be fine?
I did. I did.
If anybody's here to confirm that, can you confirm that when Trump started the trade war, all the smart people said everything's going to go to hell, right?
What did I tell you?
I told you no, nothing's going to go to hell.
We'll just come out ahead. Trump did the thing that all the smart people said don't do.
Don't start a trade war.
Here we are a few years later.
The World Trade Organization just agreed with him 100%.
And how's our economy doing?
Well, considering the pandemic, pretty good.
So I think that Trump is having a great week.
He's not even president, and he's killing it.
Right? I mean, that is fair.
That is fair. So anyway, rate this as one of my correct predictions against the grain.
The only ones I care about are the ones where everybody said something else was going to happen, and I took the contrarian view, because those are the ones that are fun.
Let's look at Biden's record so far.
Immigration, disaster.
Trump did better. COVID, getting worse.
Probably not Biden's fault, right?
I don't know that Biden did anything wrong with COVID necessarily, but it's getting worse.
So he's president, so it's going to look like his fault the same way it looked like Trump's fault that we had a bad first wave.
Inflation is worse. That's bad.
China looks like they're unchecked.
Roe vs. Wade looks like it probably has been neutered by the Texas law on abortion.
Now, of course, if you're conservative, you're saying, well, that's good news.
But if you are Biden's base, Biden just lost Roe vs.
Wade on his watch.
Now, was there anything he could do about it?
No, not really. I don't think he had any power.
But it happened on his watch.
So, I don't know, I think that accrues to him in the indirect way that we say presidents are responsible for everything.
He botched the Afghan pull-out, obviously, but on the positive side, stocks are up, which has more to do with the economy, or I would say stocks are up despite Biden, wouldn't you say?
Because the things Biden is doing would be a drag on stocks.
If he's going to raise taxes, for example.
That would be a drag on stocks.
But they're up anyway. So I don't think you can give him credit if the only thing he did was a drag on stocks.
And the other thing you've got to give Biden credit for is the rioting stopped.
I guess structural racism is not so much a problem now.
So it was an imaginary problem.
Not imaginary problem.
Structural racism is real, as is systemic racism, the way I define it anyway.
It's real. But the riots stopped.
People stopped complaining about it in the streets anyway.
So that's good.
Anyway, so the Biden presidency looks like an unmitigated disaster.
There's a story in Axios.
Looks like they had an exclusive.
There's a well-known Silicon Valley investor who is being accused of dismissing racism.
Dismissing racism. And when you hear this story, what do you first think?
Oh my God, there's some old white guy who just dismissed racism.
This is going to be bad.
Because that's what the headline says.
It says, a Silicon Valley investor dismissed racism.
It's got to be an old white guy, right?
Because first of all, when you think of Silicon Valley investors, even though they're not all white, obviously, your brain goes there because of the stereotypes.
The first ones you think of often.
But it turns out that the Silicon Valley investor who dismissed racism was a Was one, what's her name?
Her last name is Wu, W-U. And so, I'm thinking that Ms.
Wu may not be an old white guy, after all.
May not be an old white guy.
Somebody here says they automatically think Indian American when they think of venture capitalists.
That's the other thing you think, or Asian American.
So, yeah, if you're going by stereotypes alone, that's what you think.
So here's what Ms.
Wu said, allegedly.
Quote, I don't believe in Black Lives Matter.
If anything, I think they are the true racists trying to stir up things to make this country going to socialism or even communism, potentially.
Now... Is that opinion racist?
Would that be dismissing racism?
I don't think she dismissed racism.
She just called it out.
She just said, here's an example of racism.
She just says it's the Black Lives Matter people.
So that would be the opposite of dismissing it, wouldn't it?
Literally, she confirmed it.
She just pointed to a different place to find it.
Now, do you think...
Do you think that Ms.
Wu, do you think that she believes there's no actual racism in the country?
Well, she's silent on that question.
Well, I doubt it.
Right? Do you think...
That if you asked her, hey, but are you saying there's no racism in the country?
Is she going to say, yeah, I don't think there's any racism in the country?
No, no. She's saying that Black Lives Matter is racist.
She probably, now we don't know this, so I don't want to be a mind reader, but I'm just working with what information we have, and then we have to sort of fill in what we don't know to have an opinion.
I would say that she's not only not dismissing racism, but she's calling out extra racism.
To me it looks like she has confirmed more racism than her critics.
Because she's not dismissing regular racism.
Nothing she says dismisses it.
But on top of that, she's adding that Black Lives Matter is also racist.
That's twice as racist as what Black Lives Matter believes is happening in the country.
So she believes things are twice as racist and she's being blamed for not thinking racism exists.
The opposite of the story.
Now, there's also an allegation that one ex-employee said that she said something about why there are not many black people in STEM, and I don't think we should treat that as a credible allegation.
Because that one, that's too creepy.
If you have this person who used to work there who says you said something, and they're allegedly quoting you from memory, and they don't have quite exactly the context, maybe, I'm not even going to repeat that allegation.
I would say the credibility of that allegation is so low that you should treat it as non-existent, like it didn't happen, basically.
Um... But here's what Axio says.
So adding context to their own exclusive, Axio said, and they put this in the article like this is a fact, okay?
See if you would agree that this could be stated as a fact and just left there without question.
All right, here's some context.
Here's a fact. Axio says black people are underrepresented in Silicon Valley because of systemic barriers to entry.
3% of venture capital's investment partners' positions were held by blacks in 2020, according to a survey by blah blah blah.
And just 1.2% of all venture funding went to black startup entrepreneurs in the first half of this year, per Crunchbase.
So, do you buy that?
Is that a good explanation of what's happening?
Have they proven, Axios, that black people are underrepresented in Silicon Valley because of the lack of venture capital funding?
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in my life.
Now, let's accept that there almost certainly is far less funding for black entrepreneurs.
Can we all accept that that's almost certainly true?
So there's no argument about the numbers.
Almost certainly true, I mean, who would even doubt it, that black entrepreneurs are getting less venture capitalists for lots of different reasons.
But by the time people are not getting funded...
The problem already happened.
The problem is not the lack of funding.
The reason they're not getting funding is because the venture capitalists don't think they can make money.
That's it. Or there aren't many of them.
There just aren't enough of them asking for money.
Are you telling me that the major venture capitalists don't want to have a successful black entrepreneur unicorn in their portfolio?
Is there anything they'd want more than that?
This is one of those dumb fuck things that people who have never lived in the real world don't understand.
If you're a bunch of white people with a big venture capital firm, there's nothing you want more than to fund a black entrepreneur, especially one that would be successful.
You want that as much as you want air.
So to act as if there's some structural barrier to black people getting funded is so fucking backwards.
It's completely backwards.
You show me a black entrepreneur who's got a skill and a good idea, they're funded.
They're funded every fucking time.
In the real world, people with skill...
Get funded, and people with skill who are black get extra funding, or extra consideration.
Now, I would do that if I were a venture capitalist.
If a black entrepreneur came with a good idea, I would give them priority.
Why? Because it's good for me.
Just selfish. It would be good for me.
If I had a bunch of investments, wouldn't I love to be an early investor in a black unicorn company?
That would be the coolest thing you could ever say in your world.
It's great to say, oh, I was an early investor in Facebook and stuff.
That's pretty good. Early investor in Twitter?
Good for you. But imagine bragging that you were an early investor in whatever, black, gigantic unicorn startup, and you were one of the early investors.
That would be the coolest thing you could ever say in American society, that you helped that happen.
So the imagination that the funding is the problem, it's not the problem.
The problem is systemic racism, for sure.
So let's all agree, well, you don't have to agree, but it's my opinion, that it is systemic racism, but it's because of the teachers' unions.
We're not producing enough entrepreneurs who happen to be black.
That's the problem. Why?
Because the schools. The schools are a mess.
Black kids can't get a decent education, on average, right?
Everybody's different. But the teachers' unions are the source of all systemic racism, and dumb fucks think it's in the funding.
The funding's at the end of the tunnel, right?
The tunnel was all of the other problems that were before that point.
Anyway, I guess you're all on board on that.
Let's talk about Candace Owens, who's in the news for a couple of reasons.
Now, you might know that I'm a big fan of Candace Owens, one of the most impressive talent stacks you're ever going to see.
By talent stack, I mean a set of talents that work well together, and that's what she has.
She has one of the most impressive combinations of talents, everything from being young and good-looking and being black that she uses to her advantage, to being a great communicator, thinker, political She knows a lot about stuff.
So she just has tons of skills.
I'm very impressed by her in general.
But she has also opposed face masks and said some vaccination comments that the experts do not agree with.
And so she tried to get a COVID test and was denied vaccination.
The laboratory that did the test found out who she was and denied her service because of her comments on the pandemic.
What? It's like all the news has the same thing.
You just read the news straight and then you pause for a moment and then you say, what?
What? Are you freaking kidding me?
Now, I don't agree with Candace on a number of her comments about the pandemic, but that doesn't mean I'm right, right?
I mean, have some humility about this.
I can disagree. It doesn't mean I'm right.
It could mean she's right.
The only thing I know for sure is we disagree.
So... This is outrageous.
And I guess there was only one other option where she lives or where she wanted to do this, and it was you have to wait in line, and it's first come, first serve, and it's a bad situation.
So this just sucks.
But here's the interesting part.
Remember conservatives were supporting the bakery that didn't want to bake a gay wedding cake?
This feels a little bit like that.
It's not, right?
It's not like that. So it would be bad to use that as an analogy.
But it reminds us of it.
And then you have to ask yourself, if you like capitalism, does the lab just have the right to refuse service for any reason?
Because they're not discriminating on gender or race or anything, as far as we know.
I mean, there's no indication of it.
Do they have that right?
Somebody says it's racist, but there's no indication that that has anything to do with anything in this case.
Do they have the right?
They do, right? Don't they have a legal right to discriminate in this case?
It would be different if it were a hospital.
I'd be worried about that.
But if it's just a test facility, but on the other hand, it is a pandemic, so it's pretty messed up to deny somebody a test during a pandemic.
That's pretty messed up.
But she might have the right.
She might have the complete right to do a messed up thing.
This would be the owner of the lab who denied service.
Candace also in the news a little bit, at least on social media.
Because I guess the Taliban just announced that China will be their gateway to international markets along the One Belt Road Initiative.
And Candace was pointing out that she predicted that Joe Biden would basically give Afghanistan to China.
And it looks like she was right.
But here's where I disagree with Candace.
I don't know that China's going to be happy about this in the long run.
Because so far, everybody who's been involved with Afghanistan has come to regret it.
Now, China is different from every other country in lots of different ways, so maybe they won't.
Maybe they'll be happy.
Maybe they can accept whatever losses or costs.
And maybe they'll be happy for the strategic advantage.
Having their Belt and Road Initiative, which connects a lot of stuff so they can do trade, maybe it'll be a mess and still worthwhile, because the economics might be kind of tremendous for them.
But I think I would disagree with Candace that this looks like a good thing for China.
I suspect China's going to come to regret it, but I'm only leaning in that direction.
Candace could be right on this as well.
I don't like to disagree too publicly with people I consider smart because when you disagree with smart people, you're taking a chance.
Right? So if you disagree with somebody like Candace, you disagree with a smart person and you're taking your chances.
All right. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
He tweeted this provocatively.
Now, here's some statistics that I don't know if are true.
So I'm just reporting what Tyson says.
But, you know, he's a science proponent, of course.
Famous science proponent and scientist.
Astrophysicist? I think that's what he is.
But he points out that every 10 days, 8,000 unvaccinated Republican voters die of COVID. Now, how smart is he to say voters?
Because he's trying to persuade.
But instead of saying 8,000 unvaccinated Republicans die every 10 days, he says 8,000 unvaccinated Republican voters die.
That's a little extra, isn't it?
Because then you're saying, wait a minute.
Are you saying that the next election could be determined by whether we get vaccinations?
And he is saying that.
He's very much saying that.
That the next election...
There might be enough Republicans who die to change some election results.
That could actually happen.
I don't know what the odds are, but it feels like it's physically possible.
But for every Republican who dies, there are five times as many of them as Democrats.
I need a fact check on that.
Is it true, as Tyson claims...
Neil deGrasse Tyson, that there are five times as many Republicans dying from COVID as Democrats.
Has anybody seen a statistic like that?
Has anybody even collected that statistic?
Because, yeah, somebody says no way to know, and that's where I'm at.
I don't think we know that, do we?
Now, I had...
Maybe it's estimated by just what counties are in or something like that.
Yeah, nobody tracks it.
I don't think it's ever been surveyed.
So I'm a little hesitant to say it's true.
But here's what I like about it.
What I like about it is that he's taken a crack at persuasion and did a pretty good job.
He did a pretty good job. In fact, this is exactly what I recommended earlier on, recommended in terms of if somebody wanted to be persuasive.
What you would do is set up a competition between Republicans and Democrats.
If you reported every day how many Democrats died, vaccinated and not, and how many Republicans died every day, vaccinated and not, and just put that little...
Put that little data in a sidebar.
Just put it there every day where they used to have all the COVID information.
I feel like that would make a difference because you would turn Democrats and Republicans into competitors.
You say, all right, see who can live the best.
Just make it a competition.
See who lives the longest.
Should media disinformation be considered a health crisis?
We now have two parts to healthcare.
One is the stuff you actually do, you know, the setting your broken bones and taking medicine and stuff, the actual care.
But the other part of healthcare is the mental part.
What do you know, and do you know enough to get the right care, and are you making the right decisions, the mental part?
And we separate them like they're somehow separate.
But I feel like the punditry, at least in the pandemic, the punditry has become health care.
Wouldn't you say? Because people are definitely being influenced by non-medical professionals, including me, sadly, to make decisions on their own health.
And I think we have to start recognizing that the punditry is just part of health care now.
At least for the big national topics.
Not for your everyday stuff.
It doesn't matter to your gout.
But for the big stuff, like a pandemic, the punditry is just health care.
It is. Because people are taking their medical advice from people like me.
And I'm telling you not to, right?
I say it a million times.
Don't, don't, don't, don't.
Get your medical advice from me.
But it happens, right? Just because people are influenced by what they see and hear.
So somehow we have to deal with that.
And I wonder if there will be a day that we'll ever be able to calculate how many people each pundit killed or saved.
Could you, at some point in the future, let's say, this is hypothetical, right?
Let's say someday in the future, science came to a consensus about what worked and what didn't work in the pandemic.
We're nowhere near that right now.
Right now, I don't think we know what works.
Like, we're still arguing masks and vaccinations and all that stuff.
But let's say someday... Someday we do have a pretty good idea what worked and what didn't work.
Then we could look at the pundits of what they said.
You could look at the size of their platform.
You could make an assumption about what level of influence they have.
Somehow you could do that. And I think you could actually come up with an estimate of how many people each pundit killed or saved.
Because some pundits would have said more of the right things and less of the wrong things.
I'd like to know that.
Maybe ten years from now, when our emotions have gone down a little bit.
So I guess what I would add to the conversation is, I'll bet you could calculate it.
I'll bet you could calculate how many people each pundit killed.
So that should keep you honest.
Rasmussen has an excellent red meat kind of poll results here.
They ask, what percentage of people diagnosed with COVID do you think have died from the disease?
So this will be testing, among other things, who has better information about COVID, Democrats or Republicans?
What do you think? Before I tell you the answer, who do you think has better information about the details of COVID, Republicans or Democrats, specifically just the death rate?
So, yeah, it's Republicans double.
Republicans are twice as likely, twice as likely, to get the right answer to this question.
So Democrats, only 21% think that fewer than 2% of the people diagnosed died of the disease.
So let me say it in a clearer way.
The real number of people who died of COVID is less than 1%, right?
But it's less than 2%.
And Democrats, only 21% of Democrats know how few people die of COVID. Only 21%, one in five Democrats, only one in five, even know close to what the death rate is.
That's the biggest factor in your decision.
The number one factor in your decision about what to do personally for the pandemic, the number one thing is how many people are dying.
And the Democrats don't know.
Only one in five knows.
I mean, that's crazy!
One in five gets the right answer, that's it?
Republicans are not exactly killing it either.
Only 39% of Republicans think it's less than 2%.
It's twice as much as Democrats, so that's good.
It's still not good. That's pretty uninformed for both Democrats and Republicans.
So here's the question.
If Democrats have a higher vaccination rate, I think that's true, do they have a higher vaccination rate because they are...
Smarter about science or dumber about data?
You can't tell.
Or is it both? Some combination.
Because I do think the Democrats...
don't hate me, but I do think the Democrats might have a little bit more, let's say, trust in the experts for the vaccinations.
Doesn't mean they're right, but they have more trust.
But they certainly have less information about the data.
So are the Democrats so smart that they're believing the experts and they're right about it?
Or are they so dumb that they think that the virus is way deadlier than it is, and that's why they're getting vaccinated?
Can't tell.
well.
All right. Rasmussen also asked, do you believe health officials are lying about the safety of COVID vaccines?
Well, 53% of Republicans say yes.
They think health officials are lying about the safety of the vaccines.
53%. Think that the people in charge are lying about one of the biggest things in the world you could ever lie about.
I mean, what would be bigger than this?
I mean, you could probably think of something, but it'd be hard.
But only 26% of Democrats believe that health officials are lying about the safety of vaccines.
Now, keep in mind, we just watched officials lie about masks.
Right? In 2020, Fauci even admits he lied about it.
He lied right to your face about masks.
Now, you still think he was right the first time or whatever, but that's a different question.
He admits he lied.
So if the same people who lied to you about masks are telling you certain things about vaccinations, is it unreasonable to doubt them?
No. Now...
I would be in the category that says health officials are lying about the safety of everything.
Not just vaccinations.
I just think we're in a weird world where they're lying about everything.
Not everything about everything.
But probably every topic's got a little bit of a lie in it.
Not every part of it, though.
So I'm not saying that vaccinations don't work.
I'm just saying that there's probably a lot of lying by the people who are in charge.
All right, I've only got a minute to go here.
And luckily, I'm ready.
So, here's the thing.
I think this was one of the best live streams in the history of the universe.
Not just mine, but of all time.
If you disagree, well, I don't want to hear about it because I'm turning off YouTube right now.
