Episode 1492 Scott Adams: Dr. Fauci versus Rand Paul Rematch, and Lots of New Information About the Things You Care About
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Content:
Vaccinated odds of getting COVID, vanishingly small
Addiction, the worsening challenge
Rand Paul vindicated, Dr. Fauci gain of function
Larry Elder on teachers unions, school choice
Another reason China is doomed
Dr. David Nicholl needs to explain some things
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Like it's happening now, really.
But the simultaneous sip is coming up also, and all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or a jalous or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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It's called the simultaneous sip, and it's going to happen right now.
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Delightful. Well, a little note to the locals' developers.
Looks like your new version is working.
I like the new options. But I can't see myself.
So my self-image is about 10% of the lighting value it normally is.
So you might want to take a look at that.
In the news, El Salvador today became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender.
So does that mean that Bitcoin is here to stay?
Kind of feels like it, doesn't it?
I do not make recommendations for crypto or finances in general, so don't get any financial advice from me, but it should be noted that the thing that gives any currency value is whether or not a country will accept it.
Because if a country will accept a cryptocurrency to pay taxes...
Then the cryptocurrency will always have value as long as there's a country that will accept them.
Because even if you didn't have any reason to pay taxes in that country, the people who do, they need bitcoins.
So they might have to buy them from you to pay their taxes.
For example. That's a bad example.
But the point is that if you can find one big country that's taking bitcoins, it goes a long way to making it permanent.
One country isn't enough, probably, but it seems like a big step.
I think we've got to keep our eye on that.
There's a billionaire looking to build a city of the future.
I think this is going to be the next big, big thing.
As in, so big you can hardly believe it big.
As big as climate change.
As big as maybe even the, I don't know, the energy market.
I mean, it could be big. And that is designing a city.
Because right now we design homes.
We design rooms.
We design products. We design cars.
But you know what? We don't design the city.
Because the cities tend to just grow up over time.
You know, they tend to be near a port and evolve in whatever way they evolve.
So you end up with a completely unlivable urban centre.
Now suppose you started with a greenfield and you started from scratch to make everything work better.
One of the things that they're building into this city of the future, should it be funded, I don't think it's quite funded yet, would be that you could get to everything within 15 minutes.
So your work, your shopping, everything would be within 15 minutes.
Imagine being close to everything you need.
In today's world, people are commuting two hours a day or more.
Quite fairly frequently.
But imagine if you didn't have to do that.
And imagine if you made everything eco-friendly and you designed it so that it would be a natural way to socialize with your neighbors instead of scurrying in and out of locked doors.
So there's a lot we could do there.
I think that this redesigning cities from scratch could be the biggest economic driver of the next hundred years.
So that's my big prediction.
That designed cities will be the next big, big, big thing.
Because remember, there are a lot of billionaires in big companies that can no longer do small things.
Take Apple Computer.
Apple Computer is so big that if it takes on a new line of business, that new line of business has to have potentially an enormous revenue.
Or else it's not worth it to them because they can't do little stuff.
Little stuff's not worth the time.
So as you have these mega corporations and mega rich people like Musk and Bezos, they're going to look for stuff to do that is the size they need it to.
Now Musk and Bezos are looking at space because space is one of those few things that's big enough.
You know, you can put a lot of money into space and maybe the returns will be worth it.
But building a city is something you can do on this planet that I think a lot of big billionaire types and big companies are going to get interested in it.
All right, here's some new information on breakthrough COVID cases when you're vaccinated.
Were you under the impression that being vaccinated didn't make much difference in terms of whether you would catch the virus?
Now, you did understand that if you had a vaccination, your odds of getting sick were You know, desperately sick from the virus were low.
I think everybody knew that by now.
But you still thought you could get it, which is still true, and you still thought that maybe you could pass it along just like somebody who had not been vaccinated.
Turns out that's not even close to true.
And it was confusing because we thought that vaccinated people had as much viral load in their mouth and nose as unvaccinated people, maybe even more.
And so logically you said to yourself, wait a minute, if these vaccinated people have all this virus in their mouth and nose, they must be able to spread it.
And sure enough, they can.
But the odds of spreading it if you are vaccinated are just vanishingly small.
Actually, the odds of getting it in the first place, if you're vaccinated, is about 1 in 5,000.
And it could be as low as 1 in 10,000.
So if you're vaccinated, you can still get the virus.
But your odds of getting it are vanishingly small.
Vanishingly small. So small that you can actually ignore it.
I mean, it's small enough that you don't even need to put it into your consideration.
But it exists. So that's the New York Times.
David Leonhardt did an article on that.
And one of the takeaways is that the amount of viral load in your mouth and nose probably is irrelevant when comparing vaccinated versus unvaccinated.
It probably doesn't make any difference because in the real world they can't find the difference.
Well, there's yet more information telling us that narcissism works.
There's a new paper by Italian researchers...
They found that when people have a high degree of narcissism, they are far more likely to be promoted, 29% faster in their career progression.
No surprise, right?
People who are self-promoters and tell you that they're awesome and they did a great job, people believe them, and then they promote them.
So being a narcissist is actually a benefit.
It's a clear economic benefit.
Now, I think that's why narcissism is not called a mental disorder.
Because if you call it a mental disorder, it suggests that it's bad for the person who has it.
But it doesn't seem to be.
It seems to be maybe good for the person who has it.
They don't mind at all.
It's just bad for the people around them.
So I think it's called a personality disorder, narcissism as opposed to a mental disorder.
So here's CNN's anecdotal persuasion for the day.
I've been telling you that every single day, they'll do one, and probably only one, story about somebody who wishes they'd been vaccinated.
Darn it. And sure enough, there's a Nevada mother, Christina Lowe, is urging others to get vaccinated after losing her husband to the virus, saying that they thought the virus was, quote, a political game.
That's right. People dying from the virus who once thought the vaccination was fake and that the virus was not even real.
One of these stories every single day.
Now, when I told you that CNN was going to run one of these stories every day, did you believe that it would really be every day?
And that it would be a different story?
Same story, but different.
Every day? Just one?
I'm reading them out every day, right?
Can you predict that tomorrow there will be a story about somebody, just one, just one story on CNN's page, about yet a new person who wishes they'd been vaccinated because their family member died?
So look for that.
Michael Schellenberger is...
Dunking on the renewable energy people in Europe.
And points out that Britain and others are burning more coal lately because natural gas prices went up.
That's one of the reasons.
So they had to start burning more natural coal.
But there was another reason that they needed a lot of natural coal.
Turns out they have a lot of windmills in Great Britain.
And the wind didn't blow much this year.
Yes, natural coal.
That's right. I said natural coal and I meant it.
The kind that comes right out of the ground.
So what do you make of the fact that the wind might stop blowing?
What? Apparently there's a pretty big difference from year to year about how much wind you get.
I don't think I knew that.
I mean, I knew that hurricanes can differ.
But I would have thought that if you took the average of the wind of every day for a year, it would look a lot...
You know, one year would look a lot like another year.
But apparently not.
Apparently you could have a windy year and a non-windy year.
So that's a problem.
And then I ask you this question.
With climate change, shouldn't it be windier...
Can somebody give me a fact check on that?
If all we're talking about lately is, hey, that big storm must be climate change, and that hurricane must be climate change, and that flood must be climate change, and maybe they are.
I'm not saying they are or are not.
But if those are all climate change, wouldn't the lack of wind quite logically be, at least you would suspect, Had to do with climate change?
Now, my instinct would be that climate change would make the wind stronger because there would be more differences in temperature.
You know, this is my dumb non-scientist take.
That probably it creates more imbalances.
And is it not the imbalances of temperature and pressure that causes the wind?
I'm not sure I know what I'm talking about, so I put a lot of skepticism on everything I say about weather.
But if every negative thing that happens in the world is because of climate change, why not the lack of wind?
I mean, it should make some difference, right?
Climate change should change the wind one way or the other.
It's not going to be the same, will it?
So it's either going to make it better or worse for windmills, and I think that that's probably something we should understand.
You may remember that Naval Ravikant, on one of my early live streams, indicated that addiction is probably going to be the big challenge of the future.
Now, he was talking about drug addiction, but I think it's bigger than that.
Or actually, maybe he wasn't talking about just drug addiction, but I'll expand it anyway.
Because we're addicted now to everything from phones, games, drugs, fast food, social media.
And here's the real problem.
That the technology for getting somebody addicted to anything is way, way better than it used to be.
So you can get somebody addicted to food by manipulating the amount of sugar, fat, and salt in it.
And there's a formula which is known...
It's known to the food experts that if you hit the right ratio of salt, sugar, and fat, it's addictive.
Fast food, for example, is addictive.
So that's an addiction that we can only learn to make food like that because our science is better.
In the past, it would just be an accident if you made something that turned out to be addictive.
But now we can do it every time.
You just keep testing until you have it, and then you release it.
Likewise, with games and videos and anything you consume online, we now have the technology to find out exactly which content will addict you.
Not just addiction in general, but how much will get you.
That's important. What about porn?
Porn no longer shows you generic people doing generic and naughty things.
Porn can find exactly the thing you want to see.
It'll find you a redhead doing God knows what, exactly what you want it to see.
Wearing a pearl necklace and heels.
You name it. No matter how specific you want to get, You can probably find it.
And if you can find exactly what you want for porn versus some generic stuff that works for everybody a little bit, you're going to get more addicted.
So our ability to find out what addicts people and then apply it in a commercial sense is off the charts right now.
We're really good at it.
And that's a challenge.
So addiction is going to be the number one problem.
Drug addiction alone killed 93,000 people in the U.S. this year.
Drug addiction killed 93,000 people just this year.
It's a new record.
Where does it come from?
Mostly China passing through the cartels after they process it.
At least the fentanyl portion of it.
So, yeah, we're going to have to learn to deal with addiction, and we have not come to grips with that yet.
I mean, I think we're looking at addiction as something that applies to each individual category.
So there are people looking at online addiction, there are people looking at, you know, drug addiction.
But I think we just need to understand that technology has reached a point where we can make anything addictive, right?
Any category, not any product, but any category we can make addictive.
And what's that do to people?
What's it do to your illusion of free will?
Well, Rand Paul is having a good day.
You might recall that Rand Paul was accusing Dr.
Fauci of being one of the people involved in getting funding They ended up at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dr. Fauci said that is 100% false.
That did not happen.
Rand Paul said, well, it's totally true.
We've got the receipts.
Well, today there was a new story came out.
I forget where it was.
But a new story came out that Basically confirmed what Rand Paul had been saying, that the funding, American funding, through Fauci, Fauci was part of that process, did, in fact, get to the lab.
And it did, in fact, specifically include gain of function as it is defined.
Now, The Intercept, yes, thank you.
It was The Intercept who has that story today.
And by the way, you have to watch Glenn Greenwald...
Go off on The Intercept.
That's his old publication.
I think he was a co-founder. But he's just tearing them apart for hypocrisy.
It's really fun to watch him rip them apart.
But anyway, it looks like the report completely agrees with Rand Paul.
That Fauci was part of it.
Now, what will Fauci say in response to this?
Will Fauci say, well, you got me.
You got me now.
I did fund that stuff.
No. Because I don't think they're talking about the same thing.
I think they're using words differently.
I believe that Fauci...
Talks about gain of function in a more weaponized way, whereas I think the science talks about gain of function as anything that acquires a function.
Doesn't mean it's weaponized necessarily.
So I think he's just playing with weasel words to say he wasn't involved.
Now, let's say he was involved.
Let's say the reporting is accurate and he was part of approving some money that went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Let's say that Rand Paul is completely correct.
I'm not so sure that that's as damning for Fauci as it looks.
I'm not a Fauci supporter, per se, but also not the biggest critic.
Because even the things that I know he did wrong, such as lying about masks in the beginning, he told us why.
And he actually had a reason.
Now, you could argue that the reason wasn't good enough.
He was trying to protect the supply of N95 masks for healthcare workers.
But I think it was good enough.
I don't actually ask my government not to lie to me.
I do ask my government to lie to me when it matters.
If it's for my benefit, yeah, lie to me.
Please, please, please lie to me.
If it's for my benefit, as a citizen...
And I think that was one of those cases.
It was just a weird case where lying to the public might have been the best solution.
So I don't even fault Fauci for blatantly lying to us about that.
It did, however, destroy his credibility.
So he had a reason, and it was a pretty good reason, but it did destroy his credibility, so he paid for it.
Actually, I think you'd have to give him a little credit for that.
A little bit of credit for that, I think.
Now, you can criticize him all you want, but he did make a tough choice in a leadership role.
Whenever I see a leader make a tough choice, meaning a lot of people aren't going to like it, I always say to myself, it might be a mistake and it might not be, but at least, damn it, it's leadership.
At least it's leadership.
You've got to have that. But they do make mistakes, of course.
Does he get credit for deceiving the administration?
Well, I'm talking about deceiving the public.
All right. So I'm going to give Rand Paul the win for this week.
I feel like Rand Paul's claims have been substantiated.
So Rand Paul for the win.
All right. It looks like the Texas abortion law in which citizens can sue an abortion provider, which is a weird law.
I don't quite understand how they can do that, but I guess they got away with it.
It passes Supreme Court muster.
But Mayor Wheeler of Portland said that the city council intends to vote on an emergency resolution so that the city of Portland won't do any business With Texas and its employees won't travel there on business.
To which I say, how often were Portland employees, employees of the city, how often were they traveling to Texas on business?
Is that even a thing?
Do you ever need to go to Texas on business if you work for a local city?
I don't know. It feels like this is purely symbolic.
But, as somebody smart pointed out, by Texas making the abortion law a big topic, they may have screwed Republicans in the next election.
Because it's going to make the next election about abortion.
And if the election is about abortion, Republicans lose.
So, I don't think they wanted to make it about abortion, but that's what happened.
You may be aware that I have been saying for a long time that systemic racism and structural racism are real.
And the biggest source of them is the school system, which doesn't adequately educate black citizens.
And others as well.
But if we're talking about racist outcomes, let's just keep it simple and say our schools are not adequately educating black citizens.
And that is a serious, serious ethical as well as practical problem.
I mean, ethically, it's just beyond imagination.
It's so unethical.
Immoral, I guess. I'd say it's immoral.
And just deeply immoral.
I mean, it's immoral on a level that, short of actually killing people, it's hard to find other topics that are as immoral as the fact that we don't adequately educate black people to the way that we should.
So... Wall Street Journal article today, Bill McGurn, writing for the Wall Street Journal, basically points out that the real structural racism is the school system.
And of course, what is the big problem with the school system?
Well, the biggest problem is that the teachers' unions prevent competition.
And where competition is prevented, nothing ever grows.
We know that.
I mean, there's no way around it.
So here's the only thing that I would point to as important.
Is it going to enter the mainstream thought...
That teachers' unions are the main source...
I'd say 75%, just sort of subjectively.
Is it going to enter the mainstream thought that teachers' unions are the cause of systemic racism?
75% of it.
Because it's now...
It's a major article in the Wall Street Journal.
But guess what?
Larry Elder, running for governor in the recall election in California...
It is quoted as saying, quote, the number one obstacle to school choice is the teachers' unions.
And then he points out, who is the number one funder of his opponent?
That would be Gavin Newsom.
The teachers' unions.
So Larry Elder is now also making the case, and I'm sure he's made it before, but the case is becoming a little more prominent, that the teachers' unions are the problem.
And you're seeing it in two different ways on the same day.
So you know how the zeitgeist works?
Have you ever heard that word? It's a German word that we use in America.
Zeitgeist. And there's no direct English interpretation.
Is that true? I don't know if that's true.
But it's a word we use that says there's just an idea that's in the air and everybody starts thinking the same way and you're not sure why.
This might be one of those.
But it might also tell you why people start thinking of things at the same time.
I'd like to think it's not a coincidence that people with big platforms who are persuasive are trying to make the zeitgeist see the teachers' unions as the big problem for systemic racism and other reasons.
So I wonder...
Is the zeitgeist real?
Or is there always an influencer that's just making the zeitgeist what it is?
Does it just happen on its own?
Sometimes I think it must.
But I also think that sometimes there are influencers behind the curtain and you don't know why you're thinking what you're thinking.
But somebody caused you to think it.
Why don't we know what makes a virus go away?
I come back to this topic all the time.
Because the more we learn about COVID and viruses in general, the more mysterious they get.
Instead of getting smarter, I feel like we're getting dumber.
It's like there's as much misinformation about viruses as there is information.
But I'll tell you what my guess is.
So I heard somebody smart on Twitter say that viruses go away because they mutate, And they favor mutating towards something that spreads faster, so that everything wants to reproduce faster.
That's why that's a key component of evolution.
So some thought is just that the less lethal stuff is what it evolves to, and the lethal stuff kills people before they can spread it, so it doesn't evolve as fast.
But we have a problem with the Delta variant and maybe some other variants in that they don't ever seem to die out.
At least not yet.
But we do have reports of, let's say, if you look at the dynamics of India versus Israel.
This comes from Twitter account COVID-19 Crusher.
And if you do some magic on the numbers, it looks like one of them has lots of vaccinations and And is getting a certain result in their curve.
And one of them does not have many vaccinations and is identical in their curve of decrease in cases.
So the question is, can you compare these two things, a region in India versus Israel, and say, oh, we've learned something.
Vaccinations work or they don't work.
And I would say no.
No. Every time you see a comparison of two regions...
Whether it's state to state or country to country or, you know, counties within a region or whatever, they're all useless.
Too many other variables.
And it'll take about a second after one of those, you know, graphs appear on the internet for somebody smart to say, uh, that number is wrong.
You picked the wrong number from the wrong column or, you know, there's some obvious reason that it's wrong.
So 100% of the time when you see any two countries compared for COVID, just discount it.
In your mind, you should say, nope, doesn't mean anything.
No matter how clear the data looks and how obvious the interpretation would be, just assume the data's wrong, because it almost always is.
Now, maybe not every time, but probably 95% of the time.
Yeah, somebody's saying, why aren't homeless people dying from COVID? Well, let me tell you what I think is going on.
If the virus goes around in a community, a lot of people get a low viral initial dose, maybe so low that their immunity kicks in before they even know they have a problem.
So I feel as if it's the low doses of the virus that make the virus effectively its own vaccination.
So it could be a combination of it evolves and It evolves to something less deadly but more spready, because that's how viruses like to evolve.
It gives them more opportunities to live.
But also, I think some kind of self-vaccination is happening, I think.
That would be just speculation.
All right, but it's weird that we don't know what makes a virus go away.
There's another study on proper mask use.
What do you think? New study, actually from June, I think.
And it said masks definitely work and it makes a big difference.
Now, you don't need to know the data.
Do you believe it? So you just heard there's a study that says masks totally work and they work pretty well.
You know, reduces the R by maybe 20-25%, which would be a lot.
Do you believe it? Unfortunately, no.
But here's something I'm going to add to that conversation.
Do you remember when all the smart people said masks don't work because people fuss with them?
Right? All the smart people said that, right?
They said masks aren't going to help you much because you're touching them and fussing with them, then stuff's on your hands, then your hands are infected, and it's just a big old mess.
And then we learned that the virus doesn't like surfaces, right?
It's pretty much airborne or you don't get it.
So you don't see people worrying about touching doorknobs anymore.
If you go down the escalator...
I try not to hold the handrail on the escalator, but you could.
You could touch all the items in your office with your bare hands.
Right? So I think all of the worry about touching your mask didn't make any difference.
So I think...
We will come to learn that you could be touching your mask all day long and it will have almost nothing to do with transmission rates.
Because the only thing that matters is how much of that virus is getting through the mask and in the air.
It probably doesn't matter at all if you touch it with your hands because it doesn't seem to be a surface-spreading problem.
So I would warn you that I am not a doctor and you should probably...
You should probably scrub down your surfaces and wash your hands as much as possible.
That's what the experts say. I have no reason to believe they're wrong, but I'm just going to add that whoever said that the mask touching was going to be a big issue, it's probably not an issue at all.
It's probably zero. China is doomed for lots of different reasons, but here's one way.
So China is talking about how they want to pursue common prosperity.
Meaning that they have too many rich people and too many poor people.
So there's 1% of China owns a third of the country.
1% owns a third of the wealth in the country.
Turns out that's just about what it is in America, too.
But China is saying, hey, we have to change this.
They're basically saying, we knew we were going to create a bunch of rich people by opening up the economy, as they have in past decades.
But they thought that phase two would be to become more socialist after they made a lot of money.
So China's strategy is to use capitalism to make a bunch of money, and now they figure they've done that.
And now they're going to try to figure out how to claw back that money from the billionaires so that the poor people can benefit.
What is it that China is about to do wrong?
Ha! What they're about to do wrong is ignore human motivation.
Yeah. I'm seeing it in the comments, right?
The only reason they have money is that they didn't do the thing that they're planning to do next.
And I don't know if those two things can ever be compatible.
Now, you know, there is some reason to imagine you could tweak it because, you know, Europe has highly socialist countries with capitalism, so maybe.
Maybe they can just have good health care and stuff.
But I feel like it's going to be a big, big problem.
And I feel as if this income inequality, which isn't going to change, by the way, because the rich people also control the government in China, just like pretty much everywhere.
So the rich people aren't going to want to give away their money, so they're just going to stop it from happening.
So if income inequality just keeps getting worse and the poorest people in China are having a tough time, I don't know.
Could be a revolution. Could be.
CNN has some fake news on marijuana.
Or at least that's how I interpret it.
It's suggesting that no matter whether you smoke it, vape it, or eat it, cannabis increases your risk of a heart attack.
So they found that people who smoked marijuana or imbibed it in any way had a greater chance of having a heart attack than people who didn't.
Was that causation or correlation?
Was it causation or correlation?
Shit. Was it causation or correlation?
Which one was it? Well, they even say it was not causation.
So they did not determine causation.
But CNN reported it like they had.
But in their own words, they have not.
Now, is there anything that would suggest to you why people who are more likely to smoke marijuana might have worse health outcomes?
Well, one reason that people smoke marijuana is that they're using it because they have bad health outcomes in the first place.
So probably marijuana does skew a little bit toward people with worse health.
Because it's a medicine.
Who takes more medicine?
People who need medicine.
People in poor health. So that would be one correlation I'd look at.
But I would imagine that people who are more likely to smoke marijuana are more likely to do anything dangerous.
More likely to eat fast food, more likely to do a lot of things.
So I wouldn't put too much credibility in that study.
What is up with those old videos we saw of people collapsing in the street in China?
Will we ever know why we saw those?
Remember in the beginning of the pandemic, it looked like people were just falling over dead in Wuhan?
Well, those are obviously faked or doctored or something because definitely people are not walking down the street and falling over dead.
But why did they do that?
Was it to cause their own public to do anything they told them to do?
Was it... A way to round up dissonance?
You know, just a cover story for rounding up dissonance?
No, no. I wonder if we'll ever know.
Or was it something to screw the rest of the world so the rest of the world would shut down their economy, whereas China wouldn't?
Because I don't see that benefiting them exactly, because they have to sell to the rest of the world.
So I don't know. Maybe we'll never know, but it's weird.
All right, so here's my provocative question of the day.
What would the pandemic look like if most doctors had skill at data analysis and persuasion?
Because I don't think most doctors are statisticians, and I don't think most doctors have ever taken a course in persuasion.
And so we've got the people who are in charge who can't read the data and And we know that for sure because they come to different conclusions.
If all doctors came to the same conclusion, I'd say, well, they must be pretty good at reading data.
But if they come to different conclusions, which is typical, what do you do with that?
So let me give you some actual examples of what problems that causes.
All right. So because doctors are not good at persuasion and data, we're still talking about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
If doctors could read data...
No, I'm not high, but thanks for assuming.
If doctors could read data, and they were good at it, and they were persuasive, would we be talking about ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine?
Probably not. Probably not, right?
Because the doctors would all look at the data.
They'd all come to the same conclusion.
They would persuasively tell you what that conclusion was.
And you would say to yourself, oh, that sounds pretty good.
Doctors all agree. They've now told us what's going on.
We agree. So that problem would maybe be better.
Remember I told you there was a doctor, Dr.
Corey, who was talking about there were 31 randomized controlled trials that say ivermectin works?
Well, what's the counter to that?
Can you imagine that there could be?
How do you counter 31 randomized controlled trials on ivermectin that collectively show it works really well?
How can you possibly argue against that?
Well, Andres Beckhaus does, effectively, by pointing out that if you remove the studies that are known to be low quality for reasons that would be objectively observable, if you took out the ones you know are low quality, it reverses the result.
So, what the hell do you do with that?
Do you take the meta-analysis, which says, all right, we know a lot of these studies are low quality, but if you look at them all together, they may be low quality for different reasons, and therefore the studies sort of cancel out their flaws.
And you can see overall, hey, every time you look at the overall, it looks like it works.
But if the only reason that the meta-analysis works is that a whole bunch of the studies were bad...
There may just be some big problems with the data.
So if you remove the low-quality studies, it reverses it.
Now, here's the problem.
Who gets to decide which studies are low-quality?
Right? Right?
It turns out that this is like...
It looks like it's science, but if you can choose the studies you like and ignore the ones you don't like...
Is it science? Or is it just people using their opinion and rationalizing it with whatever data they want?
All right. Suppose doctors were good at persuasion and data analysis.
There's an article today by Dr.
David Nickel in the Mail Plus.
I tweeted it. He refers to, when he talks about ivermectin, he says...
He says, quote, in an article he wrote, what ivermectin is not in any way suitable or licensed for is the treatment of coronavirus.
So he says ivermectin is not suitable or licensed.
And of course, he says, any sane person may see that as obvious.
So he's a doctor who says that any sane person, not a doctor, are there any sane people watching?
If you are sane...
Do you buy his comment that it's obvious?
Because the way the drug works is it damages the nerves of parasites.
But a virus is not a parasite.
And it's far too tiny to have nerves.
So this doctor says, Dr.
David Nickel... He says anybody can see that ivermectin couldn't possibly work against the virus because the way ivermectin works doesn't even apply because the virus doesn't have any nerves to damage.
So how can it work?
We know it works against parasites because they have nerves to damage.
But how can it possibly work, this doctor says, and it's obvious and anybody can see it because it's designed to work in a different way Then it would be even applicable to a virus.
How does this doctor explain...
Yeah, there, Eric, you're ahead of me.
How does the doctor explain that ivermectin works in vitro?
That it works in a test tube?
It's killing something, right?
Now, the in vitro, the test tube test, doesn't tell you it works in humans.
Right? Because there are lots and lots of cases where it works in a test tube, it doesn't work in humans.
In fact, I think most often, I think it usually doesn't work in humans if it does work in a test tube.
Is that true? Give me a fact check on that.
But... If we know it works in vitro, his argument that we don't have any mechanism for how it works is a moot point.
So do you trust this doctor who tells you there's no mechanism for ivermectin to work at the same time you know it does work in the laboratory?
He's got to explain that, right?
If he doesn't at least explain why it works in vitro...
He needs to just stop talking.
Now, it could be that just everything works in vitro.
I feel like you could take a piss in a COVID petri dish and your piss would kill the COVID. I think.
I mean, that's just a random example.
Diet Coke? Do you think you could put a little Diet Coke on the virus and it would kill it?
Probably. Probably, right?
So it doesn't really mean that much that it works in a test tube.
However, this doctor says there's no mechanism for it to work.
Clearly there is.
Clearly there's a mechanism because it works in vitro.
So he at least has to explain that.
Now, he's trying to persuade us.
Are you persuaded by a doctor who ignores the fact that ivermectin definitely works in vitro?
No. Because he's leaving out the thing you know that you think matters.
That's a problem with persuasion.
You have to address the things that people know to be true, or you can't convince them.
You have to say what the person you're trying to convince...
If they believe something's true, you have to specifically address it.
You can't just ignore it, or you just look like a liar if you ignore the argument and try to make a point without addressing the main argument.
All right, here's what else he says.
He refers to ivermectin as, quote, horse medicine.
If a doctor, an actual medical doctor...
Refers to ivermectin, which we know is something that's used for both humans in some cases, and animals in different cases.
If he refers to it in his persuasion as horse medicine, should you listen to anything else he says?
Nope. Nope.
Because he's talking like the people that are already convinced.
If your doctor is trying to convince you not to take ivermectin, And he calls it horse medicine?
What's the first thing you think about that doctor?
Fucking idiot.
Right? Two words.
Fucking idiot. Would you listen to anything else a doctor said after calling ivermectin horse medicine?
You would not.
Everything said after the two words horse medicine should be discounted because whoever says that is a fucking idiot.
Right? Because you know it's both a human drug and a horse drug, and it's a little different, right?
So this is a real good case of where doctors are not taught persuasion.
This doctor needed to say that ivermectin is used for humans.
This doctor needed to say there were 31 randomized controlled trials that shows it works.
This doctor needed to say...
That there was a meta-analysis that suggests it works.
He needed to say all of those things.
And then, having said those things, I will listen to his argument of why he thinks ivermectin isn't the answer.
Now, he doesn't actually ever give a reason.
So I don't think he had one.
And he's even acting as though He couldn't prescribe something unless it was approved for their purpose.
Would you listen to a doctor, a doctor, who told you that they can't prescribe something unless it was approved for their purpose?
I mean, I'm not a doctor and I know you can do that.
Right? Don't all of you know you can do that?
I think everyone on here knows a doctor can prescribe something as long as the doctor's judgment has a reason, there's a medical theory to it, and it looks like the risk-reward makes sense.
Of course they can.
So this is the least persuasive doctor I've ever seen.
Now, he's probably a smart guy.
How do you become a doctor unless you're smart, right?
So there's no question that doctors are smart.
But they don't know persuasion, and maybe they should.
Uh...
The study I told you about masks had two parts to it, and I left out one part.
First of all, don't believe any mask study, just in general.
Just don't believe anything.
Don't believe any vaccine study.
Don't believe any mask study.
Don't believe any ivermectin study.
Just don't believe anything on the Internet.
Because the odds of a big ride are small.
But I should say that the study that shows that masks do work did not show that mandates work.
Got that? It showed that from a physical sense, masks, according to their research, make a difference, and a pretty big difference.
But there was no correlation between the mandates and a good effect.
Because apparently people either wear them or not in the right situation just sort of naturally.
Let me say it a different way.
Even if you did not have a mask mandate during a pandemic, you'd probably wear a mask to visit your grandmother in the old folks' home, right?
Even without a mandate.
So it could be that the mandate doesn't add enough because people are already using their judgment and risk management in a right enough way to That they're doing all the important ones.
They may be doing everything that's important and maybe slacking on the less important stuff, such as not wearing a mask outdoors.
Maybe. That's just speculation again.
Yeah, as Billy Mandalay points out, a mask man date?
A little bit sexist.
Couldn't it be a person date?
Yeah, it could be.
It could be a people date. All right, I'm going to go do some other stuff as long as I've covered all my topics, and I have.
And I would say today was, once again, an amazing, amazing live stream.
