Episode 1506 Scott Adams: Congress, Climate Change, Coronavirus: Everything Bad Starts With the Letter C
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Content:
Apple's iPhone can detect depression?
China's masculinity campaign
Facebook censors The Lancet
Cold kills more people than heat
Project Veritas: Vaccination side-effects
Banana VAERS database
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I realize that there are a lot of things that start with the letter C that are bad.
You got your coronavirus.
You got your Congress.
You got cancer.
You got China. You got climate change.
If you've got a problem and it starts with a C, you've probably got a pretty big problem.
But the exception?
The exception? Coffee.
Yeah, coffee is always your friend.
Coffee will never cheat on you.
Coffee will never lie to you.
Coffee will never steal your...
Wallet. Coffee is always your friend.
It'll make you feel better when you're feeling down.
And in case you are a racist, it'll fix that too.
Because coffee is brown and you'll love it.
It's indirect, but I think it works.
So make sure you get your coffee if you've got any problems at all.
And we'll do the simultaneous sip in a little bit once everybody gets past the commercial breaks here on YouTube.
Well, here's a cool thing that's happening that you don't see coming.
You know that virtual reality exists.
And you know that AR exists, you know, basically extending reality.
And MR technology, it's merging the real and the virtual worlds.
So they're all kind of in that same domain.
But here's what you didn't know.
So you knew all those things exist.
And you knew that they would get better.
But how many of you knew...
That the key to making them better is two technologies that now exist.
Augmented reality, yes.
AR is augmented reality.
I forgot the word augmented there for a moment.
Thank you. But the two technologies that you need to know about are 5G and what's called edge computing.
Those two things didn't exist.
Really until sort of this year, right?
At least as scale.
Now what 5G gives you is more than 4G, right?
So how many knew that 4G would be awesome, but 5G would be a little bit better?
Wrong. 5G is not a little bit better than 4G. 5G is way better than 4G. In fact, it's so better...
That is one of the key things that would allow, you know, broad adoption of these AR and VR and MR technologies, along with something called edge computing, where basically your local computer is dealing with the cloud and it's offloading some of the processing to the cloud so that your local computer seems to be processing faster.
Now, those two technologies, when put together, Give you the computing power to do real kind of impressive virtual reality stuff and putting it everywhere.
Now, one of the biggest things that people are blind to is when gradual changes become not gradual anymore.
And we've been watching the speeds of your phone get sort of gradually better.
It's quite a bit better. 5G is a whole different game.
5G changes everything.
And 5G is rolling out right now.
So you don't have to...
It's not that far future.
Your next phone, I think, will have 5G capability.
And if you're in a metropolitan area, you've got 5G. LAUGHTER So this is a gigantic, gigantic deal that will change everything about your reality.
Because virtual reality will be better than the real thing.
It will change all of education.
It will change all of social interaction.
Just think about that.
Just think about the size of the statement I just made.
That 5G will change everything.
Everything. Work...
Education and your social life will not even be recognizable in five years.
In five years, the change will be bigger than, say, the change of just the Internet.
That's how big it is. Well, I mean, it's hard to compare things.
But I would say the invention of the Internet itself...
That's the size of the change that we're looking at with 5G. It just doesn't feel like it because, well, it's just one more G. I already had four Gs.
I'm just adding one more G. How big a deal could that be?
Not so big a deal. But let's have a simultaneous sip to the future, which looks kind of awesome in many ways.
But all you need for that is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or gel stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid I like.
Coffee. Even though it starts with the letter C, I like it.
I like it. There are other things that start with the letter C that I'm rather fond of, but we won't go into that.
For now, for now, join me for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better, including your phones and speeds.
It's called the Simultaneous Sympathetic Psycho.
Okay, a little bit of heartbreak here.
I just realized that I had set my coffee not on the coffee warmer, but rather on the desk adjacent to the coffee warmer, thus making the temperature of my coffee suboptimal.
But I'm going to fix that later, let me tell you.
I'm not going to go through life with cold sips.
I hope you did better.
Did you all do better?
I failed at the simultaneous sip, but I think your day will do better.
All right. I've got a tip here on how to hide from law enforcement.
Many of you will need that.
Raise your hands if you have some reason to escape the law.
Just me? All right.
Well, that's embarrassing. But if you'd like to escape law enforcement, I would take the technique that the...
Who is it? Hands way up.
That the... The fiancé of, what's her name, Petito, who is missing.
Apparently he told, so law enforcement's looking for him because he's at least a person of interest, maybe.
I don't think he's a suspect, but they certainly like to know where he is and to talk to him.
I guess person of interest is not fair because he hasn't been charged with anything.
But they certainly want to talk to the...
To the fiancé when his fiancé disappears and is murdered, presumably.
So where is he?
Well, he's hard to find because he left home with his backpack and told his family he was going to the Carleton Reserve.
Now, I'm not familiar with the Carleton Reserve, but apparently it's a very big place.
And if you take your backpack into the wilderness of the Carleton Reserve...
Turns out that it will be hard to find you with drones and helicopters.
I mean, you can hide for a long time.
So, there's my tip on how to hide from law enforcement.
No, not go to the Carlton Reserve, you idiots.
Tell somebody you went to the Carlton Reserve and walk out the door with your backpack.
But the last thing you want to do is go to the fucking Carlton Reserve.
Because that's the only place they know to look for you.
But if you wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere that's not the Carleton Reserve, a really good way to do it is to walk out with a backpack and tell your parents that you went to the Carleton Reserve.
You do that, and they're going to be looking in the wrong place for you for a long time.
So that's my tip on avoiding law enforcement.
Well, apparently Apple has decided that they think its iPhone can diagnose depression and cognitive decline.
So it's not designed to do that, but they're looking at that.
And they think it can do everything from reading your facial expressions.
Is that creepy?
Your phone will look at your face and say, Smile, why are you so sad?
Basically, your phone could turn into like a creepy guy.
Women, back me up on this.
Ladies, you know that guy in the office who sees you in the office and says, hey, smile.
What's so bad today?
Yeah, now that's going to be your phone.
Your phone's going to be a creepy guy.
Hey, what's wrong? You look like you're sad.
Yeah, Kim, back me up on that.
Exactly. So your phone's a creepy guy.
What's wrong? What can I do for you?
But it also, apparently it'll track your speaking pace, the frequency of your walking, your sleep patterns, your heart, your aspiration rates.
Do you think that your phone can detect depression?
Yes, yes.
Do you think that your phone could detect a trend?
Yes. Toward moving from, let's say, a happier state to a more depressed state.
Do you think your phone could pick up that trend?
I could build that app tomorrow.
It would be an app that does this.
Are you using your iPhone?
Yes or no.
If you say yes, which it could actually detect because you're using the phone, then it would determine that you're more depressed than you used to be.
Why? Because you're spending time on your phone.
How much technology do I need to determine that people who have a phone in their hand are less happy than if they didn't?
Not a lot.
Not a lot. Maybe just yes, no.
Phone in hand? Yes.
Depressed? Yes.
More depressed than you used to be?
Yes. You're looking at your phone.
Are you more anxious than you used to be?
Yes. Do you feel that you're more disconnected from life?
Yes. Do you feel worried about your body image?
Yes. Do you like my algorithm?
It's called the yes algorithm.
If phone...
Yes to all of those problems.
So iPhone, so Apple has, quite helpfully, they're going to build an app to tell you how sad their phone makes you.
I'm not making that up.
I mean, I'm wording it differently than they're wording it, but I'm not making that up.
Apple is making an app, I don't know if it'll be free or they're going to sell it to you, that'll tell you just exactly how the phone is ruining your life.
And then here's the fun part.
Probably going to blame it on something else.
Do you think the phone is going to say, according to the data that we have picked up from you, your phone is making you depressed.
Throw it in the garbage immediately.
Probably not. Probably not.
Probably say something like, maybe you should get more sleep.
Probably tell you to take a walk in the forest.
But I don't think it's going to tell you that your phone is what's causing you to be depressed when, in fact, it's your phone.
I mean, with the services that it connects to.
Now, I don't know if you can get rid of phones, but I don't know.
Is there a problem with today's stream on locals?
I'm not seeing other people complain about it.
It might be... Yeah, it looks like the stream is fine for other people.
So it may be a local problem, not a locals problem.
All right. And how about cognitive decline?
So your phone could actually pick up your cognitive decline.
It could definitely get that. But, you know, I think it would just find out if you're stoned.
You know, you're not going to believe this, but I know this goes against everything that you think is true, but...
And this just blows me away.
Apparently the FBI did something that is damaging their reputation.
I know! I know!
When was the last time the FBI did anything that damaged the FBI's reputation?
I can't think of anything.
Can you? When has that ever happened?
Well, I guess this is the one and only time lately that the FBI has embarrassed itself.
I guess they raided a bunch of safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills without enough evidence of wrongdoing and got millions of dollars, but now those people are probably going to be in trouble with the IRS. But there was no crime apparently related to why they got into the boxes.
But there might be a crime now because they found all this money and the IRS is going to be asking some questions.
But it's kind of embarrassing because they took all this money and they didn't have real good reasons for it, I guess.
Now you're just talking crazy, Scott.
All right. So that's the whole story.
But I'm wondering, what will the FBI do next?
Hmm. What next for the FBI? Will they burn down an orphanage?
Will they murder some senior citizens?
Will they just start shaking people down for money on the streets?
I don't know. I feel like it's moving in the wrong direction.
Seems like they used to solve crimes and stuff back in the old days.
I don't know what they're doing now, but they've got a little bit of a reputational problem.
All right. So, and this next story, this is going to blow you away.
You will never see this coming.
You might want to sit down, because this will be the surprise of surprises.
I know, I know.
This is going to be hard to break it to you, but believe it or not...
The infrastructure bill is stalled in Congress.
I know! I know!
Who saw that coming? But the best reason, the best part of this story is why it's stalled.
I mean, there's been, you know, reason after reason after reason why it's stalled.
But the new reason is just the best.
This is the best reason.
Turns out that Congress has a parliamentarian who gets to decide if they're following the rules.
And the latest infrastructure bill didn't follow the rules sufficiently that the parliamentarian would even let them vote on it.
Now, apparently, and if I understand it right, the problem is that they tried to use a budget bill...
To make substantial changes to, was it immigration?
And that's not allowed.
So you can't use the budget to kind of be a backdoor way to make major changes.
You can make minor changes, but you can't make major changes to some existing legislation or systems just by tweaking the budget.
That's not allowed, parliamentarian-wise.
But here's the thing.
They didn't know that? Who put the bill together?
The people who put the bill together didn't know that it's not even votable?
I mean, dear God, they used to at least make bills that they couldn't decide on.
They've moved backwards.
Now they don't even know how to make a bill that you can even vote on.
They literally couldn't craft the bill...
To be votable.
I think they're moving backwards.
Because in the old days, it was just, you know, we disagree on the bill.
But we voted on it.
And now they can't even figure out how to make a votable bill?
Let me take you back.
Come back with me in the Wayback Machine.
We're going back to the early days in Egypt, several thousand years ago.
And we watched the Egyptians build pyramids.
Sophisticated building.
They're building pyramids.
I'm not sure that we've evolved in the right direction.
Because now we can't even make a bill we can vote on.
Much less a pyramid.
I don't know. Could you build a pyramid?
I couldn't. I wouldn't know how to make a pyramid.
But I also wouldn't know how to make legislation.
Oh, no. I probably would.
I think I could have made legislation you could vote on.
It might have had some typos and spelling errors, but I'll bet you could have voted on it.
I'll bet I could have accomplished that goal.
So yeah, Congress looking bad.
So Joy Reid, Joy Ann Reid.
Was talking about this Gabby Petito case, the missing white woman, and referred to it as missing white woman syndrome.
Missing white woman syndrome.
Now, she didn't make that up.
She borrowed that from somebody else's commentary.
But in a break from tradition, I would like to completely agree with Joy Ann Reed.
I know. I know.
She's right on this.
Do you think we'd be having this story if she was not a white woman?
An attractive, young white woman?
Do you think? I don't think this would be a national story.
If she were just a black woman?
Exact same story, but it's a black woman.
Are we talking about it?
Somebody says yes.
You think yes? I appreciate your optimism...
And I respect it.
I would respect your disagreement in this case.
Usually I respect any reasonable disagreement.
But I've got to go with Troy Reid on this.
I feel like, you know, you can't prove it, right?
There's no data that backs my opinion.
But it sure feels like it.
Yeah, she was a YouTuber.
Yeah, okay. But I never heard of her.
Did you? It's not like we've heard of her, right?
Right. And there are plenty of YouTubers, people of color, who are YouTubers.
I don't know. I think Joy Ann Reid is right on this one.
But I'll respect your disagreement on that.
China has decided they're banning what they call, or at least the translation of what they're calling it, is, quote, sissy men.
Sissy men. Men who are wearing makeup and, you know, let's say, in their words, more effeminate.
Effeminate dress.
And apparently this is some kind of a risk to the Chinese system because they don't want a nonconformity, or at least not that much nonconformity.
And they don't want these so-called sissy men.
Now, they're not stating the sexuality, which is interesting.
So they're not saying it's bad to be gay.
I imagine they have those feelings as well, but that's not officially what they're saying.
They're talking about just the outward appearance of some number of men.
And I'm thinking to myself, I wonder if China's going down for this.
Because, you know, humans are funny.
You can do all kinds of terrible things to human beings and they'll be like, okay, I'll just get used to it.
But then you go after some things, and you don't think that's the biggest thing, and then people just go nuts.
And maybe this is it.
Now, I've told you that China's in for big problems.
I don't know if this is a big, big problem.
But... But...
I can see the LGBTQ community, which is, I assume, in deep hiding in China, I can see them maybe emerging.
And how powerful is the LGBTQ community...
I mean, maybe they don't have the option in China because there would be too much pushback.
But I feel like they're going to find a way.
I feel like they'll find a way.
There may be some amount of bravery that will push through.
I mean, you'd have to be super brave to be an LGBTQ activist in China.
But people are brave.
There are brave people in the world.
We could be surprised. Here's the weirdest story.
Facebook censored a post by Bjorn Lomborg.
You might know him as one of the people who talks about climate change and the economics of climate change and points out that if you were to objectively look at the economics of climate change, it doesn't look so bad.
If you were to be objective and to analyze it correctly.
Now, The Lancet pointed out that global warming saves more people than it kills.
This is in The Lancet, right?
This is not conspiracy theory.
This is not a climate denier.
This is in The Lancet.
And I'll talk about Project Veritas.
And in The Lancet, they said...
Basically, that more people are saved by it warming up because the most dangerous thing is the cold.
I guess the cold kills more people than the heat.
I didn't know that. So, so far, it looks like global warming has saved a net 166,000 lives each year.
So there are more deaths.
There are more deaths from heat, for sure.
But there are far more people saved by it being a little warmer.
Now, here's the funny part.
Facebook censored that...
Censored it.
Facebook censored the Lancet.
Not because any of the information was wrong.
Just think about that.
It's a scientific, a respected scientific...
You could argue how respected it is.
But certainly in the upper tier...
Of scientific publications, even though they've had some major issues, right?
And Facebook decided to censor them, and not because they were wrong.
I don't believe Facebook said this is wrong, because I don't think the data is wrong, or at least, you know, that's not the problem.
It's just that the narrative didn't go their way, I think, right?
Now, maybe I'm missing something in the story, but I don't think so.
I heard this from Bjorn himself.
He messaged me on Twitter, because Twitter did not censor it.
So we'll give a thumbs-up to Twitter, allow this content, because it's right.
It's just actual data, and it's the Lancet.
So Twitter says yes.
Facebook censored it.
I mean, my God.
My God. Um...
Now do the deadly virus hoax, somebody says.
All right. New York Times has some fear porn today.
It says scientists have detected early warning signs that a critical ocean system is at risk, according to a new analysis.
A slowdown in the network, which influences weather far and wide, could spell trouble.
So the essence here is that climate change will change the The nature of the ocean systems, and that could be cataclysmic.
That sounds pretty bad.
So that's what the tweet says.
Do you think the article says that?
Do you think the article says anything like what this tweet says, that a critical ocean system is at risk and blah, blah, blah from climate change?
Nope. Not exactly.
What it does say is that the people studying it don't see any signs that we're in trouble.
It could be, because things are changing.
So it is true that it's a risk, but it's not sized.
Is it a 1% risk?
90% risk?
Even the people studying it are saying, no, no, don't say it's a risk.
I mean, or don't say we know this is going to happen.
We don't know. It might be a problem, might not be a problem.
That's very different, isn't it?
So this is clearly a case of turning a real story into fear porn.
All right. A lot of hallucinating people.
Have any of you been following me on Twitter lately and watched the comments?
And you see how many people are literally hallucinating opinions for me?
I'll tell you the funniest ones.
These are real people saying this in public.
And cognitive dissonance is real easy to spot when you're not in it.
If it's somebody else's cognitive dissonance, it really stands out.
Let me give you some examples. Somebody said today to me...
Said, you fail to recognize that vaccine hesitancy is caused by the perceived risk of the shot.
What? So I'm being criticized for failing to recognize that vaccine hesitancy is caused by people thinking that the shot might be risky.
What? There isn't a single person in the world who has this misunderstanding.
Literally every person in the world knows that vaccine hesitancy is because people are worried about the shot.
How can you possibly hallucinate that I'm on the other side of this opinion?
Now, a lot of my tweets today that my critics coming after me are like this one, where somebody states an assumption that I have...
And then bitches about it.
Except the assumption that they give me is ridiculous.
And certainly nothing I've ever said or thought or suggested.
So the typical comment about me today is, Scott says the moon is full of cheese.
But the probes don't seem to suggest that.
And I think, well, no, I really didn't say the moon is full of cheese.
Well, why are you even thinking that?
Now, there's a reason that so much of it is happening today, do you know?
Why is so much of that happening to me today?
It's because of my tweets lately, which means that I've triggered cognitive dissonance in a number of people, and they're playing it out by saying literally ridiculous things and imagining that somehow that's my opinion.
Because if they attack my actual opinion...
They'd have a problem. Because they can't.
Or they don't know how.
All right. Project Veritas.
There's a whistleblower video in which a doctor in some hospital is saying that the vaccinations are shet.
Those are her exact words.
The vaccinations are shet.
And that there's somebody in the hospital who has probably myocarditis from getting the vaccination.
At least that's suspected the cause.
Now, is that a whistleblower who is blowing the whistle and actually also says that that person would not be tracked?
So I guess that's even the worst part, is that if there's a person who had an adverse effect, and as far as this doctor knows, there's no tracking, that nobody's going to pick this up.
Is that true? Do you think that nobody is studying adverse effects?
Because I think that they're doing it by sample.
What do you think? I could be wrong, but my belief is that there are some groups of experts who have at least sampled, done surveys, and asked people, all right, you got the vaccination, how did you feel the week after, or whatever. Don't you think they did sampling?
Now, I do believe that they did not track, meaning count every person...
Count every person who got it.
That sounds real.
I mean, she's the doctor. She would know they're not reporting it.
If she says they're not reporting it, I believe it.
That seems credible.
But don't you think they've sampled it?
The doctor is silent on that.
So I would say, first of all, the doctor is showing some ignorance, I think.
But give me a fact check.
It might be me showing the ignorance.
My belief, and this is not based on a specific source, but my belief is that we do track it, but we do it by samples, not by trying to count every person.
Can somebody give me a fact check on that?
Is there anybody here who would know the answer to that?
Somebody says sampling would only be during initial trials originally, but I think that we have sampled after that.
And we would also be sampling the people from the trials, right?
Were there not tens of thousands of people in the trials, and would that not be enough if you followed up on them to know how many of them got a bad reaction?
And wouldn't that tell you what you needed to know?
So if you have that data, would you absolutely need to count the people, or would you trust the samples?
So I would say that that doctor doesn't know the answer to that question, probably.
I don't think any of you do.
I'm looking at your answers.
I don't think any of us know the answer to this.
But I don't think the doctor does either.
So factor that in.
Very few people in trials.
No, I think there were like 40,000 people in trials, weren't there, by now?
Probably different vaccinations.
But my question is this, for people who...
I just saw a comment I'm going to have to deal with later.
All right. Then this doctor said that...
The vaccination is causing a problem.
Now, was this anecdotal information or data that you should make decisions on?
There's a whistleblower doctor with a video, Project Veritas, who says she has specific knowledge of a patient, or maybe two, that had negative effects from the vaccination, she thinks.
Is that data...
Or is that just an anecdotal situation and a doctor spouting off who might not know how they track stuff?
Why is this even in the news?
Does anybody know?
Why is this even a headline?
Somebody says, you know something is off here.
No, I don't. I don't know that.
If you're saying, do these vaccinations have more side effects than other vaccinations, I wouldn't be surprised at that.
That wouldn't surprise me at all.
But we're comparing that to the alternative of no vaccination.
The doctor was recorded without her knowledge, yes.
Yeah, that doesn't make it a whistleblower, does it?
But why is this even news?
There's a doctor who is worried about the vaccination side effects.
Probably lots of doctors are worried about the side effects.
If you've ever seen the side effect, I would imagine if you're a doctor and you had a patient who had a side effect, you'd be very worried about it, even if it was just one.
So, you're welcome.
Yeah, I don't know. There might be something in the story I'm missing, but one doctor who sees some bad side effects from the vaccination, we already knew that.
We know that there are side effects.
We just don't know how many, and this story doesn't give us that, right?
The only question is how many.
Do we all agree with that?
There's nobody who's doubting there are bad side effects with vaccinations, including this one.
The only question is how many.
And that whistleblower thing didn't give us any information about how many.
So I don't know what did we get from that.
Um... So you know the mystery of why China seems to have no COVID deaths, or virtually none?
I saw a hypothesis on this on LinkedIn.
So a gentleman who has some connection with China, seems to have a little, seems to have a hand on things over there, said the following.
And he sounded authoritative.
It sounded like he knew.
I wasn't guessing. I'll just put this out here as a hypothesis, okay?
Just a hypothesis. Number one, doctors in China don't test for COVID. They just treat it.
If you have symptoms for COVID, they just assume you have it, and they treat you like you have it, including quarantine, including whatever therapeutics.
But they don't count it.
So one part of it could be there might be plenty of COVID, but they're treating it like the flu.
They're just making sure that you quarantine.
And nobody talks about it.
It's like, okay, you got this symptom?
Stay away from everybody for two weeks.
And take these therapeutics.
And let me know if it gets worse.
So it sounds like they just don't count it.
They just treat it like it's cold.
Now... The other thing that this gentleman suggested is that in China, and I can't confirm this, right?
This is an unconfirmed report.
He says, he seems to know, he says he knows this, that the deaths are listed by the comorbidity, not by coronavirus.
So if you've got some advanced cancer, and you also get the coronavirus, and you die, in China they say you die to cancer.
Do you believe that? I don't know that it's true.
This is the report from one person that I can't confirm.
I'll bet they do. At least some of them.
Maybe. And are they wrong?
Would that be lying? Yeah, I'm seeing in the comments somebody says, yeah, that's logical.
I would say that somebody who has advanced cancer and dies at the same time that they have COVID, it might have been the last straw, but they died from cancer.
Likewise, somebody who's morbidly obese gets COVID and dies.
I feel like they died from obesity.
Like, in my brain, that's how I process it.
I get that the last straw and the last, you know, causal, proximate thing was the COVID, but it doesn't feel like that's what killed them.
I mean, just in my mind, it doesn't feel like that.
So maybe in China they do count it differently.
Also, I'm told that the average age is younger in China.
The life expectancy is much less.
Is that true? I don't know that that's true.
But if it is true, you'd have fewer 80 pluses to die as a percentage.
But there'd still be so many of them in China.
Seems like that can't be part of the answer.
And then, of course, the weight of the Chinese people.
There are very few overweight people, relatively speaking.
If the only thing that was different in China was they basically don't have much in the way of fat people...
And doctors aren't testing for it, so they're not recording it, they're just treating it.
And they list the death by the comorbidity.
Have we explained the whole thing?
Did that explain everything?
I'm not quite there.
I don't think that would explain everything.
It doesn't feel like enough.
But maybe part of it?
Could be part of the answer.
I don't know. It feels true-ish.
Let me say it's credible without necessarily knowing that it's true.
Sounds credible. I mean, it just has that feel to it, doesn't it?
Somebody says vitamin D levels.
I don't think that's the big thing in China.
All right. Maybe it's the green tea.
Who knows? I've heard that green tea has some properties.
So far there are 675,000 COVID deaths, at least the way we count them here in the United States, as Jonah Goldberg was tweeting.
Caused some people to respond.
Punky Booster responded by showing the actual mortality rates by age group.
So, for example, under the age of 19, your survival rate is 99.9973.
Doesn't sound like much of a problem, does it?
You go up the range, you get all the way up to 50 to 59, and your survival rate, if you get it, is still 99.73.
Again, doesn't seem like that big of a problem, does it?
But you get above 70, and suddenly you're in the range of 5% of the people dying over 70.
Now, that includes people who are institutionalized, etc., in hospitals.
Now... I like this standard and I'm going to adopt it.
So I take this point that these percentages say this is something we should not be worried about.
And so I'm going to stop worrying about other things, too.
For example, I'm going to stop worrying about gun violence because as a percentage of people, it's not really very high.
Gun violence? What percentage of people die from guns?
It's got to be pretty low, right, as a percentage.
At least, you know, certainly in my age group.
How many people in my age group die from gun violence?
People in their 60s?
Like zero? So why do I care about gun violence?
Should I? How about drunk driving?
Should we have any laws about drunk driving?
Because as a percentage, very few people die of drunk driving.
Very few. So why worry about it?
How about overdose deaths?
Lost in the rounding.
How many people 64 years old?
That's my age.
How many people died from overdose deaths age 64?
Vanishly small.
So I'm not worried about it.
How about domestic terrorism?
Domestic terrorism. Why don't we report domestic terrorism the same way, as a percentage of Americans who die from it?
Why is domestic terrorism our top priority when almost nobody dies from it?
Percentage-wise, it's like nothing.
All I'm asking is, why don't we use the same standard for everything?
They're not the same.
I'm not suggesting all these topics are the same.
But there should be a reason...
A reason we treat them differently.
I just don't know what the reason is.
Yeah, percentage dying from fentanyl, tiny.
As a percentage of all overdoses, it's a big percentage.
But as a percentage of people in my age group, nothing.
Practically nothing. Yeah.
So just think about that.
I would suggest that anything is a problem if it's a problem in its absolute number or its percentage.
It's a problem if either one of those is a problem, it's a problem.
You can't say that the number is big, but I'm going to ignore it because the percentage is small.
That's not really the way we think about anything, really.
Let's talk about that VAERS database.
You know the VAERS database that shows the negative, potentially negative reports of people who got vaccinations and then had a bad outcome from the vaccination itself?
Well, the VAERS database, as you know, is not scientific.
It's just supposedly to raise a flag in case there are big problems that are so big that you don't even need to study to see them.
Looking for problems that are so big...
You don't need to do a controlled trial to look for them.
They're like, oh, my God, everybody's reporting that their ears are falling off or something.
So then you do the study if you saw a flag raised.
So it's not science, but it's useful, the VAERS database.
Now, the thing that's important about it is that if you looked at the numbers reported from vaccinations in prior years, it's a tiny little graph.
If you look at the past year, it's this gigantic number.
So we went from very few vaccination reports, relatively speaking, to a big number with these new vaccinations.
So, what's that tell you?
Go. What's that tell you?
The VAERS database has a big, big spike, really big, based on this latest vaccination for the COVID. What's that tell you?
In the comments.
Well, it does tell you it raises a flag, right?
So exactly what the VAERS database is supposed to do, it tells you, hey, you better look into this.
So we'd all agree on that, right?
Point number one, the VAERS database does, I think we all agree, tell us that the coronavirus vaccination is something we need to look at.
Everybody on the same page?
It definitely flags that you should look at it.
Now, once you look at it, suppose you find out that the reports are all true.
What if you find they're all true?
Do you then ban the vaccination?
No. No.
That's not how it works. You would still compare the benefits of the vaccination to the reported and actually confirmed problems.
So the fact that there might be, let's say, 20 times...
I'll just pick a number.
I don't know if this is accurate. Let's say there are 20 times more various reports for the coronavirus vaccination.
Does that mean you should not take it?
No. No.
Nothing like that. It just means there might be 20 times more problems.
Maybe. We don't know.
But maybe. But that wouldn't get to the question of whether you should take it, because you'd still have to compare it to the alternative.
All right. Now, here's a thought experiment.
You ready? You ready to have your minds blown by a thought experiment?
Imagine this. Imagine a legislation comes out that every American needs to eat one banana.
Every American has to eat one banana.
And then report to the VAERS database, the following week after eating the one banana, any bad health outcomes.
What would that year on the VAERS database look like?
Everybody got a banana.
Everybody. The whole country, everybody got a banana.
At the same time, one banana.
And then for the week or two after, they report to the VAERS database all their health problems.
Now remember, if you had a bad headache, that goes in.
Now you don't know that that was caused by the vaccination, but that's not what the VAERS database does.
The VAERS database just says, I got vaccinated soon after I had this problem.
It doesn't go to causation.
What would the spike in that data look like?
Well, I think it would be through the moon, wouldn't it?
If you were to track the health outcomes from a banana, would it look exactly like the health outcome from the vaccination?
Now, in past vaccinations, what percentage of the country got vaccinated in any one year?
In a typical year, let's say 2014, just pick a year, what percentage of all humans in the country got vaccinated?
Five? Five percent?
I'm just guessing. Somebody says 30 percent, really?
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe 30 percent.
Yeah, if you count the flu and everything else.
Could be, yeah. But can you compare a year in which 30 percent get vaccinated to a year in which...
70% get vaccinated.
I mean, that's one difference, right?
So at the very least, you have to adjust your numbers for how many people are getting any kind of vaccination at all.
And then look at the banana example.
If everybody ate a banana, 300 million people ate a banana, how many people would have a bad outcome within a week?
10 million? You'd probably have 10 million people With a banana-related bad outcome that had nothing to do with a banana.
It just happened to be that weak.
R.W. here. So I keep telling you about all the cognitive dissonance.
R.W. says this.
Scott, let me help you out.
Quote, I was wrong about everything for the last year and a half about coronavirus.
Speaking about me, being wrong about everything about the coronavirus.
I would submit that I am the most right about the coronavirus of any public figure.
Do your own research.
Find out for yourself. Look at everything I've said about the coronavirus from the start and compare everything I've said about it to every other pundit, and I will bet you a large amount, actually, that I have the most accurate predictions.
Not 100%. Nobody got everything right, right?
Would you all agree that everybody got something wrong?
I said the vaccine is a therapeutic, right?
I said from the start that therapeutics would be what gets us through this, not vaccinations.
And sure enough, the vaccination is just a therapeutic, right?
I said that masks...
I said they were lying about mask effectiveness, and they were.
Now, you're arguing that maybe they're still wrong about masks?
Separate question. What I predicted is that they were lying about the masks, and that was confirmed.
Nobody else said that.
Who was the first person in the world to say we should close travel from China?
Okay, probably Jack Posobiec.
But who was the second person?
Me. Me.
Way before Trump did it.
If you go right down the list, I was the most accurate about the pandemic, I think, by far.
I don't think anybody was even close, if you look decision by decision.
You advised Trump.
I didn't advise him on the coronavirus.
You were not better than ZDogg.
Really? Challenge accepted.
Somebody said I was not better than ZDogg.
And ZDogg's very good.
If you're not following ZDogg on locals and other places, you should.
So ZDogg would be, you know, at the highest level of credibility, I would say, for any of this stuff.
And I'll bet my record would be better than this.
Because, remember, I didn't make a prediction on everything.
So if there were things that I didn't have a strong feeling about, I just didn't make a prediction.
But when I did, I'll bet I had the strongest accuracy record of anybody in the public.
Check it out yourself. But make sure you don't leave anything out.
And make sure you accurately get my opinion.
All right. I'm going to need to go in a moment.
But I will tell you that my comment about the VAERS database and the banana example was liked on Twitter by a Mayo Clinic professor, Vincent Rajkumour.
I don't know if you're watching, Vincent, but thank you for liking that.
And I only point that out to say there was at least one person who does know what they're talking about who agreed with my point.
It doesn't mean it's right, but at least one smart person who knows what he's talking about agrees with it.
Just in case you wondered if anybody did.
All right.
Norm's autobiography.
Yeah, I keep hearing that I should listen to Norm's autobiography.
I've listened to exactly zero books on tape, so I don't expect that to change.
Yeah, you can keep asking me, but I don't think it's going to happen.
You are correct. We had a massive increase in the number of vaccinations compared to pre-22.
Yeah, we should have. Your point is flawed.
I love that people just say, your point is flawed.
