Episode 1516 Scott Adams: Lots of Fun and Interesting Stories Today, and Coffee Too!
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
57% Believe Milley, 25% believe Biden
Biden Iowa approval 31%
60,000 Haitians heading to US from Panama
Cenk Uygur vs Joe Rogan
Rand Paul dissects HHS Sec. Becerra
Merck antiviral pills coming soon
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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My understanding is that the YouTube stream starts about 10 seconds after I go live.
In other words, somehow I guess you miss the first 10 seconds if you're watching live.
And that's why I stall.
I stall. Well, Boo the Cat is looking good, but I have to take her back to the vet today for a little check-up as soon as I'm done with this.
Yes, no sip yet.
No sip yet. So, how about it?
How would you like to make this, like, a really good day?
A really good day?
I mean, to launch you into the weekend?
I know, I know.
Yeah, it's going to be amazing.
And all you need is, well, a cup of mug or a glass, a tank or chalice, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a pestle of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
Well, yeah, you know it.
You've done it before. You know it.
If you're new to this, well, you've got a surprise coming.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip.
And despite its ordinary sound, it's extraordinary.
Watch. Go.
Yeah, that made everything better.
I'm always surprised when it works.
Well, one of my favorite stories of the day.
I guess the Rolling Stones have some concert tour they're doing.
And Mick Jagger was in Charlotte, North Carolina and decided to go into a dive bar by himself.
That's right. Mick Jagger walked into a dive bar in Charlotte, North Carolina just by himself and had a beer.
Here's the funny part. Nobody recognized him the entire time he was there, including people who had tickets to his show.
Now, you have to see the photo, because I think Mick Jagger is the one who posted it.
He's just standing there alone, leaning on some kind of counter having a beer.
And as somebody in the comments noted, and it was just one of the greatest comments, if you and I take a picture in a bar having a beer, it looks like a picture of you or I having a beer in a bar.
But when Mick Jagger takes a picture of himself in a bar, it looked exactly like an album cover.
And until you hear the comment, you don't realize it, and then you look at it again, and you're like, that looks exactly like an awesome album cover.
I would buy the album.
You have to see the picture to see.
With no effort whatsoever, Mick Jagger is so permanently cool that he just has to walk in with a funny hat on, lean on the bar and have a beer, and you've got an album cover.
How the hell does he do that?
How do you do that?
Just exist?
And you're so cool, you're an album cover wherever you go?
Anyway, here's my story within the story.
Did you know that men of a certain age are invisible?
Oh, they are.
Men, can you back me up?
If you're male, and you're a certain age, nobody looks at you.
You can walk down the street with like a knife stuck in your forehead...
People will not notice.
You can walk down the street with your dick hanging out.
I'm sorry. You know what I mean.
Nobody's going to notice. Because in the way we score people's value in society, an adult male has the lowest value.
We don't even look at them.
And the first time I noticed this, this was years ago, I had some laser surgery on my face to get rid of some spider veins.
And the technology of the day was a little less than it is now.
And so for weeks, you would look like you went through a windshield.
Your face would be all swollen and purple until it healed.
And, you know, the advice was, well, you know, you probably want to stay home for a few days because it's going to be frightening to go out and people see your face looking all messed up like that.
That lasted about two days.
Oh, on local, somebody posted the photo.
Let me see if I can show this to the rest of you.
All right. On YouTube, if you haven't seen it, let's see if this works.
Over on the Locals platform, somebody posted it.
Now you tell me that doesn't look like an album cover.
So that's Mick Jagger having a beer at a dive bar.
These guys over on the side?
No idea. No idea that they were this close to the coolest thing that ever happened to them in their entire life.
All they had to do was stand up and start talking to Mick Jagger.
Because he was standing there. I'm sure he would have been friendly, right?
He went to a bar. He's not going to ignore them.
They could have just hung out with Mick Jagger.
They didn't know. They were just five feet away.
Anyway, something about that I just love.
Thank you over at Locals for posting that.
Um... Rasmussen has a poll out asking people if they believed Biden or General Milley about Afghanistan, and specifically the question of whether the generals had recommended keeping 2,500 or so people, and Biden said that he had never been advised of that.
57% of respondents, remember this is the whole country, this is Democrats plus Republicans, 57% believe Milley, Only 21% believe Biden.
Remember I told you about that 25%-ish?
Like every poll seems to have 25%-ish, you know, give or take.
Of people who are just whack.
They get every question wrong.
I believe if they took the SATs, they'd get a zero.
Like 25% of the country.
And... I said, 21% believe Biden.
How the hell do you believe Biden in that case?
All the generals were on the same side.
It would be the easiest thing to fact-check in the world.
In the world, it would be the easiest thing you could ever fact-check.
And 21%, probably all Democrats, like, oh yeah, I believe Biden.
All right.
So speaking of Biden and his approval, CNN is ringing the alarm.
There's an Iowa poll, so this is just for Iowa, but Biden's approval has reached an historic low, 31%.
Apparently that's lower than Obama or Trump ever got.
So Biden is breaking records for low approval.
And, you know, even CNN is saying, uh, we have a problem here.
Do you realize that Biden getting elected could end up being the best thing that ever happened to Republicans?
Because I don't think you could ever get to a point where Republicans controlled everything until you had a Biden.
Am I wrong? Until you have a Biden, the country isn't going to really appreciate what the other side is offering, especially Trump.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't almost everything worse than under Trump?
I mean, you could argue about the pandemic, but that was going to happen the way it happened, no matter who was president.
It feels like everything's worse, a little bit.
I don't know. You know, stock market's relatively up, but that's not how you measure things.
All right. I'd like to give a compliment to somebody that I would not normally compliment.
And I tell you that I like to do this as a system.
You know, I always tell you have a system, not a goal.
Well, if your goal was to be unbiased, you don't have a way to do it.
So just having a goal doesn't give you enough.
You need a system. To be unbiased.
Or at least as unbiased as a human being can be, right?
There's a limit to how unbiased you can be.
So one of my techniques, which I share with you often, is to compliment somebody you typically disagree with.
Just to see if you can do it.
So here's a compliment to CNN's Chris Saliza.
He's an opinion guy. He does these little video packages that appear on CNN, and you've probably been watching him forever.
So if you've ever watched Chris Saliza do any kind of video presentation, most of you have seen him, right, if you watch CNN. And you know it's sort of straightforward, the normal way that anybody would do a video on CNN. But apparently he's changed his game.
The way he does his presentation.
He went big. So he's got lots of action, and he's just going wild, and lots of movement in his chair, and just going big.
And I've got to tell you, he freaking nailed it.
I've got to say. And here's your persuasion communication lesson for the day.
There is a...
When you're doing this kind of work...
Meaning you're on camera. There's an illusion, also true of public speaking, any kind of public presenting.
There's an illusion that happens with the presenter.
And the illusion is that if I get wild, people will like me less or I'll be embarrassed.
You know, something bad will happen if I go big.
So I've just got to give you the facts.
You know, keep my arms in the normal way that a speaker does.
Just got to keep it serious.
But people don't like that.
So the thing you think is going to be the good presentation is always the bad one.
The thing you think is too risky, just go wild, just go full Alex Jones, it works.
Everybody wants to watch something with more energy.
If you bring more energy, people like it better.
More action, more variety, etc.
So Saliza seems to have maybe got some advice or maybe just did it on his own, but he's really nailing it.
You have to watch it. It's really well done, regardless of whether you agree with his opinion.
His game is really good now.
Panama is warning us that 60,000 Haitian immigrants are forming a caravan to go north to cross the border.
60,000. Turns out Panama has been warning the US for some time.
Do you remember the big story about it?
Nope. No, you don't.
You don't remember the big story about these 60,000 people that Panama warned us for for weeks or months or however long it's been?
We just found out.
You just found out what your government knew for a long time.
60,000 Haitian immigrants are coming our way.
Do you think that's it? That's all they have?
60,000 and we're done?
Nope. The reason 60,000 are coming is because 15,000 or whatever percentage of them got in.
They're coming because it works.
As long as it works, they're going to come more.
I mean, why wouldn't they? What is it I tell you that Democrats consistently get wrong?
In the comments, what do I tell you Democrats consistently get wrong?
And it doesn't matter what the topic is.
Every topic, same problem.
Human motivation. They misjudge or don't include human motivation.
And as long as you design a system ignoring human motivation or assuming that everybody does the right thing and everybody's generous and fair, you just have nonsense.
I mean, your system just looks like nonsense.
All right. So that's happened.
I would think the 60,000 immigrants coming our way largely guarantees Republican victories.
So, you know, you might not like 60,000 Haitian refugees coming across your border illegally, but if you're a Republican...
You probably like the fact that it guarantees a Republican win.
I mean, I don't see how the Republicans could lose at this point.
I mean, I could be wrong, right?
I don't like to speak in certainties, but in terms of where it's heading, it looks like it's heading toward a, you know, just a blowout.
We'll see. Yeah, and in the comments, I'm seeing that the mail-in voting might negate that effect, possibly.
Well, I need some confirmation of whether this is true, but I saw a video, Mark Schneider was tweeting it, that showed Trump supporters and Black Lives Matter people marching together against vaccine mandates in New York City.
I'm a little questioning whether the video is real.
I see some people saying it's true.
I think I'm a little bit skeptical because it didn't have like a...
The source on it that I saw.
Yeah. Well, if that happens, maybe it's the beginning of the black public wanting to actually win for a change.
Let me speak to the black public directly for a moment.
I know there are a number of black Americans who are watching this.
And wouldn't you like to win?
Wouldn't you like to get everything you want?
Because you know you can have it.
It's like right there for you.
Just work with the Republicans.
Just do it honestly. I mean, it's hard to do, right?
Historically, you've got some tension there.
But if you think the Republicans don't want to work with Black Lives Matter, you're so wrong.
They just want to work on the things that you have common interest in.
One of the common interests is better schools, get rid of the teachers' unions.
But there are others. There are others.
If the black Americans want to win, just join the team that can help you.
Do you think the Republicans don't want that?
They do want that. They do want to do something that's really useful to the black community because it helps them.
It's good for getting elected.
Why wouldn't they like that? They also like Americans.
Surprise! Surprise!
Republicans like Americans.
And if Americans happen to be God-fearing, well, that's a bonus.
And if they happen to respect the Constitution and think that working for a living is a good idea, you're all good.
You're all good.
Right? You...
If you're black, you would be amazed how little your color matters to a Republican.
You really would. Now, does it matter in a social way?
Is it, you know, on the front of their mind?
Yeah, probably. Because we're all conscious of racial stuff.
But in terms of decisions and choices they make and hiring decisions and anything else, policy, yeah...
They care that you're an American.
They care that you love the Constitution, love the country.
If you do all that stuff, you're good with the Republicans every time.
Monica Lewinsky has some new controversy.
Turns out there's a woman who claims that Monica Lewinsky slept with her husband before she even slept with Clinton.
And now, I have a question for you.
If this is true, and it sounds credible, you have to be skeptical of anything these days, but it sounds credible.
If she, in fact, ruined two marriages by sleeping with two different husbands, shouldn't the story be about what a piece of shit she is?
Like, why are we treating her as the victim?
Is that sexist?
You know, I get that there's a gigantic power differential, especially with the president.
But apparently this other husband that she was sleeping with wasn't the president.
So it wasn't just that.
Monica appears to not be too concerned about breaking up marriages.
I think we have to reassess...
What we think of Monica Lewinsky.
By the way, I like her.
I like Monica Lewinsky.
I follow her on Twitter and stuff.
I think she's a wonderful personality.
And I do think that she was young and she got herself in some bad situation.
But I don't think you could give her a pass for breaking up two marriages or ruining them, essentially, because they're never the same after that.
But I don't know.
I feel like we should judge her more harshly and not see her as the victim exactly.
She's a little bit of a victim.
I give you that. Because of the power differential.
That's real. But she was also an adult.
She was also an adult.
She had a little bit of responsibility there, and I don't think she did it.
All right. Some cool housing options that are coming online.
I think you're going to see a whole bunch more of this.
I've mentioned these before, but they're They're growing, so it's more of a thing.
So in Denver, there are 455 units of co-living space.
So basically, they're taking the college dorm model and just improving it so it's not as basic as a college dorm, but it gives you the advantages of the social life.
You're surrounded by people in similar situations, and you might have a roommate, but you've got common facilities where you'll meet each other, etc., I feel like housing needs to solve two problems, not one.
And housing...
Historically, housing has solved one problem.
Housing. Right?
The only problem that housing ever solved was you got a place to live.
But there's a second problem, and I want to see in the comments some confirmation.
Loneliness. The ability to just meet people that you can have a relationship with as friends and neighbors.
And I feel as though we need options such that the housing solves your social life at the same time, at least gives you social interaction in a natural way, and solves that at the same time as it solves housing.
There's no reason it couldn't.
In fact, it should. I would argue it's the biggest problem.
Now, when people were universally, or seemingly universally, getting married and having families, much less important, because your family is that social thing, and then the kids have friends, and then the parents of the kids become your friends and everything.
So if you have a family, you're already in good shape, probably, because you meet people just automatically having a family.
But for the single people, of which there are more and more of them, They're going to need something that isn't Tinder.
Because Tinder doesn't work except for the top 2% of guys.
All the other guys don't have a chance.
But if they're meeting people in a natural setting, well, they have a chance too.
So this is a big deal that I think will just get bigger and bigger.
And then there's an intergenerational housing option in which I think the deal is that they find a senior citizen who might need a little help And they pair them with a young person, say a college student, who just needs a cheap place to stay.
And it's actually a good combination.
Making sure that the old person has somebody there to call 911 or lift heavy objects.
And the young person gets a nice house to live in that would be better than they could afford.
It's a pretty good deal. We'll see more of that, too.
Well, there's another woman's soccer coach fired for sexual misbehavior, allegedly.
Let me ask you this.
You've got a woman's team.
Let's say it's gymnastics.
Let's say it's volleyball. Let's say it's women's soccer.
What kind of people are going to be on those teams?
Young females who are in unusually good physical shape.
Do you think you should ever have a male coach or a male doctor in that situation?
I mean, I'm not the Taliban, right?
And I don't think you should necessarily limit people's employment by their gender.
That's a problem. Yeah, well, some of them are lesbians, but I don't think that's not the biggest variable here.
Here's my question. You don't want to be the Taliban, but why the hell do you think it's a good idea to put a normal heterosexual male in a situation where all day long he deals with attractive young women?
There's no way in the world this doesn't get you in trouble.
But again, you know, you don't want to be the Taliban and say, oh, we can't have the genders mixing or anything.
But this is crazy.
It's crazy to have men in these positions.
Am I wrong? Maybe there's a legal reason where you just have to do it because you can't discriminate or something.
And I realize that, you know, women are coaching male teams now, but that's different, right?
Isn't that different? Because you don't have the power imbalance problem.
I say, yes, you're wrong, a little wrong.
I would acknowledge I'm a little wrong.
Because there's no clean right answer, right?
You don't want to limit people's employment by gender.
That's true. But you don't want to create a situation where you're guaranteeing sexual harassment.
I mean, you're talking about guaranteeing it, really.
All right. Well, I'd look into that.
Here's a feel-good story.
There were some burglars who broke into a home in Coweta County in Georgia...
And the owner's dogs killed him.
Killed the burglar. He was found dead on the porch.
I have no comment on it.
It was just sort of a feel-good story.
I love dogs.
Well, Dr. Anarchy over on Twitter, that's not his real name, but Dr.
Anarchy, who does not wish you to know his real identity, reports that the ICU at his hospital in Florida is 100% capacity.
They have no beds, Is that a big problem or a small problem?
Well, let me give you some context before you say it in the comments.
I know, I know, I'm going to give you the context.
Don't worry. The context is this.
All ICUs try to operate in your capacity.
All ICUs try to operate pretty close to capacity because they make money on the ICUs.
So they're always 90% full.
So all you need is any kind of a mass casualty event, and that extra 10% gets filled.
So COVID should be expected...
Given all the different hospitals in the country and the fact that statistics are not smooth, there are lumps of everything in statistics.
There are statistical clusters.
So you are guaranteed that even if COVID isn't crashing hospitals in general, you are guaranteed there will be specific hospitals that do reach capacity.
Is that a problem?
Well... In this particular hospital, the additional context is that only 10% of the ICU has COVID patients.
So 90% of the ICU is just the regular patients.
They only had 10% capacity, roughly, 10% extra anyway, because that's what they always have.
And this particular hospital filled it up.
Does that mean they can't have another ICU person?
Nope. Nope. They just expand it.
They just add beds.
So no, they are not turning anybody away because they know how to expand and contract that capacity.
But their official ICU capacity is at capacity.
Official ICU resources are at capacity.
But it doesn't mean as much as you think.
So probably it's not the problem that it sounds like when you first hear it, but we should know about it.
In other interesting celebrity news, do you know Senk?
Is it Eiger?
Eiger? I don't know how exactly to pronounce his last name.
But you probably know Senk.
He's got a show, the Young Turks.
He identifies with the left.
And I guess he went after Joe Rogan on the vaccination question.
And somebody dared him to say this to Joe Rogan's face.
And then that turned into Senk saying in public, at least on Twitter, Senk believes that he could beat Joe Rogan in a fight if it came to that.
Now, take a look at Senk Uyger.
And I apologize if I'm pronouncing his name right.
I never do that intentionally, by the way.
I would never intentionally disrespect somebody by pronouncing their name wrong.
But there it is.
I probably did. And is there anybody here who thinks that Senk could beat Joe Rogan in a fight?
Senk says he's a big guy and he's been fighting all his life, so he knows how to fight.
But he's not exactly trained in the martial arts, as far as we know.
So, first of all, Joe Rogan would never fight him.
I don't think there's any chance that would happen.
But, yeah, Joe Rogan is, like, highly trained in And ripped.
He could lift a school bus and he could tear a person apart with one hand.
But Senk thinks he has a chance.
Now, it would be easy to dunk on Senk for this opinion that seems crazy to the rest of us, but I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to give you like a surprise twist.
I actually like the fact that The Senk said in public, he thinks he could take Joe Rogan.
The reason I like it, not because it's true.
I mean, I think it's silly, you know, and just ridiculous.
But I love the fact that he said it.
Because, you know, if Trump had said something like this and brought a lot of attention to himself, I would have been praising him.
Because part of his job is bringing attention.
And if it worked, hey, it worked.
Senk's job is like that, too.
Part of his job is marketing his own product.
And if he got us all to look at this and nobody got punched, home run.
Home run. So I'm going to give Senk an A-plus for marketing.
I don't know how well he fights, but he's a marketing mofo.
This is really good.
Good job, Senk.
Nice marketing. But don't take a punch.
Don't throw a punch at Joe Biden.
I'm sorry, at Joe Rogan.
Don't punch Joe Biden either.
But don't punch Joe Rogan.
I don't think that'll work out for you.
Alex Jones lost a big legal case, it looks like.
So the Sandy Hook thing, you all know he...
He believed the Sandy Hook school shooting.
At one point he made a claim that maybe they were actors or something and that it didn't really happen.
Well, he got sued and apparently it's going to cost him a lot of money if this stands.
And he was found legally responsible in two lawsuits for damages caused by his claims.
To which I ask, what exactly were the damages?
Was it that the parents and the survivors got a lot of grief from other people?
Was that the damages?
Or was it emotional damage?
I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand, people do need legal recourse when people say crazy things that affect them in public.
You probably need some kind of legal option there.
But this feels like a violation of free speech.
If we accept that Alex Jones was wrong, wasn't it also an opinion?
He's not exactly a news source, is he?
Isn't he an opinion person?
And if it was his opinion, looking at the facts, that this looked like a hoax, but he was terribly, terribly wrong, did he get sued for being wrong?
Like, how do you lose a case just because you were wrong?
And by the way, he's admitted he was wrong.
Later he admitted. So if you've even admitted you were wrong, how do you lose that case?
I don't know if I want to live in this country where you can lose on an opinion because somebody was injured by your opinion.
That's like a standard I don't know if we want to keep.
So that's a big old red flag on freedom of speech, I'd say.
Well, if you haven't seen the video going around today of Rand Paul talking to HHS head Xavier Basara, or is the C hard?
Is it a hard C, Bacara, or is it Basara?
Somebody tell me the pronunciation of that.
Bacara or Basara?
Anybody? Anybody? All right, somebody will tell me.
Basara, I'm hearing. Seems right.
I'm going to go with Basara.
So Rand Paul is talking to him about apparently health and human services as part of the government that says you need a vaccination as opposed to proving that you have antibodies because you got infected already.
Now as you know Rand Paul has had COVID and he says his antibodies are better than people who are vaccinated and apparently there's a large study he referenced that would agree.
And You have to watch Rand Paul dissect this guy on live TV. It is one of the best live performances, if I can call it that, that you'll ever see.
Now, here's what makes it brutal.
Not only is Rand Paul, you know, he has medical credentials, right?
But the guy he's talking to doesn't.
I guess he's a lawyer or something by training.
So, first of all, Rand Paul is...
He's not...
Here's the best way to say it.
Rand Paul seemed to have taken his presentation, instead of raising his energy to, like, really press his point and, like, you know, and get mad at this guy, he went the other way.
That you can only do if your argument is so damn good that you don't even need to alter your presentation to help it.
And that is so strong.
Persuasion-wise, if your case is this strong and you lower your energy, it's devastating.
So watch Rand Paul lower his energy and just dissect this guy.
He dissects him.
It is fun to watch.
You really have to watch it.
And so, let me say it again.
I'll give you, maybe I'll act it out.
Had he said something like, are you a medical doctor?
Are you a medical doctor?
Are you? And you watch that?
You would say to yourself, alright, it's just two people fighting on TV. I've seen a million of this.
But instead...
Rand Paul has lowered his energy way down.
But because he's the only one talking, and it's televised, he gets all the attention.
And the lower he goes, the more powerful it is.
So you just see him sitting there saying, and do you have a medical degree?
Are you a doctor? No, you're not a doctor.
Do you have a science degree?
Well, not a science degree.
Are you aware of the study...
That says that natural immunity is seven times better than the vaccination.
Oh, you've not seen that study?
I think you should actually refer to that study.
Two, two and a half million people were studied.
You know, and I don't think I'm doing a good enough job of it.
But you have to watch Rand Paul pull this off.
It is masterful.
And it is freaking great.
So, in terms of public communication, a double plus for Rand Paul.
There's a story in Stephanie Grisham's book that Trump was asked about going, I don't know, vegan or vegetarian or something.
And allegedly Trump's swift response was, and he was very serious about it, he said, no, no, it messes with your body chemistry, your brain.
And if I lose even one brain cell, we're effed.
If I lose even one brain cell, we're effed.
First of all, I love that part of it.
I love the fact that Trump is completely aware that as President of the United States and the person with the nuclear codes, that if he loses even one brain cell, the whole world is effed.
True, right?
And now we have Joe Biden, so maybe we're effed.
But do you believe the statement, it messes with your body chemistry, your brain?
What do you think? Scientifically accurate or not?
Now, many of you know that I was vegetarian for years.
Now I'm a pescatarian.
Let me tell you my experience when I went vegetarian.
You ready? Changed my thinking and my mood and my body chemistry.
And I could tell.
Now, how did it change it?
I became less aggressive.
Now, is it cause and effect?
I don't know, but it happened at the same time.
I felt that eating meat made me more aggressive.
And in my specific case, I have a problem with being too aggressive, not a problem with not being aggressive enough.
I spend a lot of time trying to control my own aggressiveness.
I think, you know, you can tell from my, like, facial structure, I'm sensitive to testosterone.
It doesn't mean I have a lot.
It just means that it has a bigger effect on my body.
That's the male pattern baldness here, the square chin.
Testosterone sensitivity. So I feel like I just have a natural aggressiveness that being a vegetarian took the edge off.
That's what it felt like.
I may know...
I'm not making a medical claim.
I'm not saying you would have this experience.
I'm not even saying the science would agree with me.
But I will tell you that it's what I experienced.
So I don't know if he's right or wrong, but it doesn't shock me to hear he had that opinion.
Big news coming. I'm going to talk a little bit about COVID stuff, but it's new stuff.
I think you might like it, even if you're...
I won't try to sell you on vaccinations, okay?
Don't worry about that.
I'm not going to try to sell you on anything.
I'm just going to tell you what's new.
So Merck is coming out with some antiviral pills that apparently reduce the risk of death from COVID by 50%, and they'll be ready maybe this year.
I think there are two other big companies that have some antivirals coming.
We're still waiting on information on their effectiveness.
But here's my question to you.
How many of these various meds can you take at the same time?
Suppose there are three antivirals that come out.
Can you take them all?
If they work in different ways, why can't you take them all?
Can you take them at the same time as your monoclonal antibodies?
Same time as your prednisone, your vitamin D. How many of these things that we already give to people can you take at the same time?
Here's why I'm asking. If the antiviral did, as said, and reduced your risk of hospitalization, you have to take it early, first five days of symptoms.
But if you take it early, it reduces your risk a lot.
And so do these other things.
So we started with a risk that was small to begin with, But, you know, it doesn't matter how small it is.
If you multiply it by 370 million people, it's still too big.
But we took that risk that was already small, and then we cut it in half with, let's say, prednisone.
And then we cut it in half again with vitamin D. And we cut it in half again with monoclonal antibodies.
And then we cut it in half again with antivirals.
Am I doing the math right?
Aren't we done? I mean, when the end of virals come online, and it could be the end of the year, aren't we done?
Because how many times can you take a small risk and cut it in half before you're done?
I realize there's a Zeno's paradox happening here, and you can never get to zero if you're only cutting it in half every time.
But, yeah, I beat you to it.
I knew that Zeno's paradox was coming.
I beat you to the comment, only because there's a delay on YouTube.
Yeah, it depends on how many overlapping mechanisms, right?
Exactly. If the antivirals use the same mechanism, can they all be patented?
Here's a question for you.
Can you patent drugs that are developed at the same time that use the same mechanism to do their work?
If one was not copying the other, they just came out about the same time?
Does the first one get the patent and the rest of them can't mark it?
How does that work? I have questions.
But I feel like we're going to be through with this.
Oh, we have some news that a senior al-Qaeda leader was killed by an American drone strike in Syria.
Do you believe that?
A senior al-Qaeda leader was killed in a drone strike.
No civilians were killed.
Who believes that that really happened?
Not me. Not me.
Now, it's not impossible that it happened.
But... Let's just look at the timing, shall we?
Because, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the American military need a palate cleanser with the drone strikes?
Because you know they want to do more drone strikes, obviously.
It's a good weapon. But they've got that bad one on their permanent record.
You know, the civilians they killed by accident.
They needed a clean drone strike really soon, didn't they?
So that you would start thinking good about drones again.
You know, your average of good ones to bad ones would be better.
What are the chances that an unverifiable attack on a leader, an al-Qaeda leader, would happen just about now?
I'm sorry. This timing, no.
I feel as if this al-Qaeda leader might have been not so much of a leader as maybe somebody in the group.
And maybe there were people who got killed that weren't just al-Qaeda.
I'm not going to believe anything about this story.
Doesn't mean it's untrue.
I'm not telling you it's fake.
I'm saying that credibility is different than true or false.
I say this a lot, but I have to keep saying it.
When you say something's not credible, it doesn't mean it's false.
It just means that the source can't be believed.
So this is kind of a credible source for drone strike information.
We know that, right?
We know that. Yeah, two on the nose, exactly.
I'm seeing that comment. Two on the nose.
A little too perfect.
Yeah.
So California, there's a mask mandate question, and there was some article about trying to figure out who it is who actually has the power to give mask mandates in California.
I guess it's a little murky, like what part of the government can even tell you to do that.
But I'm not too interested in that part of the story.
I'm interested in this part of the story.
I keep seeing online...
That the American public believes that the government has control over how long you wear masks.
That's crazy.
Everybody who's worried about the government permanently keeping you in masks?
What? Here's why that's crazy.
The government doesn't have any power over you wearing a mask.
You wear masks because most of the public still wants to.
As soon as the percentage of the public changes to some other percentage, it'll stop.
The government has no power.
None. None.
You know, they have power over individuals, but they don't have power over the public.
None. Not for masks.
I mean, if you could imagine if they used the military to get something done, they could do that.
But they're not going to deploy the military to make you wear a mask.
Because the public will take the masks off when the science says they can.
Right? And that probably will be around year-end when we have enough therapeutics and the vaccination uptake is looking good and the numbers are coming down.
The American public will decide.
Now, if the government is smart, they'll front-run the public.
That the government will, on its own, get rid of the mask mandate before the public tells them they have to.
But the moment you think that the government has control over this decision, you are very confused.
The government has no control.
Australia? Nope.
Australia is not an example of the government having control.
It's not. It just means that the public is not agreeing with getting rid of the mandate at a high enough percentage.
As soon as enough of the public is done with the masks in Australia, they're done.
That's it. There's no exception to this.
Not for masks.
I mean, there would be an exception if it was some bigger issue that went to Homeland Security or something.
Then the government might have to do what it has to do.
But not with masks.
The public has this decision completely.
Don't be fooled. If you want to change it, change the opinion of the people around you.
Change other public opinion.
You don't even need to talk to the government.
The government will do what we tell them to do.
We just have to decide what that is.
The reason we haven't told them to drop the mask mandate is the public doesn't want it by enough of a percentage.
As soon as we do, it's done.
And the public isn't going to wear a freaking mask forever.
There's no way.
No way that's going to happen.
So don't worry about that.
You can worry about how long it takes.
That's going to be a pain in the ass, but I wouldn't worry about it being forever.
Here's a similar...
This is an analogy. I just thought of it when I was looking at this story.
When I was a budget guy working at a big bank, it was my job to collect the budget requirements and then report them, etc.
And the department heads would come to me and they'd say, I'd need more budget.
And I'd say to them, well, don't ask me.
I'm not in charge of what your budget is.
I'm just reporting it.
I'm the guy who just gives information.
I don't make decisions.
And they couldn't understand that.
And I would tell them, you know you're the one in charge of your budget, right?
That all it takes to get more money is to go to your boss and make a case that if you had this money, the business would be better off.
And I would tell the department heads, stop acting like I have the power over your budget.
I don't have any. And stop acting like your boss has power over your budget.
That's an illusion. It's an illusion.
It wasn't in this case, because we had plenty of capital.
If you were actually constrained for capital, then your boss would have that decision.
But we weren't constrained for capital.
We were constrained for good ideas.
That was the constraint.
So I said, you can have all the money you want.
You just have to tell your boss that you'll make more money than you spend.
Make the case. Or that something will be better, security or something.
So lots of times we have this illusion of who's in power.
And that illusion can really limit you and also mess with your head.
You have the power quite long.
You have the power over how people feel about you.
When you walk into a room, you change how people feel.
That's true of everybody, right?
When a new person enters, changes the chemistry of the room.
You change other people.
And if you learn to do it right, you'll feel that you always have the power.
When I'm in a situation with, let's say, dangerous men who might have some reason to kill me, I never feel afraid.
Because I always feel like I have complete power over the situation.
Meaning that I can talk a man of killing me.
I can run away and get a gun and come back.
I mean, I just have all the power I want.
So sometimes you get caught in the illusion that people have power over you.
Here's another one. Suppose you are threatened by somebody that you know.
Threatened. Like physically threatened by somebody you know.
Here's my first thought.
I know where that person lives.
That's the end of the threat, isn't it?
If you know where somebody lives, they better not touch you, because I'm going to be visiting them in the middle of the night, and it's not going to go well, right?
You have the full power to kill anybody you want.
I don't recommend it, by the way.
But you can kill anybody if you know where they live.
That's all you need, right?
So, again, it's not a good idea.
I'm just telling you that you often underestimate your own power, and it's a big problem.
You have power over masks, collectively.
You have power over almost all of your situations.
You just don't realize it.
Or maybe you don't know how to use it.
So, don't give away your power, is what I'm saying.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is coffee with Scott Adams.
One of the best experiences you'll ever have.
You know where I live.
That's right. You have power over me because you know where I live.
Sort of. Apparently, there's a story about a woman who survived the 1918 pandemic, the Spanish flu, and then just died at 100 and whatever from COVID. So she survived the Spanish flu but died of COVID. I'm not sure that's the way I would have coded that.
