Episode 1535 Scott Adams: You Won't Want to Miss Today's Show Because it Will be Awesome Like Usual
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Trucking shortage reasons
Facebook is changing their name and focus
53% say others making Biden's decisions
Ron DeSantis always hits the mark
Confirmed dead from the vaccination
Vaccination and cognitive dissonance
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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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Welcome to what? You know, the best thing that's ever happened to you.
Yeah, a lot of people today woke up and did not come to watch Coffee with Scott Adams and participate in Simultaneous Sip.
We pity them.
We pity them.
Because all of you are going to experience something special.
That's right. That's right, user.
You're going to take it up a notch.
And all you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice, a styana, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with the liquid you like best.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day.
The thing that makes everything better, unless my camera is in the wrong orientation.
Oh, damn it! My camera's in the wrong orientation.
I'm going to add that to my checklist.
But, join me now for the simultaneous SIP. This will make everything except your screen orientation better.
Wait. It's even improving the screen orientation.
Didn't see that coming.
Turns out we have a solution for that.
It was only on local, so if you're on YouTube, you didn't see the difference.
All right. Much better.
I don't know if that turned all of your screens upside down for a minute.
Well, do you all know Kanye West?
Everybody know who Kanye West is?
That's a trick question.
There's nobody named Kanye West.
He's changed his name to just Y-E, which I think he calls Ye.
It's not Ye, right?
Is it? Because it's Kanye, so it's Ye.
Right. Right. Ye is a pretty good name.
I like it when people who are already super famous make us think about their name change, because it keeps us in their memory.
So I liked it when Prince did it, just because it made us continually talk about him.
And I like it when Ye is doing it.
It's just a good technique.
It's a very persuasive thing.
It's an easy way to stay in the news.
And I think everybody called him Ye in person, so it just made sense.
But the interesting thing is that he arrived on a flight, I guess people was up in the airport, wearing a Halloween kind of mask, which could be described as whiteface.
Could be described as whiteface.
It was a Caucasian mask.
How do you feel about that?
LAUGHTER Well, I love the fact that he did it because he just does anything that...
I mean, he's willing to do things that grab your attention and they're provocative.
And, yeah, it was funny.
But the weirdest thing is that he's reportedly meeting with Michael Cohen, Trump's, you know, fallen-from-grace lawyer.
What's that all about?
What is Kanye talking to Michael Cohen about?
Does anybody know? Do you even have a guess?
What possible business could the two of them have?
Oh, divorce? He's not really a divorce lawyer.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's weird. But maybe we'll find that out.
There's a story out of India about a monkey killing a man by hurling a brick off a second floor of a building.
Monkey threw that brick, killed that man.
ISIS has already claimed responsibility.
But CNN is reporting that it was caused by climate change.
Because if there's one thing you know about climate change, it will cause monkeys to start hurling bricks.
If you think this is a one-off, well, you haven't watched CNN. Because anything that's a little bit unexpected...
It means climate change.
So climate change is making monkeys crazy, and they're starting to look for blunt objects to throw at humans, and they've got their first kill.
Man and Nydia. The true part is the monkey part.
The fake part is the climate science part.
I made that up. If somebody's new here, you might actually think that CNN reported it was because of climate change.
Remember, parody and reality have merged now.
So I actually had to step back and say, no, actually, CNN is not reporting that climate change is causing monkeys to hurl bricks.
Here's news from the simulation.
News from the simulation.
It's a low-budget operation.
I have to do my own stings.
But the news from the simulation, Spokane Police Department is investigating the origin of the explicit video, an X-rated video, That showed up on screen on a news show in Spokane.
So I think it was the weather person was doing the news and suddenly an x-rayed scene showed up on the screen.
Here's the simulation part.
It was a local news station whose call letters are K-R-E-M dash TV. How do you pronounce that?
K-R-E-M dash TV. Would you pronounce it...
Krem?
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe Krem. Or...
Or...
Is the simulation messing with us again?
Is it a coincidence that the one local news station that had some porn on it was Cream TV? Cream TV. I'm not making this up.
I'm just telling you the news.
Yeah. Obviously, we live in a simulation.
There's no other explanation. All right, here's another mystery.
So you all know there's a supply chain problem, and it has to do with trucking shortages.
Do you know the reason for the trucking shortage?
Anybody? Anybody? Do you know the reason for the trucking shortage?
Well, before I tell you the reason for the trucking shortage, let me give you a rule of thumb for knowing a lie from the truth.
Now, here's one I learned from a friend of mine, and I didn't believe it the first time I heard it.
But if you follow this rule and just keep it in mind, watch how often it predicts.
Not 100%, but it's really predictive, and it goes like this.
The truth...
Usually has one good reason to it.
Right? There are exceptions, of course.
But if something is true, there's usually one good reason.
And if there's more than one good reason, there are usually obvious ones that you can also see.
Okay? So when you have more than one good reason offered, the more reasons that are offered, the less likely the base story is true.
Okay? You got that?
If there's just one, or maybe two, if there are obvious reasons, given for an explanation for a thing, probably true, or could be true.
But if you have seven explanations for a thing and they're all different, there's something going on.
It means either nobody knows what's going on, or somebody's lying.
Now let's look at the trucking shortage.
What's the one reason for it?
There isn't. There are multiple reasons.
There are some, I saw in the comments, that truckers don't want to get vaccinated, maybe.
There's truckers, or too many of them are on meth, they can't pass, or people who want to be truckers or can't pass the drug test, maybe.
There's something about California requiring only newer trucks be used for climate and And environmental reasons, so that there would be a limit of trucks because there are not enough new ones.
There's an issue of the supplies to fix the trucks themselves.
So the supply chain is broken, but included in that broken supply chain is the parts to fix the trucks that broke the supply chain.
So that's another explanation given.
So the trucks have to be green.
We don't have enough green ones.
Let's see. Here's some other reasons.
Truck-driving schools, not enough of them.
They're too slow. They're kind of expensive.
Pete Buttigieg pointed out that demand is higher.
So we're just, because of the pandemic, you know, keeping demand low for a while, it's just a little excess demand.
How about low wages and bad treatment of customers?
Low wages for truck drivers.
Customers treat them poorly.
I mentioned drug testing.
In the UK, they've got also a supply chain problem, and they blame a backlog of truck driver license requests.
I guess there are 50,000 people who have applied to be truck drivers in the UK, but they can't get through.
Now, what are the odds, given all these different reasons...
What are the odds that the UK would be having a problem at the same time we would for a different reason?
Just think about it.
What are the odds there would be a massive supply chain problem in the United States with all these different reasons given, and the UK, just coincidentally, would also have a supply chain problem for a completely different reason that the bureaucracy can't process stuff?
What's going on?
What's going on? Now, somebody says it's really the same reasons in the UK, or similar.
Could be. Wouldn't rule that out.
Here's my take on it.
I think there's something we're going to find out about this story that we don't know.
There's something we're going to find out that we don't yet know.
It could be...
Then it's just this weird, perfect storm.
All these things happened at the same time, and really the pandemic was sort of behind most of them.
Not all of them, but the pandemic exacerbated a thing that was already maybe on the edge.
That's believable. Could be.
But it's happening in the UK, same time.
They're getting the same perfect storm.
And what about other places?
I don't know. So, here's my take on this.
I think there's some big, ugly secret coming.
A big, ugly secret coming.
Let's just go through the reasons given, and let me tell you how compelling or not they are.
I believe that in the context of an emergency, it wouldn't be hard to train new people quickly.
How long does it take to learn to drive a truck?
Two weeks? Two weeks?
Couldn't you get there in two weeks?
Suppose they loosened maybe, I don't know, the marijuana condition of the drug testing.
I don't know if that's already happened.
But suppose they did that just because it's an emergency.
They say, all right, in the short run, we're going to lower our standards.
How about using trucks that are not as green temporarily and then going back to the green trucks when you can?
Don't all of these problems look solvable to you?
Don't they? There are a whole bunch of problems, but they all fall in that category of...
They look really solvable, but they don't look like they're getting solved.
Something's wrong, right?
Imagine Trump in charge, and he realizes that there's a supply chain problem.
You don't think he could fix that?
Because I think he could.
Because whatever is causing this is fear, bureaucracy, or red tape, right?
It's like fear, bureaucracy, red tape, inertia, Politics, maybe.
Something like that. Those are all Trump's sweet spots.
That's exactly what you want a Trump for.
Remember, I don't say Trump is the best at all things presidential.
I think he was not so good for health care, although he did some good things there, too.
But there are some things he's just sort of perfect for.
The border is one. Negotiating with China hard, that's another.
North Korea, he was perfect for it.
And this truck shortage, I think he'd be perfect for this.
Because he has exactly the qualities you need, but Biden has none of them.
Biden has none of them.
So that's why we're here.
I saw an interesting concept by Twitter user Phil Reid.
He was making an analogy to my talent stack idea where you add talents together that make sense to make yourself more valuable.
And he said there's a similar thing with the Apple ecosystem.
Meaning that if you start getting into Apple products, because they work together, you know, the fact that I could go from my phone to my iPad to my computer and I'm still in the same place, etc., and a number of other things that make the products work together.
He makes the point that you don't have to be the best at any of those things if you've built an ecosystem where they all work together.
And I thought that was, somebody said, synergy?
Yeah, I mean, you could say it's just synergy, but I think it gives it a little more meat on the idea to compare it to the talent stack idea and say it's an ecosystem stack, if you will.
Everything from your watch to your computer all have something in common and they work together.
I just thought it was an interesting take on that.
Big news about Facebook.
They're changing their name.
Do you know why Facebook is changing their name?
Anybody? Anybody?
Why are they changing their name?
Well, in my opinion...
Well, first of all, they may have some baggage they want to get rid of.
And I also think Facebook doesn't sound like a current name, does it?
Having the word book in a tech company name?
It's really not a forward-looking name, is it?
It was fine for a while.
But the biggest reason they're changing the name is that their business is going to change in a big way.
And I would argue that this change in Facebook will be one of the biggest changes in human evolution.
One of the biggest changes in human evolution.
Like real big.
Like as big as opposing thumbs.
Like that big.
Here's why. Apparently they're going to go balls to the wall into the metaverse or the virtual worlds, which are created by 3D, you know, graphic stuff and AR, artificial reality and virtual reality.
So Facebook is creating an entire new reality, multiple realities.
And each of these realities will have a function.
So one of the fake realities might be a conference room where you put on your goggles and you go to that conference room and you're in that room.
Others might be vacations.
You might be able to take a group vacation somewhere just with your goggles on.
You might be able to fly somewhere just with your goggles on.
And I would argue you don't see how big this is.
I don't think any of you can see how big this is.
The only people who can see it are the people who have tried the technology.
If you've tried it, you know how big this is.
Because right now it's sort of in its infancy in a way.
Maybe it's sophomore year or something.
So it's not ready for prime time, I would say.
But... Oh, that's dangerous.
It's not ready for prime time.
But it's going to get there really quickly and fairly obviously.
And this is huge.
Let me tell you what I know. I did get a virtual reality system a few years ago just to check it out.
And just in a few years, it's probably completely different now.
But when you have the virtual reality headset on, your experience is so rich, it can be better than real life.
It's a problem. The virtual reality can be better than real life, and maybe a lot.
Imagine, if you will, that you're unattractive.
I know. Hard for us to imagine, because the people who watch me are unusually sexy.
But imagine you're somebody else, and you're not the sexy beast that I know you are.
How much are you going to like living in the real world, where people treat you like Elephant Man?
Versus living in the virtual world where you look like your avatar and people interact with you as the avatar.
Which one are you going to want to spend more time in?
Yeah, disabled people.
Now, well, actually, let me take that back.
I think you trapped, with that comment, you trapped me into saying something illiberal.
Is that the right word? If we assume that disabled people, and let's say differently abled, disabled by itself is not as woke as it should be, but let's say differently abled people, if you make the assumption that they need a virtual reality, that's kind of not cool.
You know what I mean? Because just being differently abled doesn't mean you have to leave reality or something.
So I guess I was a little offended by your suggestion, even though I totally understand it.
So your suggestion is completely fair, but I don't know if...
Did anybody else feel that?
If you talk about differently abled people, and I agree with that wording, by the way, you can certainly see that there would be people in that category who would like the virtual worlds better.
So the comment is perfectly fair.
But I don't know. Just imagining that there's a group that needs to get out of reality is...
I guess I said the same thing with unattractive people.
If you are blind, interesting.
If you're blind, you're not going to have any access to this.
That's a really interesting point.
Yeah. I wonder if there's a way to get a virtual sight...
I'll bet there is. I'll bet you could get a virtual site someday.
Something, you know, directly, yeah, Neuralink kind of thing, directly linking to your brain.
Maybe. Someday.
Anyway, I don't think you realize how gigantic that is.
It's really gigantic. There's some fake news about Southwest Airlines.
Fake in the sense that it's being reported in an incomplete way.
So Hannity was tweeting this, and what Hannity said was breaking.
Southwest Airlines drops plan to place unvaccinated workers on unpaid leave.
Now, if you hear that they stopped their plan to put unvaxxed workers on unpaid leave, you would say to yourself, hey, they're going to put people who are unvaccinated on unpaid leave, or they were before.
Is that true? It's true-ish, but it's missing too much context.
Right? It's true-ish.
The context that's missing is that the only people involved were the people who had applied for exceptions, religious or otherwise, and had not gotten an answer yet.
So to me, all they're doing is delaying the mandate until they can work through the number of people asking for exceptions.
So to me, it looks like nothing.
To me, it just looks like nothing.
Like nothing changed, except they just delayed it until they feel they can do it right.
So I feel like this was fake news to imagine that they reversed the policy.
I think all they did was make a practical decision that they couldn't do everything as quickly as they wanted.
I think that's all.
We'll see. More news might come out of that.
I would like to call out one of my internet friends for cognitive dissonance.
Now, this is somebody I interact with a lot.
Might even be watching.
So if you're watching, I'm going to be talking about you in a moment.
So this is nothing personal about the person, okay?
So I'm going to say something that you might think is personal.
It's not. Because it's somebody I like.
But this person, I believe, is experiencing cognitive dissonance.
And when you experience cognitive dissonance, you're the only one who doesn't know.
That's the nature of it, right?
So if I experience it, I will swear I'm not.
You're the only people who know.
Nobody else is going to know.
So I'm talking about Justin Hart.
Justin Hart. I see you're guessing, so stop guessing.
His name is Justin Hart.
Great guy. Interacts a lot on Twitter.
I've had lots of interactions with him.
But he's more on the, let's say, I don't want to characterize other people too much, but I'd say he's on the skeptical side of the pandemic conversation.
He's on the skeptical side.
And here's something he said today, talking about this Southwest Airlines story.
So he said in a tweet, quote, they caved.
They'll cave more when the next deadline comes again.
Now, that part I'm not arguing with, whether they caved or whether they'll cave again.
So no argument about that.
But the next part, tell me if I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance, because you're the only ones who know, right?
I can't tell. I think Justin is experiencing it.
So here's the next sentence.
You be the judge, okay?
He says, since 40 to 60% of all infections are coming from fully vaccinated people...
Now, first of all, I don't know if that's true, but let's accept as true that there are a lot of vaccinated people getting infected.
So that part's true, right? I don't know if it's 40 to 60.
I'm not sure that's right.
But let's just say there's a lot of them.
Somebody says it's absolutely true, and I'm seeing other people saying it's not true.
So I want everybody to know that some people say it's true and some people say it's not true.
I don't know. But it doesn't matter to my point.
We all agree that there are a lot of vaccinated people getting infected, right?
We're all on that page.
A lot of vaccinated people are getting infected.
So here's what he says.
Because if 40 to 60 percent of all infections are coming from fully vaccinated people, He concludes that the mandates seem superfluous.
Do you think the fact that vaccinated people also get infections, and quite frequently, does the fact that they're vaccinating make the mandate seem superfluous?
Now hold on, hold on.
I didn't say is the mandate a good idea in your opinion.
That's not the question. So you're not judging whether mandates are good or bad, all right?
Nobody's judging mandates.
I know your opinion on mandates.
I don't like them. Most of you don't like them.
So we're not talking about whether mandates are good or bad.
That's not the topic. The topic is whether the fact that many vaccinated people get infections, does that make a mandate senseless?
Is that fact important to the decision?
I see yeses.
I see lots of yeses.
That that's important to the decision.
I see one now, but mostly yeses.
So most people are agreeing with Justin that a mandate is superfluous.
Now, you know that superfluous means completely unnecessary, right?
Everybody got that?
That the mandate...
Would have no effect, basically.
Have no effect.
If so many vaccinated people are getting infected.
How many people think that's a good conclusion?
So there's somebody here who still thinks I like mandates.
How could you be so misinformed?
I've only said it every single time I've been on livestream.
I think every single time I've said I oppose mandates.
Because enough people are vaccinated.
All right, here's the problem I have with that.
The reason that these airlines want people to get vaccinated has nothing to do with how many of them got infected.
It's just not part of the decision.
So it seems like cognitive dissonance to imagine it even matters.
Because here's the calculation.
That if you are vaccinated, you're unlikely to die, and you're far less likely to spread it.
Now, those two things are agreed by science, right?
I can't... I mean, I haven't tested it myself, but science is very clear, assuming they're right, very clear that it takes your risk of death down to trivial, and your risk of spreading it is much less.
I see James say, wrong.
So there are people who will be on...
Yeah, false. I'm seeing Ochango says...
So here's my challenge to you.
I'm seeing that my audience is split on this.
My understanding is that it's really, really clear, like super clear.
Way, way clear, like multiples clear.
Like the clearest thing you could ever know, the vaccinations reduce your risk and the amount that you spread.
Somebody's saying marginal.
I'm saying that's completely wrong.
That it's not marginal, it's more like 7 to 1, 11 to 1, 200 to 1.
I think I read it's like 200 times more likely you'll spread it if you're not vaccinated.
200 times. I don't know if that's right.
But say it's 11 times.
Or 10 times.
Whatever it is, it's not close, right?
So the rat race says, LOL, shark jumped.
Am I jumping the shark by telling you something you didn't know?
Because most of you are actually confused by the fact that lots of people get infected while vaccinated, and therefore the vaccinations don't have a purpose.
That is so wrong, according to science.
Now, if science is wrong, well, I guess we all got fooled.
But you do know that they're unanimous, right?
It is unanimous.
Let me say it again. I'm pretty sure that even the doctors who are the rogue doctors who are telling you it's a bad idea to get vaccinated, and you watch a lot of them, right?
How many of you have watched doctors say, hey, I'm not so sure about these vaccinations?
You know, the rogue doctors.
A lot of them say that.
But as far as I know, I think even the rogues agree that you're far less likely to die from COVID as opposed to the vaccine itself.
And that your risk of spreading it is way, way less.
I think those are things that even the critics agree with, by the way.
So here's my challenge to you.
I say that even the experts who are anti-vax would agree with the statement that the vaccine reduces your risk of COVID and your risk of spreading it vastly.
Even the critics. So that's my challenge to you.
Find out any critic...
Somebody says, Israel, that's been debunked.
I know you've read news stories that say the opposite, but they've all been debunked.
Go check it yourself.
You do the research.
You won't find any experts who disagree with me.
So, since I know that Justin...
Who I was talking about here.
Since I know him to be someone who's following this topic closely, and also, you know, a smart guy, I feel as if his previous skepticism is maybe triggering him into cognitive dissonance.
Now, as I've argued before, you need a trigger.
There has to be something that makes your worldview not make sense that triggers the cognitive dissonance.
I would argue I don't have that trigger.
Because as far as I know, I haven't predicted anything that was wrong.
Or at least relative to this specific topic.
Obviously, I've predicted things that were wrong.
Oh, somebody says I got vaccinated.
Well, that's a good...
Would that be a trigger?
Would it be a trigger to think that I was right?
Because here... So that was a good...
That's a good comment. Did you catch that?
Somebody said that I'm vaccinated and that could be my trigger because I made a decision and therefore I have to be consistent with my decision.
But here's my defense of that.
My defense is that I don't know that I made the right decision.
Hear that clearly.
I took what I thought was a calculated risk that had a risk of going wrong in either direction.
So I'm open to the fact that I made the wrong decision or that new information would make it look like a bad or worse decision than it was.
I'm completely open to that.
There's nothing that would change my, I don't know, view of myself if I turned down to be completely wrong on the vaccination stuff.
Because, to me, that would be interesting.
I would admit it immediately.
I wouldn't be embarrassed.
Because I just don't feel embarrassment for stuff like that.
And I've said from the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people are going to be really wrong.
Don't hold it against them.
We're all doing the best we can.
We're guessing. We're doing the best we can.
And so I put myself in the same category that I put others in, which is, yeah, we're going to get some stuff wrong.
And people might die.
Literally, I could be killing people.
Literally. Literally. Because if I've said something that persuaded somebody to make a choice they wouldn't have made and it turned out to be the wrong choice, I could be killing people right now.
And that's not even a little bit hyperbolic.
So I'll tell you what protects me a little bit from cognitive dissonance.
And again, how would I know?
But I'm open to being wrong and embrace it, and I don't have to protect against it.
So I don't have an ego wall that says, oh, if I'm wrong, this is going to be bad for me.
I don't. If I'm wrong, I'm just wrong.
I'll talk about something else.
I'm pretty sure I can live with that.
VAX does not reduce the spread.
This is what Right Lane Bandit says.
In all caps, VAX does not reduce the spread.
It reduces death. Get educated.
Okay, let me say this as clearly as possible.
All the experts disagree with you.
There's nothing you could Google that would agree with you.
Nothing. Nothing.
There's no expert that has your opinion.
Even the people who agree with you that you shouldn't get vaccinated don't have that opinion.
I'm seeing Bud say, Bandit is right.
All right, so here's your challenge.
Find me a...
Some scientists who are not in some sketchy blog site, you know, some credible-looking thing that suggests that all the experts are wrong.
And see if he can change my mind.
All right? Change my mind.
No, Dr.
Bhattacharya does not say that.
Nope. Nope.
All the ones you think say that are saying something different.
I think that might be the confusion.
Because there are people who are anti-vax, so I'm not saying there are no anti-vax people.
I'm saying that the reason they're anti-vax is that they think there's more risk from the vaccination than the COVID. And I'm not even arguing at that point, because I wouldn't know one way or the other.
There are other reasons for anti-vax, right.
There are other reasons, and they're not the ones I'm talking about right now.
Yeah, we're not talking about natural immunity, anything.
All right, so I feel that most of you are being triggered into cognitive dissonance, and this is what's going to happen.
Here's how you can tell. Those of you who have been triggered into cognitive dissonance, if in fact that's what's happening, it looks like it.
It looks, like, really clear.
Let me say it as clearly as possible.
I really know how to spot cognitive dissonance.
It's been my hobby for decades.
I really, really am good at spotting it, I think, in other people.
Again, nobody can spot it in themselves.
But I would say that I'm as close as you can get to an expert as spotting it in the wild.
And this is definitely it.
If I'm wrong about this, I'm wrong about everything.
This is cognitive dissonance.
Now, here's how you can tell.
Most of you will misinterpret what I'm saying.
You're going to interpret it as being pro-vaccination.
Nope. Nope.
I did not say that.
I never encourage you to get vaccinated.
Hear it clearly. But many of you will think that's exactly what you heard.
That I said the vaccinations stop all spread.
Nope. Nope.
Never said that. Said the opposite.
So watch how the people who think they're disagreeing with me are going to be disagreeing with an illusion of what I said.
And they're going to be positive they're right because they're accurately disagreeing with an illusion.
But they're not disagreeing with me.
And the ones in all caps...
All the people in all caps are in cognitive dissonance.
I guarantee that. I can promise you that.
The all caps people are having an experience that their world is blowing up right now.
All right. I think that's enough on that topic.
Way too much. So Beyonce is in a commercial for Tiffany and apparently they turned her white and Now, I don't know what the real story is, but in the video, her skin is lightened to the point where it would be hard to detect if she has any African-American influence.
And it looks like it's lightened to me.
I mean, I don't know if it's makeup or the camera work, but she's sitting next to Jay-Z, who looks exactly like Jay-Z. Like, he doesn't look like he's been lightened.
Well, she sure did.
And I think Tiffany's going to have some explaining to do on that.
Rasmussen asked, how confident are you that Joe Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of president?
What do you think people said?
Here's what they said. 41% are either very confident or somewhat confident that Joe Biden is up to it, physically and mentally.
41%. That's pretty high, isn't it?
Yeah. How many of them were very confident?
Very confident.
Not somewhat confident, but very confident.
And so it's within the 41%.
The very confidence were 27%.
Huh.
27% are very confident.
Very confident that Joe Biden's 100%.
Yeah, I'm laughing because the regular viewers know I always point out that every poll seems to have 25% of morons.
You'd have to be a fucking moron to think that Joe Biden is right on the ball.
Now, I'm okay with the people who say they're somewhat confident.
Somewhat confident. I think that's enough of a hedge.
I'll give you that. That just sounds like somebody who prefers their person in the office.
But 58% were not confident in Joe Biden, one way or the other, strongly or weakly, not confident.
And 2% were unsure.
2% were unsure.
Can't we add them to the not so sure that he's...
If you're unsure, shouldn't you have answered that you're not confident?
What does unsure mean?
So apparently we found the 2% who are the dumbest people in the world.
If you're unsure, you're unsure.
Apparently they don't know what confident means.
Are you confident? No, I'm unsure.
Okay, so you're not confident?
No! I didn't say that, I just said I'm unsure.
Oh well. Rasmussen also asked, is Biden doing the job of president, or are others making the decision for him?
How do you think this went?
53% say others are making the decision.
You realize that must include at least a number of independents and or Democrats to get to 53%.
38% say he is doing the job.
Okay. So Ron DeSantis is opening up some ports in Florida to help ease the backlog in California.
So it turns out that all these problems that they have in California...
I guess they don't have them in Florida.
So does that give you any pause?
Do you think the truck drivers in Florida are more pro-vaccination?
Do they do fewer hits of meth in Florida?
Can they get better truck parts in Florida?
They have more trucks?
I don't know. None of this is quite fitting, is it?
Now, I'm not so sure that whatever Ron DeSantis is going to do in Florida will make that much difference.
So it might be a slight uptick.
So he might be making more political hay out of it than is really warranted.
But let me say this about that.
Ron DeSantis surfs the headlines and the zeitgeist better than I've ever seen.
Apparently he has a political strategy that I consider brilliant.
This is just one of the best things I've ever seen.
And you don't really get a sense of it until you see how consistent he is over time.
Which is that there's some national story of interest and that he finds the populist way to approach it.
Or the helpful way, or the smart way, or the scientific way, or the better strategy, protecting the old people first, whatever.
So he's just the master of inserting himself into the story that's already there.
He can insert himself into any story and make himself look like the only smart person in the room.
Over and over again.
This is brilliant.
Political. Now, again, I don't know if any of the things he's doing make any difference at all.
I really don't.
I don't even have much of an opinion on the specifics of his policies.
I'm just saying that I've never seen anybody do politics better than this.
This is the best politics I've ever seen.
This is better than Trump.
Sorry. Because Trump causes trouble...
To get attention. And it's very successful.
Made him president, right? But if Trump didn't exist...
DeSantis would walk into the nomination.
He would just walk into the nomination.
Don't you think? Like, who would it be if it's not DeSantis?
It's just a great strategy.
All right. Neil Cavuto.
You know him from Fox News.
Has COVID. Now...
Can somebody give me a fact check?
I know that Neil Cavuto has quite publicly struggled with his weight for a long time.
But in current pictures, he looks like he lost a bunch of weight.
Did he...
And you're saying he also has multiple sclerosis.
He's babbled with that for years, I guess.
But it looked like he lost a bunch of weight.
Can you confirm that? He's...
Oh, I've really come around on DeSantis?
Well, he's still not exciting, but damn, he's good at this stuff.
Yeah, so I'm seeing at least one confirmation there.
But good for him.
So the first part is, if he lost a bunch of weight during the pandemic and he did it for all the right reasons, good for him.
He may have saved his own life.
Now, he was vaccinated, too, so he'll probably be fine.
But I'd just like to call out anybody who did the right thing during the pandemic.
And the right thing was to get fit.
If you didn't do that, you played the pandemic really wrong.
And if you didn't add any skills while you had a weird opening to do it, you played it wrong.
It looks like he might have played it right if he lost weight.
Tentatively, that's my guess.
And the other thing that makes him kind of important to the story is that he is a walking comorbidity, or people may think of it that way, because he's had public health problems.
Somebody said he's had cancer recovery, too.
I think that's true. So if he does well because he's vaccinated, that's going to be a story.
And I think that would be influential.
All right. CNN has good context for a change.
You're going to hate this.
This is where I'm going to lose most of you.
First of all, CNN has some good context on a story.
I know you don't like that.
But when do you hear it?
You're not going to like this at all.
And you're also going to say that all the numbers in the story are wrong.
All right? You ready? How many people...
Let me do a test with you. How many people are confirmed...
Now, confirmed is the operative word here.
How many are confirmed to have died in the United States from the vaccination itself?
Let's call it the COVID shot, not a vaccination.
How many people in the United States have died in the entire pandemic so far from the shot?
Go. Zero is wrong.
Three? Somebody says three.
Really? Three.
15,000, I'm saying thousands.
Now, I'm talking confirmed, remember?
So those of you who are guessing thousands, you know those are not thousands that are confirmed.
So just confirmed.
I'm saying 30, 17, 2,000, less than 10, less than 100, 18,000, 25,000, 666, 52, maybe 10.
Here's the number that CNN reports.
Three. Three.
Does that match your assumption?
Do you believe that three people are confirmed?
Doesn't mean only three.
Just confirmed. Do you believe that?
That's what CNN is reporting.
How about that VAERS database?
Because you know there's all kinds of stuff in there, right?
That's where people report the bad reactions to vaccinations.
Here's the second question.
How many deaths are reported to VAERS? Remember, there are three that are confirmed, but how many have been reported to VAERS? Go.
The VAERS says how many people died from the COVID shot.
Go. How many?
I see thousands, thousands.
Anybody? YouTube?
42? 1,000?
14,000? 3.5 trillion?
Good guess, but wrong.
Three. The answer is 8,600.
So 8,600 deaths have been reported to the VAERS database.
Three have been confirmed.
Three. Now, is the problem that we're really, really slow at confirming things, or is the problem that they're not real?
I don't know. Suppose they're real.
Suppose every death reported to VAERS was real.
How bad would that be?
If every death reported that virus was real, and that seems deeply unlikely, if they were all real, would that tell you that, and that's all you knew, would that tell you to get the shot or not?
Here's your next question.
If 8,600 people died, and if that were real, and we all know that's not real, but if it were real, would that tell you not to get the shot?
Somebody says yes. Yes.
I see some nos.
I see some yeses.
Yeses. All right, well, here's how you could have seen that in context.
390 million doses have been administered, and that amounts to 0.0021%, or about two deaths for every 100,000 doses, which is way less than how many people die of COVID. Remember, the all-caps people are always in cognitive dissonance.
So if you're going to type in all-caps, just know I'm calling you out.
All right. So this is CNN's reporting, by the way.
This is not me saying any of this.
So according to CNN, if you looked at all the doses given, there are only two deaths for every 100,000, but how many COVID deaths are there for every 100,000?
So this is CNN. Two deaths from every 100,000 doses, even if the VAERS database is correct.
It would only be two for every 100,000.
How many does COVID kill out of 100,000?
If it's true that the vaccination is two, how many does COVID kill?
220. That's 100 times worse.
Two versus over 200.
So if these numbers were right, even if the VAERS database was accurate, and you know it isn't, it's way, way high.
Well, it could be low, I suppose, but you know it's not accurate.
According to these numbers, it would be 100 times smarter to get the vaccination if this was the only criteria, and it's not, right?
I get it, there are other criteria.
But if this were the only criteria, the VAERS database risk versus the COVID risk itself, it wouldn't even be close.
It would be 100 to 1.
Cassandra says, Scott, you're in deep dissonance, and I wouldn't know.
So if you believe that the problem is my end, let me say as clearly as possible, I wouldn't know.
That's what cognitive dissonance does.
But if the problem was on your end, you wouldn't know.
Can we agree on that?
If the problem's on your end, you don't know.
If the problem's on my end, I don't know.
That's what it is. That's the definition of cognitive dissonance.
All right. So I'm not suggesting that you should get vaccinated.
Can I say that?
I am not suggesting that you get vaccinated.
Nor am I suggesting that you don't.
Do you know why? Why the hell would you take my advice to get vaccinated?
Can you think of anything dumber than that?
Well, I mean, seriously, what would be dumber than taking my advice on your medical situation?
Right? I mean, I'll tell you to drink coffee and exercise.
You know, I feel safe about that.
But don't take my advice and don't let me persuade you in any way.
And also, don't believe anything this CNN reports.
I'm reading CNN's report.
Let me give you an example of how bad this CNN data is.
You ready? And I know if Andres is watching this, he's already screaming at his screen.
I read this, and you probably missed it.
But it said it would be 390 million doses administered.
They're actually calculating the deaths on doses versus people.
What? So they're acting as though your risk per dose is the one that you're looking at, not your risk of being vaccinated versus not being vaccinated.
Now... It's not crazy to do that because your death probably does follow a specific dose.
But it's not going to follow the second one, is it?
How many people died when they got the second dose?
Zero? Maybe?
Do you think that people lived through the first dose and then the second or the third one took them out?
I don't think so. I don't think so.
So this is off by at least 100%.
So CNN's numbers are off by at least 100%.
And it still makes the case.
Let me say it again.
CNN numbers are probably off by 100%.
And it still makes the case that it's way smarter to get vaccinated than not.
Not even close. Even if their numbers are off by 100%.
Even if the VAERS is off by 100%.
A thousand percent. It's still, according to their numbers, way smarter to get vaccinated.
That's not me saying.
I'm talking about what other people are saying, right?
Only in the short term, somebody says.
Yes. So if you were looking at your full risk of getting the shots versus not, you would have to look at the long term.
That's still unknown. So as clearly as I can say it, let me summarize again that I'm not telling you it's risk-free or risky.
I don't know. Don't listen to me.
I'm just telling you that you might be looking at the wrong stuff to make your decision.
Wouldn't you rather look at the right stuff?
I mean, if you don't want to get the vaccination, you have plenty of argument.
Plenty of argument. You don't need the bad arguments.
So don't use the VAERS database as your argument, because that's a bad argument.
Here's a good argument.
You want a good argument for not getting vaccinated?
Again, this is not me advising it, but I will advise you what a good argument looks like.
A good argument looks like, I'm young and healthy, And I don't trust the government or anything they say about the vaccinations, so therefore none of the data, pro or con, is useful to me, because I don't trust any of it, and nobody knows what will happen in the long term.
That's your best argument.
As soon as you depart from that into statistics, you're just wrong.
You're just wrong. Because the statistics all come from official sources.
The official sources are all in the same direction.
So if you're using any kind of credible official numbers, they all point in the same direction.
And that's not your argument.
The argument you can make is subjective.
Don't use data. Data doesn't work in your favor.
But there is a strong subjective argument that the people who are recommending it can't be trusted.
Is anything wrong with that argument?
The people recommending that you put this in your body can't be trusted.
That's it. You don't need more than that.
They can't be trusted.
If you need 100 examples of why you shouldn't trust them, I can give them to you.
But that's all you need.
It's coming from a source I don't trust.
Period. Hasn't been tested in the long term?
Why would I take your word for it?
Right? So there is...
There is a good argument for not getting vaccinated, but it's not based on any statistics.
It's not based on numbers.
There is no numbers-based argument for not getting vaccinated.
Nor, you could argue, is there a numbers-based argument for getting vaccinated?
Because it's all unreliable numbers.
But at least the unreliable numbers are all in the same direction.
You know, the official ones.
The experts are on the roof.
Yeah. All right.
Yeah, and if you want to make exceptions for this or that, that makes sense.
So, for those of you who are angry that my opinion disagrees with yours, it probably doesn't.
I'm anti-mandate because of freedom and because you have a choice of getting vaccinated.
And while I do understand the basic concept of...
You know, the mandate is so we'll all be protected from each other.
We're dangerous to each other all the time.
You get that, right?
We are all dangerous to each other all the time.
If we have sex, we're dangerous to each other.
If we get in a car, we buy a gun, even though we don't plan to shoot anybody, it's a gun.
So we live in a world in which we're all being dangerous to people all the time.
As long as that's our standard...
No mandate. Now, if this were polio, I'd probably have a different opinion.
But given the specific nature of this pandemic, I don't see the argument for a mandate.
Now, some of you asked me, Scott, are you going to get a third booster?
No. And again, you should not follow my model.
Nobody should look at what I'm doing to inform them how to do it.
That would be the wrong way to approach a medical decision.
So anyway, take care of yourself.
Don't listen to me. But don't use the numbers as your argument if you're anti-vaccination.
It just doesn't work. All the numbers are against you.
All of them. All the numbers are against you.
Doesn't mean the numbers are right, right?
So I want you to hear that clearly.
I'm not saying the numbers are right, the official numbers.
Probably they're wrong like every other official number.
But they're all in the same direction, so just don't use that argument.
Oh, about the booster, yes.
My decision to get a booster is undecided because...
Oh, yes, and I'll be on Viva and Barnes later today.
So look for me on Vivian Burns later today.
Circular argument.
What's the circular part?
Numbers are all made up.
They might be. Oh, so just finishing up on the booster.
So I'm going to make the same process I did to decide on getting the vaccination.
Since I got the vaccination late, my immunity is a little higher than people who got it earlier, so I have some time.
So I'm going to wait as long as possible to have the most information.
If I don't hear any information that is startlingly negative, I'm inclined to get the booster.
Just because there's a consistency thing about it.
If there's no new information, why wouldn't I use the same decision?
Because there's no new information.
But, am I comfortable with it?
No. Does that help you?
Am I comfortable getting a booster?
Nope. Was I comfortable getting the first shots?
No. You shouldn't be either.
How can you be comfortable with it?
Like I said, the people who are telling us to do this are all liars.
They're all undependable.
But you had to do something, right?
There's a risk of getting vaccinated.
There's a risk of not. You just had to make a decision.
And, you know, not getting vaccinated is a decision.
We all made decisions without the right amount of information.
Everybody agree with that?
That all of us made the decision without enough information.
We kind of guessed. And then we imagined that we used data after the fact, but we didn't.
