Episode 1576 Scott Adams: The Coming Collapse of China and More Good News
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Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Local Afghan market experience
Lauren Boebert's apology to Ilhan Omar
Top 2024 Democrat contenders
US investment in China
Omicron danger indications
Dangerous COVID variants
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that's ever happened to you and to anybody.
Not only in the real world, but in your imagination.
The metaverse and everywhere else you can imagine.
It's just the best thing that's ever happened.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams and it features the simultaneous sip.
What do you need for that?
Well, you need a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or a chalice or a canteen, jug or a glass, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure The dopamine at the end of the day makes everything better.
Really. Except China.
It's all the simultaneous. Something happens now.
Go. Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah, that's good.
I think that makes my memes more delicious.
Alright, I have a weird left field question for you.
Has anybody discovered that there's an exact temperature, mostly for indoor living, at which your body shuts down, and your brain doesn't work, and you can't even have sex?
Like, your body will move.
For me, it's exactly 76 degrees.
Somebody says 58 degrees, and their brain shuts down.
Yeah, now, I assume that there's lots of individual difference, but I've been tracking this forever, and at 76 degrees, I can't think, and I can't even have sex at any age.
It's not even age-related.
But at 76, I can't function.
Now, I would recommend, if you've never noticed...
That there's a temperature where it just falls off a ledge.
And here's the interesting thing, at least in my case.
It's not like 74 degrees I start feeling it, because I don't.
It's like 76 degrees I'll be sitting there thinking, I can't do anything.
And I'll get up and I'll go to the thermometer and check.
It's always 76 degrees.
It has been for years and years.
So anyway, I'll just put that out there as a helpful tip.
If you feel yourself shutting down, just go check the temperature.
And then check it again every time you feel that feeling where you just can't think, just can't get anything done, can't do anything.
Yeah, humidity would be...
So where I am, it tends to be lower humidity, so maybe my temperature is always more consistent.
All right, I got a little story for you yesterday.
Christina, my wife and I went to a small Afghan food market locally.
I'd never been there before.
And here was our experience.
We got our little ingredients that we're going to make some kind of amazing soup, I guess.
Christina gets in line, and I'm just sort of hanging around with her.
And we're the only ones in line, right?
There are two cash registers, but only one of them has somebody attending.
And we get in line at the one cash register.
And the guy indicates that we should move to the other cash register.
So we didn't really know why, but...
Doesn't really matter why, because there was nobody in line.
So we just walk over to the empty cash register, assuming that either that man will walk over and help us, or somebody else will soon be there.
But instead, we just sort of waited there.
And here's the weird thing.
Meanwhile, a whole line forms at the other cash register, the one where he just said he's not going to help us.
And he starts waiting on people.
And it's one person after another, and there's like this long line, and he's waiting on them.
But he told us not to be there.
We had to be at this other cash register with nobody at it.
Does anybody know why?
Yeah, some of you already guessed.
It was a man at the cash register, and Christine is a woman.
You wouldn't wait on her.
We had to go to the special woman-only cash register...
And when we were waiting, I was waiting, you know, shoulder to shoulder with her, as if either of us were the customer.
And when I finally figured out what was going on, because there was a woman in traditional Islamic garb, came to our cash register.
And as soon as she did, I looked at the other line, and I realized it was all men.
Have you ever been in a grocery store with a long line at the cash register that was only men?
It's the first time I've ever seen it.
They literally wouldn't wait on her.
They wouldn't take her money because she was a woman.
Her woman had to be taken by another woman.
So now I'm standing at the cash register and the woman in Islamic garb walks up.
And, you know, I'm the one with the wallet.
You know, Christina wasn't carrying her wallet at the moment.
So I've got to pay, but I can't pay this woman.
So how do you buy your food?
So obviously I gave the credit card to Christina and just, you know, backed away from the situation out of respect.
And so Christina paid and everything was fine.
But I never quite...
Have you ever experienced that?
And I have to admit that I didn't feel put out by it.
Which is strange.
Because you would imagine that I would be.
Here's what I felt. I just felt that I had entered another culture, and I was actually quite happy to conform to their preferences.
So I didn't have any problem with it at all, because I understood it to be important to them.
If it's important to them, it's no big deal for me.
Of course I'm going to be respectful for it.
So it's not my business how they do their business.
Now, I mentioned that the woman didn't seem to have a problem with it.
I don't know what her private feelings were.
But they seemed happy, so I didn't have a problem with it.
Anyway, you would think I would.
I imagine if it were more inconvenient, I would.
But I think people can be people, and we can respect that.
Anyway, I'm going to add to my NPC spotting list.
Here's how you can tell you're dealing with a non-player character, someone who is not capable of independent thought.
I've told you before that if they mention the Matrix movie or Soil and Green movie, they're probably an NPC, but I'm going to add jumping the shark when used in the wrong way, which is anybody who has a new idea...
Anybody who does anything different, well, you're jumping the shark now.
NPC. Because everybody's doing new stuff all the time.
Everybody isn't jumping the shark.
Sometimes it's progress.
I wouldn't even be doing what I'm doing now if I hadn't jumped the shark, right, from cartoonist to, I don't know, whatever I am now.
I mean, jumping the shark is what you should all be doing, looking to get out of your domain, try something risky, etc., I'm going to take a little aside here and give you some advice that will completely change the experience of some of you.
Just a few. Maybe 5%.
The rest of you, just watch.
Just watch this experience, okay?
How many of you have a problem with sadness or, let's say, depression, but maybe not the full clinical kind, for which I don't have any answers?
But, you know, you're depressed, as you use the word commonly, but let's say not in the full medical sense, where you literally can't get out of bed.
How many of you have days like that?
All of you, right? You have phases like that, periods like that.
Let me give you a way out.
Okay? If you're just in the doldrums, there's just nothing good going on, you just can't find a way to get happy, here's your way out.
Increase your risk. Do something that you wouldn't do unless you knew you were going to be dead tomorrow.
Live your life like you know you're going to be dead tomorrow.
Because if you're unhappy, you might as well be dead tomorrow.
Right? The whole point of life is to get some enjoyment out of it.
If you're not getting enjoyment out of life, ramp up your risk.
Now, when I say risk, I don't mean physical risk.
You know, don't do extreme sports necessarily.
Maybe, for some of you.
But do the thing that you weren't going to do before.
Walk up to that person that you were too afraid to ask out, and you get shot down.
Remember, imagine that you're going to be dead tomorrow.
Do you mind that you got turned down for a date?
Well, not if you're going to be dead tomorrow.
No. No, it doesn't matter.
You can change your frame from, oh, everything's bad and I'm in a bad mood, to, wait a minute, I just got a free pass to do all the scary things I couldn't do before.
For about 5% of you, that changed your life.
The rest of you are wondering, I don't know, would that work?
5% of you...
Just change your life.
I guarantee it.
Just tell yourself you're not sad, you just got a free pass to do things you couldn't do before.
Because what's the difference?
What's the downside? Is it going to make you sad?
Nope. You're already sad.
Have I told you before that when I have a bad day, like, you know, you have these bad days, you know it's going to pass, but you're having a really bad day, you just have to get through it?
When I have a bad day, I fire people that I wanted to fire anyway.
Now, if you work for me, I'm not planning to fire anybody.
I'm talking in general.
In general, I do unpleasant things when I'm already feeling bad, because that's the perfect combination.
I'm not going to feel any worse.
I might as well do those things that I knew were going to make me feel bad, because it won't make me feel any worse.
It's already a bad day.
So, the same strategy.
If you're sad, sad, sad, and you just can't get out of it, go do something that you were scared shitless of five minutes ago.
Scare the shit out of yourself.
See what happens. One time out of, I don't know, three or five, something great might happen.
And the other times, at least you'll wake yourself up.
So, give that a try.
Anyway... Are you watching the story about Congresswoman Robert?
So she told a joke in public that was filmed in which she suggested that Ilhan Omar might be a terrorist.
That was the essence of the joke.
Details don't matter.
Now, she ended up apologizing, but people had some opinions about whether she should have.
It's a common opinion on the right to say you should never apologize, because then you'll just be apologizing for everything all the time, and you're basically giving power to the people who demand apologies.
And I have some sympathy for that.
I think that's a reasonably good...
Trump-like strategy.
You know, I'm big on apologies if the issue doesn't matter.
If you can make a...
In your personal life, if you can make something go away with an apology, go ahead and do it.
But politically, I think apologies probably are just a transfer of power for no reason.
But here's my take on this.
Did we conflate our standard for how we treat public figures with how we would treat each other?
Because that's not the same.
If a public figure told a joke about you, a private citizen, suggesting that you were a terrorist because of your ethnicity, that would be pretty bad.
That would be pretty bad.
You don't want your public servants, elected officials, to be mocking private citizens for their ethnicity, even if it's a joke, right?
There's no joke that's going to be funny enough that it's going to be okay for our elected officials to make fun of a private citizen.
For ethnicity, anyway.
But that's not the standard we use for other elected officials.
You can say basically anything about an elected official.
How many times has Trump been called Hitler?
How many times have Republicans in general been called Hitler?
Is anybody apologizing for that?
Is anybody asking them to apologize?
No! Because it's the standard for talking about public figures.
If Boebert or anybody else wants to call any member of Congress a terrorist, no matter what, because of their ethnicity...
Because that's why Trump is called Hitler, right?
That's why Republicans are called Hitler.
It's because of their ethnicity. If they were not white and male...
A lot less Hitler calling, don't you think?
There'd probably be some.
But to be a lot less of it, and to pretend that calling somebody Hitler is unrelated to their ethnicity is a little disingenuous, right?
Because we don't, you know, call the black leaders Hitler.
I mean, sometimes, but it's, you know, that'd be the exception.
So I don't think that Boebert, did I call her Roebert?
I don't think Boebert should have apologized.
I don't think it's a big deal that she did either way.
But as long as calling Trump Hitler is okay, we can call Omar a terrorist because she's a...
A political figure. And she has said things that would make ordinary people suggest she has some, let's say, not enough disavowing of the terrorists, let's say.
Yeah, it's a reasonable opinion.
You could debate it, but it's in the reasonable zone.
But here's my take on it, just to get you all mad.
I don't see much difference between the far left and the far right.
I think both of them are racist ideologies, and I think they're not practical ideologies.
Now, I would go further and say that everybody on the far left has a far right doppelganger who's just sort of like the same thing but is racist against different groups.
So they're not identical.
They're similarly racist and similarly impractical.
So you could play this game at home, but I think Bober is just AOC with a gun.
That's all I see. Now, I'm pro-AOC as an influencer, as a persuasive person, as a powerful entity in the country.
She does have the whole package.
Bober has a pretty good package, too.
Let's say the marketing of herself is pretty strong.
They're both pretty persuasive in their different ways.
But, yeah, everybody's going to say it's a bad comparison.
I'm aware of that, right?
I'm aware that you don't like this.
But I'm giving you my opinion.
You can't really argue with an opinion.
It's subjective. So if you say, hey, in my opinion, they're completely different, I'm not even going to argue with you.
I'd say, okay. That would be how you see it.
And that's perfectly acceptable.
But I'm telling you how I see it.
You can't argue it.
It's literally a subjective opinion.
That they're basically the same person.
Boebert sounds like she's tough on immigrants, which some people will interpret as racist.
AOC says she's tough on white people, which reasonable people feel is racist.
It's the same person to me.
And in some ways, Ilhan Omar is just Steve King, but with better headwear.
By the way, if I may give a compliment to Ilhan Omar, because I'm generally a critic, and I always advise you that if you can't give a compliment...
To somebody on the other team, maybe you're not as unbiased as you'd like to be.
Here's my compliment to Ilan Omar.
I really like her style.
Like her actually fashion style.
You know, she's always within the...
Well, I don't know if she's always...
But within the sort of Islamic, westernized look, she's really good at fashion.
Anyway... So I don't see much difference between the far left and the far right.
And I think that we're being hypnotized into imagining that we should be siding with either of them.
A Daily Beast columnist named Wajahat Ali, he tweeted that nothing the squad has said or done is remotely as extreme or radical as Boebert, Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Trump. To which I say, what?
What? Are you kidding me?
You don't think that they've been as extreme or as radical on the far left?
What news are you watching?
How could you possibly think that?
Now, again, he's expressing an opinion, and it's subjective.
So I can't say it's wrong, because it's subjective.
But it sure looks the same to me.
I mean, they look about equally extreme or radical, but just in completely different ways.
Anyway, here's my favorite story of the day.
If you don't follow tennis, you've never heard of this gentleman.
But Nick Kiergios, he's a young male tennis star.
He has been in the top 20, but he's struggling a little bit.
And part of the reason he's struggling is that he claims he's too horny to play tennis.
No, seriously. Seriously.
He said he was too horny to play tennis.
Because apparently he goes on the road and then he's away from his girlfriend or wife or whatever it is for months at a time.
And, you know, allegedly he's not cheating on her, apparently.
And he said out loud, this is not even my interpretation.
He basically said it's getting more difficult to play.
I was going to say hard, but then you were going to make bad jokes.
It's getting difficult to play because he's too horny.
Now, I'm really in favor of this excuse because most excuses you've heard so many times and you're like, oh yeah, traffic was bad.
That's why you were late, right?
The traffic was bad.
Not because you started out late and everybody knew the traffic was bad, but because the traffic was bad.
Do I have chocolate on me?
Damn it. I always have chocolate on the edge of my mouth when I do these things.
But the reason I'm so happy about this story is that I plan to use this for a lot of different excuses.
For example, if I fail to meet my comic deadline for Dilbert, and my editor calls me and says, you know, you missed deadline, I'm going to say, I know I missed the deadline, but in my defense, I was way too horny to draw a comic.
Way too horny. And I think that has to mean something.
All right, so let's normalize that excuse.
I like that one. So there's a poll I saw on, I guess, Fox News.
It was reporting on a poll that said Kamala Harris is the top choice for Democrats if Biden doesn't run again.
Top choice. The lowest approval in history for a vice president.
Top choice. Oh, but wait.
I don't want you to think that the Democrats don't have a deep bench, because here are the other people who also did well.
And by the way, the top choice only gets 13% support on their own team.
13%. Top choice.
Here are the ones that are not the top choice.
Bernie Sanders, who will be, I believe...
273 years old when the election happens.
Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Yang, and Pete Buttigieg also were named.
So that's their bench.
Now, of this group, I would say that Michael Bloomberg at least looks like a serious person.
But how old is Bloomberg now?
Isn't he like 107 or something?
That's it? Give me an age on Michael Bloomberg.
Somebody Google that quickly.
Is he 80? He's not 69.
He's got to be older than 69.
Isn't he? All right, well, somebody will have that number in a moment.
79, I'm seeing.
I don't know. He's too old.
So anyway, the Democrats have absolutely no bench.
How in the world is anybody going to keep Trump from being president again?
Like, what would have to happen?
There's no way he's going to be beaten straight up.
Am I right? So we're seeing Bloomberg at 79, almost 80.
Um... This is the weakest bench I've seen in a long time.
Pretty weak. Because the people on here are proven losers.
We're too old.
Yeah, now look at the Republican side.
Imagine DeSantis.
Strong choice.
Imagine Tom Cotton.
Strong choice.
Rand Paul. Serious choice.
Trump, of course. I mean, I feel like you could go down the line and you could find, you know, a reasonable number of Republicans who have a shot at it.
Yeah, Kristi Noem.
Oh, you know, Newsom is interesting because he was not on the list.
See, you know, we're all critics of, not all of us, but many of us here are critics of Governor Newsom, including myself, but he's a really good politician.
He's got the look and the play.
So if he got serious about running for president, I think he could make a dent, actually.
Let's talk about China.
So my favorite NBA player of all time so far is N.S. Cantor, who has been dumping on China like crazy, and now he's going after the Olympics.
Yay. NS. He says, quote, shame on organizations like the International Olympic Committee that's setting up an Olympic Games this coming winter in China.
So he's going right after the Olympics.
And China's kind of weak there because...
The tennis star disappearance.
So their top tennis star has semi-disappeared, obviously is under something like a house arrest for speaking out against Chinese leadership.
Specifically, talking about getting raped by a member of leadership.
So, Anes, I am backing you 100%, and I don't think we should attend the Olympics in China.
Or anybody else should. We will probably, but I don't think we should.
In other good anti-China news, China Telecom Americas, which is a telecom services provider in the U.S., is being blocked.
So the FCC is kicking them out.
So they won't be able to do business in the United States anymore because they have ties to China and they lied about where their data was being kept and They have ties to the Chinese government, specifically.
So they were considered not trustworthy.
Now, when I heard that America was going to start to dump on Huawei, you know, the big Chinese telecom company, I immediately bought shares in their competitor, Ericsson.
And those Ericsson shares went down, I think, 16% in just a few weeks.
Now, why is Ericsson stock going down when Huawei, I think its biggest competitor, should be almost approaching extinct in a lot of markets?
What exactly is happening?
I don't give investment advice.
And if you were to take any based on this conversation, it would be a big mistake.
But I don't see why the competition could possibly be down when their biggest competitor is sort of in big trouble.
Anyway, I'm watching that.
There's something I don't know about that market that's happening right now.
Probably a lot. But seeing the United States shutting down Chinese businesses here is good stuff.
But that's not all that's happening.
So I saw a tweet by Dan Harris.
He has some international experience that makes him look qualified to say this.
So there's an article talking about how there's a commission that's looking at shutting down investment from the United States in Chinese government businesses.
Government-connected businesses.
But it looks like maybe...
So this is what Dan says.
He says, within a year at most, the U.S. will have shut down nearly all investment money flowing to China.
Is that real? Now, I'm talking about people investing in their stock market to prop it up.
I'm not talking about companies moving in with production facilities.
I don't know about that.
I don't know if that's slowing down or stopped.
And I'd love to see some news on that.
Can you tell me why there's no news on what companies in the United States have recently decided to do new business in China, as in manufacturing plants?
Why is that not reported?
Maybe the single most important thing we should know.
Am I wrong? Is there anything more important in the world than knowing how many Americans are still moving into China versus whether or not it stopped?
I can't think of anything.
Because even climate change is going to take a while.
But the China problem is a little bit more immediate.
All right. So that's happening.
And... The Jerusalem Post is reporting that apparently there had been some math done at the Peking University about what would happen if China opened up to travel, because China is still locked down for travel.
If China opens up for travel, apparently it will be a pandemic disaster in China.
According to some modelers.
So they can't open up for travel, maybe ever.
What are they going to do?
So China's in a world of hurt.
So they're losing their ability to compete in any company that has a government connection in China.
They're losing their investment from at least the United States in their stock market.
And they can't open up their country, but probably countries will be able to open up.
So how do you bring new business to China?
If you were going to build a manufacturing plant in China, you know that you would have to visit it a lot, right?
If you were going to do it right.
Let's say Apple wanted to open a new or do new business with somebody in China.
They would put an American Apple employee like right on scene checking stuff out.
If you can't travel, I don't know if you can do new business there if there's any physical part of that business because you have to see it.
To believe it. So here's a little difference of experts.
So this Omicron variant, do we know if it's more dangerous or less dangerous yet?
We're thinking it's more virulent or spreads faster than the normal ones, but we don't know if it's more dangerous yet, right?
Because we're seeing some indication, and I would say these would be preliminary reports, that it's way less dangerous than the existing big ones.
But then I saw this comment from Dr.
Eli David. He was quoting the chair of the South African Medical Association who said about the Omicron variant that it may be highly transmissible, but so far the cases we're seeing are extremely mild.
Extremely mild. And then Dr.
David says, this makes a lot of sense because less virulent mutations have greater evolutionary advantage.
Makes sense. And this is exactly how the Spanish flu ended, he says.
Wait, do we know that?
I thought it was still a mystery how the Spanish flu ended.
But is this a true statement?
That we know how the Spanish flu ended and it was because a variant was more transmissible but weaker, so it basically was like a vaccination?
How many of you remember a long time ago that I was wondering why we don't make a variant of our own that's highly transmissible but gives you extremely mild symptoms?
So everybody would just get vaccinated immediately.
Sort of naturally, just by hanging around.
And it turns out that maybe that's a thing, but you have to wait for it as opposed to engineering it.
Right? The tech didn't exist to test the Spanish flu, exactly.
So we wouldn't really know what happened with the Spanish flu, would we?
Or do we just assume that's the only way it could have stopped?
Because I don't think the Spanish flu ever reached herd immunity, did it?
I don't think it did. It just stopped, and we don't know why, right?
Oh, the Dark Horse podcast went over this.
Did Dark Horse conclude that the variants, the weaker variants, were the reason that the dangerous variant died out?
All right, so I'm going to say that that's still a mystery to me.
And then Michael Amina gave us a reminder here that said it's not inevitable that the viruses mutate toward becoming less pathogenic and virulent.
And he says the idea that viruses inevitably become more infectious but less transmissible has been stimulating but should really be put to rest.
So apparently your virus can go in either direction, but wouldn't it be reasonable to assume it goes in both at the same time?
Wouldn't you see, for any massive pandemic, wouldn't you see the virus having some variants that are worse and some that are better?
Better meaning it transmits, but it doesn't make you sick.
Very sick. So I'm a little confused about what is and isn't happening here with these variants, but I'm tentatively going to be of the opinion that That there's no other explanation for how any pandemic ends.
I feel like the weak variant hypothesis has to be the only way they end, right?
I can't think of another way.
So I would think that if you wait long enough, you inevitably get worse ones.
Inevitably. But inevitably you would get ones that would inoculate you forever also, right?
Herd immunity is the end of the virus, Scott.
Well, you're acting...
And then LOL? What's the LOL for?
Because you imagined I said something I didn't, and then you dunked on me in your imagination, and then you're like, ha-ha, LOL. Good job hallucinating and then dunking on your hallucination.
Dr. Drew's been saying this from the beginning.
All right. So I saw an Andy Ngo video montage.
He didn't make it, but he tweeted it.
Of all the Democratic leaders saying that the vaccine was dangerous because it was a Trump vaccine in the early days.
Now, how much trouble has the fake news...
And the Democrats caused by lying about shit.
I mean, how many people have died because of fake news?
It's not zero. Fake news is killing people in a variety of ways.
All right. Here's what I would call true but fake news.
Are you ready? This is now my opinion, so the next stuff I say, you need lots of fact checks on this because it's pretty preliminary.
But you have your Dr.
Malone, a lot of you have heard of.
He's getting a lot of attention on the Internet.
And I believe his take is that the vaccines would cause selection pressure and cause more variants that could be dangerous.
How many of you believe that's the case?
that vaccinations create selection pressure because if something gets out, then, you know, that's really a super bug if it got out past the vaccines.
I'm seeing a lot of yeses.
Yes, yes, yes.
So would you say that it's true that vaccinations create an extra danger of variants?
True or false? Give me a yes or no, in your opinion.
Do vaccinations make the odds of a dangerous variant worse?
Yes or no? See, lots of yeses, but lots of nos.
How could we be disagreeing on such a basic question?
By now. Now, a lot of you are saying, hey, stop talking about the pandemic.
I'm not really talking about the pandemic anymore.
I'm kind of talking about how we're processing information.
That's the interesting part to me.
But look how many people are on different sides of this very basic question.
Does a vaccination cause variants to become more dangerous?
All right? Here's why this is fake news that's real news, in my opinion.
So I need some help on this one, but here's my take.
It's true that vaccinations make variants add selection pressure, meaning that anything that gets out past the vaccination may have a little extra characteristics that would be dangerous.
So I think that's true.
But here's why it's fake and true at the same time.
Here's the twist.
Because if you had no vaccinations, what would happen?
More virus, right?
Everybody agree with that basic statement.
If there are more vaccinations, there are fewer virus.
Because fewer people have it for, you know, a long period of time.
You can still get it, but you get it less often and you don't carry it as long.
So you'd all agree that vaccinations greatly reduce the amount of total virus in the world compared to no vaccinations?
All right. Does anybody disagree with that?
So if you disagree with that, you're just lost.
Yeah, there's one thing that I don't think any experts disagree on.
The vaccinations reduce the total amount of virus in the world.
Now, here are two things that are true.
Getting the vaccination might create some selection pressure.
True. Not having any vaccinations at all would also create more virus, which would create more variants.
Which one is the bigger effect?
True. All the virus in the world raging out of control, and all of the variants that that would create.
Because the more virus, the more variants.
That much science knows.
The more virus, the more variants.
That's pretty much direct, right?
Direct causation.
And so, you have two effects.
One is the vaccination might make the chances of you specifically creating a variant a little bit higher.
But if nobody's vaccinated, the total risk of variance is just off the chart.
So, it's true that vaccinations can create that pressure, but it's also true that if you didn't get vaccinated, it would be way worse with the variance.
That, I believe, is the current scientific opinion.
So, if you see Dr.
Malone say that vaccinations could cause selection pressure and variance, that would be true, But doesn't answer the question.
Somebody says, on the other hand, wouldn't we reach herd immunity faster?
Yes, we would. Yes, we would.
But with what level of death and damage?
All right, shoplifting is out of control in San Francisco, you may have heard.
More stores are going down.
Some security guards have been killed now, defending one of them.
And... The San Francisco Chronicle runs a story where the headline, at least the tweet, was, we explore what police data, especially numbers from one particular corner in the city, can and can't tell us about what is happening.
Seriously? The San Francisco Chronicle is wondering why the looting is happening?
Like, what's the cause of it?
Seriously? Is there anybody who doesn't know the cause of it?
The cause is that the penalties were taken away.
And it became a good business model.
It didn't used to be a good business model to steal stuff, because you'd get caught.
You'd be prosecuted. But now you won't get caught and you won't get prosecuted, or the odds are so low, that now it's just an obvious good thing to do.
You really need a newspaper to do research on this?
I'm pretty sure we know what's going on there.
So the Democrats have literally destroyed retail commerce and won't admit it.
They've destroyed retail, I think forever, and won't admit it.
How in the world can a Democrat ever get elected president again?
How in the world? I don't see any way a Democrat could win the presidency in this context.
It seems impossible.
I mean, Trump would have to declare war on Switzerland or something, wouldn't he?
I mean, what would he have to do to lose this election if he runs?
I'm not convinced he's going to run, but if he does.
All right. So here's a comment I see a lot.
So Shane Hazel said this today.
He tweeted, remember when the vaxxed people weren't going to need beds?
So basically, hearkening back to the fact that we were told the vaccinations would be real vaccinations and blah, blah, blah.
And that way of thinking is so broken.
Because you know what? We can't go back.
It's already done.
It's history. Can't change it.
And what we knew when we started is very different from what we know now.
In the fog of war, you're supposed to make mistakes.
So if in the fog of war, the government made mistakes, and they made lots of them, that doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't mean anything.
Because of course they were going to make mistakes in the beginning.
It doesn't mean the next one's a mistake.
It does mean you should be very skeptical about your government, but we're already there.
Rich says, I keep moving the gold posts.
All right, so let me talk to Rich, who is obviously a fucking idiot.
So, Rich, am I moving the gold posts, or did we learn new fucking information, Rich?
Rich, if you don't change your opinion when the fucking information changes, you're a goddamn moron.
Okay? And if you thought that during the fog of war people were going to make good decisions, well, you're a fucking idiot.
Because nobody, no matter how smart, no matter how much they're like you, Rich, they can't make good decisions without data.
And we didn't have data.
We were guessing.
Some of those guesses are going to be wrong.
Do you know what that tells you about the next decision?
Fucking nothing. So grow up.
Learn that the past is gone.
Doesn't tell you anything about the future.
Analogies are not thinking.
You're going to have to look at every situation individually.
And yes, we all fucking understand that we don't trust the government about everything and every decision.
And sometimes they make mistakes.
And sometimes it's about money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So telling us that they got one wrong doesn't tell us any fucking useful thing.
And it bores me.
All right. So, moving the goalposts.
Scott, you're moving the goalposts.
You thought the vaccines were going to work.
Well, first of all, probably one of the few people who said publicly that I didn't think the vaccines were going to work.
Fact check me. I said that the experts say that they've been trying for decades to make a coronavirus vaccination.
It hasn't worked for decades.
The experts said it won't work this time.
I said, well, it looks like it's not going to work, but I think our therapeutics will probably be pretty good.
Right? That was my prediction.
So my prediction was that vaccines wouldn't necessarily work, but therapeutics would save us.
Did I move the fucking goalposts?
Rich? No.
I was fucking right, is what I was.
Now, if I'd been wrong, I would have been like everybody else, because we didn't have data.
Chad asks, why are we not doing wide-scale serology to...
I assume you're asking to see how much immunity we have.
I'll bet those studies are going on.
Has anybody seen a study on wide-scale serology just to see if people already have antibodies?
I assume that's going on, right?
Yeah, Matt, that was worth $5 for the chuckle.
How many times have they been wrong?
The government? If you're trying to get me to admit that a government sometimes makes mistakes or even...
Shut up!
Just shut up!
Nobody needs to know that.
We all know that. Let me tell you another way to spot an NPC. If they're arguing something that 100% of the world knows.
Alright, here's an NPC thing.
But Scott, the vaccinations don't stop the flu or the virus completely.
Right. Everybody knows that.
You don't really need to tell us that again.
A micro lesson on how to handle trolls.
Well, don't do it the way I do it.
I'm not sure I'm the one who can give you the lesson on that.
Because, you know, remember, if you're an energy monster, you look for conflict, because it gives you energy.
And I'm a bit of an energy monster, too.
So when I go after a troll, it's part of my business model.
If you go after a troll, it's probably just a bad day.
So I'm not sure you should bother.
Maybe you should ignore them and leave that to the people who have a business model where mocking trolls is actually part of the entertainment.
Energy vampire. Have you watched...
Let me give you some TV show recommendations.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is back for another season.
And oh my God, it's good.
Oh my God, it's good.
It's just so good.
The other is What We Do in the Shadows.
Just incredibly funny.
I think it's off now, but you can see the ones that are on.
I hope it's coming back.
I don't think it's cancelled.
It's a terrific show. And then there's another one called...
Wellington Paranormal.
Have you ever heard of it? Wellington Paranormal.
It's actually great.
It's about two cops in New Zealand who were put on the Supernatural Task Force, but nobody gets to know.
And one of them is a dumb guy.
He does the best dumb guy.
You know, you're used to seeing somebody play the dumb guy on movies and stuff, but he does the best dumb guy since Dumb and Dumber.
I mean, he's a really good dumb guy.
He's brilliant. Yeah, Ted Lasso, I think, maybe, I didn't finish watching.
It sort of slowed down. I might get back to it.
I don't know. So, that's good.
And if you want a guilty pleasure...
I'm embarrassed that I'm even going to recommend this.
But if you want one that's like pure empty calories, but entertaining, what's it called?
The Sex Life of College Girls or something?
Is it on...
I forget which streaming service it's on.
But it is purely for your worst instincts.
But the show, they keep kind of lively.
I like fast-paced shows where nobody is tied to a chair and tortured.
By the way, that's my turn-off-the-movie point.
If I watch any movie, the moment somebody's tied to a chair, boop, turn it off.
Because that tells me the writers are bad.
If you have to tie somebody to a chair in your movie, you're a bad, bad writer.
Sorry. All right.
That's about all I've got for today, and I think that's plenty.
Don't you? Let's see if we can talk less about the pandemic in the future.
I mean, I'd really like to, but I feel as if all the psychological phenomenon is sort of happening in that domain.
So the stuff that I'm interested in is way less about the science...
And way less about the politics.
I'm just fascinated by how we're processing the information.
Because you saw that, you know, Rich the troll here.
You see how some people process information.
It's just shocking.
Please stop talking about it.
John, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to do that.
It is the biggest thing in the world and the thing that I find most interesting.
From the psychology of it.
Those of you who want it to go away by not talking about it, well, good luck with that.
That's not going to happen. So, I mean, you can have that dream, but it's a useless dream.
And I also think these are the biggest decisions we need to make.
Now, I would like to give you this following reframe.
I've said this often, but the more I say it, the more useful it is, I think.
The citizens run this country.
We only delegate when we can't decide.
So if the citizens, you know, are sort of close to split, or even 60-40, that's pretty close to a split, we say, you know, it'd be better off if we just let the politicians work this one out.
We're kind of happy with that.
But that doesn't change the fact that the citizens are completely in control.
It's only when the citizens don't have an opinion.
It's a split opinion.
That's the only time the government has control.
So if you're worried about the pandemic lasting forever, which citizens want that?
Which ones? There are no citizens that want the pandemic to last forever.
The citizens will end the pandemic when there are enough of them that want it ended.
Now, of course, it is brainwashing the citizens, and that's part of the problem.
But I feel at this point, we'll be able to directly observe.
Is it getting worse or is it getting better?
Do you know people who are sick?
So I feel like the public went from completely helpless...
It's getting more and more informed, taking a little bit more control.
And as soon as it reaches, I don't know what the ratio is, 75% on the same team.
You know, if we reach a point where 75% of any place says get rid of the masks, do you think the government could keep you masked if 75% of the public said no?
I don't. So imagining that the government has control over these decisions is a little bit misleading.
Misleading. If you could get your fellow citizens...
Whenever I say that, it sounds sexist, doesn't it?
Your fellow citizens.
If you can get them to change their mind, then the government will change its mind.
It really isn't up to the government.
Do you think that California, or that Governor Newsom is acting the way he is, tighter in California than other places, do you think he's doing that because the...
Without support of the public, he's not.
The reason California is different than Florida is that our public is different.
Not because the government's different.
It's the public. So every time you feel helpless, you're not helpless because of the government, at least on this issue.
You're helpless because your fellow citizens have different opinions.
And if you can change their opinions, and you have the ability to do that with social media, Go ahead.
Go do it. They can take your money, Scott, in all caps.
Was that supposed to mean something?
They can take your money?
Oh, you mean the government can take your money in terms of taxes?
Yes. Yes.
But do you know why the government can take your money, even at a gunpoint, in terms of taxes?
Because the citizens are okay with it.
As soon as the citizens don't want it, it goes away.
But there are enough people who want it that we delegate to the government.
And I don't think this is necessarily like other countries.
Australia, for example.
I feel like the government might be in control there.
You know what I mean? It looks like the government is in control.
But if the United States said, you all have to stay home for, I don't know, a month, you can't go outdoors, well, that would be the end of it.
That would be the end of the pandemic.
Because you certainly get more than 70% of Americans to say, no, no, we're going outdoors.
Yeah, we're done with your rules now.
We're just going outdoors. So I think that it...
Well, I'm not worried about the boiling frog syndrome.
I see that in the comments.
Meaning that they'll slowly condition us to do more and more.
Because the problem is there's nobody who wants it.
You would need somebody who's on the side of wanting the public to be locked down and wear masks.
There's nobody in the government who wants that.
They don't want it for its own purpose.
I think that's ridiculous.
Florida, baby. Yeah, the public in Florida is different, so their government acts differently, of course.
But it's not the government, it's the people.
Alright, that's all I've got for now, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
Take my money, you said.
We can deal with the age that might be later.
At least we can find happiness in China's poor.
Okay, well, I don't know if that was worth $5, but thank you anyway.
