Episode 1603 Scott Adams: Merry Christmas and It's Time to Have Some Fun. Get In Here
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Let's Go Brandon prank
Defending Joe Biden
PolitiFact and Dr. McCullough
Active vs. passive decisions
Politico lists worst predictions of 2021
Test required to qualify for COVID pill?
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Good morning, everybody, and Merry, Merry Christmas.
Not only is it Christmas, but you've managed to find your way to the best thing that's ever happened.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, the birth of, you know, Jesus and all that.
That stuff's good, and today we'll even allow that that might be a little better.
But the second best thing that's ever happened is happening right now.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, Christmas edition, and you're lucky enough to be here.
Wow. Good for you.
And all you need to make this special day even more special is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank of gels and stein, a canteen jug of glass, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
Today only, we will accept eggnog.
Every other day of the year, no eggnog.
No. Well, New Year's Eve is fun.
But today, anything you like.
Go. Oh.
Well, by now, all of you saw the prank played on President Biden.
He was doing one of these PR events where he was pretending to call NORAD and talk to some child about Santa Claus coming.
But the father of that said child got on the phone and was thanking the president, and as he was signing off, the father said, let's go, Brandon.
And... Biden actually said, let's go, Brandon.
That's right. He didn't know it was a joke, so he agreed with the idea, let's go, Brandon.
And that's right.
Now, I could be mocking our president.
Could I not? Yes, I could.
Jack Murphy.
Anyway. I could be mocking our president, but can I have a special dispensation today?
For Christmas, would anybody mind if I say something supportive of the president?
Just for Christmas.
All right. All right. I got a few yeses.
Here's the thing. Imagine if you will, you're the leader of the United States and all the things you're thinking about, and that it's also Christmas.
How many things are in your head that you have to think about when you're the leader of the United States and it's Christmas?
Like another 10% on top of it.
A lot. How fascinated and interested do you think the President of the United States is when he's talking to a random citizen for a PR event?
Not too interested.
Probably not too interested compared to all the things in his head.
And so I imagine that it would be easy for someone to give the reflex answer without even knowing who he was talking to.
Let me ask you this.
Have you ever had this exchange with somebody?
You'll say you're going on a trip, and the other person isn't.
It's just somebody you're talking to.
And then that other person will say to you, say, okay, Scott, have a nice trip.
And then you look at them and you say, you too.
But you know they're not going on a nice trip.
Ever do that? It's just sort of automatic, right?
It's just sort of a reflex. To me, it looked like Biden was just doing automatic talking because he was thinking about other things.
I'm not sure that was a sign of anything.
But let me defend him for Christmas because it would be easy to imagine Trump doing the same thing.
If I'm being honest...
It would be easy to imagine Trump, or anybody, doing the same thing, just because his mind was on something else.
I don't think it tells us anything too dark.
Well, here's some good news.
You've heard this before, but I like to throw this in a year-end.
The Sahara is actually shrinking because there's enough vegetation, largely because of climate change, we think.
Well, not climate change, but rather CO2. So the CO2 is good fertilizer, it turns out.
So the Sahara is shrinking.
Now, what is the secondary benefit of the Sahara shrinking?
And the tertiary benefit?
And the...
What comes after tertiary?
You talked yourself into a corner, Scott.
I wonder if they can tell that you had to stop to think this long.
Nobody noticed that you don't know what comes after tertiary.
Say something. Say anything.
They don't have time to look it up.
And quad tertiary, what are the other benefits?
Quaternary. Let's go with that.
Okay. Yes, hurricanes diminished is the answer I was looking for.
So the differential between the temperature over the Sahara versus the temperature over the ocean is what gets the hurricanes going in the Atlantic.
If you were to reduce that differential via CO2 causing more vegetation, you would reduce the intensity of hurricanes.
Another benefit is you might be able to grow food.
That's kind of cool. Maybe feed some people.
Another benefit is you might take a place that is largely useless and turn it into a sanctuary for refugees.
Will there be refugees from climate change?
Some experts say yes.
Lots of refugees. Where are they going to go?
Well, wouldn't it be nice to go to some place that was lightly populated and very green?
Maybe. So maybe we'll stick some fusion reactors on the ocean there.
Start tracking in some water.
Maybe seed it with these robots we were talking about to seed the deserts.
Let the animals poop on it.
Next thing you know, boom!
We're growing plants and those plants are grabbing the CO2 right out of the air.
So let's see. You would reduce the frequency or intensity, maybe, of hurricanes.
You would feed people because you could grow food there where you couldn't before.
You could handle refugees, which is one of the biggest problems some people think in the world.
And you could also capture a lot of CO2 out of the air in case there's too much.
So, that's pretty good news.
Here's the funniest human story in a while.
You're all watching, I'm sure, JFK Jr.
talking about his dislike of the pharma companies and vaccinations, etc.
So, I guess you could say JFK Jr.
is the anti-vaxxer of all anti-vaxxers.
Would that be fair? Do you think you could classify him as an anti-vaxxer, or is that oversimplifying?
I think he's known that way.
But I think, like everything else, it would be an oversimplification.
However, here's the funny part.
He's married to actress Cheryl Hines.
Somehow he bagged one of the most attractive women in Hollywood.
I guess I'm not someone who should be talking about that.
There are mysteries in this world, and that's one of them.
And apparently they're having a holiday party, and his wife has required all the attendees to be vaccinated.
That's right. JFK Jr., the world's most famous anti-vaxxer.
The most famous anti-vaxxer is hosting a party requiring vaccinations because his wife said so.
And he was asked about it.
And he said quite honestly something we all understand, which is he doesn't make all the decisions.
Now, I'm not even making a comment here about vaccinations, right?
This is not about vaccinations.
It's just about a human interest thing that no matter what your professional brand is, if you're married, things could go the other way.
Anyway, here's a little fake news for today in which I will once again Defend Joe Biden.
Because it's Christmas.
Just give me today. We'll go back to criticizing Biden.
Don't worry about it. We've got the whole year ahead of us.
But today, there was a report in the Washington News Today.
A huge publication.
But it's talking about reports...
Which I believe are anonymous.
Anonymous sources within the White House.
And you know how accurate they are.
They're saying that the staff is beyond demoralizing.
Things are hypocritical and ironic that a president whose brand is built on empathy and family has staff policies that fly in the face of that brand.
And more reports of, you know, bad management and chaos.
Now, how true does that sound?
Does it sound true that the White House under Biden is all mismanaged and a bad place to work?
Have you ever heard that about any other White House before?
Did you ever hear that about Trump's White House?
Did anonymous sources tell you things were not well managed in the White House and the staff morale is low?
How about this is what everybody says about everything?
It's not a story. This would be like, oxygen breaks out in America.
Oh, no, we always had oxygen.
I mean, it might be a little dirty, but we always had some oxygen.
Now, if you hear an anonymous report that employees say that management is doing poorly in a large organization, all you have discovered is the reason that the Dilbert comic strip was so popular.
Because everybody thinks where they work is unorganized and poorly managed.
It's about the most universal statement you could make.
So, is the Biden White House any worse than every other large organization?
How would we know?
How would we possibly know?
All we know is that people say so.
But they say that about everything.
So, and let me say that, again, if Trump had been on the receiving end of this, and he was, this exact thing, I said, don't believe it.
It's just the general thing people say.
Even if it's true, it isn't credible because it's still the general thing that people say.
All right, here's a...
Oh, I just want to put this out to start some fights with your family.
A lot of you are believers in what rogue Dr.
McCullough has been saying about vaccinations and about the pandemic.
But I tweeted today, and I would call your attention to it, I call your attention to it.
A PolitiFact, a fact-checking organization, who talks about some of Dr.
McAuliffe's claims and then compares them to what they believe is the truth.
Stop it.
I'm reading your minds.
Stop it. Stop it.
No, I don't automatically believe what PolitiFact says.
Not automatically.
Right? I mean, you sort of have to look at the two sides and, you know, use something like judgment, even though we're probably not.
So my point is that you can have a nice fight with your family just by looking at the claims that Dr.
McCullough has made and compare them to the PolitiFact fact check, fact check.
Now... I would note that PolitiFact does show its sources.
So, if you want to check the sources, you can go check.
Now, will those sources be reliable?
Are any of our sources reliable in 2021?
Any of them? Is there any data that you actually trust anymore?
Some data might be accurate, but we don't know which ones it is.
You can no longer say, well, it's official data, it's probably pretty good.
We don't live in that world.
Not at all.
All right. So I don't have an opinion on who's right or who's wrong, but you can check the sources.
At least you can check the government sources, whether those are accurate or not.
All right. I have a...
Persuasion kind of a...
I don't know if this is an insight or is it obvious.
You tell me. Is the next thing I'm going to tell you insightful where you go, oh, I never thought of it that way.
Or the opposite.
This is so obvious that I'm the last person who thought of it.
And it goes like this.
People are more comfortable avoiding active decisions.
Then they are avoiding passive decisions.
Here's what I mean. And again, I'm not going to get into pro or anti-vaccinations.
I'm talking about the mental process here.
If you decide to get vaccinated, that's an active decision.
Just the way I'm defining it, right?
So for our decisions, if your body moves and you go do something, that's an active decision.
A passive decision would be a decision to not do something.
I think I will not get vaccinated.
So if you can accept my definition just for this conversation, that getting vaccinated is an active decision and not doing it is sort of an inactive, passive decision.
Okay? How would you feel...
Forget about whether this is even vaccinations.
This could be any topic.
How would you feel if you made an active decision and it turned out to be wrong?
How would you feel? Pretty, pretty bad, right?
You made an active decision.
You went and did something, and then that turned out to be a big mistake.
You would feel terrible.
Now compare that to how bad you would feel if you made a passive decision.
You simply didn't do anything.
But you had bad luck, and that turned out to be the wrong decision.
So it turns out that not doing anything, it turned out to be the wrong decision.
Which of these two conditions would you consider?
Again, forget about whether it's vaccinations or anything else.
It doesn't matter what the topic is.
I'm talking about a general persuasion bias kind of a situation.
Which one would you see?
Yeah, somebody says you see that a lot in trading in the investment world.
Which would you feel more comfortable with being wrong?
Under the assumption that you could be wrong, which one would be the one you feel more comfortable being wrong?
Yeah. Now, I may have primed you too hard on this, so I think I was leading the witness a little bit too much on this.
I may have biased you towards saying passive, because I framed it in a way that made that easier to do.
So, if you'll forgive me for being accidentally too persuasive on this, I'm not sure it would be quite as landslide-y looking as it does.
But... That's just a hypothesis I'm working on, that independent of what the content is, people are less likely to want to make an active mistake.
It seems like something you could test.
I don't know which way it would test out, but I feel like it would go that way.
All right. Reuters is doing a fact check on something that many of you watching this believe to be true.
So here's something that a lot of people tweeted at me because they believed it to be true.
As soon as I saw it, I said to myself, eh, that's not true, and didn't really pay much attention to it.
Now Reuters is doing a fact check on it.
Wait, wait, wait, I know what you're thinking.
Hold on, hold on.
Am I going to say that because somebody fact checked it, that the fact check is the correct one?
No! No, but I'm going to tell you there is a fact check.
So if you haven't heard the other side...
That would be useful. Alright, here it is.
There was data in the UK from the Office of National Statistics claiming that the double vaccinated and triple vaccinated are more likely to test positive for Omicron has been misrepresented.
According to Reuters, new data shows breakthrough cases among vaccinated people are more likely to be Omicron than other variants.
Not that vaccines don't work or that vaccinated people are at greater risk of infection.
So in other words, when people saw that this UK Bureau of Officialness said that There were a lot of double-vaxxed and triple-vaxxed people are more likely to test positive.
It was in the context of Omicron.
In other words, they were saying, if you get a positive test with a vaccination, it's probably Omicron, which would not be the biggest deal because Omicron is the one you want, right?
If you're going to get infected, pick Omicron.
So, am I saying that Reuters got the fact check right?
No. Nope.
We don't live in a world where I can just automatically assume the fact check is right.
But you should be aware that if you interpreted that data, it was not intended to be interpreted that way.
In other words, the people who put the data together don't think it says what you think it says.
That's all. You should be aware of that.
That the people who presented the data don't think that's the right interpretation.
All right. How about this?
I tweeted yesterday that our levels of awareness are not yet high enough to know that we all made irrational decisions about vaccinations or not to get vaccinated.
And then there were a number of people who corrected me, and I'm going to accept this correction.
I know, it's a Christmas miracle.
I'm going to tell you I was wrong about something.
Weird, huh? Here's what I was wrong about.
So I said that everybody's decision about vaccination or not vaccination is based on fear.
But you're just afraid of different things.
Some people are afraid of the shot.
Some people are afraid of the government overreach.
Some people are afraid of big pharma.
Some people are afraid of COVID, etc.
And then other people corrected me.
So there were people who made this decision without fear.
And they convinced me that they really did not have any fear.
And they said things like this.
I didn't really think about the virus or the vaccination.
I just needed to, you know, my work said I needed to get a vaccination, so I just got one.
Or I wanted to visit someplace, and it was the only way I could do it, so I just got one.
Now, I will admit that that is not a fear-based decision.
So I'm going to say I was wrong to say all the decisions were fear-based.
Some of the decisions actually were completely thought-free, which was a category I hadn't quite anticipated.
I really should have. That was certainly a mistake in my mental model.
But there are a lot of people who convinced me with their comments that they literally didn't put anything thought into it at all.
This is not even an insult.
If it sounds like I'm mocking them, I'm not at all.
Because compared to the alternatives, it's not less rational.
But some people were completely aware that they didn't use rational thought.
I think they're operating at a higher level.
I think the people who went into it saying, well, there's no way to know what's right or wrong.
But I need this shot for work, and that's my immediate problem, so I'll just get this shot for work.
Rose is saying you, Adams, took the jab also for practical reasons.
That's not quite accurate, but it's a little bit accurate.
I got vaccinated partly for practical reasons, but I'm also aware that fear was probably part of the decision, right?
So, you know, I suppose I had a fear of, you know, losing my wife if I couldn't travel because I didn't get vaccinated.
So I guess that was a fear, in a way.
So I would soften my word fear to just say that there was irrationality all the way through the decisions, in both sides and everybody, including me, because there wasn't really an opportunity for a rational decision.
Now, there's some people who said, Scott...
What about people who are already infected?
Let's say you're 25 years old, you're previously infected, you got over a fine, isn't that a case where not getting vaccinated is just a no-brainer?
To which I say, no, not even close.
Because in that is a bunch of assumptions that you don't know about.
You don't know the long-term risk of COVID. Let's say, you know, COVID, long COVID. You don't know the risk of that compared to, let's say, if you got vaccinated.
Would your long COVID be worse or better or even exist at all if you got vaccinated on top of having natural immunity?
Nobody knows. It's an unknown.
So, as soon as you think, okay, well, this special case is really clear, there are none.
I don't think there are any special cases where it's completely clear.
You're all guessing.
You know, the most extreme would be somebody with no immunity whatsoever.
But even in the case of somebody with no immunity...
Do you know for sure that the vaccination is safer than just keeping them hidden until this passes?
Do you know for sure?
Because I don't. It feels like you know, and it feels like your common sense is giving you a good enough answer, but that's the illusion.
The illusion is that we have common sense.
There's a reason we do randomized controlled trials.
It's because we don't have common sense, but we're pretty sure we do.
That's why you do the randomized controlled trials.
The whole process of science is to make you stop using your common sense, because it doesn't work.
That's why science is awesome.
All right. In other news, I'll just throw this out there.
It looks like COVID's been cured.
I'll go to the next story.
Oh, wait. You probably want to hear more about that.
Now, let me say that this is another one of those stories of COVID being cured in a test tube or a petri dish or something like that, basically in a laboratory.
But please do not go out and try anything that I'm going to say right now.
Please, please, please, please do not try this at home.
I was even considering not even mentioning it.
It increases the horse dewormer stuff happening.
So don't do this.
But there's a report that if you combine Benadryl, which a lot of people would have in their medicine cabinet already, used for allergy symptoms, Benadryl, if you combine it with this lactoferrin, a protein found in cow and human milk, You can reduce the virus' replication by 99% in lab tests in human lungs and monkey cells.
So if any of you have any monkey cells, this could be the answer to that.
I worry about my monkey cells as well as my human lungs.
But here's the warning.
The lactoferrin that they used, although it is commercially available, For other conditions, to treat other things, it's not exactly the same stuff they used in the experiment.
So if you think you can just buy some of this stuff and mix it together, you can't.
It's not available. That doesn't sound like it'd be a big problem to make it available.
And one wonders what would happen if you did try the over-the-counter with the Benadryl, which would be the worst thing I could ever suggest, because I'm not a doctor, and the last thing you want to do is mix some chemicals together and put them in your body, because you heard it on a cartoonist's podcast.
Don't do that. Don't do that.
However, all that said, and the fact that 95% of these things that work in a laboratory never work in a human being, But besides that, I choose to be optimistic.
I choose optimism.
All right. Politico is trying to dunk on me today and putting me on the list of their worst predictions for 2021.
So I'm getting mocked on social media for the worst predictions of 2021.
And so that must be true, right?
Because I'm getting fact-jacked by Politico...
So if Politico fact checks me, well, the fact check must be true, right?
No! No!
No, the fact checks are all fake, too.
Not all of them. But there are a lot of fake fact checks.
Let's see how Politico did with their fact checking.
So there were two claims I made that they treated as predictions.
I'm not sure they should have, but they did.
One was that if Biden got elected, Republicans would be hunted.
And they fact-check that by saying that Republicans, indeed, have not been hunted.
Now, I'd like to give a little lesson on how to read to the Politico people who approved this and wrote this article.
Here's how reading works.
Sometimes the words in a sentence are not always meant to be literal.
So if you thought that the word hunted...
meant that there would be hunting licenses, for example, for Republicans.
That maybe would be a bad interpretation.
If you thought that hunted meant, for example, that people would actually get hunting rifles and go searching around and finding a Republican so that they can kill them.
If that's how you interpreted it, and that it would be widespread and it would be the basic nature of the country...
You might not be a good reader.
Here would be a more reasonable way to interpret it.
Haunted being more of a figurative term.
So, for example, what might come under that category of haunted would be, can somebody tell me how many Trump supporters have been deplatformed since Trump was in office?
How many of his main supporters have been deplatformed?
And is it the same number on the left for doing similarly bad behavior?
Or does it seem like it was targeted more at the right, more at Republicans?
Does it seem to you that people were looking for Republicans, some might say hunted, hunting for them, looking for them online to see what bad behavior they did so that they could be canceled?
How many Trump supporters are being held without bail right now because of the January 6th protests?
Are there a lot of Democrats being held for political reasons, as political prisoners?
Because that's what it looks like.
It looks like the January 6th protesters are being held as political prisoners.
Because it's taken so long and there's no bail.
Which seems weird, because I don't think most of these people had ever committed any kind of crime.
So I would say that the country treating them as insurrectionists and then keeping them in jail for political reasons is very much haunted.
That word doesn't work for you?
Haunted? That feels like that's exactly the right kind of figurative speech that a good reader would recognize as accurate enough.
How many Trump supporters were the subject of an FBI action?
Say, Roger Stone.
Was that happening a lot to Democrats during the same time?
Or did it seem like it was targeted at Republicans?
It felt like it was targeted at Republicans.
How many Democrats were accused of a heinous crime for which there is so much video of the actual events every single person could see no crime occurred?
Well, I can think of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was believed to be Republican, and at this point he probably is.
I don't know if he used to be, but I'm sure he is now.
I shouldn't say that, because that would be reading his mind.
But I can't think of any Democrat...
Who was on multiple videos committing no crime whatsoever, who still had to go through a full trial?
Yeah, Kavanaugh, he was kind of hunted.
That was before, though. So, I don't know.
I would say that hunted came true.
How many would agree with me that my prediction that Republicans would be hunted under Biden is accurate?
A lot of you think I was accurate.
All right, let's do another one. I also said that there was a good chance that if Biden got elected, there was a good chance that you'd be dead by next year.
And Politico fact-checked me and said, not true.
Not true. False.
What is the definition of good chance?
Anybody? Don't Google it, just top of your head.
What's the definition of a good chance?
What's a good chance?
I'm seeing people saying less than 100%, less than 50%, over 10%, 10% or higher.
Do you know who's right?
Some people saying over 90%, some people saying over 10%.
And the answer is both right.
They are both the definition.
If you Google it, you look up what is the definition of a good chance.
The definitions include, these are synonyms, a possibility.
A possibility.
Also, a probability.
So two of the definitions are kind of almost close to opposites.
So if you say there's a good chance of something happening, it means that it's possible.
Like there's a goodly enough chance that it's worth talking about.
Possible. But also could mean probable.
Like 90%.
So, which of these is the more likely interpretation?
So I'm a public figure who mostly is not too crazy.
Does Politico think that my actual prediction is that you would probably be dead in 2021?
Because that's how they interpreted it.
They interpreted it as probably.
No, I didn't think you'd probably be dead.
I said there's a good chance.
Was I accurate?
If there's not a good chance that you could be dead in 2021, why did we have to wear masks and get vaccinated?
The entire theme of 2021 is there's a good chance that you could die.
Either a good chance from the vaccine or from the corona.
I mean, I think the vaccine is safer than the corona.
Some of you don't. But you'd all agree with the concept that we led the entire year based on the primary assumption that there was a good chance you'd die.
If there was not a good chance you'd die, we wouldn't have to do any of that stuff.
We're not taking extraordinary measures for things that don't have a good chance of happening.
So Politico took my word hunted and turned it into a literal, which was stupid.
Can we be honest?
That was just stupid.
But they also took my good chance, which has a wide variety of interpretations, one of them quite reasonable, there's more chance that you would be dead, And how did I do?
Turns out that the average life expectancy fell.
I'm pretty sure it fell in 2021.
It fell in 2020. But I'm pretty sure that my prediction was not only accurate, but pretty darn accurate.
If you know how to read.
So if you believe that hunted was literal instead of figurative, and if you believe that good chance you'll be dead means probably, which would be ridiculous, but if you interpret them as actual words the way people can read, pretty good.
Pretty good. That's what I say.
How many agree that I got both of those right?
I just like to have people say I'm right.
All right. And let me ask you this.
Do you think that they chose me randomly to be one of their top debunked predictors?
Do you think that I was just one of the people?
No. It's because I'm known to support Trump.
They would assume...
Incorrectly, that I'm a Republican.
And they hunted me.
They hunted me.
They hunted me in the article debunking that Republicans would get hunted.
Now, I'm not a Republican, so that's slightly technically not exactly what happened.
But basically it's what happened.
I was targeted, just like every prominent Republican supporter will be.
You know, like, it's happening on the left as well.
But it's definitely happening.
It's not only happening to me.
It's certainly happening on both sides.
But, you know, the odds that Republicans would be hunted under Biden, it wasn't that hard of a prediction.
Thank you. Good predictions.
Good predictions. Politico is paying someone to monitor your words?
Yeah, I don't know. I doubt that's true, per se, but...
I'm definitely on lists.
You know, not necessarily an actual written list, but conceptually I'm on the list of people that would get targeted in the next few years.
Wait till you hear the stuff that comes out about me.
Like, I don't even know what it would be.
I'm not talking about true stuff.
But just wait till you hear the stuff you're going to hear about me between now and 2024 elections.
It's going to be mind-blowing.
None of it will be true.
Well, who knows? Maybe some of it will be true.
Jack says, what is your biggest fear for America right now?
You know, I don't have one.
I honestly think we're in great, great shape.
And I know that's not popular at the moment.
But, you know, we will get past the pandemic.
And we're going to come out of it way stronger.
I mean, honestly, one of my biggest problems, or if I had to say there's one thing I'm worried about, it would be that the economy overheated.
I'd be worried about the economy going too hot at this point.
Because if the pandemic didn't slow down the economy, I mean, it barely did.
It was like a blip.
We took, like, 20% of our workforce and idled them for months, and we just screamed ahead like nothing was happening.
So I see good news everywhere, just everywhere.
Inflation's a worry, but I think we can manage that.
Inflation's basically a tax on rich people, and if you had to tax somebody, well, you might as well tax people who can afford it.
It's a tax on everybody, but in the long run...
In the long run, rich people pay most of the taxes.
But, of course, poor people will suffer more from inflation.
What about four-plus vaccines a year?
Well, I'm not going to get four vaccinations a year.
Is anybody here going to do that?
I think that the, especially since the therapeutics have been improved now...
By the way, did you notice that we got COVID pills at the same time we got restrictions that would make them almost worthless?
Am I the only one who noticed that?
Hey, we've got these great pills.
These could really help you if you take them early.
Also, we're going to create a series of regulations and procedures that make it almost impossible to get them early.
You know both of those things happened yesterday, right?
Here's your pills. Here's why they won't work, because we'll have some regulations where you can't take them early.
Do you know what we would do if we were serious about this?
We'd say, you think you have symptoms?
Here, take these pills.
Now, obviously, we don't have enough of them to do that.
But if we were even a little bit serious...
We'd say, that's probably COVID, take a pill, and we'll test you.
And if the test shows that you don't have it, immediately stop taking the pill.
Right? If we were even a little bit serious, it doesn't look like we're trying, honestly.
It doesn't look like that's even a serious try.
And now that's an example...
That is what Florida does.
Well, I'm talking about, Jack, I think you're talking about Regeneron and stuff like that, and I think you're right about that, and other therapeutics.
But there's specific regulations about these new COVID pills from Pfizer and Merck, and it looks like they're going to require a positive test before you get them.
Imagine that. You have to take it within five days for it to be effective, they say.
But your test could take five days.
And that's just for the result.
That's not counting how many days it takes to get a test.
So we've been told that you can't possibly get a test within five days in a lot of places right now.
But if you did, you could get the pill.
So the solution to the pandemic is here, but you can't have it.
I got questions, right?
Know you all. All right.
Yeah, I think there's got to be corruption in here somewhere.
I don't think any of this is a coincidence.
Now, it could be just a shortage model.
I don't know how long it takes to make these pills.
My God, Scott, you could get an at-home test in 15 minutes.
Correct and the wrong topic.
So my understanding is that the home tests would not count toward getting your approval for the...
I think you have to have the serious test, not the rapid test.
Now, do I think that that makes sense?
Nope. I think that if your own personal rapid test, which is not as accurate, if that thing says you've got COVID, yeah, you should be taking that damn COVID pill right away.
Here's what probably will happen.
I think doctors will just do whatever makes sense.
If Dr.
Zhu sees this, maybe you can confirm this.
But my understanding is since you can do off-label stuff, there's no doctor who would be dumb enough not to give you the pill If it looked like it was indicated, you know, all things considered, right?
So the doctor's going to be looking at the big, big, big picture, not just pill or no pill.
So if your doctor says big, big picture, let's say you've got some comorbidities and, you know, you're coughing pretty hard, your oxygen is a little bit low, do you think that doctor's going to wait for you to get a positive test?
Does anybody think that? Do you think any doctor, seeing that you're obviously suffering from COVID, I mean obviously meaning 90% likely, do you think any doctor is going to make you wait five days?
You should quit your doctor right away if that happens.
Assuming the pills are available.
I think availability will end up driving a lot of this stuff.
Oh, let me give you a thought experiment for the vacation day here.
Anybody want a good thought experiment?
It goes like this.
Suppose you reimagine government as nothing but the nation's insurance company.
That's the whole idea.
Re-imagine government as an insurance company.
So there would be no private insurance except for extra.
Everybody would have a basic insurance.
But if you wanted some extra stuff, like you wanted to buy a luxury vehicle, you could buy some extra insurance on your luxury vehicle.
Here's why. Your insurance companies have to reduce the risk of payout.
And so the insurance company would, the first thing they'd do is say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we'd better get a military so nobody attacks us.
So the insurance company would say, okay, cost-benefit, we need a military.
Then they would just go down the list and say, okay, cost-benefit, we'll charge for this, don't charge for that.
You can do anything you want, it's a free country, but if it costs, you know, if you're doing something we can measure and it's bad for your health or other people's health, we'll charge you more.
So basically, through insurance rates alone, all policy would be determined.
And your first impression would be, that can't work for everything.
And that's what the Thorne experiment is.
Try to find something it wouldn't work for.
It works for way more things than you think you should work for.
What is the tipping point for Feb 1 to be a reality?
and I think that's what we're going to do.
Well, I think the tipping point will be the direction of deaths.
I think on February 1, if pretty much everywhere the death rate is decreasing, and it looks like Omicron is really as mild as we hope, if we can confirm Omicron is mild...
And that it has swept the country and it's sort of the main thing people are getting.
I think we're done. If the death surge from the holiday is not surprisingly high, I think we're done.
I think we're done. Now, the question is, how do you get everybody to be done at the same time?
I hope that's sarcasm.
Scott finally woke up.
I can't tell.
You have to be careful.
Because remember, I blocked people for saying that.
And if you're being sarcastic, I can't really tell.
because sarcasm and reality look the same now.
Yes, the Omicron is more infectious, but probably less lethal.
And it is possible that we still get overwhelmed just because of the sheer numbers.
But I'll tell you, that's a problem I'd want, right?
Like, if it's the fastest way to get to herd immunity, then putting...
And I know that healthcare professionals are already crushed.
So it'd be bad for them.
To give them that workload.
Definitely bad for the healthcare professionals.
But it could be a net benefit for the country if it doesn't crush our healthcare to just get it over with quickly.
Do you ban people for saying you're still not woken up?
I ban them for bad grammar.
Actually, I don't, but that was my witty rejoinder.
Pharma has notified the Biden administration that the next variant is due Feb 1.
Okay.
Yes, that is a picture of me.
All right. That's all I've got for now.
And big old Merry Christmas to all of you.
And... Jack says, why do you blame the fake news for COVID when they just parrot what the government says?
Well, the answer is in your question.
The fake news just parrots what the government says.
The real news would investigate and give you both sides and all that.
Oh, let me put this out here as a 2021 objective.
You all know I like systems more than goals, but there are special cases.
And a special case is one where the situation is so defined that you might as well have a goal.
I've told you that the only way to get good information about a topic where the country is divided is to put two experts...
In the same conversation with one aggressive host who can ask the right questions and challenge them, etc.
I've heard people suggest a regular debate format, which I hate.
If you've watched a regular debate, they're just snore-fests.
You need a host who can keep it interesting.
Somebody like Trump. Trump would be a great host for this sort of thing.
I think I would as well.
And I think that I could at least show a model of it.
Maybe it's the bad version that somebody could do better.
But I'd like to put this out there.
I'd like to host some expert debates.
Could be on COVID stuff or something else.
But I just want to find something where the country is quite divided.
Put the experts in the same place and not have a timer on them.
The only timer would be the host.
In other words, if somebody gets off track, I'm going to interrupt them.
So it would be an interrupt-driven process.
Because what happens if the host doesn't interrupt somebody?
You get nonsense.
Because people will just filibuster.
They'll just talk as long as they can.
So you have to have a host who's just going to cut them off.
Nope. You didn't answer the question.
Nope. Tell me yes or no first, and then give me the explanation.
And then they start the explanation.
You go, nope, nope.
Give a yes or no first, and then you can give me the explanation.
So you have to really get on top of them.
And part of the entertainment would be watching the host try to wrangle two people who didn't want to get wrangled.
Because if they're trying to persuade, they don't want to get nailed down too much, right?
So that would be the tension.
The tension would be the host...
With both of the people.
Ideally pushing both of them hard.
So, I've said the only reason I haven't done it is that there's no technology solution for doing it live.
There must be by now.
There must be somebody who has a studio, you know, some professional entity, who can just zoom us up and put us on screen and turn the timer off.
That's the important part.
It can't have an end time. You cannot have an end time.
It just has to go until it's done, according to the host.
And, you know, just try it.
It could be a disaster, right?
It could be a total disaster.
But I think we need to A-B test a few things.
Somebody says, again, Dave Rubin's help.
I don't know if his studio can do that.
I mean, he has a full studio, so he has the most capability of any independent that I know of.
Does anybody know anybody independent who hasn't...
Well, actually, yeah, there'd be everybody from...
I don't want to name names, but...
Yeah, there are probably a number of people who could do it.
I don't know if Rogan or Tim Poole could do that.
Alex Jones... Yeah, Alex Jones is the one I thought of.
But, you know, as soon as you throw Alex Jones into the mix in any way whatsoever, then it becomes about Alex Jones, who I always liked.
He's such a likable guy.
Does anybody have that same impression?
There's something about him that is just so relatable.
Glenn Beck. That would be interesting.
Yeah, they probably have all the studio capability there, don't they?
Or... Yeah.
Anyway, so I'll put that out there if there's somebody who wants to offer some studio resources.
The minimum requirement is three faces on screen and live.
And live. Can't be recorded.
And the reason I want it live is that there's a different energy to it and that the people's comments could be coming in at the same time.
Because I'd want the host to have an assistant Doesn't have to be in the room.
But the assistants should be monitoring the questions to make sure that the audience might have come up with a good question or a good counterpoint or a good source that you want to test.
So you'd want the public to be live.
That's why you don't want it recorded.
And you want to really keep it...
You know, dangerous. One of the reasons that people watch something, this is one of my theories as well, is the thought that somebody's in danger.
Now, not physical danger, but danger of embarrassment or losing their career or something like that.
So, live gives you extra danger, which I'm attracted to, as an entertainment form.
Alright, that's all I've got for now, and I will talk to you...
Tomorrow. And have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas.
