Episode 879 Scott Adams - Sip and Relax With me While I Tell You What the Future Holds
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: Our Surgeon General lied to us about masks helping, multiple times Drug cartels struggling: Shortage of Chinese precursor chemicals US government MIGHT expel Chinese spies working in our media What about all the spies working in social media? Ambassador Richard Grenell targeted for voice reduction ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you would like my channel to have a wider audience and higher production quality, please donate via my startup (Whenhub.com) at this link: https://interface.my/ScottAdamsSays I use donations to pay for the daily conversions of the original Periscope videos into Youtube and podcast form, and to improve my production quality and search results over time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Please subscribe to my channel…it REALLY helps. Like my video? Hate my video? Let me know, VOTE! Please leave a comment, let me know how I'm doing. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Um, hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for another edition of Coffee with Scott Adams. Aren't you happy that you get to drink a simultaneous sip every day, every morning? I never miss unless
View segment →something bad is happening. But all you need is a mug or a glass, a tankard, a chalice or a stein, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that is dopamine today, the thing that makes everythin…
View segment →r, including the coronavirus. It's called the simultaneous sip. Go. Every time I use that little Trump phrase I always smile to myself because it's so effective. You know when Trump brands something or puts a nickname on it, he uses this phrase. He goes, it's called the simultaneous sip. Yeah, as i…
View segment →one who named it. He'll say Jeb Bush is called low-energy Jeb. Yeah, without reference to the fact that he's the one who started it. I always laugh when he does that. All right. Well, it looks like in a new poll the voters who are quote unquote enthusiastic, not just supporting but enthusiastic sup…
View segment →enough. I'll say again, by the way, yeah, I say this because it makes you mad. I think I enjoy it. But I think I enjoy bothering you with this. I have a lot of respect for Alyssa Milano. While I would not agree with many of her positions politically or otherwise, she is the real deal. She's not jus…
View segment →opinions all the time, but you say, well, okay, that's a reasonable person who's actually trying to do what's good for the country in their own way. All right. There was a poll, I guess this one was Rasmussen, I believe. And it showed that only Democratic voters believed by majority anyway, only De…
View segment →he study, their own study. I'll just read it straight and you tell me that this straight fact is not funny. All right, here it is. Only Democratic voters believe most reporters are simply trying to report the news in an unbiased fashion. Funny that there's somebody in this country, and they can be e…
View segment →l I think it's fair to say that in general the news is no longer the old-fashioned news. It's really just different interests. They are moving their interests. All right. Question for you, because I don't know if you're seeing it. Everybody on social media is blowing up over the World Health Organi…
View segment →. And alone among, I felt, I felt like a loon among observers. And I doubt I was alone. One has to assume that in other places people were saying the same thing. But I didn't see it when I said it. And I said, well, that's just clearly a lie. Here's why I thought it was a lie. It's in a little book…
View segment →e times, let's hold off on, you know, shooting the people on our own team. Let's wait. Because if he has a good explanation I'm open to it. But otherwise he has to be fired. Of course there's some tweets going around today. I guess on February 7th Secretary Pompeo was tweeting a photo of American p…
View segment →lions of anything, yeah, when it comes to medical supplies you actually go through millions of stuff really, really quickly. So you can see really big numbers of what we shipped and, you know, it might have been one hospital rips through them in, you know, five days or something. So it's not as much…
View segment →to have anything to do with you because you're not a useful person. You're just being a troll. So that's in the media block, just so you know. Apparently here's a weird outcome of this coronavirus is that the illegal drug business is struggling because they're not getting the necessary chemical com…
View segment →l it that. But now it's kind of obvious. And I'm not even talking about the, you know, the Chinese virus. I don't know what the origin of that is. That feels more like a mistake than intentional. But they certainly didn't help us. They didn't help us the way we would have expected a reasonable coun…
View segment →ust have to take sides. I'm on Team America. I would like to see China's fate turn very, very bad in the next few years. And I'm gonna work to make sure that happens unless they reform the government, which would be fine. That's first choice. All right. Um, there's an article speaking of this in Th…
View segment →ght? Because if they ever reported anything negative about China they'd be kicked out anyway. So what is the point of having a US journalist? Any of them? Even one? Why would we even need one? They're not getting stories. They're not breaking any news. That's not going to happen. What's the point?…
View segment →hey followed him. It's not really something you'd forget, you know, because it's a conscious decision. Now so let me ask you this. Do you think that there was, is it more likely that there was somebody who works for Twitter who was, you know, like some rogue employee, just some American who didn't l…
View segment →my hypothesis with no proof for any of that. So the official story is that we don't know. We don't know why it seems that, I'll say seems officially, nobody there really knows why this stuff's happened. All right. So I saw a complaint that I think it was CNN. They were saying that the emergency rel…
View segment →know the rest of us are. And here's why. Whoever was the first person in the world, be they American, be they Chinese, be they whatever, but let's say American. Let's just limit to America. Whoever was the first American who said we should stockpile our supplies in case, whoever was the first Americ…
View segment →y before me, way before anybody. And it was probably already saying, hey we better get some supplies in. Hey we better close our borders. So if you're not that person, well then you're an idiot. Because you weren't smart enough, wise enough to know we should have done it sooner. It doesn't help that…
View segment →ll know to wear them or we'll start to have enough. We'll have beds that we know work and we'll start to use them. We'll have ventilators that we didn't have that now we have. And I think that you'll see, here's my prediction. I think that you're gonna see one of the most amazing human feats of all…
View segment →ong with azithromycin, the news we're getting seems to be from sketchy sources and foreign studies and, you know, a doctor who just says I tried it once, a patient who tried it and it seems to have worked. But it's not a scientific study. So it's beginning to be obvious to me that there's, I won't c…
View segment →You know this is as bad as the government telling you that masks don't work even a little bit. And you just look at it and you say well that's not just a lie. That's a lie like you think I'm really stupid. That's the sort of, what do you think of me that you would tell me the fabric doesn't slow dow…
View segment →an't believe anything about any Harvey Weinstein stories. Who knows what's happening in there. But certainly he would be the target for that virus. Are you working out more often now that you stopped going to the gym? The answer is yes. Well you know I always worked out every day that I could and I…
View segment →what am I doing to fix it and how much difference is it making. If you don't have that mechanism in place, and we don't, it's obvious we don't because you watch the task force and they're just guessing. They're like well we got a shipment here and there's a plant working over here but there's no kin…
View segment →fact as there could ever be in the behavioral sciences and economics and management. So but the good news is that Vice President Pence clearly acknowledges that need and he said yesterday that they're working hard to talk to the hospitals and gather that. Now once gathered I would say they're managi…
View segment →Um, hey everybody, come on in here. It's time for another edition of Coffee with Scott Adams. Aren't you happy that you get to drink a simultaneous sip every day, every morning? I never miss unless something bad is happening. But all you need is a mug or a glass, a tankard, a chalice or a stein, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that is dopamine today, the thing that makes everything better, including the coronavirus. It's called the simultaneous sip.
Go. Every time I use that little Trump phrase I always smile to myself because it's so effective. You know when Trump brands something or puts a nickname on it, he uses this phrase. He goes, it's called the simultaneous sip. Yeah, as if he's not the one who named it. He'll say Jeb Bush is called low-energy Jeb. Yeah, without reference to the fact that he's the one who started it. I always laugh when he does that.
All right. Well, it looks like in a new poll the voters who are quote unquote enthusiastic, not just supporting but enthusiastic supporters of Joe Biden, 24 percent. 24 percent of Joe Biden supporters are enthusiastic about it. To which I said to myself, really? Really? If I were to dig into these numbers a little bit, maybe get the name of one of these enthusiastic voters, drove over to that enthusiastic voter's house and said, you recently answered a poll question and you're in the 24 percent of people who say you're enthusiastic. You're the enthusiastic. Ask about Joe Biden. Did you really say that? Now, do you think that if you were in person with one of the people who said that they were enthusiastic about supporting Joe Biden, do you believe that you would detect said enthusiasm?
Now, I do believe the polling was accurate in the sense that, you know, a question was asked, that answer was given, it was recorded correctly and tabulated. So I'm sure the polling was, yeah, I think it was Rasmussen. It was it. I don't forget who it was, but whoever it was, I'm sure they did the polling correctly. But do you really think you would find that person? Really? Like, is it a coincidence that I have never met anybody who supports him who's excited about it? Ever? Have you ever seen one of his biggest supporters? Alyssa, what's her name? Alyssa the actress whose name I'm forgetting at the moment. You know, she tweets about him and supports him and stuff. And even her tweets and her support for him looks like she's working at it. It looks like she had to swallow hard and say, well, vote for Joe Biden. I mean, it just, everything about his supporters screams I wish I didn't have to be doing this. It's this or Bernie or Trump. And what am I going to do?
So that's the most ridiculous poll number I've ever seen, that 24 percent of people are enthusiastic about Biden. There are none. Oh yeah, Alyssa Milano. I'm sorry, I forgot her name. How could I forget Alyssa Milano's name? I must be really tired. It's not like we don't hear her name enough.
I'll say again, by the way, yeah, I say this because it makes you mad. I think I enjoy it. But I think I enjoy bothering you with this. I have a lot of respect for Alyssa Milano. While I would not agree with many of her positions politically or otherwise, she is the real deal. She's not just celebrity drive-by. She's invested. She's got skin in the game. She is trying to make the country better in the way that she thinks would work. So while I don't think she should get all of the things she wants, I'm very happy about her being a high-level player with, you know, good intentions. And she's part of the process and she's effective. I have a lot of respect for that, same as I do for, you know, anybody on the other side who just does a good job. You know, whether it's AOC or Van Jones or, you know, David Axelrod. I mean, you can find a lot of people who you may not agree with their opinions all the time, but you say, well, okay, that's a reasonable person who's actually trying to do what's good for the country in their own way.
All right. There was a poll, I guess this one was Rasmussen, I believe. And it showed that only Democratic voters believed by majority anyway, only Democratic voters believe by majority that, quote, it's so funny it's hard even to read the sentence. You know I've told you before that the news and humor have completely merged. There's no real difference between comedy and the news. But what you see is funny will be different than what I see is funny based on, you know, what team you're on, what direction you're looking at your things. But there's no such thing as just comedy anymore. You know, nobody, almost nobody makes a comedy movie, you know, because people will be offended and nobody's gonna go anyway. But politics is still funny. And it's funny without even trying.
And you tell me if this isn't funny. All right, I'm just gonna read, I'm gonna read the sentence the way it was tweeted, I believe, in Rasmussen's Twitter feed about the study, their own study. I'll just read it straight and you tell me that this straight fact is not funny. All right, here it is. Only Democratic voters believe most reporters are simply trying to report the news in an unbiased fashion. Funny that there's somebody in this country, and they can be easily identified with one side of the political divide, believe that the news is actually the news. Well, actually more than half of Democrats think the news is both legitimate and that the news people are trying to do it legitimately. How could you possibly see that no matter what news you're watching? I don't care which outlet you're looking at. How can you possibly think that? Aren't we way beyond that? Aren't we now?
I still think there are, you know, individual news people who are, you know, just trying to report the news straight. That's true. But in general I think it's fair to say that in general the news is no longer the old-fashioned news. It's really just different interests. They are moving their interests.
All right. Question for you, because I don't know if you're seeing it. Everybody on social media is blowing up over the World Health Organization and their statement that masks don't work. When obviously, by the way, my nose isn't running, it's itching and I'm trying not to touch my face in front of you. It's just psychosomatic, let's say. So was I saying, oh, who told you this first? Where is the first place you ever heard this? So when all of our professionals were telling us that wearing masks, oh God, the edge wouldn't help, who's the first person you heard say in public, well that's just a lie. Like it's just an obvious lie. They're wearing masks won't help you in any way.
And the reason, see, is because I think I'm the first person who said it publicly. Because, you know, there are a lot of people saying it now. But it's harder to say it when you're the first person because I said it just looking at the news from the most qualified professional authoritative medical sources. Right? I mean I looked at complete agreement across all the spectrum of medical sources and a hundred percent of them said, no joke, these masks won't help. Don't wear them. And alone among, I felt, I felt like a loon among observers. And I doubt I was alone. One has to assume that in other places people were saying the same thing. But I didn't see it when I said it. And I said, well, that's just clearly a lie.
Here's why I thought it was a lie. It's in a little book called Loserthink. It's my book. I'm sure you've all read it. If you haven't, what's wrong with you? You've got all this time. And on page 153 of my future forward book there's a chapter called Friction. Allow me to read a small sample from my book. It says, in political discussions you often see partisans talking in binary terms. For example, that a particular plan will completely stop some bad thing or otherwise they will do nothing. But in the real world often the best you can do is to create some friction to slow down the things you wish would stop completely.
Now I go on and talk about the wall and border security and saying that, you know, a wall is not meant to stop every person. It's meant to be friction to slow this thing down to a manageable level. Likewise, when somebody, the first time the expert said that the virus is spread through the air coming into your mouth, and then the very next sentence is wearing a mask over that air won't make anything better, that was sort of the end of the credibility right at that point. There was no point in even listening to the professionals anymore ever, at least or at least believing in them. Because if they would tell you something that's so obviously not true, I mean something that your own eyes and ears and brain can say, no, no, a barrier stops air at least a little bit. You know, is the air coming out of your mouth gonna go as far as it has to go through a mask? Of course not. Of course not.
So it's a clear case where the mask created friction. In this case, friction for the air and the virus. So of course it made a difference. Not a hundred percent, but whoever said it would.
So here's my problem with that. We watched our, I'll just pick, you know, one person from the experts, our Surgeon General. So our Surgeon General has said this right to our faces in public multiple times. Do you think he knows it's a lie? Because there are one or two possibilities. Either the Surgeon General lied to the public in public, you know, multiple times about the effectiveness of face masks during a health crisis. Remember this is a world pandemic. What is more important than the most important credible health professionals telling you the truth? There's nothing more important than that. That's the most important thing, is that your most credible health professionals need to tell you the truth.
Now the weird exception might be if they're trying to prevent a run on critical supplies, which would not be in the interest of the greater good. But here's what I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna put a stake down right here. Okay, you ready? Here's my stake. Our Surgeon General got in front of our country and lied to our faces in an obvious lie. Not even a little bit slightly not a lie. And he did it multiple times in a crisis. Should he keep his job? Should the Surgeon General keep his job lying so grotesquely in a crisis to the American people repeated times?
Now here's my answer to that. It's complicated. If after the crisis is over or at least after, let's say, the shortages are over, let's say we get to the point where, you know, the press and the public and the politicians and the hospitals generally agree that finally we caught up and we have enough supplies, once the shortage is over and everybody agrees it's over, if the Surgeon General says to the American people, I would like to apologize to you. I lied to you but I did it intentionally. Here was my purpose. My purpose was to stop a run on these supplies, the masks, and so that they could be used in the most, you know, the place where we can leverage them the best, which is with health care professionals and people who really needed them. If he tells us that after the fact, I might be okay with him keeping his job. Especially if he was ordered to do it, right? If he said, look, I work for the administration. The administration said I need you to go out there and shade the truth a little bit. It's for the greater good. And so I went out like a good soldier and I did it. I would say okay. I would say okay. I would say you can keep your job, you know, as my opinion as a citizen. Because you've explained it, you've apologized, and you had a reason. I'll take that. But don't ask us to believe you again. You know, the next time you tell us something, can we believe you? I mean that's a big problem, right?
So I would say if he does not later say, you know, okay, here's the deal. I intentionally was shading the truth because it was good for the country. If he doesn't say that, well, I think he needs to be fired, right? Wouldn't you agree? That's definitely a firing offense. I mean I can't even think of anything that would be more obviously a firing offense than lying about the value of face masks to a country where people are dying because of bad advice. You know, don't you think there were some people who had face masks, could have worn them? They weren't gonna, you know, donate their one mask to the hospital or anything. Don't you think you killed some people? I think you did. I mean statistically speaking probably somebody died who didn't need to because they didn't wear a mask if they had one in the closet because they had bad advice. So that's a pretty big deal.
But let's hold off, and I'm gonna say this a few more times, let's hold off on, you know, shooting the people on our own team. Let's wait. Because if he has a good explanation I'm open to it. But otherwise he has to be fired.
Of course there's some tweets going around today. I guess on February 7th Secretary Pompeo was tweeting a photo of American planes being loaded up or unloaded, I guess. Apparently in February 7th the United States sent many pallets of PPE, the protective stuff that we need in this country and we have a shortage of. We sent a plane load to Wuhan to help them with their shortage. Now people are saying, my God, you incompetent monsters. You, President Trump and Secretary Pompeo, how could you possibly be sending our limited supplies, which we're basically, you know, right at the ragged edge of running out of in our crisis? How could you send our critical national resources to a strategic frenemy, enemy, whatever you want to call China? How does that make sense?
Well let me tell you, everybody's a genius in hindsight. How many people in the United States, be they political or scientific, knew on February 7th that the United States would run out of protective equipment? Or raise your hand. Raise your hand if on February 7th you knew that the United States didn't have enough of this stuff and couldn't make it fast enough and or couldn't get a supply. Right? Raise your hand if you knew that on February 7th. You fricking liars. If you got your hands up you didn't know. Pompeo didn't know. Trump didn't know. Of course there were scientists and of course there were probably individuals who were saying, no, no, maybe you shouldn't do that. But nobody knew on February 7th.
Here's why I know we didn't know. Because we still don't know. Do you know if we have enough, let's say N95 masks, not only available but do we have enough in the pipeline so we'll be okay? Do you know? No, you don't know. You don't know. I don't know. Is there anybody in the world who knows? No. The reason I know we don't know this is because Pence said yesterday we don't know. That was yesterday. How did he know? How could he have known in February 7th we wouldn't have enough? Do you think on February 7th Mike Pence knew we didn't have enough masks? He doesn't know today. He doesn't know. Nobody knows. Nobody's even collected the fricking information.
Do you, did you know on February 7th that we had no mechanism for all of the hospitals in the country to report what critical supplies they might run out of in a crisis? That system didn't exist. So flying completely blind, the president, presumably, and the Secretary of State, probably, and others made a decision to give some supplies that they had access to to Wuhan. I don't know if those supplies made any difference at all. You know, I don't even know if it's enough because even when they talk about millions and millions of anything, yeah, when it comes to medical supplies you actually go through millions of stuff really, really quickly. So you can see really big numbers of what we shipped and, you know, it might have been one hospital rips through them in, you know, five days or something. So it's not as much as you think. That's the first thing.
And as a percentage of the United States total supply of that equipment, what do you think it was? If you had to guess, of our total United States supply of whatever that medical equipment was, how much of it do you think we gave to China on that one airplane? Well, less than one percent, don't you think? Less than one percent. And at the time I don't think that our officials who made this stuff knew we had a shortage. I don't think anybody knew. So if they made a decision back then to do something that would have obviously great, you know, diplomatic potential and, you know, in establishing this as a, you know, credible world player and being helpful even to people who are maybe not as helpful to us while we're still negotiating, you know, part two of the trade deal, I think this probably made sense on February 7th. In retrospect you could say it was wrong. But we're still in the battle. And if you're bayoneting people while the battle is still raging, you're not on our side. That would like you to be on our side for a while.
Here's the reason you will get blocked by me on Twitter or Periscope. So I just sort of put that out there. So in a comment on Twitter today, you know, I responded to somebody, they responded back, and then some third person comes in and says of me, he won't respond to any more. You're blocked. So I'll block people for telling me what I will do and what I am thinking. Those are the two things you can't comment on without getting blocked. Because you don't know what I'm gonna do and you don't know what I'm thinking. And if you're out in public telling people what I'm gonna do or what I'm thinking, I don't want to have anything to do with you because you're not a useful person. You're just being a troll. So that's in the media block, just so you know.
Apparently here's a weird outcome of this coronavirus is that the illegal drug business is struggling because they're not getting the necessary chemical components from China. To which I said, wait, what? Now I knew that fentanyl was coming, you know, the precursors were coming in from China and then the cartels were mixing them up and sending them north. So I knew that China was the source of things through Mexico in terms of fentanyl. But I didn't know that that was also true for heroin and meth. So whatever chemicals, I don't know if it's the poppies or something else, but apparently China is also the source for other major drugs going through Mexico into the United States. I didn't fully understand that. I did not fully understand that. I thought it might be limited to maybe, you know, one bad laboratory or two doing the fentanyl stuff. I didn't know that apparently the majority, if you don't count marijuana which is grown in this country now, it looks like the majority of the hard drug stuff, not counting cocaine I guess, is coming from China or at least the ability to make it.
So this has completely revised my opinion of what's going on. Because before I would have said to myself, yeah, yeah, China, you need to try harder to clamp down on those one or two laboratories that are sending fentanyl products. But it felt like an individual problem, didn't it? You get blocked from that to this person who got blocked. Those what they did.
All right. So now that I know that there is a more robust highway of, you know, illegal drug stuff coming from China through Mexico into the United States, now I think you could just say that's just war. I would say that's war. So before I thought, darn it China, you should try harder to stop your individuals who were sending bad things into Mexico and then into our country. But now it doesn't look like that at all to me. It doesn't look like that at all. Now it just looks like a war we didn't know we were fighting. Or I didn't know, I guess our government knew but maybe wanted to interpret it in a different way. But to me this is just war. We're at war with China. They're sending weapons of mass destruction through Mexico into the United States and killing Americans by the tens of thousands.
Try not to swear. Those of you who have been with me for a while, you know that I lost my stepson in 2018 to a fentanyl overdose. And you know that my opinion about China is largely influenced by that. So I'm not an unbiased observer when it comes to China. But I don't think people quite understand that we're in a hot war. It just doesn't happen to involve bullets and bombs. But if China is willingly, and obviously the crisis caused them to have a production stop that was enough to rattle the cartels on the other side of the world, it's pretty obvious, not pretty often, it's completely obvious that the Chinese government is supporting the drug trade through China and killing tens of thousands of Americans a year. And that's war.
You know, I thought, you know, I felt like it was a little bit war when it was just fentanyl and it maybe was individuals. But now that I know it's really a whole, you know, a system, well that's just a war. So at this point I would say to myself, oh man, I didn't try so hard not to curse. I'm gonna try to get through Sunday without cursing in public. See if I can do that.
I can't tell you how much I hate China if that hasn't come through to you. And again I want to be clear, not the Chinese people. I don't think I've ever met a Chinese person I didn't like, you know. But the government is pure evil and we can't do business with them anymore. So we have to decouple and we're gonna have to take them down in the process. So I don't think there's any way that the future looks anything but this. China has some bad years ahead of it. I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure that's true. I can make sure that the country of China, as long as they keep their current form of government which is a cancer, as long as they keep their current form of government, their future is worse. I'm gonna work every day of my life at least a little bit, at least persuasion-wise, to take China off of the top shelf and make sure that they fall and get worse every year from that point on. Economically, militarily, influence-wise and reputation-wise. And I'm sure a lot of people will be joining me in that fight.
But I think at this point if the United States just does business as usual, which I know when this is all done and we just start trading with them like normal, then I would say the government of the United States is my enemy. At least in terms of whatever the administration is that's doing that. And if an administration came along that was promising to stop doing that I would support them over the Trump administration. So it's war. And I don't play a war to lose. Do you? If you're in a war do you play to lose? Do you play for a draw? This is war now. We're at war with China. It's obvious we have been. We just didn't want to call it that. But now it's kind of obvious.
And I'm not even talking about the, you know, the Chinese virus. I don't know what the origin of that is. That feels more like a mistake than intentional. But they certainly didn't help us. They didn't help us the way we would have expected a reasonable country to help us. So at this point I would say that closing the border with Mexico is how you win the war with China. And that anybody who at this point, now that we understand that we're at war with China, they're sending drugs through the cartels into the United States, if you still don't want to close the border with Mexico you're a lost cause. Now maybe you just don't understand the situation. But I would say for anybody who now understands this situation and that it really is China at war with the United States, sending their weapons of mass destruction through the border with Mexico, if you're not, if you're not ready to close the border now and whatever that takes, drones and military and walls in some places, whatever it takes, if you're not willing to do that now, whose side are you on?
I mean at this point you just got to take sides. It's not even an opinion piece anymore. You just have to take sides. I'm on Team America. I would like to see China's fate turn very, very bad in the next few years. And I'm gonna work to make sure that happens unless they reform the government, which would be fine. That's first choice.
All right. Um, there's an article speaking of this in The New York Times about maybe sending home the Chinese spies at media companies. What? What am I understanding the story right? In The New York Times that the US government is considering maybe sending home the Chinese spies that work for media companies in the United States. What? What are you telling me? That we know they're spies and they're working in the United States writing stories that you and I are reading? What? Of course you should send them all home, dude.
Should we care that China is expelling our journalists? Probably not. Because I can't imagine journalists can actually operate in China anyway. Do you think it matters if we had journalists in China? Probably not. Because it probably just spies, or at least some of them don't. But do we care if we have spies or do we care if we have journalists, US journalists in China? Why would we care? They're not getting any stories, right? Because if they ever reported anything negative about China they'd be kicked out anyway. So what is the point of having a US journalist? Any of them? Even one? Why would we even need one? They're not getting stories. They're not breaking any news. That's not going to happen. What's the point?
So they're kicking out our journalists. Big deal. And then it's reported almost nonchalantly that we somehow know about all these Chinese spies in our media structure. To which I say why aren't they gone now? Like why are we waiting for the end of today? Is it because we don't know exactly which ones are spies and which ones are just, you know, people born in China who are working over here? Is it because we can't tell? Maybe that's why.
Now let me say something else which I cannot source but I'll tell you it's obvious. All right, you want to know something that's true and obvious at this point? That some amount of the, let's say the unexplained behavior of your social media platforms is foreign spies. And so can I prove this? No. But I'm gonna make a statement of fact and I'm gonna do it with high confidence. But I don't have a source. I'm just saying that common sense and everything you know about the world will tell you this is true. And this is one of the benefits of studying economics, by the way. You know there's some things that you can predict to be true every time just because you know economics. You know economics will have an influence on people that's fairly predictable on average over time.
So for example in economics if somebody, if the same product were being sold for, you know, a hundred dollars here and dollars here, you don't have to be psychic to know that as long as people know that it's the same product that people will buy more of the cheap one, right? So there's just some things in economics that guarantee you're seeing the future as close as that can be guaranteed. Right? Nothing's 100 percent. And in the world it's just very clear once you understand economics and psychology. Here's one of those cases.
If you were Russia or you were China or you were even one of our allies, name an ally, I won't pick favorites. And you could, and let's say it was possible, and you could put people who were loyal to your country but not the United States, if you could place them into jobs at the major social media platforms, you know, let's say you're Googles and you're YouTubes and you're Facebooks and your Twitter and your Instagrams, if you could do it, would you do it? Right? Any question about that? If they could do it wouldn't you all agree that they would? You know if we could put a spy in a major social media platform company in China, would we do it? Well obviously of course we would. If we could put an American spy into some important social entity or company or business in Russia, would we do it? Obviously we would. That's what we do.
If China could influence somebody who's already working at one of the platforms or longer-term like promote somebody, you know, help somebody's career until they get a job there, if China could put their own agents into the social media platform companies, would they do it? Do you have any question that they would do it? Well no, no, no, you don't have any question. Yeah, I see people mentioning different comfort countries. Yeah, so some countries are more active and more successful spying. So you know nobody would be surprised, you know, if Great Britain or Israel or, you know, even France or Germany or any of the big countries. So nobody should be surprised if any of the major countries are putting spies into any of the other major countries. So none of that should be a surprise.
So here's the thing. You know I've been saying from the beginning that I doubted that whatever was happening on Twitter that was hard to explain, that was either, you know, the most coincidental series of computer bugs or somebody's messing with us. Right? Those were the two possibilities. Because it was obvious something was happening. You could look at it and track it and write it down and you could see that things were happening to some follower accounts and likes were being unliked and stuff like that. And I had told you that in my opinion, unless I'm the worst judge of character in the world and I don't think I am, that Twitter management doesn't know what's going on. And my hypothesis is that foreign spies have embedded themselves or have access to the API or have access through apps. They have given control to your Twitter accounts. There might be 50 different ways they could do it. But I think some of the irregularities you're having, and I'll give you the, here's sort of the canary in the coal mine.
You know the problem I had with being unfollowed from Richard Grenell. So Ambassador Grenell of Germany, it was probably the most high-profile ambassador, wouldn't you say? I think he's probably the most high-profile ambassador. We all know him. Is there anybody who doesn't know the name of Richard Grenell? Probably not. There's probably not one of you watching this who hasn't heard his name now. Name another diplomat. Go name one other diplomat for any country, an American diplomat working anywhere. Can you name one? Probably not, right? So Richard Grenell, I think you'd agree, the most famous diplomat who also has a good reputation. People like him. And I looked at his Twitter followers and it's like 215,000 or something. I have twice as many Twitter followers as our most famous diplomat who is very active. He was far more famous than I am, far more active, and he has half as many Twitter followers.
Now a lot of people reported when I pointed out that I had been unfollowed from him, in other words I had followed him and then I wasn't anymore on two separate occasions that I know of. I checked it this morning and I'm still following him. And a bunch of other people said, hey, I asked people to check it and said, hey, it happened to me too. Happened to me too. So all kinds of people said they're positive they followed him. It's not really something you'd forget, you know, because it's a conscious decision. Now so let me ask you this. Do you think that there was, is it more likely that there was somebody who works for Twitter who was, you know, like some rogue employee, just some American who didn't like Trump, who decided to reduce the voice of Richard Grenell? Well maybe. But doesn't it seem more likely that he would be targeted by another country? Because most of what Grenell talks about is our relationship with other countries. He doesn't really say grossly just, you know, President Trump is the best president. I mean it does some of that because he's part of the administration. But he's mostly talking about other countries and our relationship to them. That's sort of his deal.
And his voice probably, I would guess that his natural Twitter following would be over a million by now. I'm guessing just, you know, given his visibility and, you know, his importance in the world. I think he'd have a million Twitter followers by now being an active tweeter. So who is more likely to have reduced his voice? Now if you were saying to me, hey, somebody reduced, you know, Jack Posobiec's, I would immediately say, oh that might be internal politics, you know, because there are some people who are talking more about domestic politics all the time. And if you saw their voice being reduced somehow by some unseen entity, your first thought would be, hey, is there somebody who works at Twitter who's doing this? Is this management or a rogue employee? And that would be a reasonable thing. But when you see Richard Grenell being, I think, obviously targeted in some way for a reduced voice, and he's mostly talking about our relationship with other countries, who do you think did it? Isn't it more likely another country did it?
So that's my hypothesis with no proof for any of that. So the official story is that we don't know. We don't know why it seems that, I'll say seems officially, nobody there really knows why this stuff's happened.
All right. So I saw a complaint that I think it was CNN. They were saying that the emergency relief bill had a gift in it for rich people. And I thought to myself, well that probably didn't happen. Yeah, that was my first impression when I saw the headline. It's like, really? Really? Somebody's gonna stick in a gift for the top 1 percent, a tax break for the top 1 percent? Somebody put that into this relief bill? Seriously? And so I thought, okay, fake news. I'll read this and it won't, just the headline won't even match the content, which is what we're getting used to. And I read the content and I thought, oh my God, this is true. You know, you can't believe anything's true. But here's the claim. That there was a substantial change in the tax code so that real estate moguls can write off some capital gains losses in a way more favorable way than before. To which I say to myself, what does that have to do with the recovery? What did that have to do with the recovery? What a pathetic performance by our Congress.
I mean I think I'm beyond hate. You know it starts with, well I'm not, I don't have a lot of confidence in Congress. Then there's some point where you just hate them. And I think I passed through hate. I'm at this is pathetic. They should just be embarrassed every day. I mean first, like I guess we have to fact check whether this real estate depreciation slash write-off tax break for the rich, I guess we have to see if it's true. Because just because it's reported doesn't mean it's true, unfortunately. But if it's true that's just pathetic. Just pathetic. And I would say that nobody in Congress should be reelected, be they Republican, be they independent, be they Democratic. So you know in case you're wondering if I'm being partisan, I don't care if every Republican in the Congress and the Senate loses their job in the next election. That'd be fine with me. And moreover I don't even care what the mix is when it's done. I don't care if there are more Democrats or more Republicans or more anything. I don't care. I think at this point they all need to lose their job. Because if they, if that's true, is that true? I mean first of all I need to know if it's true. But if it is they all need to be fired.
I've seen two completely different medical opinions on how this coronavirus gets transmitted. I will tell you the two opinions I've heard and then I will tell you that I don't know how to know which one's right. But I'll just pass along. So both of these are not scientific studies. These are based on doctors who are working on the front lines and they're reporting. So some of this is anecdotal but it's the people who were in the fight. So it's not people watching the fight. These are doctors who were actually intubating people and putting them on ventilators. You know they're right in it in New York City. One of them said here's the good news that if you're really good about washing your hands and social distancing and not touching your face, so if you do those three things, this one doctor said, you know, wash your hands like crazy, wear a mask mostly to prevent you from touching your own face, it's just good, and do your social distancing. This doctor says the odds of getting it if you do just those three things are basically vanishingly small. Now that's based on his experience, not based on studies, okay? Because and the idea is I guess he wasn't seeing people who had it unless they also had a story of close contact. Meaning, and he defined it as, you know, maybe it could be a handshake but also it could be, you know, spouses hugging or something. So then another doctor had a very different story. He said that he's hearing from people who had no known contact with someone who had it but they had been to the grocery store and that was their only exposure.
So the idea is that people who went shopping were also turning up in emergency rooms and that was the only known exposure they had to the public. They just had to go buy food and come home. Now that's still anecdotal. It doesn't mean that they got it from buying groceries. It still allows. And by the way the first doctor who said your odds of getting it are very low did not say go shopping. So I think they're both on the same page that if you can avoid physically going to a store, especially if you're, you know, if you're in a danger zone or you're older or something, you should do it. So I think they're both consistent on that. But one is saying that, you know, the grocery store is a source if you go in person. And then the other doctor was saying that food that is delivered to your house, so long as you, you know, wear gloves when you're opening it up or at least you're washing hands after you've just exposed, after you've disposed of the outer bag, this one doctor said probably by the time you get to the food your odds of getting something are very low. So he's suggesting getting delivery if you can.
All right. Here's apparently President Trump has a 49 percent approval rating which approaches a career high. And 60 percent of Americans now approve of his handling, including more than a quarter of Democrats, handling of the crisis. Now you might say to yourself, you may say to yourself, but what about all the things he should have done differently? How could even Democrats be happy with the president when it's reported on CNN every day that he's getting his facts wrong in public and that he should have done whatever sooner? But why is the public not responding to that the way they normally do? Why is the public saying, no, he's doing a good job even when the enemy press is telling the public that he's not? He should have done things sooner, should have done things differently, should have talked about it differently, should have, you know, not had those facts wrong. So why is the public seeing past the reporting this time when normally they don't? It's not everybody but a lot of them are seeing past the reporting.
And I hope it's this. I hope it's this. One of them is we've learned that nobody knew how much inventory we needed or why we needed it or who had it. So I think we've learned that nobody had the basic knowledge that we weren't prepared and therefore didn't know we needed to prepare. Because nobody even knew we were not prepared, probably in the government anyway. I mean I'm, I feel confident in saying that before this started probably nobody ever told President Trump directly or Pence, hey, if we have a pandemic we're gonna run out of all these supplies. I doubt anybody told them that, right? So is it the president's fault that we got caught unprepared? Well look at every other country. Every other country got unprepared. Was China ready? In the hell was South Korea ready? No. Was Japan ready? No. A hundred percent of countries weren't ready. So is the public saying, okay, I get what you're saying CNN and MSNBC, but you realize there are a lot of countries and none of them were ready. Maybe that context sort of changes that you feel out.
Secondly a lot of, a lot of people are making hay out of something that should have been done sooner. And this is one of those topics. So somebody who I was writing said they think that, you know, Trump should have acted sooner to either close the airports or close travel. He should have acted sooner to do social distancing. He should have acted sooner to get supplies that are in shortages. Now is it true, just objectively speaking, that we would be better off if he had acted sooner? Yes. Yes, we can all agree with that, right? No matter what political side you're on we would all agree that things would be better if we had acted sooner.
But I would like to make this standard. So here's a standard I would like to suggest. There was one smart person in the world and all the rest of us are okay. That's the frame you should put on that. Because we don't know who it was. Like we can't put a name to the one person who's not an idiot. But we can know the rest of us are. And here's why. Whoever was the first person in the world, be they American, be they Chinese, be they whatever, but let's say American. Let's just limit to America. Whoever was the first American who said we should stockpile our supplies in case, whoever was the first American who said we should close, you know, travel from China before even I did, I said it on January 24th. Jack Posobiec said it a few days before that. Maybe somebody said it before us. I would guess that was probably somebody in the world who said it first. So I want to be very clear we don't know who that was. But of all the seven billion people in the world and of all the 370 million Americans, however many there are, there was one of us who was right and also first. The rest of us are stupid, aren't we? Because we were too late. We were all too late.
I mean I was so proud. It's like, hey, January 24th I was already yelling at the top of my lungs, close that airport. Look at me. Haha. I beat some other people. I got there before other people did. No, I'm an idiot. Why am I an idiot? Because I didn't get it first. Why wasn't I saying it when the first person was saying it? What's wrong with me? Yeah. So let me make this standard. If you don't know who the first person was who got to the right answer before you did, because you know now it's retrospect. We're all, we all have great hindsight right now. We know it didn't make sense. Now we know we should have gone in sooner. But there was somebody, don't know who it was, who was way before me, way before anybody. And it was probably already saying, hey we better get some supplies in. Hey we better close our borders. So if you're not that person, well then you're an idiot. Because you weren't smart enough, wise enough to know we should have done it sooner. It doesn't help that you know it now. What good is that? What good is it that you know it now that we should have done this sooner? That's useless. Oh we're all geniuses now about the past. But if you weren't the first person then you're like all the rest of us. You're just an idiot who wishes you had been smarter in the past.
All right. I guess I didn't make it through Sunday without using a bad word. I'm gonna double down on my estimate for the total death toll in America from the coronavirus. So since the time I've been making an estimate I think I've been consistent. So maybe not. We'll see. But lately I've been saying this. I think, I think it will be 5,000. Now you might say to yourself, Scott, Scott, Scott, that's way off because we're already at 2,000 right in this country. I think we have, is that right? We crossed 2,000 already for this country. And we're closer to the start than the end, at least some people think so. That's my estimate, 5,000 total, which would be way less than even the common flu. I think the common flu it takes out like 30 to 80 thousand a year or something like that in the United States. So that would be a tiny, tiny death rate.
Now does that mean that we have overestimated the crisis? No. What my prediction is entirely based on people getting more clever and more serious and working harder. So yes, I'm seeing a confirmation that it's over 2,000 deaths. So I think you're gonna see when we hit around 4,000 deaths, which isn't going to take long by the way, that could be by the end of the week. So we're around 4,000 deaths. We're gonna have this figured out by, figured out I mean we'll have enough masks and we'll know to wear them or we'll start to have enough. We'll have beds that we know work and we'll start to use them. We'll have ventilators that we didn't have that now we have. And I think that you'll see, here's my prediction. I think that you're gonna see one of the most amazing human feats of all time. And it's going to happen right in front of you. You know we all get, we're all in the audience for this one, right? Everybody gets to watch how the coronavirus turns out. Nobody's not paying attention.
And we're gonna watch the human species pull together into one, you know, mega creature. You know like a transformer. You know we're a bunch of individuals with something like the government. But when this coronavirus hit, the body human just suddenly formed and connected over the internet and started acting like, you know, it took a while. We're still evolving into this greater creature. But we formed like a whole different species which is whatever is the sum of us all working together. Normally we're not working together so it's not a species. It's like individual cells just doing what they do. But boy when we were threatened we just formed up into a big old, you know, global brain with lots of arms and legs and just started flailing at this virus from every possible direction. Learning what we could, taking casualties, you know, putting field hospitals in there. And we went to war and we're in it right now.
So as my estimate, I don't believe anybody who is responsible will have an estimate that low. Because if your job is to be a scientist and to keep everybody scared so they do the right thing you're gonna use big numbers. And I think I'm okay with that from a persuasion perspective. What you can't do if you're a legitimate scientist or even a politician is you can't say what I just did. You know I can say that because I'm just observing. I don't have an official job. And so I can say yeah I think you're gonna see something akin to a miracle. Not a God miracle but a human miracle where the level of ingenuity will just be, I think, historic. It'll be crazy. You see it already.
All right. Let's see what else we got going on. Those are the main things. Somebody says Styx was one of the first to call out the virus response. Well if he was the first then all of the rest of us have something to answer to. If somebody was before him, well then he's just an idiot just like you are, just like I am. We're all, if we were too late. And I don't think there's anything I'm gonna have less patience for than people on our own team, meaning human beings fighting this virus. If people on the human being team are bayoneting people on their own team during the battle while the battle is raging, I'm gonna go after the bayoneters. And I'm gonna go pretty hard at the critics who imagined that they knew what the right thing was and they knew it on time. If you can't find that first person you're an idiot. So am I.
All right. We continue to watch with great curiosity the stories and or lack of stories about the hydroxychloroquine. It feels like the only news we're getting about that drug that's being trialed along with azithromycin, the news we're getting seems to be from sketchy sources and foreign studies and, you know, a doctor who just says I tried it once, a patient who tried it and it seems to have worked. But it's not a scientific study. So it's beginning to be obvious to me that there's, I won't call it a cover-up. Oh okay, I'll call it a cover-up.
All right. Let me give you an example. The New York Times just did a big article about why Germany's death rate is so low compared to others. So it's a whole article about what they did differently. You know how their response is, what their demographic is, you know the timing of things, the political decisions, the medical decisions. So it's a New York Times article so it's researched. There's a lot of detail in there about all the things the Germans did that's different from what everybody else did. Do you know what wasn't mentioned? Hydroxychloroquine. There was a whole article in The New York Times about what they were doing right and not doing right and it didn't even mention the drug that one must presume they're using over there. Didn't even mention it. You know it would be one thing to say well they're also using this drug but nobody has a good idea whether that's working or not, right? Wouldn't that be at what you would expect to see in that story?
And that ladies and gentlemen is the dog that was not barking. It's the one that I've been telling you about for a while. And you know I've been hinting about it but I'm just gonna tell you directly now. The dog that's not barking is if you see a story about another country that was or was not successful and it doesn't even mention hydroxychloroquine, doesn't mention that they used it, doesn't mention they didn't use it, doesn't mention they considered it, it just doesn't mention it, you're seeing manipulation on a level that should make you want to overthrow your government. Meaning that the media and presumably the government, are they must be working together at least in a limited way to prevent you from having this information. Right? Because clearly the New York Times knows that the hydroxychloroquine is one of the biggest variables. We don't know if it works. I'll say this every time. It might not. But it's certainly the most, you know, besides ventilators it's probably the most important thing that people talk about. It's not even mentioned in a major feature story about Germany. Are you kidding me?
You know this is as bad as the government telling you that masks don't work even a little bit. And you just look at it and you say well that's not just a lie. That's a lie like you think I'm really stupid. That's the sort of, what do you think of me that you would tell me the fabric doesn't slow down air and you would expect me to believe it? Well like how dumb do you think I am? And then you see a feature story about Germany without mentioning this drug positively or negatively. And I look at that and I go like how dumb do you think I am? How dumb do you think I am that I would believe that's anything like news? That is just propaganda or something. I don't know. It looks like the government have probably ordered them not to report on that is my guess. Or they voluntarily decided to because, you know, they may be part of reducing the hoarding of it. Maybe that's good.
All right. Here's some bad thinking I've been seeing. People have been saying to me why is it that you don't see any celebrities and or athletes dying? And of course the conspiracy thinking is well they must be getting the good drugs, you know, because they're not dying. Well maybe. But how about there's a more likely explanation. The more likely explanation is that your celebrities and athletes are all in really good shape. And the one thing we know is that if you're youngish and or you're in good shape you do better. Now Tom Hanks is I think right around my age. Yes. But he's clearly in better shape than other 60 year olds, wouldn't you agree? I mean you just look at Tom Hanks you say okay he works out, you know, he watches what he eats. It's pretty obvious. So he's not the kind you'd expect to have a bad outcome. Now on top of that they also probably got the hydroxychloroquine and the best possible treatment. But you know especially if you see like an NBA player and he doesn't die, well there's a reason for that. He's an NBA player. He's an elite athlete. His body is a sports car. Of course he can beat a virus. So it doesn't mean that there's some kind of special treatment although that probably is. It just could be that they're healthier and younger and they take better care of themselves. And they haven't been, that many, and 80 percent of people get over it anyway. And so far none of the celebrities have been, you know, obese and elderly. So maybe there's very low death rate.
Somebody in the comments says that Japanese girls have cute feet. Thank you for noting that. I think that fit the topic perfectly. Trump's body motto is money over morals. Like you know those are like the lowest level of political comment. Yeah, a person who with no profile picture comes in, Trump has an inner thought that he likes money more than humanity. It's like, you did you animate a fish? I mean what kind of brain does it take to think well this is, I think this can add to the public discourse. I'll just pretend I can hallucinate what a stranger is thinking. That should be good.
People are noting that Tom Hanks has diabetes. Yeah, you know you've heard that diabetes is a risk factor. But I'm just gonna put this out there as a hypothesis. The people who have diabetes tend not to look like Tom Hanks. I'm all right. Now I don't know percentage-wise how many are, you know, still can maintain their weight and be healthy and also have diabetes. But I've known a lot of people with diabetes. They don't look like Tom Hanks if you know what I'm talking about, right? People with diabetes have a tough time generally keeping their weight down. They tend to have other issues that compound. You know you get the diabetes and it's one thing after another. So you know if you're on top of it as successfully as I'm guessing somebody like Tom Hanks would be, meaning keeping yourself healthy in general etc., it's probably not the same risk as somebody who's 400 pounds and has diabetes.
All right. Let's see what else people are saying. Harvey Weinstein is in trouble though. Yeah, you know you can't believe anything about any Harvey Weinstein stories. Who knows what's happening in there. But certainly he would be the target for that virus.
Are you working out more often now that you stopped going to the gym? The answer is yes. Well you know I always worked out every day that I could and I'm still doing that. But I think I'm working out better. So what I changed was it wouldn't be unusual if I went to the gym and tried to exhaust myself, you know, try to get the most benefit I could. And you know I don't have to do much later so I just like wear myself out. But I don't do that because I would lower my immunity temporarily. So instead I changed my exercise habits so it's long walks instead of say using the StairMaster, running or anything like that. Because the long walk is just nothing but good. It's like it's just good for you and you feel it. So I told you before that I'd skip a day in the middle of this to see how differently I felt and there was a big difference. You know my whole, how much I, well I, my attitude, my stress, everything was different just because I did or did not take a walk. And so yesterday I just got overwhelmed with stuff to do and I didn't have time and it was raining and I didn't get out. And man I felt it. 1 a.m. this morning I woke up and I was just up. Yeah, I was just up for the day because I didn't exercise. So my body wasn't, just couldn't sleep that long. You know if I don't exercise I'm good for three or four hours of sleep and then my body just, it's like it has to go do something. I can't sleep after that. But if I've exercised I can.
All right. Here's one way you know your government is failing on this crisis. I think we'll get to the end of it and we'll do what we have to do. But there's going to be a lot of, you know, mistake, correction, mistake, correction. And we should look at that generously when it's done because nobody knows what to do. And that's just the fact. Nobody knows what to do. We got to try stuff and then quickly correct if it didn't work. But one of the things that you would have to say is clearly a mistake if it goes on much longer, and much longer would be I'd say end of today, if you don't see good reporting on which hospitals need which supplies and, you know, what their peak need would be, what they have and what's in the pipeline for them. If you don't see that reporting by say the end of today, doesn't have to be perfectly accurate but at least the beginning of that, you know, that system for reporting, I would say we're not competently handling this. Because you don't manage something you don't measure. If you don't think that's the most profound statement in all of human psychology and management then you have not studied those fields. This is the most profound and important thing you'll ever hear about getting groups of people to do something. And it's this. If you don't measure it you're not managing it. You're just flailing around.
So you have to be able to measure what the situation is and then on an ongoing basis what am I doing to fix it and how much difference is it making. If you don't have that mechanism in place, and we don't, it's obvious we don't because you watch the task force and they're just guessing. They're like well we got a shipment here and there's a plant working over here but there's no kind of idea of the total of that and what it looks like for the hospitals. So at this point the task force is not, it can be said as just a fact because that reporting is not in place, it's simply the fact that it's not being managed. Would you agree? You can't say the task force is managing the critical supply because they're not measuring it. That's just a fact.
All right. Everybody's got a background in management and maybe even psychology in some cases. You'll see in the comments there's a hundred percent agreement for the people of that skill set and that talent stack. Nobody will disagree with this by the way. Nobody will disagree with the statement that if you can't measure it you're not managing it. Right? Just that that is as hard a fact as there could ever be in the behavioral sciences and economics and management. So but the good news is that Vice President Pence clearly acknowledges that need and he said yesterday that they're working hard to talk to the hospitals and gather that. Now once gathered I would say they're managing. But I would also say that up until today nobody's been managing it. People have been doing things but they're just flailing, you know. And many of those things are productive. Of course it makes sense to make more of the stuff. So there's some things you can do where they're actually managing it. You just know you need more of it so everybody makes more of it if they can. But it's not being managed. Management happens the moment you see the reports even if inaccurate because they'll get better over time. That's when management begins. So don't think that we started managing. That hasn't even started yet. And so you look in the comments everybody's agreed.
All right. That's enough on that. I will talk to you tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, 7:00 p.m. Pacific. Don't miss it. Bring your blanket.
um hey everybody come on in here it's time for another edition of coffee with Scott Adams aren't you happy that you get to drink a simultaneous sip every day every morning I never miss unless something bad is happening but all you need is a cover of Margaret glass a tanker Challenger stand in the canteen Jagger flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me down for the unparalleled pleasure that dopamine today the thing that makes everything better including the coronavirus it's called the simultaneous hip go every time I use that little Trump phrase I always smile to myself because it's so effective you know when Trump brand something or puts a nickname on it he uses this phrase he goes it's called the simultaneous imp yeah as if he's not the one who named it he'll say Jeb Bush he's called low-energy Jeb yeah without reference to the fact that he's the one who started it I always laugh what he does that all right well it looks like in a new poll the voters who are quote enthusiastic enthusiastic not just supporting but enthusiastic supporters of Joe Biden 24% 24% of Joe Biden supporters are enthusiastic about it to which I said to myself really really if I were to dig into these numbers a little bit maybe get the name of one of these enthusiastic voters drove over to that enthusiastic voters house and said you recently answered a poll question and you're in the 24 percent of people who say you're enthusiastic you're the thews II ask about Joe Biden did you really say that now do you think that if you were in person with one of the people who said that they were enthusiastic about supporting Joe Biden do you believe that you would detect said enthusiasm now I do believe the polling was accurate in the sense that you know a question was asked that answer was given it was recorded correctly and tabulated so I'm sure the polling goes yeah I think it was rasp it was it I don't forget who it was but whoever it was I'm sure they did the polling correctly but do you really think you would find that person really like is it a coincidence that I have never met anybody who supports him who's excited about it ever have you ever seen one of his biggest supporters Elissa what's-her-name Elissa the actress whose name of forgetting at the moment you know she tweets about him and supports him and stuff and even her tweets and her support for him looks like she's working at it it looks like she had to swallow hard and say well vote for Joe Biden I mean it just everything about his supporters screams I wish I didn't have to be doing this it's this or burning or chomp and what am I going to do so that's the most ridiculous poll number I've ever seen that 24 percent of people are enthusiastic about Biden there are none oh yeah Alyssa Milano I'm sorry forgot her name how could I forget a lesson Milano's name I must be really tired it's not like we don't hear her name enough I'll say again by the way yeah I say this because it makes you mad I think I enjoy it that but I think I enjoy bothering you with this I have a lot of respect for Alyssa Milano while I would not agree with many of her positions politically or otherwise she is the real deal she's not just celebrity drive-by she's she's invested she's got skin in the game she is trying to make the country better in the way that the way that she thinks would work so while I don't think she should get all of the things she wants I'm very happy about her being a high level player with you know good intentions and she's part of the process and she's effective I have a lot of respect for that same as I do for you know anybody on the other side who just does a good job you know whether it's AOC or Van Jones or you know David Axelrod I mean you can find a lot of people who you may not agree with their opinions all the time but you say well okay that's a reasonable person who's actually trying to do what's good good for the country in their own way all right there was a poll I guess this one was Rasmussen I believe and it showed that only Democratic voters believed by majority anyway only Democratic voters believe by majority that quote it's so funny it's hard even to read the sentence you know I've told you before that the news and humor have completely merged there's no real difference between comedy and the news but what you see is funny will be different than what what I see is funny be based on you know what team you're on what direction you're looking at your things but there's no snow such thing as just comedies anymore you know nobody almost nobody makes a comedy movie you know because people will be offended and nobody's gonna go anyway but politics is still funny and it's funny without even trying and and you tell me if this isn't funny alright I'm just gonna read I'm gonna read the sentence the way it was tweeted I believe in Rasmussen Twitter feed about the study their own study I'll just read it straight and you tell me that this Strait fact is now funny all right here it is only democratic voters believe most reporters are simply trying to report the news in an unbiased fashioned funny that there's somebody in this country and they can be easily identified with one side of the political divide believe that the news is actually the news well actually more than a half of Democrats think the news is both legitimate and that the news people are trying to do it legitimately how could you possibly see that no matter what news you're watching I don't care which outlay you're looking at how can you possibly think that aren't we way beyond that aren't we now I still think there are you know individual news people who are you know just trying to report the news straight that's true but in general I think it's fair to say that in general the news is no longer the old fashioned news it's really just different interests they are moving their interests alright question for you because I don't know you're seeing everybody on seems like everybody on social media is blowing up over their world health organization and their statement that mess don't work when obviously by the way my nose isn't running it's itching and I'm trying not to touch my face in front of you it's just psychosomatic let's say so was I saying oh who told you this first where where is the first place you ever heard this so when all of our professionals were telling us that wearing masks Oh God the edge wouldn't help who's the first person you heard say in public well that's just a lie like it's just an obvious lie they're wearing masks won't help you in any way and the reason s key is because I think I'm the first person who sent it publicly because you know there are a lot of people saying it now but it's harder to say it when you're the first person because I said it just looking at the news from the most qualified professional authoritative medical sources right I mean I looked at complete agreement across all the spectrum of medical sources and a hundred percent of them said no joke these maslow help don't wear them and alone among I felt I felt like a low and among observers and I doubt I was alone you one has to assume that in other places people were saying the same thing but I didn't see it when I said it and I said well let's just clearly a lie here's why I thought it was a lie it's a little book called loser think it's my book I'm sure you've all read it if you haven't what's what's wrong you've got all this time and on page 153 of my future forward book there's a chapter called friction allow me to read a small sample from my book it says in political discussions you often see partisans talking in binary terms for example that a particular plan will completely stop some bad thing or otherwise they will do nothing but in the real world often the best you can do is to create some friction to slow down the things you wish would stop completely now I go on and talk about the wall and border security and saying that ya know a wall is not meant to stop every person it's meant to be friction so slow this thing down down to a manageable level likewise when somebody the first time the expert said that the virus is spread through the air coming in into your mouth and then the very next sentence is wearing a bear / that error won't make anything better that was sort of the end of the credibility right at that point there was no point in even listening to the professionals anymore ever at least or at least believed in them because if they would tell you something that's so obviously not true I mean something that your own eyes and ears and and brain can say no no a barrier stops air at least a little bit you know is the air coming out of your mouth gonna go as far as it has to go through a mask of course not of course not so it's a clear case where the mask created friction in this case friction for the the air and the virus so of course it made a difference not a hundred percent but whoever said it would so here's my problem with that we watched our I'll just pick you know one person from the experts our Surgeon General so our Surgeon General has said this right to our faces in public multiple times do you think he knows it's a lie because there are one or two possibilities either the Surgeon General lied to the public in public you know multiple times about the effectiveness of facemask during a health crisis remember this is a world pandemic what is more important than the most important credible health professionals telling you the truth there's nothing more important than that's the most important thing is that your most credible health professionals need to tell you the truth now the weird exception might be if they're trying to prevent a run on critical supplies which would not be in the interest of the greater good but here's what I I'm gonna put this I'm gonna put a stake down right here okay you ready here's my stake our Surgeon General got in front of our country and lied to our faces in an obvious lie not even a little bit slightly not a lie and he did it multiple in a crisis should he keep his job should the Surgeon General keep his job lying so grotesquely in a crisis to the American people repeated times now here's my answer to that it's complicated if after the crisis is over or at least after let's say the shortages are over let's say we get to the point where you know the press and the public and the politicians and the hospitals generally agree that finally we caught up and we have enough supplies once the shortage is over and everybody agrees it's over if the Surgeon General says to the American people I would like to apologize to you I lied to you but I did it intentionally here was my purpose my purpose was to stop a run on these supplies the mass and so that they could be used in the most you know the place where we can leverage them the best which is with health care professionals and people really needed them if he tells us that after the fact I might be okay with him keeping his job especially if he was ordered to do it right if he said look I work for the administration the administration said I need you to go out there and shade the truth a little bit it's for the greater good and so I went out like a good soldier and I did it I would say okay I would say okay I would say you can keep your job you know as my opinion as a citizen because you've explained it you've apologized and you had a reason I'll take that but don't ask us to believe you again you know the the next time you tell us something can we believe you I mean that's a big problem right so I would say if he does not later say you know okay here's the deal I intentionally was shading the truth because it was good for the country if he doesn't say that well I think he needs to be fired right wouldn't you agree that's definitely firing offense I mean I can't even think of anything that would be more testily obviously a firing offense then lying about the value of face mass to a country where people are dying because of bad advice you know don't you think there were some people who had face masks could have warned them they weren't gonna you know donate their one mask to the hospital or anything don't you think you killed some people I think you did I mean statistically speaking probably somebody died who didn't need to because they didn't wear a mask if they had one in the closet because they had bad advice so that's a pretty big deal but let's let's hold off and I'm gonna say this a few more times let's hold off on you know shooting the people on our own team let's wait because if he has a good explanation I'm open to it but otherwise he has to be fired of course there's some tweets going around today I guess on February 7th secretary Pompeo was tweeting photo of American planes being loaded up or unloaded I guess apparently in February 7th the United States sent many pallets of PPE the protective stuff that we need in this country and we have a shortage of we sent a plane load to Wuhan to help them with their shortage now people are saying my god you incompetent monsters you president Trump and Secretary of Pompeo how could you possibly be sending our limited supplies which we're basically you know right at the ragged edge of running out of in our crisis how could you send our critical national resources to a strategic frenemy enemy whatever you want to call China how does that make sense well let me tell you everybody's ingenious in hindsight how many people in the United States be they political or scientific knew on February 7th that the United States would run Anna's protective equipment or raise your hand raise your hand if on February 7th you knew that the United States didn't have enough of this stuff and couldn't make it fast enough and or couldn't get a supply right your raise your hand if you knew that On February 7th you fricking liars if you got your hands up you didn't know Pompeyo didn't know Trump didn't know of course there were scientists and of course there were probably individuals who were saying no no maybe you shouldn't do that but nobody knew in February 7th here's why I know we didn't know because we still don't know do you know if we have enough let's say and 95 masks not only available but do we have enough in the pipeline so we'll be ok do you know no you don't know you don't know I don't know is there anybody in the world who knows no the reason I know we don't know this because pence said yesterday we don't know that was yesterday how did he know how could he have known in February 7th we wouldn't have enough do you think on February 7th Mike Pence knew we didn't have enough mass he doesn't know today he doesn't know nobody knows nobody's even collected the fricking information do you did you know on February 7th that we had no mechanism for all of their hospitals in the country to report what critical supplies they might run out of in a crisis that system didn't exist so flying completely blind the president presumably in the Secretary of State probably in others made a decision to give some supplies that they had access to to Wuhan I don't know if those supplies made any difference at all you know I don't even know if it's enough because even when they talk about millions and millions of anything yeah when it comes to medical supplies you actually go through millions of stuff really really quickly so you can see really big numbers of what we shipped and you know it might have been one one Hospital rips through them and you know five days or something so it's not as much as you think that's the first thing and as a percentage of the United States total supply of that equipment what do you think it was if you had to guess of our totally United States supply of whatever that medical equipment was how much of it do you think we gave to China on that one airplane well less than one percent don't you think less than one percent and at the time I don't think that our officials knew who made this stuff knew we had a shortage I don't think anybody knew so if they made a decision back then to do something that would have obviously great you know diplomatic potential and you know in establishing this as a you know credible world player and being helpful even to people who are maybe not as helpful to us while we're still negotiating you know part two of the trade deal I think this probably made sense on February 7th in retrospect you could say it was wrong but we're still in the battle and if you're bayonetting people while the battle is still raging you're not on our side that would like you to be be on our side for a while here's here's the reason you will get blocked by me on Twitter or periscope so I just sort of put that out there so in the in a comment on Twitter today you know I responded to somebody they responded back and then some third person comes in and says of me he won't respond to any more your block so I'll block people for telling me what I will do and what I am thinking those are the two things you can't comment on without getting blocked because you don't know what I'm gonna do and you don't know what I'm thinking and if you're out in public telling people what I'm gonna do or what I'm thinking I don't want to have anything to do with you because you're not a you're not a useful person but you're just being in trouble so that's in the media block just so you know apparently here's a weird outcome of this coronavirus is that the illegal drug business is struggling because they're not getting the necessary chemical components from China to which I said wait what now I knew their fentanyl was come you know the precursors were coming in from China and then the cartels were mixing him up and sending them north so I knew that China was the source of things through Mexico and in terms of fentanyl but I didn't know that that was also true for heroin and meth so whatever chemicals I don't know if it's the poppies or something else but apparently China is also the source for other major drugs going through Mexico into the United States I didn't fully understand that I did not fully understand that I thought it might be limited to maybe you know one bad laboratory or to doing the fentanyl stuff I didn't know that apparently the majority if you don't count marijuana which is grown in this country now it looks like the majority of the hard drug stuff not counting cocaine I guess is coming from China or at least the ability to make it so this has completely revised my opinion of what's going on because before I would have said to myself yeah yeah China you need to try harder to clamp down on those one or two laboratories that are sending fentanyl products but it felt like an individual problem didn't it you get blocked from that to this person who got blocked those what they did alright so now that I know that there is a more robust robust highway of you know illegal drug stuff coming from China through Mexico into the United States now I think you could just say that's just war I would say that's war so before I thought d'arnot China you should try harder to stop your individuals who were sending bad things into Mexico and then into our country but now it doesn't look like that at all to me it doesn't look like that at all now it just looks like a war we didn't know we were fighting or I didn't know I guess our government knew but maybe wanted to interpret it in a different way but to me this is just war we're at war with China they're sending weapons of mass destruction through Mexico into the United States and killing Americans by tens of thousands try not to swear those of you who have been with me for a while you know that I lost my stepson in 2018 to a fentanyl overdose and you know that my opinion about China is largely influenced by that so I'm not a biased I'm not an unbiased observer when it comes to China but I don't think people quite understand that we're in a hot war just doesn't happen to involve bullets and bombs but if China is willingly and obviously the crisis caused them to have a production stopped that was enough to to rattle the cartels on the other side of the world it's pretty obvious not not pretty often it's completely obvious that the that the Chinese government is supporting the drug trade through China and killing tens of thousands of Americans a year and that's war you know I thought you know I felt like it was a little bit war when it was just fentanyl and it maybe was individuals but now that I know it's really a whole you know a system well that's just a war so at this point I would say to myself oh man I didn't try so hard not to curse I'm gonna try to get through Sunday without cursing in public see if I could do that I can't tell you how much I hate China if if that hasn't come through to you and again I want to be clear not to Chinese people I don't think I've ever been a Chinese people I didn't like you know but the government is pure evil and we can't do business with them anymore so we have to decouple and we're gonna have to take them down in the process so I don't think there's any way that the future looks anything but this China has some bad years ahead of it I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure that's true I can make sure that the country of China as long as they keep their current form of government which is a cancer as long as they keep their current form of government their future is worse I'm gonna work every day of my life at least a little bit at least persuasion wise to take China off of the top shelf and make sure that they fall and get worse every year from that point on economically militarily influence wise and reputation wise and I'm sure a lot of people will be joining me in that fight but I think at this point if the United States does just does business as usual which I know when this is all done and we just start trading with them like normal then I would say the government of the United States is that my enemy and at least in terms of whatever the administration is that's doing that and if an administration came along that was promising to stop doing that I would support them over-over the Trump administration so it's war and I don't I don't play a war to lose do you if you're in a war do you do you play to lose do you play for a draw this is war now we're at war with China it's obvious we have been we just didn't want to call it that but now it's kind of obvious and I'm not even talking about the you know the Chinese virus I don't know what the origin of that is that feels more like a mistake than intentional but they certainly didn't help us they didn't help us the way we would have expected a reasonable country to help us so at this point I would say that closing the border of Mexico is how you win the war with China and that anybody who at this point now that we understand that we're at a war with China they're sending drugs through the cartels into the United States if you still don't want to close the border with China you're a lost cause now maybe you just don't understand the situation but I would say for anybody who now understands this situation and that it really is China at war with the United States sending their weapons of mass destruction through the border with Mexico if you're not if you're not ready to close the border now and whatever that takes drones and military and walls in some places whatever it takes if you're not willing to do that now whose side are you on I mean at this point you just got to take sides it's not even an opinion piece anymore you just have to take sides I'm on Team America I would like to see China's fate turn very very bad in the next few years and I'm gonna work to make sure that happens unless they reform the government which would be fine that's first choice all right um there's a article speaking of this in The New York Times about maybe sending home the Chinese spies at media companies what wait what am i understanding the story right and the New York Times that the US government is considering maybe sending home the Chinese spies that work for media companies in the United States what what are you telling me that we know they're spies and they're working in the United States writing stories that you and I are reading what of course you should send them all home dude should we care that China is expelling our journalists probably not because I can't imagine journalists can actually operate in China anyway do you think it matters if we had journalists in China probably not because it probably just spies or at least some of them don't but do we care if we have spies or if we do we care if we have journalists US journalists in China why would we care they're not getting any stories right because if they ever reported anything negative about China they'd be kicked out anyway so what is the point of having a u.s.
journalist any of them even one why would even need one they're not getting a getting a stories they're not breaking any news that's not going to happen what's the point so they're kicking out our journalists big deal and then it's reported almost nonchalantly that we somehow know about all these Chinese spies in our media structure to which I say why aren't they gone now like why are we waiting for the end of today is it because we don't know exactly which ones are spies and which ones are just you know people born in China who are working over here is it because we can't tell maybe that's why now let me say something else which I cannot source but I'll tell you it's a hobby yes all right you want to know something that's true and obvious at this point that some amount of the let's say the unexplained behavior of your social media platforms is foreign spies and so can I prove this now but I'm gonna make a statement of fact and I'm gonna do it with high confidence but I don't have a source I'm just I'm just saying that common sense and everything you know about the world will tell you this is true and this is one of the benefits of studying economics by the way you know there's some things that you can predict to be true every time just because you know economics you know economics will have an influence on people that's fairly predictable on average over time so for example in economics if somebody if if the same product we're being sold for you know hundred dollars here and dollars here you don't have to be psychic to know that as long as people know that it's the same product that people will buy more of the cheap one right so there's just some things in economics that guarantee you're seeing the future as close as that can be guaranteed right nothing's 100% and in the world is just very clear once you understand economics and psychology here's one of those cases if you were Russia or you were China or you were even one of our allies named an ally I won't pick favorites and you could and let's say it was possible and you could put people who were loyal to your country but not the United States if you could place them into jobs at the major social media platforms you know let's say you're Google's and you're youtubes and you're Facebook's and your Twitter and your Instagram if you could do it would you do it right there any question about that if they could do it wouldn't you all agree that they would you know if we could put a spy in a major social media platform company in China what do we do it well obviously of course we would if we could put an American spy into some important social entity your company or business in Russia would we do it obviously we would that's what we do if China could influence somebody who's already working at one of the platforms or or longer-term like promote somebody you know help somebody's career until they get a job there if China could put their own agents into the social media platform companies would they do it do you have any question that they would do it well no no no you don't have any question yeah I see people mentioning different comfort countries yeah so some countries are you're more active and more successful spying so you know nobody would be surprised you know if Great Britain or Israel or you know even France or Germany or any of the big countries so nobody should be surprised if any of the major countries are putting spies into any of the other major countries so none of that should be a surprise so here's the thing you know I've been saying from the beginning that I I doubted that whatever was happening on Twitter that was hard to explain that was either you know the the most coincidental series of computer bugs or somebody's messing with us right those were the two possibilities because it was obvious something was happening you could look at it and track it and write it down and you could see that things were happening to some follower accounts and likes were being unliked and stuff like that and I had told you that in my opinion unless I'm the worst judge of character in the world and I don't think I am that Twitter management doesn't know what's going on and my hypothesis is as foreign foreign spies have embedded themselves or have access to the API or have access through apps they have you've given control to your Twitter accounts there might be 50 different ways they could do it but I think some of the irregularities you're having and I'll give you the here's sort of the canary in the coal mine you know the problem I had with being unfollowed from Richard Grinnell so ambassador of Grinnell of Germany it was probably the most high-profile ambassador wouldn't you say I think he's probably the most high-profile ambassador we all know him is there anybody who doesn't know the name of Richard Grinnell probably not there's probably not one of you watching this who hasn't heard his name now name another diplomat go name one other diplomat for any country an American diplomat working anywhere can he name one probably not right so Richard Grinnell I think you'd agree the most famous diplomat who also has a good reputation people like him and I looked at his Twitter followers and it's like two hundred and fifteen thousand or something I have twice as many Twitter followers as our most famous diplomat who is very active he was far more famous than I am far more active and he has half as many Twitter followers now a lot of people reported when I pointed out that I had been unfollowed from him in other words I had followed him and then I wasn't anymore on two separate occasions that I know of I checked it this morning and I'm still following him and a bunch of other people said hey I asked people to check it and said hey it happened to me too happened to me too so all kinds of people said they're positive they followed him it's not really something you'd forget you know cuz it's a conscious decision now so let me ask you this do you think that there was a is it more likely that there was somebody who works for Twitter who was you know like some rogue employee just some American who didn't like Trump who decided to reduce the voice of Richard Grinnell well maybe but doesn't it seem more likely that he would be targeted by another country because most of what Grinnell talks about is our relationship with other countries he doesn't really say grossly just you know President Trump is the best president I mean it does some of that because he's part of the administration but he's mostly talking about other countries and our relationship to them that's sort of his deal and his voice probably I would guess that his his natural Twitter following would be over a million by now I'm guessing just you know given his visibility and you know his importance in the world I think he'd have a million Twitter followers by now being an active tweeter so who is more likely to have reduced his voice now if you were saying to me hey somebody reduced you know Jack pasaba case I would immediately say oh that might be internal politics you know because there are some people who are talking more about domestic politics all the time and if you saw their their voice being reduced somehow by some unseen entity your first thought would be hey is there somebody who works at Twitter who's doing this it was this management or a rogue employee and that would be a reasonable thing but when you see Richard Grinnell being I think obviously targeted in some way for a reduced voice and he's mostly talking about our relationship with other countries who do you think did it isn't it more likely another country did it so that's my hypothesis with no no proof for any of that so the the official story is that we don't know we don't know why it seems that all say seems officially nobody there really knows why this stuff's happened all right so I saw a complaint that I think wasn't CNN they were saying that the the emergency relief bill had a gift in it for rich people and I thought to myself well that probably didn't happen yeah that was my first my first impression when I saw the headline is like really really somebody's gonna stick in a gift for the top 1% a tax break for the top 1% somebody somebody put that into this relief bill seriously and so I thought okay fake news I'll read this and it won't just the headline won't even match the content which is what we're getting used to and I read the content and I thought oh my god this is true you know you can't believe anything's true but here's here's the the claim that there was a substantial change in the tax code so that real estate moguls can write off some capital gains losses in a way more favorable way than before to which I say to myself what does that have to do with the recovery what what did that have to do with the recovery what what what a pathetic performance by our Congress I mean I I think I'm beyond hate you know it starts with well I'm not I don't have a lot of confidence in Congress then there's some point where you just hate them and I think I pass through hate I'm at this is pathetic they should just be embarrassed every day I mean first like I guess we have to fact check whether this this real estate depreciation slash write-off tax break for the rich I guess we have to see if it's true because just because it's reported doesn't mean it's true unfortunately but if it's true that's just pathetic just pathetic and I would say that nobody in Congress should be reelected be they Republican be they independent be they're democratic so you know in case you're wondering if I'm being partisan I don't care if every Republican in the Congress and the Senate loses their job in the next election that'd be fine with me and moreover I don't even care what the mix is when it's done I don't care if there are more Democrats or more Republicans or more anything I don't care I think at this point they all need to lose their job because if they if that's true is that true I mean first of all I got it I need to know if it's true but if it is they all need to be fired I've seen two completely different medical opinions on how this corona virus gets transmitted I will tell you the two opinions I've heard and then I will tell you that I don't know how to know which one's right but I'll just pass along so both of these are not scientific studies these are based on doctors who are working on the front lines and they're reporting so some of this is anecdotal but it's the people were in the fight so it's not people watching the fight these are doctors who were actually intubating people and putting them on ventilators you know they're they're right in it in New York City one of them said here's the good news that if you're really good about washing your hands and social distancing you and not touching your face so if you do those three things this one doctor said you know wash your hands like crazy wear a mask mostly to prevent you from touching your own face it's just good and do your social distancing this doctor says the odds of getting it if you do though just those three things are basically vanishingly small now that's based on his experience not based on studies okay because and the idea is I guess he wasn't seeing people who had it unless they also had a story of close contact meaning and he defined it as you know baby it could be a handshake but also it could be you know spouses hugging there's nothing so then another doctor had a very different story he said that he's hearing from people who had no known contact with someone who had it but they had been to the grocery store and that was their only exposure so the idea is that people who went shopping were also turning up in in emergency rooms and that was the only known exposure they had to the public they just had to go buy food and come home now that's still anecdotal it doesn't mean that they got it from buying groceries it still allows and by the way the the first doctor who said your odds of getting it are very low did not say go shopping so I think they're both on the same page that if you can avoid physically going to a store especially if you're you know if you're in a danger zone or you're older or something you should do it so I think they're both consistent of that but one is saying that you know the grocery store is a source if you go in person and then the other doctor was saying that food that is delivered to your house us so long as you you know wear gloves when you're opening it up or at least you're you're washing hands after you've just exposed after you've disposed of the outer bag this one doctor said probably by the time you get to the food your odds of getting something are very low so he's suggest getting delivery if he can all right here's a apparently president Trump has a forty nine percent approval rating which approaches a career high and sixty percent of Americans now approve of this handling including more than a quarter of Democrats handling of the crisis now you might say to yourself you may say to yourself but what about all the things he should have done differently how could even Democrats be happy with the president when it's reported on CNN every day that he's getting his facts are on the public and that he should have done whatever Souter but why is the public not responding to that the way they normally do why is the public saying now he's doing a good job even when the enemy press is telling him is telling the public that he's not he should have done things sooner should have things done things differently should have talked about it differently you should have you know not add those facts wrong so what why is the public seeing past the reporting this time when normally they don't it's not everybody but a lot of them are seeing past the reporting and I hope it's this I hope it's this one of them is we've learned that nobody knew how much inventory we needed or why we needed it or who had it so I think we've learned that nobody had the basic knowledge that we weren't prepared and therefore didn't know we needed to prepare because nobody even knew we were not prepared probably in the government anyway I mean I'm I feel confident in saying that before this started probably nobody ever told President Trump directly or pence hey if we have a pandemic we're gonna run out of all these supplies I doubt anybody told them that right so is it the president's fault that we got caught unprepared well look at every other country every other country got unprepared was China ready in the hell was South Korea ready now was was Japan ready now a hundred percent of countries weren't ready so is the public saying okay I get what you're saying CNN and MSNBC but you realize there are a lot of countries and none of them already maybe that context sort of changes that you filled out secondly a lot of the a lot of people are making hay and of something that should have been done sooner and this is one of those topics so so somebody who writing said they they think that you know Trump should have acted sooner to either close the airports or close travel he should have acted sooner to do social distancing you should have acted sooner to get supplies that are in shortages now is it true just objectively speaking that we would be better off if he had acted sooner yes yes we can all agree with that right no matter what political side you're on we would all agree that things would be better if we had acted sooner but I would like to make this standard so here's a standard I would like to suggest there was one smart person in the world and all of the rest of us are okay that's the frame you should put on that because we don't know who it was like we can't put a name to the one person who's not an but we can know the rest of us are and here's why whoever was the first person in the world be they American be they Chinese be they whatever but let's say American let's just limit to America whoever was the first American who said we should stockpile our supplies in case whoever was the first American who said we should close you know travel from China before even I did I said it on January 24th Jack Poe Sabich said it a few days before that maybe somebody said it before us I would guess that was probably somebody in the world who said it first so I want to be very clear we don't know who that was but of all the seven billion people in the world and of all the 370 million Americans however many there are there was one of us who was right and also first the rest of us are stupid aren't we because we were too late we were all too late I mean I was so proud it's like hey January 24th I was already yelling at the top of my lungs close that Airport look at me haha I beat some other people I got there before other people did know I'm an why am I an because I didn't get it first Wyatt why wasn't I saying it when the first person was saying it what's wrong with me yeah so let me make this standard if you don't know who the first person was who got to the right answer before you did because you know now it's retrospect we're all we all have great hindsight right now we know it didn't make sense now we know we should go in sooner but there was somebody don't know it was who was way before me way before anybody and it was probably already saying hey we better get some supplies in hey we better better close our borders so if you're not that person well then you're an because you weren't smart enough wise enough to know we should have done it sooner it doesn't help that you know it now what good is that what good is it that you know it now that we should have done this sooner that's useless oh we're all geniuses now about the past but if you weren't the first person then you're like all the rest of us you're just Nestle who wishes you had been smarter in the past all right I guess I didn't make it through Sunday without using a bad word I'm gonna double down on my estimate for the total death toll in America from the coronavirus so since the time I've been making an estimate I think I've been consistent so maybe not we'll see but lately I've been saying this I think I think it will be 5,000 now you might say to yourself Scott Scott Scott that's way off because we're already at 2000 right in this country I think we have is that right mm we cross 2000 already for this country and we're closer to the start than the end at least some people think so that's my estimate 5,000 total which would be way less than even the common flu I think the common flu it takes out like 30 to 80 thousand a year or something like that in the United States so that would be a tiny tiny death rate now does that mean that we have overestimated the crisis no what I'm my my prediction is entirely based on people getting more clever and more serious and working harder so yes I'm seeing a confirmation that it's over 2,000 deaths so I think you're gonna see when we hit around 4,000 deaths which isn't going to take long by the way that could be by the end of the week so we're around 4,000 deaths we're gonna have this figured out by figured out I mean we'll have enough masks and we'll know to wear them or we'll start to have enough we'll have beds that we know work and we'll start to use them we'll have ventilators that we didn't have that now we have and I think that you'll see here's my prediction I think that you're gonna see one of the most amazing human feats of all time and it's going to happen right in front of you you know we all get we're all we're all in the audience for this one right everybody gets to watch out of the Krone iris turns out nobody nobody's not paying attention and we're gonna watch the human species pull together into one you know mega creature you know like a like a transformer you know we're a bunch of individuals with something like the government but when this Kuroda virus hit the the body human just suddenly formed and connected over the internet and started acting like you know it took a while we're still evolving into this greater creature but we formed a like a whole different species which is whatever is the sum of us all working together normally we're not working together so it's not a species it's like individual cells just doing what they do but boy when we were threatened we just formed up into a big old you know global brain with lots of arms and legs and just started flailing at this virus from every possible direction learning what we could taking casualties you know putting field field hospitals in there and we went to war and we're in it right now so as my estimate I don't believe anybody who is responsible will have an estimate that low because if your job is to be a scientist and to keep everybody scared so they do the right thing you're gonna use big numbers and I think I'm okay with that from a precision perspective what you can't do if you're a legitimate scientist or even a politician is you can't say what I just did you know I can say that because I'm just observing I don't have an official job and so I can say yeah I think you're gonna see something akin to a miracle not not a God miracle but a human miracle where the level of ingenuity will just be I think historic it'll be crazy you see it already alright let's see what else we got going on those are the main things somebody says Styx was one of the first to call out the virus response well if he was the first then all of the rest of us have something to answer to if somebody was before him well then he's just an just like you are just like I am we're all if we were too late and I don't think there's anything I'm gonna have less patience for then people on our own team meaning human beings fighting this virus if people are the human being team are bayonetting people on their own team during the battle while the battle is raging I'm gonna go after the the Bayon enters and I'm gonna go pretty hard at the critics who imagined that they knew what the right thing was and they knew it on time if you can't find that first person you're an so am i all right we continue to watch with great curiosity the stories and or lack of stories about the high hydroxychloroquine it feels like the only news we're getting about that drug that's being trialed along with is that through my son the news were getting seems to be from sketchy sources and foreign studies and you know a doctor who just says I tried it once a a patient who tried it and it seems to have worked but it's not a scientific study so it's beginning to be obvious to me that there's I won't call it a cover-up oh okay I'll call it a cover-up all right let me give you an example the New York Times just did a big article about why Germany's death rate is so low compared to others so it's a whole article about what they did differently you know how their response is what their demographic is you know the timing of things that the political decisions the medical decisions so it's a New York Times article so it's it's researched there's a lot of there's a lot of detail in there about all the things the Germans did that's different from what everybody else did do you know what wasn't mentioned hydroxychloroquine there was a whole article in The New York Times about what they were doing right and not doing right and it didn't even mention the drug that one must presume they're using over there didn't even mention it you know it would be one thing to say well they're also using this drug but nobody has a good idea whether that's working or not right wouldn't that be at what you would expect to see in that story and that ladies and gentlemen is the dog that was not barking it's the one that I've been telling you about for a while and you know I've been hinting about it but I'm just gonna tell you directly now the dog that's not barking is if you see a story about another country that was or was not successful and it doesn't even mention hydroxychloroquine doesn't mention that they used it doesn't mention they didn't use it doesn't mention they considered it it just doesn't mention it you're seeing manipulation on a level that should make you want to overthrow your government meaning that the the media and presumably the government are they must be working together at least in a limited way to prevent you from having this information right because clearly the New York Times knows that the hydroxychloroquine is one of the biggest variables we don't know if it works I'll say this every time my work might not but it's certainly the most you know besides ventilators it's probably the most important thing that people talk about it's not even mentioned in a major feature story about Germany are you kidding me you know this is as bad as the the government telling you that masks don't work even a little bit and you just look at it you say well that's not just a lie that's a lie like you think I'm really stupid that's a sort of what do you think of me that you would tell me the fabric doesn't slow down air and you would expect me to believe it well like how dumb do you think I am and then you see a feature story about Germany without mentioning this drug positively or negatively and I look at that and I go like how dumb do you think I am how dumb it do you think I am that I would believe that's anything like news that is just propaganda or something I don't know it looks like the government have probably ordered them not to report on that is my guess or or they voluntarily decided to because the you know they may they may be part of reducing the hoarding of it maybe that's good all right here's some bad thinking I've been seeing people have been saying to me why is it the that you don't see any celebrities and/or athletes dying and of course the conspiracy thinking is well they must be getting the good drugs you know because they're not dying well maybe but how about there's a more likely explanation the more likely explanation is that your celebrities and athletes are all in a really good shape and the one thing we know is that if your youngish and or you're in good shape you do better now Tom Hanks is I think right around my age yes but he's clearly in better shape than other 60 year olds wouldn't you agree I mean you just look at Tom Hanks you say okay he works out you know you watches what he eats is pretty obvious so he's not the kind you'd expect to have a bad outcome now on top of that they also probably got the hydroxychloroquine and the best the best possible treatment but you know especially if you see like an NBA player and he doesn't die well there's a reason for that he's an NBA player he's an elite athlete his body as a his body as a sports car of course he can beat a virus so it doesn't mean that there's kind of some kind of special treatment although that probably is it just could be that they're healthier and younger and they take better care of themselves and their haven't been that many an 80% of people get over it anyway and so far none of the celebrities have been you know obese and elderly so maybe there's very low death rate somebody in the comments says that Japanese girls have cute feet thank you for noting that I think that fit the topic perfectly Trump's body motto is money over morals like you know those are those are like the lowest level of political comment yeah a person who with no profile picture comes in Trump has an inner thought that he likes money more than humanity it's like you did you animate a fish I mean what kind of brain does it take to think well this is I think this can add to the public discourse I'll just pretend I can hallucinate what a stranger is thinking that should be good people are noting that Tom Hanks has diabetes yeah you know you've heard the diabetes is a risk factor but I'm just gonna put this out there as a hypothesis the people who have diabetes tend not to look like Tom Hanks I'm all right now I don't know percentage-wise how many are you know still can maintain their weight and be healthy and also have diabetes but I've known a lot of people with diabetes they don't look like Tom Hanks if you know what I'm talking about right people with diabetes have a tough time generally keeping their way down they tend to have other issues that compound you know you get the diabetes and it's one thing after another so you know if you're if you're on top of it as successfully as I'm guessing somebody like Tom Hanks would be meaning keeping yourself healthy in general etc it's probably not the same risk as somebody who's 400 pounds and has diabetes alright let's see what else people are saying Harvey Weinstein is in trouble though yeah you know you can't believe anything about any Harvard Harvey Weinstein stories who knows what's happening in there but certainly he's you would be the target for that that virus are you working out more often now that you stopped going to the gym the answer is yes well you know I always I always worked out every day that I could and I'm still doing that but I think I'm working out better so what I changed was it wouldn't be unusual if I went to the gym and tried to exhaust myself you know try to get the most benefit I could and you know I don't have to do much later so I just like wear myself out but I don't do that because I would lower my immunity temporarily so instead I changed my exercise habits so it's long walks instead of say using the Stairmaster running or anything like that because the long walk is just nothing but good it's like it's just good for you and you feel it so I told you before that I'd skip today in the middle of this to see how differently I felt and there was a big difference you know my whole how much I well I slapped my attitude my stress everything was different just because I did or did not take a walk and so I yesterday I just got overwhelmed with stuff to do and I didn't have time and it was raining and I didn't get out and man I felt it I 1 a.m.
this morning I woke up and I was just up yeah I was just up for the day because I didn't exercise so my body wasn't just couldn't sleep that long you know if I don't exercise I'm good for three or four hours of sleep and then my body just it's like it has to go do something I can't I can't sleep after that but if I've exercised I can all right here's here's one way you know your government is failing on this crisis I think we'll get to the end of it and we'll do what we have to do but there's going to be a lot of you know mistake correction mistake correction and we should look at that generously when it's done because nobody knows what to do and that's just the fact nobody knows what to do we got to try stuff and then quickly correct if it didn't work but one of the things that you would have to say is clearly a mistake if it goes on much longer and much longer would be I'd say end of today if you don't see good reporting on which hospitals need which supplies and you know what their peak need would be what they have and what's in the pipeline for them if you don't see that reporting by say the end of today doesn't have to be perfectly accurate but at least the beginning of that you know that system for reporting I would say we're not competently handling this because you don't manage something you don't measure if you don't think that's the most profound statement in all of human psychology and management then you have not studied those fields this is the most profound and important thing you'll ever hear about getting groups of people to do something and it's this if you don't measure it you're not managing it you're just flailing around so you have to be able to measure what the situation is and then on an ongoing basis what am i doing to fix it and how much differences in making if you don't have that mechanism in place and we don't it's obvious we don't because you watch the task force and they're just guessing they're like well we got a shipment here and there's a plant working over here but there's no kind of idea of the total of that and what it looks like for the hospital's so at this point the task force is not it can be set as just a fact because that reporting is not in place it's simply the fact that it's not being managed would you agree you can't say the task force is managing the critical supply because they're not measuring it that's just a fact all right everybody everybody's got a background in management and maybe even psychology in some cases you'll see in the comments there's a hundred percent agreement for the people of that that skill set and that talents that nobody will disagree with this by the way nobody will disagree with the statement that if you can't measure it you're not managing it right just that that is as hard a fact as there could ever be in the behavioral sciences and economics and management so but the good news is that vice-president pence clearly acknowledges that need and he said yesterday that that they're working hard to talk to the hospitals and gather that now once gathered I would say they're managing but I would also say that up until today nobody's been managing it people have been doing things but they're just flailing you know and many of those things are productive of course it makes sense to make more of the stuff so there's some things you can do where they actually managing it you just know you need more of it so everybody makes more of it if they can but it's not being managed management happens the moment you see the reports even if inaccurate because they'll get better over time that's when management begins so so don't think that we started managing that hasn't even started yet and so you look in the comments everybody's agreed all right that's enough on that I will talk to you tonight at 10 p.m.
Eastern Time 7:00 p.m.
Pacific don't miss it bring your blanket
[Music]
um hey everybody come on in here it's
time for another edition of coffee with
Scott Adams aren't you happy that you
get to drink a simultaneous sip
every day every morning I never miss
unless something bad is happening
but all you need is a cover of Margaret
glass a tanker Challenger stand in the
canteen Jagger flask a vessel of any
kind fill it with your favorite liquid I
like coffee and join me down for the
unparalleled pleasure that dopamine
today the thing that makes everything
better
including the coronavirus it's called
the simultaneous hip go every time I use
that little Trump phrase I always smile
to myself because it's so effective you
know when Trump brand something or puts
a nickname on it he uses this phrase he
goes it's called the simultaneous imp
yeah as if he's not the one who named it
he'll say Jeb Bush he's called
low-energy Jeb
yeah without reference to the fact that
he's the one who started it I always
laugh what he does that all right well
it looks like in a new poll the voters
who are quote enthusiastic enthusiastic
not just supporting but enthusiastic
supporters of Joe Biden 24% 24% of Joe
Biden supporters are enthusiastic about
it to which I said to myself really
really if I were to dig into these
numbers a little bit maybe get the name
of one of these enthusiastic voters
drove over to that enthusiastic voters
house and said you recently answered a
poll question
and you're in the 24 percent of people
who say you're enthusiastic you're the
thews II ask about Joe Biden did you
really say that now do you think that if
you were in person with one of the
people who said that they were
enthusiastic about supporting Joe Biden
do you believe that you would detect
said enthusiasm now I do believe the
polling was accurate in the sense that
you know a question was asked that
answer was given it was recorded
correctly and tabulated so I'm sure the
polling goes yeah I think it was rasp it
was it I don't forget who it was but
whoever it was I'm sure they did the
polling correctly but do you really
think you would find that person really
like is it a coincidence that I have
never met anybody who supports him who's
excited about it ever have you ever seen
one of his biggest supporters Elissa
what's-her-name Elissa the actress whose
name of forgetting at the moment you
know she tweets about him and supports
him and stuff and even her tweets and
her support for him looks like she's
working at it it looks like she had to
swallow hard and say well vote for Joe
Biden I mean it just everything about
his supporters screams I wish I didn't
have to be doing this it's this or
burning or chomp and what am I going to
do so that's the most ridiculous poll
number I've ever seen that 24 percent of
people are enthusiastic about Biden
there are none oh yeah Alyssa Milano I'm
sorry forgot her name how could I forget
a lesson Milano's name I must be really
tired it's not like we don't hear her
name enough I'll say again by the way
yeah I say this because it makes you mad
I think I enjoy it that but I think I
enjoy bothering you with this I have a
lot of respect for Alyssa Milano while I
would not agree with many of her
positions politically or otherwise she
is the real deal
she's not just celebrity drive-by she's
she's invested she's got skin in the
game she is trying to make the country
better in the way that the way that she
thinks would work so while I don't think
she should get all of the things she
wants I'm very happy about her being a
high level player with you know good
intentions and she's part of the process
and she's effective I have a lot of
respect for that same as I do for you
know anybody on the other side who just
does a good job you know whether it's
AOC or Van Jones or you know David
Axelrod I mean you can find a lot of
people who you may not agree with their
opinions all the time but you say well
okay that's a reasonable person who's
actually trying to do what's good good
for the country in their own way all
right there was a poll I guess this one
was Rasmussen I believe and it showed
that only Democratic voters believed by
majority anyway only Democratic voters
believe by majority that quote it's so
funny it's hard even to read the
sentence you know I've told you before
that the news and humor have completely
merged there's no real difference
between comedy and the news but what you
see is funny will be different than what
what I see is funny be based on you know
what team you're on what direction
you're looking at your things but
there's no snow such thing as just
comedies anymore you know nobody almost
nobody makes a comedy movie you know
because people will be offended and
nobody's gonna go anyway but politics is
still funny and it's funny without even
trying and and you tell me if this isn't
funny
alright I'm just gonna read I'm gonna
read the sentence the way it was tweeted
I believe in Rasmussen Twitter feed
about the study their own study I'll
just read it straight and you tell me
that this
Strait fact is now funny all right here
it is only democratic voters believe
most reporters are simply trying to
report the news in an unbiased fashioned
funny that there's somebody in this
country and they can be easily
identified with one side of the
political divide believe that the news
is actually the news well actually more
than a half of Democrats think the news
is both legitimate and that the news
people are trying to do it legitimately
how could you possibly see that no
matter what news you're watching I don't
care which outlay you're looking at how
can you possibly think that aren't we
way beyond that
aren't we now I still think there are
you know individual news people who are
you know just trying to report the news
straight that's true but in general I
think it's fair to say that in general
the news is no longer the old fashioned
news it's really just different
interests they are moving their
interests alright question for you
because I don't know you're seeing
everybody on seems like everybody on
social media is blowing up over their
world health organization and their
statement that mess don't work when
obviously by the way my nose isn't
running it's itching and I'm trying not
to touch my face in front of you
it's just psychosomatic let's say so was
I saying oh who told you this first
where where is the first place you ever
heard this so when all of our
professionals were telling us that
wearing masks Oh God the edge wouldn't
help who's the first person you heard
say in public well that's just a lie
like it's just an obvious lie they're
wearing masks
won't help you in any way and the reason
s key is because I think I'm the first
person who sent it publicly because you
know there are a lot of people saying it
now but it's harder to say it when
you're the first person because I said
it just looking at the news from the
most qualified professional
authoritative medical sources right I
mean I looked at complete agreement
across all the spectrum of medical
sources and a hundred percent of them
said no joke these maslow help don't
wear them and alone among I felt I felt
like a low and among observers and I
doubt I was alone you one has to assume
that in other places people were saying
the same thing but I didn't see it when
I said it and I said well let's just
clearly a lie here's why I thought it
was a lie it's a little book called
loser think it's my book I'm sure you've
all read it if you haven't what's what's
wrong you've got all this time and on
page 153 of my future forward book
there's a chapter called friction allow
me to read a small sample from my book
it says in political discussions you
often see partisans talking in binary
terms for example that a particular plan
will completely stop some bad thing or
otherwise they will do nothing but in
the real world often the best you can do
is to create some friction to slow down
the things you wish would stop
completely now I go on and talk about
the wall and border security and saying
that ya know a wall is not meant to stop
every person it's meant to be friction
so slow this thing down down to a
manageable level
likewise when somebody the first time
the expert said that the virus is spread
through the air coming in into your
mouth and then the very next sentence is
wearing a bear
/ that error won't make anything better
that was sort of the end of the
credibility right at that point there
was no point in even listening to the
professionals anymore ever at least or
at least believed in them because if
they would tell you something that's so
obviously not true I mean something that
your own eyes and ears and and brain can
say no no a barrier stops air at least a
little bit you know is the air coming
out of your mouth gonna go as far as it
has to go through a mask of course not
of course not so it's a clear case where
the mask created friction in this case
friction for the the air and the virus
so of course it made a difference not a
hundred percent but whoever said it
would so here's my problem with that we
watched our I'll just pick you know one
person from the experts our Surgeon
General so our Surgeon General has said
this right to our faces in public
multiple times do you think he knows
it's a lie because there are one or two
possibilities either the Surgeon General
lied to the public in public you know
multiple times about the effectiveness
of facemask during a health crisis
remember this is a world pandemic what
is more important than the most
important credible health professionals
telling you the truth there's nothing
more important than that's the most
important thing is that your most
credible health professionals need to
tell you the truth now the weird
exception might be if they're trying to
prevent a run on critical supplies which
would not be in the interest of the
greater good but here's what I I'm gonna
put this I'm gonna put a stake down
right here okay you ready here's my
stake our Surgeon General got in front
of our country and lied to our faces in
an obvious lie not even a little bit
slightly not a lie and he did it
multiple
in a crisis should he keep his job
should the Surgeon General keep his job
lying so grotesquely in a crisis to the
American people repeated times now
here's my answer to that it's
complicated
if after the crisis is over or at least
after let's say the shortages are over
let's say we get to the point where you
know the press and the public and the
politicians and the hospitals generally
agree that finally we caught up and we
have enough supplies once the shortage
is over and everybody agrees it's over
if the Surgeon General says to the
American people I would like to
apologize to you I lied to you but I did
it intentionally here was my purpose my
purpose was to stop a run on these
supplies the mass and so that they could
be used in the most you know the place
where we can leverage them the best
which is with health care professionals
and people really needed them if he
tells us that after the fact I might be
okay with him keeping his job especially
if he was ordered to do it right if he
said look I work for the administration
the administration said I need you to go
out there and shade the truth a little
bit it's for the greater good
and so I went out like a good soldier
and I did it I would say okay I would
say okay I would say you can keep your
job you know as my opinion as a citizen
because you've explained it you've
apologized and you had a reason I'll
take that but don't ask us to believe
you again you know the the next time you
tell us something can we believe you I
mean that's a big problem right so I
would say if he does not later say you
know okay here's the deal
I intentionally was shading the truth
because it was good for the country if
he doesn't say that well I think he
needs to be fired right wouldn't you
agree
that's definitely firing offense I mean
I can't even think of anything that
would be more
testily obviously a firing offense then
lying about the value of face mass to a
country where people are dying because
of bad advice you know don't you think
there were some people who had face
masks could have warned them they
weren't gonna you know donate their one
mask to the hospital or anything don't
you think you killed some people I think
you did I mean statistically speaking
probably somebody died who didn't need
to because they didn't wear a mask if
they had one in the closet because they
had bad advice so that's a pretty big
deal but let's let's hold off and I'm
gonna say this a few more times let's
hold off on you know shooting the people
on our own team let's wait because if he
has a good explanation I'm open to it
but otherwise he has to be fired of
course there's some tweets going around
today I guess on February 7th secretary
Pompeo was tweeting photo of American
planes being loaded up or unloaded I
guess apparently in February 7th the
United States sent many pallets of PPE
the protective stuff that we need in
this country and we have a shortage of
we sent a plane load to Wuhan to help
them with their shortage now people are
saying my god you incompetent monsters
you president Trump and Secretary of
Pompeo how could you possibly be sending
our limited supplies which we're
basically you know right at the ragged
edge of running out of in our crisis how
could you send our critical national
resources to a strategic frenemy enemy
whatever you want to call China how does
that make sense well let me tell you
everybody's ingenious in hindsight how
many people in the United States be they
political or scientific knew on February
7th that the United States would run
Anna's
protective equipment or raise your hand
raise your hand if on February 7th you
knew that the United States didn't have
enough of this stuff and couldn't make
it fast enough and or couldn't get a
supply right your raise your hand if you
knew that On February 7th you fricking
liars if you got your hands up you
didn't know Pompeyo didn't know Trump
didn't know of course there were
scientists and of course there were
probably individuals who were saying no
no maybe you shouldn't do that but
nobody knew in February 7th here's why I
know we didn't know because we still
don't know do you know if we have enough
let's say and 95 masks not only
available but do we have enough in the
pipeline so we'll be ok do you know no
you don't know you don't know I don't
know is there anybody in the world who
knows no the reason I know we don't know
this because pence said yesterday we
don't know that was yesterday how did he
know how could he have known in February
7th we wouldn't have enough do you think
on February 7th Mike Pence knew we
didn't have enough mass he doesn't know
today he doesn't know nobody knows
nobody's even collected the fricking
information do you did you know on
February 7th that we had no mechanism
for all of their hospitals in the
country to report what critical supplies
they might run out of in a crisis that
system didn't exist so flying completely
blind the president presumably in the
Secretary of State probably in others
made a decision to give some supplies
that they had access to to Wuhan I don't
know if those supplies made any
difference at all you know I don't even
know if it's enough because even when
they talk about millions and millions of
anything yeah when it comes to medical
supplies you actually go through
millions of stuff really really quickly
so you can see really big numbers of
what we shipped and you know it might
have been one one Hospital rips through
them and
you know five days or something so it's
not as much as you think that's the
first thing and as a percentage of the
United States total supply of that
equipment what do you think it was if
you had to guess of our totally United
States supply of whatever that medical
equipment was how much of it do you
think we gave to China on that one
airplane well less than one percent
don't you think
less than one percent and at the time I
don't think that our officials knew who
made this stuff knew we had a shortage I
don't think anybody knew so if they made
a decision back then to do something
that would have obviously great you know
diplomatic potential and you know in
establishing this as a you know credible
world player and being helpful even to
people who are maybe not as helpful to
us while we're still negotiating you
know part two of the trade deal I think
this probably made sense on February 7th
in retrospect you could say it was wrong
but we're still in the battle and if
you're bayonetting people while the
battle is still raging you're not on our
side that would like you to be be on our
side for a while
here's here's the reason you will get
blocked by me on Twitter or periscope so
I just sort of put that out there so in
the in a comment on Twitter today
you know I responded to somebody they
responded back and then some third
person comes in and says of me he won't
respond to any more your block so I'll
block people for telling me what I will
do and what I am thinking those are the
two things you can't comment on without
getting blocked because you don't know
what I'm gonna do and you don't know
what I'm thinking and if you're out in
public telling people what I'm gonna do
or what I'm thinking I don't want to
have anything to do with you because
you're not a you're not a useful person
but you're just being in trouble so
that's in the media block just so you
know
apparently here's a weird outcome of
this coronavirus is that the illegal
drug business is struggling because
they're not getting the necessary
chemical components from China to which
I said wait what now I knew their
fentanyl was come you know the
precursors were coming in from China and
then the cartels were mixing him up and
sending them north so I knew that China
was the source of things through Mexico
and in terms of fentanyl but I didn't
know that that was also true for heroin
and meth
so whatever chemicals I don't know if
it's the poppies or something else but
apparently China is also the source for
other major drugs going through Mexico
into the United States I didn't fully
understand that I did not fully
understand that I thought it might be
limited to maybe you know one bad
laboratory or to doing the fentanyl
stuff I didn't know that apparently the
majority if you don't count marijuana
which is grown in this country now it
looks like the majority of the hard drug
stuff not counting cocaine I guess is
coming from China or at least the
ability to make it so this has
completely revised my opinion of what's
going on because before I would have
said to myself yeah yeah China you need
to try harder to clamp down on those one
or two laboratories that are sending
fentanyl products but it felt like an
individual problem didn't it you get
blocked from that to this person who got
blocked those what they did alright so
now that I know that there is a more
robust robust highway of you know
illegal drug stuff coming from China
through Mexico into the United States
now I think you could just say that's
just war I would say that's war
so before I thought d'arnot China you
should try harder to stop your
individuals who were sending bad things
into Mexico and then into our country
but now it doesn't look like that at all
to me it doesn't look like that at all
now it just looks like a war we didn't
know we were fighting or I didn't know I
guess our government knew but maybe
wanted to interpret it in a different
way but to me this is just war we're at
war with China
they're sending weapons of mass
destruction through Mexico into the
United States and killing Americans by
tens of thousands try not to swear those
of you who have been with me for a while
you know that I lost my stepson in 2018
to a fentanyl overdose and you know that
my opinion about China is largely
influenced by that so I'm not a biased
I'm not an unbiased observer when it
comes to China but I don't think people
quite understand that we're in a hot war
just doesn't happen to involve bullets
and bombs but if China is willingly and
obviously the crisis caused them to have
a production stopped that was enough to
to rattle the cartels on the other side
of the world it's pretty obvious not not
pretty often it's completely obvious
that the that the Chinese government is
supporting the drug trade through China
and killing tens of thousands of
Americans a year and that's war you know
I thought you know I felt like it was a
little bit war when it was just fentanyl
and it maybe was individuals but now
that I know it's really a whole you know
a system well that's just a war so at
this point I would say to myself oh man
I didn't try so hard not to curse I'm
gonna try to get through Sunday without
cursing in public see if I could do that
I can't tell you how much I hate China
if if that hasn't come through to you
and again I want to be clear not to
Chinese people
I don't think I've ever been a Chinese
people I didn't like you know but the
government is pure evil and we can't do
business with them anymore
so we have to decouple and we're gonna
have to take them down in the process so
I don't think there's any way that the
future looks anything but this China has
some bad years ahead of it I'm gonna do
everything I can to make sure that's
true I can make sure that the country of
China as long as they keep their current
form of government which is a cancer as
long as they keep their current form of
government their future is worse I'm
gonna work every day of my life at least
a little bit at least persuasion wise to
take China off of the top shelf and make
sure that they fall and get worse every
year from that point on economically
militarily influence wise and reputation
wise and I'm sure a lot of people will
be joining me in that fight but I think
at this point if the United States does
just does business as usual which I know
when this is all done and we just start
trading with them like normal then I
would say the government of the United
States is that my enemy and at least in
terms of whatever the administration is
that's doing that and if an
administration came along that was
promising to stop doing that I would
support them over-over the Trump
administration so it's war and I don't I
don't play a war to lose do you if
you're in a war do you do you play to
lose do you play for a draw this is war
now we're at war with China it's obvious
we have been we just didn't want to call
it that but now it's kind of obvious and
I'm not even talking about the you know
the Chinese virus I don't know what the
origin of that is that feels more like a
mistake than intentional but they
certainly didn't help us they didn't
help us the way we would have expected a
reasonable country to help us
so at this point I would say that
closing the border of Mexico is how you
win the war with China and that anybody
who at this point now that we understand
that we're at a war with China
they're sending drugs through the
cartels into the United States if you
still don't want to close the border
with China you're a lost cause now maybe
you just don't understand the situation
but I would say for anybody who now
understands this situation and that it
really is China at war with the United
States sending their weapons of mass
destruction through the border with
Mexico if you're not if you're not ready
to close the border now and whatever
that takes drones and military and walls
in some places whatever it takes if
you're not willing to do that now whose
side are you on
I mean at this point you just got to
take sides it's not even an opinion
piece anymore you just have to take
sides
I'm on Team America I would like to see
China's fate turn very very bad in the
next few years and I'm gonna work to
make sure that happens unless they
reform the government which would be
fine
that's first choice all right um there's
a article speaking of this in The New
York Times about maybe sending home the
Chinese spies at media companies what
wait what am i understanding the story
right and the New York Times that the US
government is considering maybe sending
home the Chinese spies that work for
media companies in the United States
what what are you telling me that we
know they're spies and they're working
in the United States writing stories
that you and I are reading what of
course you should send them all home
dude should we care that China is
expelling our journalists probably not
because I can't imagine journalists can
actually operate in China anyway
do you think it matters if we had
journalists in China probably not
because it probably just spies or at
least some of them don't but do we care
if we have spies or if we do we care if
we have journalists US journalists in
China why would we care they're not
getting any stories right because if
they ever reported anything negative
about China they'd be kicked out anyway
so what is the point of having a u.s.
journalist any of them even one why
would even need one they're not getting
a getting a stories they're not breaking
any news that's not going to happen
what's the point so they're kicking out
our journalists big deal and then it's
reported almost nonchalantly that we
somehow know about all these Chinese
spies in our media structure to which I
say why aren't they gone now like why
are we waiting for the end of today is
it because we don't know exactly which
ones are spies and which ones are just
you know people born in China who are
working over here is it because we can't
tell maybe that's why now let me say
something else which I cannot source but
I'll tell you it's a hobby yes all right
you want to know something that's true
and obvious at this point that some
amount of the let's say the unexplained
behavior of your social media platforms
is foreign spies and so can I prove this
now but I'm gonna make a statement of
fact and I'm gonna do it with high
confidence but I don't have a source I'm
just I'm just saying that common sense
and everything you know about the world
will tell you this is true and this is
one of the benefits of studying
economics by the way you know there's
some things that you can predict to be
true every time just because you know
economics you know economics will have
an influence on people that's fairly
predictable on average over time so for
example in economics if somebody if if
the same product we're being sold for
you know hundred dollars here and
dollars here you don't have to be
psychic to know that as long as people
know that it's the same product that
people will buy more of the cheap one
right so there's just some things in
economics that guarantee you're seeing
the future as close as that can be
guaranteed right nothing's 100% and in
the world is just very clear once you
understand economics and psychology
here's one of those cases if you were
Russia or you were China or you were
even one of our allies named an ally I
won't pick favorites and you could and
let's say it was possible and you could
put people who were loyal to your
country but not the United States if you
could place them into jobs at the major
social media platforms
you know let's say you're Google's and
you're youtubes and you're Facebook's
and your Twitter and your Instagram if
you could do it would you do it right
there any question about that if they
could do it wouldn't you all agree that
they would you know if we could put a
spy in a major social media platform
company in China what do we do it well
obviously of course we would if we could
put an American spy into some important
social entity your company or business
in Russia would we do it obviously we
would that's what we do if China could
influence somebody who's already working
at one of the platforms or or
longer-term like promote somebody you
know help somebody's career until they
get a job there if China could put their
own agents into the social media
platform companies would they do it do
you have any question that they would do
it well no no no you don't have any
question yeah I see people mentioning
different comfort countries yeah so some
countries are you're more active and
more
successful spying so you know nobody
would be surprised you know if Great
Britain or Israel or you know even
France or Germany or any of the big
countries so nobody should be surprised
if any of the major countries are
putting spies into any of the other
major countries so none of that should
be a surprise so here's the thing you
know I've been saying from the beginning
that I I doubted that whatever was
happening on Twitter that was hard to
explain that was either you know the the
most coincidental series of computer
bugs or somebody's messing with us right
those were the two possibilities because
it was obvious something was happening
you could look at it and track it and
write it down and you could see that
things were happening to some follower
accounts and likes were being unliked
and stuff like that and I had told you
that in my opinion unless I'm the worst
judge of character in the world and I
don't think I am that Twitter management
doesn't know what's going on and my
hypothesis is as foreign foreign spies
have embedded themselves or have access
to the API or have access through apps
they have you've given control to your
Twitter accounts there might be 50
different ways they could do it but I
think some of the irregularities you're
having and I'll give you the here's sort
of the canary in the coal mine you know
the problem I had with being unfollowed
from Richard Grinnell so ambassador of
Grinnell of Germany it was probably the
most high-profile ambassador wouldn't
you say I think he's probably the most
high-profile ambassador we all know him
is there anybody who doesn't know the
name of Richard Grinnell probably not
there's probably not one of you watching
this who hasn't heard his name now name
another diplomat go name one other
diplomat for any country an American
diplomat working anywhere can he name
one probably not right
so Richard Grinnell I think you'd agree
the most famous diplomat who also has a
good reputation people like him
and I looked at his Twitter followers
and it's like two hundred and fifteen
thousand or something
I have twice as many Twitter followers
as our most famous diplomat who is very
active he was far more famous than I am
far more active and he has half as many
Twitter followers now a lot of people
reported when I pointed out that I had
been unfollowed from him in other words
I had followed him and then I wasn't
anymore on two separate occasions that I
know of I checked it this morning and
I'm still following him and a bunch of
other people said hey I asked people to
check it and said hey it happened to me
too
happened to me too so all kinds of
people said they're positive they
followed him it's not really something
you'd forget you know cuz it's a
conscious decision now so let me ask you
this do you think that there was a is it
more likely that there was somebody who
works for Twitter who was you know like
some rogue employee just some American
who didn't like Trump who decided to
reduce the voice of Richard Grinnell
well maybe but doesn't it seem more
likely that he would be targeted by
another country because most of what
Grinnell talks about is our relationship
with other countries he doesn't really
say grossly just you know President
Trump is the best president I mean it
does some of that because he's part of
the administration but he's mostly
talking about other countries and our
relationship to them that's sort of his
deal and his voice probably I would
guess that his his natural Twitter
following would be over a million by now
I'm guessing just you know given his
visibility and you know his importance
in the world I think he'd have a million
Twitter followers by now being an active
tweeter so who is more likely to have
reduced his voice
now if you were saying to me hey
somebody reduced you know Jack pasaba
case I would immediately say oh that
might be internal politics you know
because there are some people who are
talking more about domestic politics all
the time and if you saw their their
voice being reduced
somehow by some unseen entity your first
thought would be hey is there somebody
who works at Twitter who's doing this it
was this management or a rogue employee
and that would be a reasonable thing but
when you see Richard Grinnell being I
think obviously targeted in some way for
a reduced voice and he's mostly talking
about our relationship with other
countries who do you think did it isn't
it more likely another country did it so
that's my hypothesis with no no proof
for any of that so the the official
story is that we don't know we don't
know why it seems that all say seems
officially nobody there really knows why
this stuff's happened all right so I saw
a complaint that I think wasn't CNN they
were saying that the the emergency
relief bill had a gift in it for rich
people and I thought to myself well that
probably didn't happen yeah that was my
first my first impression when I saw the
headline is like really really
somebody's gonna stick in a gift for the
top 1% a tax break for the top 1%
somebody somebody put that into this
relief bill seriously and so I thought
okay fake news I'll read this and it
won't just the headline won't even match
the content which is what we're getting
used to and I read the content and I
thought oh my god
this is true you know you can't believe
anything's true but here's here's the
the claim that there was a substantial
change in the tax code so that real
estate moguls
can write off some capital gains losses
in a way more favorable way than before
to which I say to myself what does that
have to do with the recovery what what
did that have to do with the recovery
what what what a pathetic performance by
our Congress I mean I I think I'm beyond
hate you know it starts with well I'm
not I don't have a lot of confidence in
Congress then there's some point where
you just hate them and I think I pass
through hate I'm at this is pathetic
they should just be embarrassed every
day
I mean first like I guess we have to
fact check whether this this real estate
depreciation slash write-off tax break
for the rich I guess we have to see if
it's true because just because it's
reported doesn't mean it's true
unfortunately but if it's true that's
just pathetic just pathetic and I would
say that nobody in Congress should be
reelected be they Republican be they
independent be they're democratic so you
know in case you're wondering if I'm
being partisan I don't care if every
Republican in the Congress and the
Senate loses their job in the next
election that'd be fine with me
and moreover I don't even care what the
mix is when it's done I don't care if
there are more Democrats or more
Republicans or more anything I don't
care I think at this point they all need
to lose their job because if they if
that's true is that true I mean first of
all I got it I need to know if it's true
but if it is they all need to be fired
I've seen two completely different
medical opinions on how this corona
virus gets transmitted I will tell you
the two opinions I've heard and then I
will tell you that I don't know how to
know which one's right but I'll just
pass along so both of these are not
scientific studies these are based on
doctors who are working on the front
lines
and they're reporting so some of this is
anecdotal but it's the people were in
the fight so it's not people watching
the fight these are doctors who were
actually intubating people and putting
them on ventilators you know they're
they're right in it in New York City one
of them said here's the good news that
if you're really good about washing your
hands and social distancing you and not
touching your face so if you do those
three things this one doctor said you
know wash your hands like crazy
wear a mask mostly to prevent you from
touching your own face it's just good
and do your social distancing this
doctor says the odds of getting it if
you do though just those three things
are basically vanishingly small
now that's based on his experience not
based on studies okay because and the
idea is I guess he wasn't seeing people
who had it unless they also had a story
of close contact meaning and he defined
it as you know baby it could be a
handshake but also it could be you know
spouses hugging there's nothing so then
another doctor had a very different
story he said that he's hearing from
people who had no known contact with
someone who had it but they had been to
the grocery store and that was their
only exposure so the idea is that people
who went shopping were also turning up
in in emergency rooms and that was the
only known exposure they had to the
public they just had to go buy food and
come home now that's still anecdotal it
doesn't mean that they got it from
buying groceries it still allows and by
the way the the first doctor who said
your odds of getting it are very low did
not say go shopping so I think they're
both on the same page that if you can
avoid physically going to a store
especially if you're you know if you're
in a danger zone or you're older or
something you should do it so I think
they're both consistent of that but one
is saying that you know the grocery
store is a source if you go in person
and then the other doctor was saying
that food that is delivered to your
house
us so long as you you know wear gloves
when you're opening it up or at least
you're you're washing hands after you've
just exposed after you've disposed of
the outer bag this one doctor said
probably by the time you get to the food
your odds of getting something are very
low so he's suggest getting delivery if
he can all right here's a apparently
president Trump has a forty nine percent
approval rating which approaches a
career high and sixty percent of
Americans now approve of this handling
including more than a quarter of
Democrats handling of the crisis now you
might say to yourself you may say to
yourself but what about all the things
he should have done differently how
could even Democrats be happy with the
president when it's reported on CNN
every day that he's getting his facts
are on the public and that he should
have done whatever Souter but why is the
public not responding to that the way
they normally do why is the public
saying now he's doing a good job even
when the enemy press is telling him is
telling the public that he's not he
should have done things sooner should
have things done things differently
should have talked about it differently
you should have you know not add those
facts wrong so what why is the public
seeing past the reporting this time when
normally they don't it's not everybody
but a lot of them are seeing past the
reporting and I hope it's this I hope
it's this one of them is we've learned
that nobody knew how much inventory we
needed or why we needed it or who had it
so I think we've learned that nobody had
the basic knowledge that we weren't
prepared and therefore didn't know we
needed to prepare because nobody even
knew we were not prepared
probably in the government anyway I mean
I'm
I feel confident in saying that before
this started probably nobody ever told
President Trump directly or pence hey if
we have a pandemic we're gonna run out
of all these supplies I doubt anybody
told them that right so is it the
president's fault that we got caught
unprepared well look at every other
country every other country got
unprepared was China ready in the hell
was South Korea ready now was was Japan
ready now a hundred percent of countries
weren't ready so is the public saying
okay I get what you're saying CNN and
MSNBC but you realize there are a lot of
countries and none of them already
maybe that context sort of changes that
you filled out secondly a lot of the a
lot of people are making hay and of
something that should have been done
sooner and this is one of those topics
so so somebody who writing said they
they think that you know Trump should
have acted sooner to either close the
airports or close travel he should have
acted sooner to do social distancing you
should have acted sooner to get supplies
that are in shortages now is it true
just objectively speaking that we would
be better off if he had acted sooner yes
yes we can all agree with that right no
matter what political side you're on we
would all agree that things would be
better if we had acted sooner but I
would like to make this standard so
here's a standard I would like to
suggest there was one smart person in
the world and all of the rest of us are
okay that's the frame you
should put on that because we don't know
who it was like we can't put a name to
the one person who's not an but
we can know the rest of us are and
here's why whoever was the first person
in the world be they American be they
Chinese be they whatever but let's say
American let's just limit to America
whoever was the first American who said
we should stockpile our supplies in case
whoever was the first American who said
we should close you know travel from
China before even I did I said it on
January 24th Jack Poe Sabich said it a
few days before that maybe somebody said
it before us I would guess that was
probably somebody in the world who said
it first so I want to be very clear we
don't know who that was but of all the
seven billion people in the world and of
all the 370 million Americans however
many there are
there was one of us who was right and
also first the rest of us are stupid
aren't we because we were too
late we were all too late I mean I was
so proud it's like hey January 24th I
was already yelling at the top of my
lungs close that Airport look at me haha
I beat some other people I got there
before other people did know I'm an
why am I an because I
didn't get it first Wyatt why wasn't I
saying it when the first person was
saying it what's wrong with me yeah so
let me make this standard if you don't
know who the first person was who got to
the right answer before you did because
you know now it's retrospect we're all
we all have great hindsight right now we
know it didn't make sense now we know we
should go in sooner but there was
somebody don't know it was who was way
before me way before anybody and it was
probably already saying hey we better
get some supplies in hey we better
better close our borders so if you're
not that person well then you're an
because you weren't smart enough
wise enough to know we should have done
it sooner it doesn't help that you know
it now what good is that what good is it
that you know it now that we should have
done this sooner that's useless oh we're
all geniuses now about the past but if
you weren't the first person then you're
like all the rest of us you're just
Nestle who wishes you had been smarter
in the past
all right I guess I didn't make it
through Sunday without using a bad word
I'm gonna double down on my estimate for
the total death toll in America from the
coronavirus so since the time I've been
making an estimate I think I've been
consistent so maybe not we'll see but
lately I've been saying this I think I
think it will be 5,000 now you might say
to yourself Scott Scott Scott that's way
off because we're already at 2000 right
in this country I think we have is that
right mm we cross 2000 already for this
country and we're closer to the start
than the end at least some people think
so that's my estimate 5,000 total which
would be way less than even the common
flu I think the common flu it takes out
like 30 to 80 thousand a year or
something like that in the United States
so that would be a tiny tiny death rate
now does that mean that we have
overestimated the crisis no what I'm my
my prediction is entirely based on
people getting more clever and more
serious and working harder so yes I'm
seeing a confirmation that it's over
2,000 deaths so I think you're gonna see
when we hit around 4,000 deaths which
isn't going to take long by the way that
could be by the end of the week so we're
around 4,000 deaths we're gonna have
this figured out by figured out I mean
we'll have enough masks and we'll know
to wear them or we'll start to have
enough we'll have beds that we know work
and we'll start to use them we'll have
ventilators that we didn't have that now
we have and I think that you'll see
here's my prediction I think that you're
gonna see one of the most amazing human
feats of all time and it's going to
happen right in front of you you know we
all get we're all we're all in the
audience for this one right everybody
gets to watch out of the Krone
iris turns out nobody nobody's not
paying attention and we're gonna watch
the human species pull together into one
you know mega creature you know like a
like a transformer you know we're a
bunch of individuals with something like
the government but when this Kuroda
virus hit the the body human just
suddenly formed and connected over the
internet and started acting like you
know it took a while we're still
evolving into this greater creature but
we formed a like a whole different
species which is whatever is the sum of
us all working together normally we're
not working together so it's not a
species it's like individual cells just
doing what they do but boy when we were
threatened we just formed up into a big
old you know global brain with lots of
arms and legs and just started flailing
at this virus from every possible
direction learning what we could taking
casualties you know putting field field
hospitals in there and we went to war
and we're in it right now
so as my estimate I don't believe
anybody who is responsible will have an
estimate that low because if your job is
to be a scientist and to keep everybody
scared so they do the right thing you're
gonna use big numbers and I think I'm
okay with that from a precision
perspective what you can't do if you're
a legitimate scientist or even a
politician is you can't say what I just
did you know I can say that because I'm
just observing I don't have an official
job and so I can say yeah I think you're
gonna see something akin to a miracle
not not a God miracle but a human
miracle
where the level of ingenuity will just
be I think historic it'll be crazy you
see it already alright let's see what
else we got going on those are the main
things
somebody says Styx was one of the first
to call out the virus response well if
he was the first then all of the rest of
us have something to answer to if
somebody was before him well then he's
just an just like you are just
like I am we're all if we were
too late and I don't think there's
anything I'm gonna have less patience
for then people on our own team meaning
human beings fighting this virus if
people are the human being team are
bayonetting people on their own team
during the battle while the battle is
raging I'm gonna go after the the Bayon
enters and I'm gonna go pretty hard at
the critics who imagined that they knew
what the right thing was and they knew
it on time if you can't find that first
person you're an so am i all
right
we continue to watch with great
curiosity the stories and or lack of
stories about the high
hydroxychloroquine it feels like the
only news we're getting about that drug
that's being trialed along with is that
through my son the news were getting
seems to be from sketchy sources and
foreign studies and you know a doctor
who just says I tried it once a a
patient who tried it and it seems to
have worked but it's not a scientific
study so it's beginning to be obvious to
me that there's I won't call it a
cover-up oh okay I'll call it a cover-up
all right let me give you an example the
New York Times just did a big article
about why Germany's death rate is so low
compared to others so it's a whole
article about what they did differently
you know how their response is what
their demographic is you know the timing
of things that the political decisions
the medical decisions so it's a New York
Times article so it's it's researched
there's a lot of there's a lot of detail
in there about all the things the
Germans did
that's different from what everybody
else did do you know what wasn't
mentioned hydroxychloroquine there was a
whole article in The New York Times
about what they were doing right and not
doing right and it didn't even mention
the drug that one must presume they're
using over there didn't even mention it
you know it would be one thing to say
well they're also using this drug but
nobody has a good idea whether that's
working or not right
wouldn't that be at what you would
expect to see in that story and that
ladies and gentlemen is the dog that was
not barking it's the one that I've been
telling you about for a while and you
know I've been hinting about it but I'm
just gonna tell you directly now the dog
that's not barking is if you see a story
about another country that was or was
not successful and it doesn't even
mention hydroxychloroquine doesn't
mention that they used it doesn't
mention they didn't use it doesn't
mention they considered it it just
doesn't mention it you're seeing
manipulation on a level that should make
you want to overthrow your government
meaning that the the media and
presumably the government are they must
be working together at least in a
limited way to prevent you from having
this information right because clearly
the New York Times knows that the
hydroxychloroquine is one of the biggest
variables we don't know if it works I'll
say this every time my work might not
but it's certainly the most you know
besides ventilators it's probably the
most important thing that people talk
about it's not even mentioned in a major
feature story about Germany are you
kidding me you know this is as bad as
the the government telling you that
masks don't work even a little bit and
you just look at it you say well that's
not just a lie that's a lie like you
think I'm really stupid that's a
sort of what do you think of me that you
would tell me the fabric doesn't slow
down air and you would expect me to
believe it well like how dumb do you
think I am and then you see a feature
story about Germany without mentioning
this drug positively or negatively and I
look at that and I go like how dumb do
you think I am how dumb it do you think
I am that I would believe that's
anything like news that is just
propaganda or something I don't know it
looks like the government have probably
ordered them not to report on that is my
guess or or they voluntarily decided to
because the you know they may they may
be part of reducing the hoarding of it
maybe that's good all right here's some
bad thinking I've been seeing people
have been saying to me why is it the
that you don't see any celebrities
and/or athletes dying and of course the
conspiracy thinking is well they must be
getting the good drugs you know because
they're not dying well maybe but how
about there's a more likely explanation
the more likely explanation is that your
celebrities and athletes are all in a
really good shape and the one thing we
know is that if your youngish and or
you're in good shape you do better now
Tom Hanks is I think right around my age
yes but he's clearly in better shape
than other 60 year olds wouldn't you
agree I mean you just look at Tom Hanks
you say okay he works out you know you
watches what he eats is pretty obvious
so he's not the kind you'd expect to
have a bad outcome now on top of that
they also probably got the
hydroxychloroquine and the best the best
possible treatment but you know
especially if you see like an NBA player
and he doesn't die well there's a reason
for that he's an NBA player he's an
elite athlete his body as a his body as
a sports car of course he can beat a
virus
so it doesn't mean that there's kind of
some kind of special treatment although
that probably is it just could be that
they're healthier and younger and they
take better care of themselves and their
haven't been that many an 80% of people
get over it anyway and so far none of
the celebrities have been you know obese
and elderly so maybe there's very low
death rate somebody in the comments says
that Japanese girls have cute feet
thank you for noting that I think that
fit the topic perfectly Trump's body
motto is money over morals like you know
those are those are like the lowest
level of political comment yeah a person
who with no profile picture comes in
Trump has an inner thought that he likes
money more than humanity it's like you
did you animate a fish I mean what kind
of brain does it take to think well this
is I think this can add to the public
discourse I'll just pretend I can
hallucinate what a stranger is thinking
that should be good people are noting
that Tom Hanks has diabetes yeah you
know you've heard the diabetes is a risk
factor but I'm just gonna put this out
there as a hypothesis the people who
have diabetes tend not to look like Tom
Hanks I'm all right now I don't know
percentage-wise how many are you know
still can maintain their weight and be
healthy and also have diabetes but I've
known a lot of people with diabetes they
don't look like Tom Hanks if you know
what I'm talking about right people with
diabetes have a tough time generally
keeping their way down they tend to have
other issues that compound you know you
get the diabetes and it's one thing
after another so you know if you're if
you're on top of it as successfully as
I'm guessing somebody like Tom Hanks
would be meaning keeping yourself
healthy in general etc it's probably not
the same risk as somebody who's 400
pounds and has diabetes alright let's
see what else people are saying Harvey
Weinstein is in trouble though yeah you
know you can't believe anything about
any Harvard Harvey Weinstein stories
who knows what's happening in there but
certainly he's you would be the target
for that that virus are you working out
more often now that you stopped going to
the gym the answer is yes well you know
I always I always worked out every day
that I could and I'm still doing that
but I think I'm working out better so
what I changed was it wouldn't be
unusual if I went to the gym and tried
to exhaust myself you know try to get
the most benefit I could and you know I
don't have to do much later so I just
like wear myself out but I don't do that
because I would lower my immunity
temporarily so instead I changed my
exercise habits so it's long walks
instead of say using the Stairmaster
running or anything like that because
the long walk is just nothing but good
it's like it's just good for you and you
feel it so I told you before that I'd
skip today in the middle of this to see
how differently I felt and there was a
big difference you know my whole how
much I well I slapped my attitude my
stress everything was different just
because I did or did not take a walk and
so I yesterday I just got overwhelmed
with stuff to do and I didn't have time
and it was raining and I didn't get out
and man I felt it I 1 a.m. this morning
I woke up and I was just up yeah I was
just up for the day because I didn't
exercise so my body wasn't just couldn't
sleep that long you know if I don't
exercise I'm good for three or four
hours of sleep and then my body just
it's like it has to go do something I
can't I can't sleep after that but if
I've exercised I can all right
here's here's one way you know your
government is failing on this crisis I
think we'll get to the end of it and
we'll do what we have to do but there's
going to be a lot of you know mistake
correction mistake correction and we
should look at that generously when it's
done because nobody knows what to do and
that's just the fact nobody knows what
to do we got to try stuff and then
quickly correct if it didn't work but
one of the things that you would have to
say is clearly a mistake if it goes on
much longer and much longer would be I'd
say end of today if you don't see good
reporting on which hospitals need which
supplies and you know what their peak
need would be what they have and what's
in the pipeline for them if you don't
see that reporting by say the end of
today doesn't have to be perfectly
accurate but at least the beginning of
that you know that system for reporting
I would say we're not competently
handling this because you don't manage
something you don't measure if you don't
think that's the most profound statement
in all of human psychology and
management then you have not studied
those fields this is the most profound
and important thing you'll ever hear
about getting groups of people to do
something and it's this if you don't
measure it you're not managing it you're
just flailing around so you have to be
able to measure what the situation is
and then on an ongoing basis what am i
doing to fix it and how much differences
in making if you don't have that
mechanism in place and we don't it's
obvious we don't because you watch the
task force and they're just guessing
they're like well we got a shipment here
and there's a plant working over here
but there's no kind of idea of the total
of that and what it looks like for the
hospital's so at this point the task
force is not it can be set as just a
fact because that reporting is not in
place it's simply the fact that it's not
being managed
would you agree you can't say
the task force is managing the critical
supply because they're not measuring it
that's just a fact all right everybody
everybody's got a background in
management and maybe even psychology in
some cases you'll see in the comments
there's a hundred percent agreement
for the people of that that skill set
and that talents that nobody will
disagree with this by the way nobody
will disagree with the statement that if
you can't measure it you're not managing
it right just that that is as hard a
fact as there could ever be in the
behavioral sciences and economics and
management so but the good news is that
vice-president pence clearly
acknowledges that need and he said
yesterday that that they're working hard
to talk to the hospitals and gather that
now once gathered I would say they're
managing but I would also say that up
until today
nobody's been managing it people have
been doing things but they're just
flailing you know and many of those
things are productive of course it makes
sense to make more of the stuff so
there's some things you can do where
they actually managing it you just know
you need more of it so everybody makes
more of it if they can but it's not
being managed management happens the
moment you see the reports even if
inaccurate because they'll get better
over time
that's when management begins so so
don't think that we started managing
that hasn't even started yet
and so you look in the comments
everybody's agreed all right that's
enough on that I will talk to you
tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern Time 7:00
p.m. Pacific don't miss it bring your
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