The first thing you need to know is that while there have been some publicized missteps in the beginning of this thing, the country is really stepping up. Really, really stepping up. Very impressive. And let me give you one concrete example of that. When I had the suggestion of allowing doctors to practice across state lines, that idea ended up in the hands of the president's chief of staff, I think in an hour. I think it took one hour for just an ordinary good idea that doctors should temporarily at least be able to practice across state lines. It took an hour. One hour. That idea was literally in the hands of Mark Meadows or in his brain. He said it sounded like something you wanted to look into, and then I got a confirmation back in one hour. Now that's not the only time that's happened. It's just a clean example. But for whatever accident of history I ended up being sort of a filter and curator of some ideas that people are sending up, and they don't know who to talk to. In some cases they don't know who to connect to, and I just happened to be able to do that.

So the stuff you're not seeing is working really well. The people who are restocking the shelves, etc., they're working hard. There's a lot of good stuff happening and more coming.

So I want to talk about some of the thinking past the sale here a little bit. Sooner or later we're gonna get a handle on this thing. We're gonna get control of it like we always do. If you bet against humanity, well, you're on the wrong side. It's a bad bet. We're good at this stuff and this is nowhere near something that's going to take us down. Nowhere near. This is an annoyance that has some weird unintended benefits. Now I'm not losing sight of the hard times ahead, but it doesn't hurt to just take your mind off of that for a while.

And here are a few things that I could identify that seemed to me likely to be better in the future because of the virus. Now you could quibble with some of them, but let me run through them.

The first thing that's going to be better is science. Maybe not every branch of science, but because of this crisis suddenly a whole bunch of people who would not have met each other met. That's a big deal. When you take all these geniuses in the world, the smartest people in this field, and you say now you don't have a choice, you're working together, you're gonna cross-pollinate, you're gonna share ideas, and you're still going to know each other when it's done. This is huge. I mean it's enormous but also kind of invisible because the benefits are down the line and you'll never really know what one came out of it. But when you put this many of the brightest people in the world together on the same problem, they don't lose touch. That becomes a permanent part of society's brain, if you will, that just got organized by this problem.

So in a sense this virus is like any blow to the body. Let's say your muscles. If you overwork them, well they break down and then they build back stronger. And you see, I think you'll see that with science.

You're also seeing participation in government. I didn't know what to call it, but the example that I used before where average citizens are just saying I could build a factory, you know I can get that done. I mean maybe not with my own hands but I could make that happen. People saying I can solve this problem. I can help this person. I could find somebody. You need something. So we've created this, the internet helps tremendously, we've created a participant kind of a government where that distinction between what's the government and what is the people has somewhat got a little murky. Because is Fauci the government or is he a scientist? Are all the scientists the government or are they private? What about all the people working with the government? So it's like the government and the public just became this single creature. And maybe some of the good parts will stick, specifically the part about bubbling up good ideas.

I think this process is going to identify new leaders. Now it's a presidential season but I'm not talking about that. I'm simply talking about the fact that, let me use this example. If you were in a crowded cafe and there was an explosion outside and you thought it was bad, whatever it is, most of the people in the cafe are gonna get up and run because they should. But in that cafe there will be three people who stand up and walk directly toward the danger because there's something about humans that we breed heroes. Not all of us, obviously. And if those three people ended up needing more help, people who were not heroes would just become heroes almost spontaneously. You know we're sort of like chameleons like that. We run when running away makes sense, but then when it doesn't, ordinary people just become heroes. You're seeing it every day. It's happening. It's happening all over the world. So we're gonna identify new leaders. I don't know what that means. I don't know if any of them will become permanent leaders, but you'll know who they were. You will know who they were.

Our pandemic defense is getting a real good test. Tests, except unfortunately it's a real thing. Will it be better after this is done? Absolutely. Was this the biggest problem we'll ever have with a pandemic? Probably not. So having the one that doesn't kill you and tells you, oh for sure there might be one later that does, that allows us to strengthen our defense. When this is over we will be the strongest we've ever been as a civilization because we'll have this. And right now it's one of our biggest vulnerabilities as a species, if you will.

Home delivery of course will just go through the roof. I heard Amazon is looking to hire a hundred thousand more people. Safeway apparently is hiring like crazy. That's my local grocery store. And I had no problem at all door dashing. Now I don't know if that'll change, but I'm ordering food from local restaurants because that may be the change that's coming. The change is coming might be that restaurants become more like kitchens and maybe the costs go down with volume and stuff. And at least for a while we'll keep them alive with ordering from them. And that also takes the burden off of your emergency supplies because the restaurants are well stocked. You know they have more than they can sell right now. So buy from your local restaurant. Save the beans and rice just in case. I don't think you're gonna need them. I'll talk about that in a minute.

I think our hygiene as a people is permanently improved. I think we are a permanently more hygienic species after this because we're building habits. It's in our heads. And a lot of people are saying their lives will lessen if, well it will save more. I can confidently predict this: that we will save more lives with all the hygiene reflexes that people are developing than we will lose with the coronavirus. We will come out ahead. It just won't be right away.

And a lot of people are taking the advice to use this as an excuse to get healthy. Nobody's gonna argue with you, especially if you're over 50, but they're not gonna argue with anybody when you say I have to take a walk. I just have to go for a run. I've got to lift some weights at home. You know I wouldn't go to the gym but you're gonna learn to do it at home. Try walking. So I did a little experiment. You know stress is kind of high with everybody. So yesterday I did not take a long walk. It's the first time in a long time. And I gotta tell you my mental state was far more, let's say, rebel than it was on all the days that I walked. So then the next day I walked and I just said alright, now do a little internal survey. And by the way I recommend this. You should always do a little audit of your mental state after you've done a physical thing, especially exercise and especially eating any particular type of food. Just see how you feel for a few hours after. And I can tell you that after a long walk, it wasn't exhausting, it was just a nice good long walk, I came back and my mental state was excellent. Slept like a baby. It was great. So if you don't do anything else you should take a walk every day. Really.

Our prepping skills are gonna be much better. If there's any other future time that something comes up, wow are we gonna be better at this. Alright, I'm not saying that that's a good thing that we have another tragedy of course, but we'll be ready for it. So that's good.

What about the online school? I think it will move faster to online.

I think the UBI situation, in my opinion the UBI idea of at least temporarily during the crisis giving people who need it, I don't know maybe everybody but people who needed it at least a thousand dollars a month, maybe more, who knows, but something like that, I would almost guarantee that's going to happen. That's as close to definitely happening as just about anything I could think of. And the reason that I'm going to say it's close to definitely going to happen is that it looks like it might be necessary. And here's why. You know it's going to happen. Rich people want it to, right? And that's the problem basically. Rich people are going to say yes, UBI, let's crank it out. And you know I don't think you'll get disagreement. This is not a Democrat thing. This is not a Republican thing. And if all the rich people agree, which they never had agreed on the UBI before, I mean it had been a polarizing kind of a topic that was growing in popularity, but at the moment to save the people who literally can't buy food you're not going to find a rich person who says no to that. And if you do, steal their food. You have my permission.

Now really, when somebody says what Naval says, one is stupid, the UBI, I don't think he is talking about the UBI for an emergency situation. So I don't know that we'll ever move to UBI in perpetuity, you know some kind of a thousand dollars a month no matter what you do. But we will test it. Wouldn't that be good to have a test?

I think our healthcare system will be forever better because of all the things we learned. I think there are lots of regulations that will never come back because once they were gone people didn't miss them.

I think the risk to our supply chain, which at the moment I think it's actually kind of low. Yeah, if I had to put money on it, but I guess I have put money on it because I still have my money in the market. The supply chain is something we do well and food will come back first. You're never going to have a problem with energy. I don't see any chance of that. You'll have water. You'll have all the basics. The garbage will get picked up I imagine and we'll go on.