Episode 843 Scott Adams: Taking Questions on the News and Coronavirus

Hey, everybody. Come on in. We might have fewer viewers today because I'm taking questions. Why does that make sense? I don't know, but it does. Good morning. It's time for Coffee with Scott Adams. And I'm Scott Adams. And you are so lucky because you are in the right place at the right time. That's important, too. And all you need is a cup of mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen, jugger flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And get ready for the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything better, it's called the simultaneous sip. Goes. Mmm. That's some good sipping right there. So how many of you watched the press conference in which President Trump went to the cdc, I think, put on his Make America great again hat in his windbreaker, as presidents do when they go to situations like this and disasters. And I don't want to say that the President did everything wrong in that press conference, but I think it was the worst press conference I've ever seen from a president, Gotta say. So if I'm being objective, I'm reading a comment here, and I want to read it, but I'm not going to if I'm being objective. That was the President's worst performance at a press conference, I think. I don't even know where to begin to say all the things that were not ideal about that. I don't think it'll make any difference. You know, it's a political season, so we yak about every. Every appearance of the candidates, but somebody says they loved it. Are you kidding? How could you have watched that and felt good about it? Again, I don't think it's a big deal. I just don't think he hit his. He didn't. He didn't hit the notes. And here's what I mean by that. I think it was. CNN is calling it a muddled. A muddled performance. And it was kind of muddled. There was a one point that I just. I couldn't watch it anymore. I had to turn it off because he was talking about the testing in South Korea, and somebody in the audience said that there was testing in South Korea. He cut them off, and he said, they're just sampling. And you could see the guys behind him, the experts, going, oh, don't say that. No. And the President insisted to the reporters, no, you just heard from the experts. I just heard them, too. They just say they're not testing in South Korea. They're sampling those Roadside tests. You can. Apparently, you can just drive up and they'll take your sample. But that's not what the experts said. They just said that the roadside stuff was where they get the sample and then they send it to some center where it's very rapidly tested. So it is testing. And the President said, no, I was here. I heard it myself. I'll tell you, they're not testing, they're sampling. And that was just wrong. And to watch his experts standing behind him, and you could watch their faces just dying, and they were like, oh, that's exactly opposite of what we said. We said, they're testing. They're just sampling there. So that was less than ideal. And then we talked about the cruise ship that I don't know if it's unloaded yet, but as of yesterday, I had Americans on it. Now we're trying to decide whether to treat them on the ship or to take them onshore. And the President starts talking about how he's going to let them make the decision. The experts will make the decision about what to do. So that part's good. But then he says that he doesn't want it to affect his stats because the United States has a very low infection rate. And if they get off the boat and get onto shore, that by definition raises the infection rate because now they're in the United States. And I thought to myself, well, that's just the worst thing you could have possibly said. I mean, really, you're talking about your stats. There's infected Americans possibly at the risk of death floating just offshore of the United States, and you're going to tell us about your stats. I'm really, really trying hard not to curse. I'm really trying hard because, you know, most of you know I'm. I'm still on the prednisone stuff that makes you. It causes you to maybe have a little more anger or flash angry more than you would. And I am right on the edge of just exploding right now. But because I can recognize it, I can hold it back, it's only because I know it's the drug. If I thought this was an honest reaction, if I thought the thing I were feeling and thinking right now were actually a reflection of exactly how I'll think and feel when this drug wears off, I'd be exploding right now. I'd be on fire because my hair is on fire right now. And also, I'll just say it calmly because I want to swear the President was talking about his stats while American citizens were floating offshore, possibly infected. Now, I think the stats matter. I'm not even going to take that away from them. The stats matter. It matters to how we think about it. It matters to. There might be some extra risk. Well, there would be, obviously, if you bought. If you brought them onto the mainland, some of the doctors could be infected. Of course that's the risk. So it wasn't crazy to say that there's some reason that he would prefer it, but he's gonna let the experts say it. So he didn't actually say anything that was technically wrong or would cause the wrong action. So he didn't do anything that would cause the wrong action. That's important, but, man, that's just not the way to talk about it. Don't talk about your stats. What was the other stuff he did? The other thing he did was he started bragging about how he's natural scientist because his uncle is really. That was the time, in the middle of a natural disaster, to talk about. Your uncle's a genius at mit, but maybe you inherited it genetically. I mean, I know that, you know, he's. It's joking and hyperbole, and he doesn't literally mean that he inherited genius genes. He was just trying to tell people that he understands the situation, but it really wasn't the way. It wasn't the time. Somebody says, you are working off a fake basis. Use your words. Use your words. It's okay. Just tell me what your point is. You don't have to just scream in capitals that there's something I'm missing. I'm going to take some calls in case you have some opinions on stuff. We'll talk about the coronavirus. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff, and. Let's just. Yeah. Oh, and he said. He said that something was perfect, like his Ukraine phone call. I mean, it was. It was interesting. All right, let's see who wants to talk. Let's go to Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Come to me, Matthew. All right. Matthew doesn't want to talk. Let's try somebody else. Sorry about the technology. May or may not work. Well. Guest, can you hear me? Hello, Guest, can you hear me? Can you hear me? No, Cliff, can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Can you hear me?

Do you have a question for me? Yeah.

I really appreciate the questioning period. I've been dying to ask you what your prediction is for the Durham investigation. What will come out of that?

I'm sorry, the. Which investigation?

The Durham investigation.

That. Yeah. Well, you know, the. The legal stuff. I don't follow as closely as A lot of other. So if you. If you wanted guesses on that, somebody like Dan Bongino would be. Would be a better place. But I'll give you a very general one. My general one is he's going to say some people were naughty and nobody's going to jail. What do you think? Well, I'm.

I'm thinking just the evidence that's out there, Scott, that there's going to be some. There has to be some people indicted.

Well, I agree with you that there will be clear evidence of people doing bad things. And here's my prediction that we, the lay people will look at it and say, yep, that's clearly, clearly a bad thing. I guess that person is going to get indicted. And then unless they're not famous, you know, some lesser famous people could always get indicted. But I don't think any of the big names will get indicted. It's just like we don't live in a world where the people in the news get indicted. At least the, you know, the, the main ones. Now, you know, if you had something like a Manafort, that's just a different situation. I mean, it's a different level. But I don't know that all of this gray area seems to go in favor of the players, at least on the other side. So we'll see, but thanks for the question. See what else we got here. Expecting coronavirus questions. We'll see if we get any. Lynn? Lynn? Lynn. Lynn, can you hear me? I'm having a little trouble hearing you. See if I got a volume control.

Can you hear me now?

I do not. What's your question, Lynn?

So the crew members on that ship, they're actually not U.S. citizens. They are not. They are. All those crew members come from other countries. I think that that's probably one of the reasons why he doesn't want them on.

Lynne, I can't hear you. Unfortunately, you're talking very slowly or the technology is not working. So I apologize. I couldn't hear the question. And if I had asked you to repeat it, I wouldn't have been able to hear it. So let's see if I've got a better connection with somebody. If I put you on. Speak loudly. At the very least, if you would. Timothy. Timothy, let's see if we can get you on. I'm sorry, Lynn. I didn't mean to cut you off. I just couldn't hear you. Okay, that one didn't work. Let's try Paul. Probably should have a producer screening calls like important people do. Oh, I think I actually Added two of you. Can anybody hear me? No. All right, so the technology is just not going to work for us today. So I guess I won't be taking questions after all. But I'll take your questions on your comments. You're saying that some of you could hear the caller. I just couldn't hear it. So it didn't work. I would have to hear it for it to work. She said the cruise ship people are not Americans. Americans. I'm not totally sure that that makes a difference. There had to be Americans on it. I don't believe that you're saying that they're all not Americans. So that doesn't make much difference. Lynn said the Crew members aren't U.S. citizens. Doesn't matter. You know, in this situation, we're going to have to kind of. We're going to have to be a little flexible. All the old rules are gone. All right. Somebody says it takes about 30 seconds after I add them to hear them. Well, that wouldn't be a very good user experience. Maybe that's just today. Favorite home brewed coffee. I don't really have strong coffee preferences. Amazon is jacking up the price on their dried beans. Maybe not. It's probably not Amazon who's raising the price. The way Amazon works is that people have control over posting their goods. And the people who are posting on Amazon, the people who have been pre approved to post must be the one who are doing the gouging. There's not really any chance that it's Amazon itself. So don't think it's Amazon. Amazon, as far as I know, has been acting very responsibly in this situation. They've told their staff to stay home. So I see. The recommendation today is that people like me should no longer go out in public. I've told you before how I live in the future accidentally. Here's another way I live in the future. I was telling you before on the topic of facial recognition that I've already lived in a world in which there was facial recognition. It's because I'm a little bit famous. If you're a little bit famous and you go out in public, people recognize your face. It's like facial recognition, but only for me. I walk outside and I go to the store, I go to Safeway and people say, hey, Simultaneous IP Dilbert. Hey. So I've lived in the future where people know who I am and even what my job is, and a lot about my biography. Just by looking at my face, the rest of you are going to discover that world so someday, maybe when you go to stores or parties or whatever, everybody will recognize you by your face because they've got an app. Likewise, similarly, analogously, I'll be 63 in June, which means I'm in the over 60 group that are at risk. But I wouldn't be at risk being perfectly healthy and on the youngish side of the old people unless I had a respiratory problem. But I have a respiratory problem. So I do have a history of asthma. And my sinuses of course are or a war zone. So the recommendation from the CDC for me is I'll never go outside into crowds again. Think about that. Because that's your probably your future. Except I don't think it'll last in your case. So I'm in the future. I actually can't go to public places where there are a lot of people if I want to follow the government's advice. And I am going to follow the government's advice for two reasons. If it were only my self interest. I'm not kidding about this. I kind of want to get it over with. I'm definitely a pull the band aid off kind of guy all the way. I mean, to my core, I'm a pull the band aid off guy. If you've got some bad news for me, I want it right now. If it's going to hurt, I want it right now. If it's going to kill me, maybe let's just get it over with. Let's do it. So selfishly, I actually kind of want to get the coronavirus and that's not even a joke now. I don't want to go infect myself. I'm not going to be an idiot. But if it's going to happen anyway and I had a choice, I'd rather sooner than later. I'd rather get to the other side of it. Whether I'm dead or alive, let's just get it over with. And that's just a personality thing. I'm not saying that you should adopt that. But there's a second and far, far bigger consideration. If I end up in an icu, somebody else isn't, and we're gonna have some shortages. So keeping myself healthy is 100% in my case, just, you know, speaking personally. In my case, it's really close to 100% about protecting the country. Because if the country crashes because the health care system crashes from quantity, I would be part of that. So I'm going to do what I can do to follow the CDC's directions. Maybe I get infected, maybe I don't But I'm going to follow the directions and lower my risk. And I'm going to do it for patriotic reasons, because if it were just for me, honestly, I would get the flu. I would just. Let's say, let's do it. Let's dance. So I'm not expecting to die, and I'm not expecting any of you to die. But I'm telling you that we're in the new world. For me, it started today. So for me, today is the first day that I will restrict my outdoor activity, my external activities, severely. Somebody says, don't be fatalistic. You might not get it. Well, I think that's true. Might not get it. But the only way people like me might not get it is if everybody else gets it. By everybody else, I don't mean everybody, I mean a big, possibly majority section of the country has to have it so that they can't get it again. If they can't get it again, then I can be around them with a low risk. So the only way the old people will be safe in the future is when most or a lot of the young people actually get it, don't have symptoms because young people don't have as much of a problem with it and reduce the number of ways it can get to me later. That's the only way to kill the thing. So I've said before that I'm reasonably sure, based on observation of what. What we're seeing here, that the government's plan is not to prevent it. And I don't think you should go through life thinking that is the plan, because these things don't really have that quality of being preventable. They get compared to the other things, like what were the other things, the SARS and other stuff, but they don't really act the same. This one might be the kind of that just spreads faster. Those other ones didn't spread that fast. They didn't have that quality. But this one spreads fast and it seems to kill people. Now, there is a question, look, that I would like to put forward to you. You ready for this? I'm going to give you the biggest mind. Mind word. I'm not going to say imagine. I was saying two words instead of one. The first one starts with mind. The second one starts with F. And it's coming at you right now. Here it is. We can't tell the difference between a virus that's extra deadly and one that's extra safe. Do you believe that? Do you believe that we can tell the difference even at this stage? With all the testing and everything we've done, do you. Do you think that we can tell the difference between a virus that's extra deadly and one that's extra safe? Well, in order to know the difference, here's what we would need to know. Then you can ask yourself, do we know it? We would need to know how many people are infected that don't have much in the way of symptoms. Do we know that? We don't? Do we? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we finding it in 80 countries? Do you think it spread in the last few weeks to all of those 80 countries and that we caught it in 80 countries? I don't think so. Why is it that. Here's another mystery that might be related. Africa doesn't seem to have much of a problem with it, and people aren't sure why. It's a mystery. So Africa doesn't have a problem. That's a pretty big deal. So there are two things here that would give you at least possibility for optimism. But I do not encourage optimism. If that sounds weird, I don't encourage you to be optimistic. I'm simply giving you the lay of the land. I'm just telling you the odds. And right now, if I had to guess, I would agree with the president, who believes that the death rate for this virus might continue to get adjusted down. And there's an obvious reason for that. The obvious reason is we're not good at testing for it. And as soon as we can test, we're going to find a lot more people, presumably who have it, who didn't have much in the way of symptoms. So it could be that this is already the biggest, most widespread flu, you know, that we've seen, if. If it's extra mild. So let me make my case about how you can't tell extra mild from extra bad. If it's extra bad, people are dropping like flies. And you can tell, you think you know, because people are dying. You'd be saying, oh, my goodness, more people died from this than died from the other stuff. So that would be a good, good indication. That's extra deadly. More people are dying. But what if it's also simultaneously more people. Got it. That part you don't know. You know, what if it's the most viral thing that's ever been in the history of humanity and it's spreading like an, you know, just crazy, but nobody's testing for it and the symptoms are so mild that people aren't even noticing. If that's true, and we haven't ruled that out yet. It would actually be one of the most mild flus in terms of percentage. In other words, if you get it, your odds of dying are just as low as any other flu. It's just the more people would have it now, the more people having it. Plenty big problem. Plenty big problem. But it might suggest that there's a way for it to end, because if so many people get it, if it's super, super viral, many of you will get it. And then that will prevent the people who would have the worst symptoms from being able to get it more easily because it would be stopped by all the people who had immunity. How will people get out the vote? Well, sorry, given that people like me just got the word to stay indoors, and given that this virus is likely, experts think might subside a little during the warmer summer season, but then it might come roaring back in November. November is polling time. So could we see fewer elderly people voting? I would say there's 100% chance you'll see fewer elderly people voting in November. And I only thought of this just now. Now, who does that benefit? I actually don't know because if it's Biden against Trump, which one of them gets the old vote? Do you know? I don't know. Here's another factor. There seems to be some kind of difference between liberals and conservatives in terms of their, their gag factor or their, their ickiness factor. Now, I've seen that. I'm not sure I totally buy the science. There have been studies that say this, that conservatives would be grossed down at stuff more easily than liberals. Is that true? I don't know, but I'll just throw that out there as something that studies have shown to be true. I'm a little skeptical of it, but let's say it's true. What does that say about election turnout? If you're a conservative, are you more, more freaked out by the coronavirus and therefore you're more likely to stay home? Maybe. I don't know. I don't think anybody has a handle on that. So, yeah, in the comments you're saying the mail in vote. But here's the thing. The, the older citizens, I'm guessing, are also not the people who were mailing in votes. Well, let me take that back. Of course, there are lots of older people who are mailing in votes, but, but I have to think it's not the majority, and that's the group that's the hardest to change, to turn into a new thing. It might be easy for them to Stay home on election day. But it might be hard for them to fill out forms and figure out how to mail in stuff and do paperwork and stuff. Well, I think there's probably going to have to be a push for mail in elections. And as I'm thinking about this, wouldn't it make sense to start now and have the government start pushing for mail in votes? Wouldn't that make sense? And wouldn't it maybe, let me also ask this. Wouldn't it make sense maybe to move the election to October? Is that possible? Could you move the election up? Because we know with fair amount of certainty that the virus is going to, you know, come down a little in the summer and then rage back in November. Why wait till November? That might be the very worst time to have an election. It might be now. The one thing about an election that's different from other things is people aren't coming necessarily from out of town to do it. So most of the people who vote will already be in that town. So that doesn't make it so bad as it would if it were an international conference, for example. All right, so having put that out there, I don't think that we know at this point whether this is an extra mild flu or an extra terrible one. We just know that a lot of people are dying. Now if you took the cruise ship, for example, and you say to yourself, scott, Scott, Scott, we do know this is the bad one because look at the cruise ship, it's like a little laboratory. There were. How many people have died on the cruise ship? Now give me an updated number. But the number who died on the cruise ship is obviously far worse than people. The number who die on a cruise ship normally. Right. Number of people who would die on any given cruise ship is how many? Well, let me ask you, how many of you know the answer to this question? How many old people die a cruise ship in ordinary circumstances? How often does it happen? Do you know what the answer is? About once a week. About once a week an old person dies on, I think each cruise ship. I'm not even talking about all of the cruise ships in the world. I think on each cruise ship you get one or two a week. You know, it's, it's a big number actually. And it's because obviously they don't have, you know, the high end health facilities on the cruise ship. And it's older people. So it's, you know, everything, the, everything that you need to kill people in one place. So what would it mean if there were, say 10 of them? On one ship, does that mean that, that, that that really was a bad situation? Well, it depends how. If they were not on the ship, would they have gotten health care more, more quickly? Is it simply because they were in close quarters? Would a regular flu, just the ordinary flu, if that many people had it in that many, in that closed spaces, would it have been the same? I don't know. So, yeah, I'm seeing all kinds of numbers, 6, 26, 45,000 single kinds of weird numbers in the, in the comments. So I don't know what it is. But the point is you could have, you could have another explanation for why there were a bunch of people dead on one ship that also had a lot of coronavirus. So that you can't completely rule out that there's something about that that was unusual, but it certainly is a gigantic red flag. So that said, you should certainly treat this like it's a deadly disease. You should all, you should all take completely seriously the CDC's warnings, you should do what they say. But there is some possibility that this will, will be far less of a problem in the end than we thought. And in fact, that's. If I had to bet on it, I'd bet on it now. I'm betting that it's going to be less of a problem than we think, not because of the virus itself being less of a problem. What I think is that when you focus the entire world on a problem. Let me back up, I'm going to take a second simultaneous sip because I just woke up and I really need it. Please join me. That one without the introduction. So I want to give you the good news. And it's of course awkward to give good news in the heart of a crisis, but there is something good happening and it has to do with where the world's at in 2020 compared to, let's say, the Spanish flu. Spanish flu happened when the world was not that connected. We didn't have Internet and our medical facilities were primitive, etc. And we're seeing something really different happening here. And here's the way I would describe it. Have you noticed that because we're all connected and talking about this coronavirus that I believe this is the first time we've ever had a planetary threat that everybody agreed was a planetary threat. And it's here right now. Can anybody fact check me on that? Now you're going to say, oh, World War II was a planetary threat. Well, not really. I mean, it affected, I don't know, half the world or whatever directly and all of it indirectly, but it was kind of a different situation. Right. But we did see the world pull together to defeat Nazi Germany and the Japanese ambitions at the time. But we've never seen it like this. We've never seen where the citizens are all connected. I'm connected to you right now, so my thoughts are going into you. You can watch in real time as your thoughts are merging into me. And I've said this about Twitter and social media in general. We have formed a God brain because the brains of the United States are no longer what they were in 1918 during the Spanish flu. In 1918, it was a whole bunch of individual brains. Here's a scientist doing what a scientist does. Maybe he can talk to some other scientists by the telegraph. I don't. Did they have the telephone in 1918? I don't know my history well enough. When did everybody have commonly have telephones? It wasn't 1918. Right. So what were they doing? Telegraph. Write a letter to the other scientists to coordinate. So what we have now is wholly, completely, entirely different than anything we've ever seen before. We've never been disconnected, and we've never had a global threat that was immediate like this one. And you're just watching the entire civilization, 15 billion years of evolution coming together, where as one, the citizens of Earth have decided that on this question, we're all on the same side. Never happened before. Even global warming is just a controversy, but there's not really a controversy about this thing. We're all on the same side. We have a mortal threat. We'll probably lose millions worldwide. It's gonna change civilization. We don't know how yet, but it's coming. And you and I are completely connected right now. I am not separate from you. We are mentally, psychologically, absolutely connected. That's not happened before. And one of the things that that does is it allows the. What I call the God brain to be activated. And you're seeing it right now. You're seeing a new form of intelligence emerging while you watch. Maybe there's never been anything more impressive in all of human history than what's happening now that you don't even notice because it's so natural. You. You simply have evolved into it. Your brain is now tapped into the collective. Now you might have to be on Twitter or watching television or on the phone or something for that to be active at the moment, but we're all connected right now. And we have focused. Not a bunch of little individual people with individual brains, but we are forming a God brain now. I'M not saying we're going to be a religion or competing with your actual God, if you prefer. I'm saying that, in effect, we have now summed up. We are, for the first time, a cumulative brain focused on one problem, one global problem. At the moment, we are not one. Yet we're not. But we're forming it fast. Anything that we learned about the coronavirus in Tennessee is going to be in Wuhan in 60 seconds. Well, you know, as soon as it takes somebody to type it. The smartest people in the world are no longer on the sidelines. In 1918, do you think the very smartest, very best people were all working on something to do with the flu? No. First of all, they didn't have any tools. It was more of a primitive time. And secondly, you couldn't even find the smartest people. You couldn't find them. I turn on Twitter and I see a message from Balaji Srinivasan. Now, if you don't know Balaji, just think one of the smartest people in the entire freaking planet Earth, literally. And then I go down, there's some messages about the coronavirus, some advice from Naval Ravikant. Again, I literally speak of Naval as the smartest person I've ever met. True. And you go down the list and you're watching all the smartest people in the world jump in. And they didn't used to be able to do that. Because if you were the smartest person in the world here, I'm just speaking hyperbolically, but if you were super smart and you could be super useful in 1918, what could you do? You could do nothing. You couldn't do a single thing. But now you can. And people are jumping in. People are volunteering, People are going into the fight. We're not. People aren't running away. People are going right at this thing. And a lot of them and people are doing what you see me doing, essentially. I mean, what I did, you watched it in real time. You saw me look at this, feel part of it. I'm threatened personally, but all of you are as well. And you can watch as I try to figure out how to be productive. Now, I think the best way that I can be productive is to be part of the God brain and to bring you voices like Naval to retweet useful things, threads and such, to inform you to keep your spirits up. I've actually thought that one of the most useful things that I could do. Naval went to your high school. I bet you've got some good stories. I'D like to hear those. So one of the things that I think I can do is simply help people to know what to do if there wasn't anything you knew to do. Now, most people have already gotten a hint that they should bring in some supplies, etc. I really think you're not going to need them. I don't think anybody's going to go hungry. I don't think the power is going to go off. I don't think the electricity is going to go off. I think that all that stuff would be fine. And it has to do with the fact that 80% of us will always be healthy at any time. And 80% of us can do 100% of the work. If you've ever seen any big company, 20% of the people can stay home on any given day, and it doesn't make any difference. 80% is fine, and we'll always have 80%. So things will keep running. The economy will just take a hit for a while. So you'll be fine. But what I recommend is that you take advantage of this disaster. You've heard the saying, never let a good disaster or a good crisis go to waste. This is one of those times. So yesterday I was taking my long walk in the sun, which I recommend to all of you. I believe that all of you should be doing the small things you can do to stay as healthy and to keep your immune system just, you know, as good as it can get. So one of those is light exercise as opposed to heavy exercise. At the moment, light exercise should be your goal, not building muscles. You want light exercise to stay at maximum fitness in case, in case your body's attacked. We need you. You are all soldiers in this war against this, this invader. And by the way, Naval says this. If you were to take bets on the coronavirus, think about the odds. Would you ever bet against human beings in a war against any other living object on Earth? Well, probably not, because human beings have essentially conquered 100% of the species, except for this one. And we're going hard at this one, too. So if you were going to bet against humans in the field of battle of Earth, well, don't bet against humans. We're pretty, pretty good at this stuff. And secondly, you'd also have to bet against the United States. Who has ever won money betting against the United States? Well, that's a tough bet. I suppose anything can happen. But if you think there's going to be a meltdown of society, you know, in a kind that really could get to you I don't know. We're pretty good at this stuff. So, anyway, my point is, stay healthy, take a walk. And I felt yesterday healthier than I felt in a long time because I'm really. I'm serious about getting enough sleep, getting light exercise, eating right, doing everything I can to lower my stress, which I'm. Hopefully, I can be part of that for you. So there you go. What about alien life forms? Well, maybe these. Maybe viruses are from another planet. Did you know viruses are not alive? Isn't that. Doesn't that just blow your mind that a virus is. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think I'm right on that. Right. I don't think a virus is a living thing. You just can't stop it from spreading. Curiosity is making it harder to sleep. That's interesting. How do you grade our government's response thus far? Very good question, and I'll give you an answer to that. Number one and certainly the most important thing you should keep in mind. It's not your government doing stuff for you. You're in on this. You're not an observer. So it's like, you know, I feel as if somebody in the stadium said, hey, you know, I'm watching this football game. How's the team doing? And I'm the referee, and I'm looking at you and sitting in the audience, and I'm saying, dumbass, you're on the field. Get out of the stands. So if you're asking yourself, is your government doing a good job? It's a fair question. But let me ask you this. What the hell did you do today? What did you do? And I mean that seriously. You, the person who asked that question, whoever asked, is the government doing its job? I asked the same question to you. Did you do your job? Did you exercise? Did you wash your hands? Every day, did you tell somebody to wash their hands? Did you help an old person? What'd you do? Because I did stuff, I'll do stuff every day. But here's the thing. You really can't tell if the government's doing a good job or not. And part of the reason is that we're shielded from the people doing the work by the people doing the talking. So if Mike Pence or President Trump gives a press conference that I don't think is an A press conference, what does that tell us about the people doing actual work? Nothing. Nothing at all. It doesn't. I do think that putting Pence in charge was a good move from the outside. Now, again, you have to be really Close to these situations, to know what really is a good idea and what's not, to know what worked and what didn't, what makes a difference, what's a big difference, what's a small difference. We're all way too far away from it. You and I cannot tell if the experts at the CDC are doing their job. We can't tell. Do I think that they probably are doing it? Yes. Do I think that they'll make some mistakes? Of course. Do I think that ultimately their game will improve and rapidly? Yes. That's everything everything is about. Not what happened already. Everything that matters is what we get to quickly and how quickly we get to it. If they can take it from where we are to a better place and get there fast and nobody can really predict rates and changes and what's going to happen and the surprises that are coming. But, but the real, the real, the real play here is how quickly they get better, smarter and more effective. It's not what they've done so far, it's how quickly they can improve it. We don't know that because they're still ramping. If I had to guess again, going back to the God brain hypothesis, that we are sort of forming into an entity in which the best ideas anywhere will reach the place they need to go. And we've never had that. So if you have a situation where 100% of the planet is in the fight, and if you're not, you should be, even in your own way, you need to be in the fight. Time to join our capability as a civilization. It's unparalleled. I mean, it's like nothing that anything has ever existed. And if you tried to ask yourself how good could we be? You know, once we're ramped up, we're not there yet. But how good will we be by summer at this stuff? And the answer is, you're going to be probably amazed. You will probably be amazed at the capability of humans. So go humans. We're pretty darn good at this. And remember, it's not you. You know, it's not you and me. We're not the ones who are making these big scientist decisions and stuff, but you can be pretty sure that the smartest people in the world are joining the fight. Everybody's off the sidelines now. The people who have capability are jumping in because they know they need to. So this is the fight of our lives. It's the first, in my opinion, first planetary risk. It has incredible implications for the future. Maybe in some good ways, bad ways too, but There are going to be some good things that come out of this. And I even think that there are some analogy issues that are coming out of this. One is that the virus is going to affect immigration, not just directly, because people want to close their borders to reduce the risk of the virus. Obviously, it'll have that effect, but secondarily, the way we think about hard to identify risks, and it's just going to. It'll influence everything from climate change to immigration. So I think the world will be a different place once we get on the other side of this, which we've will. And. Somebody says somebody survived meningitis. Well, you're tough. You can come live with me. Whoever survived meningitis, I like tough people. All right. Will this virus affect Trump's reelection? Yes. Yes, it will. It's the biggest story. So the biggest story is always going to affect the election. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad. Yet somebody in the comments is saying, musk says this is all dumb. What he said was, I saw his tweet. He got over 100,000 retweets on it. So Elon Musk said yesterday on Twitter that all of the coronavirus panic is dumb. So he said the panic was dumb. And we don't know exactly what he meant by that. So I'm not going to comment on that, because if you don't know what he meant, it's hard to agree or disagree. I'm seeing other people in the comments who survived meningitis. Well, we got a tough crowd here. Look at that. Somebody says, I survived Ebola. I don't think that's true, but it's funny. Well, a lot of people survive meningitis. And what do I have, some kind of a audience that is all meningitis survivors or something? Yeah. You know, I've said this before, and I'll say it again, that when you try to judge whether your president is doing a good job, it doesn't matter if it's this president or another president. Well, I'm not going to finish that thought. Oh, I will finish thought. So, whether. If you're trying to judge a president, one of the things you should do is. Oh, my God, I just forgot my thought again. I'm watching your comments and trying to do. Trying to multitask, but my point is you need the right president for the right situation. There's no such thing as a good president. There are definitely such things as bad presidents, but within the good presidents category, you need the right president at the right time. And sometimes a president is well suited for one task but not another. No president is more suited for negotiating with China than Trump, in my opinion. We've never seen anybody who was more perfectly suited for that job because he can treat them nice and treat them tough at the same time. It's kind of tough. Very few people could do that, and he had the will to do it and, you know, the. The risk profile to do it. So Trump is the ideal president for dealing with trade and China, but is he also the ideal president to deal with a. A virus outbreak? My guess is no. If I'm going to be honest, I'd rather have Obama as the president right now for this. I know I probably just lost half of my. Half of my audience by saying that. All I'm saying is you can't say that a president is good or bad. It would be more accurate to say that a particular president is well matched or not well matched to a particular challenge. This isn't. It's obvious, I think, at this point that this is not President Trump's strongest suit. But I don't know, it matters because he did what he needed to do. He put Pence in charge, and he's not holding back any authority, meaning that there's nothing. There's nothing that's a problem because the president hasn't made a decision, and there's nothing a problem because the president made the wrong decision. So the president is getting it done. He's just not the perfect fit. But I do think, as far as I can tell, he's getting it done. I don't think there's a problem at all. All right, somebody says he's a fast learner. Well, okay, I gotta dump on him one more time for his press conference. And I hope that at least. If you don't like that, I hope that at least it builds my credibility for the future. Because you can't just. You can't say everything's good. Sometimes there's a little bit of mistake. Trump said at the press conference. Yes. That he found out four or five minutes ago, meaning when he found out yesterday that he had just found out that the regular flu, flu B, or whatever it is, just the regular flu might kill 18,000 to 45,000 or 77,000 globally in a year. And he said he just found out yesterday that the regular flu could kill that many people. And I thought to myself, you need to get off the stage right now. Because we all knew that. I mean, I think we all knew that if he just found out that the Regular flu. If he just found out yesterday that the regular flu kills tens of thousands of people a year, that does not inspire confidence. Now, again, I want to say this as clearly as possible. I think all the things he's doing are good. He closed the airports fast. He put Pence in charge. He got more money than he asked for, you know, so I don't think he's botched anything. I don't think there's anything in here that you have to worry about. There's nothing that's being poorly managed. From the, at least from the executive level, I don't see any signs of it. But the way he talks about it, he's just not the best person to be the spokesperson for this specific problem. He's just not well suited for it. And maybe Pence is. All right, too bad Pence is boring because he's going to be talking about this a lot. Let's talk about Biden's brain. What are the Democrats thinking? What are they thinking? And that's not a rhetorical question. I'm so curious about what's going on in their minds. I talked to my most, let's say most emotional Democrat, Trump hater friend who I've tried to avoid for the last four years because it's difficult to be with people who hate Trump that much if, you know, because it's an emotional thing. But I checked in with him to find out if he was backing Bernie or Sanders. And the reason I checked it with him is because he's a really smart guy. Now, what does a really smart guy? Went to a, you know, Ivy League college, pays attention, very well informed. What does somebody who's well informed and very smart say when their team has been reduced to Bernie, Sanders and Joe Biden? I was really curious and what he said was he's going to back Biden because he liked to be buttigieg, but he's not an option anymore. So he's going to back Biden. And he said, and I quote, he would rather vote for a stack of old magazines than Trump. And I thought to myself, well, I guess you are. It looks like you are going to vote for a stack of old magazines because Joe Biden, if you were going to describe him in a humorous analogy, stack of old magazines might be pretty, pretty good as an analogy. And he's going to take that choice. And I think to myself, but that does mean you can tell, right? It does mean you can tell that Biden's brain is not quite working and you're going to vote for him anyway. How interesting is that? Not in a good way. So now here's the second part that I wanted to bring up. It's one thing to look at your candidate and say, you know, I'm a little worried, but we'll be okay. It's another thing to look at your candidate and then listen to Trump, who has clearly signaled, correct me if I'm wrong, Trump has clearly signaled that if Biden is the nominee, he's going to go after his brain. Right? He said it now directly. He said that he's talked about Joe being in the old folks home and you know, and there's something not right. Imagine Trump being freed to brand that mercilessly. By the time Joe gets to the election booth, he might not get any votes. This would not be close. Do the Democrats not understand that Biden is not going to be close? Trump hasn't even started on him and he's already got the entire country talking about his mental illness. It's not going to be close. Please, do they not see this? Can you not give us a good, a good contest? Now? I think Bernie, of course, has no chance of winning because of his policies, but Biden, he's literally mentally incompetent. And even his own team knows that it's not going to be close. If Biden were running any kind of a conventional candidate, maybe somebody would not have mentioned the obvious, that he's losing it, but Trump will. There's nothing that's going to stop Trump from absolutely grinding that into the dirt. And the best part is the matchup, because the one thing you, you know that Trump has as a, not the one thing, but one of the big things that people complain about is that he has a speaking style that makes people say, oh, you know, he's not speaking like a, like a sane person. But you put Trump next to Biden on the stage and only one of them is going to look sane. It's not going to look good. All right, that's about all I got for today. It's always great to talk to you. So go forward, be part of the God brain. You're all part of the fight against this planetary invader. I'll be talking to you from my bunker, where apparently I will be locked in my bunker for the next, I don't know, year. So I'm on lockdown and I will talk to you all later.