Episode 840 Scott Adams: Conversation With Naval Ravikant About Coronavirus
Date: 2020-03-05 | Duration: 37:47
Topics
Scott Adams talks with Naval Ravikant (smartest person on the planet) about the coronavirus. Grab a beverage and see if this changes how you feel.
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Rough Transcript
This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.
Transcript
[0:03]
hey everybody this is Scott and welcome to coffee with Scott Evans this is a very special one with my guest Navarro vaca and founder of Angeles legendary investor but more importantly lately one of the clearest thinkers in the United States maybe the world I refer to them all all the time is the smartest person I know with the most impressive talents stack but you know it’s a dangerous time and after we do the simultaneous sip which I’m hoping the volume me with let’s do the simultaneous sip we don’t need a preamble go oh my god so that means I I will say given your stellar introduction I do have to point out that Scott is a recluse and doesn’t know very many people definitely helps if I ever meet somebody smarter you’re gonna get demoted from smartest person I know is so you know this coronavirus is is of course the big story and the government
[1:04]
course the big story and the government is doing a pretty good job of telling us what to do you know wash your hands don’t sneeze on grandma don’t go to China and they’re not doing a good job of telling us how to think and I think about it have a feel about it and that’s what you are perfect for tell us what we should think about this coronavirus how afraid should we be how should we frame this for the most productive approach to it I think essentially the coronavirus is going to push us to do things that we should probably already be doing as a society firstly we do need to practice higher and higher levels of Hygiene in this highly interconnected world who doesn’t want to be cleaner all the time everybody I’ve ever met wants to be cleaner everybody admires people who are cleaner than them everybody likes going to places that are super clean everybody when they first go to Japan has this reaction of oh my God look how clean they are and it’s never looking down on them it’s always looking up at them so I think as a society it will make us more hygiene conscious which will help us just reduce spreads of the common cold and the basic
[2:07]
spreads of the common cold and the basic flu so I think in that sense it is very helpful secondly I think it’ll move us more towards the future faster robotics automation telepresence VR remote work all those things that are coming anyway I mean let’s face it most of white-collar jobs are just LARPing right you’re just running around pretending like you’re doing work in meetings and I think this will expose a lot of that the actual productivity in most white-collar jobs it’s in a small creative portion which this will emphasize and it’ll force assist order to make that solve the collective action problem moving through those tools and I think it’ll also cause us to do basic preparedness for viruses and bacteria that we need as a society because synthetic biology technology is getting easier and easier and spreading more and more so it’s only a matter of time before we see engineered viruses and bio weapons and so as a society if we’re better prepared for that it’s good this good sorry yeah I saw your tweet in which you refer to it as essentially a series of wars that
[3:09]
it as essentially a series of wars that we the the big creatures of Earth the humans are gonna have with the small creatures the you know the viruses this is this has always been true if you look at humans we’ve been the apex predators on planet Earth for a long time ever since we discovered fire or tools we’ve basically taken over and killed everything else right as soon as humans invented Spears axes and fire that was it we won and every other species got driven into extinction or domestication to the point now where the lowest ranking human outranks the highest ranking animal like the top you know dog in the world is lower status than the lowest human you would put that animal down if it attack that human so we’ve conclusively won against all the big things so our remaining natural predators and actually they’re not quite predators they consider us their habitat our bacteria and viruses and that’s a very broad generalization it’s like saying plants and mushrooms or fungi so obviously they’re good bacteria and even good viruses that we use their symbiotic but for every symbol in the in the
[4:10]
but for every symbol in the in the animal kingdom there’s six parasites or so that’s the rough ratio that I’ve heard so bacteria and viruses are our last major remaining enemies with one exception mosquitoes mosquitoes who are and mosquitoes are actually caused damage to us by carrying bacteria and viruses with pathogens they’re just flying needles right is the way to think about them though bacterial viruses compete with us and there’s this hypothesis called the Red Queen hypothesis it’s named after Alice in Wonderland where the Red Queen in her guards are running really fast but they’re all kind of running in place against each other because the ground keeps moving so the idea there is that bacteria and viruses evolve to compete with us and infest us and we evolved in such a way to get away from them and so we use sexual selection which is Scott Adams goes and find Christina bashyam and this goes through a long selection cycle and then your genes mixed with her genes and then your children which I hope you will have you know can use whichever genes are best adapted to this environment to resist the next generation of viruses and
[5:10]
the next generation of viruses and viruses are mutating they’re not intelligently selecting other viruses to mate with they’re not sexual they’re asexual but they’re just replicating mindlessly and mutating so they’re much less likely to pick the right gene but they’re so short-lived that they’re getting many many many more mutations and if you look at the amount of genetic variation that a bacterial virus would get over 20 years it’s roughly similar to what a human will get over 20 years but a human will do it by wandering around their entire life and find the proper mate to mix their genes with the bacterial virus will do it just by massive amounts of replication so there has always been this race going on this red queen style race between bacteria and viruses and us and we fight through genetic selection and and and mate selection and they fight through mutation and now because of the huge interconnectedness we have humans living in urban environments traveling around airplanes you know shaking hands and doing a lot of business with each other we’re spreading these bacteria bacteria
[6:10]
we’re spreading these bacteria bacteria and viruses much faster we also have a much larger population so now you have seven or eight million hosts within which the bacteria can mutate as opposed to just a few hundred thousand hosts a hundred thousand years ago so we need to use technology to combat that to offset that and we’re going to use things like vaccines therapeutics hand-washing hygiene antibiotics social distancing etc etc to resist that so that’s kind of my general thesis what do you think is reasonable life seen a few people hypothesize that because of how we’re changing our lifestyles to protect ourselves from all this stuff that we might actually end up saving lives even if the the coronavirus is pretty bad we could end up ahead is that possible yeah there’s some data around that out of Hong Kong that’s showing that social distancing is working Hong Kong was hit very badly by SARS and so they reacted very quickly and vocally to what just happened in China and basically people just stayed indoors and forget about what the government orders what the
[7:11]
what the government orders what the government doesn’t I think the government’s ability to actually do things is very limited in these cases and people have to save themselves in a decentralized manner and people in Hong Kong just stayed indoors and wore masks and they wash their hands and they kept their distance from each other and you can see in the data that not only the corona virus stops spreading or get contained but everything went down so the influenza went down and common colds went down and other viruses went down so it works I mean viruses have very specific methods in how they spread and a human being is a much smarter entity than any given virus so if each one of us is taking care of ourselves the problem takes care of itself so let’s not know some of the news you know it’s tough to peer into this fog of war and and know what’s true so China is saying that they’ve got a at least maybe they’ve turned the corner and the new cases are less than than they had been do you think that’s real do you think China has given us the straight scoop I
[8:13]
China has given us the straight scoop I mean they acted pretty aggressively could be actually I do believe them and it’s not that I believe them because I think the government there is a paragon of transparency and virtue I think it’s because they don’t gain much by lying if they if they lie and if the thing’s not under control and everybody starts going back to business as usual people don’t start dropping that again and that’s going to be a disaster for them economically of course but they have lied up till now pretty much everybody is press it when they thought that it was just a rumor mongering they are there I’m also China is more decentralized and I think people give it credit for a lot of what goes on at the local level you know it takes time to filter up to the big boss’s level it’s a very large country it’s not a it’s not a single unified monolith so I think they were definitely not the most competent in their initial handling of it but I don’t think that they’re overtly explicitly lying I think the bigger danger with China is that as they return to business as usual it starts spreading again but there are countervailing factors like it’s gonna get warmer and people on average are just gonna be a lot more careful even if
[9:13]
just gonna be a lot more careful even if they say go back to work to everybody tomorrow they’re all gonna be wearing masks still they’re all gonna be washing their hands all the time they’re not gonna be hugging each other with in close quarters of each other and my guess is that public events and buffets and church attendings and so on will still suffer from low attendance and the cruise the cruise ship industry is dead never to return unfortunately I think you’re right about that I had a plumber come over yesterday and I tried for the first time the non handshake greeting oh yeah you put out his hand and I did that you know coronavirus sorry you know nothing personal sort of testing it out to see does it work socially and there was a little bit awkward but not enough that I’m not gonna do it again so well the easiest the easiest way to handle that one is this is something I’ve been doing for months now which is I just tell people I’m just getting over a cold and they just back off so it’s basically it’s not you that excuse would never work better than today exactly so that would be my advice to keep a little
[10:14]
would be my advice to keep a little chest tightness here exactly now there was an article I just read about the cruise ship which for all the wrong reasons it turned out to be the best laboratory because you had people in a closed setting you could really know who these people are and then you could look at the result and one of them one of the outcomes of that is that nobody under 70 has died and of over 700 people infected on that ship so that’s impressive but also they did not get care that quickly they were not identified that quickly so if you if you assume that only the older people were even affected and now that we know that’s where the real risk is we could really put a you know sort of a wall around our our oldsters isn’t it possible that even if this virus is ten times more viral that because the people dying from it can be easily identified and walled off
[11:16]
can be easily identified and walled off is it there leave some hope that now that we’re no longer caught off-guard we could drive down the death rate to ordinary flu levels which is plenty bad but yeah I don’t think it goes down to levels this thing is much worse than the ordinary flu for one thing it’s far more virulent you know the r0 the spread factor is multiples of what is the flu the flu is like a 1.28 but but that’s that’s that’s what the the virus itself can do but if you factor in our response to it sure we would effectively lower it that’s true I think we can effectively lower it but I think it’s gonna require a level of self quarantine and hygiene that the American population is currently not engaged in at least in San Francisco and 99% is business as usual and if it’s gonna spread anywhere since San Francisco because you’re a cold urban environment that’s directly interconnected to Asia so I just I walk around the street nobody’s wearing masks everyone’s still going to events and
[12:17]
everyone’s still going to events and gatherings people are still shaking hands and high-fiving so we do not have anywhere near the level of self control that I think will be required to actually report lower the spread factor secondly this thing does kill people in their 20s and 30s and 40s it’s just statistically a lot less likely but it has a high comorbidity rate so if you have an existing condition which could actually just be a flu or cold it can go haywire on you so 20-somethings and 30-somethings have died from this it’s just in the under 10 category that we’ve hardly seen anything the children seem to be very immune to it well what’s interesting about the cruise ship is that there were enough people that we should have seen 30 year olds dying if if people who had good modern care were going to die and none of them did yeah yeah the counter-argument is also who has good modern care because the current ICU system the intensive care unit system is built on an assumption of a very small number of beds being need at any given time so if this thing really does land 20% of
[13:19]
if this thing really does land 20% of people in the intensive care unit like some estimates say then it’ll easily overwhelm the hospital system and you’ll end up with higher morbidity rates so a lot a lot of it is about spreading it out spreading out the illness like if we just all take care of ourselves and summer arrives then hopefully the sick and the sick don’t arrive all the hospital all at once but there’s already evidence that that’s happening in South Korea the hospital and South Korea is extremely well run in manage in this regard so III don’t think we’re out of the woods here I think we’re actually just entering the time period in the u.s. where we’re going to have to take some measures maybe not as extreme as China but we’re gonna have to start doing social distancing to protect ourselves and I’m hoping that the warm weather will save us frankly because nobody knows with this particular virus and the flu dust spread and warmer weathers but in general the warmer the climate the more humid the climate the lower the spread factor because these are airborne viruses that like cool and
[14:20]
are airborne viruses that like cool and dry and don’t like hot humid now here’s an interesting maybe just completely coincidental and you can help me sort this out the places with the biggest problems coincidentally have the worst air pollution so even people don’t realize but Italy has the worst air pollution in Europe South Korea is a mess and here’s the weird part cruise ships I just read an article that said the air on the deck of a cruise ship not even not even below deck and on the deck of the cruise ship the air quality was worse than tera mmm now so I’ve asked ask people could that be a correlation and there are actually a number of different ways that it could be one is that it decreases the sunshines and there’s a vitamin D hypothesis that you know if you’re low you’re more susceptible one is that the pollution just lowers your resistance in general even what my my own hypothesis is that maybe the the virus actually becomes more easily airborne
[15:22]
becomes more easily airborne if a hitch is arrived mmm-hmm early that’s a real thing a virus can hitch a ride on dust so and then yeah but you have the other correlations are heavy smoking areas and identity I think high density is actually the Occam’s razor one Asian cities are much higher density than Western cities even in Italy broke out in the Turin marathon at first you no qualms you have huge amounts of travelers and pilgrimages coming in and then sitting in like large gatherings so I think just high density of people is the most obvious thing if there’s a large group of people gathering indoors that’s the perfect spot for a virus if you have a small number of people spread out on a tropical beach that virus is not going to get a foothold so I think there’s some common sense that we’re just evolved as humans to realize this here’s a very simple way to think about how embedded this is in human society and culture cold tend to occur during cold weather and the people in cultures
[16:25]
cold weather and the people in cultures where they have a lot of cold weather tend to have cold behavior and cold attitudes why do we use that word cold to remember to an illness to remember to refer to to refer to an illness to refer to a weather and we use to refer to a set of behavior patterns cultural behavior patterns we use the same word for all three things that right there should clue you in on where these things replicate and this is knowledge that’s embedded in the English language and goes back thousands of years if you look at the so called cold cultures like northern European cultures and Eastern European cultures they’re not bear-hugging you you know they’re not singing and chanting and holding hands together they’re generally sitting far apart they’re you know very suspicious of each other you know they’re not engaging in large gatherings and they’re generally and when it can and these cultures also have long traditions or for example sauna use and hot springs because they’re trying to induce artificial fevers in their body they also tend to a favor
[17:25]
also tend to a favor you know this into worship being in the outdoors and being in nature if you go into kind of warmer weather cultures like for example India the ones that are involved in hot and humid environments what they have to worry about are waterborne diseases so they’re constantly boiling their water or there’s their food because they’re trying to kill the waterborne diseases we’re in cold-weather cultures you’re trying to fight airborne diseases so I think you just need to have a cold personality and go to a warm climate if you want to avoid colds well I’m looking at the big implications because it seems to me that we have a pretty good formula for how to keep grandma safe you know grandma you know don’t talk to anybody who’s been to the concert let’s take you out to the country you know he’d just keep you away from people from little kids well we don’t know right now for little kids or spreaders or not little kids do get it they tend not to get really sick from it the question is how much of are all shedding and spreading do they do if they do do a lot then the obvious vector
[18:27]
they do do a lot then the obvious vector would be that it spreads in schools the kids are largely asymptomatic or unhurt they bring it home grandma’s living at the house and she gets sick so that is a vector that we have to test if I had to predict I would say schools will shut maybe for a month whatever the right amount I don’t think there is any chance it won’t happen in this country do you don’t don’t you think schools are gonna shop for maybe a month I think schools have to shut and I think large public gatherings have to be canceled and I think large public gatherings are going to be canceled not because the people organizing them want to cancel them there’s too much money at stake for example at South by Southwest and the Olympics it’s just that nobody’s gonna show up people are gonna clue in all it’s gonna take is a few people dropping dead and everybody will run for the hills the harder part is school cancellation because schools or schools aren’t really about education let’s face it schools are an extended form of daycare and socialization so if you cancel schools then you have a daycare problem for adults you know well I’m gonna be the the voice of optimism on this because I
[19:28]
the voice of optimism on this because I think the country needs to to hear that you know we’re capable and we’re strong if this were just one person who had a daycare problem that’s it that’s the problem right but if the whole world has a daycare problem yeah well I’ll watch your kids yeah yeah it takes a village to raise a child they’ve been in collective child a child watching then it gets pretty easy right so we have a whole host of problems they would be caused by this that I believe are probably relatively solvable let me talk about another one just to finish that off I think this is a huge boon for the homeschooling movement this is a moment yeah I mean it could change civilization quite permanently and in forever and maybe for a good I’ve said for a long time that we’re homeschooling is going is virtual reality yeah I’ve got my little virtual reality set over here you spend five minutes in that and then you say to yourself okay would I rather learn history by reading a book or would I rather stand in the middle of Napoleon’s battles right there’s just a
[20:31]
Napoleon’s battles right there’s just a question of absolutes all going so businesses now one of the big fears is that the economy will get crushed worldwide big depression etc and I’m a optimist on this obviously there’ll be a big disruption so there’s no question about that but how bad it becomes I’m going I’m gonna add this context and I could do this because I’m the creator of Dilbert you could take 20% of any work force and remove them from reality and nothing would happen I think it’s more than 20 but yeah ya know what happened and the reason I know that is not not just experienced but it’s called summer right it’s called Christmas you know you know we we routinely have 20% of people also see this when my people go on strikes or there’s a government shutdown you’re like yeah what I worked for the phone company the local phone company I was a salaried employee and when the non salary people who went on strike which
[21:31]
salary people who went on strike which happened a few times we so-called managers or salary people would have to fill in so there’s a very small number of salaried people compared to all the the Union people didn’t make it a difference you know twenty percent of us did the job of 80 we just didn’t do the big projects of the long-term stuff put that on hold for a month it was fine and it by the creative destruction argument we’re gonna go through a shift and the new industries that we shift to are actually going to be better for the economy longer term so you know going to remote work man to be more efficient you may be able to hold more jobs as a remote worker because you just get the job done instead of having to do FaceTime at the office even there was some concern that uber and lyft would take a big hit because who wants to get in a car with a stranger but it turns out that may be better than getting in the subway or a bus bus so people switch away into other models of doing things I think people are fundamentally creative and innovative and consumptive and they don’t stop doing that they just change how they do it and what they do it around like this
[22:32]
it and what they do it around like this is gonna be a huge boon for Netflix and slack and companies like that which rely on people staying indoors zoom is gonna do great here we are on Zoom I was thinking this morning how I could invest to make money on this and and I had to talk myself out of thinking about that I’ve already and I’ve invested in that by living in the Bay Area and by kind of being in tech tech companies in various ways so also your viewership should go up that’s something you could track yeah maybe maybe we induce a panic and then everybody comes to our Twitter in person I never mind I call that market you’re kidding do you think and I know that there’s no way to know this but just based on your your broad understanding of the world do you think there’s a genetic element to who’s susceptible to the coronavirus doesn’t doesn’t have ethnic no no there probably is but I think there’s probably so it binds to this thing in the lungs called the ACE 2
[23:33]
this thing in the lungs called the ACE 2 receptors which is overexpressed in patients and males on the other hand does seem to be killing Iranians and Italians and so on as well so I don’t think that that’s gonna necessarily mean that it’s focused in one part of the population but definitely people who evolved or grew up or came through generations of people who live next to animals have hired one have higher resistance to diseases like flu and smallpox than people who didn’t and you can see the clear evidence of that and when the conquistadors first got to South America or the colonizers got to North America you know they basically almost accidentally killed all the native populations maybe deliberately maybe accidentally but by spreading flu and smallpox but those are flus and diseases that they themselves are immune - because they and their ancestors have been exposed to them because they had grown up in cold climates where you bring the animals indoors during the winter and so you grow up next to animals and all the animal born diseases as opposed to Native Americans who are
[24:34]
as opposed to Native Americans who are running around outdoors and didn’t have this concept of living indoors with cattle or domesticated animals so there there’s definitely a genetic component to it and there’s a historical component to it but we’re not gonna be able to suss that out without massively genome sequencing everybody in drawing large-scale patterns I’m almost wondering if you could just take the cruise ship or you know some group like that and just sequence them and sheep we could probably start doing it we could probably start sequencing all the patients and then seeing what level they end up at and then using that to figure out who to put in the front lines of health care or not this is an idea floated by Balaji shouldn’t’ve awesome recently mutual friend of ours who’s really declared what everybody calls World War V the world war virus World War five it’s pretty clever and is going full-scale on this thing but he basically made that point which is you should we should be doing the sequencing and testing to figuring out which healthcare worker should be front of the line and which ones should be back in the line I saw an article the other day
[25:36]
the line I saw an article the other day that the Neanderthal gene you know or however much DNA we got from them might might have something to do with your susceptible to susceptibility to some you know common common colds and viruses and stuff so it’s gonna be something like that whether it’s yeah I don’t know if you ever see this thing on the and earth all gene I’m always suspicious of those kinds of correlations they’re too neat right like they make for good headlines you know I’m sure there’s a baboon gene and there’s a squirrel gene and you somewhere right now have you have you done your 23andme or something like that to see if you have any I’ve got a little bit I didn’t do it for two reasons one is those things are incredibly non-actionable like I don’t actually tell you what make it any different sort of like don’t marry somebody else who’s missing the exact same gene and that’s very unlikely in my case I’m not going to change my spouse based on that and the second reason I didn’t do those is because the privacy around them right very suspect they will use that to
[26:37]
very suspect they will use that to arrest your second cousin who turns out was a serial killer or was near a murder scene or what have you so I just don’t want my kids I don’t want to get sequence and send out my kids genes in the process what what kind of criminals are you raising there find out hopefully smart ones yeah you know I think the whole privacy boat has left a long time ago I mean I just you’re correct and in that physical privacy is gone there are cameras everywhere and surely eventually there would be gene surveillance and that works everywhere so I think physical privacy is dead but I think digital privacy will be alive and well through encryption it’ll be a very different kind of underground process well not for you and me but you know for pseudonymous internet trolls privacy still around that’s right you know for for you and I we have this weird future feeling where we know what it’s like to not have privacy the way that regular people who don’t you know operate in the public already have and for me I don’t
[27:40]
public already have and for me I don’t know do you ever have any your you roughly have a similar situation to me which is people will recognize you especially in the Bay Area is it ever a problem it’s inconvenient at times but I brought it on myself so it’s not it’s not really a problem I mean Fame Minor Fame being like a b-list source c-list celebrity has some slight advantages but it also has significant disadvantages like you know it’s hard for me to travel to a lawless country anonymously so there are there parts of the world where I just won’t go to anymore overall I would say for me the harms outweigh the benefits but I might just be saying that like if you took my fame away tomorrow I might be screaming for it back it’s very hard to say I don’t think I don’t think I’m self-aware enough to know oh yeah I would say there’s more good than bad you know the good is it makes me feel good every once awhile somebody approaches me in the grocery store and I’m usually happy to see them so yeah I think I would rather be rich and anonymous than poor and famous but a lot of times rich
[28:43]
poor and famous but a lot of times rich and famous go together or anonymous go together so if I had to choose between those two yeah of course I’ll take rich and famous silver important animus all day long so let me let me ask you this is sort of a psychological question has to do with the coronavirus are you doing anything to prepare because I think I think people want to feel that they’re doing something and actually doing this doing this what we’re doing right now is part of what I felt I could do like I feel like I want to help yeah I’m doing something for things for myself to stay healthy etcetera are you doing it yeah look I’m an obsessive slightly paranoid a heavily paranoid person by Nature so I’m definitely washing my hands to litter dryers and raw there’s a hand sanitizer everywhere in the house we even have ingredients to make our own we do have food stockpiles for a couple of weeks I have masks I have gloves I have all that stuff sleep and exercise
[29:44]
all that stuff sleep and exercise because those are bright yeah I’ve already had a pretty good sleep exercise regimen it’s kind of late to change that I’m probably taking a lot more vitamin C and a vitamin D than I used to I’m not going to the gym I’m working out outdoors I’m not going to large public gatherings I’m working remotely whenever possible if there is an uncontrolled outbreak in the Bay Area in other words if we know that community spread is happening in there thousands of cases and I give that actually a pretty reasonable chance because we just haven’t been testing then we will go into quarantine style lockdown like my friends in China we’re doing where we just stay in the house we go out only to get food we spray it down with alcohol you know the boxes before we bring you in and we’re just very careful about who we let in and out of the house I am actually particularly susceptible to getting colds because I’m involved for an equatorial climate and whenever I’m living in the Bay Area which is a lot of fog in those sunshine I’m always getting colds and respiratory illnesses I’m less worried for my wife and who’s younger and not of indian-origin
[30:44]
and not of indian-origin and my kids were just young and not as affected by coronavirus I’m very worried for my mom so I basically locked her down her house and I’m sending her deliveries from Amazon but I’m on the more paranoid side and have more flexibility than most people but I do think that it’s it’s worth just watching the stats and it looks like there’s an uncontrolled outbreak in your area then you want to be ahead of that game and not behind I do think having two weeks of food and probably not if I don’t need water but food toilet paper kind of all the necessities prescription medicines that’s just common sense despite what they say you should have a mask you should just it’s that you need to know how to use it so going YouTube and watch the videos on how to use the mask it’s it’s a little disingenuous to say you don’t need a mask master useless and then saying please save mask for the health care workers like both of those things cannot be true thank you for saying that but are you doing this on Twitter for yeah week and if nothing you wear a mask to protect others in case you have it so like I would feel more comfortable in a social gathering if
[31:45]
comfortable in a social gathering if everybody else is wearing masks and so I would do my part by wearing a mask and you see this in places like China and Hong Kong where they will not let you enter a store if you’re not wearing a mask because you’re not doing your bit to protect others so I think all of those kinds of measures it’s smart to start doing that and also it takes time to learn how to do these things these are not like you flip a switch in the next day you certainly know everything about hygiene and protection and distancing and so on so I’m viewing this as a dry run I’m getting my family prepared and ready and frankly it’s something to do with your time right and then if the if it actually arrives then we’re ready for it I’ve been taking daily walks in the sunshine I definitely do that do you know do 45 minutes or an hour and and I’m doing lighter exercise because if I if I wear myself out then I’m actually more susceptible so and I find that when I do my walk it’s such a small small thing I can do to you know
[32:46]
small small thing I can do to you know make a very small difference in my protection but I’m doing something so psychologically I’m now part of the solution instead of a victim and it’s a whole different mindset and I feel like yeah bring it on I you know coronavirus or not I’m gonna be ready gonna be as strong as possible if it happens it happens I’m ready yeah I don’t think vitamin D supplementation will make up for actual sunlight falling on your skin so getting Sun is really good and that’s where I’m hoping the curve will naturally Bend as warmer weather arrives and when that happens people are more outdoors they’re less likely to be in endure gatherings the Sun itself kills viruses your vitamin D levels your immune system stronger all those things play in our favor but what that concerns me is that a vaccine is still at least 12 to 18 months away possibly a longer time because we’ve never successfully developed a vaccine for any of the existing six other corona viruses so because a vaccine is pretty
[33:46]
viruses so because a vaccine is pretty far away we’re gonna have at least one more wave and the second wave will start building let’s say around let’s say weather is a factor and that helps suppress it then the second wave starts building in October November instead of January February and it starts with infected base of hundreds of thousands of people instead of a few dozen people in the middle of ohan so the second wave could be a lot larger and in past pandemics that’s usually turned out to be the case this time at least we have the advantage that our response will be faster I responsibly faster and there already be some people in the environment who have limited immunity from previous or similar infections in fact one of the pieces of potential good news here is that usually these viruses hit kids pretty hard but in this case they’re not at all and so why is that and the current best hypothesis is that about a quarter of the common colds cost today are actually caused by four circulating corona viruses that also got released and are endemic in the population but those four corona viruses don’t hurt you anywhere near the same level they just cause
[34:47]
near the same level they just cause symptoms of common cold and so the theory goes that kids have been getting these at school and so that they already have some natural immunity built up to this one and if that turns out to be true that means you could use data and dead virus from those four viruses to help build a vaccine that would be good news that would be well I think that the supply lines will stay open because we could lose a lot of workers and we’re gonna you know once you reach that crossover line where the risk of the flu is is not as high as the risk of a you know a global economic down and I think you get that you get to that point really quickly because of economic meltdown it’s gonna kill far more people then the panic could be worse than disease for sure I mean like even if you go to a worst-case wuhan style scenario for the whole world right let’s say we let’s say what happened in one happens to the entire planet right
[35:48]
one happens to the entire planet right okay so unfortunately you know a lot of people die but it’s still not enough to like seriously impact like everybody it’s like you know 98 99 percent of people are still mostly fine even the people who end up hospitalized or don’t get hospital care some of them get very sick in Britain and die but the productive capacity the economy doesn’t really go down it just have to shift into an indoor remote work kind of economy until we build up enough immunity and vaccines you’re probably not gonna riots in the streets because there’s a killer virus you don’t want to gather in the streets right it’s kind of the opposite of a zombie apocalypse right or in that sense it is like a zombie apocalypse everybody runs and hides except the zombies or not 98 percent out there it’s like 0.1% and they’re dropping dead they’re not like coming out to eat you so I don’t I don’t see those kinds of worst-case scenarios outside of panics and the panic is probably not a physical panic it’s more of an economic panic so this is this is exactly why I wanted to talk to you because you know there are some people
[36:49]
because you know there are some people who think were in bad shape and the panic itself can be can be worse but if I had to bet my own personal money on it I would say it’s gonna be painful and we’re gonna be okay yeah I think it could be somewhere between relatively painless to very painful but I think we’re fine long term regardless I think a year and a half from now it’s a blip and even stock markets are very forward-looking instruments you know stock markets discounted what’s going on what’s gonna happen next thirty years and discount back so I think the stock market will also be fine in fact it’s mostly already recovered or at least partially recovered well I think that’s a perfect place to stop this conversation and I hope that was useful to anybody watching this and thank you for thank you spending with absolutely hope this was useful as fun thanks guy