Episode 868 Scott Adams: Grab a Soft Blanket and Get Ready to Relax Before Bed
Date: 2020-03-24 | Duration: 37:39
Topics
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) Death rate of people under 60 who receive HCQ+AZITHROMYCIN Viewer questions and spitballing possible solutions
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## Transcript
[0:07]
bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in just checking my Twitter to see if anybody's put any questions there for me oh it looks like there are all right do you have your blanket on if you think if this isn't better with the blanket on oh I feel for you
you sorry I just covered up my sound so did you all see the the by didn't deep fake so evidently Joe Biden has been replaced by a digital reproduction a deep fake and it made its debut today I call it version 1.0 they had they got all of his flaws and you know speaking imperfections in there so I thought that was really good for a version one but you could tell by his hand motions to robotic where their president should do
[1:10]
robotic where their president should do ass right right so we don't know what they did with the real Joe Biden but maybe he'll come back I have to assume that he's being kept alive in some kind of a coma like a state somewhere deep below about or not possibly here's the idea for you don't you think that there's a high likelihood there's some genetic propensity to all of this if I don't I don't mean necessarily ethnic I mean that there must be something about some people's bodies that make them a little extra susceptible so what would you think of the idea just put this out there of rapidly testing the DNA do a full sequence I don't know all the right words but you test the DNA of all the people who died from the corona virus
[2:10]
people who died from the corona virus and maybe you don't bother testing the one
one are over 80 because you got an you kind of know that anything would have taken him out but the people who are let's say under 60 who also died what do you want to know if their DNA has anything in common might be something about their love receptor or something like that so given that DNA testing is fairly easy and we could test I I don't think it would be that hard to test the DNA if people either have already died or started collecting it now and wouldn't we know fairly quickly if there was anything anything they had in common so that's one way we could get back to work we could identify the people who are relatively invulnerable nobody's in druggable but the people were less the least likely to have problems and say
[3:10]
least likely to have problems and say well maybe you guys go back you guys and gal let's go back first now if you're watching if you're having this experience of flipping back between C and then and Fox there's there's the two movies forming and it's a really funny one this time except you know we might all die from if they get the wrong answer that's not funny but if you turn on CNN you'll find out that the I'm gonna call it the Trump pills so the the pills that Trump keeps talking about as having great promise if you turn on CNN that they don't just that's just not true and they've kind of study that says that the Trump pills don't work it's a brand new study then you turn it on Fox and expert after expert it'll say oh yeah
[4:10]
expert after expert it'll say oh yeah those Trump pills that work then you go to NBC and the headline is two people try to take the Trump pill and died from an overdose so maybe it'll kill you there's something wrong with all of these stories and I don't know I don't think I've decoded it all but here here are a few things first of all the study the study that CNN is saying shows that the Trump pills don't work our different pills so that's the first thing so the thing that CNN says you know is what the president is referring to and then they say here's the study and it doesn't work but wasn't exactly what the president was referring to so I think where they study it and I need a fact check on this but this isn't just my quick read on this is that the study was for
[5:12]
this is that the study was for chloroquine but I believe that the one that is the presumed to be the good one is a version of that hydroxychloroquine and then there's a second difference which is even the study that said the chloroquine didn't seem to make a difference said only by itself but when paired with the azithromycin even the chloroquine and the azithromycin package did seem promising and they said that should be immediately studied some more but the actual thing that is I believe fact check me on this but I believe the thing that they're going to study in New York the thing that's you know far more effective and promising then the chloroquine the CNN says sort of doesn't work based on that one study it's not really that's the different drug so here's here's the challenge when the media is talking about the pills that
[6:14]
media is talking about the pills that Trump is talking about you got to be careful which ones they're talking about because apparently there's something that makes a difference when you use them together and it's the hydroxychloroquine not the simple chloroquine that's the one that's a good one apparently now what about NBC running this the story that somebody took chloroquine and died you know there's nothing funny about that a couple took it and died but then you go to the first paragraph and it's actually it was some kind of cleaner for for fish tanks it wasn't even a pharmaceutical drug they took a pharmacist they took a different drug that just had a similar first name that was used for cleaning your fish tank and they died now I think the headline should have been couple of mistakes real
[7:15]
should have been couple of mistakes real drugs you know mistakes a aquarium cleaner for drugs and and dies from taking it I mean I feel like that should have been the headline right that they took the wrong thing not that they took something that's like the right thing and died that was pretty bad all right there's something very interesting about to happen that I think is gonna make you glad that you have a president who has his experience and Trump's specific experience here's the way it is I'll give it I'll start by you know a related or unrelated story but I'll tie it in if you hire a lawyer and it's something you don't know anything about and you're just a normal person you hire a lawyer and some topic you just don't know anything about you just need the lawyers help should you take the lawyer's advice well on day one yeah
[8:17]
lawyer's advice well on day one yeah yeah the lawyer knows about it and you don't that's why you got the lawyers so yeah on day one you can take the lawyer's advice but here's the secret if you work with enough lawyers in in the business setting the corporate setting you still have to incorporate more variables than your lawyer will so your lawyers gonna say what's legal there's a riskier should I do it well there's a risk but should I do it well you know I maybe say no because there's a risk but the legal risk isn't the only risk in the world there's their risk of losing money the risk of reputation you know all kinds of risk the risks of how do the employees take it whatever so the boss in these cases has to get the input but knowing that the input is not all the variables so the boss still has to make the adult decision which often can be counter to you know one or more of the experts
[9:19]
you know one or more of the experts because that expert is in a domain and let's let's take this to the current situation so if we have a situation where doctor foul she says yes keep everything closed for a longer time that's really a medical judgment and the president is balancing other considerations one of them is psychological there's a pretty big psychological cost in this the other of course is just raw lives and sometimes you don't know you know are is there anybody who's smart enough to know if you if you take it this many days the economic impact will be a crossover with more people dying from bad the bad economy than they would have died from the you know there's actually nobody who can do that calculation so the first thing you need to realize if you want to be an adult in the conversation is that
[10:21]
be an adult in the conversation is that nobody knows and if kouchi and Trump have a different opinion about which of the paths is going to save the most lives or kill the most that's a pretty fair fair difference because neither of them know you really it really is going to come down to this this weird indefinable business judgment experience hunch gut feeling instinct you know putting it put any kind of words on it but these are decisions that would be made without the benefit of the very information that would allow you to do irrationally so can you know who do you trust in that in a vague situation where there's a big economic cost there's a psychological cost there's a you know medical cost who you know what kind of person do you trust in that situation
[11:22]
person do you trust in that situation and I kind of say Trump's got a pretty good skill set for exactly this you know generic situation where the the economics and the psychology and the the experts you know they may be pointing different directions and you just have to make a decision somebody's gonna make a decision it's gonna be right it's gonna be wrong you know we'll fix it as quickly as we can if it's the wrong one but it's a really really adult decision and this is sort of the this is sort of the reason you don't let anybody be president because we're going to be asking Trump this will be one of the great decisions of all presidential history if you think about it yeah you could say decision to go to war and World War two but weren't we gonna do that anyway you know so you can think of a lot of decisions there were big ones you know the Civil War freeing of the
[12:25]
you know the Civil War freeing of the slaves and you know civil rights lots of big decisions but I'm not sure if any of those decisions were as murky and immediately high stakes as this I feel like the decision to go to war in a world war situation was actually sort of a no-brainer you just there was a matter of when but it kind of knew you were gonna get sucked into it and you know other decisions are a little more obvious that that you're picking the right side but this one is not like that I I don't think that there's anybody who can honestly say oh yeah it's smart enough to know that you know we got to end this on Tuesday because that's the crossover when it's worse the way that it is to go back to work
yeah dropping the atomic bomb that was a pretty big decision and certainly in
[13:27]
pretty big decision and certainly in terms of life and death potential anyway this might be in that same category it might actually be that big you know in the worst case scenario now I'm still very much in the camp that the only statistic isn't that matters you can see lots of numbers and the only one that matters is the death rate of people under 60 who got the combination of Hydra chloroquine and azithromycin so it's all of those combinations so they've got to be under 60 have no frickin preconditions you know health health problems and also get the drug relatively soon after it was obvious that they had some symptoms if those people are still dying next week we got to rethink everything and you know hope that there's another drug behind it
[14:28]
that there's another drug behind it that's better etc but if we find that it's either so low that it rounds to zero or at zero all the weight of all the way it is toward going back to work in the week or so you know what it's a little bit negotiable but we're not talking a month I don't think it's going to happen the other thing is that you can't underestimate the degree to which people will adapt so if you just imagine that you say hey go back to work and everybody acts the same way at work I don't think that's the case do you I think there's gonna be a lot of scrubbing down I think there's got to be a lot of wearing face masks you know the social distancing within the business you know even if you have to go to work maybe you still make your phone call instead us be in the same room so you can't really put any kind of an estimate of how much the difference that makes the fact that going back to work is not really going back to earth the normal
[15:28]
really going back to earth the normal way it's a whole different way
so there's that I don't know what they're gonna do with travel but let me let me just throw out some possibilities it would be easy to imagine that the hotels would be allowed to maybe have people and I know half capacity or something so maybe maybe a half capacity and then nobody can you know be in the same space of the lobby or something I don't know maybe there's a way to to get there baby only for the younger first but I think we'll be able to phase things in and it looks like that's where it's heading now I would like to suggest some apps so I told you about project at 95 comm where if you're looking to get medical equipment or your supplier that's looking to provide it you can you can find each other around there so that's one I told you about the next
[16:30]
that's one I told you about the next door app and if you are over 60 and you think you might need a little help somebody picking something up from the store and groceries or whatever the next door app will let you look at your neighborhood and see anybody who signed up to do that you can see exactly where they are in the neighborhood just go oh it's my my neighbor Bob and yeah this is a 19 year old daughter's home from college or whatever and so in my neighborhood there are a few people who signed up for that and there was somebody I knew and so I'm I actually again had some groceries delivered by somebody who was was a much better immune system than I do so that's working well now I don't this is awkward but I'm gonna put it out there anyway for some reason this pandemic has allowed people to say yes it's okay to be a capitalist so you can be a capitalist and you can even make money
[17:31]
capitalist and you can even make money let's say you're making face masks or you know you're converted your factory to make you know hand sanitizer nobody's telling them they can't make money right they just can't price couch so in the spirit so that apparently that is acceptable behavior so long as the behavior is good for the public I will remind you again that my startup has two apps which are just by coincidence perfectly suited for this situation so one of them is called approach it allows you just to track track any two or more people on a map temporarily the same way if you have food delivered let's say door - your your app will show the door - coming to your house well you can use my app for free it's a free download doesn't cost you anything to use it the only people who ever pay or if they want to brand it put the name on it that's optional and so anybody who's just wants to be delivering food to an old person
[18:32]
delivering food to an old person checking out an old person or just knowing where each other are just use the app and the beauty of it is it's a it's got a timer on it so you set a whole low on how long you want to watch each other so you just set it for half an hour you don't have to worry that you're you giving away your privacy it's just just for the transaction and then it times out so it's called approach and it's in all the app stores the other one is called interface that's also in the app stores it allows you to make a video call to an expert in anything now originally months ago we thought this might be good for doctors but we had a problem which is to make it really useful for doctors you need to practice across state lines because you can't you couldn't rely on the fact that the one doctor who was available at that moment was also in your stage or practice for your license for your state but because
[19:32]
your license for your state but because of the emergency the that restriction has been dropped at least temporarily so temporarily the app is ideal for that so if there's anybody who's let's say quarantined at home and apparently there are some medical professionals who are self quarantined because they had some exposures so if you wanted to help out you could set the price to zero so let me be clear about that nobody has to charge for anything you can just say your price to zero it's an emergency if you just want to help you want to give advice maybe your resource maybe you want to find now how to find a buyer for your mask you know any kind of thing like that anything that would connect an expert with somebody who needs it in the face of the crisis you can use the apps at your price to zero you don't have to but you know if you've lost your job and you have something to add that you think
[20:33]
you have something to add that you think people would pay for I don't think it's immoral to charge for your time if you lost your job and you're trying to pay the bills so but make your own decisions about what is right you can set the price as you like so it's called approach for seeing each other on the map temporarily and interface to have a video call with with an expert and and find them whether it you know I have the beauty is you don't have to know their contact information you just find them and set up a call and the the app does all that for you all right
what would you use approach for you would use it if let's say you were a neighborhood young person and you were going to deliver groceries for some elderly people as as I did tonight and I was added the house take a walk not with other people taking a walk and it was
[21:37]
other people taking a walk and it was handy for me to know when I needed to get back to the house because I could see you know in theory she didn't click on the link but in theory we could have seen each other and made sure that I was there when the groceries came which were left at the doorstep and wash my hands thoroughly so taking all the precautions I can all right um I'm going to see if you get any questions here on Twitter as I asked here's the question how many people have to die of the corona virus before you will start wearing gloves and makes you facemasks I don't know I guess that's an individual choice is April first a good target for restarting I think we'll know a whole bunch more in another week especially about the meds so every estimate about when things will get better really depending on getting more visibility then next week so we're in a
[22:38]
visibility then next week so we're in a information war and we are just absorbing information like crazy okay can I use a bike pump as a ventilator
and then she has some manual ventilators operated by younger volunteers I don't know you've seen a whole bunch of people who have had ventilator inventions i we did one around where somebody made a very cheap one because if you get rid of all the extraneous features the things that you you might need but you probably don't and you just make the cheapest possible ventilator it's only just a few parts so you just need a little logic board and and a motor and then you know the device that goes in that was a little bit of an oversimplification but apparently you could bring the price way down and start cranking them out if you wanted to will this outbreak make the
[23:41]
wanted to will this outbreak make the national debt a bigger focus in the future I don't know if anything can make that if we if the national debt is the weirdest thing because everybody sure it's important but they're not sure how important or when or what you do about it
it so we all just sort of act like act like it's not important while we all say it's important it's the weirdest you know disconnect there because there's nobody who doesn't think it's important and yet there's nobody who treats it as it's important it's a complete opposite of how we think about it and what we do
how about a phone app that listens for sneezes and coughs and then warns you when your phone maybe needs a cleaning well what about the idea of having your phone listens for a coughing because
[24:42]
phone listens for a coughing because don't you think that the government can listen to your phone if they want to would it would it be the worst violation if you know just just imagine that it's just a computer that's listening so there's no human who's you know listening to your phone it's just a computer and if the computer hears in your household through your phone the sound that it identifies as a cough maybe a sends you a text message it says you know hey do you have a cough yeah if you do check out this link it'll tell you what to do you could it's not the craziest idea because remember we're in we're in total emergency mode and again no human would be hearing you talk it would literally just be the computer listening for the sound of a cough and that's it it wouldn't be listening for anything else now of course you don't trust it because once it's listening it could do anything but in theory you can
[25:43]
could do anything but in theory you can actually build that down right when will Congress move the stimulus forward you know I'm I'm almost too amazed to be angry about the stimulus package are you having the same the same reaction I am because you know again it's the the two movies problem because if you go to CNN they were trying to stop a corporate giveaway and they've got a pretty good point and then you go to Fox News and the Democrats put in a bunch of silly pork then nobody would nobody wants to consider now you know independent of whether they're good or bad ideas they have nothing to do with the topic at hand and so that the Republicans are like yeah not that so
the fact that our leaders can't make that happen I mean I feel actually
[26:46]
that happen I mean I feel actually somewhat insulted by the the things that were added in so from the Democrats I feel that you know from the perspective of the Democrats I literally just feel insulted because right in front of our faces as if we're not watching or we don't care or even if as if it makes sense or it's the right priority they just stick a bunch of unrelated things in the bill and it just kills it now don't you feel just literally insulted by that because they're treating us like garbage basically like we're not even part we're not the important part of the equation it's like Oh getting in my little pet funding thing is the important part no it's not really not really I think the important part is the people so from the Democrats perspective
[27:49]
people so from the Democrats perspective it's embarrassing and it's just insulting but I don't think the Republicans got it right did they because they had this this big sloppy bill with not enough controls on it for what they're gonna do for the big corporations and I agree that you know it's a serious seriously you know we should consider doing things for big companies if they're employers and and we can make a profit off it because remember what the Republican plan if I understand it correctly is it's not just giving money to big companies I believe we take stock can somebody there's somebody's lighting up my phone right now
why isn't that dirty enough sorry I got too many devices in here they're not all turned off but the Republicans I don't think you're doing
[28:50]
Republicans I don't think you're doing much better because their bills kind of sloppy and doesn't seem to have the right controls it makes people suspicious that's gonna go to the wrong place I'm not happy about that I mean I can't even take sides on this one it looks like both sides just screwed the approach am i wrong doesn't it look like neither side really really did the job of the American people I can't even pick sides on this one it just looks like our ranking competence but it's not even the normal kind where maybe we don't notice it or they hide it a little bit if they were trying to hide it better I'd have a little bit of respect but neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seemed to be hiding the fact that we're not the top priority am I wrong about that it does there's there's no pretense anymore we're just not the top priority I don't even know what to say about it is it it's so mind-boggling I don't even know how to get mad about it because it's I
[29:52]
how to get mad about it because it's I almost can't believe it I guess they said it was step one step one is it yeah and isn't impossible to simplify it just seems to me like we ought to find a way to simplify let me say again something I said earlier but I'll say it better there are a whole bunch of bills that we pay that are you can't avoid paying for example if you if you live you're paying either rent or mortgage you're paying some kinds of insurance and you know energy and phone and stuff so those are bills that you're not going to ever walk away from in other words you're never gonna have a time in your life when you say you know I don't need electricity and gas I don't need it so that's not gonna happen right so all those companies that charges every month for either a standard amount or how much we use they have our names
[30:52]
or how much we use they have our names and they kind of own us because they know who you are and they know where you live and they know what your all of them so here's where I'm going with this suppose we said that all of those people who bill you every month from rent to mortgage to electricity to you know cable etc that they all just have to forgive your bills for two months they just can't collect anything but because these companies have a hook in you they know where you are they bill you you know if you want to have electricity in California you there's nowhere else you're gonna go you know if you want to get it you walk away from your loan well good luck you can't get another loan if you're a deadbeat on the other loan so you've got a little trapped with these companies and that means that they could just forgive your costs and tack it on in the future in other words PGD the power company
[31:53]
in other words PGD the power company here could say nobody has to pay us for two months just don't pass but at the end of two months we know where you are and even if you move we still we're still going to connect to you and we'll just add 10 percent to your bill once the economy gets going it'll just be a little little extra it'll be as if we gave you a loan right so it would be as if we gave you a loan because you're gonna pay us back because we got our hooks at you you know the bank can always find you the insurance company can find you your energy company can find you now the thing the area where you can't do that where you just have to give people money is buying goods you know physical things like a loaf of bread and a new iPhone for that people just got to pay and maybe we got to give them money for that but I can see the situation where the government just says all right you just got to suspend payment you know maybe there's some means-test where you have to prove
[32:54]
means-test where you have to prove you're out of work maybe you have to prove that you you've applied for employ me something like that so people like me I still pay my bills so PG&E would still have I don't know 80% of US revenue could my power companies stay in business if for two months it only made 80% of its revenue and then it made up the difference later because it's stacking it on to catch up well it might have a shortfall too but yeah then maybe the government can handle it so the point is there probably are some really clever ways to yeah where we need to get that's all I'm saying the dangerous virus to everyone not just not just the people with those incomes yes did the Golden Age jinx us oh I think you're gonna be surprised the Golden Age apparently had a third act and we're in
[33:57]
apparently had a third act and we're in it this is the third act this is the problem that looks unsolvable but until you do that's what makes it a good movie there's no doubt we're gonna we're gonna get on the other side of this and we're gonna do it without destroying the economy III will rest my entire reputation on the following prediction we're not gonna wreck the economy and the reason you could be sure of it is that wrecking the economy would definitely be worse than even the number of people that would get the coronavirus I mean everybody sort of agrees with that we're gonna know when we've gone too far you know not exactly but we're gonna know we're in the range of uh we this is as far as we can go so don't worry that the shutdown lasts forever all the way to destruction no chance no chance there's that there's actually no chance of that at all it will last until it's painful because the more pain that
[34:59]
it's painful because the more pain that we can reasonably take the better shape we're going to be if there's some magic zone where we've taken a little bit of pain and the economy has taken a pretty big hit but not an that we can't climb out of in a year so there's we're entering the Goldilocks zone now the the the area in which well that's as good as we can do for protecting people and also protect the economy it's it's in the next you know maybe the week after this you're really into the crossover zone I think and you also have to read the room right you know it doesn't matter what the government wants the public to do if if the government loses our trust people are going to just do whatever the hell they want and there's not enough government in the world that will stop them so they need the people to think that what they're doing is reasonable and they see the same thing we do they see the the amount of pain and suffering that this coming week is going to have
[35:59]
that this coming week is going to have so don't let anybody kid you this coming week it's gonna be rough you know a lot of different ways but it is the week that we will complete our weapons I believe or be close to it we'll know what works and what doesn't we'll have much better visibility and then we go on offense because of this war so far we have cleverly done a strategic retreat to our homes we've divided so that we can conquer we have built our weapons factories they're going up all over the place we've tested our weapons testing them this week we're loading up we are we're stocking up our ammo you know big shipments of these drugs just in case coming our way and we're just about ready to go to war we need test kits we need soldiers we need tents and they're coming it's all coming so you don't have to wonder how it ends you can you can
[37:03]
to wonder how it ends you can you can wonder when it ends that's the right question but it ends with us winning and getting back to where we were and better so this is the third act but like every other third act like every other third act it will be solved so I'm quite proud of the country I'm quite disappointed with Congress at the moment but I think that the force of public opinion will force them to give something done pretty quickly all right that's all I got for now and I will talk to you later