Episode 889 Scott Adams: Simultaneous Sipping With a Cartoonist Who Needs a Haircut

Date: 2020-04-03 | Duration: 57:41

Topics

My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: China’s “wet markets” and eventually opening up travel Coronavirus and people who are bad at math Hydroxychloroquine treatment for patients Experts have begun telling truth about mask benefits A back-to-work decision The WHO lied, the task force lied, the FBI lied

If you would like my channel to have a wider audience and higher production quality, please donate via my startup (Whenhub.com) at this link: https://interface.my/ScottAdamsSays

> [!note] Rough Transcript
> 
> This is an auto-generated transcript and may contain errors.

## Transcript

[0:08]

[Music] um hey everybody come on in it's time for your twice daily dose of coffee with Scott Adams and the simultaneous F and if you would like to enjoy this simultaneous sip perhaps you need a cup or a marker glass a tankard chelators tying the canteen jug or flask a vessel of any kind fill it with your favorite liquid I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure the dopamine Fan Tutte the thing that makes everything better including the coronavirus that's right including that its disciple teeny except go yeah better every moment alright

[1:08]

China is apparently keeping open their their their wet markets the places where they torture animals to death and then eat them or something I don't know exactly what they're doing there but here's my proposition for the world we should never open up travel to China so long as they have their web markets open now what would that caused them to do well they might close the web markets so that they could have travel again with the United States or they could admit that the virus didn't come from the wet market if they want to keep them open so I think we should just make it not personal nothing personal about this China no insult intended but as long as you're wet markets are open we're never going to have flights between the United States and China never now at some point in the near future we're going to have the debate about reopening travel might

[2:11]

the debate about reopening travel might be a month from now but let me tell you where I'm gonna come out on this if the web markets are still open I'm gonna go nuts if we open up travel I don't think I'm gonna make I don't think I'll do anything else except complain about that so are you with me we can't open up travel to China well they keep the web market open that's that's a level of irresponsibility that takes them out of first world contention I mean there there's a certain set of behaviors that are just necessary to be part of the civilized world and that's not it that's just not it so let's agree that no travel to China ever ever for the rest of time until they close the web markets now you might say to yourself well that work could we could we put pressure on China that way

[3:11]

could we put pressure on China that way and allow me to tell the story from years ago this story won't tell you much about China but I was reminded of it it was funny it goes like this a million years ago when I was young and I worked in the corporate environment at the phone company I was in a cubicle environment and this is so long ago this smoking was allowed indoors so I would be surrounded by people smoking cigarettes indoors and you know I've got mild asthma and it was just horrible like it just smelled and it was unpleasant I couldn't work with that smell but of course it was legal at the time so I would talk to my boss and my boss would say what can I do it's legal it's allowed you know what can I do so that situation persisted for a while and keep in mind that this is before I started Dilbert I was just a guy in the cubicle and and it's important for the

[4:13]

cubicle and and it's important for the historical you know value of the story you have to know that this was way before I was known for being persuasive that's important to the story so every day I would think gosh what am I going to do I can't I can't put up with us and I've already asked management and they said we're not going to change it well one day as luck would have it the corporate the corporate folks decided that we all had to sign off on some workplace safety documents and that each person had to look at the documents and read them and then they had to sign that they understood of the workplace safety rules and that they would implement them so it wasn't enough that you you knew what they were you were basically committing that if you saw workplace safety problem there was your job to do something about it and one of the things they required is that if a workplace is

[5:14]

they required is that if a workplace is unsafe that you should immediately inform management and then not go to work there so it was your responsibility to not work where it was unsafe it was only your responsibility to tell management that you weren't going to work there and then they need to change it so I get the document and I'm looking down the list of known known problems it was listing carcinogens it listed tobacco secondhand tobacco smoke so on the on the the company's own documents the official document that I had to sign to promise that I will comply with it is said that if I was in a situation with secondhand tobacco smoke I was in a dangerous workplace area so I complied and I informed my management that I wouldn't be coming to work any more until the workplace was created to be safe and I said it's nothing personal

[6:14]

safe and I said it's nothing personal I'm just I'm just gonna use the company policy this says this is an unsafe workplace I mean it's right here I'm not making this up and I'm reading it right off the page and I'm in one I mean there's no doubt about it there's no there's no question about the data I'm sitting right next to a smoker so I said I'll come back to work when it's so I went home a day goes by and my media supervisor calls and says are you serious about this or words to that effect and I said why wouldn't I be serious about it it's it's the workplace policy I'm just following your own policy I can't go to work until it's safe that's that's your that's your rule I'm not making the rules up he talks to his boss his boss calls me the next day so this is day two where I'm being paid but I'm not going to work so so far this is good for me right but boss's boss calls and said are you

[7:15]

boss's boss calls and said are you serious about this I said yeah totally serious about it I'm not coming back to work until the smoking is gone and then my boss's boss's boss called I maybe remembering some of this a little approximately but it was basically this story and and said are you serious about this and I said yep and about a day later my boss called and said that they had rearranged the office and put the smokers in one place and they would have me in another place so I decided to go back to work because they they moved me to a non-smoking part of the building and there was only there's only maybe months after that that the whole company banned smoking indoors now part of what I did was make sure people knew my story because the company buckled they had to they had to what were they going to do it was their own policy it was in

[8:17]

it was their own policy it was in writing and I they just gave it to me and forced me to sign it at the risk of being fired if I didn't sign it now what would happen after I told all the people in my office that they could just go home and get paid and they didn't have any chance of getting fired well that was the end of smoking at Pacific Bell so my point is that we could certainly tell China that we're not going to open up travel until their wet market are closed we could do that because you just have to you have to make sure that they know you're not bluffing it's all about knowing you're not bluffing and let me tell you I was willing to get fired I would have gone to the local newspaper I would have made it a you know a national story to the extent that I could have so remember I told you the difference between wanting something and deciding this is this is a perfect anecdote for that there were a lot of people who in the office who wanted to

[9:19]

people who in the office who wanted to not be around cigarette smoke but wanting it didn't do anything they could talk about it they could ask for it but they were just sort of wanting it I wanted it until I decided I wasn't gonna have it anymore once I decided it was over I was not going to be around it you know I might have lost my job you know might have been big consequences but I had already decided so that's the difference between deciding so if I had lost my job that was the price I was going to pay but I had already decided all right um yesterday there were under 236 fewer deaths than the day before let's see if we can keep that up I don't think will necessarily be low again today I imagine the numbers are going to pop around a little bit randomly for a while but that's a good sign could be the beginning of the turn never know on fox news they said the unemployment rate after these six point whatever a million people are added to unemployment was

[10:20]

people are added to unemployment was four point four percent that's not right is it did we just add over six million people to unemployment and the unemployment rate is still only four point four percent that can't possibly be right right so I need a fact check on that because I thought it was around 10 percent because if it's only four point four percent I'm not sure we have a problem right but if it's 10 percent we serve with a pretty serious problem so let's fact check that that can't possibly be right that is four point four percent and maybe the problem is that it's just going to keep getting higher so maybe I shouldn't be too happy about that if it's true
here's you know my my complaints about why the task force does not give us good reporting on ventilators and masks and PPE and I dug into a little bit and it turns out that one of the problems is

[11:20]

turns out that one of the problems is that the hospitals either can't tell you or won't tell you or they're hoarding or they're lying so what do you do when you need to make decisions about you know what to do about ventilators and supply and all that but you know all the information is bad it's just bad data because people are lying they don't know they're they're hoarding so everything you're getting is bad here's what I would suggest I believe that you could estimate these things even without the hospitals because you could take some averages for example you could say how many people does our model say we'll go into the hospital I think the model gives you a range right you know the model says it'll increase this much in New York City I should tell you how many new patients you got now you know that if you get a hundred patients maybe two or three of them will end up on ventilators whatever the number is so you should be able to estimate if you know how many people are

[12:22]

estimate if you know how many people are gonna come in you know what percentage of them are give me on ventilators and you know how many ventilators you have you kind of have enough now in any given Hospital you might be way off but if you were to sum them up you probably your your mistakes would they might average out so you get closer to a good number when you average out the the peculiarities but at the very least it would give you a directional number now some have said if they can add an adapter to you know double the number of people on a ventilator and those are big variables that can change everything we don't know how that plays out but let's say let's have a number without that just a raw a ventilator number could could the defense procurement Act the DPA could the president say to all the hospitals I'm the president it's an emergency and under the under the defense act I order

[13:22]

under the under the defense act I order all the hospitals to give me these three pieces of data by the end of the day and maybe it's just an email address or whatever it is and just say by the end of today you tell me how many ventilators you got how many are in use you know and whatever data around that would be also useful could the president force that to be done in 24 hours I think so I think so what all the auspi ttles give him accurate information would some sandbag yeah of course of course because it's human beings involved but you'd get in the ballpark you know wouldn't you like to know if we're 60 percent of the way you know and let's say you're wrong about that it's not the 60 percent of the way it's turns out to be 50 or 70 that's pretty far off right well not really for decision-making it tells you you have to go as hard as you can because whether we have 50 percent enough or 70 percent enough it's not even close to enough but if it's 90 percent enough maybe you say

[14:24]

if it's 90 percent enough maybe you say all right put a little energy into something else because we're pretty close on that so we need these numbers it's not a joke anymore or we have to say the task force's incompetent if they can't give us these numbers by today I would say I mean they're already incompetent for not doing it yesterday and I'm not going to grade easy on this you know I've got my compliments for things the president has done I think his decision-making has actually been quite good if you were to look at you know what you knew at the time and then what decision you made I think history is going to say his decision-making is quite good but there's something preventing the number of crunchers or whoever's job it is from giving the public useful information on these PPE and ventilators and that just just needs to be fixed I I can estimate it for you I mean I could do it it wouldn't you know and I could get within a range or you know a field where it would be useful information

[15:27]

it would be useful information it's not that hard one of the things we're seeing here is that people are really bad at math and it makes a difference in how you and science as well I suppose it makes a difference on how you see the whole situation if you don't know anything about math or economics you can be sort of blinded to the tricks people are playing and let me give you an example in the New York Times they've got a story that says there are 2200 ventilators left in New York State and they expect to need 350 per day and so they just took the 2200 that they have available and they said all right how many does 350 go into that and it's about 6 days so they said well I got about 6 days supply what's wrong with that calculation anybody anybody Muller Euler the answer is it doesn't calculate people coming off ventilators

[16:27]

calculate people coming off ventilators because you don't use the ventilator and throw it away people are coming on and coming off so if the number was and it's not but let's say the number was they get off on Slater's in 3 days well that completely changes how many days of ventilators you have if it's two weeks a little that you got a little more trouble I've seen estimates from 9 to 11 days some people saying 7 but let's say it's 10 days you have to calculate that right the New York Times writing a feature article just takes the amount available and divides it by the amount you need per day and says well it looks like about 6 days are you kidding me a sixth grader would know that's not the right answer because people are coming off as leaders - so yeah it's difficult to calculate but let me finish the point so by way of background for years my corporate job was estimating and

[17:29]

corporate job was estimating and predicting and calculating things in the financial world and the tactical world so that's all I did all day how accurate were my prediction predictions not very because it turns out that predict in the futures kind of hard hard to predict the future so but we're my predictions useful just the same and the answer is yes so if you don't understand this point you're gonna be very confused about what you see about numbers and decisions and stuff here's the point accuracy is not what you're shooting for it'd be great if you could have it but you can't be accurate about the future that's not a thing you can only predict and hope you're accurate that's the best you can do but it still tells you what to do and what not to do even in its inaccurate form and I'll just keep using this example if you had a very inaccurate number but it told you that we were somewhere between zero and 30%

[18:29]

we were somewhere between zero and 30% of the number of ventilators we needed that would tell you to do a major major push to make more ventilators even though your number is grossly you know approximate likewise if it was more like over 90 percent you would make a different decision about where to put your resources so you don't have to be that accurate and the other thing is that people are good at this can pretty quickly work through reasonable estimates okay so for example I'll give I'll give you an example from my budgeting days so I would go to each department head and I'd say give me your budget for the coming year and then I would take all their but their budget information to my boss and the boss would look at it and say okay cut it by 20%
20% just cut everybody by 20% now you think that's stupid right because all the department heads told you what they needed so if you cut it by 20% they can't do their jobs right well here's where experience comes in because what I

[19:32]

where experience comes in because what I knew and what my boss knew every time is that the department managers would be padding their estimates so they'd have too much because they don't want to have to level and we know because human nature is human nature that the department heads are not so dumb that they're going to double asking what they asked for last year unless they had some good grades so you know they're not gonna like cheap by lwith because human nature it would be too obvious etc you know they're not gonna just increase it by ten percent because they can try to get a little more than that so human nature is they're gonna pick a number to pad it by that they think they can get away with the biggest number they think they have a chance of getting away with and big enough that once if it got reduced a little bit they'd still be ok what is that number well let me tell you from experience it's usually around 20% if you were to just randomly you know survey a bunch of people in that position and say alright you know how much you think you're gonna Pat it you'd

[20:34]

much you think you're gonna Pat it you'd probably find that on average people would bat at about 20% now do I know that do I have data for that no not at all it's basically just something an experienced person would know automatically cuz you just see them you see it you see it until it's just obvious that that's what's been happening so likewise with this ventilator situation if you told me tell me how many that the hospital says they have I would probably in my mind say well that's probably the least number they have they might have patted that a little bit because they don't want to run out so in this case they would Pat it low in other words they tell you they had fewer ventilators than they really have once you sum up all those numbers a good estimator would say you know if we take their numbers at face value it looks like this but common sense says they may have patted it a little bit and then you might figure that in all right now because it's life and death you

[21:35]

now because it's life and death you wouldn't want to try to cut it too close to the edge you're still going to want to have more ventilators not less but these approximate numbers do give you some some sense of you know sense of what you should be doing according to Josh Rogin tweet scientists don't rule out that an accident at a research lab in Wuhan might have spread the deadly bat virus so I don't believe that there are any serious people saying that it looks like it was intentional which is different from saying it's engineered so the virus could be engineered and it could be natural but nobody's saying that China would be dumb enough to say oh this is a good idea let's let's release this in our own country so I don't think anybody thinks that happened at least the people who were experts at this sort of thing but it's still out there and now that does that of course plays into the the wet market question if we know that

[22:38]

wet market question if we know that other viruses came from the wet market you still have to close it so independent of whether this one came from the wet market where it didn't you still have to close the wet market so that's just that just has to be done there's a another frej study about the hydroxychloroquine which is less good so that most of you heard that one study from France that looked like the hydroxychloroquine with as if niacin and zinc was really effective in keeping people off of ventilators but another study where they only gave it to people who were in bad shape showed that it did not reduce the virus and that was that suggested to the researcher who did it that it probably doesn't work at all because if it worked even a little bit you would see it even with the sickness patients so in other words you know it would make sense that it helps the less sick people a lot but you should still still see a big effect even if it

[23:38]

still see a big effect even if it doesn't save their lives you should see the virus go down and the more sick people and that they were the limit the limit up that the study was limited to sick people but here's the thing I'm not a doctor but isn't there something wrong with this if they if what he was basing this on was measuring the virus load because my understanding and in the here's where I get into trouble dr. drew if you're going to watch this send me a message later and tell me how completely wrong I am so everybody everybody with this warning I don't know what I'm talking about so you get that right I'm gonna talk about some medical stuff and I don't know what I'm talking about so put that caveat and you had my understanding of why this coronavirus thing was killing people is not because there was a lot of virus but rather there was something about some people's lungs and their condition and maybe their East two receptors or something about their lungs there would

[24:39]

something about their lungs there would cause this your cause your own body to go into this some kind of a storm that basically you were it would be your defense mechanisms going haywire that is the thing that kills you now my understanding is that the hygienic hydroxychloroquine is supposed to reduce the risk of your own immune system going nuts now here's the part I did the fact check on is the assumption of why the hydroxychloroquine works then it reduces virus because I didn't think that was the assumption I thought the assumption of why it worked is that it reduces the reaction of your body as opposed to how much virus there is so if this researcher said well I don't think the hydroxyl clerkly works because we didn't see it reduce the virus but he was already working with people who maybe were too far gone does that tell you

[25:40]

were too far gone does that tell you anything and so so my question is yeah that's the word I was looking for it's a cytokine cytokine C wide t okay I and E storm and that that has something to do with your body's own defenses going into some kind of a spiral that that is bad alright somebody says incorrect and then somebody says correct somebody says you are correct and somebody says yes it reduces virus somebody says no it kills the virus somebody says yes and no all right so that's why we do a fact check because the other thing I'm not sure about is did the second study show the the cocktail I think you did right the azithromycin but I know anyway so I'm just gonna put that out there that I don't know if the two studies were comparable so but there are now two studies I know of this shows

[26:41]

are now two studies I know of this shows that doesn't work right so if it turns out that the hydroxychloroquine doesn't work don't say nobody told you because there are two studies that suggest it doesn't at least two there might be more but one of them is the Chinese study that has no credibility because it's a Chinese study and the second one is this one which I'm not sure they compared apples and oranges so I don't know if it's telling this what it should but it should worry you that the virus did not reduce all right yeah I was already worried about the following thing happening and it already happened today like there's some things you can just predict about human nature the humans are just sometimes we're awesome but sometimes we're just terrible and here's a prediction I made about human nature so I have made for some time the prediction that the total net keyword net deaths from the corona

[27:43]

net keyword net deaths from the corona virus would be 5k or less 5,000 or less now you say to yourself but Scott 6000 people have already died so you're already wrong because it's over 5,000 to which I say no you missed the net part because so many people have lived because there's no traffic etc they have to consider that because that was all part of the same decision the decision to close the economy necessarily saved a whole bunch of lives it wasn't why we did it but it's there so already and I predicted that no matter how clearly and how often I would say the 5k is net that when we know what the real numbers are idiots would come after me on the internet and say Scott you said 5,000 and it's really 20,000 so I guess you're wrong better admit it in public and if you couldn't believe it somebody is already doing it already somebody

[28:46]

is already doing it already somebody contacted me on LinkedIn and said Scott you should already admit that you're wrong because it's over 5,000 and you didn't say net the first time you said it
why do people like that exist now it probably is true that I didn't say that the first time I said it but I did say it way before we knew how many people were gonna die I said it wouldn't about a thousand had died so far and it should be obvious that it's net because they shouldn't be anything else the only thing that matters is the net that's the whole point we're trying to net save people that's all we're doing right so of course is to that I shouldn't have to say it but already so you know I blocked you know so I'm gonna block everybody who does that so I want to give you a warning there will be people come in here who say you know sorry 5,000 so

[29:46]

here who say you know sorry 5,000 so you're wrong it goes against your appropriate record and I'm just gonna block you for being stupid okay so just know that that's gonna happen alright so we learned yesterday that the Florida emergency management officials said the 3m was selling masks to other countries because they were showing up with cash or they were ahead of us on the in the line and then some people are saying well you know you have to let people sell across borders because if everybody if everybody did that then we might have less supply because we wouldn't be able to get it from other countries I don't know if any that's true but let me say this I don't judge this kind of mistake and that has to be judged as a mistake by the government I don't judge this as a mistake because as soon as I found out about it they stopped it so this is a case of things working correctly now you would like that we wouldn't have anticipated this from day one that

[30:48]

anticipated this from day one that somebody should have said on day one here's the law you know under the emergency act or whatever Act or executive order or whatever we need to do you can't sell it to foreign countries because we need it here but I don't know if anybody thought of that did they I I don't believe anybody had it on the top of their mind that that was even a risk it was a hole that needed to be plugged but apparently as soon as the president heard about it you know within 60 seconds he said go plug that hole and then they did so I think this is exactly the kind of mistake that you should judge generously because we're in an emergency it's fog of war we're probably going to make all kinds of mistakes but if we're correcting them as soon as we make them that's really as good as you can do so I'm not going to criticize the President or the task force for that whereas they're not giving us good numbers about the PPE and ventilators they've had plenty of time I'm definitely criticizing them for that

[31:50]

I'm definitely criticizing them for that how do you make decisions when you have incomplete data and you don't trust your data that's the situation we're in and I'll give you some hints one way is that you can make decisions you can reverse so if you don't know what you should do because the data is so fuzzy do something that you can reverse if it doesn't work out so that's rule number one
one next thing you want to do is things you can test which is the same as reversing it if it doesn't work out you need to be able to know it's not working and then beyond that you make decisions with the best expected value which is you say well there's a 10% chance of this happening in costing me a thousand dollars so I will value that at ten percent times a thousand dollars or a hundred dollars that's an expected value calculation you don't need to do all the math but there are ways to estimate things when you don't and there ways to make decisions when all your data is bad one of the things you keep hearing from our experts is that our national strategy is to use data to make

[32:53]

strategy is to use data to make decisions but am I wrong that all of our data has been wrong so far I feel like all of our data is just bad so what does it mean to make data based decisions when all of your data is bad and you know it well we're not really making database decisions we're not making decisions based on data that's sort of just something politicians say so you feel better about it they would make decisions based on data they want to they just don't have any they don't have the right kind of data that they can rely on so I don't know what it means to make decisions on dated when you don't have a good data all right but we can still make decisions are you having the same handshaking experience I am as you watch expert after expert get on television and you know get and give interviews in which the experts are now saying oh yeah masks or a good idea obviously Oh obviously masks are a good

[33:55]

obviously Oh obviously masks are a good idea and wasn't it just a few weeks ago that only the idiots who had no expertise we're saying obviously mess for a good idea why are you lying to us like this and now the experts are acting like they knew it all along it's bugging me it's got it bugging me to watch the experts act as though it's just common sense of course I mean if the if the virus is spread by things coming out of your mouth and especially some of them might be non symptomatic why wouldn't you want to cover that source of virus it's really bugging me but I'm glad that they're coming around to the right answer and where were you a month ago is my question for those experts let's see I saw two people made the same suggestion today and I would like to

[34:55]

suggestion today and I would like to promote that idea Dana Perino and Jake Novak who separately made the same kind of observation that we need some kind of a task force or somebody in charge of the go back to work decision because it's not just yes/no right the decision to go back to work is probably going to get really complicated and you know and again it'll be hard to have the right data but here's how I do it so I agree with Dana Perino and Jake Novak to those smarter people who observed the world just in general they're usually on the right side and stuff if you follow them but here are the factors that I think we should put into it so first of all I would take this as a stake in the sand I would say if you were gonna send people back to work we should not kid ourselves that'll be a hundred percent safe because obviously it's not so we should set some kind of a level of risk then if you are below that risk you can go back to work

[35:57]

below that risk you can go back to work but if you're above that level of risk maybe you wait a little while and here are the factors that I believe we could accurately say determine your risk now of course every person is individual so you're not going to be able to protect every person you know any any guidelines you have will necessarily result in somebody who probably had a high risk but didn't know it goes to work and he ends up dead so so don't think in terms of reducing risk to zero and I think if we were to reduce the risk of going back to work - let's say normal flu season levels whatever that is then we'd probably be okay with at least though the the part of the world that would only have normal flu level risk we probably let them go back to work and here are the factors that would determine whether they have regular flu risk or extra crota virus risk my favorite estimates the 80 to 90 percent

[36:58]

favorite estimates the 80 to 90 percent of the hospitalized people are overweight could we in this country say here's the deal if your if your BMI is above this number you're not safe now body mass index is of course dicey because muscular people look fat if you if you weigh them because muscle weighs more but I think we could work through the sub of that so here's the first thing it's politically incorrect to say fat people stay home we're in an emergency this is an emergency all the rules about polite behavior are out the window so let me say this as as as directly as I can when some people get to go back to work fat people got to stay home because you don't have the same risk I'm sorry fat people have to stay home now I'm not Fasching I'm not giving you any advice I'm just saying the math suggests that

[37:58]

I'm just saying the math suggests that we will have a national tragedy if fat people go to work and until the virus is so I think we have to grow up a little bit you know I'm using I'm using a provocative word and I'm saying fat because that sounds insulting but I'm trying to make the point that the moment you're complaining about that you know the political correctness of it then you don't understand what an emergency is it's an emergency if we have to tell fat people to stay home okay we can call it overweight we can put it in terms of BMI so we're polite we're still civilized so we can put it in polite terms that's fine but if we're getting worked up about you can't tell fat people to stay home we got to get over that because part of the answer is gonna be fat people stay at home I'm sorry that is gonna be the answer I'm day one of people going back to work assuming that the data supports that and I think it probably does the next factor would be whether you could isolate yourself at work do you have outdoor work if it's outdoor work or if it's

[38:59]

work if it's outdoor work or if it's isolated work or or you're in a cubicle environment and only you know only one at a five of you or going back to work because the rest of you can telecommute can you check the box that says yeah I can easily stay more than six feet away from people could you have a factor for your age of course age is a big factor so if you're younger you get to go back first how about if you're already recovered as soon we hope we'll have enough tests to know if somebody has the antibodies so obviously if you're already recovered that's good how about having an app to track your contacts and you can't go back to these are just brainstorming ideas how about an app that uses your let's say your Bluetooth and I think you could do this you have to turn on your Bluetooth your app and you have to have the app that lets you go back to work so again just brainstorm here so if you in order to get the go-ahead to go back to work if you meet these other criteria

[39:59]

to work if you meet these other criteria you also have to have your app on Wi-Fi asked me on and the only reason is it identifies people you're near so if it turns out later you get it the government could just open up the app they can see all the times that that your your Bluetooth was close enough to somebody else's Bluetooth sends them a text message and says you were within six feet of somebody who was infected maybe you should isolate or whatever the recommendation is what about testing people for these ace two ace 2 receptors in their lungs there's strong evidence that that makes a difference let's say if you've had that test that's another factor another factor would be whether you could isolate that home not just at work so in order to be allowed to go to work and then come back into your house you're going to have to demonstrate that there's no old person in your house who

[40:59]

there's no old person in your house who can't be isolated so you so they'd have to have some criteria because you're also bringing the risk back into your house so that could be a factor could we take all the old people who live with young people and put those old people in hotels for a few months because there's a whole bunch of hotels are available right could you say yes this household need needs their their breadwinner let's say to go to work or breadwinners but it you can't allow it if grandma's still in the house and it's there's just too many people in the house so maybe grandma goes to stay at the Fairmont because you know there are no regular guests enter anyway and she just gets a better isolation situation so maybe that's a possibility how about you have to report every day could be also on the same app I was talking about weather today you have your sense of smell and taste because apparently the Google searches for losing my sense of smell go through the roof

[42:00]

smell go through the roof in places where their hot spots because that seems to be a risk you lose your sense of taste and smell and maybe take your temperature every day so maybe your requirement to go back to work is you have to have a any one of the reliable testing devices maybe it skewed into your app so it feeds it in automatically I don't know if that's necessary or maybe you enter it but you have to enter your actual temperature every day now would anybody lie about that you know maybe they've got a little fever or they didn't didn't check it today would they lie about it say no I need to go to work so I'm not gonna say I have a little fever they might but remember this is not a hundred percent safety situation this is reducing the risk to maybe normal flu levels so here is my second suggestion as we've watched the performance of the task force do you have confidence that the task force in

[43:01]

have confidence that the task force in its current composition would be able to come up with a checklist the way that I just described it there would accurately let you check off the boxes that applied and then score yourself and say oh okay looks like I can go back to work but then maybe you have to print it out if in case a police officer asked you you might have to show it to him say yeah here's here's my checklist you can see I'm qualified to go back to work I don't think the task force is qualified to do this because what we've seen so far does not suggest the level of competence that would be required to do the the calculation of when to go back to work am I wrong about that as the task force shown the minimum level of competence to calculate what I said needs to be complemented I don't think so I don't anything close because remember they were wrong on masks they still can't tell us how much PPE we need and these are pretty basic things so I would say I

[44:02]

are pretty basic things so I would say I would say that the task force you it's unlikely that they'll ever have the capability to do this as well as they should be done so what do you do I think the public has do it now that means that lots of people trying it and you know maybe somebody does it well and that one wins but I think the public is gonna have to come up with a checklist maybe it's somebody building a website that lets you do it or an app the websites faster maybe it's just somebody publishes an article that says this is the way I would do it well I don't think it would be a good idea in fact it would be a terrible idea to just assume that the task force will come up with an idea as good as the one I just described or better I don't think you can count on that because nothing they've done so far suggests that level of competence
somebody says Mark Cuban and you should run this well we both got a lot going on but yeah Mark Cuban is really really

[45:07]

but yeah Mark Cuban is really really stepped up so you know I could not say enough good things about his level of patriotic leadership that he's showing here so that's my that's my suggestion is that we the public if you think you could take a stab at this even if it needed to be refined take a stab at it because I think the government needs your help and I'll even go further and suggest what would you call this now what is it you call it when you don't comply with the government there's a word for that some kind of protest but we could easily get to the point where the people decide to go back to work before the government says yes we could easily decide as a public that we're just going to go back to work and overwhelm the system so for example you know if one person decides to go back to work against the recommendations the police go and they say you can't do that and they stopped it but if everybody

[46:10]

and they stopped it but if everybody went back to work it wouldn't be possible to enforce it right or if some large number went back to work it would just be more than the system could police and we might get to that point but I would say that we should not get to that point unless we the public have come up with some kind of a general consensus checklist that says look I'm not going to wait for the government to approve me I'm gonna do my own checklist you know at least I did the work you know I thought it through I calculated the odds but here's my checklist government it would have been good if you gave me this but if you're not going to give me the checklist I'm gonna give it to you so I'm going back to work sue me throw me in jail here's why I did it good luck take that to a Jordy you know arrest me give me a jury trial and I'm gonna show the jury what I did and why I went back to work and why that risk was reasonable based on these calculations and then I'm going to tell the jury that the government should have done that for me

[47:12]

government should have done that for me but didn't put me in jail good civil disobedience yes so the phrase is civil disobedience so I think that we should be prepared for civil disobedience but civil disobedience is key word civil right I'm now talking about riots I'm talking about intelligent civil disobedience civil disobedience done right is really filling in for what the government should have already done for you I mean that's why it's civil right it's civil because the government really just should have done it and you're you're embarrassing them into it basically so I think that we could reach a point where if our government has not given us the checklist of what it takes to go back to work we should make our own and then go back to work civil disobedience now I'm not saying when we should do that and we definitely shouldn't do it until you know smart people are really happy that we have a

[48:13]

people are really happy that we have a checklist that makes sense now probably the minimum you need to work wait for is to have tests available so I wouldn't do any civil disobedience while you don't have the right tools but as soon as we get those tools the ability to say test at home rapidly you may be the ability to test our genetics as well as soon as we have those tools I don't think the government can keep us home for you know you feel me there might be a point where we just have to overrule our government on this but only intelligently only intelligently because then that it makes sense here are some things if you want to further reduce your confidence in your government and the news I want to remind you again that the things you heard from me before you heard them from the regular news now I'm not saying that I alone was the first or even you know close to the first to mention any of these topics so I'm not

[49:13]

mention any of these topics so I'm not saying I started these or I was first I'm saying that you probably heard them first from me and what does that tell you about the you know the Internet and its information base versus the so-called legitimate news so here are things you heard first from me I didn't make any of these up I heard them from other people but the hydrochloric wean the masks you know that that might have some potential we don't know yet you heard for me that the convalescent blood treatment might have a lot of potential and now that's that's the it's a big talk again these didn't come from me you know that one came from E and all they they all come from others some other source I said that masks work where was the first place you heard that maybe we could retrofit the CPAP and there's a thing called a BiPAP where did you hear that maybe we could retrofit them and turn them into ventilators well it's happening who was the first person who told you maybe you could split a ventilator and have two people on it probably me right now that's in the news

[50:15]

probably me right now that's in the news who's the first person who told you there was probably a genetic component you probably heard that somewhere else but it's still not there's still not much chatter about it I treated an article about it so there is now some reporting on that the East to things seems to matter and who was the first to tell you that you didn't know it yet but there would be fast advances in blood testing because that technology existed it just hadn't worked its way into the mainstream yet and you and now you've seen it a bunch of companies just popped up and suddenly they can they've got little devices which is what I told you would be tabletop devices they could do advanced blood tests really easily and this is because after 9/11 the government labs built that technology and then they licensed it to startups so I knew I'd seen the start of years a few years ago so I knew that this technology was like right just ready to be implemented and sure enough you know within a few weeks they were

[51:16]

you know within a few weeks they were already building lots of machines that could do this sort of stuff we're starting to have the conversation about whether economists or EPI epidemiologists should make the decision about going back to work it's exactly the right question and it highlights the talent stack problem which is if somebody is just an economist do you want them making the decision of when do we go back to work or if somebody is just a doctor no matter how qualified do you want them to make the decision because you really need somebody who's can see the whole field right and that's going to be tough so the problem is that the the doctors are going to want to reduce you know deaths to zero and they're not really going to be focused on the economics of it even though they understand that bad economics could lead to death - so it's the nature of the job that they're probably going to focus on

[52:17]

that they're probably going to focus on near-term deaths whereas the economists might say well people are going to die no matter what so you know what's our best overall situation so keep an eye on that and make sure that people with the right tell and snacks are making the suggestions all right
today's death rate is lower than yesterday's or are you saying that yesterday's was lower than the day before which we know to be true so I still don't know about today's and it's too early to know about today right it's the day just started testing is our way out yes of course this so testing is our way out so tell me how long will it be before you can test yourself at home no idea right you have no idea that's the failure of the task force if the task force can't give you even a range of when you might

[53:20]

give you even a range of when you might be able to test yourself at home even if you don't have symptoms to find out if you have that antibodies if they can't even give you a range that's not competent so I'll say it as many times as I need to the task force is not achieving the minimum level of competence because if they did they'd have estimates for things even if they're wrong even if they have to change them even if they have to update them every at every 10 minutes no estimates no competence it's as simple as that so you know if you had to guess will you have a way to test yourself easily at home for antibodies in a month you have no idea two months you have no idea three months no idea that's completely unacceptable completely because the task force for example knows which companies have committed to be able to make test

[54:20]

have committed to be able to make test kits those companies surely have given them estimates of how much they can produce so if you know if you know who is producing it and how much they can produce and you know how many people are going to need it tell us tell us that's a minimum level of competences gosh people we can make a million a week but until we until we can make you know 20 million a week we're not going to be on top of this whatever the number is so tell us tell us you in the unrelated story the FBI apparently lied or did not follow the rules on every single FISA application I'm not even following that story because you know all of our attention has been diverted but just think of it the fact that the World Health Organization lied about everything our experts lied about mass they lied about supplies of things they look the

[55:20]

about supplies of things they look the other than the their early numbers don't seem to match what we're already experiencing from the models so all the credibility of you know those types of experts right out the window at the same time our FBI who we used to think was credible we find out has been massively you know what would you call I don't know if it's illegal or it's just bad behavior so I'll tell ya I've never had less trust for the professional class at the same time we don't really have a choice so I will trust my doctor most of the time and I will go to a hospital if I need it so I'm still going to use the experts and if they can produce numbers I'm probably still gonna act based on those even if they're wrong and they need to update them all right in perfect I must have estimates we don't all need

[56:21]

I must have estimates we don't all need tests well we probably don't all need tests but we probably do need to do enough tests and wouldn't you like to know if you have the antibodies so people like me who experience some kind of really bad illness in January that I didn't have a name for I'd like to know I'd like to know if I already have it because I'd be leaving the house a lot more if I had so yeah I want to test to know if I have antibodies every prediction they make the fills by one hour still be used as an attack yeah that's that's too bad they should do it anyway
Radio Free Tom is hard to see at 200 what that means we need incentives incentives for what somebody says I don't think they're lying they just don't know about the availability of equipment it's it's a little both but

[57:23]

equipment it's it's a little both but not knowing the exact number should not stop you from estimating you still can do it all right that's all I got for now and I'll talk to you tonight 10:00 p.m. Eastern 7:00 p.m. Pacific have a good day