Episode 895 Scott Adams: Catch up on the Day and Learn Some Tricks for Relaxing
Date: 2020-04-06 | Duration: 37:55
Topics
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a Content: A zoo tiger tests positive for the coronavirus High altitude pulmonary edema and Hydroxychloroquine Cruise ship bookings for next year Relaxation tips
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
[0:13]
it's time to get your swaddle on get mine on if I could find the long side oh
so much better oh my goodness Oh
get yourself a warm blanket it's the best so let's catch you up on what's happening in the last 12 hours does all of this feel like Groundhog Day to you I don't know about you but there's a certain sameness to every day now because I feel like I feel like I wake up I do some cartooning and do a periscope and I talk about the same five things and then there's a press conference with the president and the task force and they babble the same meaningless stuff that doesn't mean anything and you can't you can't understand it in context you don't know
[1:13]
understand it in context you don't know if that's enough ventilators or not enough you really don't know anything but they sure talk a lot then it's this time of night then I do this again if then I'll be going to bed pretty soon and then I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do exactly the same thing again it's starting to feel a little repetitive am i dead is this hell where I just wake up every day in the pandemic but it's it never gets worse and it never gets better it's just it's about the same yesterday do you remember yesterday today's like that but a little bit different anyway but there are some small differences we will talk about them so there's a website that lets you estimate your chances of getting the coronavirus and then if you get it your your odds of
[2:13]
then if you get it your your odds of dying from it I'm I'm not proud to say then I thought oh I got to find out if I'm gonna die from the corona virus so I I just retweeted the site so if you want to find it for yourself go to my Twitter feed and it's near the top and what do you put in your particular you know your gender and age and some lifestyle stuff what your situation is and this is what it spit out for me and tell me if you think this sounds reasonable it says I have a fifty five percent chance of catching the virus now I putted that I literally am completely alone do I have a fifty five percent chance of catching it all alone in my house just because what I get mail you know I I ordered food that's pretty high
[3:14]
know I I ordered food that's pretty high so I'm not sure I believe I have a fifty five percent chance but the next thing is what are my odds of dying from it so again I put in my particulars and it said that if I get it my odds of dying from it or 2.6 percent the equivalent of one hundred thirty eight people so or if people are in betting odds there's no there's a thirty seven to one chance I won't die so if you want it if I get the coronavirus and you want to bet on me you know if you want to do a Dead Pool the the odds apparently are thirty seven to one that I would survive not bad not bad on the other hand is there anything else as that much of a chance of killing me by the end of the week probably not so it news from the
[4:14]
probably not so it news from the simulation I think I think I'll make an ongoing segment that is just news from the simulation what I mean by that is the idea that we're a similar software simulation and if we are there might be some code reuse meaning you would see some patterns that recur that seemed like more than coincidence of course this is just for fun because they're just coincidences but I like to point them out because the alternative explanation that you live in the simulation and there's code reuse is just way more fun here's the example according to the news a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City has tested positive for corona virus in what may be the first confirmed case of an animal being infected now do you know what is scarier than a tiger you know assuming that you're in the same room with the
[5:14]
that you're in the same room with the tiger do you know what is scarier than that a tiger with corona virus that's sort of two ways to kill you it's like oh good news you know the the zookeeper pulled you away before you were mauled totally by the tiger you just got some flesh wounds well now the bad news you got a little bit of corona virus so what are the odds that we're all going to be watching the tiger King on Netflix it's like yeah it's all the news and social medias like tiger king tiger king tiger king and then the first animal they gets the corona virus there's a tiger now I don't have to tell you that there are many animals in the world you got your cats you got your dogs you got your birds I could go on but I think you see the point there are many animals but there's only one animal that's sort of all in
[6:15]
only one animal that's sort of all in the headlines at the moment well I guess you could say bat but you know bat would be the other one but I would be you know too on-the-nose it's like it comes from a bat and then a bat gets it yeah that's no good but if the only animal that gets at first is a tiger at the same time the Tigers are on Netflix okay maybe it's a coincidence or maybe we live in a simulation just maybe all right so yeah as I said the press conference was again very inadequate in my mind and Jake Tapper had a good piece today and seeing in which he was asking the president what the plan is and I thought yeah it's time to ask that question I think it wasn't
[7:16]
to ask that question I think it wasn't time a little bit earlier so you know you have to allow that there's the fog of war there's collecting data and we're learning things and testing things so you don't always have to have a plan to that to the end state in the early days because you're just finding your footing but I think we're just about at the point especially because of the economic risk where we sort of has to ask for that don't we don't you think this is the time to start saying well just in broad strokes what's it sort of look like because I don't quite understand the part where we go back to work in whenever it is a month or two months or three months whatever it is I don't get that part because doesn't it just come roaring back I mean reasonable people have asked and it is the only thing we're trying to do to slow it down so it doesn't over overwhelm the hospitals that's it so we're just sort of waiting and then
[8:17]
so we're just sort of waiting and then we'll send out some work any pigs to get it but that's the plan now it could be that we're you know just another week or so would really tell us a lot about the the hydroxide hydroxychloroquine in particular so there might be a good reason to wait but I think the public has a right to start demanding some answers and you know my big pet peeve once again another day goes by in which reporters are desperately trying to ask a question about the sufficiency of various supplies they're trying to ask the question in a way that they can get any kind of a useful answer and they really can't can they you're noticing that right so you're noticing that the reporters are saying okay but how many ventilators do you need and how many do you have you know they're getting pretty close to asking the right questions now and you're not getting anything like an
[9:17]
and you're not getting anything like an indication of a shadow of a suggestion of an attempt to even answer the question I mean it doesn't matter who's standing up there nobody is taking a swing at that why is it because we don't know that we're you know we're ten percent of the way or ninety percent of the way we don't know we can't even put a range on it and say well we don't know for sure where he hope it's over 70 percent but you know we're not going to take a chance of working that if we have to go over a hundred percent and we're gonna do it and we're gonna try really hard I mean there are a million ways you could give a useful answer without precision but the fact that they can't even give a useful directional approximate we hope it's in this range kind of an answer they just spew out the same raw statistics four thousand ventilators or six thousand gloves took from a car and put it in a trunk maybe we asked some pretty we had somebody make some gowns
[10:18]
somebody make some gowns you know there's 75 thousand gowns that maybe on a truck were possibly plain we don't know where they are but in separate news there are also 70,000 gowns oh wait I'm just giving you the same statistics I gave yesterday in raw numbers because you can't tell the difference it sounds like action but really it just means I don't know how many we have and how many we need so pretty pretty disappointing I gotta say now if there's some reason that we can't know that shouldn't no that can't be collected it's impossible to know really well you know take your best shot of explaining it but I don't think I'm gonna believe whatever you tell me there is very interesting hypothesis floating around it's brand-new do you like your brand new hypotheses that's why you come here for the brand new hypotheses you know you know what the old ones so I could I will not present this with
[11:21]
could I will not present this with confidence so there would be some things that you hear first my periscopes that might turn out to be kind of important but there might be other things you hear that turned out to be nothing later so in the with the understanding that it could go either way and I don't have an opinion on it I'm just going to pass it along because it's so darn interesting so there's a growing body of anecdotal information and I'll see if I can do my best to explain this that the mechanism for why this virus is killing people specifically the pneumonia lung part maybe we're looking at it all wrong meaning scientists and doctors and the argument for that is that the the way the lungs look to the doctors who handle these things is exactly like high altitude pulmonary edema and I don't
[12:22]
altitude pulmonary edema and I don't know the details but it has something to do with damage to your lungs if you're at high altitude for too long so apparently doctors who know what that looks like and there's there's a whole checklist of okay that the lungs look like this does it you know just blah blah blah so there's a pretty long checklist to show that you have this high altitude pulmonary edema and at least on the internet if you can believe random things on the Internet Cove in nineteen meets all of the checklist so that doesn't mean that doesn't mean it is
is high altitude pulmonary edema it means it has the same checklist so that raises a question you know do we even understand what's going on here so the hypothesis goes like this and this is not mine I'm just passing along that the the damage from the virus is in the blood before the lungs so in other words the blood becomes damaged to the point
[13:23]
the blood becomes damaged to the point where it can't hold oxygen and then it doesn't matter what your lungs are doing because your blood can hold the oxygen efficiently anymore so then the lungs go into some kind of bad state without the oxygen I guess so furthering this hypothesis is the fact that there's anecdotal but not yet clinically proven evidence that hydroxychloroquine malaria malaria drug might work and I'm told again I'm Way out of my depth here so just you should discount everything I say now you should forget you were even here yeah save him or you know if anybody asks you what you did recently just say nothing I took a nap I was not listening to a crazy hypothesis that that doesn't have sufficient credibility yet but I will tell you that I'm hearing this from smart really smart people and from doctors so this is a full crackpot
[14:25]
from doctors so this is a full crackpot theory so that at least two people with MD behind their names have been saying this in public hey it looks like this high-altitude thing and it would also explain why the malaria drug works because apparently malaria has that same quality if I understand it right I need a big fact check on this if anybody can help me that malaria affects the blood not so much the lungs and it might be exactly why the hydroxychloroquine appears to be working for the the cove at 19 because it might be doing something protective with the blood the same way it protects the blood from the malaria is the hypothesis now what are the odds I would put on this
that I wish the only reason I would put the odds of this being this alternate explanation being fruitful is that there
[15:26]
explanation being fruitful is that there are an awful lot of experts looking at this thing so it would be weird to be and unexpected if we had gotten this far and somebody would have an aha moment of this magnitude not impossible do not rule it out whatsoever so I've seen nothing that would rule them down but I'm so unqualified that you know I can't rule them in or out but I would say it falls into the class of things which in general are unlikely and as the let's call it the Perry Mason moment for those of you old enough to remember an old TV show Perry Mason the Perry Mason moment is you know he's in the courtroom he's a he's a famous lawyer trying the case and he gets somebody who's in the audience to confess to the crime yeah that's the the Perry boys in the basement moment because it's the most unexpected outcome is that there's a defendant on trial and you're such a good lawyer that you get somebody in the audience to confess during the trial so it's like a Perry
[16:27]
during the trial so it's like a Perry Mason thing that we would find out this late in the game and all of those experts would not have sniffed this out by now leads me to believe it's in the category of unlikely things but I got to tell you that the people talking about it are smart people so you're gonna have to weigh that really smart people talking about it really smart people but it's in that category of things there's quite often they're not true so I keep an eye on that let's see what else we got going on Boris Johnson apparently is pretty sick with the corona virus and that is terrible but it makes me ask this question and maybe in the comments you can tell me it has has there been any celebrity let's say famous person so not a
[17:29]
let's say famous person so not a celebrity just a famous person has there been the first famous person to die of the coronavirus and I'm not saying this for sensationalist reason there's going to be a an actual point to this because I believe there have been relatives of famous people am i right relatives of famous people and people who had some status but I've never heard of them in other words a somebody had been famous 90 years ago and stuff and here's the question how many how many famous people die every year of regular flu of which we now all know there could be you know fifty thousand a hundred thousand one hundred and fifty thousand so does the regular flu kill celebrities every year because that's a lot of people people are saying Joe Diffie and
[18:37]
I think Oh Joe definitely the country singer does he die Bill Withers celebrity he died okay so now we still have the problem of if they had died of the regular flu would it be reported as they died of the flu probably not right and if they had died of something just because it was time to die but they also had a little corona virus in them they would be reported as dining of the corona virus so here's just a question I'm not even sure I can make a point out of this yet I see the name John Prine go by but I don't know that is Ellis yeah Marsalis yeah his father right so there were some some relatives and stuff but keep an eye on this if it's if it turns out that you keep hearing of celebrities dying from this but we never hear of
[19:38]
from this but we never hear of celebrities dying from the regular flu even though we know that the regular flu if you were just compare the beginning of this one to a full flu that's going a full season the full flu would have a much higher body count in its in its fullness than we have seen in this early stage of this one so it's just something to keep an eye on all right
apparently analysts at UBS to say that the the bookings for cruise is next year what do you what do you guess is the the booking rate for cruises next year so cruise ships of course are scarier because everybody's afraid to get in the coronavirus on a cruise ship but what do you think of the bookings look like for 2020 one way up or way down turns up they're up sharply they're up 9%
[20:39]
they're up sharply they're up 9% compared to last year so cruise bookings are up now the story goes on to say it might be just the people who rebooked you know they're just optimist and like let's just give it a year we'll just push it out of here so you've probably got you know it could be only nine percent really had the original idea in theory is just mathematically speaking it couldn't be only nine percent new people and all the rest are just read books I doubt that's the case but you get the point so here's where I'm going with this when you're trying to figure out what will be the final economic outcome of this let me give you a little economic lesson and it's a it's a variety of things I've said before let's say you are the cruise industry and you just got done you just got creamed this year I don't want to say decimated because that only means 10% so you're the cruise industry you just got wiped out so all of 2020 is just nothing but
[21:40]
out so all of 2020 is just nothing but you know hundreds of billions of dollars of losses but let's say it's six months from now or yeah let's say it's the end of the year and the problem is behind us sufficiently that people feel safe going on a cruise but your your industry has been you know just destroyed you've got all this debt then can you get a loan to reopen your business and the answer is if you've got if you've got bookings for the entire year you probably can the only thing that would prevent you from reopening is that you're all your customers went away if you're a good business before this before the problem if you are already a good business and the only thing that happened was you took on a whole bunch of new debt while the government might pay some of that depending on your situation but and and some companies might go bankrupt but the
[22:41]
some companies might go bankrupt but the assets would still exist and another company could say well you guys ran up a lot of debt and you can't pay it back so sorry you're bankrupt but we'll buy your ships will buy your operation and we'll just start our own company and all the customers are still there so would the new the new cruise industry that bought all these assets for practically nothing the bank lost a lot of money but the cruise ship has all the bookings for next year and they've got a cheap boat lots of cheap ships I guess so it seems to be that if you have this critical thing which is that people have booked the business in advance you can open up so let's take this to its logical conclusion you've got restaurants that are just getting killed very difficult for a restaurant to get it credit or to get a loan but suppose you used something like open table or one of these online
[23:44]
open table or one of these online reservation systems and they might have to tweak the system so you can make a reservation a year in advance what if all of us decided to save the restaurant industry and you can only do so much now because you know you can you can do what I just did before I got on ordered some food for delivery you can get takeout that's not enough I mean you know you're lucky if they can limp to a point where where something is better but what if there was there was an online system and all of us could go online and just book like once a week or whatever is our normal normal amount of eating out and just book all your local restaurants for the entire 2021 so that when the restaurant goes to their bank and says we got killed this year but I can I've got a really good idea that we're gonna have strong business next year and if you want to know why we les I'm actually booked for every night in 2021 every
[24:47]
booked for every night in 2021 every night with real people with real names now I can't guarantee every one of them shows up but you know the system will prompt them I think they'll still be in a mood to want to save the local restaurants maybe you should give me a loan because what's what's better than this this is better than my regular business I never had this much business I've never been booked every day so there may be a way because I keep telling you that that all of economics is always a psychology experiment and part of the psychology is to get people to guarantee your business in pretty far future because if you can credibly be you know guaranteed some future business you can get a loan and you're back in business so there are a lot of things that are really different about this situation and starting back the economy that I think we've never seen before and and everything that I feel about it suggests it's going to be way better than you
[25:49]
it's going to be way better than you know even even good estimates are so I call me a call me a super bowl on human innovation and ingenuity when we when it's time to crank back the economy yeah you saw all the the ingenuity that's going into dealing with the medical aspect of the coronavirus I mean amazing amount of energy nobody just tremendous we're gonna have that same amount of ingenuity on the financial tinkering on the economics of the business models you know if you if it's not your thing and you're not a business business person it may be scarier and look like there's not as much flexibility to do things but I think I could speak for most experienced business people and entrepreneurs you should check this by the way you know I I can't really speak for everybody but I have a feeling that that people who know the most about how
[26:49]
that people who know the most about how to create a business you know what a business model looks like what are the requirements how do you get credit you know the basics of business I think the people who know that most about that are probably going to be among the most optimistic about how quickly we can give back and that has to do with the fact that the people with experience have greater visibility about where all the buttons and levers are so I could you know say you know sometimes if you're experienced in something you can smell the solution before you before you know what it is you know say you're an experienced mechanic or engineer or even artist anything often you just you know where the solution is you can just smell it but you can't describe why it's just something about your experience that says yeah there's something here I don't know what it is but there's definitely something here and so my contention is that those of us with lots of business experience see this economy as having every potential
[27:49]
this economy as having every potential still the moment it opens up we're gonna have to re-engineer on the fly you get really clever get really creative work really hard be really disappointed get back up make it work again but it happens to be also the thing we do best you know what what do what Americans do better then figure it out right if there was one thing you could say that defines Americans and I know I'm talking to an international audience but maybe you would agree - yeah this could be just a you know that American thing I don't know but if you had if you said all right tell me one thing that defines an American you know I'm not counting about you know loving the country in the Constitution stuff let's say let's say that's all the given but what makes the the character of an American what's the most defining feature we can figure stuff out that's our most defining feature give us a
[28:51]
our most defining feature give us a problem we'll figure it out go to the moon we'll figure it out cure a cancer we're getting there you know it's not done but we're getting there build an electric car you know you name it you got a problem humans are really really good at solving problems even ones we've never seen so I think you're going to be really surprised in the positive way when the things open back up that we will have a better recovery than 90% of the world believes so I'm gonna put me in the 10% we're super optimists because I'm gonna bet on people and I'm gonna bet on the best of us so I'm not even betting on average people because average people you know if you can find your way back to your old job that's probably good enough but so so most of us don't need to do anything heroic we just need to show up but like everything else there are going to be those you know that 1% that 2%
[29:53]
to be those you know that 1% that 2% maybe it's 10% but the best of us are going to figure out how to do it differently because that's the whole thing right you can't just go back to work like nothing happened you got some problems to solve but they're well within the solvable range for the most clever among us who have the right intentions and everybody's really sort of got the same you know direction so all good news I was asked to give you some tips on how to relax which I'm going to do right now this is the portion in which I tell you how to enjoy your your social isolation and how to bring down your your feelings of anxiety should any arise it's tense times I know number one you're gonna have to take breaks from social media and the news you just have to very important you don't have to take
[30:56]
to very important you don't have to take the whole afternoon off because there's so much happening it really probably pays to dip in every now and then just in case something important happens but you can take an hour off yeah you could take two hours off so build that into every day make sure you get a little a little alone time without the news of any kind likewise if you're trying if your goal is removing tension and relaxing and it should be a goal and by the way you should be your full-time job when I think what my job is you know for my life in terms of the the selfish part of what I do not the things I might do for other people but in terms of taking care of myself I see my job as we removing my stress that's like the main job and there are a hundred ways to do it and many things I would do to get that done including you know maybe completing my work on time but everything is really about my energy and my stress energy and stress being related if you have too much stress it
[31:58]
related if you have too much stress it hurts your energy etc so you want to avoid anything that puts you in the wrong frame of mind so don't do tense movies do do companies don't do music that you know is headbanger music even if you even if it's your favorite music just take a break from any music any music that's provocative or is trying to work you into some kind of emotional state that's not the one you want all right now if you're gonna listen to classical music you know that's probably fine but anything they'll put you in the wrong frame of mind or even anything that reminds you of you know that past boyfriend or girlfriend anything like that just avoid it because that's all just polluting your mind at a time when it's hard enough to to keep it keep it straight the thing you should do is obviously avoid caffeine yeah after a certain part of the day everybody's different so by now you probably know your reaction but
[32:59]
now you probably know your reaction but more than ever if it's your habit to have a cup of coffee late in the afternoon maybe rethink that just for now you know go for decaf yeah it's easy to get into habits and that and then not realize that your habit is no longer suited to the current situation so if your habit was I drink coffee you know five o'clock at night never bothered me before but maybe today it does so just give a thought that you might want to change some of your habits to optimize for this situation so definitely get enough sleep that's the main thing if you get enough sleep everything's easier and you can solve problems easier things don't bother you you feel better so your stress will just naturally be better if you get more sleep so that's that's just an obviously I cannot emphasize enough the importance of light daily exercise as in making sure that you literally get exercise every day there's such a
[34:01]
exercise every day there's such a difference in what that does to your stress level and again emphasis on the light if the reason you don't exercise is because you just don't like you know beating yourself up and you know you're not really that no pain no gain kind of person I'm not even talking about that I'm literally just talking about taking a nice leisurely walk as far as you want to go you know whatever your body tells you is right it's so emphasis on the light part just for stress reduction this is not about building muscles not about losing weight at the moment your top priority is just chilling out so optimize your exercise for that objective to chill amped light exercise walks a great
next I usually make it a point to take my lunch as as me time and I've always done this this is this is a longtime
[35:01]
done this this is this is a longtime habit so a lot of people will say I have so much to do I'm going to eat and at the same time I'm going to be doing some work so I'll multitask I get that sometimes we have to do that but man you should try as hard as you can not to give yourself that 45 minutes whatever it is that's just you your food your beverage and maybe something on your phone that's not reminding you of anything tense you know you're not doing emails necessarily you're texting a friend watching a YouTube that's funnier that sort of thing but just just leave the world behind for a little while now I've given you lots of sleep tips about make sure that you use the bed just for sleeping and adult behavior but you also want to get your oxytocin up oxytocin is the drug or the chemical that your body produces when you have close personal
[36:02]
produces when you have close personal relationships that are good so if you're you know making love with something you love or you're you're hugging somebody you're just you know canoodling with somebody in a close intimate way so if there's somebody like that in your life somebody that you can spoon spoon it up so you should spoon for medicinal reasons you if you're gonna watch a TV show watch a comedy get in spooning position on the couch now if your partner is not watching this right now you should go to them and say baby I know we usually set in different chairs and I know usually that's fine but this is like getting getting lost this snowstorm you might have to you know use your body warmth but it's not a body once you need it's the oxytocin it's that feeling of being close to somebody so your assignment tonight be it in bed or be it into your couch
[37:04]
be it in bed or be it into your couch this is spooning it up spoon it and watch how you feel and watch your stress just melt away so those are your tips I might think of some more tips later but don't think too much about the bad news think about the best possible outcomes fill your mental shelf space with good thoughts so that the bad ones don't have room just think of it as the shelf has to be filled because you can't think of nothing you could try but it doesn't work so if there's going to be something on your mental shelf space you be the author put stuff on it until it's all full keeps the bad thoughts out that's your trick for tonight now we'll talk to you in the morning 10:00 a.m. Eastern 7:00 a.m. Pacific and we'll solve this pandemic then I promise