October 31, 2021 • 55 mins
COVID was supposed to be that "Independence Day" external threat that would unite us all. Instead, it divided us. How did that happen? In this episode we talk about the danger of statistics and how lies can be less misleading than carefully selected truths.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Henri (00:06):
All these businessmen started picking up copies of Sun
Tzu.
Now, everyone has a copy of“TheArt of War”, and no one ever
(00:26):
reads it.
It's kind of like Christianswith the Bible...
I'm joking, joking, I'm joking!Welcome to Come On! Don't
Bullshit Me! Where we peel awaythe messaging of the talking
heads to get to the crux oftoday's issues.
(00:55):
There's an old expression thatthere is lies, damn lies, and
statistics.
People are lying withstatistics.
And the final statistics thatpeople like to throw out has
underlying hidden statisticsthat it derives itself from.
The big thing that they'retrying to say is that, oh, COVID
is not a big deal, so weshouldn't really worry about it.
(01:16):
And that's where a lot of hateis coming from.
They come around saying that,oh, it only really kills 2% of
people, and even still, it onlyaffects people who are older, or
sick, or have comorbidities...
That is a new buzzword.
No one knew what the word“morbidity” was, but now
everyone seems to be an Englishexpert.
So they say, oh, yeah, you havecomorbidities.
(01:37):
And they say that if you arehealthy and young, then you
don't have anything to worryabout, and that we should just
open everything back up and notworry about anything.
They say COVID is overblown,it's a hoax, because death rate
is so low.
And people like to pull outstatistics and say,“Oh, look at
the CDC data or WHO data!” Andpeople are already
(02:01):
mathematically illiterate as itis, but then when you arm them
with a little bit ofknowledge...
or it's not even knowledge, it'sinformation because they don't
really apply it.
Knowledge is the application ofinformation.
But you give them a little bitinformation, and then they know
enough to be dangerous, so theyquote...
I don't want to say"bogusstatistics”, because the
(02:22):
statistics on the surface arecorrect, but the statistics is
used in bad faith.
Actually, I shouldn't even saythat, because again, like I
said, they are mathematicallyilliterate, so they think they
are applying the statistics in agood faith way, but because
they're mathematically literate,they leap to conclusions that
(02:44):
are erroneous at best maliciousat worst.
Okay.
So, first off, those statisticsare only available, if the
government in question isactually taking good statistics.
Obviously, the big offenders areChina, Russia, India, and
Turkey.
Maybe because they don't havethe means to take those
statistics, presumably like itwas in the case of India; or
(03:05):
they are willfully obfuscatingthe statistics, like it was,
allegedly, in the case of Russiaand China.
And there are a lot ofenterprising reporters who said,
okay, I'm going to ignore theCOVID death rates given by the
sovereign nations, that arebeing reported, and instead I'm
(03:25):
going to look at theirequivalent of the bureau or
office of vital statistics, orwhatever it is, and basically
look at the excess deaths.
Because you can make areasonable assumption that, if
you look at all the excessdeaths of 2020 versus other
years, you can probablyattribute those to the pandemic,
because that's the only thingthat really changed.
(03:47):
And then the death rates wereenormously higher.
But, of course, since we areonly following the News outlets,
rightfully so, we can onlyreally quote the statistics from
the WHO, as that is what isbeing reported.
And I am sure some couple ofyears down the road there is
going to be Math Masters or PhDcandidates who are going to be
(04:07):
taking these statistics, andthey will produce a whole bunch
of interesting papers on this.
On how governments gated theactual death toll on the
pandemic.
When everything is all said anddone.
Hopefully, this thing will dieout and we are not going to live
with this.
(04:33):
The 2% statistics that peoplequote is an American statistic,
so, it comes from the CDC.
And you can say, okay, theUnited States is pretty good and
is being open and transparentaround statistics.
But as the pandemic wasunfolding, not to get political
on this, it just happens to bepolitical, a lot of the
right-wing governors, or theright-wing state governments,
were under-reporting, falsereporting, you name it, whatever
type thing they were doing, toobfuscate their own State's
death results.
And all the CDC can do is reallyto just compile the States'
results to a Federal level.
(04:54):
So, if the States’ results areobfuscated, then, obviously,
whatever is reported at the endby the CDC is also going to be
obfuscated.
But that is just a minor thing,because, good faith argument, we
understand the point of whatpeople are trying to say.
I don't want to be like, oh, itwas not 2%, it was more like
3.6%.
The point is what they're tryingto say, I get it, I understand:
(05:17):
the final death toll, which iswhat seems to be the main issue,
in their eyes was relativelylow, and it didn’t justify the
confinement or social shutdownthat was warranted in 2020.
That's what they argue.
Jazz (05:34):
[ Music]
Henri (05:44):
The classic thing that people like to quote is, oh, did
you know that more people die tocows than they do to shark
attacks?
And everyone thinks that this issuch a profound thing.
Like, oh my God, cows are somuch more dangerous than sharks!
And it probably started off witha well-intentioned meaning,
because there was that wholething where"Jaws", the movie,
(06:05):
put a fear into people aboutsharks.
And it was a disproportionatefear, because prior to that
movie sharks weren't reallyfeared by humans.
But after the movie, all of asudden, everyone was scared of
sharks.
And then the shark attacksstarted becoming more known
because it was reported more.
Like, oh my God, it's anothershark attack! And then now, of
(06:26):
course, we can't really separatethe two things and we have this,
I do not want to say irrational,but we have this heightened fear
of sharks.
And then you had statistic,which, again, may have started
well-meaning, I don't know whereit came from.
But people used it to say, oh,look, you really shouldn't worry
about sharks so much because,look, more people die from cows,
(06:46):
than they do from sharks.
While on the surface, that'strue, the point is that humans
interact more with cows, thanthey do with sharks.
If you have 7 billion people inthe world, and we all live on...
ok, 99.999% of us live on land,with the occasional scuba
(07:11):
divers.
So, essentially, almost all ofus live exclusively on land.
So, obviously we are going to beencountering land animals more
than we are going to beencountering the marine animals.
(07:36):
So, mow I'm just throwing thiscompletely wrong statistic,
let's say, sharks are 25%dangerous, whereas cows are
0.01% dangerous.
Well, if you take 7 billionpeople and then multiply it by
that point one percent, that rawnumber is going to be a lot
larger than a hundred people...
or, let's say, a thousand peopleat one time encountering sharks
at 25% rate.
So, that raw number of peopledealing with the cows is going
to be a lot larger than the rawnumber of people encountering
(08:03):
sharks.
So, obviously when you comparethe raw numbers at the end, you
are going to be like, oh yeah,look, cows are more dangerous
than the sharks, when inreality, no.
Because sharks are moredangerous than cows.
It's just that we don't interactwith sharks so much.
And that's why that number isthere.
So that profound statement hastwo hidden statistics
underneath, that it is derivedfrom.
(08:25):
One is the dangerousness of theanimal in question, and two
being the exposure rate of thehumans to that specific species.
And the similar thing is goingon with COVID: the underlying
statistic is right, but thestatistics only talk about
things in the past.
They don't talk about things inthe future and people will say,
(08:47):
oh well, yeah, but you can usestatistics to predict the
future.
Well, yes and no.
It's kind of like the gambler'sfallacy: if you bet on a Russian
roulette..
excuse me, not a Russianroulette, you bet on roulette at
the roulette table, and theroulette hits red five times,
you're like, oh, I'm going toput all my money on black
(09:09):
because it's due! It's bound tobe black because it hit red five
times before.
Because you think the statisticspredict what will be next.
But no, that's actually nottrue.
The probability of hittingblack, minus the double zeros,
is, basically, 50%.
So, you still have a 50% chanceof hitting red versus black.
Again, ignoring the zeros for asecond.
You can't just say, oh, well,because the roulette table hit
red five times before, it isgoing to be black this next
turn.
And it's the same thing appliesto sharks versus cows.
(09:46):
We talked about the attributionerror of exposure to sharks
versus exposure to cows.
But that only talks about thepast.
Now, if all of a sudden, let'sjust say, we get into a Kevin
Costner“Waterworld” situation,and now everyone is living in
the ocean, you can't be like,oh, well, the statistics say
cows are more dangerous than thesharks, so should not worry
(10:07):
about it.
Well, no, actually you reallyshould worry about it, because
now all humans are living in theocean, so our exposure now is
way more towards sharks than itis to cattle.
Because we stated that theunderlying made up dangerousness
rate of sharks was 25% asopposed to 0.01% for cows.
So, the raw numbers now aregoing to be much higher for
sharks, because not only is thedeath rate against sharks is
higher, but the humanity'sexposure to sharks is higher,
because now everyone is livingin the Kevin Costner
“Waterworld”.
Just like in the cattle versussharks situation, you have
(10:46):
hidden underlying statisticsfrom which that COVID 2% comes
from.
That statistic comes from awhole bunch of different
factors.
First off, we have to remember,that that 2% statistic comes
from the situation of 2020,which was, essentially, the year
(11:06):
of the lockdown.
It's like, you're rolling a50-sided die, and your chances
of rolling a one is 2%.
If I gave you a 50-sided die andsaid, hey, you're going to walk
away,easy-peasy-nothing-happens, if
you roll between a two and a 50;but if you roll a one, then you
are going to get shot in theface by a guy in a PlayStation
(11:26):
mask.
But that's still an isolatedcase, because you are rolling
the die once, and that's it.
There's nothing else.
The game ends right there.
It starts there and ends there.
Boom, done! But when we aretalking a pandemic, it is a
different situation, because abullet is not contagious.
If you get shot, there is not arisk that someone else is going
(11:48):
to get shot after the fact thatyou got shot.
Whereas the virus, once itinfects someone, then it can
affect others, and on and on andon.
And that's how pandemics happen,right?
So when we are talking aboutvirology, or epidemics, or, in
this case, a pandemic, the thingis, you can't take the
statistics in isolation becauseevery person that gets infected,
(12:08):
further increases your chance ofgetting infected.
And what was the big thing thathappened in 2020?
Oh yeah.
That's right, the entire world,essentially, went on a lockdown.
Well, that naturally was goingto reduce the death rate of the
virus, because less people wereinteracting with each other.
Again, it is kind of like theshark situation: the COVID virus
itself is dangerous, just likethe shark is, but because we
(12:30):
were in a lockdown, becausewe've been socially distancing,
because we've been wearingmasks, because we've been taking
these public safety precautions,our exposure rate dropped.
So, therefore, naturally, theend statistic, was going to drop
and it became that 2% deathrate.
And then there were anotherfact: in the beginning of the
pandemic we didn't know whatthat virus was.
(12:50):
It is called a novelcoronavirus, because it was a
new thing.
So we didn't know how to dealwith it.
And naturally, as the hospitalsstarted dealing with it, gained
more experience with that virus,their triage methods improved
and the way they took care ofpatients improved.
For example, one of the thingsthat they like to cite news is
that we learned, that youshouldn't lay people on their
(13:13):
back, but you should lay themdown on their stomach instead,
and that'll help the patientsget more air in and, apparently,
improve their survivabilitychance.
And, obviously, it's a very goodthing.
But when you're talking aboutthe statistics, it is, an air
quote, a"bad" thing.
I'm using air quotes again here,because now your presumed death
rate is going to be lowered notbecause the virus, all of a
sudden, became less of a threat,but because human ingenuity
figured out a way to deal withit.
(13:33):
So, there's that.
That by us being able to dealwith the virus in a better
capacity, we effectively reducedthe death rate, which is,
(13:55):
obviously, a good thing forhumanity.
But when you are trying to bedismissive and are flipping
about the pandemic in general,it becomes a different story.
Because not everyone is going tohave access to knowledgeable
healthcare staff.
Because, maybe, you are in adifferent country, or you are in
a different area, where theseCOVID best practices haven't
(14:17):
been disseminated to yet, andthey just legitimately don't
know.
Now, all of a sudden, you'redealing with that and then
you're going to be lying on yourback in this specific case.
And now your probability ofdeath is going to be higher than
it is for the rest of theinformed population.
And the response to the pandemichas become needlessly
politicized to the point whereyou cannot have an honest
(14:38):
conversation about the potentialramifications of this virus.
There are a lot of these alienmovies.
We like to talk about howeveryone's fighting each other
and how humans have wars, but…If you remember, in"Independence
Day" movie the aliens came andall of a sudden, everyone banded
together to face the commonthreat.
Chinese, Russians, Americans–all fought together.
(15:01):
And Bill Pullman had that famous– greatest movie cinematic
president by far, even betterthan Harrison Ford in the the
"Air Force One", which is sayingsomething, because Harrison Ford
was awesome in"Air Force One",but anyway, Bill Pullman– the
greatest cinematic presidentever, and then you also had
those scenes of the Arabmilitary working with the IDF,
and everyone came together toface the common thread of those
aliens.
And, yeah, that's awesome...
Well, now what we saw in thispandemic, is that was not the
(15:33):
case.
That even when we have anexternal threat, like the virus,
when this was an opportunity foreveryone to band together,
because the virus does notdiscriminate, whether you're a
leftist or rightist, whetheryou're a communist or
capitalist, whether you're aChristian or a Muslim, the virus
affects everyone.
It doesn't care.
(15:53):
So you'd think that, okay, weshould band together,
apolitically, and fight thispandemic.
But instead...
Maybe this was because thepandemic in most people's eyes
wasn't as, quote,“bad” as theythought it was going to be, so
they were able to afford to makethis a political issue.
And it did become a politicalissue.
(16:20):
But what was surprising, wasthat it became a political issue
in a way that was the oppositeof what you would think it would
be.
Because you would think, okay,well, the Republicans are in
charge, Donald Trump is incharge.
Again, I'm talking from anAmerican perspective, and a lot
of it comes from the fact thatthe US perspective dominated the
media and it was spread to theother parts of the world.
(16:41):
Which is a separate topic initself.
But again, the point here is,we're focusing on the American
perspective.
The American perspective is (16:45):
you have a Republican in charge,
Donald Trump.
This is a perfect chance for himto rally the nation together,
like George W.
Bush did after 9/11, and say,hey, we got this pandemic, this
virus, it is affecting us all,so we need to band together and
come together and fight thisthing.
And then you would have theDemocrats, who, being the
minority power, they would belike, oh my God, you bungled
this whole thing, and people aredying, and you suck, and
politicize it that way, right?
Or saying like, oh, you aremaking all these draconian
policies here, and the measuresyou are taking are inadequate
and ill advised; and therefore,we're going to politicize,
maybe, not the virus, but we aregoing to politicize the response
to the pandemic.
And of course, the response waspoliticized, but it was
politicized in the opposite way: It was the Democrats, the Left (16:57):
undefined
Wing, that was saying, hey, wegot to come together and fight
this thing, because it affectsus all.
And the Right Wing was the onesaying, oh no, this is
ridiculous, it's a hoax.
We're not going to take thisthing seriously, and Democrats,
you, guys, are all full of shit.
So, it is disappointing, that wedidn't have our"Independence
(17:41):
Day" moment, where we would allband together.
But it was also disappointing inthe sense that it did become
politicized, but it becamepoliticized in the opposite way
that you would think it wouldhave been politicized, which
shows how completely bizarre isthe timeline that we're living
in.
You can't be prudent aboutwearing a mask, where if you're
(18:11):
right-wing, you can't wear amask, because if you wear a mask
than, all of a sudden, it meansthat you are a Democrat.
And because of the power of theAmerican media, even in Europe
it is associated, that if you'renot wearing a mask, that's now
like a calling card to say, hey,look, I'm a right-wing
conservative.
It's like your badge of honor.
Which is completely ridiculouson the surface, but,
unfortunately, the battle lineshave been drawn up by media.
Predominantly, by social media,but just media in general.
And this is just another way todivide the population.
I guess, this is prettyAmerican-centric, because if you
look at the authoritarianregimes, like Russia or China,
the government is pretty firm.
Or, maybe I should not say this,because that's not really fair:
the government of the UnitedStates is also firm in saying
that we should be taking itseriously.
But the point there is that incountries like Russia and China,
they essentially speak with onevoice and they are dealing with
misinformation with a laserfocus.
Whereas here in the UnitedStates, even though we have the
executive branch saying, yes, weshould take the pandemic
seriously, you have people onthe right, who are predominantly
within the legislative branch,who are muddying the waters
deliberately.
(19:26):
And that's only exacerbated bythe right wing media apparatus,
slash, social media.
Now, we can talk about socialmedia some other time, but the
whole point is that social mediawant to drive engagement numbers
to increase their revenuestreams.
And controversy and people beingdivisive, people being angry
with each other, is profitableto them.
(19:48):
So there's an incentive to keepthis type of lie going.
And of course, as they say inthe old KGB manual, you have a
lot of"useful idiots" where themedia can just drop a little
nugget like, oh, COVID is only2% death, and then these"useful
idiots", which are just thepeople who consume that media…
(20:09):
Note that I say"media", not"news", because they are not
news.
There has even been court caseson this, where they themselves
say, oh no, you can't sue us,because we're not news, we're
entertainment, but yet, theystill lie and say that they're
news to the public.
Anyway, that's besides thepoint.
But so, they drop these littlenuggets of, quote,"statistics".
Again, they're not bogusstatistics, but the conclusion
(20:32):
that you leap to from these....
Again, it's not bullshitstatistics, it's true statistic,
but the conclusion that you leapto is bullshit.
So, they drop that kind of likea pebble into a pond, and then
you have the"useful idiots"...
I'm not calling them idiots, butit's just a term that was used
in those spy manuals.
And then it takes a life of itsown, kind of like the ripple
effect in a pond (20:53):
after you drop a stone.
You can just drop a stone andwalk away, seconds later, the
lake is still disruptive withwaves and ripples.
(21:19):
The point here is that the finalstatistic that people like to
throw out there, like thatpebble into a pond, is that that
statistic has underlying hiddenstatistics that it derives
itself from.
And those are equally, if notmore important than the final
statistic, because it is notjust the final statistic that
matters, but it is the nature ofhow that statistic came about,
which should dictate publicpolicy.
In a news report it's fine toreport the final statistic, but
when you're doing public policy,it's not just about, what is
(21:40):
happening.
You have to understand why it ishappening too, and then reduce
those effects.
(22:10):
You know what another great 2%statistic is?
Only 2% of American militarytroops died in World War I.
So, in that case World War I wasnot a big issue.
Why is there this thing, that,oh my God, it was the war to end
all wars, and it was such abloody war, such a disaster?
For the United States it wasonly 2% death.
Obviously, you can see howridiculous of a statement that
is to say that World War I wasnot a big deal.
Because, first off, the UnitedStates entered World War I
pretty much at the end– in thefourth quarter– to face a
depleted German military, wheretheir will to fight and the
effectiveness of their martialcapability were severely
diminished.
And the US provided the muchneeded resources to the Allies
to get through the hump, so thatthey could continue carrying on
(22:34):
with the fight.
And the deaths weren't just theUnited States, but it was also
France, UK, and well, I guessRussia was already out because
of the Bolshevik revolution, butagain, the point here is that...
you had that...
And oh, by the way, the lastyear of the war was the advent
of tank warfare, which did a bigpart in ending the war, because
(22:54):
now you could use tanks to getover the trenches and you didn't
have infantry getting mowed downby the machine gun fire.
So there were a lot ofunderlying things that happened,
which contributed to that finalstatistic of only 2% of American
military dying in World War I.
If you're telling me, oh, theCOVID death rates are only 2%,
it's not a big deal and weshouldn't worry about it, by
that same logic I could say, oh,well, in that case, World War I
wasn't a big deal, and weshouldn't worry about it because
only 2% of the military died,so, who cares?
But you can see how comical thatstatement would be.
Another aspect of it is that the2% is based on the overall
(23:35):
population.
Well, that population is dividedamongst a whole gamut of age
groups.
And if it is presumed to be thatthe COVID virus is more
dangerous to the elder than itis to young people, then that
younger population is going tocontribute to an overall lower
(23:57):
death rate to the society, thanone that is older, right?
So all things being equal, andthis is important, all things
being equal, because it's not.
But all things being equal, thedeath rate for, you know,
Nigerians, for example, would beexpected to be much lower than
it would be for Japan, forexample.
And that is because Japan has amuch larger proportion of
elderly in their population,whereas Nigeria is a relatively
young country.
But again, all things beingequal.
And it's important to understandit, because that is the only
really proper way that you cancompare statistics to each
other (24:05):
if you isolate one variable.
When you mix and mash a wholebunch of different things, then
you don't really know.
And it's kind of only God knowswhat's the actual causation is.
So, in this case, that part ofthat 2% number comes from the
fact that that most of theirpopulation is young.
So it naturally reduces thedeath rate, but still that
doesn't change the fact that thedeath rate is higher for the
elderly.
(24:55):
And these are just the thingsthat we already know.
But then again, thejustification there is that
people say, like, well, yeah,it's high, but it doesn't re
really warrant shutting down theeconomy.
And okay, well, fine, we'll letthe old people sit home and be
(25:19):
confined, whereas young peoplecan go out and do things, right?
Well, there are several thingswrong with that.
First off...
I always remember when I waslittle, my parents, my
grandparents, uncles, aunts,they would say, the problem with
your generation is that you,guys, don't care about the
elderly, you don't respect yourelders.
Right?
Everything, me, me, me, selfish,selfish, selfish.
(25:40):
And we show respect to ourelders, and you, guys, don't.
Well, now here we are.
We have this pandemic that, byyour own admission, doesn't
affect us, but it affects you,guys.
And we're the ones trying toprotect the country, protect
you, guys by having thisconfinement and lockdown.
And you, guys, are the ones tosay, oh no, screw everyone, go
out there and do not beconfined, right?
Well, what were all thosecomments, all that lip service
that you were giving us abouthow this generation doesn't
respect its elders?
So, that's one thing.
But more importantly, is that,again, when we are talking about
(26:18):
a virus, a pandemic, it is not abullet, it is not a throw of
dice.
Things do not happen inisolation.
If people are out there notbeing confined, this virus is
spreading around and goingaround with them.
Even if the death rate is low,people are still catching the
virus.
And when they come back home orwhen they do interact with the
elderly, well, now you have abigger chance, higher chance of
exposure to someone who a youngperson who is infected.
They may be asymptomatic,because as you like to say all
the time, the 98% of youngpeople are going to survive, so
it's no big deal.
Well, it's no big deal to them,but for you, it's a big deal,
because you're elderly and yourdeath rate is, supposedly, a lot
higher.
So, going back to the sharksversus cattle, if you are
talking about, oh, well I nevergo out to the sea, so I'm not
going to worry about sharks.
Now, all of a sudden, youretired, you went down to a
Ibiza or whatever, and now youare basically living by the
ocean all the time.
Well, maybe I shouldn't sayIbiza, because that's
Mediterranean, and sharks,aren't really in Mediterranean.
Anyway, you get the point.
It is that your exposure rate tosharks now, all of a sudden, is
much higher.
So your death rate is going tobe potentially higher.
And this is a cause for concern.
(27:19):
We shouldn't be taking thingslightly, because, oh, the
mortality rate for COVID is only2%.
(27:39):
There are underlying factorsthat contribute to that.
It's not in isolation.
This is not like you have a 2%chance of getting shot with a
bullet.
This is a virus.
So every infection increases theexposure for others, and it just
keeps going, and going, andgoing.
That's the real threat here.
And this is why the statisticsare dangerous to be quoted.
And you have a lot of"usefulidiots", because people just
(28:02):
take the final conclusion fromthe final statistic in
isolation.
And you can't do that, whenthere are correlating factors.
A pandemic by definition is notin isolation.
It's based on the interaction ofhumans and their proximity to
the virus and to each other,because that's how the virus is
spread.
So that's the whole concept ofherd immunity is that herd
immunity is, essentially, makingthe population immune, and
therefore reduce the exposure orthe transmission rate of the
virus.
So, you can either do thatthrough immunity, which is the
case in a lot of cases, or inthis case, where the jury is
still out there, we don't knowif you can be immune or if you
get infected again.
It seems to be from what we'reseeing, even though if you get
infected, it doesn't mean you'reimmune.
You can get it again, we don'tknow this.
I don't want to spread it falseinformation out there.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
But because again, this is a novel coronavirus,
emphasis on novel, we're stilllearning the data.
Five years down the road, we'llknow about this, because we'll
have all the data there in frontof us.
We can make a logicalconclusion, but right now we
can't– there's not enough dataout there.
And there are enough anecdotes,shall we say, to warrant a cause
(29:17):
of concern that, hey, immunityis not achievable.
Well, if immunity is notachievable and you want to
reduce the transmission rate,well, how are you going to do
that?
If immunity is off the table,then you do that through social
distancing and confinementprotocols.
So that's essentially is justthat dangerous, and the pitfalls
are in just blindly quotingstatistics without understanding
(29:42):
the hidden statistics, that thestatistic is derived from.
Jazz (29:45):
[ Music].
Henri (29:55):
So the second thing is...
Well, let me just take a detourhere.
One of the things that liketeach you to worry about in
military tactics, if you will,is the shooting to kill versus
shooting to maim.
And this was an issue that you'dsee in Iraq and Afghanistan,
that the insurgence would, insome cases, try not to kill the
(30:19):
American or NATO troops,coalition, troops, but was
trying to injure them.
This is not just some profoundthing, this is probably, I
don't, I don't think it's in SunTzu’s"The Art of War", but
essentially it is as old SunTzu, or, well, maybe not as old
as that, I don't know.
We probably can talk aboutmilitary story in here, because
the unique thing these days isthat military...
Is that modern Militaries, and Ican definitely speak about the
United States, is that we willdo almost anything to save our
own troops.
And that's the whole thing aboutthe US Air Force, PJs, the
Pararescuemen, is that othersmay live, and the whole, CSAR-
Combat Search and Rescue- isthat a...
And a lot of this came, I guess,from Vietnam and whatnot, is
that if someone is behind enemylines, or if they're trapped, or
you get shot down, I say thisfrom an Air Force perspective,
we will stop everything, all theoperations in that area, and go
and rescue the airman orsoldier, or whoever it is..
sailor or Marine.
And only after we rescue them,will we go back and recommence
operations.
And the enemy knows this, thatspecifically, and I'm talking
about the United States, butthis is true for a lot of other
militaries as well, is that ifone of our guys is down or
injured or anything like that,we're going to do whatever it
takes.
Even if it takes 10 guys orgals, whatever, I'm from New
York, so"guys" is a neutralterm.
So, yeah, even if it kills like10 guys, we're still going to,
we're going to get that one guythat is injured on the
battlefield.
(32:22):
So, the logic there is that ifyou really want to, again, not
strategically, but tactically,stop, the US troops, all you got
to do...
I'm going to say,"all you got todo" is kind of facetiously, but
all you got to do is injure oneof the soldiers and then the
rest of the unit is going tostop everything, they are doing
(32:44):
to try to get that injuredtroops out of there.
And while they're trying to getthat injured out of there, you
can go pick them off and startkilling them and everything like
that.
It is kind of a morbid thing,but hey, we are talking about
the pandemic, so, I guess, thetheme fits.
(33:04):
But the point here is that it'salmost...
I don't know how to phrase this,any way I phrase this is going
to come out bad.
But from the perspective of zeroemotion or zero tact, it's
almost better if the persondies, because then the unit is
not going stop, and they'regoing to continue with the
operation.
Of course, afterwards, they aregoing to come back and grab the
KIA.
But, uh, but the point is thatif they're injured, everything
stops to focus to get thatperson back to prevent the
death.
Whereas, if the person is dead,well, the dead, you can't make
them undead.
So, an effective tactic inmodern-day military, where
militaries, they try to,generally speaking, try to save
their own, is that even thoughit is an incredibly hard to do,
is not shoot to kill, but shootto maim, shoot to injure.
And it stops the operation inits tracks.
Okay.
So what does this have to dowith the pandemic?
Well here.
Again, one of the things that wetry to do here as the podcast,
(33:26):
is we're trying to not beingpoliticians, we're trying to be
statesman.
And the difference between apolitician and a statesman that
a politician, you know, theyobviously, they deal with
politics, where statement try tobe above that, above the
political fray and are trying todo what's best for the country,
which presumably is apolitical.
And in this case, forget aboutthe fact that the entire
(33:47):
pandemic has been politicized.
It's a fact now, you can't stopit.
The cat is already out of thebag, but the point here is what
matters for the country.
(34:17):
A minor detour.
One of the things I remember mygrandfather would say to me, is
that it's always good to studywar.
Because in war the humancondition boils away all
frivolities, so that you onlyfocus on the cold, hard
realities, boil away all thebullshit.
And what matters is...
All that matters is the cold,hard realities.
And not only the cold, hardrealities, that's what happens
in the war, but also soldiers,generals, people who are in the
profession of war, don't havethe luxury of dealing with
politics, because people's livesare on the line.
So, naturally, the best solutionor the best strategy is going to
(34:38):
naturally percolate up.
It may take a while and maycause lots of deaths, like it,
did in the World War II, theWorld War I, or you know, many
different wars, but eventuallythe best idea is going to come
up because war and the deaththat come with war- there is a
finality to it.
So, you can't really hide behindpolitical propaganda, because it
(34:59):
becomes very quickly evident.
Again, a classic examples isVietnam: they tried to
politicize it and say, oh no,everything's fine with Vietnam,
but then it became quicklyapparent everything was not fine
because that's just the gruesomenature of war.
And then only later did werealize that we had to do other
things to get out of Vietnam.
And those tactics became readilyapparent.
I don't know if this was in aHarvard business review or, if
(35:25):
it was in The Economist, but oneof those big newspapers and
magazines, I forget where itwas, but they were talking about
how a lot of business schoolsand executives are now focusing
on military strategy and aretaking lessons from there to
make business decisions.
Because economists andsociologists can say a lot of
(35:47):
bullshit, that sounds nice.
And you say, oh yeah, I'm goingto try that for my business, and
it may or may not work, becausethere are so many different
factors.
But because business doesn'thave the finality, that war has,
your guess is as good as minewhether that practice is going
to work.
But if you are studying war, themartial arts, if you will, not
like Bruce Lee martial, butmartial, as in military arts,
(36:09):
then because of the finality ofwar, the best practices that
come from the military canpresumably be used as best
practices in business.
I don't know if it was in thelate nineties, when everyone,
all these businessmen startedpicking up copies of Sun Tzu.
Now everyone has a copy of“TheArt of War”, even though no one
ever reads it.
(36:30):
It's kind of like Christianswith the Bible...
Anyway, I'm joking, I'm joking!And the point is, when you look
at the military or when you lookat things from a military
perspective, it is a good way ofboiling away, all the bullshit
and dealing with what reallymatters.
(37:01):
And the reason why I bring thatup is that, in the military I
made the analogy with the WorldWar I and how 2% of Americans
died.
I don't know what the deathrates are for Iraq or
Afghanistan or some of the otherrecent wars that happened.
Let's just not say you theUnited States, we can talk about
death rate of the French in Malior Ukrainians or Russians in, I
guess, Ukraine.
Or I guess if you're Russian,then you're saying Russians in
Russia.
But you look at those deathrates, and they are probably a
(37:25):
lot less than 2%, I'm assuming,I'm imagining, I don't know what
the actual numbers are.
But you can make the same thing,the same logic there.
If you leap to the conclusion,saying, oh, death rate in these
wars are so low.
Well, in that case, if you makea parallel with the pandemic,
well, in that case, we don'tneed body armor, we don't need
armored personnel carriers, wedon't need military security
around Forward Operating Bases,because death rate is so low.
(37:50):
Why"waste" all the money ontrying to protect soldiers from
a death scenario who'sprobability is so low, right?
It's only 2%, or less than 2%.
Why do that?
Now, of course, if I said that,or if a politician said that...
Imagine, if the president, Bidenor Trump, whoever, said that,
hey, you know what?
we're not going to give oursoldiers body armor or Armored
Personnel Carriers, orup-armored Humvees, because
death rate is so low, therewould be a massive riot going
on, right?
For obvious reasons.
Because while you can foolpeople with something like the
pandemic, or some other thinglike that, in war it becomes
painfully obvious that thestatistic might be accurate, but
the conclusion that you leap tois complete bullshit.
(38:41):
And what does this have to dowith shooting to injure, or
shooting to meme?
Well, the thing is, if we lookat the pandemic as a war where
we're fighting against thevirus, what people are focusing
on is the, is the death rate,which is, again, the analogy is
shoot the death.
But that's not the issue,because again, in my very cold,
nasty way of saying things, if asoldier dies, it's"not as bad
(39:02):
as, as being injured" in thatspecific scenario that I'm
talking about.
The injury is"worse" than thedeath, right, because it stops
everything, grinds everything toa halt.
Take that analogy back to theCOVID pandemic, and that's the
issue here.
The issue here is not thatpeople are dying.
People are not saying, oh, weneed to go to lockdown, because
people are dying.
The reason why we went to alockdown, or the reason why
(39:23):
we're taking all theseprecautions, is because that you
have patients going intohospitals, going to ICU.
And they're using the hospitalbeds for two weeks.
It's like the Ebola virus.
You know, if you go back to, uh,what was this?
Michael Crichton book?
Um, not Congo...
"The Hot Zone"! Yeah, that was"The Hot Zone", yeah, that was
(39:44):
it.
So, again, it's not like"The HotZone" Ebola virus, where, okay,
it has 90% mortality or whateverit was, but people die within
three days (39:52):
you come to a hospital and three days later
you are dead.
I don't remember how many daysit was, but the point is, it was
very short.
It was a super-fast virus, superdeadly, just killed people
immediately.
The thing is there, again, ifyou're looking at it from a cold
calculated perspective, thenyour hospital, I'm using air
quotes again, is"fine" in thesense that, okay, someone got
infected with Ebola, they werethere for three days, they died.
(40:15):
You do what you have to do withdisposing that body, but the
hospital bed is free.
With the coronavirus it'sdifferent.
It is not killing people, butinstead people are lingering in
the hospital for two weeks at atime, maybe even longer.
And there's only a limitednumber of ICU's.
It's kind of like, when I'mgoing back to the analogy of the
(40:36):
body armor or the up-armoredHumvees, up-armored Humvees are
very expensive.
The body armor is expensive.
The cost of equipping a soldierto preventing this, quote, 2%
death rate in a militaryoperation that we just
established that the presidentwould be hanged for, it costs a
lot of money to equip thesoldiers.
So, the more body armor that isbeing taken, the more Humvees
(40:59):
that are being taken, the lessHumvees to be used for other
things.
And if you were having moresoldiers coming into the
battlefield, that means you haveto spend more money for more
Humvees.
And when you're talking about avirus, the equivalent of the
soldiers are the people, who arebeing infected.
They are fighting off the virus.
And the Humvees here in thiscase are the ICU's.
Again, the point here is notthat people were dying, which...
(41:21):
of course that was a point, butin this specific conversation,
the point is not that peoplewere dying is that they were
taking up the hospital beds fortwo freaking weeks.
So, the hospitals physicallycouldn't handle the capacity.
There weren't enough Humvees.
There wasn't enough body armorto give to all the new"soldiers"
coming into the battlefield.
That was the issue.
That's why most statistics likeyou look in...
(41:42):
in Europe, that was also theinitial discussions with the CDC
before everything gotpoliticized, that was the
statistic that really mattered alot, was that, do we have the
healthcare system capacity todeal with the pandemic?
And in this case it was theICU's, the hospital beds.
The more people got infected...
Again, because they weren'tdying immediately or immediately
(42:04):
healing...
Like, if you have a cold, you'redone in three days.
If you have the Ebola, airquotes, you're"done" in three
days, you're dead.
The point here is being that thehospital beds are free for other
people to get a treatment forwhatever it is.
With COVID that's not the case.
You're there for two, maybethree weeks long and you're
taking up space.
And someone sneaky is going tobe, like, well, you know, who
(42:26):
cares?
Because again, at the end of theday, it's 2% death rate.
So I don't really care if thehospitals are being, uh, used
up, I'm young and healthy andyou know, I work out and I eat
properly.
So I'm not going to get COVIDwell, yeah.
Okay.
Well, that's fine.
Yeah, you're young and healthyand you do that, but you know,
maybe you ride a bike, amotorcycle or whatever.
Maybe you are just going towork, and,"Final Destination"
(42:48):
style, you get into a trafficaccident.
Because we do have statistics ontraffic accidents, and that is
really high.
And a lot of people get intotraffic accidents.
Or maybe you're working on yourhouse during the confinement and
you're on the ladder, and thenyou fall, your trip, and then
you break your ankle, orsomething like that.
Or you fall down on the rake andnow you need to go into the
(43:09):
hospital for a tetanus shot, orsomething like that, whatever,
whatever it is.
There's a kajillion differentways that we can get injured and
require emergency services.
And again, by your statisticthat you admit to that, hey,
only 2% die.
It's not a big deal.
But it has nothing to do withthe ICU occupation statistic.
(43:32):
So there you are coming in for anormally just a minor injury
that requires a hospital bed,it's minor but serious, so you
require medical help, medicalassistance.
But because all the beds arebeing taken, all of a sudden,
now you can't get to thetreatment that you need.
And if all of these ICU beds arebeing used up by COVID people,
(43:54):
now things that you shouldn'thave been dying to, now, all of
a sudden, you're dying to.
And these things are not beingreported because, technically,
this has nothing to do withCOVID.
You died from tetanus, youdidn't die from COVID.
But because these things arerelated, the seemingly unrelated
statistic of the COVID pandemicis directly affecting the
seemingly unrelated healthcaresituation of you getting bit by
(44:18):
your neighbor's dog andpotentially getting rabies.
And now, all of a sudden, whileyou should be surviving, because
you got bit by the dog, youwould just go and get your shot,
but now, all of a sudden, youcan't do that, because the beds
are being taken.
And now you've got rabies and,of course, rabies a hundred
percent mortality rate, so nowyou're dead.
When you shouldn't have beendead, but now you're dead.
That's the issue.
(44:40):
That's why we went down tolockdown.
That's why we've been takingthese thing seriously.
We have social distancing,because we didn't have the beds.
Our healthcare system physicallycouldn't handle the two to three
weeks that people were occupyingbeds.
And, so, to go back to the waranalogy, it's like, you're
putting more troops to thefrontline, sending more troops
to Iraq, but you're not givingthose new troops the body armor.
(45:03):
Or another cheeky comparison isWorld War II Stalingrad-"Enemy
at the Gates".
You got all your soldiers, butyou only have a certain number
of guns.
And now you're telling themsaying, well, you're going to go
out there without guns.
Anyone who dies, you're going topick up their gun, but otherwise
you just go in there, meat tothe grinder.
That may have worked for 1942Soviet union, but it's not going
to work for 2020 the UnitedStates.
People who take the pandemicseriously, rightfully say, oh,
(45:31):
well, it's not just about deathrate.
It's about taking care ofpeople, and death rate matters
because it's not 2%, it'sactually higher.
Or, oh, you're going to loseyour sense of smell, or you can
get pneumonia later on, andeverything.
Those are all, obviously, trueand well-meant arguments, but
it's not going to sway allthese, I'll call them, pandemic
deniers, or the people, the"useful idiots", who consume the
(45:54):
rhetoric of the pandemicdeniers.
But war has an amazing abilityto boil away all the bullshit.
And when you look at it and youjust look at and say, the
(46:15):
pandemic, regardless of allthose other things that you talk
about, it ties up our healthcaresystems.
So that even if you're not goingto die from COVID, now all of a
sudden your mortality rate forsomething that was originally
innocuous, now becomes deadly.
And that's a problem.
And it's not just hospital beds,because I know someone's going
to listen to this and I canalready see the angry comments,
(46:35):
saying things like, even if it'sa premature baby, well,
technically, they don't need theICU, they just need a, you know,
any old bed will do, orsomething like that.
Okay, fine, point taken.
But again, good faith argumenthere.
Listen to what I'm trying to sayhere.
Okay.
Maybe not the ICUs, but the factthat all the nurse staff are
taxed.
The doctors are taxed, because,we saw all the horror stories
about how people are working,ridiculous numbers of shifts,
(46:58):
and they are completely taxed.
They come home, cry because ofall the trauma that they've had
with dealing with all theseCOVID patients.
And they're still doing itnowadays.
And they're getting maybe fourhours of sleep and all, and then
you come, and you're dealingwith a doctor or a nurse, who
are completely burnt out fromall those, uh,“COVIDiots”, as
people like to say, who didn'ttake it seriously, and now they
(47:19):
do make a mistake, or they givethe wrong medication to you or
to your wife.
And all of a sudden they'redead.
Obviously, that's a reallydoomed scenario, but that's what
the seriousness of this pandemicis about.
It's not about the death, whichof course is serious, but that's
not the argument that's going tosway these pandemic deniers.
(47:40):
The issue is tying up thehealthcare system.
And we can have a separatediscussion about, oh, well, this
would have been a goodopportunity to talk about how we
should revamp our healthcaresystem and make it more
affordable.
Make the hospitals with highercapacity, mobilize the
healthcare infrastructure todeal with things in the future.
And that's a great, and it's amissed opportunity, that we
(48:01):
didn't deal with that.
And it's another thing, again,going back to that last week, we
were talking about this, howDemocrats are just complete
morons with their messaging.
Even now, when they're talkingabout trying to get Medicare for
all, they're not using thispandemic to make their case.
It's that they deal with theseother talking points that just
completely get shot down by thelikes of Fox news or Newsmax, or
whatever.
(48:21):
This would have been a goodconversation to have about
mobilizing the country.
Just like we did when wemobilized for the World War II
or for any of these other wars.
Because, again, war has adistinct ability to boil away
the bullshit.
And when at war, if you have tosend more troops in, you're
going to need to mobilize themand train and equip them, and
(48:43):
give them their body armor, orthe equipment that they need to
fight.
And the fact, the matter is,even forget about the patients.
The hospitals and the healthcarestaff- we didn't arm them with
the necessary tools that theyneeded to fight this pandemic.
That's why there was this wholebig thing with the masks.
And everyone likes to say, oh,well the CDC, they sold
(49:03):
conspiracy.
They could have told us maskshelp.
And then now they hid the factfrom us because, you know, they
needed the masks.
But yeah, but you know what?
Yeah, they do need the masks,because they are on the front
lines, fighting just like in awar.
You don't need body armor, whenyou're walking down the street,
even though we have the SecondAmendment and you want to carry
your AR-15 down the street, andthen you want to have your body
armor, because you want to lookcool.
(49:24):
Or like the police want to weartheir body armor, because they
think their local fellowcitizens are all potential armed
and dangerous criminals, whichis a topic for another podcast.
But the thing is, you don't needthem as you don't need the body
armor as much as the troops inIraq and Afghanistan, who are
actually, day in and day out,fighting and have a real, very
(49:45):
real threat of dying from theenemy actions.
Okay.
So, here's the thing.
We can talk about the masksituation.
And that's a big, really big petpeeve of mine.
But what really infuriates meabout this, is that the same
people who are the COVIDdeniers...
Let's just say, there's a giantoverlap, again, because of the
(50:06):
politicized nature of thispandemic, of people who are
super pro guns, super pro SecondAmendment, where it's like, you
have a right to bear arms andtanks and you know, missiles,
and they can do anything theywant.
They think it's the"Red Dawn",and the Democrats are the"Soviet
Mexicans".
Red Dawn, I forgot, I haven'twatched it in a long time, but,
I think, it was Mexico that wasunder the Soviet occupation,
(50:28):
right?
Anyway, the Soviet Mexicans arecoming and you're in Montana
with your gun.
And you single handily are goingto save the country, right?
This is ever Second Amendmentgun guy's dream.
What, do a lot of these gunpeople do?
They love to go on the internetand see pictures of people with
(50:49):
guns.
And what is something, that theyalways like to derisively talk
about?
Oh, the guy doesn't have triggerdiscipline.
He doesn't have muzzlediscipline.
You're always supposed to haveyour index finger on the side of
the gun.
You should never have it on yourtrigger.
You should never pointed atanyone.
And they like to make a big showof taking pictures with their
AR-15s, walking down publicstreets, terrorizing their
(51:09):
fellow citizen, but they haveit.
They're carrying it.
They're not pointing at anyone,because they have the muzzle
discipline.
They like to show the picturesof their index finger extended
because, hey, look, I gottriggered discipline, right?
Well, excuse me.
Why do we have muzzle disciplineand trigger discipline, it's an
unloaded gun, right?
(51:30):
So the death rate from anunloaded gun is like practically
0%.
What are you worried about it?
You can point the gun at whoeverthe hell you want, brandishing
laws aside, but you can pointthe muzzle anywhere you want.
You can put your index finger onthe trigger all you want, click
it all you want it, because whocares?
It's an unloaded gun.
That's...
who cares about it?
And everyone likes to make abig, giant deal about this.
(51:50):
And any time they see someonewho doesn't have trigger
discipline, immediately,everyone vultures to the
carrion, oh, the guy does nothave the trigger discipline! The
guy doesn't have triggerdiscipline, but why is that such
a big deal?
Because it's not that theoverall statistical of unloaded
gun means the death rate is solow.
It's the fact that there's apotential for death.
And even if there's a 0.001%chance of death, the outcome,
which is death, is prettydrastic, right?
It's not like a 0.001% chancethat you're going to get an
upset stomach.
But the fact that the outcome isdeath, that's a huge thing.
And that's why we have triggerdiscipline and muzzle
discipline.
Well, take that same logic tothe pandemic.
(52:34):
The outcome here that we'retalking about is death.
It's people's lives.
It's a pandemic, it is a virus.
And you're here, making a bigdeal about muzzle or triggered
discipline.
Yet you won't even wear a mask.
What do you think a mask is?
When, again, going back to theanalogy of military, where
military scenarios boil away thebullshit, putting a mask on...
that's another statistics issaying, oh, masks are only 10%
(52:57):
effective and blah, blah, blah,who cares?
Just like with your triggerdiscipline, you put a mask on
just in case.
It is not going to preventeverything.
Your mask is basically yourmuzzle discipline, where in this
case in a pandemic of anairborne virus...
or, I guess, someone is going tosay, well, actually, it's not
airborne, it's on waterdroplets, but you understand
what I'm saying.
The point is, when we aretalking about an airborne virus,
(53:20):
the muzzle is essentially yourmouth and your nose.
Your mouth and your nose areshooting out viruses, viral
particles, just like a gun canshoot out bullets.
And even with the gun, you know,you've checked it, it's cleared
and it's empty.
The magazine is empty.
But even though that's the caseand you know it, you verified
it, you still have the muzzlediscipline, because that's the
(53:43):
right thing to do.
And if you are serious aboutguns, this is ingrained to you
from your very first lesson thatyou do this.
You treat every gun, like it'sloaded, right?
That's the same.
Well, it is the same case withthe pandemic: treat every person
like they're infected.
And if you practice muzzlediscipline with a gun, you
should practice"muzzle"discipline with your mouth.
(54:04):
And in that case, you wear amask, just like you would you
have the muzzle discipline witha gun.
When you don't do that, when youjust take...
When you try to politicize thisand say, oh, well, I don't care
about this, I'm not gonna wearmy mask, because, screw you
guys! And it's only 10%effective.
Well, you know what you are?
You're just faux American.
Just like you are cosplayingbeing a soldier by acting all
(54:25):
tough with your body armor andyour AR-15 down the street, you
are cosplaying as an American,when you don't put the mask on.
Because you don't care aboutyour fellow citizens.
Because if you did, you wouldput the mask on, because of the
offhand chance, that you do havethe virus.
Even though it is 10% effectivefrom preventing your infection,
(54:46):
it's not about you.
It's about making sure that noone else gets hurt.
And that's exactly what theyteach you from day one, when you
handle a gun.
If you would like to comment onthis podcast or on the topics
covered within it, or you'd likeus to raise a new topic in our
(55:07):
next episode, please feel freeto leave us a message or a
voicemail on www.codbsm.com.
That's Charlie Oscar, Delta,Bravo, Sierra, Mike dot com.
Thank you for listening and seeyou at the party, Richter!
Jazz (55:20):
[ Music].
All these businessmen started picking up copies of Sun
Tzu.
Now, everyone has a copy of“TheArt of War”, and no one ever
(00:26):
reads it.
It's kind of like Christianswith the Bible...
I'm joking, joking, I'm joking!Welcome to Come On! Don't
Bullshit Me! Where we peel awaythe messaging of the talking
heads to get to the crux oftoday's issues.
(00:55):
There's an old expression thatthere is lies, damn lies, and
statistics.
People are lying withstatistics.
And the final statistics thatpeople like to throw out has
underlying hidden statisticsthat it derives itself from.
The big thing that they'retrying to say is that, oh, COVID
is not a big deal, so weshouldn't really worry about it.
(01:16):
And that's where a lot of hateis coming from.
They come around saying that,oh, it only really kills 2% of
people, and even still, it onlyaffects people who are older, or
sick, or have comorbidities...
That is a new buzzword.
No one knew what the word“morbidity” was, but now
everyone seems to be an Englishexpert.
So they say, oh, yeah, you havecomorbidities.
(01:37):
And they say that if you arehealthy and young, then you
don't have anything to worryabout, and that we should just
open everything back up and notworry about anything.
They say COVID is overblown,it's a hoax, because death rate
is so low.
And people like to pull outstatistics and say,“Oh, look at
the CDC data or WHO data!” Andpeople are already
(02:01):
mathematically illiterate as itis, but then when you arm them
with a little bit ofknowledge...
or it's not even knowledge, it'sinformation because they don't
really apply it.
Knowledge is the application ofinformation.
But you give them a little bitinformation, and then they know
enough to be dangerous, so theyquote...
I don't want to say"bogusstatistics”, because the
(02:22):
statistics on the surface arecorrect, but the statistics is
used in bad faith.
Actually, I shouldn't even saythat, because again, like I
said, they are mathematicallyilliterate, so they think they
are applying the statistics in agood faith way, but because
they're mathematically literate,they leap to conclusions that
(02:44):
are erroneous at best maliciousat worst.
Okay.
So, first off, those statisticsare only available, if the
government in question isactually taking good statistics.
Obviously, the big offenders areChina, Russia, India, and
Turkey.
Maybe because they don't havethe means to take those
statistics, presumably like itwas in the case of India; or
(03:05):
they are willfully obfuscatingthe statistics, like it was,
allegedly, in the case of Russiaand China.
And there are a lot ofenterprising reporters who said,
okay, I'm going to ignore theCOVID death rates given by the
sovereign nations, that arebeing reported, and instead I'm
(03:25):
going to look at theirequivalent of the bureau or
office of vital statistics, orwhatever it is, and basically
look at the excess deaths.
Because you can make areasonable assumption that, if
you look at all the excessdeaths of 2020 versus other
years, you can probablyattribute those to the pandemic,
because that's the only thingthat really changed.
(03:47):
And then the death rates wereenormously higher.
But, of course, since we areonly following the News outlets,
rightfully so, we can onlyreally quote the statistics from
the WHO, as that is what isbeing reported.
And I am sure some couple ofyears down the road there is
going to be Math Masters or PhDcandidates who are going to be
(04:07):
taking these statistics, andthey will produce a whole bunch
of interesting papers on this.
On how governments gated theactual death toll on the
pandemic.
When everything is all said anddone.
Hopefully, this thing will dieout and we are not going to live
with this.
(04:33):
The 2% statistics that peoplequote is an American statistic,
so, it comes from the CDC.
And you can say, okay, theUnited States is pretty good and
is being open and transparentaround statistics.
But as the pandemic wasunfolding, not to get political
on this, it just happens to bepolitical, a lot of the
right-wing governors, or theright-wing state governments,
were under-reporting, falsereporting, you name it, whatever
type thing they were doing, toobfuscate their own State's
death results.
And all the CDC can do is reallyto just compile the States'
results to a Federal level.
(04:54):
So, if the States’ results areobfuscated, then, obviously,
whatever is reported at the endby the CDC is also going to be
obfuscated.
But that is just a minor thing,because, good faith argument, we
understand the point of whatpeople are trying to say.
I don't want to be like, oh, itwas not 2%, it was more like
3.6%.
The point is what they're tryingto say, I get it, I understand:
(05:17):
the final death toll, which iswhat seems to be the main issue,
in their eyes was relativelylow, and it didn’t justify the
confinement or social shutdownthat was warranted in 2020.
That's what they argue.
Jazz (05:34):
[ Music]
Henri (05:44):
The classic thing that people like to quote is, oh, did
you know that more people die tocows than they do to shark
attacks?
And everyone thinks that this issuch a profound thing.
Like, oh my God, cows are somuch more dangerous than sharks!
And it probably started off witha well-intentioned meaning,
because there was that wholething where"Jaws", the movie,
(06:05):
put a fear into people aboutsharks.
And it was a disproportionatefear, because prior to that
movie sharks weren't reallyfeared by humans.
But after the movie, all of asudden, everyone was scared of
sharks.
And then the shark attacksstarted becoming more known
because it was reported more.
Like, oh my God, it's anothershark attack! And then now, of
(06:26):
course, we can't really separatethe two things and we have this,
I do not want to say irrational,but we have this heightened fear
of sharks.
And then you had statistic,which, again, may have started
well-meaning, I don't know whereit came from.
But people used it to say, oh,look, you really shouldn't worry
about sharks so much because,look, more people die from cows,
(06:46):
than they do from sharks.
While on the surface, that'strue, the point is that humans
interact more with cows, thanthey do with sharks.
If you have 7 billion people inthe world, and we all live on...
ok, 99.999% of us live on land,with the occasional scuba
(07:11):
divers.
So, essentially, almost all ofus live exclusively on land.
So, obviously we are going to beencountering land animals more
than we are going to beencountering the marine animals.
(07:36):
So, mow I'm just throwing thiscompletely wrong statistic,
let's say, sharks are 25%dangerous, whereas cows are
0.01% dangerous.
Well, if you take 7 billionpeople and then multiply it by
that point one percent, that rawnumber is going to be a lot
larger than a hundred people...
or, let's say, a thousand peopleat one time encountering sharks
at 25% rate.
So, that raw number of peopledealing with the cows is going
to be a lot larger than the rawnumber of people encountering
(08:03):
sharks.
So, obviously when you comparethe raw numbers at the end, you
are going to be like, oh yeah,look, cows are more dangerous
than the sharks, when inreality, no.
Because sharks are moredangerous than cows.
It's just that we don't interactwith sharks so much.
And that's why that number isthere.
So that profound statement hastwo hidden statistics
underneath, that it is derivedfrom.
(08:25):
One is the dangerousness of theanimal in question, and two
being the exposure rate of thehumans to that specific species.
And the similar thing is goingon with COVID: the underlying
statistic is right, but thestatistics only talk about
things in the past.
They don't talk about things inthe future and people will say,
(08:47):
oh well, yeah, but you can usestatistics to predict the
future.
Well, yes and no.
It's kind of like the gambler'sfallacy: if you bet on a Russian
roulette..
excuse me, not a Russianroulette, you bet on roulette at
the roulette table, and theroulette hits red five times,
you're like, oh, I'm going toput all my money on black
(09:09):
because it's due! It's bound tobe black because it hit red five
times before.
Because you think the statisticspredict what will be next.
But no, that's actually nottrue.
The probability of hittingblack, minus the double zeros,
is, basically, 50%.
So, you still have a 50% chanceof hitting red versus black.
Again, ignoring the zeros for asecond.
You can't just say, oh, well,because the roulette table hit
red five times before, it isgoing to be black this next
turn.
And it's the same thing appliesto sharks versus cows.
(09:46):
We talked about the attributionerror of exposure to sharks
versus exposure to cows.
But that only talks about thepast.
Now, if all of a sudden, let'sjust say, we get into a Kevin
Costner“Waterworld” situation,and now everyone is living in
the ocean, you can't be like,oh, well, the statistics say
cows are more dangerous than thesharks, so should not worry
(10:07):
about it.
Well, no, actually you reallyshould worry about it, because
now all humans are living in theocean, so our exposure now is
way more towards sharks than itis to cattle.
Because we stated that theunderlying made up dangerousness
rate of sharks was 25% asopposed to 0.01% for cows.
So, the raw numbers now aregoing to be much higher for
sharks, because not only is thedeath rate against sharks is
higher, but the humanity'sexposure to sharks is higher,
because now everyone is livingin the Kevin Costner
“Waterworld”.
Just like in the cattle versussharks situation, you have
(10:46):
hidden underlying statisticsfrom which that COVID 2% comes
from.
That statistic comes from awhole bunch of different
factors.
First off, we have to remember,that that 2% statistic comes
from the situation of 2020,which was, essentially, the year
(11:06):
of the lockdown.
It's like, you're rolling a50-sided die, and your chances
of rolling a one is 2%.
If I gave you a 50-sided die andsaid, hey, you're going to walk
away,easy-peasy-nothing-happens, if
you roll between a two and a 50;but if you roll a one, then you
are going to get shot in theface by a guy in a PlayStation
(11:26):
mask.
But that's still an isolatedcase, because you are rolling
the die once, and that's it.
There's nothing else.
The game ends right there.
It starts there and ends there.
Boom, done! But when we aretalking a pandemic, it is a
different situation, because abullet is not contagious.
If you get shot, there is not arisk that someone else is going
(11:48):
to get shot after the fact thatyou got shot.
Whereas the virus, once itinfects someone, then it can
affect others, and on and on andon.
And that's how pandemics happen,right?
So when we are talking aboutvirology, or epidemics, or, in
this case, a pandemic, the thingis, you can't take the
statistics in isolation becauseevery person that gets infected,
(12:08):
further increases your chance ofgetting infected.
And what was the big thing thathappened in 2020?
Oh yeah.
That's right, the entire world,essentially, went on a lockdown.
Well, that naturally was goingto reduce the death rate of the
virus, because less people wereinteracting with each other.
Again, it is kind of like theshark situation: the COVID virus
itself is dangerous, just likethe shark is, but because we
(12:30):
were in a lockdown, becausewe've been socially distancing,
because we've been wearingmasks, because we've been taking
these public safety precautions,our exposure rate dropped.
So, therefore, naturally, theend statistic, was going to drop
and it became that 2% deathrate.
And then there were anotherfact: in the beginning of the
pandemic we didn't know whatthat virus was.
(12:50):
It is called a novelcoronavirus, because it was a
new thing.
So we didn't know how to dealwith it.
And naturally, as the hospitalsstarted dealing with it, gained
more experience with that virus,their triage methods improved
and the way they took care ofpatients improved.
For example, one of the thingsthat they like to cite news is
that we learned, that youshouldn't lay people on their
(13:13):
back, but you should lay themdown on their stomach instead,
and that'll help the patientsget more air in and, apparently,
improve their survivabilitychance.
And, obviously, it's a very goodthing.
But when you're talking aboutthe statistics, it is, an air
quote, a"bad" thing.
I'm using air quotes again here,because now your presumed death
rate is going to be lowered notbecause the virus, all of a
sudden, became less of a threat,but because human ingenuity
figured out a way to deal withit.
(13:33):
So, there's that.
That by us being able to dealwith the virus in a better
capacity, we effectively reducedthe death rate, which is,
(13:55):
obviously, a good thing forhumanity.
But when you are trying to bedismissive and are flipping
about the pandemic in general,it becomes a different story.
Because not everyone is going tohave access to knowledgeable
healthcare staff.
Because, maybe, you are in adifferent country, or you are in
a different area, where theseCOVID best practices haven't
(14:17):
been disseminated to yet, andthey just legitimately don't
know.
Now, all of a sudden, you'redealing with that and then
you're going to be lying on yourback in this specific case.
And now your probability ofdeath is going to be higher than
it is for the rest of theinformed population.
And the response to the pandemichas become needlessly
politicized to the point whereyou cannot have an honest
(14:38):
conversation about the potentialramifications of this virus.
There are a lot of these alienmovies.
We like to talk about howeveryone's fighting each other
and how humans have wars, but…If you remember, in"Independence
Day" movie the aliens came andall of a sudden, everyone banded
together to face the commonthreat.
Chinese, Russians, Americans–all fought together.
(15:01):
And Bill Pullman had that famous– greatest movie cinematic
president by far, even betterthan Harrison Ford in the the
"Air Force One", which is sayingsomething, because Harrison Ford
was awesome in"Air Force One",but anyway, Bill Pullman– the
greatest cinematic presidentever, and then you also had
those scenes of the Arabmilitary working with the IDF,
and everyone came together toface the common thread of those
aliens.
And, yeah, that's awesome...
Well, now what we saw in thispandemic, is that was not the
(15:33):
case.
That even when we have anexternal threat, like the virus,
when this was an opportunity foreveryone to band together,
because the virus does notdiscriminate, whether you're a
leftist or rightist, whetheryou're a communist or
capitalist, whether you're aChristian or a Muslim, the virus
affects everyone.
It doesn't care.
(15:53):
So you'd think that, okay, weshould band together,
apolitically, and fight thispandemic.
But instead...
Maybe this was because thepandemic in most people's eyes
wasn't as, quote,“bad” as theythought it was going to be, so
they were able to afford to makethis a political issue.
And it did become a politicalissue.
(16:20):
But what was surprising, wasthat it became a political issue
in a way that was the oppositeof what you would think it would
be.
Because you would think, okay,well, the Republicans are in
charge, Donald Trump is incharge.
Again, I'm talking from anAmerican perspective, and a lot
of it comes from the fact thatthe US perspective dominated the
media and it was spread to theother parts of the world.
(16:41):
Which is a separate topic initself.
But again, the point here is,we're focusing on the American
perspective.
The American perspective is (16:45):
you have a Republican in charge,
Donald Trump.
This is a perfect chance for himto rally the nation together,
like George W.
Bush did after 9/11, and say,hey, we got this pandemic, this
virus, it is affecting us all,so we need to band together and
come together and fight thisthing.
And then you would have theDemocrats, who, being the
minority power, they would belike, oh my God, you bungled
this whole thing, and people aredying, and you suck, and
politicize it that way, right?
Or saying like, oh, you aremaking all these draconian
policies here, and the measuresyou are taking are inadequate
and ill advised; and therefore,we're going to politicize,
maybe, not the virus, but we aregoing to politicize the response
to the pandemic.
And of course, the response waspoliticized, but it was
politicized in the opposite way: It was the Democrats, the Left (16:57):
undefined
Wing, that was saying, hey, wegot to come together and fight
this thing, because it affectsus all.
And the Right Wing was the onesaying, oh no, this is
ridiculous, it's a hoax.
We're not going to take thisthing seriously, and Democrats,
you, guys, are all full of shit.
So, it is disappointing, that wedidn't have our"Independence
(17:41):
Day" moment, where we would allband together.
But it was also disappointing inthe sense that it did become
politicized, but it becamepoliticized in the opposite way
that you would think it wouldhave been politicized, which
shows how completely bizarre isthe timeline that we're living
in.
You can't be prudent aboutwearing a mask, where if you're
(18:11):
right-wing, you can't wear amask, because if you wear a mask
than, all of a sudden, it meansthat you are a Democrat.
And because of the power of theAmerican media, even in Europe
it is associated, that if you'renot wearing a mask, that's now
like a calling card to say, hey,look, I'm a right-wing
conservative.
It's like your badge of honor.
Which is completely ridiculouson the surface, but,
unfortunately, the battle lineshave been drawn up by media.
Predominantly, by social media,but just media in general.
And this is just another way todivide the population.
I guess, this is prettyAmerican-centric, because if you
look at the authoritarianregimes, like Russia or China,
the government is pretty firm.
Or, maybe I should not say this,because that's not really fair:
the government of the UnitedStates is also firm in saying
that we should be taking itseriously.
But the point there is that incountries like Russia and China,
they essentially speak with onevoice and they are dealing with
misinformation with a laserfocus.
Whereas here in the UnitedStates, even though we have the
executive branch saying, yes, weshould take the pandemic
seriously, you have people onthe right, who are predominantly
within the legislative branch,who are muddying the waters
deliberately.
(19:26):
And that's only exacerbated bythe right wing media apparatus,
slash, social media.
Now, we can talk about socialmedia some other time, but the
whole point is that social mediawant to drive engagement numbers
to increase their revenuestreams.
And controversy and people beingdivisive, people being angry
with each other, is profitableto them.
(19:48):
So there's an incentive to keepthis type of lie going.
And of course, as they say inthe old KGB manual, you have a
lot of"useful idiots" where themedia can just drop a little
nugget like, oh, COVID is only2% death, and then these"useful
idiots", which are just thepeople who consume that media…
(20:09):
Note that I say"media", not"news", because they are not
news.
There has even been court caseson this, where they themselves
say, oh no, you can't sue us,because we're not news, we're
entertainment, but yet, theystill lie and say that they're
news to the public.
Anyway, that's besides thepoint.
But so, they drop these littlenuggets of, quote,"statistics".
Again, they're not bogusstatistics, but the conclusion
(20:32):
that you leap to from these....
Again, it's not bullshitstatistics, it's true statistic,
but the conclusion that you leapto is bullshit.
So, they drop that kind of likea pebble into a pond, and then
you have the"useful idiots"...
I'm not calling them idiots, butit's just a term that was used
in those spy manuals.
And then it takes a life of itsown, kind of like the ripple
effect in a pond (20:53):
after you drop a stone.
You can just drop a stone andwalk away, seconds later, the
lake is still disruptive withwaves and ripples.
(21:19):
The point here is that the finalstatistic that people like to
throw out there, like thatpebble into a pond, is that that
statistic has underlying hiddenstatistics that it derives
itself from.
And those are equally, if notmore important than the final
statistic, because it is notjust the final statistic that
matters, but it is the nature ofhow that statistic came about,
which should dictate publicpolicy.
In a news report it's fine toreport the final statistic, but
when you're doing public policy,it's not just about, what is
(21:40):
happening.
You have to understand why it ishappening too, and then reduce
those effects.
(22:10):
You know what another great 2%statistic is?
Only 2% of American militarytroops died in World War I.
So, in that case World War I wasnot a big issue.
Why is there this thing, that,oh my God, it was the war to end
all wars, and it was such abloody war, such a disaster?
For the United States it wasonly 2% death.
Obviously, you can see howridiculous of a statement that
is to say that World War I wasnot a big deal.
Because, first off, the UnitedStates entered World War I
pretty much at the end– in thefourth quarter– to face a
depleted German military, wheretheir will to fight and the
effectiveness of their martialcapability were severely
diminished.
And the US provided the muchneeded resources to the Allies
to get through the hump, so thatthey could continue carrying on
(22:34):
with the fight.
And the deaths weren't just theUnited States, but it was also
France, UK, and well, I guessRussia was already out because
of the Bolshevik revolution, butagain, the point here is that...
you had that...
And oh, by the way, the lastyear of the war was the advent
of tank warfare, which did a bigpart in ending the war, because
(22:54):
now you could use tanks to getover the trenches and you didn't
have infantry getting mowed downby the machine gun fire.
So there were a lot ofunderlying things that happened,
which contributed to that finalstatistic of only 2% of American
military dying in World War I.
If you're telling me, oh, theCOVID death rates are only 2%,
it's not a big deal and weshouldn't worry about it, by
that same logic I could say, oh,well, in that case, World War I
wasn't a big deal, and weshouldn't worry about it because
only 2% of the military died,so, who cares?
But you can see how comical thatstatement would be.
Another aspect of it is that the2% is based on the overall
(23:35):
population.
Well, that population is dividedamongst a whole gamut of age
groups.
And if it is presumed to be thatthe COVID virus is more
dangerous to the elder than itis to young people, then that
younger population is going tocontribute to an overall lower
(23:57):
death rate to the society, thanone that is older, right?
So all things being equal, andthis is important, all things
being equal, because it's not.
But all things being equal, thedeath rate for, you know,
Nigerians, for example, would beexpected to be much lower than
it would be for Japan, forexample.
And that is because Japan has amuch larger proportion of
elderly in their population,whereas Nigeria is a relatively
young country.
But again, all things beingequal.
And it's important to understandit, because that is the only
really proper way that you cancompare statistics to each
other (24:05):
if you isolate one variable.
When you mix and mash a wholebunch of different things, then
you don't really know.
And it's kind of only God knowswhat's the actual causation is.
So, in this case, that part ofthat 2% number comes from the
fact that that most of theirpopulation is young.
So it naturally reduces thedeath rate, but still that
doesn't change the fact that thedeath rate is higher for the
elderly.
(24:55):
And these are just the thingsthat we already know.
But then again, thejustification there is that
people say, like, well, yeah,it's high, but it doesn't re
really warrant shutting down theeconomy.
And okay, well, fine, we'll letthe old people sit home and be
(25:19):
confined, whereas young peoplecan go out and do things, right?
Well, there are several thingswrong with that.
First off...
I always remember when I waslittle, my parents, my
grandparents, uncles, aunts,they would say, the problem with
your generation is that you,guys, don't care about the
elderly, you don't respect yourelders.
Right?
Everything, me, me, me, selfish,selfish, selfish.
(25:40):
And we show respect to ourelders, and you, guys, don't.
Well, now here we are.
We have this pandemic that, byyour own admission, doesn't
affect us, but it affects you,guys.
And we're the ones trying toprotect the country, protect
you, guys by having thisconfinement and lockdown.
And you, guys, are the ones tosay, oh no, screw everyone, go
out there and do not beconfined, right?
Well, what were all thosecomments, all that lip service
that you were giving us abouthow this generation doesn't
respect its elders?
So, that's one thing.
But more importantly, is that,again, when we are talking about
(26:18):
a virus, a pandemic, it is not abullet, it is not a throw of
dice.
Things do not happen inisolation.
If people are out there notbeing confined, this virus is
spreading around and goingaround with them.
Even if the death rate is low,people are still catching the
virus.
And when they come back home orwhen they do interact with the
elderly, well, now you have abigger chance, higher chance of
exposure to someone who a youngperson who is infected.
They may be asymptomatic,because as you like to say all
the time, the 98% of youngpeople are going to survive, so
it's no big deal.
Well, it's no big deal to them,but for you, it's a big deal,
because you're elderly and yourdeath rate is, supposedly, a lot
higher.
So, going back to the sharksversus cattle, if you are
talking about, oh, well I nevergo out to the sea, so I'm not
going to worry about sharks.
Now, all of a sudden, youretired, you went down to a
Ibiza or whatever, and now youare basically living by the
ocean all the time.
Well, maybe I shouldn't sayIbiza, because that's
Mediterranean, and sharks,aren't really in Mediterranean.
Anyway, you get the point.
It is that your exposure rate tosharks now, all of a sudden, is
much higher.
So your death rate is going tobe potentially higher.
And this is a cause for concern.
(27:19):
We shouldn't be taking thingslightly, because, oh, the
mortality rate for COVID is only2%.
(27:39):
There are underlying factorsthat contribute to that.
It's not in isolation.
This is not like you have a 2%chance of getting shot with a
bullet.
This is a virus.
So every infection increases theexposure for others, and it just
keeps going, and going, andgoing.
That's the real threat here.
And this is why the statisticsare dangerous to be quoted.
And you have a lot of"usefulidiots", because people just
(28:02):
take the final conclusion fromthe final statistic in
isolation.
And you can't do that, whenthere are correlating factors.
A pandemic by definition is notin isolation.
It's based on the interaction ofhumans and their proximity to
the virus and to each other,because that's how the virus is
spread.
So that's the whole concept ofherd immunity is that herd
immunity is, essentially, makingthe population immune, and
therefore reduce the exposure orthe transmission rate of the
virus.
So, you can either do thatthrough immunity, which is the
case in a lot of cases, or inthis case, where the jury is
still out there, we don't knowif you can be immune or if you
get infected again.
It seems to be from what we'reseeing, even though if you get
infected, it doesn't mean you'reimmune.
You can get it again, we don'tknow this.
I don't want to spread it falseinformation out there.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
But because again, this is a novel coronavirus,
emphasis on novel, we're stilllearning the data.
Five years down the road, we'llknow about this, because we'll
have all the data there in frontof us.
We can make a logicalconclusion, but right now we
can't– there's not enough dataout there.
And there are enough anecdotes,shall we say, to warrant a cause
(29:17):
of concern that, hey, immunityis not achievable.
Well, if immunity is notachievable and you want to
reduce the transmission rate,well, how are you going to do
that?
If immunity is off the table,then you do that through social
distancing and confinementprotocols.
So that's essentially is justthat dangerous, and the pitfalls
are in just blindly quotingstatistics without understanding
(29:42):
the hidden statistics, that thestatistic is derived from.
Jazz (29:45):
[ Music].
Henri (29:55):
So the second thing is...
Well, let me just take a detourhere.
One of the things that liketeach you to worry about in
military tactics, if you will,is the shooting to kill versus
shooting to maim.
And this was an issue that you'dsee in Iraq and Afghanistan,
that the insurgence would, insome cases, try not to kill the
(30:19):
American or NATO troops,coalition, troops, but was
trying to injure them.
This is not just some profoundthing, this is probably, I
don't, I don't think it's in SunTzu’s"The Art of War", but
essentially it is as old SunTzu, or, well, maybe not as old
as that, I don't know.
We probably can talk aboutmilitary story in here, because
the unique thing these days isthat military...
Is that modern Militaries, and Ican definitely speak about the
United States, is that we willdo almost anything to save our
own troops.
And that's the whole thing aboutthe US Air Force, PJs, the
Pararescuemen, is that othersmay live, and the whole, CSAR-
Combat Search and Rescue- isthat a...
And a lot of this came, I guess,from Vietnam and whatnot, is
that if someone is behind enemylines, or if they're trapped, or
you get shot down, I say thisfrom an Air Force perspective,
we will stop everything, all theoperations in that area, and go
and rescue the airman orsoldier, or whoever it is..
sailor or Marine.
And only after we rescue them,will we go back and recommence
operations.
And the enemy knows this, thatspecifically, and I'm talking
about the United States, butthis is true for a lot of other
militaries as well, is that ifone of our guys is down or
injured or anything like that,we're going to do whatever it
takes.
Even if it takes 10 guys orgals, whatever, I'm from New
York, so"guys" is a neutralterm.
So, yeah, even if it kills like10 guys, we're still going to,
we're going to get that one guythat is injured on the
battlefield.
(32:22):
So, the logic there is that ifyou really want to, again, not
strategically, but tactically,stop, the US troops, all you got
to do...
I'm going to say,"all you got todo" is kind of facetiously, but
all you got to do is injure oneof the soldiers and then the
rest of the unit is going tostop everything, they are doing
(32:44):
to try to get that injuredtroops out of there.
And while they're trying to getthat injured out of there, you
can go pick them off and startkilling them and everything like
that.
It is kind of a morbid thing,but hey, we are talking about
the pandemic, so, I guess, thetheme fits.
(33:04):
But the point here is that it'salmost...
I don't know how to phrase this,any way I phrase this is going
to come out bad.
But from the perspective of zeroemotion or zero tact, it's
almost better if the persondies, because then the unit is
not going stop, and they'regoing to continue with the
operation.
Of course, afterwards, they aregoing to come back and grab the
KIA.
But, uh, but the point is thatif they're injured, everything
stops to focus to get thatperson back to prevent the
death.
Whereas, if the person is dead,well, the dead, you can't make
them undead.
So, an effective tactic inmodern-day military, where
militaries, they try to,generally speaking, try to save
their own, is that even thoughit is an incredibly hard to do,
is not shoot to kill, but shootto maim, shoot to injure.
And it stops the operation inits tracks.
Okay.
So what does this have to dowith the pandemic?
Well here.
Again, one of the things that wetry to do here as the podcast,
(33:26):
is we're trying to not beingpoliticians, we're trying to be
statesman.
And the difference between apolitician and a statesman that
a politician, you know, theyobviously, they deal with
politics, where statement try tobe above that, above the
political fray and are trying todo what's best for the country,
which presumably is apolitical.
And in this case, forget aboutthe fact that the entire
(33:47):
pandemic has been politicized.
It's a fact now, you can't stopit.
The cat is already out of thebag, but the point here is what
matters for the country.
(34:17):
A minor detour.
One of the things I remember mygrandfather would say to me, is
that it's always good to studywar.
Because in war the humancondition boils away all
frivolities, so that you onlyfocus on the cold, hard
realities, boil away all thebullshit.
And what matters is...
All that matters is the cold,hard realities.
And not only the cold, hardrealities, that's what happens
in the war, but also soldiers,generals, people who are in the
profession of war, don't havethe luxury of dealing with
politics, because people's livesare on the line.
So, naturally, the best solutionor the best strategy is going to
(34:38):
naturally percolate up.
It may take a while and maycause lots of deaths, like it,
did in the World War II, theWorld War I, or you know, many
different wars, but eventuallythe best idea is going to come
up because war and the deaththat come with war- there is a
finality to it.
So, you can't really hide behindpolitical propaganda, because it
(34:59):
becomes very quickly evident.
Again, a classic examples isVietnam: they tried to
politicize it and say, oh no,everything's fine with Vietnam,
but then it became quicklyapparent everything was not fine
because that's just the gruesomenature of war.
And then only later did werealize that we had to do other
things to get out of Vietnam.
And those tactics became readilyapparent.
I don't know if this was in aHarvard business review or, if
(35:25):
it was in The Economist, but oneof those big newspapers and
magazines, I forget where itwas, but they were talking about
how a lot of business schoolsand executives are now focusing
on military strategy and aretaking lessons from there to
make business decisions.
Because economists andsociologists can say a lot of
(35:47):
bullshit, that sounds nice.
And you say, oh yeah, I'm goingto try that for my business, and
it may or may not work, becausethere are so many different
factors.
But because business doesn'thave the finality, that war has,
your guess is as good as minewhether that practice is going
to work.
But if you are studying war, themartial arts, if you will, not
like Bruce Lee martial, butmartial, as in military arts,
(36:09):
then because of the finality ofwar, the best practices that
come from the military canpresumably be used as best
practices in business.
I don't know if it was in thelate nineties, when everyone,
all these businessmen startedpicking up copies of Sun Tzu.
Now everyone has a copy of“TheArt of War”, even though no one
ever reads it.
(36:30):
It's kind of like Christianswith the Bible...
Anyway, I'm joking, I'm joking!And the point is, when you look
at the military or when you lookat things from a military
perspective, it is a good way ofboiling away, all the bullshit
and dealing with what reallymatters.
(37:01):
And the reason why I bring thatup is that, in the military I
made the analogy with the WorldWar I and how 2% of Americans
died.
I don't know what the deathrates are for Iraq or
Afghanistan or some of the otherrecent wars that happened.
Let's just not say you theUnited States, we can talk about
death rate of the French in Malior Ukrainians or Russians in, I
guess, Ukraine.
Or I guess if you're Russian,then you're saying Russians in
Russia.
But you look at those deathrates, and they are probably a
(37:25):
lot less than 2%, I'm assuming,I'm imagining, I don't know what
the actual numbers are.
But you can make the same thing,the same logic there.
If you leap to the conclusion,saying, oh, death rate in these
wars are so low.
Well, in that case, if you makea parallel with the pandemic,
well, in that case, we don'tneed body armor, we don't need
armored personnel carriers, wedon't need military security
around Forward Operating Bases,because death rate is so low.
(37:50):
Why"waste" all the money ontrying to protect soldiers from
a death scenario who'sprobability is so low, right?
It's only 2%, or less than 2%.
Why do that?
Now, of course, if I said that,or if a politician said that...
Imagine, if the president, Bidenor Trump, whoever, said that,
hey, you know what?
we're not going to give oursoldiers body armor or Armored
Personnel Carriers, orup-armored Humvees, because
death rate is so low, therewould be a massive riot going
on, right?
For obvious reasons.
Because while you can foolpeople with something like the
pandemic, or some other thinglike that, in war it becomes
painfully obvious that thestatistic might be accurate, but
the conclusion that you leap tois complete bullshit.
(38:41):
And what does this have to dowith shooting to injure, or
shooting to meme?
Well, the thing is, if we lookat the pandemic as a war where
we're fighting against thevirus, what people are focusing
on is the, is the death rate,which is, again, the analogy is
shoot the death.
But that's not the issue,because again, in my very cold,
nasty way of saying things, if asoldier dies, it's"not as bad
(39:02):
as, as being injured" in thatspecific scenario that I'm
talking about.
The injury is"worse" than thedeath, right, because it stops
everything, grinds everything toa halt.
Take that analogy back to theCOVID pandemic, and that's the
issue here.
The issue here is not thatpeople are dying.
People are not saying, oh, weneed to go to lockdown, because
people are dying.
The reason why we went to alockdown, or the reason why
(39:23):
we're taking all theseprecautions, is because that you
have patients going intohospitals, going to ICU.
And they're using the hospitalbeds for two weeks.
It's like the Ebola virus.
You know, if you go back to, uh,what was this?
Michael Crichton book?
Um, not Congo...
"The Hot Zone"! Yeah, that was"The Hot Zone", yeah, that was
(39:44):
it.
So, again, it's not like"The HotZone" Ebola virus, where, okay,
it has 90% mortality or whateverit was, but people die within
three days (39:52):
you come to a hospital and three days later
you are dead.
I don't remember how many daysit was, but the point is, it was
very short.
It was a super-fast virus, superdeadly, just killed people
immediately.
The thing is there, again, ifyou're looking at it from a cold
calculated perspective, thenyour hospital, I'm using air
quotes again, is"fine" in thesense that, okay, someone got
infected with Ebola, they werethere for three days, they died.
(40:15):
You do what you have to do withdisposing that body, but the
hospital bed is free.
With the coronavirus it'sdifferent.
It is not killing people, butinstead people are lingering in
the hospital for two weeks at atime, maybe even longer.
And there's only a limitednumber of ICU's.
It's kind of like, when I'mgoing back to the analogy of the
(40:36):
body armor or the up-armoredHumvees, up-armored Humvees are
very expensive.
The body armor is expensive.
The cost of equipping a soldierto preventing this, quote, 2%
death rate in a militaryoperation that we just
established that the presidentwould be hanged for, it costs a
lot of money to equip thesoldiers.
So, the more body armor that isbeing taken, the more Humvees
(40:59):
that are being taken, the lessHumvees to be used for other
things.
And if you were having moresoldiers coming into the
battlefield, that means you haveto spend more money for more
Humvees.
And when you're talking about avirus, the equivalent of the
soldiers are the people, who arebeing infected.
They are fighting off the virus.
And the Humvees here in thiscase are the ICU's.
Again, the point here is notthat people were dying, which...
(41:21):
of course that was a point, butin this specific conversation,
the point is not that peoplewere dying is that they were
taking up the hospital beds fortwo freaking weeks.
So, the hospitals physicallycouldn't handle the capacity.
There weren't enough Humvees.
There wasn't enough body armorto give to all the new"soldiers"
coming into the battlefield.
That was the issue.
That's why most statistics likeyou look in...
(41:42):
in Europe, that was also theinitial discussions with the CDC
before everything gotpoliticized, that was the
statistic that really mattered alot, was that, do we have the
healthcare system capacity todeal with the pandemic?
And in this case it was theICU's, the hospital beds.
The more people got infected...
Again, because they weren'tdying immediately or immediately
(42:04):
healing...
Like, if you have a cold, you'redone in three days.
If you have the Ebola, airquotes, you're"done" in three
days, you're dead.
The point here is being that thehospital beds are free for other
people to get a treatment forwhatever it is.
With COVID that's not the case.
You're there for two, maybethree weeks long and you're
taking up space.
And someone sneaky is going tobe, like, well, you know, who
(42:26):
cares?
Because again, at the end of theday, it's 2% death rate.
So I don't really care if thehospitals are being, uh, used
up, I'm young and healthy andyou know, I work out and I eat
properly.
So I'm not going to get COVIDwell, yeah.
Okay.
Well, that's fine.
Yeah, you're young and healthyand you do that, but you know,
maybe you ride a bike, amotorcycle or whatever.
Maybe you are just going towork, and,"Final Destination"
(42:48):
style, you get into a trafficaccident.
Because we do have statistics ontraffic accidents, and that is
really high.
And a lot of people get intotraffic accidents.
Or maybe you're working on yourhouse during the confinement and
you're on the ladder, and thenyou fall, your trip, and then
you break your ankle, orsomething like that.
Or you fall down on the rake andnow you need to go into the
(43:09):
hospital for a tetanus shot, orsomething like that, whatever,
whatever it is.
There's a kajillion differentways that we can get injured and
require emergency services.
And again, by your statisticthat you admit to that, hey,
only 2% die.
It's not a big deal.
But it has nothing to do withthe ICU occupation statistic.
(43:32):
So there you are coming in for anormally just a minor injury
that requires a hospital bed,it's minor but serious, so you
require medical help, medicalassistance.
But because all the beds arebeing taken, all of a sudden,
now you can't get to thetreatment that you need.
And if all of these ICU beds arebeing used up by COVID people,
(43:54):
now things that you shouldn'thave been dying to, now, all of
a sudden, you're dying to.
And these things are not beingreported because, technically,
this has nothing to do withCOVID.
You died from tetanus, youdidn't die from COVID.
But because these things arerelated, the seemingly unrelated
statistic of the COVID pandemicis directly affecting the
seemingly unrelated healthcaresituation of you getting bit by
(44:18):
your neighbor's dog andpotentially getting rabies.
And now, all of a sudden, whileyou should be surviving, because
you got bit by the dog, youwould just go and get your shot,
but now, all of a sudden, youcan't do that, because the beds
are being taken.
And now you've got rabies and,of course, rabies a hundred
percent mortality rate, so nowyou're dead.
When you shouldn't have beendead, but now you're dead.
That's the issue.
(44:40):
That's why we went down tolockdown.
That's why we've been takingthese thing seriously.
We have social distancing,because we didn't have the beds.
Our healthcare system physicallycouldn't handle the two to three
weeks that people were occupyingbeds.
And, so, to go back to the waranalogy, it's like, you're
putting more troops to thefrontline, sending more troops
to Iraq, but you're not givingthose new troops the body armor.
(45:03):
Or another cheeky comparison isWorld War II Stalingrad-"Enemy
at the Gates".
You got all your soldiers, butyou only have a certain number
of guns.
And now you're telling themsaying, well, you're going to go
out there without guns.
Anyone who dies, you're going topick up their gun, but otherwise
you just go in there, meat tothe grinder.
That may have worked for 1942Soviet union, but it's not going
to work for 2020 the UnitedStates.
People who take the pandemicseriously, rightfully say, oh,
(45:31):
well, it's not just about deathrate.
It's about taking care ofpeople, and death rate matters
because it's not 2%, it'sactually higher.
Or, oh, you're going to loseyour sense of smell, or you can
get pneumonia later on, andeverything.
Those are all, obviously, trueand well-meant arguments, but
it's not going to sway allthese, I'll call them, pandemic
deniers, or the people, the"useful idiots", who consume the
(45:54):
rhetoric of the pandemicdeniers.
But war has an amazing abilityto boil away all the bullshit.
And when you look at it and youjust look at and say, the
(46:15):
pandemic, regardless of allthose other things that you talk
about, it ties up our healthcaresystems.
So that even if you're not goingto die from COVID, now all of a
sudden your mortality rate forsomething that was originally
innocuous, now becomes deadly.
And that's a problem.
And it's not just hospital beds,because I know someone's going
to listen to this and I canalready see the angry comments,
(46:35):
saying things like, even if it'sa premature baby, well,
technically, they don't need theICU, they just need a, you know,
any old bed will do, orsomething like that.
Okay, fine, point taken.
But again, good faith argumenthere.
Listen to what I'm trying to sayhere.
Okay.
Maybe not the ICUs, but the factthat all the nurse staff are
taxed.
The doctors are taxed, because,we saw all the horror stories
about how people are working,ridiculous numbers of shifts,
(46:58):
and they are completely taxed.
They come home, cry because ofall the trauma that they've had
with dealing with all theseCOVID patients.
And they're still doing itnowadays.
And they're getting maybe fourhours of sleep and all, and then
you come, and you're dealingwith a doctor or a nurse, who
are completely burnt out fromall those, uh,“COVIDiots”, as
people like to say, who didn'ttake it seriously, and now they
(47:19):
do make a mistake, or they givethe wrong medication to you or
to your wife.
And all of a sudden they'redead.
Obviously, that's a reallydoomed scenario, but that's what
the seriousness of this pandemicis about.
It's not about the death, whichof course is serious, but that's
not the argument that's going tosway these pandemic deniers.
(47:40):
The issue is tying up thehealthcare system.
And we can have a separatediscussion about, oh, well, this
would have been a goodopportunity to talk about how we
should revamp our healthcaresystem and make it more
affordable.
Make the hospitals with highercapacity, mobilize the
healthcare infrastructure todeal with things in the future.
And that's a great, and it's amissed opportunity, that we
(48:01):
didn't deal with that.
And it's another thing, again,going back to that last week, we
were talking about this, howDemocrats are just complete
morons with their messaging.
Even now, when they're talkingabout trying to get Medicare for
all, they're not using thispandemic to make their case.
It's that they deal with theseother talking points that just
completely get shot down by thelikes of Fox news or Newsmax, or
whatever.
(48:21):
This would have been a goodconversation to have about
mobilizing the country.
Just like we did when wemobilized for the World War II
or for any of these other wars.
Because, again, war has adistinct ability to boil away
the bullshit.
And when at war, if you have tosend more troops in, you're
going to need to mobilize themand train and equip them, and
(48:43):
give them their body armor, orthe equipment that they need to
fight.
And the fact, the matter is,even forget about the patients.
The hospitals and the healthcarestaff- we didn't arm them with
the necessary tools that theyneeded to fight this pandemic.
That's why there was this wholebig thing with the masks.
And everyone likes to say, oh,well the CDC, they sold
(49:03):
conspiracy.
They could have told us maskshelp.
And then now they hid the factfrom us because, you know, they
needed the masks.
But yeah, but you know what?
Yeah, they do need the masks,because they are on the front
lines, fighting just like in awar.
You don't need body armor, whenyou're walking down the street,
even though we have the SecondAmendment and you want to carry
your AR-15 down the street, andthen you want to have your body
armor, because you want to lookcool.
(49:24):
Or like the police want to weartheir body armor, because they
think their local fellowcitizens are all potential armed
and dangerous criminals, whichis a topic for another podcast.
But the thing is, you don't needthem as you don't need the body
armor as much as the troops inIraq and Afghanistan, who are
actually, day in and day out,fighting and have a real, very
(49:45):
real threat of dying from theenemy actions.
Okay.
So, here's the thing.
We can talk about the masksituation.
And that's a big, really big petpeeve of mine.
But what really infuriates meabout this, is that the same
people who are the COVIDdeniers...
Let's just say, there's a giantoverlap, again, because of the
(50:06):
politicized nature of thispandemic, of people who are
super pro guns, super pro SecondAmendment, where it's like, you
have a right to bear arms andtanks and you know, missiles,
and they can do anything theywant.
They think it's the"Red Dawn",and the Democrats are the"Soviet
Mexicans".
Red Dawn, I forgot, I haven'twatched it in a long time, but,
I think, it was Mexico that wasunder the Soviet occupation,
(50:28):
right?
Anyway, the Soviet Mexicans arecoming and you're in Montana
with your gun.
And you single handily are goingto save the country, right?
This is ever Second Amendmentgun guy's dream.
What, do a lot of these gunpeople do?
They love to go on the internetand see pictures of people with
(50:49):
guns.
And what is something, that theyalways like to derisively talk
about?
Oh, the guy doesn't have triggerdiscipline.
He doesn't have muzzlediscipline.
You're always supposed to haveyour index finger on the side of
the gun.
You should never have it on yourtrigger.
You should never pointed atanyone.
And they like to make a big showof taking pictures with their
AR-15s, walking down publicstreets, terrorizing their
(51:09):
fellow citizen, but they haveit.
They're carrying it.
They're not pointing at anyone,because they have the muzzle
discipline.
They like to show the picturesof their index finger extended
because, hey, look, I gottriggered discipline, right?
Well, excuse me.
Why do we have muzzle disciplineand trigger discipline, it's an
unloaded gun, right?
(51:30):
So the death rate from anunloaded gun is like practically
0%.
What are you worried about it?
You can point the gun at whoeverthe hell you want, brandishing
laws aside, but you can pointthe muzzle anywhere you want.
You can put your index finger onthe trigger all you want, click
it all you want it, because whocares?
It's an unloaded gun.
That's...
who cares about it?
And everyone likes to make abig, giant deal about this.
(51:50):
And any time they see someonewho doesn't have trigger
discipline, immediately,everyone vultures to the
carrion, oh, the guy does nothave the trigger discipline! The
guy doesn't have triggerdiscipline, but why is that such
a big deal?
Because it's not that theoverall statistical of unloaded
gun means the death rate is solow.
It's the fact that there's apotential for death.
And even if there's a 0.001%chance of death, the outcome,
which is death, is prettydrastic, right?
It's not like a 0.001% chancethat you're going to get an
upset stomach.
But the fact that the outcome isdeath, that's a huge thing.
And that's why we have triggerdiscipline and muzzle
discipline.
Well, take that same logic tothe pandemic.
(52:34):
The outcome here that we'retalking about is death.
It's people's lives.
It's a pandemic, it is a virus.
And you're here, making a bigdeal about muzzle or triggered
discipline.
Yet you won't even wear a mask.
What do you think a mask is?
When, again, going back to theanalogy of military, where
military scenarios boil away thebullshit, putting a mask on...
that's another statistics issaying, oh, masks are only 10%
(52:57):
effective and blah, blah, blah,who cares?
Just like with your triggerdiscipline, you put a mask on
just in case.
It is not going to preventeverything.
Your mask is basically yourmuzzle discipline, where in this
case in a pandemic of anairborne virus...
or, I guess, someone is going tosay, well, actually, it's not
airborne, it's on waterdroplets, but you understand
what I'm saying.
The point is, when we aretalking about an airborne virus,
(53:20):
the muzzle is essentially yourmouth and your nose.
Your mouth and your nose areshooting out viruses, viral
particles, just like a gun canshoot out bullets.
And even with the gun, you know,you've checked it, it's cleared
and it's empty.
The magazine is empty.
But even though that's the caseand you know it, you verified
it, you still have the muzzlediscipline, because that's the
(53:43):
right thing to do.
And if you are serious aboutguns, this is ingrained to you
from your very first lesson thatyou do this.
You treat every gun, like it'sloaded, right?
That's the same.
Well, it is the same case withthe pandemic: treat every person
like they're infected.
And if you practice muzzlediscipline with a gun, you
should practice"muzzle"discipline with your mouth.
(54:04):
And in that case, you wear amask, just like you would you
have the muzzle discipline witha gun.
When you don't do that, when youjust take...
When you try to politicize thisand say, oh, well, I don't care
about this, I'm not gonna wearmy mask, because, screw you
guys! And it's only 10%effective.
Well, you know what you are?
You're just faux American.
Just like you are cosplayingbeing a soldier by acting all
(54:25):
tough with your body armor andyour AR-15 down the street, you
are cosplaying as an American,when you don't put the mask on.
Because you don't care aboutyour fellow citizens.
Because if you did, you wouldput the mask on, because of the
offhand chance, that you do havethe virus.
Even though it is 10% effectivefrom preventing your infection,
(54:46):
it's not about you.
It's about making sure that noone else gets hurt.
And that's exactly what theyteach you from day one, when you
handle a gun.
If you would like to comment onthis podcast or on the topics
covered within it, or you'd likeus to raise a new topic in our
(55:07):
next episode, please feel freeto leave us a message or a
voicemail on www.codbsm.com.
That's Charlie Oscar, Delta,Bravo, Sierra, Mike dot com.
Thank you for listening and seeyou at the party, Richter!
Jazz (55:20):
[ Music].
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.