 40 here. Why can't conservatives ever build a boycott? What makes conservatives have such a difficult time building a boycott with teeth? Lefties, liberals, they build boycotts all the time. Why can't conservatives do the same thing? What is it about conservatism or republicans that makes them so ineffectual at building a boycott? So Donald Trump has called for republicans to boycott Coca-Cola and other organizations that are boycotting Georgia. But there's no reason to believe that this is going to work. So Trump, I think, called for people to boycott all sorts of organizations, including the National Football League. How effective has that been? What is it about conservatives that make them so ineffective at boycotting? So I'm looking at this, well, off the top of my head, here's what comes to mind for me. So Elliot Blatt notes that conservatives think that boycotting is gay. Another thing is that perhaps conservatives treat politics as politics, while people left of center treat politics more like a substitute religion. So perhaps the energy that people on the left devote to cancel culture, to boycotting, and to politics, that energy people right of center are much more likely to devote to religion. So does that make sense? So for many people on the left, politics is a substitute religion, while most conservatives are religious. Also, I think conservatives don't like the idea of the political encompassing all of life. I think for conservatives, the natural inclination is that the political is just one sphere of life, and then you just get on with everything else. So perhaps liberals, for liberals, politics takes up a much wider sphere of life. So I think for liberals, they're much more likely to see more of life through a political sphere, while conservatives, I think, have a narrower view of what is the political. Now, I have a friend who says, conservatism is not collective. It is not a solidarity movement by definition. I don't know about that. Is that true? So collective action is anathema to it. I have skeptical. I don't believe that's the nub of it. So my friend says, asking conservatives to boycott or to join a collective movement, have I examined my daily walks through a racial lens yet? Just different races for me, just friends I haven't made yet. So my friend says, asking conservatives to boycott is like asking Jews to convene a Vatican Council or to establish new doctrine or Protestants for the same reason. So maybe conservatives are more individualistic. I mean, why don't corporations fear Republican boycotts? Why aren't corporations afraid of ticking off conservatives? Why are they only afraid of the left and the left's cancel culture? Why can't conservatives build the same kind of powerful boycotts that the left does? So the chart says that's the kind of thing a leftist might concern themselves with, examining daily walks through a racial lens. Yeah, because for the left, the personal is the political. Wall Street Journal, I'll pad a few days ago, what I wouldn't give for a shave that isn't woke. So I'm not one who's into boycotts, organizing boycotts, promoting boycotts, I don't think about boycotting. So the chart says trying to mobilize conservatives is like trying to herd cats. But I am kind of taken aback about all the fear factor that the left, that the left puts into people and nobody seems to fear ticking off people on the right. So Rustin says the elites support the left. So I guess it depends the elites in which area. So cultural elites, yes. Legal elites, yes. Academic elites, yes. Media elites, yes. Mainstream religious elites, yes. But traditional religion, religious elites support the right. I think surgeons tend to be right-wing. The energy industry tends to be right-wing. So there are industries that support the right dominantly. And so I would expect that elites from those industries support the right. So just because the elites support the left, that is that your answer to why conservatives can't mount an effective boycott? Because I don't quite see the connection there. But it is a little queasy making when you keep consuming products that align with the left. I mean, Amazon was funding support for same-sex marriage. Our cops and our law enforcement support the right. Yeah, there are definitely professions that dominantly support the right. And then there are professions that overwhelmingly support the left. So it makes me a little queasy when I support corporations use services that fund the left. I can think about all those hundreds of corporations that donated money to Black Lives Matter, which I see as a domestic terrorist organization. Wall Street Journal, I've heard from my closet to my bathroom. My house is full of leftist brands. It's time to do something about it. Like what are right-wing brands? What are the leading right-wing brands? Chick-fil-A used to be right-wing, but Chick-fil-A is supporting Black Lives Matter. And the author here in the Wall Street Journal, Dave Seminarra says, maybe I was wrong to think conservatives should refrain from adopting the bullying boycotting tactics of the left. So press one if you think conservatives should adopt the bullying boycotting tactics of the left. Press 12, 1 and 2 if you think conservatives have the ability to adopt the bullying boycotting tactics of the left in an effective way. So can conservatives pull this off if they want to? So we've got all this corporate virtue signaling after George Floyd's death. Maybe it wasn't a passing trend. Maybe it was a sea change. Chick-fil-A supports Black Lives Matter because blacks hate gays as much as they do. Now, is it time for conservatives to boycott companies that hate us? So Coca-Cola and Delta became progressive boycott targets this month for not doing enough to stop Republicans in Georgia from passing an election security law that's been recast absurdly as a civil rights violation. Now, companies didn't withstand it well. Coca-Cola CEO said the new Georgia Voting Rights Act was unacceptable and a step backwards but didn't explain why. CNBC didn't ask if he feared a conservative backlash. She just pressed him on why Coca-Cola didn't publicly oppose this before. It seems a little bizarre to me that corporations would be taking stands on highly contentious issues like voter integrity, voter fraud, voting rights. It just seems weird. Why don't corporations fear ticking off conservatives? So the woke mob on Twitter insisted that Coca-Cola hadn't condemned the legislation soon enough or forcefully enough. Then Delta came out, leased a statement saying that the Georgia legislation was unacceptable and does not match Delta's values. Now, that just seems bizarre. Delta has values about voter access, voter integrity, voting rights. What is it about a corporation that gives them expertise on matters of voter integrity and voter fraud? So the Wall Street Journal claims that this Georgia legislation is an honest effort to improve election integrity. Now, I don't believe that because I've yet to see any substantive evidence that voter fraud played a substantial role in the 2020 election. Therefore, from my perspective, this wave of Republican legislation that they phrase as voter integrity is really about voter suppression, which I'm fine with. I'm fine with trying to suppress the vote. It's just that it's socially unacceptable to come out and say that you're trying to suppress the vote. I mean, what it's really about is trying to suppress the black vote. The black vote goes 90 to 95 percent for the Democrats. Republicans would be weird if they didn't try to suppress this substantial portion of the vote that overwhelmingly goes for Democrats. So you can point out, oh, no other industrialized nation has as restrictive rules on voting or such low rates of voting as the United States, but no other industrialized nation has a 13 percent black population. So voter restriction laws, voter suppression laws, they are overwhelmingly directed at reducing the black vote with the thinking that blacks are low information voters who aren't going to go to a great deal of effort to vote. And if they do vote, they're overwhelmingly going to vote for the Democrats. And there's really no rational reason for 90 percent of blacks to even consider voting Republican. I don't see any rational reason why 90 percent of blacks would even consider voting Republican. So as I understand reality, there are probably a hundred million Americans who don't much like blacks. And when these Americans vote, it seems to me probably my guess is that 70 percent of the time, 75 percent of the time, they vote Republican. Now, I have been surprised in my life experience that all sorts of people I meet who are quite woke, who are quite left wing, but they really don't like blacks. So what do you think? Do you think that people who don't like blacks that they vote 50-50 Republican versus Democrat? So my perception is probably 70 percent Republican, 30 percent Democrat. But I do frequently meet all these lefties who really don't like black people, but they're otherwise completely on the left. So Coca-Cola, Delta, Microsoft, and all sorts of other companies that we all use call this Georgia Voting Rights legislation racist. So that's saying that if you support the Georgia voting legislation that you're a bigger. So do you really want to buy products from companies that regard you as bigoted? So when you look around your home, you're going to see all these products from work companies that strongly disagree with you on pretty much every issue of the day and regard you as a racist, you know, bigger. Do you want to financially support these companies? So if you go to Patagonia, which is a clothing and gear outfitter at the top of its website, exhaust visitors to act now to stop climate change. I mean, on many of these corporate websites, you're getting left wing indoctrination. And Patagonia endorses political candidates, none of them are Republicans. Now, if you go to the bathroom, you might have Gillette raises, right? So remember their ridiculous 2019 ad decrying toxic masculinity. Now, some people will switch. Oh, I'm going to switch to Harry's raises, but they just pulled their advertising from the daily wire, right? They're not supporting Ben Shapiro. How can we support a corporation that refuses to stand with Ben Shapiro? So Harry's fled the daily wire after a Twitter user with 29 followers complained that one of the daily wires podcast was spreading homophobic and transphobic content. So I'm sure you've got Procter and Gamble products. This is a company that supports the left. Pantene shampoo. They recently released a video about life of a young transgender girl and her lesbian moms. She's always been super gender-creative and hair has been a big part of her transitions as one of the moms. And at the end of the commercial, the banner reads, Pantene family is beautiful, LGBTQ, proud to support transgender visibility. So you want to buy Pantene shampoo. So the ad has six times as many dislikes as likes on YouTube, but that hasn't stopped the company. The tweeting transphobia has no place in our world or in our feed. So if you subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, I mean, these are all corporations pushing a left-wing agenda. So there's apparently black rifle coffee company. So that's a right-wing type of coffee and its revenue doubled in 2020. So what are your answers? Why aren't conservatives able to build sustainable boycotts? Okay, so there's an analysis in the Washington Post, why half-hearted conservative boycotts rarely take root. So Donald Trump called for boycotting Coke after Coke wants to boycott Georgia. But in the background of a recent photo, Donald Trump took, you could see his diet Coke. So back in 2011, Donald Trump was calling for a boycott of Coke because of an annoying TV commercial. No, that was Geico. Then he carried a boycott of Glenfiddish Scotch after the company honored a Scotsman of the Year, a farmer who opposed Trump's efforts to expand a golf course. And then Trump endorsed a boycott of Scotland broadly because the country planned to install wind turbines off its coast within sight of Trump's politics. So one might argue that Trump became president because of those boycotts. Macy's and Univision ended business deals with Trump's company following his anti-immigrant comments at his campaign launch in 2015. Trump asked his supporters to avoid these companies. And when Trump showed he was willing to take a financial loss, that's how seriously he took his platform. I think that's when people like Steve Saylor started taking him very seriously as a political candidate. So on Saturday, Trump called for boycotts of Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, Viacom, CBS City Group, Cisco, UPS and Merck, because all these companies had spoken out about this new law reshaping Georgia's election system. And his boycott call went out with his standard Trumpian rhetoric that the 2020 election that he lost was stolen. And then he accused Democrats of trying to boycott and scare companies into submission, which is kind of a weird thing to do, to decry, to decry after you just called for boycotts and nine companies. Okay, Glyb Medley makes a good point. Consuming is a woman's game, men just buy stuff to fix things. If the Dollar Shave Club is good enough for Richard Spencer, it's good enough for me. Liberals and lefties have a religious fervor about boycotting and cancel culture, says Glyb. That's a great point. Do you ever get a tickling your throat while live streaming? Have you ever tried a sugar-free ricola cough drop? Lemon flavor? Absolutely delicious. Okay, so is it weird for the de facto leader of the Republican Party that has spent months railing against canceled culture to now demand that we try to cancel certain companies? That those companies who express a political point of view should be canceled? Should people stop buying Coca-Cola products because of action that the company took with Georgia legislation? So Washington Post says it is the spasmodic nature of the Trump and Republican boycotts that makes them impotent. Boycotts don't work simply by calling for them to happen. They work only when there's repeated pressure for the boycotts to be upheld. A slow, tedious process that depends on the public seeing a real motive for the boycott and a willingness to do without the products. I think publicans just don't have the energy, the mental space, the religious fervor to push boycotts. I mean, even Trump fans are not going to go out of their way to boycott companies simply because the former president asked them to. So successful boycotts demand a concerted vocal effort with dedicated resources. They require the demonstration of a viable threat. I just don't think this is high enough on conservative priorities. So Trump dissing Major League Baseball might get a few people to stop watching games, but without a sustained collective effort to pressure the sport over many months, it's just going to fizzle out like Trump's other boycotts. And Trump waged attacks on the National Football League. Those attacks faded out. So companies want to target demographic groups that are perhaps not going to be listening to Trump here. So you had hundreds of companies endorse, support and donate to Black Lives Matter after George Floyd died. And they saw themselves as making a statement about their corporate values, but they were also making a bet on what the consumers, their most interested in want to see. So perhaps companies are primarily interested in younger consumers and the people who vote Republican and vote conservative tend to be older. So younger consumers are generally more valuable for companies because it's thought that their allegiances are more up for grabs. Now, another problem for Republicans calling for boycotts of companies is they've invested so heavily in giving corporations a larger platform in American politics. Republicans have the rhetoric that to raise taxes on corporations is to just strangle freedom in America. So if Republicans press for corporations to be free to express themselves, then maybe they're not going to reliably express themselves in a right wing manner. So Republicans thought that if corporations felt more free to express themselves, they would do it in a Republican skewing ways, but not really happening. And also key marketing demographics tend to skew younger than Trump's base of support. The left has decades of experience in pressuring corporations to make change. The right simply does not have that experience. So Georgia is now the new proving ground for sports boycotts. So prior to Georgia, it was Arizona. So for about a decade, major corporations, including major sporting teams, were trying to pressure Arizona because Arizona would not recognize Martin Luther King Day. So apparently, Arizona lost $200 million or so worth of business. 1991, National Football League moved the 1993 Super Bowl. The NBA moved its annual meetings all over Arizona's refusal to recognize a federal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. In 2010, musicians put out a concert and pressured Major League Baseball to pull its All-Star Game from Arizona over controversial immigration crackdown. 2014, 2015, the NFL was pressured over the 2015 Super Bowl because of an Arizona bill that would allow businesses to deny service to gays. So what's the difference between what happened in Arizona then and what's happening in Georgia now? Well, in large part, thanks to Republican judges and Republican legislation, corporations feel much border about going public with their political opinions. Also, athletes are speaking out more now. So Arizona lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to these boycotts. So there's little reason to believe that the Republican boycotts are going to have much bite, but corporations are quite afraid of left-wing boycotts. Now, there's a lot of conversation about Colorado's voting laws and Georgia's new voting rights legislation, and it's partisan. It's not serious. It's why I'm increasingly tired of the partisan approach, whether it's like Jews are always right or Jews are always wrong or Republicans are always right and Democrats are always wrong. It's just not serious. Okay, Colorado does almost all this voting by mail, right? So in Georgia, most of its voting has historically been done in person. So conservative defenders of the new Georgia voting rights legislation have spotlighted certain provisions of the law that leave Georgia within the mainstream of how other states conduct their elections, including blue ones. And what about Colorado? Okay, so Colorado requires voter ID. Now, Colorado requires voter ID, but it's not a stringent requirement. It's voter ID to vote in person. But here's the key point. The voter ID law at issue in Georgia is not for in-person voting, it's for mail-in voting. So Georgia is going to require a driver's license number, social security number, other ID on absentee balance. So these provisions may make voting just a little bit difficult for low information, low capability voters. So Republicans see this as a way to reduce the black vote. Now, Colorado sometimes requires ID to vote by mail, but only when someone casts a mail ballot for the first time. And their list of acceptable voter IDs is significantly broader. So Colorado conducts its elections almost entirely by mail. So all registered voters in Colorado receive absentee ballots automatically. And about 99% of people who vote in Colorado vote absentee. So Colorado is being hailed as the very beacon of voting laws. So it tends to have about the highest voting turnout, about 87% of registered voters, 75% of eligible voters in 2020. Also is reputed to have one of the safest, if not the safest voting systems in the nation. So Colorado ranked number two in voter turnout in 2020. So all this Republican legislation to make voting a little bit more difficult, essentially to try to restrict the black vote is all part and parcel of Donald Trump's claims and Republican claims that voter fraud determined the 2020 election, about which there's no evidence. So I've been listening to a book on the war in the Pacific in World War II. So let me just play a little bit from... In 1903, the Wright brothers made their historic first flight at Kitty Hawk. And farsighted officers could envision the future possibilities of these new flying machines. In 1906, Great Britain launched a new battleship, the HMS Dreadnought. She had 12 inch guns and a 21 knot cruising speed. And from the day she slid down the ways, every other battleship in the world was obsolete. All the ranking American admirals of the Second World War had began their naval careers during that era of stupendous technological change. Between about 1900 and 1910, as fresh faced teenagers leaving home for the first time, they had entered the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. To win admission, they had passed punishing entrance examinations and survived a ruthless selection process. They were Protestant and middle class, almost to a man. There were no blacks, no Jews, and precious few Catholics. A few were Navy juniors following in the footsteps of fathers or grandfathers. Okay, I'm looking at Stephen Taylor. I like his column on OutsideTheBeltway.com. So the House of Representatives has passed the Bill HR1 to make it easier for Americans to vote. So the conventional wisdom is the higher the turnout, the more that's good for the Democrats, the lower the turnout, the more that's good for Republicans. So Republican approaches to voting rights usually want to restrict the turnout, the voting turnout. The Democratic approach is to expand voting turnout. So it's the conventional wisdom is that it's in Republicans' advantage to have lower turnout to make voting just a little bit more difficult. And for Democrats, it's thought to be in their interest to make voting easier and easier to make voter turnout expand. So House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrats. They've passed HR1 to make it easier for Americans to vote. Meanwhile, Republicans who dominate a lot of state legislatures, they are trying to make voting just a little bit more difficult, particularly they want to try to hold down the black vote, which you would expect them to do. So Republicans in Georgia, they're shocked that they lost the presidential election and then they lost both Senate seats. And they now want to try to reduce the turnout of black voters who vote 95% for Democrats. So Georgia Republicans are proposing new restrictions on weekend voting that could severely curtail one of the black church's central roles in civic engagement elections. So Republicans want to suppress black turnout, which is being critical for Democratic victories. Now Republicans, of course, it is socially unacceptable. What do you do when what you want to say, what you stand for is socially unacceptable, then you have to use code. So Republican code is we want to secure the vote and restore confidence in the electoral process. But there's no credible evidence that the United States is a massive problem with voter fraud. So the 2020 election in Georgia was conducted by Republicans. You had multiple recounts and they all show that the system in Georgia was secure and accurate. So there's nothing in Georgia. We have no evidence that there's anything Georgia that needs securing. And the only reason that there are any problems with voter confidence is because Donald Trump and his allies have been spreading lies about the integrity of the vote. Now, that doesn't mean that I think all these Republican voter restriction laws are a bad idea. I don't really have an opinion on that. But what I'm for is for honesty. Instead of calling it restoring confidence or voter integrity, the honest thing is to just face this voter restriction. Also, there are legitimate nonpartisan points of view here. You don't really want people handing out goodies to voters who are standing in line. So that that makes sense. So we've had 33 states have introduced over 165 bills to restrict voting access, limit mail voting access, impose stricter voter ID requirements, slash voter registration opportunities, enable more aggressive role purges. And these are overwhelmingly, of course, led by Republicans. Arizona leads the nation in proposed voter suppression legislation with 19 restrictive bills, Pennsylvania second with 14, followed by Georgia 11, New Hampshire 10. Now, Democrats, of course, they're trying to do everything they can to make voting easier. From every region of the country, but within a year or two, their accents and dialects were rung out of them, and they spoke in an efficient super regional version of English so that their family and friends at home would shake their heads in wonder at the changes the Navy had wrought. Now he belongs to his country, his parents were told, and the implication was clear. Their influence over him was all part of the past. He had crossed a threshold into a new life from which there was no return, except by the disgraceful act of failing and flunking out. At Annapolis, they entered an austere, inward looking, highly regimented social order, hermetically sealed off from the cacophonous civilian society in which the... Okay, this is a book on the war in Pacific in World War II talking about the American Navy program. So who's been the most wrong most consistently and most visibly about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic? And so we've got Derek Thompson here at the Atlantic. He's got an article from a week ago, the pandemic's wrongest man in a crowded field of wrongness. One person stands out, Alex Berenson. So I enjoy Tucker Carlson, but he's highly irresponsible with the type of people he brings on his show. I mean, he's having Peter Schiff on his show. He doesn't ask them tough questions. And I think I first started hearing about Alex Berenson about a year ago on Tucker Carlson show. And this guy should not be on TV. This guy is alone. He's just so consistently wrong about COVID. So the pandemic, of course, has made fools of many, many, many, many people. So just about all the predictions were wrong. Anthony Fauci has been wrong about a lot of things. California was wrong about trying to restrict people's access to the great outdoors. New York was wrong about subways. All right. So lots of people made lots of mistakes with regard to COVID. But in this crowded field of wrongness, one voice stands out, the voice of Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter, Yale educated novelist, other Twitter, online essayist and all around pandemic gadfly. So he's been serving up COVID-19 hot takes for the past year. And he blithely predicted the United States would not reach 500,000 deaths. So we're well past 550,000. He's argued that cloth and surgical masks provide no protection against coronavirus. And yes, there's evidence that they can. He's got a big megaphone. He has more than 200 followers, 200,000 followers on Twitter, and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News' Most Watch Shows. On Laura Ingram's show, he's downplayed vaccines. He's claimed that Israel's experience proves that they're considerably less effective than claimed. And Tucker Carlson, he predicted the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illnesses and deaths. So with regard to vaccines, Alex Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding vaccines, trying to make the dubious case that most people would be better off completely avoiding them. From Reveley at 6.30 to Lights Out at 9.30, their days were parceled out in exacting increments of time. They drilled and marched for hours in all kinds of weather on the academy grounds and conducted physically exhausting amphibious drills in open boats on the Chesapeake. Gleaves learned to double time down the corridor, change directions at sharp right angles and sit rigidly at attention while sitting on the forward two inches of his chair. Wayward behavior was kept in check by a combination of stern discipline and social pressure. Demerits were assessed against a long list of violations. Tardiness, talking in ranks, smoking, failing to square away one's room, or sneaking into town for a beer. They learned basic seamanship first by practicing on rigging and spars erected in a drill hall, later by cruising in old schooners and cutters on the Severn River. Academic coursework emphasized seamanship, navigation, gunnery, tactics, and engineering. The key to a high class ranking lay in rote memorization of data supplied in classroom lectures and textbooks followed by regurgitation on command. There was little occasion for analysis or independent thought and the midshipmen were not encouraged to grapple too daringly with the great naval military technical doctrinal issues of the day. The great emphasis was on character. Referring both to West Point and Annapolis, President Theodore Roosevelt told the Congress, we do not need to have these schools made more scholastic. On the contrary, we should never lose sight of the fact that the aim of each school is to turn out a man who shall be above everything else a fighting man. The best part of the education is the high standard of character and a professional morale which it confers. What was imperative in those first years of a naval career was to cultivate the right set of attitudes, the correct personal bearing, to cut a figure and dress blues or whites, immaculately turned out in foreign daft hat and crisp white gloves with a ceremonial sword at the hip. In short, to be well liked, to fit in. The past was always present. They were never allowed to forget that they were heirs to a proud warrior tradition, that they were charged personally and collectively with upholding the honor of their flag. The halls at Annapolis were decorated with tattered ensigns and faded oil paintings depicting naval scenes of the American Revolution and the war of 1812. The age of wooden... Okay, the pandemic's wrongest man, this is from the Atlantic. So, Alex Berenson has blamed the vaccines for causing spikes in severe illness by pointing to data that actually demonstrates the vaccine's safety and effectiveness. Alex Berenson has blamed the vaccines for suppressing our immune system by misrepresenting normal immune system behavior. So he has no qualifications which in and of itself is not disqualifying but it's just so consistently wrong about COVID. It's a shawnda that this guy is still getting appearances on Fox News and it does not speak well of Tucker Carlson that he has this guy on his show. Alex Berenson suggested the country such as Israel have suffered from their early vaccine rollout even though deaths and hospitalizations among vaccinated groups in Israel have plumbed it. What's with the sit-down streams, bro? Vaccine injury? No, bro. It's just easier. There's like fewer distractions. I don't have to monitor my sound levels and after monitor lighting, video, just fewer things to worry about. So if there's just a couple of topics I want to knock out, then it's just a lot easier. I can think much more about what I'm talking about just speaking directly to my phone rather than standing up and going through Streamlabs OBS and firing up various sound systems, sound software, hardware. So fewer things to worry about just talking directly to the phone rather than doing traditional OBS streaming. So I'm just experimenting. So open to feedback. So Alex Berenson has said for most non-seniors the side effects of the vaccines are worse than having COVID itself even though according to the CDC the pandemic has killed tens of thousands of people under 50 and we have no evidence that vaccines have conclusively killed anyone. So with vaccine resistance hovering around 30% of the general population, about 40% of Republicans saying they won't give them a shot, debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, may very well be a matter of life and death. So Alex Berenson's TV appearance is a much more misdirection than outright fiction. His Twitter feed blends internet irony and scientific jargon in ways that obscure what he's actually saying. So it's pretty clear vaccines work. They worked in clinical trials. They're working around the world. Vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson provide stronger and more lasting protection against SARS, the natural infection. They're excellent at reducing symptoms. They're extraordinarily successful at preventing severe illness from COVID. Countries that have vaccinated a large percentage of their population quickly such as the US, the United Kingdom and Israel have all seen sharp and sustained declines in hospitalizations for COVID particularly among the elderly. Countries that have lagged in vaccination, including the UK, its neighbors France and Italy and Jordan have struggled to contain the virus. So the authorized vaccines and marvels, case against them relies on half-truths, untruths and obfuscations. Most amazing vaccine ever says Leponious developed in record time zero injury or death. No one says zero injury. What we do have alleged in this article is we don't have any definitive conclusive evidence that anyone's died from it. Media knows beforehand that one did not get injured from the vaccine even if one dies days after taking it. Well what we do know is that over two and a half million people have died from COVID. So we have anecdotal evidence that a handful of people have died after taking the vaccine. So there seems to be a pretty big difference there. We've got millions of people dead from COVID and we have a few anecdotes about people who've gotten sick and died after taking the vaccine. Hank Aaron, bro. Yeah, so Hank Aaron got the vaccine and he died, what, two, three weeks later therefore it must have been the vaccine that killed him. So Alex Berenson claims in country after country cases rise after vaccination campaigns begin but in country after country cases, hospitalizations and fatalities decline after vaccination campaigns begin. With COVID, so millions of people die with COVID not necessarily from COVID. Okay, so we need to go into the background there. Like are those statistics just being made up with regard to COVID or is there some reality behind the official statistics on the number of COVID deaths? So how do they determine cause of death? Explain Florida bro. So they're handing out vaccinations in Florida too. So along with vaccinations we have a reduced rate of death. Okay, so there's a good website and I'll throw down the link that I'm referring to here. So are these official numbers of millions of people dead from COVID or they just made up? Is there some kind of con game that the elites are trying to play on us to take the vaccine to impurify our vital bodily fluids? What the heck is going on here? So it's a website, respectfulinsolence.com and largely written by a surgeon, David Gorski. So COVID went down last spring. So there seem to be many factors that influence COVID distribution. So weather, humidity, crowding, these seem to be among the factors. But surgeon David Gorski talks about this viral COVID-19 misinformation that claims only 6% of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were really due to coronavirus. I don't know if you've noticed, Mr. Ford, it's literally a feeding frenzy at the trough of government money. Come on man. So do hospitals get paid more when someone dies from COVID? And it seems to be certainly from Medicare, there seems to be some evidence yes. So therefore they're just making it up. So where's the evidence that they're just putting cause of death for COVID where it doesn't belong? Okay. So a lot of the information trying to reduce the size of the COVID pandemic comes from the QAnon crowd. So how many people have watched that six-part HBO documentary series, QAnon Into the Storm? Also all the stimulus packages. Yeah, all the stimulus packages don't shift how many people died from COVID. So you need, what's your concrete evidence that the official figures for COVID deaths are grossly exaggerated? What goes into writing down cause of death on a certificate? Okay. So we have Jim Hoft, Gateway ponder, shock report. So this is from August 30, 2020. This week the CDC quietly updated COVID-19 numbers and the 9,200 Americans died from COVID alone. The rest had other serious illnesses. So only 6% of the COVID deaths were from COVID alone, right? This is a major talking point, right? You all understand here, I am under no illusions that I'm an expert in these matters. So this is fun for me. Like some people, they play basketball for fun. Other people watch TV for fun. What I like to do is to take my values and what I regard as the best sources of information and then present them to you and hear from you about your values and your best sources of information and then try to, for me, this is like playing chess, right? I'm coming to you. I take this seriously. I mean, this is fun, but I don't think I have any illusions about having any special expertise here, but I want to come to you with the best of my values and the best sources of information of which I'm aware. That's what I bring to this show. I try to bring the best of myself to the show and now often the best of myself falls down, falls apart, is inadequate. Why is the information always so vague, bro? Okay, that's too wide. That's like too vast. Ford likes to stimulate intellectually, of course, yes. I'd like to think that my touch is more benedictory than exploratory, to quote from the play History Boys. All right, so did you hear about this that only 6% of COVID deaths are from COVID alone? And so therefore, there's now zero justification for mass and the lockdown, etc. And this is widely retweeted by the QAnon spear. So anyway, the six part HBO documentary on QAnon is great. So they conclude that Jim Watkins, this half Japanese, half white guy, who's been operating HN that he's the most likely Q, QAnon logo. Why can't we know how COVID deaths? We can, you just have to do a little bit of work. Now, I'm not an authority here, but there is a process for death certificates. So I want to discuss the little bit that I've gleaned. And maybe there are all sorts of things that I'm missing. Vaccine rollout just happens to coincide with the natural decline of the virus. Well, didn't the vaccine rollout begin in December? The virus was not going down in December. We're now in April. So no, I don't think the vaccine rollout just happened to coincide with the natural decline in the virus. So then President Trump amplified the disinformation. Viruses and pandemics do have a life cycle. In fact, yes, they do. But you could have a million extra deaths, right? Is that a big deal or not? Let's say we're able to save 500,000 people or a million people or 5 million people from unnecessary death by getting them vaccines in time. To me, that would seem like a serious matter. New variants is kind of BS. Why a new variants BS? Okay, so COVID-19 denialists seized on this fact. We're at the end of it now, bro. How do you know? I feel great that I got the vaccine. I'm much more social. I just don't see any empirical evidence because the virus is adapting as it's getting weaker. Yeah, but the virus doesn't inherently necessarily get weaker. The virus is always adapting, right? And there are limits to how it adapts. But sometimes it can adapt in a way that makes it more lethal. It doesn't inherently adapt in a way that makes it less lethal. The new variants aren't stronger. I don't know enough. But you had all these COVID-19 denialists saying only 6% of COVID deaths were from COVID alone. And we have Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine saying just 6% of COVID deaths are from COVID alone. So why is Nick swallowing disinformation about COVID-19 and then regurgitating it unthinkingly? And we have conservative actors and celebrities like Kevin Sorbo seizing on the 6% number. Now, I'm sure we'd all agree that this would be awesome if it were true. If only 6% of those who died with COVID-19 have actually died because of the coronavirus, instead of dying of something else with the coronavirus at the same time, then it really would be true. The disease is much less dangerous than previously thought. Sadly, this claim is nonsense. It's a complete misrepresentation of the figures. So the COVID skeptics say COVID-19 death tolls are being intentionally exaggerated by the media and the government for nefarious purposes. And the true death toll is only 6% of the toll usually cited. And that only the sick and the old are at risk. And essentially, you don't have to worry about COVID-19 if you don't have comorbidities and therefore lockdown, social distancing, masks are all unnecessary. Okay, Dennis Dale says the new variants on stronger new variants include a shrinking field of non-immune population. Maybe LaPonius says, I've been social the past year. Don't give a flying F about this. Well, LaPonius, what if you're being social transmitted a deadly disease to people who then died as a result of you being social and not giving a flying F about COVID? Would you have any qualms about you are responsible for the deaths of innocent people? If you were responsible, would you feel bad about it? Or would you think they've got comorbidities? Probably. It's their tough luck. I'm going to live my life. I'm going to be free. Yes, I got the jab twice. I had the second jab last week. COVID deaths are concentrated among the elderly, but we have tens of thousands of Americans under the age of 50 who died from COVID as well. So that's what I'm curious for those who are saying I've been social the whole time. I'm not buying into the COVID nonsense. Would you feel bad if by being social, you caused, played a role in the transmission of a deadly disease that killed innocent people? Elliot Blatt says, infect them all and let God sort it out. So I would feel bad if by my carelessness, I contributed to the deaths of innocent people. So that's where I come from. So I try to conduct my life in a way that minimizes the deaths of innocent people. And I try to be a blessing rather than a mass murderer. I mean, that's just my approach. Okay, so what's behind only 6% of COVID deaths are really from COVID. So CDC periodically updates this breakdown of COVID-19 deaths. And one of the table has deaths categorized by COVID morbidities. So for 6% of deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. So that's where the figure comes from. For deaths with causes or conditions in addition to COVID, there were on average 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death, additional comorbidities. So what were the most common additional causes of death for COVID? Influenza, pneumonia, respiratory failure, respiratory distress syndrome, cardiac arrest, sepsis. So along with COVID, these individuals stopped breathing and their hearts stopped. So these additional causes of death are not exactly underlying medical conditions. So since the most common causes of death from COVID-19 aseptic shock, multi-organ failure and respiratory failure, those should be the top line causes of death with COVID-19. So all death certificates should have at least one other immediate cause before COVID-19 is listed. There should be zero death certificates that list COVID-19 alone. Just like I don't think they put AIDS as the cause of death on death certificate. So the CDC report basically tells us that 6% of death certificates were incorrectly completed. How would I feel if I infected the next Hitler? If we completely degrade quality of life for everyone over a year, is it not worth some last years? Yes. And how do we balance that? Like decline in the overall quality of life just to save a few lives? I think that's absolutely crucial point, Dennis. I completely agree with you. We need statistics charts, reports, weighing up quality of life, years of life lost through all these restrictions. And like we need a cost-benefit analysis of all these lockdowns and restrictions. So 100% agree with your point, Dennis. Mass vaccination should end this within four months. Yeah, I think we'll be basically done with this by June. It was fat listed on the death certificate. Yeah, perhaps in the future we will treat all serious outbreaks of the flu the way we treat COVID-19, at least with developing vaccines. In the future, we should be able to develop effective vaccines within three months. Okay, so we need to understand how death certificates work. So on a death certificate form, there's a space for the immediate cause of death. And then there are several lines for underlying causes. So death certificates are filled out by the medical certifier, who can be the doctor who treated the patient before death, who provides his best medical opinion regarding the cause of death. So there is a subjective element here. So part one of the death certificate includes the proximal cause of death, stops breathing, what directly caused the death. Part two lists the conditions that contributed to the death. So part one lists what directly causes the death. Now the heart stops beating. Part two, significant conditions that contributed to the death, the underlying causes. So part one lists just a single underlying cause, the immediate cause for the death, which then leads to another cause, which leads to another cause and so on until the final cause, which immediately caused the death. So part two of the death certificate may list zero or additional contributing causes, sometimes called multiple causes. So if a patient dies of respiratory failure due to acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS, which was the result of pneumonia, which was the result of COVID-19, the proximal cause of death was the respiratory failure. Contributing causes were ARDS and COVID-19. The one farthest up the chain is the underlying cause of death under part one. Now if the patient had hypertension or asthma or obesity, that would go into part two. So if you suffer a cardiac arrest due to blood loss after being shot, a cardiac arrest might have been the proximal cause of death, but you still died of a gunshot wound. So sometimes these underlying causes contribute to the death. So if you have hemophilia and you suffer a stab wound that leads you to bleed out and die, when someone with normal blood clotting would have survived, then you still died of a stab wound, but hemophilia was a contributing cause of death. So death certificates are designed to reflect complexity. Final causes of death are always one of a few things, but the underlying cause is what matters. So if you get shot, you get shot and then you go into a cardiac arrest after getting shot. The cardiac arrest is the proximal cause of death, but the underlying cause of death is getting shot. The gunshot wound. So if your heart stops beating, stop breathing, so cardiac arrest is the proximal cause of death, but the underlying cause of death might well be COVID-19. Okay, so if after a six month struggle with stage four cancer, but you die of a pulmonary embolism, the death certificate would read respiratory a cardiac arrest, then pulmonary embolism, and then the underlying cause would be cancer. So if you die of ARDS or pneumonia, secondary to COVID, ARDS or pneumonia gets listed first. Now if someone just has COVID listed on the death certificate, that death certificate's filled out incorrectly because COVID is never the proximal cause of death. It can be the underlying cause of death. So COVID is the underlying cause and it leads to pneumonia, which leads to cardiac arrest, which then leads to death. So part one, the underlying cause of the death is COVID. The other cause is pneumonia. The immediate proximal cause is cardiac arrest. If someone with life-threatening asthma and severe COVID, let's say they die after breathing problems and it's not clear why, the certifier must choose a single underlying cause, then list the contributing factors in part two. So the underlying cause is asthma, contributing cause COVID or could be vice versa. So regardless of where COVID is listed on the death certificate, whether it's underlying or contributing, it was a cause of death. So people die of COVID not with COVID, right? If you're going around talking, oh, people die with COVID, not off COVID. You just, I don't think you know what you're talking about. You're hearing something that you want to believe because it reduces the severity of COVID, but I'm not sure you really understand the deeper issues. Do I know anyone under 60 who has died from COVID? No, I don't think I do. Look, by promoting this experimental vaccine, how will you feel if even one person dies in direct consequence of my support of COVID serious question? Well, given that the odds right now rationally, we know that the odds that getting the vaccine, you're a million more times likely to save life than cost of life, I'm fine with those odds. So wearing a seatbelt can cost you your life. So nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100, wearing a seatbelt is more likely to save your life than to cost your life. But occasionally wearing a seatbelt will cost you your life. But I'm fine with saying wearing seatbelts is a good idea. Lady die would still be live if she'd be wearing a seatbelt. How many people do I know personally who have contracted COVID? 40? I'd say I probably know about 40 people. So in many orthodox synagogues, most people in that synagogue have caught COVID. What is the average age of death where COVID was a primary factor? I don't know. So anecdotally, it seems to be about 70. From the studies I've read, the average number of years per COVID death of lost years of life is about 10. It's not one per COVID case. It's about 10 years of life. How many people do I know who have died from COVID? No one close to me has died from COVID. People like fathers or friends of mine have died from COVID. Friends of friends of mine have died from COVID. So determining the most important underlying cause is not always straightforward. All right. But in the vast majority of COVID-19 cases, it is straightforward. Someone with hypertension, obesity, and type 2 diabetes catches COVID. Then they develop pneumonia. Then they develop failure of multiple organ systems. Then they finally die of respiratory failure. The approximate cause of death is respiratory failure. The underlying cause of death is COVID-19, without which the respiratory failure never would have occurred. If they just had hypertension, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, they would have in all likelihood lived another 10, 20, 30 years. So yes, it's well known that certain conditions greatly increase your risk of dying if you contract COVID. So age, right? The chance of dying of COVID increases dramatically after age 50 and becomes frightening by age 80. Obesity, so you have a BMI over 30 being male. You're more likely to die from COVID having cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, compromised immune system, serious heart conditions, sickle cell disease, and type 2 diabetes. Okay. These are contributing factors. If you have one or more of these conditions when you contract COVID and you later die, you'll most likely be the COVID-19 killed you, not your underlying health condition. The underlying health conditions may well have played a role in making you sicker, but it will be COVID that kills you. Now, different countries have different ways of recording deaths, but most countries go to great lengths to ensure that deaths are correctly classified. Death reporting is incredibly important. In most cases, it is a detailed process that is checked carefully. So in most countries, we can say with confidence that deaths attributed to COVID-19 are a solid count and probably an underestimate. We're likely missing quite a few deaths that have been caused by the coronavirus, but were not picked up by our reporting systems. So probably excess deaths is probably the best way to measure COVID. One and defended the nation's independence at sea. Heavy emphasis was laid on the social graces. The young men were taught to cultivate good manners, to balance tea cups in a parlor, to compose a handwritten letter that would not embarrass the center or recipient, and to dance a passable waltz without treading on a lady's toes. They were encouraged to speak a little French and earn at least a nodding acquaintance with the classics. As naval officers, they would perform quasi-diplomatic roles in ports of call around the world, and it was thought important that they should carry themselves with grace and confidence in every social setting, and never risk being looked down upon by any man or his wife, be they civil or military, foreigners or Americans. Above all, anapolis functioned as an engine of assimilation. Those who would not or could not fit in were spat out. Those who stayed and saw it through were bonded to each other and to the Navy, with a deeply-felt desprey decor, overpoweringly and for life. As for the big doctrinal questions of fleet strategy, these were the glory days of Alfred Thayer Mahan. The American naval officer turned historian and strategic guru, whose doctrines had been embraced and put into practice by every major Navy in the world. Mahan had been catapulted into international fame with the publication in 1890 of his first major work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. In that and subsequent books and essays, he set forth the three Mahanian dogmas that governed the thinking of naval strategists right up until the beginning of the Second World War, the cult of the big gun battleship, the iron rule of concentration, and the annihilation of the enemy fleet in a single decisive battle. Okay, Robert says in the chat, COVID kills mostly old, old people who are economically unproductive retirees. This is not at all like the Spanish flu of 1918-1919, which struck the young with particular force. It sounds like COVID makes a population younger and healthier. And Elliott notes in olden times, half the children died in early childhood. So this makes the population younger, healthier, and more likely to vote Democrat. So Luke earned Apple products. I have excellent experiences with Apple products. Why should immunity compromising lifestyles be subsidized by those who follow health promoting lifestyles? Great point, Elliott. People have been spreading the common cold or the flu, thus killing vulnerable people for their entire lives to start caring now all of a sudden requires an explanation. Yes, we've got a respiratory illness that is killing many more people than the cold and the flu. Like all this talk about, oh, you know, 10,000 people a year died by the flu. Have you ever heard of anyone who's died by the flu? That is just very inexact nonsense talks. Okay, so the flu and the cold doesn't kill people overwhelmingly. COVID does. This is a degree of severity compared to the ordinary flu. It's like five or six or seven times more lethal than the ordinary flu, maybe 10 times. So that's why I'm treating it as something different. I do not employ undocumented workers. But if I did, I probably wouldn't tell you the flu doesn't kill people. It's just I'd look it up for you. All right. All the case, the cases where they tell you like the CDC tells you the flu kills what 20,000 people a year, they develop this number, but it doesn't come from death certificates. All right? It's like fancy bureaucratic reasons for lying to us. But all these people who supposedly died of the flu, you can't actually point to specific cases. It is their extrapolation of some sort of influenza type thing that may kill people. But name me a famous person who's died of the flu. You can't. All right? So if the tens of thousands of people a year were dying of the flu, as our medical CDC experts tell us were true, you'd be able to name at least one famous person who's died of the flu. If we extrapolate from your reasoning, why does this stop the government from limiting your lifestyle? Because there are people with AIDS who are put at risk. It's all a matter of degree. So what on earth am I doing in my lifestyle that puts people with AIDS at risk? Okay. Why are the movies so bad in 2020? Like movies are just awful in 2020. Like has there been a good movie released in 2020? Okay. John says, the number of deaths from COVID are exaggerated generate funding. Where's the evidence? Like it's so easy to spew lies and theories, but where's the evidence, man? Same is true with opiate overdoses. They inflate the numbers because they're getting federal subsidies. Where's your evidence? There isn't any. There's no empirical reason to believe that there's any truth behind what you're saying. Maybe Hollywood has been withholding its best product. Why do I believe COVID stats, but not flu stats? Great question. And I would have to dig up the article that I read. So I just read a very lengthy and convincing article for me on COVID statistics, what goes into a death certificate. I read a similarly convincing article on the exaggerated numbers for flu deaths. And I should dig that up. Look forward, you hold others to higher standards of evidence than you hold yourself. I don't know how many other live streamers put as much effort as I do into trying to let you know how much I know, how much expertise I have here, what I'm basing, what I'm saying on, providing you with the links and making corrections. So this is a particular medium. It's not the same as writing an academic paper where I can footnote everything. As far as I'm aware in the streaming sphere, I don't know anyone who makes as much effort as I do to be accurate and to provide sources and to give you a sense of how much I know about a particular topic. So I'm not saying the flu kills no one and COVID-19 kills 10 times as many people as the flu does and it follows that COVID-19 kills no one as well. Yes, that's true. So I'm not always going to be completely as precise as I would like with my language. So I don't believe I hold others to higher standards of evidence than you hold yourself. People throw out these wild theories in the chat and I ask for evidence. Pretty much every show that I do, I'm coming to you. Here is the basis for why I believe XYZ. So let me see if I can grab some evidence on the so-called flu deaths. In looks, Mahan was the caricature of a bookish intellectual, tall, lanky and spare, with posture very erect, his face sallow and sad, with pale blue eyes, a weak chin concealed under a graying beard, and a bulbous forehead merging into a majestic bald dome. He was abstinious, self-disciplined, pious and reserved with strangers even to the point of seeming shy. He had graduated Annapolis in 1859 when the institution was only 14 years old and entered the old wooden hull sailing navy in time for the election of Lincoln and the secession of the southern states. He passed the four years of the civil war in uneventful blockade duty off the rebel coast. In the post-war period his duties took him around the globe, with cruises on various ships throughout Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. By 1884, Mahan had 25 years of honorable but otherwise unremarkable naval service behind him. He was a 45-year-old captain with no great hope of attaining flag rank, Admiral. There was nothing to stop him drifting along for 20 more years and retiring with a comfortable pension. But he was heartily tired of the sea, where he had spent more than half his career and keen to try a new direction. So when he was offered a position as history lecturer at the newly founded U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, he took the job at once. Mahan believed himself to be utterly unqualified for the job. Okay, so when the CDC tells us that 10,000 people died from the flu, they're not basing this on death certificates. So when the CDC tells us that, you know, 550,000 Americans died from COVID, they're basing this on death certificates. Two very different ways of counting things. Okay, so how does the CDC track flu deaths? They estimate based on rates of hospitalizations from the flu. Okay, but when it comes to COVID deaths, this is based on death certificates. It's not based on estimates. As he put it, but he had a voracious appetite for knowledge and a monastic temperament that suited him to long hours of solitary study. He pillaged bookshops, haunted libraries, and bored through hundreds of years of history. The ancient Greeks and Romans, the colonial rivalries of Britain, Holland, France and Spain, the rise and fall of Napoleon. I tackled the job much as I presume an immigrant begins a clearing in the wilderness, not troubling greatly which tree he takes first, he later wrote. I laid my hands on whatever came along, reading with the profound attention of one who is looking for something. One afternoon in the fall of 1885, while working in the library of the English Club in Lima, Peru, where his ship had put in, Mahan was engrossed in a history of the Punic Wars of Roman Carthage in the second and third centuries BC. A question entered his mind arriving with the force of a revelation. What if Hannibal had invaded Italy by sea rather than by the long overland routes through Spain and the Alps? Would Rome have fallen and the entire course of Western history been diverted? Okay, so if you go to the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services, there's this request for correction on influenza deaths from Kenneth Stoller of the International Hyperbaric Medical Association. Doesn't give a date, but anyway, he notes, this is what I was referring to. US data on influenza deaths are false and misleading. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, knowledge is a difference between flu death and flu associated death. It uses the terms interchangeably. There are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear, a CDC communication strategy in which medical experts predict dire outcomes during flu season. So the CDC markets fear with regard to flu. Now, you'll say the CDC markets fear with regard to COVID. Yes, but there is far stronger substantiation for fear of COVID than for fear of the regular flu. So the CDC website states what has become commonly accepted widely reported in the lay and the scientific press about 36,000 Americans die from flu a year. Do you know anyone who's died from the flu? Can you name me a famous person who's died from the flu? So according to the CDC, flu is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, but why are flu and pneumonia bundled together? Is a relationship so strong or unique to warrant characterizing them as a single cause of death? People don't necessarily die of the flu, but they die of a secondary pneumonia. So many of these pneumonias are not viral pneumonias, but secondary pneumonias. So stomach acid suppressing drugs are associated with a higher risk of community acquiring pneumonia, but such drugs and pneumonia are not compiled as a single statistic. So the CDC states the historic 1968-69 Hong Kong flu pandemic killed 34,000 Americans. Same time, CDC claims that 36,000 Americans annually die from the flu. What is going on? So according to the CDC and clean that stuff up by the camera, bro, look, people need a variety of things to look at. So you need different colors. This is all, look, I had a set designer in here. You think I just threw down some ricola in case I had a bit of a tekel in my throat? No, I pile up the ricola because it creates like a more interesting visual. So you've got the wonderful yellow of the ricola. You've got my, I think this is a blue shirt, my black jacket. Okay. So it gets quite complicated, but essentially the CDC wants to instill fear with regard to the flu. So people take flu vaccine, which I'm all for, I take. But unlike COVID, COVID deaths are based on death certificates. Flu deaths are just guesses. They're exaggerated guesses to try to instill fear in people. So if flu is in fact not a major cause of death, this public relations approach is surely exaggerated by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia. Current data are statistically biased, right? So we don't get to have a sound discussion about public health policy because the CDC is propagandizing fear of the flu. And this is from a pediatrician. And I will try to try to find out more, more about all these fake CDC numbers about the flu, as opposed to COVID-19, which are numbers coming from death certificates. Okay. Why are Hollywood movies so bad in 2020? Like name me a good Hollywood movie released in 2020. Like movies used to be an escape from Bleak Times. Now they are what's Bleak. This is Joe Queenen writing in the Wall Street Journal. 2020 was a bleak year for everybody. But lots of people in sports and entertainment were pitched in to lift the nation's spirit. But Hollywood took a different route. Look at this year's most honored pictures show that Tinseltown's philosophy was, if you felt bad before the movie started, just wait till it's over. So ready to see a nice young barista smothered with pillows? You got it in the movie Promising Young Woman. You want to see a movie about hapless seniors scammed out of their life savings? Then you can watch the movie I Care A Lot. You want to see a movie about an old man succumbing to dementia? Then you can watch The Father. Jazz musicians fish-gutting one another? You can watch Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. How about a disastrous immigrant experience involving underachieving chicken farms in Reagan era America? That's Manari. Want to see a movie about an entire town shut down by a plant closing being stripped of its zip code, forcing depressed, penniless residents to flee to hideously downscale trailer parks? Well, you can see that with Nomadland. So in a year when tens of millions lost their jobs, like 2020 was a pretty brutal year, Hollywood really outdid itself churning out a series of movies, giving people reasons to feel far worse about life. I mean, we've got Promising Young Woman, you've got Kerry Mulligan's character dropping out of medical school to make coffee drinks. We've got Down at the Hills Repairment. Moonlighting is a serial killer in The Little Things. And in Nomadland, Francis McDormand spends the entire movie criss-crossing the country in a disintegrating RV, going from one crummy job to another. Then you had Sound of Metal, where the lead character goes deaf. And we have Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020, plays a troubled cornet player who kills off a fellow Sideman in his last film Ma Rainey. And in the United States versus Billie Holiday, cut Andre Day Sings the Blues as the target of a vicious FBI campaign. So during the Great Depression, Hollywood gave us cheerful, uplifting musicals like Shall We Dance and Toppat. During the 1970s, we got Star Wars and Rocky. This time around, the last thing the public needs is another completely incomprehensible Christopher Nolan film. Instead, we get movies about con artists, rapists, botched pregnancies, dipso, maniacal screenwriters, corrupt judiciaries, inept or crooked cops, serial killers, and underachieving chicken farmers. And another completely incomprehensible Christopher Nolan movie. This is going to be 2020. It's going to be the worst year ever for movies. Has there ever been a year that's been so bad for movies? So the only film Joe Queena says that did not want to make me slit my wrist was Borat subsequent movie film. I haven't said much about the Matt Gaetz story because I haven't had any profound insights. Now you may say, well, 40, that doesn't stop you before. time required that he complete his Naval War College lectures in time for the fall of 1886. And the trial of putting his ideas into words forced him to clarify his essential thesis. As the pages flew, he recalled, every faculty I possessed was alive and jumping. The lectures were committed to paper. And Elliot sends an interesting link to a tweet by Michael Levitt. He's a Stanford professor of biophysics and a Nobel Laureate in chemistry. And he notes it's clear that COVID-19 displaces influenza due to viral competition for a limited pool of susceptible people. Has nothing to do with mass or hygiene as evidenced by winter flu in East Asia. Okay, that's Michael Levitt. Interesting. September of 1886 and subsequently published by Little Brown under the famously stilted title, the influence of sea power upon history. The timing was propitious. Industrialization and technological change had prompted many nations to begin overhauling their fleets. National rivalries and imperial ambitions, especially among the great powers of Europe, threatened to provoke the mother of all naval arms races. The world was grasping toward a better understanding of sea power. What was its value? How was it attained? How should it be used? Mahan was not the first to ask those questions, but he framed them cogently and delicately and set out to answer them in a methodical way with examples taken from the naval wars of the past. Above all, Mahan preached the importance of capital ships or heavily armed battleships of the largest class. Frigates, cruisers, and destroyers might provide useful supporting roles such as scouting or protecting convoys, but a nation lacking big ships armed with big guns could never be more than a second-rate naval power. Mahan was adamant that this fleet of battleships must act at all times as a single concentrated unit. To divide or disperse the fleet was the classic and recurring error of naval strategy. Again and again throughout the pages of history, a united fleet had hunted down and destroyed the scattered elements of a divided fleet. To those, Mahan added a third precept, an emphasis on the offensive. The battle fleet should not be deployed as a kind of coast guard to be kept close to one's harbors, and Navy's supreme purpose, he declared, must be to range across the oceans, relying upon secure overseas bases if necessary, to hunt down and destroy the enemy fleet. War, once declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively. The enemy must not be fended off, but smitten down. Okay, here's a news report. May 8, 2020, number of COVID-19 deaths is based on actual reports. So actual death certificates, flu deaths are estimates comparing COVID-19 with the flu isn't fair. So influenza and COVID-19 have things in common. They both cause respiratory distress. They both can be transmitted via contact and in droplets in the air. They can both kill. According to the CDC, this past flu season, meaning the winter of 2019 into 2020, saw between 24,000 to 62,000 deaths. Okay, very different way than the CDC talks about COVID. Okay, the flu season ran from October 2019 through early April 2020. Now, these virus deaths are calculated very differently. So number of influenza-caused deaths, meaning flu-caused deaths is an estimate. So the CDC determines these estimates are a complicated algorithm that takes into account people who die of influenza and who's hospitalized and how many deaths went under-reported. So an actual death count for the flu does not exist, right? Because in states such as Wisconsin, they only require providers to report pediatric deaths from influenza. It's voluntary to report flu deaths from adults. So COVID-19 death counts are more accurate because of all the testing involved. Patients are tested when they're hospitalized. And so there's laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 deaths. Despite more precise measurements for COVID-19, the number of actual cases is likely higher because there are many people who die of illnesses that look like pneumonia, neurological issues or heart attacks, and these may be related to COVID-19. So during the 2009-2010 influenza season, 8% of people who died either had influenza or pneumonia. But during record COVID weeks, up to 25% of all deaths were by COVID. So one out of four people in April, May in the United States were dying approximately of COVID. So according to this article, people who dismiss COVID-19 as being something that is hyperinflated or not being hyped too much are totally wrong. That was Mahan's formula for seapower. Recognition came quickly and globally. Reviews were agilatory and admiring letters poured in from around the world. Influence and... Okay, so I've just been talking for the past few minutes about why the number of flu deaths is vastly exaggerated. And Leponius asked me, Mr. Ford, is there anything the government says that you don't believe? So there's an example. When the CDC says between 24,000 and 62,000 people died of influenza, obviously they don't have a clue. So those numbers are vastly exaggerated. They want to instill fear for whatever reason. It depends on government numbers. Some government numbers, I think, are accurate. So what's the evidence? Some government numbers are not accurate. So government is not one monolithic enterprise. There are many aspects of government. Some parts of government in some things are more accurate than other parts of government putting out numbers. So I have the same skepticism of government as I do of corporations, as I do of individuals, whether those individuals are elite or non-elite, whether they are left wing or right wing. So I'm trying to give you a combination of my best values and the best sources of information. So I try to swim through the sewer of misinformation that's flooding the internet highway and pull out what I regard as gems of insight. When was the last time government debunked itself or chose experts who contradict their narrative? Well, government is not monolithic. You're talking about government as though it's monolithic. So government is at war with itself all the time. So for example, Russiagate, the media kept telling us in 2016 that the intelligence agencies have conclusively decided, reached a consensus that Russia tried to hack the election and was trying to cooperate with the Trump campaign. It turned out it was just a handful of people who, when that came out, I said, this isn't like intelligence agencies deciding this about Russia. This is just a handful of individuals who have power who decide to do things. So obviously, all these claims about Russia hacking the 2016 elections were vastly exaggerated. And so initially we were told we were fed that all the intelligence agencies in the United States governments had reached this consensus conclusion. But that was absolutely nonsense. James Clapper, I believe, chose a few handpicked people who would follow his narrative. So it wasn't that we had a consensus among all US government intelligence agencies about the Russian role in 2016 election. Rather, we had James Clapper. It shows a few people who would go along with what he wanted to say. Yeah, Luke Ford is peak snobs only giving you the straight facts and logic. Luke Ford has never been wrong in any single topic because he reads The New York Times. Joe Biden is the most popular president ever. YouTube has to delete delights. COVID is totally real. Dr. Burke said most deaths are presumptive COVID. Luke Ford banged hands. Why aren't the funeral homes overwhelmed, bro? Well, in Los Angeles, I live in LA. And quite a few people were getting overwhelmed by the number of dead people from COVID during our surge in December and January in New York. They had to bring in refrigerator trucks because there were so many dead people. So Leponius, the CDC tells us something like 570,000 Americans have died from COVID. What do you believe is the truth? What degree of exaggeration do you believe? So I think excess deaths is the most accurate number that tells you more likely than any other statistic. And we've had 10, 20% more above the CDC official COVID death toll, the number of excess deaths over the past year. So the actual death toll from COVID is probably approximately 20% more than the official death toll. So Leponius says 80% exaggeration. But I mean, I understand you feel that way, but do you have any evidence, bro? Any facts or logic? Any links to substantiate your claims? What's the difference between Florida and California? Basically the same COVID results, very different policies, but the same COVID results. No, bro, just my gut, bro. Okay, appreciate your honesty. Okay, still a beautiful sunny day outside. And okay, yeah, Elliot, you sent me a link. What's the upshot in that link about flu deaths? So you sent me a link. Is this trying to make claims about deaths? Like, what's the upshot? You sent me a chart, but I have no idea how accurate these statistics are. So what's the upshot? What do you see as so particularly important about this chart? United States of America. Okay, I didn't see what's so important about this chart. It's hard for me to assess information and comment on it and try to figure out complicated charts at the same time. Why are there no flu cases reported for over a year? You can Google it, but people who were getting the flu and suffering from the flu and getting hospitalized by the flu are now getting hospitalized by COVID. Share the data. I don't understand the data. I don't know the source for this data. I don't know how accurate it is. I don't understand it. I just see a whole bunch of data. So share the link. You have the ability to share links in the chat. So it only makes sense that the people who would normally get quite sick from influenza and pneumonia and the flu are getting sick from COVID. Okay, so it's a chart from the CDC. So post the link to it. Is anyone wondering why there are fewer flu deaths when we have more COVID deaths? Obviously, both the flu and COVID are both respiratory influenza illnesses. You've got this year an influenza illness that is five, six, seven, eight, I don't know, 10 times more lethal than the average influenza. So people who used to suffer from the flu, suffer from regular forms of influenza are instead suffering from COVID this time around. COVID appears to spread via aerosols primarily, says Alex, yes. Influenza spread via droplets primarily, so masks are very effective at limiting influenza transmission. Yeah, particularly inside. Like it seems silly to wear a mask outside. I can't share the screen. I'm doing the show on my phone. I can't share the screen from my phone. His subsequent works were swiftly translated into French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Two years after he had broken into print, Mahan was acclaimed as the most influential scholar of seapower ever to have picked up a pen and a foreign policy say choose statements were parsed and pondered and brooded over as if they had been handed down from Mount Olympus. From 1892 on, everyone quoted him wrote an admiring Frenchman and those who debated the subject endeavored to show their views were in agreement with his. In Britain, it was said that every officer in the Royal Navy had either read the book or was pretending that he had Prime Minister William Gladstone labeled influence the book of the age. And in the houses of parliament, Mahan's name was thrown around in such a way as to cut off all debate. In 1894, Mahan received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. So, Elliott wants me to give an opinion on why there's no flu data in this CDC link. I don't know anything about this, but to me it's obvious why would you expect the same number of severe flu and regular influenza cases in a year where you've got COVID on the rampage. So I don't see that. It's just like FBI rape statistics. So let's say you've got one group A commits about 100,000 rapes a year against group B and group B commits, according to the FBI statistics, zero rapes against group A members. Now, why is this? Because the FBI regards anything less than 10 as zero. So I would expect low rates of hospitalization for the flu in an era of COVID. So if I'm missing the point, Elliott, please make the point. I keep asking you for the past 10 minutes. Make the point. So you're telling me I don't get the point. Why aren't I getting the point? Why aren't I sharing the point? Elliott, please make the point. Last 10 minutes, I've asked you, please make the point. What is the point that you want to make? Because it's not easy to just assess data that I know nothing about, statistics, flowcharts, I know nothing about. Make the point. I'm reading the chat. Oh, it's hard to read the chat, read the articles, analyze the data, comment all at the same time. So if there's a point, Elliott, please make it. The Royal Navy Club Bank, what the toast was offered. We owe to Captain Mahan, the 3 million pounds sterling just voted for the increase of the Navy. In Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II reported to a friend, I'm just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan's book and I'm trying to learn it by heart. It is a first class book and classical in all points. The valuable Kaiser ordered his naval minister, Alfred von Tirpitz, to place translated copies of influence aboard every ship in the German Navy and to let it be known that every officer was expected to read it. The Anglo-German naval arms race that preceded... Okay, here's the point from Elliott. Why have flu cases gone to zero in the exact same year that COVID is rampaging? It's not a question for me. I would expect that in the year where COVID is rampaging that there would be many fewer cases of flu. So flu fatalities are always a gross estimate on the part of the CDC. It's not like COVID death numbers which come from actual death certificates. Luke Ford wants us all to analyze the data. Can we agree the data from the CDC is accurate? Which data? It's not like the CDC and everything they do is just monolithic same level of pristine excellence. Some data from the CDC is guesswork. Some data from the CDC is propaganda meant to instill fear. Other data has a pretty solid evidentiary basis. It's not like all CDC data, all Pentagon data, all CIA reports, all government accounting office reports are just all of equal value and equal amount of accuracy, right? The CDC is staffed by human beings. Some parts of the CDC are more effective than other parts. Some CDC data has more solid basis in reality than other data. There's no monolithic nature to CDC data. Just like there's no monolithic quality to everything that I do or everything that the Pentagon does. Luke, you asked me for data. I gave you data. Now you're mad at me for doing so. Okay. I just ask you to make the point. I can't analyze flow charts and CDC data and present it, analyze it, read it, master it at the same time carrying on a live stream. So I just ask you 15 minutes to make your point. Your point is why a flu death's completely gone away according to you. And to me, to Alex to large, it's not a question. It's not something that's difficult to understand. So and again, not all CDC data, not all Ford motor car data, not all Recola data, not all data, just because it comes from one entity makes it equally empirically accurate. So Eliot says year after year, there are thousands of flu cases per day. And yet for the last year, there are zero question mark. I didn't know anything about it. So I'm not going to proclaim answers on something I know nothing about. Some lights provoked the First World War unfolded under the deep influence of Mahan. But in no nation did Mahan's writings make so deep and lasting an impression as in Japan. Mahan himself believed that to be the case. He remarked that more of my works have been done into Japanese than into any other tongue, and said no other country had showed closer or more interested attention to the general subject. In 1894, influence was translated and distributed through the Association of Imperial Japanese Navy officers. Both the Navy and Army staff colleges adopted it as a textbook. Copies were presented to the Meiji Emperor and the crown prince Yoshihito. The Japanese Naval Staff College attempted unsuccessfully to recruit Mahan to join its faculty. Mahan's doctrine of the decisive battle echoed Miyamoto Musashi, the great samurai philosopher and swordsman of the 16th century, who had extolled the power of total absorption in a single-telling blow. Admiral Heiji Hichiro Togo wrote in his own brush hand an exquisite calligraphy, a tribute. Naval strategists of all nations are of one opinion that Mahan's works will forever occupy the highest position as a worldwide authority in the study of military science. I express my deep and cordial reverence for his far-reaching knowledge and keen judgment. As Japan's political elites fell under the sway of Mahan's ideas, the Navy's never-ending crusade for a greater share of the national budget gained momentum and adherence. Japan was an island nation like Britain declared the admirals and like Britain, Japan could be attacked only by enemies who must come from over the sea. The Army's imperial ambitions would come to nothing unless troops could be delivered safely to the Asian mainland. The Japanese Navy... Okay, fact check. The CDC has not stopped reporting flu deaths and this season's numbers are typical. Okay, this is a report from the USA Today, May 1, 2020. Claim, the CDC has stopped reporting flu deaths because they are so low. So on April 28, conservative commentator, political activist Candace Owens, accused the CDC of misreporting flu deaths. According to CDC reports, 2020 is working out to be the lowest flu death season of the decade. It's a miracle. Okay, so what's really going on here? Not just lowest flu deaths. What's going on? Okay, CDC uses mathematical estimates to retroactively measure the burden of each flu season. After each flu season, the CDC considers in-hospital death data and investigates death certificates to account for total flu deaths because not all deaths related to influenza occur in the hospital use death certificate data to estimate how likely deaths are to occur outside the hospital. Flu seasons vary from year to year. They do not have a strict timeline. Last year, flu season was the longest in a decade, lasting 21 weeks. To account for this ambiguous period, the CDC releases weekly US influenza summary updates from October through May. CDC continues to report flu deaths. So this data shows there being as many flu influenza associated deaths to date in 2020 as there were in 2019. So we rate the claim the CDC has stopped reporting flu deaths because the death rates are so low as false because it is not supported by our research. CDC continues to report weekly on the 2020 influenza season. Its data show this season's rates are similar to rates of past year. The rate of flu deaths did not decrease in January, nor was the total number of deaths in 2019 as high as claimed. Okay, now don't believe everything you read about flu deaths. This is Lawrence Solomon, columnist with the National Post, contributor of the Wall Street Journal, author, co-author of Seven Books, and an advisor to President Jimmy Carter's Task Force on Global Resources and the Environment. Since 1980, he's directed the Energy Probe Research Foundation, one of Canada's leading think tanks. He's got an essay here. Don't believe everything you read about flu deaths. The CDC's decision to play out flu deaths dates back a decade when it realized the public wasn't following its advice on the flu vaccine. So this article here is published in 2014. During the 2003 flu season, the manufacturers were telling us that they weren't receiving a lot of orders for the vaccine. Associate Director for Communications at CDC toured National Public Radio. So flu results in about 250,000 to 500,000 yearly deaths worldwide. Wikipedia tells us typical estimate is 36,000 deaths a year in the United States reports NBC citing the CDC. Now these numbers are controversial because they are estimates. Controversial is an understatement. Okay, the numbers differ wildly from the Soviet tallies recorded on death certificates. By law, every certificate must show a cause. So according to the National Vital Statistics System in the U.S., for example, annual flu deaths in 2010 amounted to just 500 per year, fewer than deaths from ulcers, hernias, pregnancy, right? 500 a year. CDC says 60,000 actual statistics from the National Vital Statistics System, 500, right? This is my point. CDC grossly, grossly deliberately exaggerates the number of flu deaths each year to drive up demand for flu vaccines. Even this 500 figure is probably too high. It says the American Journal of Public Health and the British Medical Journal. Only 15 to 20% of people who come down with flu-like symptoms have influenza. The other 80% caught other germs that are indistinguishable from the flu without laboratory tests, which are rarely done. 2001, a year in which death certificates listed 257 Americans as having died of the flu. Only 18 were positively identified as true flus. The other 239 were simply assumed to be flus. Most likely had very few true flus among them. U.S. data on influenza deaths are an absolute mess. It says the article in the British Medical Journal. This article is entitled, are U.S. flu deaths more PR, are U.S. flu death figures more PR than science? Yes. So the article takes issue with the 36,000 flu death figure commonly claimed. CDC claims that flu deaths are the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S. Okay, most pneumonia deaths are completely unrelated to influenza. Pneumonia has more than 30 different causes. Influenza is just one of them. Because death certificates belie claims of numerous flu deaths, CDC enlists computer models to arrive at its 36,000 flu death estimate. Even here it needs to bend conventional medical terminology to arrive at compelling deaths. So yeah, sometimes agencies push out propaganda. Sometimes they push out more accurate figures and reports. Courses of death statistics are based solely on the underlying cause of death internationally defined as a disease or injury which initiated the train events leading directly to death. Flu is rarely an underlying cause of death. So the CDC creates the sound alike term influenza associated death. So using this new flu definition, CDC computer models tally up people who died of heart ailments or other causes as having the flu. So why does the CDC play up flu deaths? Because you realize the public wasn't following its advice on getting the flu vaccine. Manufacturers were telling the CDC that we weren't receiving orders for the vaccine. So the CDC developed the seven step recipe for generating interest in and demand for flu vaccination. So here is the recipe that fosters influenza vaccine interest and demand. Medical experts, public health authorities should publicly via the media state concern and alarm and predict dire outcomes and urge influenza vaccination. This will result in more media interest and attention in terms of motivate behavior. Other emotional recommendations include fostering the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza. And give lots of visible and tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness. Show pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward and pictures of people getting vaccinated. So the CDC unabashedly decided to create a mass market for the flu vaccine by enlisting the news media into panicking the public. And that's been going on for approximately 20 years. Be they insistent it should hold status equivalent to that of the British Royal Navy. It should be reconstituted as the primary branch of the nation's military forces with a prior claim on policy making influence. Is there a difference between a COVID death and a COVID associated death? Not really, for the reasons I made earlier and for the length that I provided in the video description and in the chat. And state funding. In his own country, Mahan's most ardent champion was Teddy Roosevelt, who upon finishing influence in May of 1890 wrote to congratulate the captain. So the WHO is not to be trusted. 40 is not to be trusted, the Pentagon. It depends which part, in which circumstance, in which areas, all right. We can't just, you know, it'd be great to just go, oh, CDC can't be trusted or the CDC can be trusted no matter what they do. It depends what they do, when they do it, who's doing it, what are the circumstances, right. You always have to look at context. Can't just decide, oh, anything the CDC does is either corrupt or has integrity, right. Some things it's going to do are going to be corrupt because everything that humans do is going to be touched with corruption. In other areas, there may be reasons to take the CDC seriously. In other areas, there are reasons to take the CDC not so seriously. Why is there no objective data that we can all objectively evaluate with confidence? Because everything that human beings do is flawed. So you have to look at, you know, which data, who compiled it, what are the circumstances, what are the incentives, right. Life isn't just laid out so, you know, oh, here at this agency, these figures are just always going to be empirically wonderful that we can all trust, right. Life is complicated, but luckily you got 40 here to try to sort through the confusion and provide you with some, you know, love and inclusion. Which data from which sources will I accept if its conclusions differ from my opinion? Well, on COVID, if you've been watching my show, I've had the most milk toast opinions. So it depends. It's not like there's any objective source that is always right, right. It's all context. I haven't had strong opinions about COVID, right. I've kind of been milk toast in the middle. So I change my mind all the time on this show. So, but there is no one objective source of information. So who is the guy who wrote, Michael Fermento did a great job with his book, The Method of Heterosexual AIDS, but, you know, he was wildly wrong on COVID. You know, Alex Baronson may be a wonderful guy and do some important investigative work, but he's been awfully wrong on COVID. I've spent the past hour expressing strong opinions on COVID, like giving an example of a strong opinion on COVID. I think I've noted how death certificates work, right. So I've been talking about COVID for a year with overall pretty middle of the road milk toast opinions. I've had the weakest opinions on COVID of any live streamer of which I'm aware. So most people in the distant right have been banging on the drum that it's all, you know, a hoax and it's all a lie and it's all exaggerated. And that's not been my approach, but I've been happy to engage with with some people who allege that. I also have not been banging on the drum that, you know, every government locked down and cracked down and everything the government says is, you know, God's honest truth either. You started the stream about the Atlantic article. I didn't start the stream with the Atlantic article, but I did read the Atlantic article pointing out that Alex Berenson has been wrong again and again and again and again. So maybe the Atlantic article is wrong, but from what I see, it seems I'm pretty solid ground. So I shared that I have shared hundreds of different perspectives on COVID, but I've not fit into either camp. I've not fit into the, you know, COVID denier camp, which seems to dominate distant right streaming. And I've not fit into, you know, the mainstream media camp where, you know, Governor Cuomo is the model and we need to lock down and everybody needs to wear a mask even when they walk down the street. I've consistently been in the middle with a pretty humble stance on COVID. I just don't really know that much. What is my opinion of COVID? I accept excess death rates as the most accurate statistical analysis of the effects of COVID. So it seems right now that COVID has killed about 600,000 or so Americans over the past 13 months. So to me, that seems fairly serious, but I agree with you. I agree with you. I want a cost benefit analysis on the various approaches to limiting the spread of COVID. So I've not been on here saying, lock down, lock down, lock down, wear a mask when you walk outside. You know, you shouldn't even go outside. You'll catch COVID. All right. It's kind of walking, walking a middle path here, the lonely middle road. I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference. Links to the things that I'm talking about are in the video description.