 So, let me just take some time to ask you, how are you doing? Because we're in week three of social distancing and self-quarantine, and I know that a lot of you are going a little bit stir crazy. So how are you doing? I think it's important for us to take the time to acknowledge that this is a lot to deal with, even if we don't know anyone who's been affected with COVID-19, for those of us who have to stay home and are not used to that. This can be really difficult, like this is going to lead to depression, it's going to lead to excess anxiety, so I really want people to acknowledge that if you're feeling worse because of the COVID-19 crisis, just know that you're not alone. And there's a lot of people, everyone who's currently experiencing the same thing. For me, I'm dealing with quarantine just fine because this isn't that much different than my usual lifestyle, to be honest, but still it has caused some depression because it feels so surreal. You see this kind of things happen in movies, but never in real life. You almost think that a global pandemic, this could never happen, but we're living through something that is truly just, it's crazy. So it really is difficult to believe that this is actually happening, and I think that this is going to become very real as more and more people that we know become infected or affected with COVID-19. So that being said, let's talk about what's going on when it comes to COVID-19. Last week, we left on a really terrifying note where Donald Trump and Republicans were insisting that we shouldn't allow the cure to be worse than the virus itself. And Trump wanted to reopen the country, reopen the country in whatever capacity he can by Easter because the thought of packed churches on Easter Sunday sounded beautiful to him. Now, to me, that sounds like a nightmare. A bunch of elderly people coughing on each other and shaking hands. That sounds horrifying. But thankfully, he has chosen to extend the deadline. But it's important, at least 30 days. Now, you've just got to play it by ear. You don't necessarily know how long this is going to last. Models predict that we won't peak until mid-April. Now, we don't know how long we'll be in the peak process and when we start to kind of go down, but buckle up. We're just getting started, and it's going to be a long ride. Unfortunately, Trump is not choosing to send everyone back to work yet to sacrifice them to the gods of capitalism. And Dr. Fauci explains why Donald Trump came to this conclusion. Long story short, because more people that are smart got to him than the dumb people. Take a look. Why have the guidelines been extended to the end of April? Why was that decision made? Well, gentlemen, you look at the kinetics of the outbreak, the patterns that are going on now, even as we speak. They were not going to reach a peak and turn around the way we wanted to within the timeframe that was originally estimated. So I thought it was prudent, and I think the right decision, to extend them another 30 days. Because what you really want to do is you want to start seeing some flattening out and turning around the curve and it coming down. It wasn't doing that. If you look at New York, it was doing this. If you look at New Orleans, it was doing this. Detroit is certainly going to start doing that. It would not have been a good idea to pull back at a time when you really needed to be pressing your foot on the pedal as opposed to on the brakes. You keep talking about the peak. Can you explain to the American people what exactly that peak looks like and how it will tax the system? Well, there are a number of factors that are going on at the same time. One is the number of new cases per day. The other is the number of deaths that you have. So if you have like 100 cases today, 200 cases tomorrow, 400 cases the next day, 600 cases the next day, you are clearly going in the wrong direction. You don't want to interfere except to try and suppress that. If you reach the point where the number of new cases starts to equilibrate so that yesterday you have 150, today you have 150, tomorrow you have 125, they're starting to level off, which is the kind of the beginning of the turning around of the curve of it coming down. Deaths tend to linger a little bit more after the hospitalizations. But when you see the new hospitalizations start to do this, you know you're going in the right direction. And we weren't doing that. And we felt that if we prematurely pulled back, we would only form an acceleration or a rebound of something, which would have put you behind where you were before. And that's the reason why we argued strongly with the President that he not withdraw those guidelines after 15 days, but that he extend them. And he did listen. You argued strongly, you said with the President. Our reporting is that among other things you showed him these models that suggest that even with the current guidelines, the death total in the United States could be between 100,000 and 200,000. So why do you think that was so convincing? Well it was quite convincing. The President, as he said multiple times at the press conference yesterday, his first goal is to prevent suffering and death. And we made it very clear to him that if we pulled back on what we were doing and didn't extend them, there would be more avoidable suffering and avoidable death. So it was a pretty clear decision on this part. So I just want to take a moment to applaud anyone who is close to Trump that convinced him to not reopen the country by Easter. This is a decision that will literally save lives. So thank you. Trump is easily persuadable. It's usually like the last person who was in his ear before he has to make a decision. That will be the most influential. So whoever got to him, you're doing the Lord's work. Thank you. Let me just again reiterate that reopening the country too early is idiotic. He was expecting a trade-off. We can save the economy if we sacrifice people, but that's not necessarily how things work. If you reopen the economy, the economy is probably still going to suffer because people dying is bad for the economy. There's still going to be global economic ramifications. We lived in a highly globalized society. World capitalism is currently dominant, right? So just because the United States chooses to send all its people back to work to die doesn't mean that other countries are going to do the same thing. That's going to impact trade. That's going to impact global markets. So to just think that you can somehow stop the economy from collapsing if you send people to work to die is idiotic. It's fucking moronic to even think that. So I'm glad that somebody convinced him to not do that. With that being said, this crisis is still very real and Trump is still in charge ultimately. He's the leader and he's the worst possible person to be the leader. And it's getting worse. And currently the United States is the number one country when it comes to COVID cases. The number one country. And I want to share another Dr. Fauci interview where he kind of tells us a little bit of what to expect based on current models and what they project. Well, Dr. Burke said yesterday, as you know, that she doesn't think any city will be spared from this virus. How many cases do you think the US will reach a million cases to 10 million cases? Or do we not even have any idea? You know, Jake, to be honest with you, we don't really have any firm idea. There are things called models. And when someone creates a model, they put in various assumptions. And the model is only as good and as accurate as your assumptions. And whenever the model is come in, they give a worst case scenario and a best case scenario. Generally, the reality is somewhere in the middle. I've never seen a model of the diseases that I've dealt with, which the worst case scenario actually came out. They always overshoot. So when you use numbers like a million, a million and a half, two million, that almost certainly is off the chart. Now, it's not impossible, but very, very unlikely. So it's difficult to present. I mean, looking at what we're seeing now, I would say between 100 and 200,000 cases. But I don't want to be held to that because it's, excuse me, deaths. I mean, we're going to have millions of cases. But I just don't think that we really need to make a projection when it's such a moving target that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people. What we do know, Jake, is that we got a serious problem in New York. We have a serious problem in New Orleans, and we're going to be developing serious problems in other areas. So although people like to model it, let's just look at the data of what we have and not worry about these worst case and best case scenarios. So I want to just stress here that this is speculation. It's based on models. There's really no way of knowing how many people will be affected and ultimately die because of COVID-19. But what Dr. Fauci says here, I mean, I just want you to think a little bit harder about this. He says it's not going to be, you know, one to two million people most likely. It's possible, right? It's within the realm of possibility, but it's highly unlikely. However, what we're looking at is probably 100,000 to 200,000 people dying to put that into perspective on 9-11. We lost 2,977 people and we are already almost at 3,000. When it comes to the lives we've lost due to COVID-19. So if, you know, these models bear out, not the best case scenario, but not the worst case scenario, and we land somewhere in the middle, which is what Dr. Fauci estimates will be the actual case. It's still going to be one of the biggest crises we've ever had to face. And that's true not just for America, but for the human race. That's really terrifying. And it doesn't help that we have the worst possible leader at a time when we need someone who's at least semi-competent, just semi-competent. We see Donald Trump caring more about his own image and perception. He's getting into spats with governors. He is not agreeing with how much ventilators hospitals say they need. He's sending, you know, states broken medical equipment, including ventilators. And on top of that, he's trying to lie to people and mislead them for purposes of doing damage control to make him look less bad. So when it comes to us being the number one country with COVID cases, he said that's because, you know, we just are testing more people, which is factually incorrect. But here's the clip of him saying that we are testing nearly 100,000 people a day, which is more than any other country in the world. And the reason we have more cases than anybody is because we're finding more people because we're testing much more. So when the fake news goes and says, well, we have more, the fact is that if you look at other countries, you have countries with 1.5 billion people, those countries, if they tested everybody, you know, it'd be a whole different story. But yeah, that's just not true. Tests are not widely available. There are people who are taking the social media to voice their grievances about how they're experiencing COVID-19 like symptoms, shortness of breath, high fever, and they are not able to get a test. Doctors are telling them to just stay home, self quarantine because there's just not enough tests to go around. If we actually tested everyone who wanted a test or who were experiencing symptoms that needed a test, then the number would be much higher of suspected cases, of confirmed cases, that is. So that's just not true. But look, we don't know how long this is going to last. And that uncertainty is, I think, the most difficult part for people because working within complete information, it makes crises a lot worse. Like if we get a sense of a timeline, it's easier for us to mentally grapple with how long we have to hunker down in our homes. But the fact that we don't know the fact that it's just kind of an open question, it makes it that much worse for people. And I really hope that in the future, we kind of have more measures in place to better prepare ourselves, not just for global pandemics, but any types of crises. And, you know, I don't want to be even a bigger Debbie Downer here, but I don't think that this is going to be the last global pandemic. Climate change will expose us to new diseases as the ice thaws. But on top of that, it will introduce us to new crises. And even when this crisis is over, we could see a resurgence of COVID-19 after we think it's gone. So we just have to be better prepared. We have to give people the option of seeing a therapist online. But that also means they have to be able to afford it and not just afford it. They should be able to get it regardless if they can or can't afford it, right? Because affordability is something that is incredibly subjective. So as we enter this new week, I just hope that people take time for themselves, find a way to treat themselves. If that means being a little bit lazy, lounging around the house, playing Animal Crossing, whatever you can do psychologically for yourself to cope, exercise in your house, do it, don't feel guilty about it because we have to make sure that we social distance, we quarantine. And just from my own experience and anyone I've talked to, I had to leave who starts to work. People are not taking this shit seriously. They're not taking this seriously. And we need to. There's a lot of people taking this seriously, but not everyone is. So if we all actually abided by what the CDC is recommending, then this would be over faster. That's what people need to realize. But it's impossible to get everyone to do the same thing, right? We can't force everyone to social distance and self quarantine. So those of us who are behaving good, we are only as strong. This pandemic will only last as long as our most stubborn citizens and stubborn government officials. So we don't necessarily know when this will be over, but just understand that it will be over at some point in time. This, like all crises, will come to an end at some point. And that's what you have to keep telling yourself as difficult as it is to imagine because we're not even in the middle at this point. We're not even to the middle point, but just know this isn't going to last forever. Things will be different afterwards, but there will be a degree of normalcy, at least in the sense that we can go to the store and not have to worry about, you know, getting exposed to it or we can go to the movie theater and not worry about getting exposed. So just try to tell yourself that and do what you need to do. Any psychological crutches that you have video games, like indulge yourself if you have food at your house that's unhealthy, eat it. Just try to give yourself a pass during this time because we have to do everything we can to stay sane because it's tough currently, I know. And he's doing a really, really good job. Many people are telling me about how wonderful the humanist report is. Bigly.