 do the other super chat questions. Let me just do this little analysis of COVID. I hope you guys are interested in this bit. So you hear a lot about the false positives in PCR tests. The PCR tests are too sensitive and what happens is they'll pick up other viruses or other things and you'll get false positives. And that this is a big problem. And this means that the numbers we have gotten around the prevalence of COVID have been blown out of proportion, out of proportion. So I want to give you a little analysis of this because in a sense there's some truth to this. But I want to make it clear when this is relevant and when it's not relevant and what the truth is. All right, so we're going to run some numbers. So if you've got a little if you've got a pad of paper and you want to write stuff down, this is a good time to just write stuff down so that you get kind of the how the numbers impact this. Okay, so we're going to assume and I think this is very close to reality. The reality is that the false positive rate of PCR test is about half a percent. So half a percent of the people who get tested will have a positive result when they're actually negative. Now, there's some debate in the literature where there's half a percent or less or closer to one percent. Maybe it's one percent and we can run the numbers on one percent too, but it's not more than one percent. And it's probably not less than half a percent, probably somewhere between half a percent and one percent. So let's take half a percent for now. We can play around with one percent in a minute. All right, so half a percent means that if you test a thousand people, of the people, sorry, if you test a thousand people, five of them are going to test positive when they shouldn't. If you test a thousand people, five of them will test positive when they shouldn't. Now, is this a big deal or isn't it? Well, it depends. If when you're doing this test, a very small number of people are actually infected with COVID and this applies to any test, are actually infected with COVID. Let's say that only five percent of the people are actually infected with COVID and you test a thousand, right? Then 50 people will test positive or maybe 55, but let's say 50 people for simplicity and five of them will be five of them. Right? So if five percent positivity, 50 will test and five of them, 10 percent, will be false. Now, 10 percent is a large number. 10 percent is significant. So of the 50 that tested positive, 10 percent are actually negative. That skews the number. It changes the interpretation a little bit of what's going on. Now imagine that 10 percent of the people are testing positive, 10 percent of the people are testing positive. Now you've got 100 people. Now you've got 100 people who've tested positive. It's still true that five of them are not positive. They're actually negative. Now it's only five percent, five out of 100. Okay, five percent is not trivial, but it doesn't change policy. It doesn't change hospital preparedness. There's still 95 people who are positive and whatever that implies in terms of the severity of the disease, how many people show up in a hospital, how many people ultimately land up in ICUs. So the fact that there are five people who are, who actually tested positive, who are actually in reality negative isn't significant at that point or a little significant at that point. Okay, a little significant at that point. Now, somebody says the false positives that people are talking about are people who are positive and pass and still shed inactive RNA. The PCR test is good at finding the viral RNA, but doesn't detect our viruses. So yeah, so if you were tested positive during, if you tested positive for COVID, don't get another PCR test because you're going to test positive over and over and over again in the future, even though you're no longer infectious. But you know, anybody was going to tell that. I mean, we were told that by people who, as some of you know, my wife tested positive for COVID and she was told by the person who gave her the news, don't test again for at least a month because you'll keep testing positive. Even though once the symptoms are gone, 14 days or 10 days, actually it's 10 days, you're free to go. No, the issue here is that, and I've seen videos of this, I've seen scientists, I've seen epidemiologists make this claim that the fact that there's so many false positives invalidates the PCR test, but that's ludicrous in cases where a significant percentage of those being tested are positive. I'll give you an example. In Idaho right now, in the state of Idaho right now, 55.6% of people being tested are positive. 55.6% more than 50. So which means out of every thousand who get tested, 556 are positive. Of those, five, it's a false positive. Does that matter? No, it's irrelevant. It doesn't make any difference. Are things really bad in Idaho in terms of the number of people that got COVID? Yes. The false positives are not going to affect that conclusion. Now, I understand that people don't study statistics and don't think these problems through and don't actually run the numbers, but then don't comment on it. I said this about the doctors, the California doctors a while back who came out and had all these statistics and they were wrong. The statistics were wrong. They had good intentions, much of what they said about the disease were right, but the statistics, the way they did it, everything they said about it was wrong. By the way, California right now, California has a 14.3% positivity rate. Now, I think it's much lower than Idaho because California has massive amounts of testing, massive amounts of testing. You can't drive around Orange County and not bump into several places that are testing for COVID. There are a lot of them. So a lot of testing going on. So if you test a lot, the positivity rate is probably going to be lower. Idaho, my guess is testing only people with symptoms. That's why they have such a high positivity rate. Anyway, in California, it's 14.3. It's 143 people for every thousand tested, of which five are false positives. I don't think that's significant. It's not going to change whether it's 138 or 143. It's not going to change anything. It's not going to change policy. It's not going to change approach to COVID. There's a, you know, California's got problems with its emergency rooms. They're packed not because of the false positives. So if you send me a video claiming here's the latest and greatest in COVID, please make sure that at least it adds up, the math adds up. Even if the false positivity rate is 1%, then now we're talking about 10. So if that 143 per thousand, 10 of which are false positive. Okay, that's inflating the numbers a little bit. It should be 133, not 143. Does it change anything fundamental? No. The only time the false positive rate is important is when there are very few cases. It's when almost nobody is testing positive. Then let's say only 10 people test positive. God, half of them are false. I don't know which, but if they're only 10, then half, 10 out of a thousand, right? Then it's important. All right. So in other words, the false positivity rate right now when rate positivity rates are so high is, I'm sorry to tell you guys, irrelevant. I mean, it was relevant. It was 5% or 10%. But at 1%, it's irrelevant. If half a percent, it's certainly irrelevant. So now I suspect that the entire way in which we're testing, the entire approach to testing right now is wrong, that there will be problems with it. I am a huge advocate of antigen tests that are cheap and that you can do at home and you can do every day rather than PCR tests. But that's not the direction this world has gone in, which I think is awful. I think if we'd gotten those antigen tests at home, easy tests that you can do yourself that cost a bucket test that you could do every day before you went out, then that would have crushed this. It would have crushed this whole pandemic. It would have halted it because you would have basically, if you positively stay home, you don't infect people. And if you're negative, you're probably 90, 70%, you're fine to go out and engage in normal activity. The economy wouldn't have crashed. You just saw unemployment numbers, 140,000 more unemployed people this month than in the past than last month. So economy's heading in the wrong direction. All of that was avoidable if we'd gotten our testing regime right. But this administration messed up testing from day one and then denied the need for testing later on and denied the resources for testing. Anyway, it's been an unmitigated disaster. But testing is the solution. It's just a matter of doing it right and getting rid of these pathetic, ridiculous lockdowns that don't seem to help. I mean, California has been in so-called lockdown and yet cases are through the roof. I see users through the roof, hospital capacity is through the roof of COVID. And instead of the hysteria and so the panic, instead of the lockdowns, instead of the infringement of rights, freedom, the freedom for companies to produce tests, the freedom of companies to offer us as individuals testing mechanisms that would have allowed us to go back to normal without any very few problems, that was denied to us by a political class of both parties, of both parties. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right. Before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But at least the people who like it, you know, I want to see, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this and you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at your own book show.com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals and enjoy your support for all, for the work, for the value, hopefully you're receiving from this. And of course, don't forget, if you're not a subscriber, even if you, even if you just come here to troll, or even if you're here like Matthew to defend Marx, then you should subscribe because that way you'll know when to show up. You'll know what shows are on, when they're on, you'll get notified. So, yes, like, share, subscribe, support, like, share, subscribe, support. There you go. Easy. Do one, all of those, please.