Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive October 12, 2026
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MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 986 Scott Adams - Was Live and Sipping

Context —

's wait for the end part. So the first part is just a setup. "Roger Stone has been treated very unfairly. How about that jury? 4-0-1. Does anybody think that was fair? Disgraceful. Stay tuned for Fox News." And guys, and then he says, "And guys like low ratings psycho Joe Scarborough are allowed to walk the streets. Open the cold case. A cold case." So if you don't know what that story's about,…

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ople's opinion of Joe Scarborough. So the fact that he would be so ballsy to throw in the suggestion that Scarborough murdered a young woman in his office. So yeah, I don't know how you could take it too seriously. But somebody will. Somebody's going to believe that really happened.

All right. So here's an interesting story. So Dr. Karol Sikora — it's a man's name, Karol Sikora. He's an oncologist and former chief of the World Health Organization's cancer program. So he's looking at the data from around the world where some of the lockdowns have ended. And he is puzzled. He is puzzled because if you look at where the lockdowns ended and people have gone back to work, the death rate is not spiking. And apparently according to him, he says it's as though something has changed, meaning there's something that's keeping the virus from raging. He says so something has changed and none of us can explain why.

Do you remember when Trump made that statement? He's been continually mocked for that. We might say the virus will just go away. And people said that doesn't happen. Viruses don't just go away. And then there was some other famous virologist who said the same thing. He said sometimes these things just go away. And here's the funny thing. You don't know why. So even the top experts say they don't know why any virus goes away. They know it does.

Now somebody's saying herd immunity. But apparently the experts do not say that. Apparently viruses go away without much herd immunity. So if that's not the primary thing, there's always some, but apparently that's not the explanation. It's part of the story, but I guess we don't know why some viruses just go away.

If I had to speculate, I will speculate. I'm going to speculate that some people are more likely to get any particular virus. And there could be — you reach herd immunity at like — this is just speculation with no background whatsoever. It could be that for some kinds of viruses you reach an effective herd immunity that may be 30 percent infected. Now if everybody could get every virus, 30 percent wouldn't stop anything. But if it turns out that viruses can affect some people and sort of not affect others, maybe 30 percent is enough.

So maybe there's some mystery like that. That's just speculation. Don't take that seriously. But I love the fact that after everything we've learned and studied and all the experts and everything that we could do, the one thing that everybody agrees should make the death rate go up — 100 percent of experts agree if you're loosening the restrictions on travel and everything, you should make the death rate go up. But maybe it's not. What if it doesn't?

So this is what I've been telling you for the last day or two. In two weeks, if everything's loosened up and in two weeks the death rate either declines a little bit or stays flat, it's over. We're back to work. Because you're not going to be able to keep anybody home if after a few weeks of loosening up there's no change in the data in terms of worsening. If it's not worsening two weeks from now, I think things are going to open up.

Now when I say things are going to open up, I don't think large events are going to happen right away. But things like school, for example, and go to work and open your restaurant but do things smart. I think all that's going to come together pretty quickly if this holds, which we don't know why, but the rates are not going up as much as expected.

Here's my best guess about why the rates are not going u

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p. It's not much of a guess actually. It was another study. A team of scientists in Hong Kong. They did some tests with hamsters or something and they determined that wearing masks is 75 percent effective. It reduces droplets by 75 percent. Doesn't it seem to you that with all the masks people are wearing and the attention they're giving to social distancing that — and also learning what the wors…

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