So if I had to guess, let me put this positive filter on it. I think the voting will be better than it should have been. In other words, I think that humanity is really going to try to rise to this challenge because the stakes are so high and we do have some time. It's not like a hurricane where you have maybe a few days. We had weeks. There should have been enough time to print things, reprint things, check things, scrub databases as much as possible. So we might be in a little better shape than we thought. So that's my positivity on there.

So yesterday I shared with you my conspiracy theory that you shouldn't take too seriously. The Kim Jong-un shows up on video not talking, and then separately you hear the audio of him talking but you don't see him talking on video, which at least opens up the possibility that you're looking at a body double on video and somebody who can do a good impression on audio. So CNN ran another piece on Kim Jong-un's big celebration thing in which he showed up in public and it teased that it was going to show Kim Jong-un being emotional during his speech. So I said to myself, "Ah, I guess that conspiracy theory fell apart because CNN is going to show me a clip of Kim Jong-un giving a speech. It does look like it's something current and he'll be emotional while he's talking and then I will see him physically on the video and I'll hear him talking at the same time and then there's no doubt about it, right? If you see the emotion and you see him talking, he's alive, he's well."

And then they show the clip and they show Kim Jong-un in front of the microphone and he's got some tears, he's emotional, and then I'm waiting for him to talk and they cut away. They don't show him talking. I don't know if that video exists. Probably exists because I don't believe my own conspiracy theory. But it's getting increasingly interesting that the thing you'd most expect — a video of him talking currently, the only thing that I would find completely credible — doesn't yet exist. So that's why it's a conspiracy theory. Don't take it too seriously.

Andres Backhaus, who keeps me honest on all things data, when you're on Twitter all day, when you depend on, when you're on Twitter all day you see a lot of bad data. And Andres often comes into the comments and clears up my misconceptions. So he did that a couple of times today. One of the times was he pointed out there's a paper that estimates the trade war costs for China were far greater than for the United States. So they do the math. They figured out that China probably cost them 35 billion, which would be about 0.3 of their GDP, whereas the US probably cost us a little under 16 billion, half as much, but we also have a bigger economy so it was only 0.08 of our GDP. And apparently Vietnam was a big beneficiary. Their GDP went up.

So it's starting to look like Trump's instinct on the trade war was correct in the sense that it would cost China more than it would cost us. So if somebody was going to blink it would probably be them, all things being equal. Now of course they would put pressure on our farmers so it's not exactly apples to apples, you know, because they could put a little political pressure on us in a way that we can't put political pressure on them because of the differences in the systems. But it still suggests that Trump's instincts were in the right direction, that China would have more to lose. And if you go into a debate or let's say into a trade war with somebody who definitely has more to lose than you do, it's a strong position. Doesn't mean you'll come out ahead, doesn't mean you win, doesn't mean it comes out good in the end, but it certainly makes it look smart. Makes it look like a good play.

All right, so let's get to the meat of this. I have placed the Trump slaughter meter at a hundred percent. It has been as low as 50 percent even last week when Trump was still sick with coronavirus and was doing some things that were getting a lot of negative attention, like driving around and putting at risk his drivers, the critics say. And he did put them at risk. I just think it was such a small risk it wasn't terribly important. But it's at 100 now.

I remind you, for those who are not familiar with the slaughter meter, the slaughter meter is not a prediction, all right? It's not. The slaughter meter just tells you how the day is going or how the week is going. It's a snapshot in time. This says, artificially — and remember this is very artificial — that if everything kept going the way things went this week you would expect this outcome. So if everything went the way things are going today, Trump would win easily.

And let me give you an idea of what's happening today because the news cycle is just crazy, isn't it? How quickly you can be whiplash from "Oh he's definitely going to lose" to "Well he's definitely going to win" to "Oh he's definitely going to lose." It's like whiplash. So the slaughter meter could change again 20 times before the election. But as of today it's pinned at 100. And here's why.

Number one, well let me give you some context. Trump doesn't need to convince you that he did a great job in all elements of the coronavirus. He doesn't need to make that case now. You think he would because that's the biggest complaint against him. It's the one that seems to stick. So all of the experts seem to agree, Democrats and Republicans, that where Trump is most vulnerable to criticism is the coronavirus because the US numbers don't look good compared to other countries. So that's a gigantic, gigantic weakness because it's the thing in our minds. It's the thing that most scares us. It affects the economy. It affects everything. He's got to get the coronavirus right or he can't get reelected, right? Wouldn't you say that would just be obvious? He's got to get it right. It's the most important thing. Or does he?

This is what I would like to add to the thinking on this. Not true. He does not need to convince you that the most important thing happening right now he got right. There's another way to do it. He has to convince you that it isn't that scary. Because if you're convinced that the coronavirus went from a 10 out of 10 in scariness, let's say in March, and he's reduced it to a five, maybe if Trump can get your fear level from a 10 out of 10 down to a five, it's not going to matter that much how it was handled because its importance will be less in your mind.

So here's what happened this week that will have the irrational effect of making you less scared. Number one, Trump is 73 or 74, got the coronavirus, he's got a comorbidity, went into the hospital, and as of today, just what a week later or whatever, he looks great. He looks great. Now, should anybody take from one anecdote about one person who had the best medical care in the world and was discovered early with the testing and had a good outcome, should you extend that one single person out of seven billion? Would it be logical or rational to say, "Oh well I guess it's safe because it happened with that one person that one time"? No, that would be completely irrational. And you're going to do it anyway. You can't help it. We are story-driven creatures.

You can give me all the data in the world, big mountain of data over here, and then one story about Trump gets the coronavirus and he's 100 a week later. Those are not equal. That one story about Trump recovering is bigger than your whole mountain of data because it's visual. We see it. We feel it. We talk about it. It becomes number one in our heads. It just takes us to an irrational place, which helps Trump. So that's number one. Trump fully recovered becomes its own little story with power, and he knows that by the way. He's playing it because he knows how powerful that is.

Here's the other thing that's coming. It's not quite here yet but I would say it's right on the border of being here. And it's this. There were 34 people who were allegedly infected who had some White House connection. 34 people. That's terrible, right? That's really bad for Trump, right? Because it would show that he mismanaged the protection element of it and got 34 people infected. So that's the day one story. But what's the story next week? Chris Christie is already out of the hospital, looks like he'll be fine. Weren't you worried about him? I mean honestly if you're being honest you know you heard that Chris Christie got coronavirus and you said to yourself, "Oh that's not good" because comorbidity city, right? He's got I think two comorbidities. He's got asthma. He's got a weight issue. He's not as young as he could be. I don't know how old he is but he's not quite into the danger zone but he's not a spring chicken. So he's out of the hospital, looks like he'll be fine.

What happens if — and I think this is the most likely scenario — what happens if all 34 people are fine in a week? Doesn't look as dangerous, does it? Now would that tell you anything? Could you look at 34 people who again were tested early, found their symptoms early, got the best treatment in the world probably, can you make any logical inference from 34 people? No you can't. They're all special cases. But that's not how your brain works. Your brain is going to say, "Okay, now I see this pattern. Feels like everybody who gets it, including Chris Christie, including President Trump with his comorbidities, it feels like everybody's getting better. Maybe this Trump cure, this Regeneron, and maybe the Remdesivir depending on where you are in the infection arc, huh? It's sounding a little bit more like a cure, isn't it?"

Now is that logical? Nope. Nope. There's no logic to what I just said because the death rate of the virus is known to be less than one percent. And if you took 34 people with great health care who got detected early, there's a really, really high chance they'll all be fine and it wouldn't mean anything beyond what you already knew. It would just be more of the same. But because we're going to look at it, because we're focused on it, because there'll be famous people, senators, the White House spokespeople, all of these people are people you know, they're familiar faces. The weight of those 34 people getting better — and let's hope they do, right? Nobody's out of the woods completely yet — but it's going to start looking like that really soon. Starting to look like they're all out of the woods because if any of them had turned bad, if anybody else had been hospitalized, well you'd know it by now. You'd know it by now.

But I'm saving the best one for last. All right, so before I get to the best one, the economy is improving, right? So your economy is getting better and we have these anecdotal stories of people who seem to go through the coronavirus fine and there's a story for why it's better now than it used to be. And President Trump has provided the story. The story is that these new therapeutics are the bomb. They're just really good. So you've got a reason and you've got a story way more powerful than data. Way more powerful. Not even in the same universe. Data? Very, very unimportant if you haven't noticed. You should notice it's the most important but it's not. Story? Very important. And the story is all Trump right now. You didn't see that coming, did you?

So the economy is improving, which you would expect because it's coming off a low base, right? It shouldn't be any big surprise that an economy coming off a low point would have big percentage gains. So I think somebody said that on October 29th, just a few days before the election, we're going to see GDP results that show that the GDP had a record increase. In other words a world record for the United States, increased quarter over quarter. I think it's going to look like that. They might not, but it will be a good increase either way. Now why should you make from that, "Oh my God, Trump is a genius because we made a record for recovery"? No, no. It would not be logical in any way to attribute that to leadership per se because we're coming off a low base and anybody who had been president would have experienced probably a record gain. Because what's weird about this disaster, it's not like a war where you have to rebuild a factory before you can get your GDP up. You just have to turn on the lights and say, "All right, back to work. Turn on the lights everybody who used to be working here. You're all trained. Just come back and do what you were doing last spring." So the economy will of course look good. It won't mean what people think it means but they will process it as though it's a Trump success, right? So irrationally it all works in his favor.

Still saving the best part for last. Are you ready? This will make this whole Periscope worthwhile. So as of today the World Health Organization, WHO, announced that it does not favor lockdowns as a way of combating coronavirus. Did you know that yet? Yeah, the World Health Organization experts, if you will — indeed probably the experts in this very thing — have come out publicly, said they do not favor lockdowns of the economy. And the reason given? It's bad for poor people, bad for Black people, bad for brown people, bad for anybody who's in a bad economic situation.

And here's what's fun about this. You might say to yourself, "Well Scott, but the World Health Organization has some credibility problems. That's why we pulled out. They first said masks are bad then they said they're good. They said not to worry too much about the virus but then it turns out we should worry." So it does seem as though the World Health Organization is not that credible. But wait, it gets better. It gets better.

Let's say you're a Democrat and you hear this news. The World Health Organization says that — well they don't use these words but they say in effect that Trump was right when he contradicted the experts and said let's open up the economy. That's right. One of the biggest expert groups and according to Democrats very credible, the World Health Organization, has just sided with Trump who had opposed most of the experts or a lot of the experts. There was a very growing sizable minority of experts who were saying the same thing the World Health Organization said, which is you might be hurting people more than helping with these lockdowns.

So if you're a Democrat and your big thing about Trump is that he doesn't follow the science, what do you do now? What do you do now? Those of us who like President Trump, one of the things you like about him the best is that he doesn't follow the science because the science is often wrong. You knew that. You knew that. You knew that the science is often, not always, and certainly we should pay attention to science. Certainly we should give it the greatest of weight. But it's often wrong. That's just a fact. And you need a leader who is willing to say, "Okay I hear what you're saying but I still think this and here's why." That's what Trump did from the very beginning when everybody else was saying, "Hey idiot orange man, lock down. It's the only way we can defeat this thing. You gotta lock down. Why are you being such a — why don't you listen to the experts? Why don't you listen to science?"

Uh-oh. Science just agreed with him. Maybe not all of science but the World Health Organization. Not exactly President Trump's friend, right? Is there anybody who dislikes President Trump more than the World Health Organization? Probably not. This month they might be the winners.

Somebody says I'm glad you're finally in about the experts. I don't think you know my history if you're saying that comment. I have never been the one who backed the experts uncritically. I would be closer to the opposite. I'm very much closer to the person who said there's a reason the experts are wrong. Here are all the reasons. I'm the Dilbert guy. You don't write the Dilbert cartoon and believe experts are right. You're just automatically — I think that experts are moving fast in the direction of being right. That's what science does. Science starts out not knowing the answer, takes a lot of guesses that sometimes don't work out, but it's moving toward truth. It's eliminating things that they used to think are true and narrowing it down, getting toward truth.

The problem with the experts in science in general is that you can't tell where you are on the path. You don't know if you're 25% of the way to truth, 50, or 100 because it looks the same. You just don't know when you're done because you think you're done and then, oh there's a new discovery. I'm not done. So if you add these things together — Trump recovering himself, anecdotal but still is powerful; 34 people recovering probably, we hope, good, fingers crossed again, just anecdotal, doesn't mean anything scientifically but it will matter. It'll matter to how afraid you are. And then the World Health Organization completely eviscerating the argument that Trump doesn't follow science. It's the biggest argument coming out of the Biden campaign. That's not the crazy racism one. And it just got eviscerated.

Because now the Democrats have two choices. They can either oppose science by opposing the World Health Organization. Do you see how awesome this is? The Democrats will have to oppose experts and oppose science to maintain their current view that Trump is wrong. They can't have it both ways anymore. They can't say Trump is wrong and science is good and accurate and you should follow it. It's gone. It's their biggest argument. It just evaporated.

Now does that mean that the World Health Organization is right? I don't know. How the hell would I know, right? I have a preference. You know if you make me the leader I'll give you a choice. I'll give you a confidence-sounding choice of what I think we should do but I don't know. That's part of being a leader. You just got to take your best shot sometimes.

So this is one of the strongest days that the president has had by far. I don't know if the rest of the media will recognize this because it's the sort of thing that's just happening in people's impressions. So going back to my original point, the president does not need to convince you that he got everything right in managing the coronavirus. He needs to make you less afraid of it so it just goes down in your priorities. The World Health Organization just did that for him. They just completed it. He couldn't have gotten there I don't think without their help because people were still going to say, "How about the experts? But what about the experts?" "Uh yeah I hear what you're saying but what about the experts?" Not anymore. Now the experts are clearly on different sides. And what do you do when the experts disagree? What is the right thing for a leader to do when experts disagree? The leader makes a choice. And the leader, if it's a good leader, will make a choice based on the most basic concepts. In other words he won't make the choice based on the science as in "Well I back this scientist and I believe this data and I don't believe that data." That would be bad leadership because if the scientists can't agree it would be absurd for the leader to say, "Ah I'm going to look into the science myself and now I've read all the science and I picked this one." Bad leadership.

A good leader says we can't know. That's what we know. What we know is we don't know. So what do you do if you don't know? How do you manage your risk if you don't know? And I think that the president has found exactly the right sweet spot here. The thing that you can default to is freedom. Because the one thing we know is that if we were to lose our freedom to anything, screw it, we're out of here. We'd all just close the planet and starve to death if we lose our freedom. We don't even want to be here. If you say to me I can give you your freedom back but there's a one percent chance that you'll die, I'm in. I'll take my freedom. I'll give you your freedom back but there's a one percent chance your grandmother might die a few years early. I'm in. Sorry grandma. I'm going to talk to grandma first but you know what? She agrees. Grandma doesn't disagree. Grandma wants me to be free. Grandma wants to be free. Will she take the higher risk that she'll die? Yes she will. If she doesn't I'll do everything I can to keep grandma safe. But if you don't know what's the right thing to do you have to default to the primary human needs. And we have a primary human need for freedom. And that affects of course the economy which keeps poor people alive which keeps us happy which keeps us from killing ourselves. All of these benefits.

So Trump has done what Trump always does. He peered through this impenetrable data science crap that wasn't quite as solid as it ever needed to be. We wanted it to be good but it never was. He peered through it all and he found the essential human part. And the human part is this. Day one, coronavirus scares us. Day two, the coronavirus attacks us, attacks the United States. Day three, coronavirus seems to be winning even though our president said it wouldn't. Day four, coronavirus is kicking our asses. Day five, day six, week two, week three, week four, coronavirus is ripping our civilization apart. Month three, coronavirus has us by the neck. Week five or month five, coronavirus is just kicking our asses. Month six, you coronavirus, we're done. We got us some tools. They're not complete tools. They're not enough to completely destroy the coronavirus yet but we're going on offense. We're not going to lose anymore. We're not going to lose to the virus. We're not going to lose to China. We're not going to lose any more. And your president has made it clear that the losing part is behind us. Will people die? Yes, yes they will. Will Americans die in large numbers that should and will alarm us? Yes. Are we going to back down because it's risky? Nope. Are we going to go forward? Yes. Are we going to beat the coronavirus one way or another? One way or another. Because we're done. We are just done losing. Can't lose forever. We're not losing. And the president has called the turn and the World Health Organization gave him an assist. And I think it could be over in terms of the election.

So Biden coughed twice in public yesterday and he coughed the other day while he was giving a talk. Now in all likelihood the coughing is nothing. He might be on a medication for example. There's one blood pressure medication that gives you a dry cough. Maybe he's on that. Who knows? At that age everybody is. So probably his coughing is not coronavirus. But it is 2020. And in 2020 nothing is off the table as Schumer has said. Everything's on the table. So will 2020 deliver the most 2020 thing that could ever happen which is Biden getting the coronavirus? Now keep in mind that if Biden gets the coronavirus and either one of these two things happens — either he recovers fine which would be the best news which would also make the virus look less scary again not in a data way but it would just make us feel that way, or he has a bad outcome and then of cou