Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 23, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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necessary. So that's the same direction we're going. You know, there'll be lots of edge questions about cruise ships. You know, there'll be special cases where people are genuinely in close contact and maybe it's not quite ready yet. You could argue that. But for all the easy stuff such as the workplace, you're not going to need any kind of a pass. Speaking of mask mandates at work, it looks lik…

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t ever believe that the government's in charge. You know, they're in charge in an emergency. They're in charge in some specific situations. But they're not in charge. The public is always in charge. They just have to choose to use their authority or not. That's the only decision.

It may be that if OSHA gets away with this, you'll see more remote work, and maybe that's good. You know, there's an argument to be made that the best thing that could happen is for OSHA to require masks at work in the workplace, and that will cause people to say, okay, I'm not going to work, I'll just work from home. And if it's a little bit more pressure on making that happen, maybe that would be good. I don't want to see masks in the workplace if you're vaccinated, but you know, anything could happen.

I've got a warning for you, and maybe you're already aware of this. This is a big, big warning, and I don't know if there'll be anything more important than this that'll happen in the next several months, you know, short of a war breaking out. And it goes like this: the end of the pandemic is going to cause a mental health crisis bigger than the pandemic itself.

Now, how many of you know why that is? In the comments, see. Let's see if you can tell me why. So this is the statement: we do know that the pandemic almost certainly has caused more mental health problems. Definitely, wouldn't you say? My prediction is that the end of it — you know, the period where you're transitioning from pandemic to non-pandemic — will be way worse for mental health. Like way worse. Like by a factor of three. Something like that. Won't even be close.

And let me tell you why. You're not used to seeing people. You're also not used to your old routine. You don't kn

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ow who you are anymore. We have to figure out who we are. I was reading an article that a lot of relationships maybe stayed together during the pandemic but will probably be ripped apart as soon as your requirements for what you need to do and not do change. So I would expect massive divorce, massive mental illness, and probably violence that comes with it. And I've noted, by the way, that mental…

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