critics agree with by the way.

So here's my challenge to you. I say that even the experts who are anti-vax would agree with the statement that the vaccine reduces your risk of COVID and your risk of spreading it vastly. Even the critics. So that's my challenge to you. Find out any critic. Somebody says Israel. That's been debunked. I know you've read news stories that say the opposite but they've all been debunked. Go check it yourself. Yeah, you do the research. You won't find any experts who disagree with me.

So since I know that Justin, who I was talking about here, since I know him to be someone who's following this topic closely and also a smart guy, I feel as if his previous skepticism is maybe triggering him into cognitive dissonance. Now as I've argued before you need a trigger. There has to be something that makes your worldview not make sense that triggers the cognitive dissonance. I would argue I don't have that trigger because as far as I know I haven't predicted anything that was wrong or at least relative to this specific topic. Obviously I've predicted things that were wrong. Oh, somebody says I got vaccinated. Well that's a good, would that be a trigger? Would it be a trigger to think that I was right? Because here, so that was a good, that's a good comment. Did you catch that? Somebody said that I'm vaccinated and that could be my trigger because I made a decision therefore I have to be consistent with my decision. But here's my defense of that. My defense is that I don't know that I made the right decision. Hear that clearly. I took what I thought was a calculated risk that had a risk of going wrong in either direction. So I'm open to the fact that I made the wrong decision or that new information would make it look like a bad or worse decision than it was. I'm completely open to that. There's nothing that would change my view of myself if I turned out to be completely wrong on the vaccination stuff because to me that would be interesting. I would admit it immediately. I wouldn't be embarrassed because I just don't feel embarrassment for stuff like that. And I've said from the beginning of the pandemic a lot of people are going to be really wrong. Don't hold it against them. We're all doing the best we can. You know, we're guessing. We're doing the best we can. And so I put myself in the same category that I put others in which is yeah, we're going to get some stuff wrong and people might die literally. I could be killing people literally because if I've said something that persuaded somebody to make a choice they went and it turned out to be the wrong choice I could be killing people right now. And that's not even a little bit hyperbolic. So I'll tell you what protects me a little bit from cognitive dissonance, and again how would I know, but I'm open to being wrong and embrace it and I don't have to protect against it. So I don't have an ego wall that says oh if I'm wrong this is going to be bad for me. I don't. If I'm wrong I'm just wrong. I'll talk about something else. I'm pretty sure I can live with that.

Vax does not reduce the spread. This is what Right Lane Bandit says in all caps. Vax does not reduce the spread. It reduces death. Get educated. Okay, let me say this as clearly as possible. All the experts disagree with you. There's nothing you could Google that would agree with you. Nothing. Nothing. There's no expert that has your opinion. Even the people who agree with you that you shouldn't get vaccinated don't have that opinion. I'm seeing Bud say Bandit is right. All right. So here's your challenge. Find me some scientist who is not in some sketchy blog site, you know some credible looking thing, that suggests that all the experts are wrong and see if he can change my mind. All right, change my mind. Doctor No, Dr. Bhattacharya does not say that. Nope. Nope. All the ones you think say that are saying something different. I think that might be the confusion because there are people who are anti-vax. So I'm not saying there are no anti-vax people. I'm saying that the reason they're anti-vax is that they think there's more risk from the vaccination than the COVID. And I'm not even arguing that point because I wouldn't know one way or the other. There are other reasons for anti-vax. Right? There are other reasons and they're not the ones I'm talking about right now. Yeah, we're not talking about natural immunity. Anything. All right.

So I feel that most of you are being triggered into cognitive dissonance and this is what's going to happen. Here's how you can tell, those of you who have been triggered into cognitive dissonance, if in fact that's what's happening. It looks like it. It looks like it really clearly. Let me say as clearly as possible I really know how to spot cognitive dissonance. It's been my hobby for decades. I really really am good at spotting it I think in other people. Again nobody can spot it in themselves but I would say that I'm as close as you can get to an expert at spotting it in the wild and this is definitely it. If I'm wrong about this I'm wrong about everything. This is cognitive dissonance. Now here's how you can tell. Most of you will misinterpret what I'm saying. You're going to interpret it as being pro-vaccination. Nope. Nope. I did not say that. I never encourage you to get vaccinated. Hear it clearly. But many of you will think that's exactly what you heard. Some of you will think that I said the vaccinations stop all spread. Nope. Nope. Never said that. Said the opposite. So watch how the people who think they're disagreeing with me are going to be disagreeing with an illusion of what I said and they're going to be positive they're right because they're accurately disagreeing with an illusion but they're not disagreeing with me. And they're the ones in all caps. All the people in all caps are in cognitive dissonance. I guarantee that. I can promise you that the all caps people are having an experience that their world is blowing up right now. All right, I think that's enough on that topic. Way too much.

So Beyonce is in a commercial for Tiffany and apparently they turned her white. Now I don't know what the real story is but in the video her skin is lightened to the point where it would be hard to detect if she has any African-American influence and it looks like it's lightened to me. I mean I don't know if it's makeup or the camera work but she's sitting next to Jay-Z who looks exactly like Jay-Z. Like he doesn't look like he's been lightened. Well she sure did. And I think Tiffany's going to have some explaining to do on that.

Rasmussen asked how confident are you that Joe Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of president. What do you think people said? Here's what they said. 41 percent are either very confident or somewhat confident that Joe Biden is up to it physically and mentally. 41. That's pretty high, isn't it? Yeah. How many of them were very confident? Very confident. Not somewhat confident but very confident. And so it's within the 41. The very confident were 27. 27 are very confident. Very confident that Joe Biden's 100. Yeah, you're, I'm laughing because the regular viewers know I always point out that every poll seems to have 25 percent of morons. You'd have to be a moron to think that Joe Biden is right on the ball. Now I'm okay with the people who say you know they're somewhat confident. Some more confident. I think that you know that's enough of a hedge. I'll give you that. You know that that just sounds like somebody prefers their person in the office. But 58 were not confident in Joe Biden or one way or the other, strongly or weakly not confident. And two percent were unsure. Two percent were unsure. Can't we add them to the not so sure there that he's, if you're unsure shouldn't you have answered that you're not confident? What does unsure mean? So apparently we found the two percent who are the dumbest. The dumbest people in the world. If you're unsure you're unsure. Apparently they don't know what confidence means. Are you confident? No, I'm unsure. Okay so you're not confident. No I didn't say that. I just said I'm unsure. Oh well.

Rasmussen also asked is Biden doing the job of president or are others making the decision for him. How do you think this went? 53 percent say others are making the decision. You realize that must include at least a number of independents and or Democrats to get to 53. 38 say he is doing the job. Okay.

So Ron DeSantis is opening up some ports in Florida to help ease the backlog in California. So it turns out that all these problems that they have in California I guess they don't have them in Florida. So does that give you any pause? Do you think that truck drivers in Florida are more pro-vaccination? Do they do fewer hits of meth in Florida? Can they get better truck parts in Florida? Are there more trucks? I don't know. None of this is quite fitting, is it? Now I'm not so sure that whatever Ron DeSantis is going to do in Florida will make that much difference. So it might be a slight uptick. So he might be making more political hay out of it than is really warranted. But let me say about that, Ron DeSantis surfs the headlines and the zeitgeist better than I've ever seen. Apparently he has a political strategy that I consider brilliant. This is just one of the best things I've ever seen and you don't really get a sense of it until you see how consistent he is over time. Which is that there's some national story of interest and that he finds the populist way to approach it or the helpful way or the smart way or the scientific way or the better strategy, you know, protecting the old people first, whatever. So he's just the master of inserting himself into the story that's already there. He can insert himself into any story and make himself look like the only smart person in the room over and over again. This is brilliant politically. Now again I don't know if any of the things he's doing make any difference at all. I really don't. I don't even have much of an opinion on the specifics of his policies. I'm just saying I've never seen anybody do politics better than this. This is the best politics I've ever seen. This is better than Trump, sorry. Because Trump causes trouble to get attention and it's very successful, made him president, right? But if Trump didn't exist DeSantis would walk into the nomination. He would just walk into the nomination. Don't you think? Like who would it be? If it's not DeSantis it's just a great strategy. All right.

Neil Cavuto, you know him from Fox News, has COVID now. Can somebody give me a fact check? I know that Neil Cavuto has quite publicly struggled with his weight for a long time but in current pictures he looks like he lost a bunch of weight. Did he? Six. Yes. And you're saying he also has multiple sclerosis. He's dealt with that for years I guess. But it looked like he lost a bunch of weight. Can you confirm that? Oh I've really come around on DeSantis. Well he's still not exciting but damn he's good at this stuff. Yeah, so I'm seeing at least one confirmation there but good for him. So the first part is if he lost a bunch of weight during the pandemic and he did it for all the right reasons, good for him. He may have saved his own life. Now he was vaccinated too so he'll probably be fine but I just like to call out anybody who did the right thing during the pandemic and the right thing was to get fit. If you didn't do that you played the pandemic really wrong. If you didn't add any skills while you had a weird opening to do it you played it wrong. It looks like he might have played it right if he lost weight. Tentatively that's my guess. And he's the other thing that makes him kind of important to the story is that he is a walking comorbidity or people may think of it that way because he's had public health problems. Somebody said he's a cancer recovery too. I think that's true. So if he does well because he's vaccinated that's going to be a story and I think that would be influential.

All right, CNN has good context for a change. You're going to hate this. This is where I'm going to lose most of you. First of all CNN has some good context on the story. I know you don't like that but when do you hear it you're not going to like this at all. And you're also going to say that all the numbers in the story are wrong. All right, you ready? How many people, let me do a test with you. How many people are confirmed, now confirmed is the operative word here, how many are confirmed to have died in the United States from the vaccination itself? Let's call it the COVID shot not a vaccination. How many people in the United States have died in the entire pandemic so far from the shot? Go. Zero is wrong. Three. Somebody says three. Really? Fifteen thousand. I'm saying thousands now I'm talking confirmed. Remember. So those of you are guessing thousands you know those are not thousands that are confirmed. So just confirmed. I'm saying 30. 17. 2000. Less than 10. Less than 100. 18,000. 25,000. 666. 52. Maybe 10.

Here's the number that CNN reports: three. Three. Does that match your assumption? Do you believe that three people are confirmed? Doesn't mean only three, just confirmed. Do you believe that that's what CNN's reporting? How about that VAERS database because you know there's all kinds of stuff in there, right? That's where people report the bad reactions to vaccinations. How many, here's the second question. How many people have been, how many deaths are reported to VAERS? Remember there are three that are confirmed but how many have been reported to VAERS? Go. The VAERS says how many people died from the COVID shot? Go. How many? I see thousands. Thousands. Anybody? YouTube. Forty-two thousand. Fourteen thousand. Three point five trillion. Good guess. We're wrong. Three. The answer is 8,600.

So 8,600 deaths have been reported to the VAERS database. Three have been confirmed. Three. Now is the problem that we're really really slow at confirming things or is the problem that they're not real? I don't know. Suppose they're real. Suppose every death reported to VAERS was real. How bad would that be? Yeah, if every death reported to VAERS was real and that seems deeply unlikely. If they were all real would that tell you that and that's all you knew would that tell you to get the shot or not? Here's your next question. If 8,600 people died and if that were real and we all know that's not real but if it were real would that tell you not to get the shot? Somebody says yes. I see some no's. I see some yeses. Yeses. All right. Well here's how you could have seen that in context. 390 million doses have been administered and that amounts to .0021 or about two deaths for every hundred thousand doses which is way less than how many people die of COVID. Remember the all caps people are always in cognitive dissonance so if you're going to type in all caps just know I'm calling you out. All right. So this is CNN's reporting by the way. This is not me saying any of this. So according to CNN if you looked at all the doses given there are only two deaths for every hundred thousand. But how many COVID deaths are there for every hundred thousand? So this is CNN: two deaths from every hundred thousand doses even if the VAERS database is correct that's how it would only be two for every hundred thousand. How many does COVID kill out of a hundred thousand? If it's true that the vaccination is two how many does COVID kill? 220, right? That's a hundred times worse. Two versus over two hundred. So if these numbers were right even if the VAERS database was accurate and you know it isn't it's way way high, well it could be low I suppose but you know it's not accurate, according to these numbers it would be a hundred times smarter to get the vaccination if this was the only criteria and it's not, right? I get it there are other criteria but if this were the only criteria the VAERS database risk versus the COVID risk itself it wouldn't even be close. It would be a hundred to one.

Cassandra says Scott you're in deep dissonance and I wouldn't know. So if you believe that the problem is my end let me say as clearly as possible I wouldn't know. That's what cognitive dissonance does. But if the problem was on your end you wouldn't know. Can we agree on that? If the problem's on your end you don't know. If the problem is on my end I don't know. That's what it is. That's the definition of cognitive dissonance. All right. So I'm not suggesting that you should get vaccinated. Can I say that? I am not suggesting that you get vaccinated nor am I suggesting that you don't. Do you know why? Why the hell would you take my advice to get vaccinated? Can you think of anything dumber than that? Well I mean seriously what would be dumber than taking my advice on your medical situation, right? I mean I'll tell you to drink coffee and exercise. You know I feel safe about that. But don't take my advice and don't let me persuade you in any way. And also don't believe anything that CNN reports. I'm reading CNN's report. Let me give you an example of how bad this CNN data is. You ready? And I know if Andres is watching this he's already screaming at his screen. I read this and you probably missed it but it said it would be 390 million doses administered. They're actually calculating the deaths on doses versus people. So they're acting as though your risk per dose is the one that you're looking at not your risk of being vaccinated versus not being vaccinated. Now it's not crazy to do that because your death probably does follow a specific dose but it's not going to follow the second one is it? How many people died when they got the second dose? Zero maybe. Do you think that people lived through the first dose and then the second or the third one took them out? I don't think so. I don't think so. So this is off by at least 100 percent, right? So CNN's numbers are off by at least a hundred percent and this still makes the case. Let me say it again. CNN numbers are probably off by a hundred percent and it still makes the case that it is way smarter to get vaccinated. Not even close. Even if their numbers are off by 100. Even if the VAERS is off by a thousand percent it's still according to their numbers way smarter to get vaccinated. That's not me saying. I'm talking about what other people are saying, right? Only in the short term somebody says yes. So if you were looking at your full risk of getting the shots versus not you would have to look at the long term. That's still unknown.

So as clearly as I can say it let me summarize again that I'm not telling you it's risk free or risky. I don't know. Don't listen to me. I'm just telling you that you might be looking at the wrong stuff to make your decision. Wouldn't you rather look at the right stuff? I mean if you don't want to get the vaccination you have plenty of argument. Plenty of argument. You don't need the bad arguments. So don't use the VAERS database as your argument because that's a bad argument. Here's a good argument. You want a good argument for not getting vaccinated. Again this is not me advising it but I will advise you what a good argument looks like. A good argument looks like I'm young and healthy and I don't trust the government or anything they say about the vaccinations so therefore none of the data pro or con is useful to me because I don't trust any of it and nobody knows what will happen in the long term. Is that, that's your best argument. If as soon as you depart from that into statistics you're just wrong. You're just wrong because the statistics all come from official sources. The official sources are all the same direction. So if you're using any kind of credible official numbers they all point in the same direction and that's not your argument. The argument you can make is subjective. Don't use data. Data doesn't work in your favor. But there is a strong subjective argument that the people who are recommending it can't be trusted. Is anything wrong with that argument? The people recommending that you put this in your body can't be trusted. That's it. You don't need more than that. They can't be trusted. If you need a hundred examples of why you shouldn't trust them I can give them to you but that's all you need. It's coming from a source I don't trust. Period. Hasn't been tested in the long term. Why would I take your word for it, right? So there is a good argument for not getting vaccinated but it's not based on any statistics. It's not based on numbers. There is no numbers-based argument for not getting vaccinated nor you could argue is there a numbers-based argument for getting vaccinated because it's all unreliable numbers. But at least the unreliable numbers are all in the same direction. You know the official ones. The experts are on the roof. Yeah. All right. Yeah and if you want to make exceptions for this or that that makes sense.

So for those of you who are angry that my opinion disagrees with yours it probably doesn't. I'm anti-mandate because of freedom and because you have a choice of getting vaccinated. And while I do understand the basic concept of you know the mandate is so we'll all be protected from each other we're dangerous to each other all the time. You get that right? We are all dangerous to each other all the time. If we have sex we're dangerous to each other. If we get in the car we buy a gun even though we don't plan to shoot anybody it's a gun. So we live in a world in which we're all being dangerous to people all the time. As long as that's our standard no mandate. Now you know if this were polio I'd probably have a different opinion but given the specific nature of this pandemic I don't see the argument for the, I don't see the argument for a mandate.

Now some of you asked me Scott are you going to get a third booster and again you should not follow my model, right? Nobody should look at what I'm doing to inform them how to do it. That would be the wrong way to approach a medical decision. So anyway take care of yourself. Don't listen to me but don't use the numbers as your argument if you're anti-vaccination. It just doesn't work. All the numbers are against you. All of them. All the numbers are against you. Doesn't mean the numbers are right, right? So I want you to hear that clearly. I'm not saying the numbers are right. The official numbers probably they're wrong like every other official number but they're all in the same direction. So just don't use that argument.

About the booster, yes. My decision to get a booster is undecided because, oh yes and I'll be on the Viva and Barnes later today so look for BMV and Barnes later today. Circular argument. What's the circular part? Numbers are all made up they might be. Oh