'm thinking is even close. How often do you think it's close? Not often.

Let me tell you where my fears were. I'll try to be as honest. I think I could be honest, completely honest about this. So I told you that when the pandemic first started and I was shouting to close the borders there were smart people telling me this civilization was about to end. Actual civilization. And the argument wasn't that everybody would get infected but that the psychological part of it on top of the actual infection would just close everything down and then civilization would crumble. There'd be sort of a cyclic, it would build on itself basically.

Now that was a very real risk and it scared the out of me. All right now you'd have to know and I'm not going to tell you but you'd have to know what source I was relying on to know about that risk. Let me just tell you it was a good one. It was a good one. Let me tell you how good the source was. Now you won't be able to guess. This is how good my source was that told me that civilization might be on the brink of ending. It was the same source that told me the leak probably came from the Wuhan lab before you ever knew there was a lab there. Before you had ever heard there was a lab in Wuhan I knew privately that it was the source of the leak. Same source told me civilization could be about ready to end. Meaning that there would be military on the streets basically. And that scared the out of me. I'm not going to lie. I don't think I've ever been that afraid for civilization and you know for myself of course and the family.

So that part yes I was afraid of. But the actual risk of getting the virus I think I was in the normal range whatever a normal range is. I definitely took steps to avoid it. But as I famously tweeted by the time I'd gotten vaccinated myself at the time I got vaccinated any concerns I had sort of dropped to zero. Now they weren't zero you know everybody has risk but once the risk gets down into the background noise level like the same risk of getting into your car, same risk of a heart attack, right? Once that risk was down with that I didn't really worry about it a lot.

So I would say that I was very worried about civilization. I was a normal amount of concerned about getting infected with something that could kill me. A sort of on the border of whether I have a comorbidity or not age-wise. And so I can't say that there was ever a time I made a fear-based decision. Well except that I made the decision to not let civilization end. So I wanted to see what I could do about not keeping, you know not ending civilization. So I will never know if I made any difference but I probably was the most prominent voice saying everything would be okay. And I do know who listens to me and who doesn't.

Somebody says arrogant. Well let me test that. Is it arrogant to say, is it arrogant to say that I was one of the most prominent voices to say things would be fine? True or not true? I don't know who else was doing it. Yeah I mean I think that's just a statement of fact. So how much impact they had I don't know. No way to know.

All right I've gone way over my limit and I think it's time to go. Yes arrogant. Are we defining arrogant the same? I'm not sure if we're defining that word the same. Wouldn't arrogant suggest that I think your opinion is less than my own on this topic? That's what that would mean, right? But I don't think I'm disagreeing with anybody. So I think it's arrogant if you disagree. I don't think it's arrogant if you agree. Is it? Somebody says you prefer smug. I prefer overconfident. Will you accept overconfident as a description of my demeanor? Some of you said yes. If you think I seem overconfident you are accurate because that's exactly what I'm trying to look like. I recommend it by the way. Being a little bit overconfident is exactly the sweet spot. What you don't want is to be exactly accurate or underconfident and you don't want to be too confident then you get into crazy territory. You want to be, find out what is the exact like reasonable amount of confidence and then just 10 more. So I'm trying to do that. So I don't, I accept that as a valid criticism but not anything I'm going to change.

And by the way the what you see as my arrogance or overconfidence is part of the reason people come. Because even things that are annoying are attractive. Meaning attractive in a weird way like a car accident. You can't look away. So some of it's like a car accident you can't look away. And I'm completely aware of that.

Speaking as if you are the only intelligent person here is not, have I done that? How many of you think that character characterizes me? Have I spoke as if I'm the only intelligent person on here? I don't think so. I'm seeing nos and yeses so apparently there's a difference of agreement. In my opinion this is the smartest audience on the internet. Like literally I'm not just buttering you up. I belie