a big mistake by getting a shot.

Now that wasn't obvious to me before because I thought these were different risk profiles. But after talking to a lot of people they're quite clear on it. That when they analyze their own risk and then they compared what they did to what I did I made the wrong decision. So I'm learning from that now.

Before we go on is there anything on here I've not discussed yet? Because I learned that there's this other box that I thought was real that I learned is not even real. Did you know that a lot of people knew the risk of long COVID way before the medical community and they just said no I know this risk? Now I thought it was unknown.

Now let's also do a definition. My definition of long COVID would include several months of feeling like crap. Not necessarily years. I mean it could be years but my definition was months. Now if you're a young person and you got long COVID probably you would kick it in a few days. It's no big deal, don't you think? Like the young people just brush off the COVID because they never get that sick in the first place. So you'd expect if they don't get that sick their risk of long COVID is probably zero.

Now if you're an older person, let's say you're over 65. Let me tell you one of my own just like a personal medical criteria. If I get any kind of major medical problem whether it's COVID or I break my leg, do you know what happens to you when you're 65 and you lose let's say several months of good health? Do you know what happens? I'll tell you what I think happens. I think you never recover. Like never as in you don't recover. Now I say you don't recover I mean you'll never get back to your fitness level before because it's just too hard to crawl back when you're a certain age.

So I've always been concerned that my health, which is very good at my current age, is very good. I've always and I had my blood done it's just perfect everything's good. And I was concerned I was always concerned that if some major problem happened that it would take me a year or more to recover. Now I'll give you an example. During the pandemic I had to take prednisone to get ready for some sinus surgery. Now because of the pandemic my surgery was delayed so they put me on prednisone the second time and then I got delayed and then they put me on a third time. You should never be on three doses of prednisone like long doses in one year because getting off it is really really hard. Like you feel terrible for a long time.

Now the prednisone problem alone probably took nine months out of my life because for months and months I could barely exercise and barely get up to where I am now. Now at the moment I'm back up to my peak everything's good but it took me maybe a year to get back. I was concerned that if I got long COVID and just had a normal week-long terrible COVID that what would happen is that I would lose a year of quality life and maybe you would never get back to where it was.

So remember when a young person gets long COVID that's not really much of a problem. They'd probably just shake it off. But if an older person got it that would be a criteria. Now what I learned was I'm the only person on this livestream who cares about long COVID. To me that was the biggest variable. But what I learned is you can just ignore it because you don't know anybody who had this problem. I hadn't thought of that. But if you don't know anybody personally who has had long COVID or you think it's just ordinary people get sick and then it takes a while to recover then you wouldn't worry about this.

But I was just watching Joe Scarborough yesterday. Joe Scarborough said that at least — Mika his wife was on the show — said that he took like three months to recover from his most recent COVID. And that was just Omicron. I don't know how old Joe Scarborough is but he lost three months of his life. Three months of quality living he lost to one infection.

Now I thought but of course you can't trust the government that if the shots did nothing but decrease how much you suffered it would probably decrease your long COVID because the long COVID probably comes from how bad your original infection is. I just assume they're connected but I don't have any science for that.

All right so what I learned here is that as long as you think young people and old people should be treated the same and as long as you ignore what I think is the biggest risk because none of us believe that the risk of dying if you're youngish and healthy was worth considering. So I think we all discounted the risk of dying if we were generally young enough and healthy enough. And even I'm young enough. You know even at 65 I'm young enough to think that the risk of dying was basically zero. But I didn't know about this one so I didn't do the right thing which is to discount my biggest risk. So I should have said my biggest risk was actually zero and then I would have gotten the right answer.

Now here's how I would have done it. I'll tell you this crow tastes good. You know this crow. So we start with science and there was lots of science around the COVID and about the vaccination. And the science was doing all the randomized controlled trials and then meta-analysis and the data. They did the observational studies in the peer review. And that part we all appreciate. The science doesn't get the right answer every time but at least it's a process that we respect. Would you agree? You know we're crawling toward the truth usually through a lot of wrongness until you get to the truth. So the science isn't about being totally right the first try. It's a process.

And there were at least three different ways that people departed from science to make their decision. The dumbest people listened to the government and big pharma and the news and said well that sounds right. If these three entities which have lied to us consistently forever if they say it's okay I'm taking it. And then they got the wrong answer, right? So they believed people.

Now a lot of people thought I was in this group but I wasn't in that group. I was in this group. I thought I didn't understand anything about the science and didn't have a way to really understand it so I used my penis to make my decision. And my penis said if I get the vaccination I can go on a trip to Santorini later to Bora Bora with a beautiful woman instead of being locked down with COVID. Now so I used my penis and my penis — I don't like to admit this — my penis has a terrible track record for decisions. I don't know about yours. And I know many of you don't have a penis so I'm just speaking to those who do. Is your penis smart? Because my penis doesn't know anything. Like I keep expecting it to make good decisions and I'm like hey what do you think we should do about taxes? Nothing. Basically won't even help me on my taxes.

So this was a big complicated medical decision. I delegated to my penis. My penis got it wrong and that's on me. That's on me. So shoot me.

But the people who were correct use a much better and more rational decision-making process. They looked at all the science and they said to themselves that's not enough. We must use our personal research and assessment to find out what this really means. We've got to look deeper. We've got to look at not just the mainstream. We've got to look at the critics. We've got to look at the bigger world.

And I want to be complimentary about this group because I know I've been harsh in the past. I want to be very clear that in order to do good personal research and assessment of this what seems like a very complicated area the people who did this right were not just experts. They were not just people who were like data analysts. They were not just doctors. They were not just researchers. These were ordinary people. Blue collar people. People with every kind of education. And they were fully qualified every one of them to look at this complicated stuff that to me I just couldn't figure out anything. I didn't know which was a bigger risk. But if you did your personal research and you ignored long COVID that was important you would get the correct answer.

Now I like to show both sides of every argument. That always gets me in trouble. So I'd like to point out that there are some critics of this approach. I'm not one of them so don't put this on me please, right? This is clearly the approach that got the right answer. It is rational. And compare it to the alternatives. What should I recommend that you stop using your rational analysis and use your penis? Half of you don't even have one. How is that going to work? You can't make a decision with a vagina. Stupid. But you know sometimes the penis gets it right but still it's not recommended, right? And nobody's going to recommend you listen to the government, big pharma, news. Those are your other choices.

So I think you would join me in saying don't use your penis or vagina to make a decision. Don't listen to the government, big pharma, news because they're professional liars. Do a rational process. Be you a scientist, data analyst or just somebody who's a smart person who's doing the work. Do your personal research and assessment to get the correct answer. And we see that they did. They did in fact.

But it has to be said there are some critics. There would be some people who would disagree with this. We'll just use some examples of people who disagree. Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton wouldn't want to see this because Isaac Newton would say wait a minute I invented science so that you wouldn't do this. Because that's what we were doing before. So I invented science because this would be sort of adding a subjective layer on top of the science. So Isaac Newton wouldn't like this. But can we agree that Isaac Newton he pooped in a hole and he was in the 1600s and we don't really need to listen to an old dead guy? All right so we can discount Isaac Newton I think.

What about does anybody else would disagree? Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan wouldn't like this at all because he would like this part but I think he would probably have some complaints about non-scientists doing their own deep research. He might say oh Scott that's taking the entire benefit of science and discarding it like it didn't count. But Carl Sagan is dead. Are you going to listen to a dead guy? I mean how smart is he? He died anyway.

So well let's talk about I saw Jimmy Dore was talking about my analysis and he says that not only am I just the Dilbert guy but he is very annoyed at my arrogance on this topic. My arrogance? Do I say American? I don't say American do I? I'm eating humble crow as hard as I can. I told you you're all right and I got it wrong. I told you I have great regret because I'm not a pure blood.

But Jimmy Dore had some good criticisms and I'd like to address. On his show he talked quite a bit about me and my opinions on this. And the first thing when I saw the show I said to myself wow Jimmy Dore is not doing too well. But you know age catches up with all of us. Now I hadn't seen a Jimmy Dore show in a while and it looked like he had sort of aged. And when I listened to it I thought oh God can somebody stop me before I start sounding like an old man who's lost it? Because somebody you know I thought somebody needed to talk to him. And I was trying to figure out how old he was and I thought just based on listening to him I thought high 70s. He looked like he's in kind of good shape you know maybe he takes care of himself but I thought he's probably 75, 76 something like that. And you know you have to I think forgive people for being a little less quick when they reach that age. Yeah he was pretty old.

So I looked up his actual age. He's 57. So that was shocking. I thought he was closer to 75. Yeah that's what I thought because you know I'm 65 and I thought well I'm losing a step but he looked like he lost a lot of steps. You'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

But he also criticized me for calling the pure bloods anti-vaxxers. And I'd like to clarify if you will allow me to clarify. When I use the term anti-vaxxer I'm not talking about all vaccinations. It's always in the context of COVID. I've never talked about vaccinations in general ever. And in fact a lot of people said Scott, Scott don't throw us into the anti-vax category because we're only concerned with the COVID one. And in fact our kids are vaccinated with regular vaccinations but they've been tested in the normal way.

So I wasn't aware of this but were you aware that the normal childhood vaccinations have been tested? Because I thought they weren't. Have they been tested? Childhood vaccinations? Because I thought they were only tested individually but the way we give them is collectively, right? We give like a combined shot but that's never been tested has it? The combined shot? Or did they only test them individually? They tested some yeah.

So I don't know much about the ordinary vaccination story but I was unaware that they've tested them the way they're given. I they were tested individually but I don't think they were tested the way they're given. You know all at once. Yeah I think that's RFK Junior's point. I think Trump made that point as well. So there are a lot of people who are happy with an untested vaccination for their children but they make a distinction because the mRNA is unknown. So they're more comfortable with the unknown of the combined childhood vaccination than the unknown of the mRNA. So that seems reasonable.

And yes and we'll get to some of your points. I see you can go by all right.

So the first thing you need to know is that when I talk about the anti-vaxxers some are taking that as I was making it an insult but I'm not. To me the anti-vaxxers were the people that didn't want to take the COVID vaccination and got the right answer. And if I had been talking about all the other people I would have included the fact that there's some question about whether the childhood vaccinations have been tested the way they should be tested. You know all together instead of individually. So I'm not anti. I'm not against anti-vaxxers. Does that make sense? If it sounded like I was why would I be? It doesn't even make sense that I would be.

All right what else did he say? Oh and then on the Jimmy Dore show they speculated that the reason I was so pro-lockdown and pro-vaccination according to them not according to anything I actually did or said but it's because of my hatred for Trump. I'll just leave that there for a moment. Yeah so after they had analyzed me completely their bottom line was that it could be the reason I'm so wrong is my hatred of Trump and that that spread over into me disliking my entire audience.

But he's only 57. Jimmy Dore will be 57. Very surprising.

All right now a lot of you said that the way you did your analysis and your personal research and assessment was not just about the science. Some of you were good at that but they were good at not trusting the people who were withholding information and making money and all that. But I think that argument is one I've always agreed with right? So the people who said all the people who are making the vaccination can't be trusted. The government can't be trusted. Nobody can be trusted. I was always on that page. I was only questioning the long COVID and apparently you knew that it wasn't a problem for young people.

No mandatory shots right? Yeah I've never been in favor of any mandatory shots that's for sure. Yeah yeah I actually led an anti-mask movement but Jimmy Dore knows better. He knows what I was really thinking and doing. But anyway I would like to push back on Jimmy's.

Oh and then there are also a number of people who wanted me to say that when I said that the unvaxxed people won that they want me to clarify that nobody won. All right so the people who did not get vaxxed do not want to be labeled as winners because that would make them seem small as if you know they didn't care about the people who were injured. But of course they do care about them. And so I won't call it a win. I'll just say they were right. Is that better?

Now Alex Berenson offered to talk to me to explain to me how he got the right answer and I didn't.

Now the last thing I'd like to deal with is Jimmy Dore thinks that I'm arrogant in general I think but on this topic I would like to defend myself against that charge. Does this look arrogant? Does this seem arrogant?

Now here's my argument. If I were going to be arrogant I would act a little differently. Well would you mind if I showed you just like a fictional version of what I would look like if I were acting arrogant? Because then you can contrast it to the way I am acting. So I like if with your permission I'm going to model what it would have looked like had I been arrogant. Okay you ready? This is me doing an impression of Scott if he were arrogant.

Well you looked at the science and then you did your own research. Some people would say there's a step missing in which the psychology mattered. I can't reach it. I'm strapped into my thing here. But some would say that the people who understand persuasion would know that this is nothing but confirmation bias. And so the people who said they did this and then you know trusted their gut instinct. If I were arrogant I would say well you've just described the exact reason that science was invented. Science was invented so you wouldn't do this. That was to prevent you from doing this and this. Because these are not science. Science is the solution to doing this. This would be the problem not the solution. This would be everything wrong according to somebody who understood psychology.

Now that would be arrogant. That would be messed up. And that's why I don't do that. Instead I say the people who got the correct answer it's obvious that they use the right process and that's the end of the story. And if they ignore the biggest risk of long COVID it's not because I know how to do things right and I include all the risks. That would be arrogant. Instead I learned from the people who got it right and I try t