s the right tone. It's very weird to watch Trump be low-energy and read off a teleprompter because you can tell he's not in his comfort zone. My take on it was it was fine in terms of the presentation. It was fine. It wasn't great and he's capable of being great. But fine was all we needed. We just needed to hear from the president. We needed to feel like he's in charge, taking it seriously. He had all those experts. So I would say there was, I didn't see anything I would criticize in it but it wasn't a home run or anything. It just was a good solid presidential speech.

But interestingly he decided to close traffic to Europe, air traffic. Now here's the way I think you should look at Trump's performance because none of us are really good at evaluating presidents. We think we are. We all think we're geniuses at evaluating presidents and I'm no different. But we're not good at it and it's good to keep that in mind. One of the reasons that we're not good at it is we forget that the valid comparison would be this president in this situation versus a different president but the same situation. And that can't be evaluated because there is no way to evaluate a different president in this same situation. That can't be done. So all you know is how one person did it and then you imagine how it could have been done differently and you end up comparing your imagination of how it could have been done differently to what was actually done. And that's not a valid comparison because your imagination is not some kind of standard to which all things can be compared.

That said, here's a good way, here's a useful way to break out your opinion. There aren't that many parts of this emergency that the president actually does. The president is one of the least important people in the emergency. I know that's weird but he's actually bordering on irrelevant. And when I say that, as soon as he does the right things, those are the small things he does are right. So he needs to focus the country's attention. Done. I'd say 100 percent effective. He needed to do the things that only a president can do such as closing the traffic from China and now closing it from Europe. I would say that he did those aggressively and decisively and I give him an A for full grades for doing the things the president can do specifically, just the president's job. Then he asked for two and a half billion. Congress said it's gonna be closer to eight and a half. He said that's fine and I'll take it. You know you could argue he should have asked for the higher number first but I don't think that's just small ball. In the real world if you've ever done anything important in the real world, a situation like this is not aim, fire, hit the target. That's not the world we're in. The world of aiming wildly in the general direction because it's an emergency. You shoot, you see how far off you were, you adjust. So we're in the world where we're in is a take a shot, adjust, take a shot, adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust. It's an adjustment world. It's not a laser focused hit the target world. And so when I see the president asks for two and a half billion but then Congress says no we're smarter, it's eight and a half billion, nine and a half, whatever it is, you know let's adjust. It happened quickly, happened without any friction. Right? There was no friction to the adjustment. So as long as you're seeing people take a shot and then adjust quickly, that's everything you can hope for. That's it. That's your government working exactly the way you wanted to. Adjust, adjust, adjust.

So the things that the president can do I think he nailed. Like the decision as the president does. He put the money there. He got the right person, gave it the right attention, did the presidential address, closed the airports early. Those are all the things he can do. Beyond that his messaging I thought was poor but also irrelevant because as long as he's willing to say blah blah blah here's what I think, now let's listen to my expert. And I think it's entirely obvious that Dr. Fauci, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the experts that the president has chosen are strong personalities who understand the nature of the threat. I believe Dr. Fauci and probably the others would stand right next to the president in public and contradict him because they have. Right now would a plain political person contradict the president if they were on the same party while standing in front of him in public? Well not so readily. A lot less likely. But I think these professionals are different cats. When you listen to Fauci speak there's nothing political there. There is nothing, nothing. And that's hard to do. I mean he is so, Fauci is so clear of political even vibration that I put a lot of credit in that guy. So I have complete trust that the experts are telling the president what needs to be told, doing the things that need to be done. And when they do it wrong they're adjusting.

So one of the things that was wrong was the test kits. How much and how, I don't know what the details were but the early testing stuff was too little, didn't work, too late, whatever. So there are questions to be answered there. But you know was the President of the United States aware that we didn't have enough test kits? Well no. But of course the buck stops at the top. So they're adjusting. But here too the same story I said with the ventilators. We should know about the test kits. I'd love to see the news reports actually standing in the factory floor watching the people try to scramble to make more test kits than they've ever made before. I want to see that process and maybe there's something we could add to it, right? Did they need labor? Do they need funds? Do they need expertise? Do they need me to call somebody? We can make something happen faster. I'd help anyway.

So I thought the president's presentation was adequate, hit all the notes. Any complaining about it would not be substantial. So I think we're on the right track. And I agree with Naval that the beauty of this problem is that it has a timer on it. We know with a very high degree of certainty because of the Chinese and South Korean experiences, we know that we can get a hold of this. We know it'll be hard but we know we can do it. So let's treat it like the short-term thing that it is.

I saw an interesting note that if everybody starts doing online education, if the colleges stay closed for a while or maybe even the schools, the lower schools, people might find out that they like online education better. And they might. That's definitely a possibility. You have some other unintended consequences that are starting to form. One is that I think telemedicine might have a resurgence. You know it's already growing but I think telemedicine will get a big boost. So you'll see that. And I think you'll see online shopping for groceries just become a thing.

I just tweeted, I think I tweeted it or liked it, I forget, a story that broke my heart today. So I'm gonna tell you to break your heart. There's a woman who was tweeting telling the story. A young woman. She was in the parking lot of her grocery store and she heard somebody yelling from inside a car. And it was two elderly people who were inside the car. They cracked the window open and apparently they'd been sitting in the car for 45 minutes trying to yell to passers-by that they were afraid to get into the store and go in public to shop for groceries. They didn't have food and they were yelling to people to help them. Apparently they didn't have much of a social or family support system. So these two elderly people went there and sat in their car and yelled through a crack in the window. And finally this woman said she'd buy them some groceries. So they put down some money and a shopping list and so she shopped for some things and put them in her trunk.

Now there might be a lot more of that going on. There might be a lot more seniors who are panicked and don't have the capacity to get through this the best way. So I would say if you know anybody in that over 70 age group you might want to check up on them. And one way to help them might be to set up some online grocery shopping and maybe you have to do it for them but just have their address and their credit card on it so the food will be delivered to them directly. So I don't know how to help the old people in your life but put some work into it. So figure out who is your most vulnerable person in your circle. Figure out what you can do to help them because this Wuhan virus is not a spectator sport. As I say this is all of us. This is all of us doing different things and you're gonna have to help out some elderly people.

Tom Hanks and his wife apparently have the corona virus. They're in Australia doing a movie and it's reported that they have it. Their symptoms are mild. But here's the thing that got me a little close to home. So Tom Hanks is 63 years old and reportedly, somebody will have to confirm this, he has type 2 diabetes. Is that true? And that's one of the top risk factors. So he's over 60, that's a risk factor, and he has a special condition. I'm sure it's well treated and monitored and he would have obviously the finest healthcare. But here's why this scares me in particular. I'm gonna be 63, his exact age, and I also have a risk condition. In my case asthma. And so I'm watching Tom Hanks like he's the canary in the coal mine for me. So if Tom Hanks survives and he's still alive in a month I'm gonna feel a lot better about myself. Selfishly speaking I'm sort of using it as my surrogate. If he survives the corona virus I'm pretty sure I can because you know he's a very healthy 63. I've been a very healthy 63 except for that one issue. Now of course my problem is a lung problem so I probably have higher risk.

If we are checking our prediction models I would like to check mine for you. Number one, did you see the video of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden together in which they pretend they're doing an endorsement and Kamala says she's endorsing Biden and then they do a staged artificial conversation after the director yells cut in which Kamala talks about her, I guess her supporters are called the KHive, and Joe Biden talks directly to them in hopes that they will support him in his campaign. But the actual most interesting part of the little video, because we know that the Democrats are lining up behind Biden so that's not surprising, but the part of the video that is most interesting is their chemistry. Watch, if you have a chance, watch it or watch it again. Watch the chemistry between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. It's really good. It's actually really good to me anyway. I mean I suppose I could be fooled by it but from an observer's perspective they look actually like a good pair. Like they have some genuine affection. And apparently the backstory is that they do because Kamala was apparently very close with Beau Biden and therefore Joe Biden. So I think Kamala is gonna be my best prediction that I ever made because as vice president she would be as effectively the presidential candidate.

But here's anot