Coffee With Scott Adams — Knowledge Archive August 23, 2026
Scott Adams Philosophy Archive
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you open up in a certain location and their hospital hasn't been impacted yet. Well maybe you can experiment a little bit there. Maybe you can be a little bit looser in a place that still has plenty of hospital capacity and a little bit tighter where it doesn't. It looks like outdoors is way safer than indoors. There's a body of evidence that's coming together from past pandemics as well as this…

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uld tell me what the guesses were so that I know how much risk.

All right, so the Chinese seem to be going all-in on blaming the U.S. for the coronavirus or at least escaping blame. I've been saying since the beginning that I don't like the phrase Chinese virus, because if it even raises the question of are you being racist, why cause that trouble? Why cause that trouble? Why would you do it? But then I revised my feeling about that when I realized China was trying to blame the U.S., and then the president was just branding them back. Now it's your freaking virus. It's a Chinese virus. And I've decided to just go all-in. I'm all-in on Chinese virus until China stops. If China decides, okay it was us, we will stop blaming you for that. That's the last time I'll ever use that phrase, because I find it a little bit offensive. And I always see any reason to offend Americans who have some Chinese ancestry. I see no reason to offend Chinese citizens who are just trying to do the best they can. But man, your government, if you're gonna brand us with it, it's coming back. So it's the Chinese flu. It's the Chinese virus to me until they stand down.

All right, let's talk about some of the options that the government is talking about for phasing in. Now I'm gonna do something obnoxious, and only the people who are new to this Periscope will see it as obnoxious because you don't have the context. I'm gonna brag about telling you something before other people told you. Now the context is that's specifically what I do on these Periscopes. I make predictions and then later I say oh I was totally wrong or I got that one right, and see if we learn anything, right? So when I brag about getting something right, just know that if I got it wrong I would also tell you. And that's part of the process. So don't judge me as being an egomaniac or anything. It's just part of the process. You should be watching to see if I can predict better than other people. And part of that process is me telling you when I got it right.

Who else told you that this was not yes no go back to work but that it would be a phased process in which we would intelligently assign risks to different categories and that we'd start going back to work, you know, but probably the seniors and at-risk people will be the last to go? Who else told you that that was gonna happen? I think I was the first, right? Now just keep that in mind and add it to your tally if you're keeping track. So I can see this coming from a mile away. If you didn't, maybe you should listen to my Periscopes more.

So here are some of the options being discussed. Let's see if we have a favorite. I took this off of I guess Fox News reporting. One option is phasing in younger people, people under 40, and keeping other people out. So that would just be simple: under 40 go back to work. So that's one option.

Another option is to keep in place restrictions on

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ly on the vulnerable and the seniors like nursing homes but allow everybody else to return. So the other option is you can go back to work unless you're clearly in these vulnerable and nursing homes or you're older or you have underlying conditions, I guess. A third plan would say Trump would lift the federal guidelines but let the governors work it out. So it's sort of they lift the guidelines,…

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