The Ricochet Podcast - The Senator and The Doctor

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

No, we did not book Rand Paul on this supersized edition of The Big Show (90 minutes of clever and civil conversation!), we booked Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) to discuss the stimulus packages (speaking of super-sized), the federal government’s response to the crisis, and a boots-on-ground report from Ohio. And our good friend and go to authority on all things medical, Dr. George Savage checks up on... Source

Our country wasn't built to be shut down. This is not a country that was built for this. It was not built to be shut down. My call was perfect. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today we talk to Senator Rob Portman and Dr. George Savage. Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome everybody to the Ricochet Podcast number 491. Last week was 490. Next week will be 492.

And it's that kind of consistency that we bring you week after week. And I know you appreciate our careful numbering scheme here. I'm James Lollix with Rob Long in New York and Peter Robinson in California. And gentlemen, before we start today, a temperature check physically and emotionally. How are you doing? Well, I let Peter answer that because he's the one who's he seems the one who's always angry. Well, you're in quarantine with with all of your children, it seems like. All but one. All but one. I have two older, actually all but two. One has gone back up to San Francisco.

But that still leaves me with plenty. Plenty. Now, this is not original with me, but I'll vent anyway. Okay, fine. Rob wins. We all have to be in shutdown because it's the good and the good are flat. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, but, well, you do sort of win that argument. I mean, separate

argument, but the impulse of the bureaucrats and the police is just, it's preposterous, but it's not funny. So, I just went for a walk today.

All kinds of parks are closed. They have put police tape over park benches. You know who sit together on park benches? Not strangers, people who know each other and are very likely holed up in the same house together. There is no danger for people to go for a walk. On the contrary, it's good for their mental health, it's good for their physical health. And what concerns me overall, of course, is that between this huge spending and these governors popping up here, there, and everywhere, and even Donald Trump asserting authority without any journalist saying, oh, by the way, exactly which clause of

the Constitution empowers you to do that? Or, Governor, exactly which statute did the California legislature enact to permit you to do that? These are just broad assertions of authority, and the press just writes it down. What concerns me is that it's going to be a little hard to claw all of this back. And even—the cops are good people, right? The people there are just trying to enforce these diktats that have been handed down so that they don't get sued. And I'm sure there are county lawyers looking at things and saying, well, the way this is handed down from the governor's office, we have to put police tape over the benches. So you've got this whole dynamic. Yes, people are sick.

We can debate whether the shutdown is necessary, but I'm willing to stipulate that Rob is right and that it was. All of that said, there's a craziness going on here. And I just—it annoys— at a minimum, it annoys me. I won't even say, this week I'm not going to say I'm angry because it would just bore people. It would be three weeks in a row. But this week I'm just annoyed. Do you get any of that in New York? Of course in New York you have fuller hospital rooms.

There's much more sense of crisis, I suppose. Well, there's a different, I mean, I have three insights here. And the third—well, I think I'll wait for Dr. Savage if I feel like I want to share it. I haven't really thought of it very much, and it's kind of—it's sort of gross to talk about, but I might talk about it anyway. Here are my three insights. One is that, you know, we're in the middle of this thing, all this news on about COVID-19 and the coronavirus every day, all day, every second. And I sort of consume a certain portion of it. I think I consume probably a judicious amount of it.

I find myself with many, many, many unanswered questions. Yes. And those questions could be answered. It's not like this. I'm not asking for someone's crystal ball to see into the future, and I'm not even asking for recriminations. I think that when this story is told, it will probably be seen in hindsight to have been an overreaction, maybe a judicious one. But it seems to me, and that's why I want to talk about Savage a little bit later. It seems to me that this virus has been around a lot longer and there are more people infected with it. And of course, you know,

that means a larger denominator for the numerator of deaths and serious illnesses, which means it's a little less lethal or a lot less lethal than we thought. I mean, I think that could be true. We won't know until the end, right? We won't know for another year. But well, I think the testing on, we can come to that. another year. But that's my question. I think the testing on... We can come to that. Go ahead. I don't want to interrupt the flow here. You want to have a whole year of testing and knowledge and stats and stuff.

So maybe less, but not for a long time. We certainly won't know about it by the summer. I mean, we may all be back to work and everything will be fine, but the actual history of it won't really be written until later. But my question is about New York. And New York is obviously hitting it very hard, and it's kind of just a very strong sort of positive feeling here.

You know, there's a 7 p.m. I mean, I'll post a video I took yesterday at 7 p.m. Cheer all up and down the city. People are cheering. Everybody's posting on Instagram, their neighborhood cheering. That's kind of a nice feeling. But my question is, all right,

we have a field hospital that was set up in Central Park. I haven't seen any pictures of that. We have a hospital ship that's docked on the Hudson. And apparently it has, last I heard, had six beds taken. And we have hospitals in Brooklyn and in Queens that are slammed, that it's a war zone. Why Queens? Who are those people? And my question is, are those people Chinese?

That's where, you know, Queens is really sort of the headquarters of the East Coast headquarters of Chinese immigrants and Chinese visitors and the Chinese community in the same way that Monterey Park is in Los Angeles. I don't know. And I don't think it's, I mean, I'm not making a racial argument. Oh, no. Yeah, I'm going to be in trouble, but it's interesting. Of course you're not making a racial argument. That's Rob, everybody. It's not Peter. It's not James. That's Rob.

It'd be an interesting statistic to learn. Maybe I'm wrong. This is for Rob and James. I'm wrong. I read yesterday that it seems like the fingerprints of the virus that we have here came through Europe. So maybe these are people who brought it from Europe to New York. That could be possible too. My second thing is one of the problems with this is that we feel like the information we're getting is information designed to inspire in us or command in us a certain reaction. Exactly. Not necessarily the truth. And we've seen this now everywhere. We've seen it when people talk about

climate change. We've seen it when they talk about race and they've seen it when they talk about crime. We've seen it when they talk about a lot of things. The idea is it's not important for me to tell you the truth. You can't. You're too dumb. You can't handle it. So you need to be told a quasi, an adjacent truth,-truth, a massage truth. And I think that is going to be the real legacy of COVID-19 isn't going to be, you know, that we wash our hands and we don't shake hands anymore. It's going to be that we are suspicious of people telling us facts, even if those facts are true, because we suspect that they're trying to get us to do something in a certain way.

And I think that's going to be a real problem for the very people for whom the truth is not the central issue, right? I could not agree more. The dynamic, I'm not saying this accounts for everything, not even close to everything, but I do believe it is present. The dynamic here is in some ways the same dynamic that we see with climate change, and it is as follows. Experts have an incentive to state the case, whatever it may be, in the most dramatic possible way. Why? Because that brings them prestige and authority and funding. And they are human beings, so they respond to incentives. And if I may—oh, by the way, Rob, on the thing that we may not know

for a year, just a little note, because we had as our guest a week ago Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya here at Stanford. I ran into Jay yesterday on the campus. We had a cup of coffee together, properly observing the seven foot. By the way, to me, it's seven feet, not two meters. None of this French revolutionary. I thought it was six feet. Oh, is it six? Oh, well, in that case, we wasted a foot. Jay has just completed testing here in Santa Clara County, and he expects the results to become available early next week. So information is going to begin to become available in days rather than weeks. I agree.

We won't know. We won't have the history of the thing for a year. Anyway, so this is a question for the two of you, and then I will fall silent, and especially for James, because James is—well, Rob, too. You write columns. James is a working journalist. He's employed by a newspaper. And Rob just said there are questions that don't seem to be getting asked, and I feel that every single day. The latest one is really quite simple. Have the experts. We know there's a new book out by the Princeton Economist. It's a husband-and-wife team called Deacon, and there's a new book out by the Princeton Economist. It's a husband and wife team called Deacon, and it's a new book out on deaths of despair. And they examine the opioid

crisis. They examine the suicide crisis. And it's not poverty, and it's not white males. It's unemployment. So the question is this. Has anyone done any modeling on the kind of ill health results, opioid abuse, alcohol abuse, and yes, even suicide that is likely to result from throwing seven million Americans out of work? And has anyone attempted rigorously to balance that against the benefits of the lives that we're saving. Now, that seems to me a respectful question, a pertinent question, an obvious question. And you can sit and look at those White House press briefings from now until kingdom come, and it won't get asked. I just, the level of journalism strikes me as appalling. Am I missing something here?

No. But frankly, Peter, I don't know where to start. First of all, you complaining about the police tape on the benches, do you want grandma to die? I mean, because that's usually the fallback position when we push back against things like this. Okay, so you want her to spread and you want grandma to die. Grandma's the one who most needs a stroll in the park. She's the one who's most penned up in her house and needs to see the neighbors and see people's children and chat and get out in the park and get some sun. Really, old people, it's bad for their health to be locked up.

So you would think, but anybody who is objecting to any of these things, that's what they're usually hit with. Two, Rob asking about whether or not the people in Queens are overrepresented by the Chinese. Again, this is appalling racism, and I need only refer you to this morning's South China Morning Post, which states that Nature magazine, let me just read, the British scientific journal Nature has apologized for associating COVID-19 with China in its reporting. You get that? Nature has apologized for drawing a connection between COVID-19 and China. They said...

Unbelievable. They said... The article published Tuesday, the publication said that the WHO's announcement on February 11th of the official name for the pneumonia-like virus would be COVID-19 had been an implicit reminder to, quote, those who had erroneously been associating the virus

with Wuhan and China, and nature groups themselves in that sad bit. And the reason for this is, quote, it's clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks with untold human costs on their health and livelihoods. So associating with China is now to be off the table, which is why a lot of people are

happy when they say, oh, you know, A, it came from Europe. Well, where was it there before it got to Europe? It isn't that it came from Europe, it's just that the signature, I don't really understand the science of it, the signature of it seems like it went through Europe before it came to the United States. Before it came to New York. It didn't go. Right.

Its parent nation took it through Italy and through France and through Spain, and then it got here. Not east, yeah. But the original location was, I think we're pretty confident in saying that it came out of China. But again, that phrase, untold cost, goes back to what Peter says. The untold cost, perhaps, of what's going to be the result of economic downturn here in the states when it comes to despair and the opioid crisis and the rest of it, I'm not sure that there's going to be an awful lot of attention paid to that because it was ongoing before and because we're talking your basic deplorables in West Virginia. And, you know, really, that's not where the sexy news is going to be at any point.

But you're right about saying that we're hearing things and we're not getting the whole truth. And I think that's because we sense, a lot of us, on either side, perhaps, I'd hope, sense that there is a big, huge, wet wad of cotton through which the news proceeds and goes the other direction. And I have a third point here, and that is that I've been dying to say this. I'm absolutely dying to say it. Oh, well, I guess we won't be getting to the third point at the moment. We have our guest, and we're happy to have him. And now we welcome to the podcast Senator Rob Portman, a Republican junior senator from Ohio. He was held since 2011. Prior to that, he was director of OMB under G.W. Bush, and he also served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Ohio's 2 second district from 1993 to 2006. Welcome to the podcast, Senator. Thanks for joining us in these busy times

here. How are things in Ohio? Well, things are a little strange in Ohio. We have this ongoing crisis, and we are at home, and our economy is largely shut down. So it's a tough time for people. A lot of small businesses have had to close their doors. A lot of individuals have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. And we have the ongoing healthcare crisis. So we've done better in Ohio than some states because we took it more seriously earlier on, had people social distancing and staying home and following the rules in terms of personal hygiene, hand washing washing and all that sort of stuff. And it's working for us. We think we'll have fewer hospitalizations than projected, fewer people in the ICU, fewer fatalities, but it's still going to be a while. And we don't have great testing, James. That's one of the things that continues to trouble me. I waited on that again

today with the COVID-19 task force. We need better and faster testing to know, one, what the healthcare situation is and get the contact tracing going and help to save people from getting sick. But second, we need to have a measurement that is credible so that at some point we can get back to a normal life, that people can send their kids back to school knowing that the crisis is behind us and that people can go back to work, back to restaurants and movie theaters and bowling alleys and all that. So my hope is that we'll see the testing pick up here in Ohio. And as that happens, I think we'll be getting over the hump.

Senator Peter here. You served as director of the Office of Management and the Budget and as the United States Trade Representative. And here are a couple of things that have happened as a result of this crisis. One, Congress, the United States Senate unanimously, Congress enacted a $2.2 trillion aid package, which has blown a hole in the federal budget the size of a barn door. And trade around the world has gone into a clench, and particularly trade between the United States and China. So tragic, or tragic but necessary, or not really that tragic because we can handle that stimulus package as a proportion of GDP. It's not that bad. How do you—you

voted for that package, but I have the feeling it pained you. Where do you stand on this? You know me too well, necessary, but at the same time, you know, really difficult, because actually that amount, $2.2 trillion, is more than we spend annually with all the appropriated spending. In other words, when you take out the stuff that's mandatory, which is on autopilot, important programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, the stuff that we fight over every year, all the spending for government, all the departments and agencies, is less than we spent in this one package. So that puts it in some context, I guess, since trillions are kind of hard for people to fathom. Two things, though. One, some of this

is temporary, meaning that, as an example, some of these loans are meant to be paid back. And, you know, if you look at the example of TARP, they were paid back and the government made a little money, which is a good thing. Second, some of the tax provisions, of course, are temporary. As an example, if you're an employer out there, you don't have to pay your employer side of the payroll tax during 2020, but then you have to make it up in 2021 and 2022. So some of this will not be quite that expensive at the end of the day. But having said that, it'll be very expensive. And so what you want to do, obviously, is get the economy moving again as soon as it's safe, as soon as people have, you know, as I said earlier, learned that it's safe to go out again. It's safe to go back to work. It's safe to send your kids to school.

And then second, I guess to say that interest rates are relatively low. So if you're going to borrow money at any time, it's better to do it when interest rates are lower. But we've got to get to the point where we're back in business, where we have revenue coming in, and that we have the ability to see the economy grow again. As you said, as a percent of GDP, this spending may not be troubling to some. It is to me because our GDP is declining right now. Right. And another question, I know Rob wants to get in, but one of the issues that has been closest on which you have worked most closely, I was about to say it was closest to your heart, but it is close to your heart. You care about these people. Southeastern Ohio, which is part of Appalachia, unemployment has been high for some

years, and it's one of the places in the country most horribly ravaged by the opioid crisis. And we know for sure that one of the factors involved in the opioid crisis was unemployment, not just people losing their jobs and going on unemployment and then getting back into the workforce, but long-term unemployment, people feeling that they were no longer in the workforce. And today we have the figure that 6.6 million Americans have been thrown out of work by our own choice. The government has done this to the economy. And I guess I have a couple of questions. One is, have you seen the public health officials who are telling us we all have to stay home? Or anybody, has anyone tried to do a rigorous modeling of the ill health effects of shutting down the economy would surely have to be balanced against the

number of lives we're saving from COVID-19. And then the second part is, what are the politics of this? Are there not people back in Ohio writing to you? And I would imagine, actually, this is a polarizing thing where people are saying, Senator, we've all got to stay indoors until the whole crisis passes. And then you've got other people saying, wait a minute, I'm two weeks from going out of business. This is crazy. Get us back to work. How are the practical politics of this playing out in the office of a very hardworking and popular United States senator?

Those are both great questions. On the first one, the CEO of perhaps our most prestigious healthcare institution in Ohio recently told me we should be doing an analysis of what it costs to shut this economy down because there are certain health effects that no one's considering. And he's right. He also believes that during this crisis, we have to do all we can to keep people social distancing, you know, following the guidelines and wearing masks in public and so on. But he thinks we got to also focus on how do we very quickly get back on track. And those two are not inconsistent. You know, the more we're doing in terms of these preventive measures, the more likely it is we can get back on track more quickly. But he makes exactly the point you're making.

I've seen very little analysis of it. Maybe there will be a brilliant Peter Robinson column on this coming up. Still crib from some Stanford, you know, healthcare effort, but it's, it's absolutely true that there, there is a, there is a negative impact and it goes beyond opioids and it just, the whole issue of, uh, of, uh, people not getting elective surgery as an example, what are the health effects of that, which is now happening throughout our country. It's happened in Ohio centers and other places. In order to protect protective equipment for the coronavirus surges that are coming, but also to free up beds and so on. So it's the right thing to do, but it has an impact and it has real world negative healthcare impacts.

So that analysis really hasn't been done. And I think the analysis would be helpful just to get us, again, more focused on testing and data and metrics because that's the way we're going to get back on this thing. We can't just snap our fingers as politicians and say it's time to go back to work. No one's going to do it, and nor should they. It's got to be based on good science. In terms of the practical political side of this, it's interesting. Even a lot of my friends who say, you know, have a small business and they're frustrated by this. And as you know, I'm in the restaurant business myself and it's tough. It's tough. I've got a call in a little while with the Ohio

Restaurant Association. They want to see some changes in this PPP program, the Paycheck Protection Program. And so it works better for our bars and restaurants. But even those people, when pushed, say, you know, this crisis is real. We realize that. And we see where the changes we've made in, you know, keeping people from gathering, the social distancing side of it, the hand sanitizing and so on, is working. And it's working to reduce all the projections that we had in terms of the impact of this disease on our health. And so they get it, but they also understand that we have to start talking about how do we turn this around now? How do we get back on track before it's too late? Because they're going to lose their businesses. Some already have effectively. Some of them don't think they can

get back on track. They didn't have the cash reserves. We have hospitals in Ohio that have a week left of cash reserves right now have hospitals in Ohio that have a week left of cash reserves right now. Hospitals? There's no funding yet. Hospitals. Oh, my gosh. There's no hospitals in Ohio. Oh, that's a different... I was a dry cleaner, a restaurant, that sort of thing. I thought those poor guys are... They either get a loan or they go... But hospitals, I had no idea. Yeah. They make their money primarily through elective surgery, and they haven't been able to do it. So this is real, and it's the other side of this coin. So, yes, people take the health care crisis seriously.

A small group of people think that it was overreaction on all of our parts, but most people realize this was necessary to do. But now let's get on with it. Let's come up with the smart things to measure this, to have metrics people trust. You know, Scott Gottlieb said yesterday that once the number of new cases per day starts to be reduced, which I believe is the best measurement. I've talked to Dr. Fauci about this and others. I believe he's right. He said, then we need two weeks because of the way this illness works. You've just got to be sure that the incubation period and so on is a couple of weeks, two weeks of progress. Then we can say, okay, let's start to transition back to a normal life. I think that's pretty good advice. And that may be possible here in the next month or so. Hey, Senator, it's Rob Long in New

York. Thank you for joining us. So I have two questions. One is, I mean, tell me if I'm a Pollyanna or not. We're not talking about businesses that were overleveraged. We're not talking about Lehman Brothers. We're not talking about the sudden realization that, you know, two homeowners in Northridge County, in Northridge, California, were overextended and these collateralized debt obligations were incredibly infected and toxic the way we were in 2008. The dry cleaner was working. The dry cleaner was making payroll. The dry cleaner was paying his rent. People were paying their mortgage. Isn't it possible that with the right sort of plan in place, an expensive plan,

but the right plan in place, that we turn the switch, everybody goes back to work, and we pick up right where we were. I mean, we were, the economy was growing, unemployment was low, and the world was, the country was incredibly unleveraged. It seems like this would be a, this is a textbook stimulus plan, right? Almost – I mean I'm a Pollyanna. I think it's going to work, but I'm also a pessimist because I think people are going to say, hey, wait a minute. If this works, why don't we keep doing it? You know what I'm saying? We're spending a whole lot of money.

There's something incredibly intoxicating about that. Yeah, there is. Who'd have thought that as what happened on the floor of the United States Senate today, that a $250 billion increase in spending would be proposed by a single senator, then another senator would come out and say, you know, no, I want to add another $250 billion for other things as well. And the two senators almost decided to spend $500 billion. One kind of, you know, stopped the other, so it didn't happen. But, you know, this is billions with a B. I mean, it's real money. But yeah, so you don't want to become too used to this. But I think your larger point is absolutely right, Rob. I think that the economy was hitting on all cylinders

only in February. I mean, that's just a couple months ago. I mean, it's not that long ago. And I think we can get back to that. I do think there's going to be a transition here for two reasons. One, I do think some people will be hesitant to go back into the normal, you know, configuration of restaurants as an example until there'll be some social distancing for a while. There'll be some caution and precautions taken in a number of businesses, even manufacturing probably as they go back, you know, testing people, taking temperatures and so on. And so that's going to make the economy a little less efficient. And, you know, frankly, if you're a restaurant, you can only have four

tables in the room rather than eight tables in the room. That changes your... So I think there may be a period of transition here. Second, to get some of these businesses back up and going is an expense. And whether you're a car manufacturer like Ford or GM or Chrysler, or whether you're a restaurant, you will have startup expenses. You just will. And those aren't covered by anything out there now. You could say that big businesses could use these loans to do that. Some will. They hesitate to do that because they'd much rather get a grant. Small businesses, the way the PPP program works, it doesn't have funding for that purpose. That's one thing I'm going to talk to the Ohio Restaurant Association about this afternoon.

They're looking for some help. When you start to get over the hump and begin to get on the right side of this curve, then you would hope that there'd be some help there just to get things going again. They really don't want employees right now because they have nothing for them to do, but they're going to need to get employees. They also tell me in some businesses, they're going to have to train new people because people move and transition in a situation like this. Not that this is something we went through before, but so they're worried about that. So I think you're right. I think within a couple months,

you're back to a pretty good economy. And within six months, you're back to a very good economy. If, as is now suggested, these projections get better, and we have a metric, again, to be able to get people back on track. Right. Well, I mean, as I said, I think I'm an optimist, and I think a metric, again, to be able to get people back on track. Right.

Well, I mean, as I said, I think I'm an optimist, and I think that it will be economically fine. I'm also a pessimist that we're going to discover the joys of spending a trillion dollars in an afternoon. If we could just project, you know, if you could, 12 months from now, just assume, you know, we're all sort of healthy, and we've all figured out how to protect ourselves and people are shaking hands again timidly and businesses are open and the economy is growing, all sorts of good things are happening. How do we treat our competitive partner, China, from now on? What's the reckoning here? There's a lot of people who think that the reckoning should be sharp and nasty.

Some people think it should be a shrug and no harm done. Where do we place China knowing that we're entangled with them in all sorts of economic ways and that sometimes when we punch them, we end up hitting ourself in the nose? What do we do? Yeah, it's a great question. And actually it goes to your previous question, too. You know, trade makes the economy more efficient. There's no question about it. It should be fair.

And I use that in the sense that there should be a more level playing field. So if China is, as an example, selling stuff to us that is below their cost, which they like to do sometimes, that's dumping. That's illegal. You should put in place a remedy for that, which we have under our laws. But trade in general makes the economy more efficient. I think we'll be doing less of that. I think two things will happen. One, with regard to supply chain, I think there will be a lot of concern among Americans,

and I'm talking about rank and file Americans, to say, wait a minute, you mean China makes the penicillin and we have to rely on them to send it to us? That doesn't make sense. I think a lot of, you know, a lot of investments in American companies, including private equity investments, ended up saying, you know, we're going to go to China for the supply chain. And people don't want to trust that anymore. So I think for things that are obvious, like pharmaceuticals, I think you'll see a movement back here, and that'll require some government incentives probably, which means some taxpayer funding in essence. Maybe it'll be through the tax code, and it won't be direct spending per se, but it'll be in effect spending, and I think that's going to happen. Second, I think you'll see a move toward

more Buy America generally. I think this whole experience will lead people to think, you know, I'm more patriotic in the sense of where my dollar is going to go. And I think that's not a bad thing. I think it's a good thing. But that's going to change where we operate a little bit. I think you'll see more onshoring of some manufacturing as a result of this crisis. I also think another aspect of this that's interesting is that we've had the opportunity to cut through a lot of red tape in order to help save our healthcare system and our economy over the past month and going into the next month. I've been very involved in that. I've been working with FDA and HHS and, gosh, the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Prisons,

all sorts of different entities to say we're on a wartime footing. And as the people in the task force say we're now in Trump time, that might be a good thing, too, because it might be that we can see where, yes, these entities have a role to play for safety, certainly, and health. But there's a way to do this more quickly and more efficiently to cut through some of the red tape. Peter and I have talked a lot about this on occasion about regulatory reform and, you know, simple things like being able to get a permit more quickly and more efficiently. I think that this may be something we learn in this process that, you know what, maybe we don't have to wait, you know, a year to get something approved by the FDA that can be done in this crisis in a few weeks

and in a safe way. So I hope that will be part of this as well. Senator Peter here, closing question for you. I get to be the crass one to point out you and Rob were just talking about, well, 12 months from now, it could look like this or this or this. Seven months from now, we have an election. As I say, it may sound crass to say it, but it is true. It's going to happen. And I recall hearing you say this past summer, and if this was in confidence, let me know and we'll just edit it out. But I recall hearing you say this past summer that it looked better than 50-50 that Democrats would keep the House, that because Republicans were facing far more competitive races in the Senate than were the Democrats, Democrats only needed to flip three seats in the Senate and take the White House. And if they flipped three seats in the Senate and took the White House, the day after the election, we would wake up in another country.

That was long before the coronavirus crisis struck. Now it has struck. How does it look to you? How does the politics of it look to you? Yeah, I have no idea. Oh, really? I don't think anybody else does either, really. But people will, of course, opine on it, as I will now. Now that I said I have no idea. I think it's net four seats in the Senate.

Yeah, I think it's net four seats in the Senate when you look at the math. So they'd end up with 50-50, and then there'd be a, you know, if there was a Democrat in the White House, they'd be able to break the tie. So they'd end up with 50-50. And then there'd be, you know, if there was a Democrat in the White House, they'd be able to break the tie. And what I also told you was, you know, I don't know what happened to the legislative filibuster at that point, which means that the 60 vote margin you normally have might not be necessary. That's where you could see a big change in our country. And in the House, I don't know, this will shake things up a little bit. I think one thing is for certain, everything we thought about what would be important has now changed. Remember, it was all going to be about impeachment. I don but probably something else between now and seven months from now that we haven't even thought about yet. So the economy was going to be the great strength of the president and of the Republican Party because things were hitting on all cylinders. Remember,

in February, we had the 19th month straight of wages increasing by 3% or more. To me, that was the most amazing statistic that we actually had finally figured out how to get this economy moving through smart tax reform and tax cuts and smart regulatory relief to actually help people get a little more take-home pay. And by the way, the highest percentage is among people who are lower income or middle-income workers. So it was working for the very people you would hope it would work for. And of course, we had 50-year low unemployment, and we had more jobs being offered than there were people looking for work, and we were exporting more energy than we were importing for the first time in our lifetimes. So there were a lot of good things going on. I assume, as Rob said, we'll get back to some of that pretty quick, but that's still uncertain. So if the economy had remained

strong, I think it would have been much more likely that you'd see a Republican Senate and you'd see Donald Trump be reelected, because I think that would have been very, very persuasive to people. Now we'll see. I think there'll be other issues, including obviously, you know, how the coronavirus is viewed, you know, how the response to it by the administration in particular is viewed by the voters. Senator, Peter may have said closing question, but I actually have the last question after which we'll let you go with our thanks. You mentioned before that some of the hospitals in Ohio are down to the last few shekels before they close. It's nationwide. Small hospitals, large hospitals, the stress is placed on the lack of elective surgery is just crippling.

So while we're spending lots of money and pitchforking huge amounts of pork to the National Endowments for the Arts and the Kennedy Center and the rest of them, is there any talk in the halls of Congress that perhaps some relief to help some of these struggling medical institutions over the hump might be in the pipeline? Or are they just simply shrugging their shoulders and saying, hey, they're doctors, they're rich, they'll figure it out? Yeah. Yeah, I think there is. We had an announcement today from HHS, Cimaverma in particular, at CMS that money was on its way out. I think it's $30 billion of the $100 billion

that is designated for hospitals and other healthcare providers. The focus is going to be, as I understand it, on hospitals based on their number of Medicare cases or percentage of Medicare cases, which is what the information that they have at CMS, which is the entity within HHS that does Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid is done at the state level, actually, in terms of the data. So we don't have that data at the federal level. Anyway, the money is going to start to flow and then another 70. The concern that I have is that it goes to these hospitals you're talking about, because otherwise we're going to end up after this crisis with a lot of areas,

especially rural areas in our country where there's not a hospital. And, you know, the consolidation has already been going on. It's not good for the patients and the citizens who live in those areas. I'm also concerned, frankly, about the children's hospitals because they don't take Medicare. As you can imagine, they take a lot of Medicaid patients, and they aren't being helped by this first tranche. So I hope in the next tranche, whatever it is, it'll be fair to the children's hospitals as well. By the way, they're also told they can't do elective surgeries, which is fine. They're protecting their PE as a result so that the masks and the gowns and so on aren't being used. And they also have beds available as overflow

here in Ohio. Almost all of our children's hospitals have offered up beds during what will be the surge here. We think now that surge won't be as significant, so it may not be needed. But meanwhile, their revenues are down substantially, hundreds of millions of dollars already just in Ohio alone. So you're right. It's a problem, and we've got to be sure that as we get through this crisis, we aren't losing some of these essential hospitals. Absolutely. Thank you for your help. Thank you for coming on the show today. We appreciate it. Back to work. We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, and we hope to talk to you when things are better and we can pick over the reasons why and why we missed a few things and the rest of

it. Have a great day. Senator, be safe, you guys. We'll do our best. Thank you. All right. Take care. Thanks, Peter. You know, one of the reasons I asked the medical question is not just because my wife works for a hospital and works incredibly hard and they're seeing these stresses, but it brought to mind something from the old Mary Tyler Moore show, which remains, of course, for me, a cultural touchstone since that's why I'm in Minneapolis and we all love it here. And that is Phyllis Lindstrom. If you remember Phyllis, she was the owner of the building where Mary lived. And very much sort of a neurotic sort. And she was complaining that money was tight and she might have to raise the rent.

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Drinkhydrant.com. Promo code Ricochet. And our thanks to Hydron for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And as much as I would like to just sit here and for the next 25 minutes engage with Peter and Rob on unfounded medical speculation that neither of us have any sort of basis for saying. How about we talk to somebody who actually does? Dr. George Savage joins us again, co-founder and chief medical officer of Proteus Digital Health and formerly the company's vice president of research and development. He sees digital medicine as an invaluable collaborative platform for patients and physicians, integrating information about a patient's response to therapy directly into everyday healthcare. We've had him before in the podcast to talk about things and we're happy to have him back. You know, oh, so many questions, but let's talk about the models.

The models were never perfect. I think we expected that, but are you surprised, heartened, intrigued by the way the models have turned out? And what are we seeing now going for two weeks, given that the United States is a huge country and there's lots of hot spots and lots of places that aren't? But, you know, where are we and how are we doing compared to the models? Well, the models, of course, are changing because as the data change, so do the models. And fortunately, the changes are in a very good direction. The causes of that, of course, are multifactorial. Everyone will claim credit for the social distancing being the sole cause, and it certainly is part of it. We'll have to disentangle that later. But the heartening thing is we now have a peak in sight. It looks like the medical system, with the exception of perhaps in the New York, greater New York area, will not be in any danger of being overwhelmed, which is great. And this means that we can now start to think about recovery and how we can restart certain regions of the country and relax certain mitigations in other areas while continuing to focus on hotspots. So all very positive. George, hey, it's Rob. Thanks for joining us

again. How are you feeling, by the way? I'm feeling great. Okay, that's good. Last time we talked, you were stuck at home like everyone else. Yeah, exactly. Well, you're not going full Jack Nicholson and The Shining like Peter. So you're on a scale of one to that. You're still a five. So I got a question just about what I'm reading. So you're going to help correct me. One of the things that I'm reading is that, yes, the numbers are going down. The numbers are going down.

The models were overstated. But those are models that were made, and obviously it's a glide path, right? They keep making them and keep refining them, so it's a constantly moving target. But those are models that were made under the assumption that we would be social distancing, or social distancing would be in place. And we're still way below those in some places, and which is leading people to say things like, well, maybe this was all an overreaction. Maybe we don't know anything. Maybe we should have waited. Maybe this was all just like a self-inflicted wound. What are the chances of that? Well, it's certainly a possibility.

And the way I deal with it is nobody knows nothing about a brand new virus and we're all looking in the rearview mirror trying to work it all out. So if it was an overreaction, well, that's okay. I was inspired by the Indiana governor when he was on the program a few weeks back to pick up John Barry's book on the great influenza. And I've been reading through that during this, and we certainly wouldn't want to repeat of 1918 now. So I get the early reactions. But given that the peak is in sight, and fortunately, it's far lower than we were all expecting, I think it is appropriate to begin talking about how we reverse some of this stuff. Because some of the reactions are just starting to carry on a life of their own in terms of taking social distancing to social control.

Cops jumping in and stuff. Hold on, hold on. I have to ask this one. A point of personal privilege. The peak is in sight, and it's much lower than we expected. I really only have one question, George, and you probably can guess what it is, and then I will return you to Rob. And my question is this. Is it still too early for me to say to Rob, told you? Well, you can if you like, I suppose. It is a fact, of course, that when bad things are happening, people are not just a simple reactive part of nature.

We have direction and organization and react to things to try to bend the curve and change things. And there are a lot of things we don't understand about this virus as it is right now. We don't even know for sure how many cases there are. And in terms of restarting the economy, that's a key thing that we need to begin serologic testing to see who's already had this darn thing and is therefore immune. How widespread has it been? The thing that has made this shut down the world has been two factors. One, the very infectivity of it. And secondly, the fact that some patients have a very divergent clinical course where everything seems to be going fine and then your immune system has a maladaptive response, we call it, where it just starts attacking everything and you wind up having to go to the hospital and potentially dying.

And we see that happening. That's very concerning. That's appropriate. And we had to deal with it. But we now need to think about what we do next. So what do we do next? I have sort of a disgusting question I want to ask, but I'm going to wait a minute before I want to do that near the end.

So I give people warnings. If you accept the axiom that people are always fighting, the generals are always fighting the last war. And a little anecdote. I was in New Orleans in 2005, I think it's 2005, and in the summer, and I was there in August, and Hurricane Cynthia was coming, and it was going to be a really bad one. And so everybody said, you got to get out of the city, got to get out of the city. The city, like pretty much, they got out of the city. They did what

they're supposed to do. And it turns out Hurricane Cynthia wasn't much. And then a few weeks later, three weeks later, it's Hurricane Katrina is coming. Got to get out of the city. And a lot of people I knew said, oh, not again. I'm not falling for this again. And we know what happened. So I guess my question to you is, is COVID-19, is it Cynthia? Is it Katrina? Or is this the wrong analogy altogether?

Well, I think we were concerned it could be Katrina. And part of the response, the result is it's looking like, fortunately, it won't be the medical version of Katrina, or to go back to history, the 1918 influenza pandemic. And people all pat themselves on the back and say it's all a response. And a lot of that is true, which is great. After bad data from China originally kind of fooled the whole world, we were late to the party, as were a lot of other people. And then we made a lot of other mistakes, as government does. But now everyone has gone up to this very draconian social distancing, horizontal interdiction, I guess Dr. Katz from Yale called it in The New York Times a few weeks ago, which I think is really need to begin moving on how to continue to contain the virus with policies that differ based on what region of the country you're in, different in New York than in California, different in Iowa, and allow us to, you know, all mitigate and people to reopen

their businesses. Because, you know, one thing that really sticks in my craw is this notion that some people run non-essential businesses where, of course, everyone's business is essential to them and their family and their customers and everybody else. But I'm not going to pay my non-essential mortgage then. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. So I have a disgusting question, and I can only ask it this way. And maybe this is a 100,000-foot view that I'm asking you as a public health historian. In sweeping 200 years, take a look at 200 years of human interaction, there are three sort of danger fluids, right?

Blood, poop, and snot. And, you know, I mean, stop me if you've heard this before. Can you stop with the technical terms, please? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So blood, we sort of like, you know, we kind of always knew that there was trouble in the diseases of the blood, blood mixing, that kind of thing. We kind of knew that that was a problem. That's a thing you want to keep to yourself. And then, you know, human excrement was something that we discovered in the mid-19th century, really the cholera epidemic in London, discovered that this is actually a very serious thing, and you shouldn't—nobody was thinking about it in 1850-something.

They just assumed that, well, the latrine is over there, and then the well is over here, and they're basically right next to each other, and that's not a problem, because the water—if you leave a jug of water on the windowsill, eventually all the cloudy particles settle to the bottom, and you can drink the water from the top. And we now know that is utterly revolting and disgusting and crazy, and why would you live that way? But back then, Voltaire lived that way. A lot of smart people lived that way. Are we going to feel the same way 100 years from now, looking back on our rather cavalier attitude towards our runny noses and our sneezing and our hands and our tissues and the idea that we just all thought this was kind of like, well, you know, it's unpleasant, of course, to blow your nose in public, but it's not nearly the same as using toilet paper in public. I mean, is that something that we should be preparing ourselves culturally to add on to the list of fluids you keep to yourself and you kind of like sanitize as you go along? And that being mucus? That's my disgusting question. Well, this is a risk-free answer given none of us will be around to call me on it in 100 years. But my own sense is probably no, I don't think so. There certainly will be- I thought I had a brilliant theory here. Will be a move to everyone wearing a lot of masks and what have you for a good period of time after

this is all over. But by and large, people are immune or have a fair amount of immunity to most common things. This is brand new, which is why this is different. It happened to be infective before you have symptoms. And what we're really suffering from, I think, as a society right now is a very large case of availability bias, which means we fixate on the daily case count and death count related to this disease as we've had to. But we need to get out of that as well, because in such a hyper-focus on this one issue, we may lose sight of the other deaths that go on, the other medical issues. I think, who is it, Bill Bennett and Seth

Leibson had a great article at World Clear Politics the other day where they pointed out the figures that there are 157,000 medical deaths a month in the United States from cancer and from coronary disease and all these other things. My colleagues were telling me the other day that their cancer clinics have been more or less shut down to prepare for COVID-19. And even those that are open, over half the patients weren't showing up for appointments because they're worried about catching COVID-19. And we don't want to create excess mortality in areas that are currently under control while we focus on the virus. We wanted both. But we have to deal with the tradeoffs.

And then, of course, we don't want to destroy the economy that makes all the medical care possible in the first place. So I'm reminded of Thomas Sowell's dictum that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. And we really need to think about them. We now have a second beautiful oxymoron added to the language by this crisis. The first, of course, was non-essential business, and the second is excess mortality. Let us have no more mortality than is absolutely necessary. George, I've got a couple of questions for you, if I may. One is on the nature of the virus. And like Rob, I think I'm on to a brilliant question. However, having heard you answer, Rob, I'm anticipating that you're just going to say, oh, Peter, Peter, Peter.

Well, he didn't say that. Well, he would have. Okay. So if he thought you could have taken it. The question is this. Somehow or other, it popped into my head the other day, this paradox about light that we know the physicists tell us that at one and the same time, it's two different things. Light is propagated in waves and light is propagated in particles. And I thought to myself, hmm, is there something like that going on with the coronavirus, some way in which it has two

features, whereas most flus have one? And this is why, to some extent, people are talking past each other when they describe the coronavirus. Overwhelmingly, for most people, the coronavirus is like the flu. It's whatever Dr. Fauci says. It's not more lethal than the flu for an overwhelming number of people, proportion of people who contract it. Most people, we now think, don't even know they have it. So to that extent, it's like the flu.

But we get these undeniable cases, 55-year-old man, unusually strong and vigorous, and he gets the coronavirus. And after 10 days of trying to shake it, he ends up in the ICU, and he's the prime minister of the United Kingdom. That's not the flu. That is just something different. Is there some weird sense in which this thing behaves just like a flu, except in a tiny number of cases when it seems to be something entirely different? Is that a useful way to think about it? I think it is. Actually, I really like that. Stop there. Sorry, Rob. But I do, because what we're running into is, again, this maladaptive immune response, which is people have some mild symptoms, typical course. You're starting to feel a bit better in seven days, seven to nine days from the case reports I've been reading. And then you either continue to feel better or you take a turn

for the worst. And the turn for the worst tends to be, as best I can see so far in the data, associated with your immune system revving up too much and heading in the wrong direction. And there is some quality of this virus when it interacts with the unique brew of an individual and your own genetics or your own immune system or whatever else you've been exposed to in life. Who knows? We don't know yet. But we know age is a factor, and having other medical problems is a factor that can cause things to head in a bad direction. And as that train starts rolling downhill and gathering speed, interrupting it is hard. So I was just reading a study earlier today where

researchers are discussing ways to jump on patients who look healthy, but they're bad enough to be hospitalized as soon as they get there, and looking for indicators that the immune system is starting to rev up so that you could then try many of these treatments that are aimed at damping down the immune system, interferons and remdesivir and all these other things that we have that go after different parts of the immune system. And trying to come up with pragmatic trials to deal with patients as soon as they're admitted to hospital where you don't wait for them to be on a ventilator in ICU, and you actually try to learn what we're doing under the stress of dealing with people with acute illness by having some kind of clinical trial around it. James has a question, but he's so good at tying up a conversation to Beau. I want to get my question in before handing the whole conversation to James. One more question for you, George. I've just been skimming, looking around at the way people have been assessing Trump. I've just made two notes here. Here's David Frum in the Atlantic

on April 7th, so that's just a couple days ago, that the pandemic occurred is not Trump's fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump's fault. And he went on at a couple thousand words to blame Trump for all of this. And the title of the piece was, This is Trump's Fault. And here's Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street, same day, April 7th, just the day before yesterday. There will be much to criticize about the Trump administration's response, just as we can never forgive FDR's baiting of Japan with embargoes while leaving the fleet in Pearl Harbor, Kennedy's action at Bay of Pigs, Johnson's in the Tonkin Gulf. Mr. Trump is the worst president we've ever had, just like some of the best presidents

we've ever had, close quote. So you get—the argument is between those who say Trump is singularly at fault here and others who say, look, this is just the way human experience rolls. And we have figures whom we now look back on as great presidents who screwed stuff up plenty, especially at the get-go of something new, like a war. Where do you fall in this, George? I'm more with Holman Jenkins. I think the other kind of bias I see at work with my friends on Facebook and other places is confirmation bias. Whatever you thought about Donald Trump before this is how you think about Donald Trump after this. And I think, to be fair, if one were to insert Barack Obama's name or pick your favorite progressive or other president, you'd see a lot of the same stuff.

There's going to be plenty of things to learn from this pandemic, not only about the virus, but about our preparedness, our response, mistakes the president and his team have made. And they might vary a bit based on the individual, but you're going to have them no matter what. And I think all in all, we're not doing a terrible job here in terms of dealing with what we saw when we saw it. And again, dealing with the fact that initially for months, the Chinese covered this up. And then when they started to release public information, they led people astray by saying, for example, end of January, I think it was, that there was no human-to-human transmission. Well, if you factor into your models that only animals were causing cases of coronavirus, that would cause you to say, as Dr. Fauci was saying, this is

probably like the flu, not a big deal. But we didn't have good data. Hey, George, it's Rob again. So I have a red meat question, but it's sort of based a little bit in fact or what I consider facts, which may not be what you consider facts. Europe, and specifically deaths in England, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, they're very high. They seem higher than, you know, in terms of excess scores, you know, greater than apparently seven, I guess, a Z score, I guess they're calling it. What does that tell you about their healthcare system? I mean, I was always told that that's the best system in the world. And if you have to be sick, you want to be sick in France. If you're a doctor, if you had to, if you, you know, God forbid, knock wood, if you or someone you loved had to be hospitalized for COVID-19, whatever we're calling it, where would you rather be? Spain, France, Italy, England, or, you know, I don't know,

Palo Alto General? Well, first of all, I'd rather be someplace where they didn't have the disease, so I wouldn't have it. No, you don't have a choice. I'm not giving that choice. Okay, yeah. If I had to be anywhere, clearly I'd be in the U.S. We have the best high-tech medicine, throw everything at you, you know, pay any price, bear any burden kind of healthcare. And if you're seriously ill, this is a great place to be. Without getting into the relative merits of different kinds of health systems, I do think it's too early in terms of adequate access to data to control for all the various factors about age of the population, underlying comorbidities, you know, the rate of infection and the rate, the degree of preparedness and all that to critique

the relative death rates. When you look at death rates per one million population on a raw basis, they differ from a lot of countries. And in the top sort of third or so is Switzerland that has a very excellent healthcare system by anyone's reckoning. And the UK is deaths per one million population so far, not so bad. But you've got to control for a lot of factors in terms of the length of time since the virus arrived and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we just don't know. So it's too soon to claim that this virus, among other things,

is a victory for free market health care and a strike against single payer? Well, I don't think you have to go very far to find strikes against single payer. Well, I'm looking for the new ones everywhere I find them. So I'm like, yeah, it's a whole separate issue. But yeah, I'd much rather be in a free market health care system. And even though we don't have a fully free market here, at least we have a good deal of the benefits of one. Last question, Doc. You mentioned masks before. Last week was the week, at least around here, where if you saw somebody with a mask in the grocery store, it was, look at that crazy person. This week, if you see somebody without a mask, it's, look at that crazy person.

Next week will be, there's somebody without a mask, call the cops. The week after that will probably be everybody in masks. And then the week after that will be, oh, I forgot to wear my mask. Shoot, oh, gosh, but I'm probably not going to die. And then it'll fade away. At the start of this, it was one of those things that I think may have dinged public confidence because we were told, don't wear a mask. It's ridiculous. I don't. They don't do any good.

And the doctors need them, which was contradictory. And now we're getting the mask message. I know that when I go to the store and I'm wearing one, I feel a sense of calm come over me prior to my previous visits because I got a mask, even though I know I can breathe. There's things probably getting in there. But if I'm walking through some of these COVIDian miasma that they've just breathed, I'm probably going to be better off than without a mask. From your perspective, given what people can make out there for themselves or what they have in their stores left over from a sanding project, masks, thumbs up, thumbs down, or it's a wash? Oh, I think I'm sort of on the equivalence point on that one. My wife is constantly leaning on me to wear this horrendous bandana kind of thing, because one of the aspects

are if you don't have a mask, you can't wear one and you can't buy any masks if you didn't already have them right now. So that's a challenge. They may certainly convey some benefit. If you're around someone in the food store and they suddenly sneeze, you'd wish you were wearing a mask. So you have to balance that against the discomfort of wearing one. I haven't resorted to doing that just yet, but I know that's a thing. If I had masks around, I probably would wear it when I went out grocery shopping because I'm now getting to be of a certain age where the risks get higher. But for a fit 24-year-old, I just don't know that you need it when you're out on a stroll away from other people. There you have it, folks. The following is not intended to diagnose or treat any medical

condition. Please consult your own doctor. Ask him if masks are right for you. Hey, Doc Savage, man of bronze, thanks for being with us today. Appreciate it. And we'll talk to you down the road again. Great being with us. Bye. George, we all lived. All four of us lived. And that wasn't absolutely clear. It's not over yet. It's not over yet. No, but it gets better and better. We hope that's the idea optimism pushing through i you know when i went downtown yesterday to do my weekly peregrination i walk downtown i go i drive downtown because it's just assertion of normalcy i'm essential i got my press badge i can drive around i can take a look i can i just it's this little cultural archaeology that i like to do when i'm there and i had my mask on and at at one point, forgetting exactly where I was, I stuck my little

cigar in my face, realizing, of course, that it was covered by my mask. And so I thought, well, okay, trade-offs here. It's like brushing your teeth with a mask. You can do it. You got to get the thing up in there inside, but it's kind of gets damp and there's spittle and, you know, it just doesn't work. So take off your mask before you brush your teeth. And for heaven's sake, when you brush your teeth, you're using a quip, aren't you? I mean, let's talk about this. Let's just talk about brushing your teeth because you may be stuck inside. You may be eating a lot of chocolate that's getting into those little nooks and crannies. You want to get it out. There's nothing that makes your

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right at this very moment, now you get your first refill free. That's your first refill free at getquip.com slash ricochet. That's spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash ricochet. Quip, the good habits company. And our thanks to Quip for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast, and to supplying my absolute favorite toothbrush in the world ever. Well, gentlemen, what were we discussing before? We had to stop what we were talking about and talk to a senator. Oh, I think it had to do with the—

You were in mid-flight. That's what I recall. You were. That's right. I was just getting ahead of steam about something, all of which is now dissipated like a locomotive engine on a spur. But I think it had to do with my dissatisfaction with my own profession. Wait a minute. Oh, that's right. A locomotive engine on a spur? Where do you come up with this stuff?

Sounds like an order in a diner. Give me a locomotive engine on a spur. I'm not referring to the journalists in my paper, all of whom are doing fantastic work putting out a paper remotely from home, which is just amazing. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.

The office is dead. There's nobody there. We're proving, you know, really? Oh yeah. There's the, the office is dead. There's, there's nobody there. We're proving actually that it can be done. I mean, we got people going out constantly to report and stuff like that, but the centralized location, as we're all learning these centralized locations, we can do without them, but we really can't because the hunger to get back into a common place and share something just physically and psychically is strong. I mean, we have these happy hours at the end of the week where we all get together on Skype and talk. And it's like, yeah, okay, fine. It doesn't quite equal going down to the cafeteria portion of the office and just chatting with somebody.

The serendipity is gone. The human interaction, all of the electricity you get from the newsroom is gone. So my journalism, the guys in my journalism world are fantastic. But having everything filtered through the miserabilistic catastrophism of the White House press corps is one of these things that I think is shaping the way a lot of people have thought. And because, I mean, these are people who can't stand Donald Trump and they think he's an idiot. And so they are smarter than everybody else. And they're also doing this performative thing where the question that they ask, they want everybody else to kind of nod and say, you know, that's a good one. You got him there.

And I've been watching these press conferences. There's the idea that I would want to hand decision making over to these people who seem obsessed with taking a drug, insisting that the president was out there holding it up like it was silver nitrate that everybody should take. And then finding the inevitable. Well, he's got to have it. It can't be that he wants people to get well. I can't be it because we saw some blue checks tweet, you know, Trump wants—he wants the death toll to be inflated because he hates life. And then, of course, Hayes will come back and say, could it possibly be—and I don't mean to dip my toe in the conspiratorial rivers here—but could it be that they inflated the death toll so that when actually it came down lower than that, they could take credit for that? They're seeing everything through the rottenest, most narrow, busted prism you can possibly imagine. And you can't tell me that that hasn't infected the way that the coverage has gone over the country.

Now, you can look at New York and say this is a horrible situation, reported fairly. Yes, there's no way you can shoot. Why would you tell everybody about this? But the constant parade of just the black ichor that seems to drip from these people and the glee, the dark glee at the horribleness that's – I mean am I the only one who just thinks that they're kind of rooting for this to be really bad because it plugs into a preexisting mental state of the way that they view the world in the first place? Well, yeah. I mean the first place? Well, yeah. I mean, the model for this is— Me, some—taking flight and robbing. You're a loner. You're not a locomotive on a spur.

But you're right. I mean, like, well, the model here is how people treat economic good news and economic bad news. Economic good news, when you think it might benefit or inure to an enemy, you downplay it. And when you think it might help your political friend or your political ally, you sing it loud. And so you have this strange position where people are actually rooting for high unemployment numbers, rooting for recessions, because I think they're left and the right. I mean, the people on the right did it for eight years under Obama, too, a lot of ways,

because they just can't see anything except politics, which is so strange to me. It's like a willful shrinking of your own brain and your own experience of the world around you. And I think we're seeing that psychotic behavior on the part of the White House press corps is so strange to me because, yeah, of course they hate the guy. They hate all Republicans. That's fine. But this is sort of the biggest story ever. It's bigger than them. It's bigger than him. It's bigger than the president this term or next term. It's the biggest story in the world for at least, I think, eight years.

I hope. I think. I mean, it's repercussions and ramifications. So there's plenty to report. You don't have to report some weird, trivial political nonsense just to score a point that day on Twitter. It seems strange. He's making money off this. If he's recommending this drug, let's take a look at it. This all patent drug. He's going to get rich. Yeah, it's crazy. come out. And there's always got to be, for example, if unemployment is zero, zero, they're

going to look at the numbers and they're going to look at the 17th graph in the story and show that personal debt is at a level not seen since 2008 before the crash. And that'll be the lead story. And by the way, folks, if you are carrying revolving debt, that means you're not paying off your credit card every month. Nicely done. Thousands, thousands, thousands of dollars in interest every year that you just simply do not have to do. So how do you get out of this revolving debt situation in which you are in? And the word is lending club. Sounds like two. Essentially, they're jammed together, so it's one. Lending club. You can consolidate your debt or pay off your credit cards with one,

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relaxing, thinking, well, the spots are all out of the way. And James hasn't yet mentioned that we should go to Apple and give us five stars and all the rest of it. So there's still a little of this long, interminable podcast left. Go. What standards do we have left? Well, very simply, we have... Oh, no. The James Lylex

Memorables of the Week. Let it ever be so. The day that that is as crisp as it should be on a 50,000 watt blowtorch radio station will be the day I'm actually not looking forward to. I think we got a bit. Rob, does this qualify as a bit? Yeah, it qualifies as a running, what we call a running bit. This is a series-long situation. Actually, to tell you the truth, no. Right now, it's Dick Van Dyke going over the Ottoman.

At some point, he's going to do that graceful little sidestep, which I think they introduced in the fourth season of the show. And that'll change everything, but we're not at that point yet. The James Lilek's Membership Post of the Week comes from M. Brandon Godbey. I'm mispronouncing his name, I'm sure, but he hasn't made the Member Post of the Week. There's so many. I mean, there have been so many great conversations.

There was one in the comments last week for this very podcast where we got into with Kay Davis about regulation. And it was hammer and tongs about regulation for 100 posts. It was great. More light than heat, I'd like to think. But that's just one example. And of course, there's been great work done on just the stats. And I should, Rodan and, the name isn't coming to me. Oh, Lashby, Lashby, who's just been doing great work on the COVID stats. I mean, these guys are really And I should Rodan and the name isn't coming to me. Oh, lash me, lash me. Who's just been doing great work on the COVID stats. I mean, these guys are really drilling into the numbers and it's fascinating stuff.

So but that's kind of obvious to pick. I picked Gabi's quote post, which was, quote, I will not mock Joe Biden. And he said, no, I will no longer mock Joe Biden. I will not participate in a process that destroys another man. I may not be able to stop the disease of American political culture from soaking into the very marrow of our moral fiber, but I will not invite it into my soul. Let it take over the world, but not through me. And what he's saying is we got a guy here that isn't firing on all of his cylinders.

And we're talking a two-stroke engine to begin with. And so jumping up and down on the condition of this fellow is just not the sort of thing that we should take glee in because we're not good people if we do that. And this leads to an interesting discussion about the tone of politics and how it's changed. I find myself enjoying, to my daughter's horror, a little bit of Donald Trump's smack mouth the other day in a press conference when some guy said he wanted to talk about the price of oil. And Trump asked him, what is it? And he said, well, I don't know. I don't know. And he said, OK, all right. All right. Next. I mean, he's right. What I like and my daughter said, he's the president of the United States. He should have a better tone. And I said, you know,

I get that. I get that. But how much of our presidential press conferences have forever been this kabuki theater where if it's a Democrat, they lob up a softball in the back of the president's mind? He's thinking this moron has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to the price of oil and what price it triggers domestic consumption. He doesn't know. But I'm going to flatter him and I'm going to give the response that I want to give. And the reporter goes away thinking, I've just had a colloquy with the president of the United States about oil. My mom and dad, I hope they're – I mean, so for Trump to say, you don't know what you're talking about. Next, I kind of enjoy it. So I get the whole tone thing, and I think people on Ricochet know I've been like tone police. But he's right.

He was right. I'm glad you mentioned that. Can I just break it? Because what I loved about that was that quickly became about Trump's tone, whereas actually all of this could have been completely avoided had the reporter simply known what the price of a barrel of oil was at that moment, which is something that you can actually find out on your phone, Google, in 0.03 seconds. It has it. I think you can actually get it, and it updates automatically on Google. It's not a hard thing, but it just revealed that this guy had no interest in the price of oil, zero interest in the price of oil, because he didn't even know it. He had only one interest, and that was gotcha to the president, which is – and I say this as somebody who doesn't like the president. But these reporters are forcing me to wear a MAGA hat.

I mean I feel like I should – like every time I watch one of these press conferences, I want to wear a MAGA hat and sign up for the website. Somebody else pointed out that after four years or three years in office, you generally see a sort of physical change in the president, the graying of the hair, a little, you know, a bit of a, they may be a little more gaunt than they were before. And granted, the guy spends a lot of time in makeup, but he does sort of have a vitality. I agree. I agree. I don't get this. It's a hard job. Well, he's not gaunt.

Let's be honest. Yeah. Gaunt is not his problem. But I mean, I read Twitter threads about how everything they see in him is proof of his neurological deterioration, that he's got pre-dementia and that everything that he, the way he looks, the way he stands, the way, they see a man who is, they see Joe Biden as fit to take the office, and they see Donald Trump as having predementia. Anyway, that was the membership post of the week and gives you an idea of what we talk about, which is all matters of the spectrum of how to behave, how to look, how to think. Not how to, but we have conversations about the morals, the tone, the content, the culture, et cetera, et cetera. So join, don't you? And no, that doesn't mean I'm quitting the show. If I was quitting the show, I would say that this podcast

was brought to you by Quip, by Hydrant, by Lending Club, and you should support them. If I was quitting the show, I'd tell you to go to Apple and give us five stars so more people can see the podcast and we can get surfaced on the main page. But I'm not going to tell you that because I'm not quitting the show because we've got a little bit of closing chat questions. First, Rob,

you did the whole world, the flesh and the devil, Omega Man thing and walked around New York deserted, posted a great picture of yourself looking with the bandana and the cigar. I got a real Ernie Pyle vibe out of that. So describe what you saw. Well, I mean, look, it's not empty. The city's not empty. There are people sort of walking around, people doing stuff. But the streets are incredibly, incredibly thin. On 6th Avenue, 7th Avenue, the big avenues up and down 5th Avenue, pretty empty of traffic except for a couple cop cars and buses and stuff. The greatest thing I saw, which I didn't have a chance to get a picture of because I was

just too busy. I was fumbling. Was there about five young guys, boys, teenage boys riding their bikes up Sixth Avenue, popping wheelies. And it was so great. It was like, yeah, that's like that feeling on a snow day when there's fresh snow on the hill and you can just go slide down it on the upturned trash can. I mean, a trash can lid, all that stuff, like that just felt to me like, okay, well, you know, it must be fun to like,

you live in a busy city. You're, you're, it was always traffic. You've never seen sixth avenue like this. No one's ever seen 6th Avenue like this get on your bike and ride crazy zigzags in the street and pop wheelies with your friends what could be better? Very sweet Peter

you're equally touching anecdote in California which does not have the density of course of New York by the way Rob did not post that picture on Ricochet, but perhaps we can prevail on to do so. Oh, I don't have it.

I couldn't get a picture of it. Oh, no, of yourself looking. Wait a minute. He just paints this gorgeous word picture of the great city in America, kids popping, and I'm supposed to come up with something equally touching? I got nothing.

I got nothing for you. Well, then I'll end with this. Parks have been closed. I hurt my back. I'm out there walking around with ski poles. I look ridiculous. I'm cranky. My hair is, my daughter, I offer to pay somebody in this house

to give me a haircut, and they won't do it? All right, I'll stop. No, I have nothing. Well, I'll leave you with this then, which I haven't seen personally, but my wife tells me. Next to our house is a tall hill, a promontory point atop which is this wonderful water tower that was built in the 30s. Around the water tower are Saracens, stone statues holding great broadswords, six of them identical, looking down. And they're called the guardians of health, that this tower, which would provide pure water to the people of Tangletown, would be guarded for you by these mythical figures. And it's great. I mean, at night, they're lit from underneath,

and it's gorgeous, and it's a local landmark. Kids go up there, high school kids, to misbehave, get out for a smoke or a drink or do the naughty things. People with dogs go up there because it's overrun with bunnies, and the dogs love to chase. My wife went up there the other night and noticed that for the last few nights, she'd seen a young man and a young girl, a young woman. Maybe high school, maybe a little later, on a blanket. And they were sitting apart. The blanket was spread out. They had the food in the middle.

And they were both at opposite ends of the blanket. And they were obviously together. And they were obviously courting. And she finally asked them, you know, are you two, as moms walking around, are wont to do eventually, are you two dating? And they were. And they'd promised to their parents that when they went out, they would keep their distance. So I just have that image in my head of the two of them courting in a time of pandemic, and then how the story finally ends with a parting shot at sunset of the two of them who are now in the center of the blanket with the food on the margins, and they're able to get together, and there's

and the distance is, the need to distance is gone. The sun sets, and there they are, and it's very sweet. And then one of them coughs. Sorry, I shouldn't have admitted that. Oh, that's a, yeah, that's a good creepy ending. That's the creepy ending part of it. And this is the actual

hopeful, uplifting part of the ending. We hope you've enjoyed this marathon, but we also hope we brought you an awful lot of information you like and some stuff to keep you up while you're running on your home treadmill or walking around or doing all the things that you do to keep you sane while we're all in lockdown. Minnesota to be locked down until May 4th seems a bit excessive. Just a bit. Just a tad. But I'm bursting for the spring to come and for everything to get back. And I think that next week when we talk, as we said last week, last week we said this was going to be bad. Remember, this was going to be the worst week. Turns out may not be the case.

So optimism, which we've been pushing since we started this damned podcast, optimism in America is still what we've got to carry forth in our breasts until the next week. Until we see you again, we'll see you all in the comments, of course, at Ricochet 4.0. And Peter, Rob, next week. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. Whoa.

A man came to our house I believe it was yesterday I would have invited him in But I didn't have a lot to say his anticipation of me opening the door outweighed my apprehension

as it never have before and drove my concentration I'm taking a walk. I'm going outside. I'm taking a walk. I'm just getting back. There's a girl in the White House. I don't even know her name. Her disheveled appearance Speaks volumes of shame Ricochet! Join the conversation I can hear you fine

Who's on? You don't even want to know who's on Roberto It's Peter and James Lilacs And Rob Long Pedro is here James and Rob Yes, three of us you you you