1
00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:07,760
Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio.

2
00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:12,319
Speaker 2: This week. On the podcast, returning for her third time,

3
00:00:12,920 --> 00:00:17,760
Speaker 2: Bethany MacLean, author of such amazing books as The Smartest

4
00:00:17,840 --> 00:00:22,160
Speaker 2: Guys in the Room about the incredible saga of Enron

5
00:00:22,239 --> 00:00:25,880
Speaker 2: and how it became one of the most respected companies

6
00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:28,400
Speaker 2: in the world, and then blew up her new book,

7
00:00:28,440 --> 00:00:32,520
Speaker 2: The Big Fail What the Pandemic Revealed about who America

8
00:00:32,720 --> 00:00:36,720
Speaker 2: protects and who it leads behind with her co author Jonasara.

9
00:00:37,159 --> 00:00:39,120
Speaker 2: First of all, I know Bethany for a long time,

10
00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:43,040
Speaker 2: and I felt very comfortable really pushing back on some

11
00:00:43,159 --> 00:00:46,040
Speaker 2: of the things she says in the book, but you know,

12
00:00:46,159 --> 00:00:50,280
Speaker 2: to be honest, I couldn't really damage her thesis very much.

13
00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:54,280
Speaker 2: The book is deeply researched and relies to a large

14
00:00:54,280 --> 00:00:58,000
Speaker 2: degree on some nuance and a lot of science and

15
00:00:58,560 --> 00:01:02,400
Speaker 2: a lot of the tropes that we all think about

16
00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:07,000
Speaker 2: the pandemic. She's and Joe have thought deeply about and

17
00:01:07,080 --> 00:01:11,000
Speaker 2: their approach is, Hey, this is not black and white.

18
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:14,720
Speaker 2: This is very complex. There were mistakes made at every level,

19
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:17,800
Speaker 2: from the White House to the CDC, and a lot

20
00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:24,800
Speaker 2: of what went wrong during the pandemic predated COVID by decades,

21
00:01:25,120 --> 00:01:28,000
Speaker 2: So a lot of nuance, a lot of subtlety, really

22
00:01:28,120 --> 00:01:30,640
Speaker 2: very fascinating. She takes me to school time and again

23
00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:34,560
Speaker 2: I found our conversation about the book fascinating, and I

24
00:01:34,640 --> 00:01:38,040
Speaker 2: think you will do as well with no further ado.

25
00:01:38,440 --> 00:01:42,240
Speaker 2: My discussion on COVID nineteen with Bethany MacLean.

26
00:01:42,600 --> 00:01:44,320
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on, Barry.

27
00:01:44,280 --> 00:01:48,200
Speaker 2: My pleasure. So those books they're all about I guess

28
00:01:48,320 --> 00:01:51,880
Speaker 2: giant mistakes, blunders seems to be your stock in trade,

29
00:01:52,080 --> 00:01:56,640
Speaker 2: Enron Fracking, GFC, Fanny and Freddy, and now COVID nineteen.

30
00:01:56,920 --> 00:01:59,520
Speaker 2: Where does this passion for disasters come from?

31
00:02:00,360 --> 00:02:03,440
Speaker 1: Porn right? I don't know. I swear I'm a happy person.

32
00:02:04,400 --> 00:02:08,160
Speaker 1: Maybe this is my way of unleashing my enter demons. No, seriously,

33
00:02:08,200 --> 00:02:10,800
Speaker 1: I always think when something goes wrong, there's always a

34
00:02:10,880 --> 00:02:13,760
Speaker 1: story about how and why it went wrong, And it's

35
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:17,000
Speaker 1: a story that is so much more than numbers. It's people,

36
00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:21,560
Speaker 1: it's history, it's predilections, it's all these things. And I

37
00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:24,720
Speaker 1: think trying to figure out what that mix is and

38
00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:27,080
Speaker 1: what has happened is just a fascinating puzzle.

39
00:02:27,440 --> 00:02:31,120
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the COVID nineteen puzzle. I found

40
00:02:31,120 --> 00:02:37,240
Speaker 2: the book infuriating, just one unforced error after another. When

41
00:02:37,320 --> 00:02:39,960
Speaker 2: you first sat down to write this, did you have

42
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:42,560
Speaker 2: any idea what you and Joe wanted to say? Or

43
00:02:42,600 --> 00:02:45,079
Speaker 2: did it kind of develop as you progress?

44
00:02:45,639 --> 00:02:49,760
Speaker 1: We had some loose ideas that ended up becoming part

45
00:02:49,800 --> 00:02:52,280
Speaker 1: of the book. But I'd be lying if I said

46
00:02:52,280 --> 00:02:54,840
Speaker 1: that it all hung together from moment one. I mean,

47
00:02:54,960 --> 00:02:57,720
Speaker 1: I was passionately interested in the spring of twenty twenty,

48
00:02:57,880 --> 00:03:00,760
Speaker 1: in the healthcare system and the effect of private equity

49
00:03:00,840 --> 00:03:04,320
Speaker 1: and healthcare. I was interested in the Federal Reserve and

50
00:03:04,360 --> 00:03:08,760
Speaker 1: how we thought about the Fed's response, And we were

51
00:03:08,880 --> 00:03:12,600
Speaker 1: both interested in globalization and supply chains and what that

52
00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:15,440
Speaker 1: had done to Ppe. So we had these loose ideas,

53
00:03:15,800 --> 00:03:18,840
Speaker 1: but as to how they were going to come together

54
00:03:18,919 --> 00:03:21,440
Speaker 1: into a coherent book, which which I hope we've produced.

55
00:03:21,880 --> 00:03:25,400
Speaker 2: No, Oh, no, it's coherent. It's too coherent. And the

56
00:03:25,480 --> 00:03:29,520
Speaker 2: coherence is pretty much everybody is grossly incompetent in an emergency.

57
00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:33,080
Speaker 2: Kind of makes you nervous if, like what goes down

58
00:03:33,080 --> 00:03:37,560
Speaker 2: when there's a really terrible earthquake or other disaster, lots

59
00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:40,520
Speaker 2: of people seem to not have their act together.

60
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:44,320
Speaker 1: Yes, and no. I think the book probably does convey that.

61
00:03:44,400 --> 00:03:46,520
Speaker 1: But then I think there are people that very much

62
00:03:46,560 --> 00:03:49,440
Speaker 1: have their act together. I happen to think in the book,

63
00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:53,280
Speaker 1: I think expresses that Operation Warp Speed is a tremendous

64
00:03:53,320 --> 00:03:55,520
Speaker 1: success and a tremendous act of competence.

65
00:03:55,800 --> 00:04:00,480
Speaker 2: So let me rephrase my criticism. Lots of people rose

66
00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:03,240
Speaker 2: to the occasion, Yes, but it seemed like lots of

67
00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:04,600
Speaker 2: institutions failed.

68
00:04:04,920 --> 00:04:07,800
Speaker 1: I think lots of institutions did fail, and I think

69
00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:11,480
Speaker 1: there are multiple reasons for that. I think one part

70
00:04:11,520 --> 00:04:15,320
Speaker 1: of it is that pandemics had largely bypassed the US

71
00:04:15,400 --> 00:04:18,800
Speaker 1: in the past, and we just simply weren't thinking that way.

72
00:04:18,880 --> 00:04:21,599
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of our structures were also

73
00:04:21,720 --> 00:04:25,719
Speaker 1: breaking even before the pandemic hit, such as our healthcare system,

74
00:04:26,480 --> 00:04:28,960
Speaker 1: such as the way inequality has taken a toll on

75
00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:32,320
Speaker 1: people's health and left people with pre existing conditions that

76
00:04:32,400 --> 00:04:35,799
Speaker 1: made them more vulnerable and then made us all more vulnerable.

77
00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:38,320
Speaker 1: And I think before the pandemic you could say that's

78
00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:41,599
Speaker 1: them and this is us, and the pandemic made you realize.

79
00:04:41,600 --> 00:04:44,839
Speaker 1: There's this great, great quote from Lyndon Johnson when he

80
00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:48,120
Speaker 1: enacted Medicare and Medicaid, and it was basically, the health

81
00:04:48,160 --> 00:04:51,120
Speaker 1: of our country is everything, because without a healthy population,

82
00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:53,720
Speaker 1: what can we hope to achieve? And I'm butchering it

83
00:04:53,960 --> 00:04:56,000
Speaker 1: a little bit, but that's the idea that if we

84
00:04:56,040 --> 00:04:58,800
Speaker 1: aren't all healthy, we don't all have access to health,

85
00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:01,279
Speaker 1: then what can we hope to achieve as a country.

86
00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:04,039
Speaker 2: You spend a bit of time talking about our two

87
00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:06,599
Speaker 2: tiered healthcare system. We'll get to that in a bit.

88
00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:10,880
Speaker 2: Let's sort of flash back to the pre pandemic period

89
00:05:11,200 --> 00:05:15,960
Speaker 2: and you talk about previous pandemics where we did pretty well.

90
00:05:16,120 --> 00:05:20,400
Speaker 2: But it raises the question why were we so unprepared

91
00:05:20,640 --> 00:05:23,960
Speaker 2: and why does it seem like nobody but Bill Gates

92
00:05:24,080 --> 00:05:25,200
Speaker 2: really saw this coming.

93
00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:30,279
Speaker 1: I think because it is beyond the human capacity to

94
00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:34,760
Speaker 1: imagine that these things could actually happen. And I was

95
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:37,400
Speaker 1: thinking about this because I've said in the context of

96
00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:41,760
Speaker 1: business disasters in the past that the old lesson from kindergarten,

97
00:05:41,839 --> 00:05:44,839
Speaker 1: use your imagination is one of the most important lessons

98
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:47,800
Speaker 1: you can possibly learn, because if anybody ever says to you, oh,

99
00:05:47,839 --> 00:05:51,440
Speaker 1: that can't happen, well, actually it can. And just look

100
00:05:51,480 --> 00:05:53,920
Speaker 1: at the last couple of decades for instruction and to

101
00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:57,080
Speaker 1: this idea that yeah, it can happen. And so I

102
00:05:57,080 --> 00:05:59,920
Speaker 1: think we all have a failure to use our imagine

103
00:06:00,279 --> 00:06:02,800
Speaker 1: and I think we're not good in this country at

104
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:06,920
Speaker 1: any kind of long term anything. And so we used

105
00:06:06,920 --> 00:06:09,280
Speaker 1: to be, we used to be, and we exist from

106
00:06:09,360 --> 00:06:13,360
Speaker 1: day to day driven by politics and polarization, and it

107
00:06:13,400 --> 00:06:17,320
Speaker 1: makes it very difficult to have anything that involves the

108
00:06:17,360 --> 00:06:20,080
Speaker 1: long term. And I think that's broadly true, not just

109
00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:22,520
Speaker 1: about pandemics, but we saw that come home to roost

110
00:06:22,520 --> 00:06:23,240
Speaker 1: in the pandemic.

111
00:06:23,480 --> 00:06:28,360
Speaker 2: So you mentioned Operation warp Speed, arguably the greatest success

112
00:06:28,360 --> 00:06:31,919
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration. It seems like he was almost

113
00:06:31,960 --> 00:06:38,320
Speaker 2: embarrassed to be associated with a giant medical win.

114
00:06:38,560 --> 00:06:41,239
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's I think it's it's more nuanced

115
00:06:41,279 --> 00:06:44,480
Speaker 1: than that. I think Trump did support warp Speed, but

116
00:06:45,040 --> 00:06:47,360
Speaker 1: somebody who was close to it said to me that

117
00:06:47,440 --> 00:06:51,279
Speaker 1: Warpsbeed could never have succeeded in any administration but under Trump,

118
00:06:51,480 --> 00:06:54,240
Speaker 1: precisely because Trump was so hands off and he just

119
00:06:54,360 --> 00:06:57,840
Speaker 1: left it to run itself. And warp Speed wasn't really

120
00:06:57,920 --> 00:07:00,160
Speaker 1: I mean, it was the Trump administration, but it was

121
00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:02,599
Speaker 1: run by people who had either been marginalized in the

122
00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:06,800
Speaker 1: Trump administration or really were not Trump supporters in any way,

123
00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:09,680
Speaker 1: shape or form. So to see this as somehow a product,

124
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:12,800
Speaker 1: a Trumpian product, it wasn't, although it might have been

125
00:07:12,920 --> 00:07:15,280
Speaker 1: enabled by some of the things that made Trump such

126
00:07:15,280 --> 00:07:18,360
Speaker 1: a problematic president during during the pandemic, which I think

127
00:07:18,400 --> 00:07:21,240
Speaker 1: is a fascinating a fascinating thing. You also have to remember,

128
00:07:21,240 --> 00:07:23,720
Speaker 1: though Trump was supportive of the vaccines when they first

129
00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:26,760
Speaker 1: came out, he was. It was as he started to

130
00:07:26,800 --> 00:07:29,920
Speaker 1: realize that his constituents had become not supportive of the

131
00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:33,480
Speaker 1: vaccines that was when he flipped. Even Trump got booed

132
00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:35,520
Speaker 1: at a rally where he talked up the vaccines, and

133
00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:38,120
Speaker 1: after that he never talked them up again. Really, yeah,

134
00:07:38,280 --> 00:07:41,960
Speaker 1: So he followed the polarization in the country around the

135
00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:46,600
Speaker 1: vaccines rather than necessarily driving it. Leadership leadership, right.

136
00:07:46,760 --> 00:07:49,600
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny you said, I can't picture another

137
00:07:49,640 --> 00:07:53,840
Speaker 2: administration doing it. Think about what Kennedy did with landing

138
00:07:53,840 --> 00:07:57,400
Speaker 2: on the moon and setting up NASA and promoting it

139
00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:02,560
Speaker 2: on a relentless and ongoing base. I can imagine a

140
00:08:03,080 --> 00:08:08,400
Speaker 2: president of a different character and a I don't know,

141
00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:11,480
Speaker 2: I don't know what the right word is. More serious maybe,

142
00:08:11,480 --> 00:08:13,280
Speaker 2: but you more institutional I think.

143
00:08:13,360 --> 00:08:16,800
Speaker 1: I think that The only counterpoint in it's so difficult,

144
00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:18,680
Speaker 1: you can't go back and hit rewind and see how

145
00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:21,520
Speaker 1: things could play out differently. The only counterpoint to that

146
00:08:21,640 --> 00:08:23,880
Speaker 1: is that a different president might have been all over

147
00:08:23,960 --> 00:08:26,360
Speaker 1: warp Speed from the beginning and might have made it

148
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:29,520
Speaker 1: very difficult for warp Speed to function because politics might

149
00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:32,240
Speaker 1: have been injected in it. And Trump, because he was

150
00:08:32,320 --> 00:08:35,200
Speaker 1: so hands off, actually allowed warp Speed to be run

151
00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:38,440
Speaker 1: by monsef Slowie in general perna and that it worked.

152
00:08:38,760 --> 00:08:41,280
Speaker 1: And so there, Oh, you don't see.

153
00:08:41,360 --> 00:08:44,800
Speaker 2: You don't see either George Bush or Obama handing it

154
00:08:44,840 --> 00:08:47,800
Speaker 2: off and saying do you They were both pretty good delegators.

155
00:08:48,040 --> 00:08:51,880
Speaker 2: They might be unfairly respectful of the institution of government,

156
00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:53,520
Speaker 2: at least outside of.

157
00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:55,920
Speaker 1: I hope, so, I hope.

158
00:08:55,960 --> 00:08:59,920
Speaker 2: So it just looks like I mentioned unforced eras Hey,

159
00:09:00,480 --> 00:09:03,680
Speaker 2: the US had all these excess deaths. When you look

160
00:09:03,720 --> 00:09:11,520
Speaker 2: at US on a per capita basis against comparable economies Germany, Switzerland, Japan, France,

161
00:09:11,679 --> 00:09:13,880
Speaker 2: I mean they all did much better than US, obviously

162
00:09:14,200 --> 00:09:17,319
Speaker 2: through countries like Italy that did poorly and China didn't

163
00:09:17,320 --> 00:09:19,960
Speaker 2: do so great. We'll talk more about China later, but

164
00:09:20,160 --> 00:09:24,040
Speaker 2: it seems like we were at the bottom of the

165
00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:28,800
Speaker 2: Western industrialized democracies on a per capita death basis.

166
00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:32,839
Speaker 1: We were. The economist has done a very good log

167
00:09:33,240 --> 00:09:36,160
Speaker 1: of keeping track of excess deaths, and I think a

168
00:09:36,200 --> 00:09:37,920
Speaker 1: couple of things account for that. I think our two

169
00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:40,720
Speaker 1: tiered healthcare system, and I think some of what happened

170
00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:43,720
Speaker 1: in COVID was that coming home to roost in the

171
00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:47,599
Speaker 1: sense that COVID preyed upon people with pre existing health conditions,

172
00:09:47,920 --> 00:09:51,120
Speaker 1: and pre existing health conditions are in some ways a

173
00:09:51,160 --> 00:09:53,960
Speaker 1: byproduct of a healthcare system that doesn't take care of

174
00:09:54,040 --> 00:09:54,800
Speaker 1: a lot of people.

175
00:09:54,960 --> 00:09:58,320
Speaker 2: You mentioned diabetes and high blood pressure in particular. Yeah,

176
00:09:58,360 --> 00:10:01,520
Speaker 2: and you know, a bad diet tends to be associated

177
00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:04,240
Speaker 2: with lower economic strata. And if you don't have good

178
00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:08,040
Speaker 2: healthcare and you have diabetes and you get COVID, not

179
00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:08,800
Speaker 2: great outcome.

180
00:10:08,920 --> 00:10:12,400
Speaker 1: Yep. It's also excess death captures things other than deaths

181
00:10:12,400 --> 00:10:15,800
Speaker 1: from COVID too, And the deaths of despair in this country,

182
00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:18,280
Speaker 1: and the desk from opioid to overdoses and lack of

183
00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:23,240
Speaker 1: access to healthcare for other conditions not COVID are some

184
00:10:23,360 --> 00:10:25,800
Speaker 1: portion of that too, we are a sicker country.

185
00:10:26,360 --> 00:10:30,400
Speaker 2: So one of the more fascinating little tidbits you drop

186
00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:33,920
Speaker 2: in the book, Most California cities end up pretty much

187
00:10:33,960 --> 00:10:37,160
Speaker 2: in line in terms of per capita deaths with the

188
00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:40,599
Speaker 2: rest of other large urban areas, the exception being the

189
00:10:40,679 --> 00:10:44,800
Speaker 2: San Francisco. When you point to all the infrastructure put

190
00:10:44,800 --> 00:10:48,439
Speaker 2: in place during the AIDS crisis that led San Francisco

191
00:10:48,520 --> 00:10:50,760
Speaker 2: to a much better outcome, tell us a little bit

192
00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:51,160
Speaker 2: about that.

193
00:10:51,440 --> 00:10:54,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was fascinating, and this was highlighted our first

194
00:10:54,559 --> 00:10:57,160
Speaker 1: written about in a really good New Yorker piece about

195
00:10:57,160 --> 00:11:00,360
Speaker 1: what San Francisco was doing and why it's numbers were

196
00:11:00,400 --> 00:11:03,760
Speaker 1: so low. And the idea was, you can't just lock

197
00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:07,079
Speaker 1: down and leave the most defenseless parts of our population

198
00:11:07,200 --> 00:11:10,760
Speaker 1: defend for themselves under a lockdown, meaning essential workers who

199
00:11:10,800 --> 00:11:12,800
Speaker 1: still have to go out and do their jobs and

200
00:11:12,840 --> 00:11:16,400
Speaker 1: then potentially bring the illness home to their communities. And

201
00:11:16,440 --> 00:11:19,800
Speaker 1: because San Francisco had this infrastructure that was put in place,

202
00:11:19,960 --> 00:11:23,120
Speaker 1: they knew how to reach all these marginalized populations. And

203
00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:24,920
Speaker 1: because they knew how to reach them all, they were

204
00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:28,199
Speaker 1: able to keep them healthier. And I think what that

205
00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:32,120
Speaker 1: pointed at to us was you. Lockdowns were in many

206
00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:36,760
Speaker 1: ways both an example of inequality and of furtherance of it,

207
00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:40,000
Speaker 1: and that the very people who could lock down were

208
00:11:40,040 --> 00:11:40,600
Speaker 1: the well off.

209
00:11:41,240 --> 00:11:48,120
Speaker 2: So you throw pretty much everybody under the bus. Trump, Cuomo, Desanti's, Deblasio,

210
00:11:48,360 --> 00:11:52,360
Speaker 2: cushn or Pence, even Fauci and lots of others. Will

211
00:11:52,440 --> 00:11:56,120
Speaker 2: get into personalities later. But who came out of the

212
00:11:56,160 --> 00:11:59,080
Speaker 2: pandemic with their reputation intact.

213
00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:01,760
Speaker 1: Well, I think I don't think anybody intended to do

214
00:12:02,480 --> 00:12:07,079
Speaker 1: a bad job, and people were placed into a difficult situation.

215
00:12:07,280 --> 00:12:09,840
Speaker 1: It was hard when you look back at the terrible

216
00:12:09,880 --> 00:12:12,720
Speaker 1: beginning of this in January and February of twenty twenty.

217
00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:15,920
Speaker 1: If anybody had told you up until it happened that

218
00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:17,800
Speaker 1: this was going to be a global pandemic and we

219
00:12:17,840 --> 00:12:20,400
Speaker 1: would be living with this for years, you would have said, no, no, no,

220
00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:23,079
Speaker 1: that can't happen, that can't possibly be true. We'll figure

221
00:12:23,080 --> 00:12:25,280
Speaker 1: out a way around this. The United States always figures

222
00:12:25,480 --> 00:12:28,160
Speaker 1: out a way around this. I think a lot of

223
00:12:28,200 --> 00:12:31,640
Speaker 1: unheralded people came through this with their reputations intact, a

224
00:12:31,640 --> 00:12:35,520
Speaker 1: lot of doctors and nurses who made things so much better.

225
00:12:35,320 --> 00:12:37,080
Speaker 2: Than private citizens doing their.

226
00:12:37,160 --> 00:12:42,280
Speaker 1: Private, private citizens doing job, but that official. But that

227
00:12:42,320 --> 00:12:44,680
Speaker 1: whole list is all public officials. And I think some

228
00:12:44,840 --> 00:12:47,360
Speaker 1: part of it is just a failure of leadership, a

229
00:12:47,360 --> 00:12:49,880
Speaker 1: failure of anybody to really want to be accountable and

230
00:12:49,920 --> 00:12:52,319
Speaker 1: to say the buck stops here in the way that

231
00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:56,480
Speaker 1: General Perna actually did during Operation Warp Speed. And it's

232
00:12:56,520 --> 00:12:59,360
Speaker 1: why I love the story of Operation Warp Speed so much,

233
00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:02,800
Speaker 1: because I think it stands as a contrast to so

234
00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:06,280
Speaker 1: much that happened elsewhere. It's an example of competence. It's

235
00:13:06,280 --> 00:13:08,760
Speaker 1: an example of people saying the buck stops here, this

236
00:13:08,840 --> 00:13:11,560
Speaker 1: is it, this is me, I'm the one responsible for this,

237
00:13:11,640 --> 00:13:13,880
Speaker 1: and I'm going to make it happen. And when you

238
00:13:14,040 --> 00:13:16,760
Speaker 1: look at so many other people, it wasn't that. It

239
00:13:17,320 --> 00:13:20,640
Speaker 1: was deferral of responsibility, pushing things off on other people,

240
00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:24,160
Speaker 1: or a failure to putting out there of rules and

241
00:13:24,160 --> 00:13:25,920
Speaker 1: then a failure to live by them yourself.

242
00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:30,480
Speaker 2: Let's talk about another giant fail China, not exactly the

243
00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:34,720
Speaker 2: world's most responsible member of the global community. Tell us

244
00:13:34,760 --> 00:13:39,280
Speaker 2: about some of the things China did that range from

245
00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:42,960
Speaker 2: merely irresponsible to utterly reckless.

246
00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:46,080
Speaker 1: Well, I think China, I don't think there's much question

247
00:13:46,160 --> 00:13:49,080
Speaker 1: now that China understood what was happening and did not

248
00:13:49,160 --> 00:13:52,559
Speaker 1: want to let the rest of the world know. And

249
00:13:53,800 --> 00:13:58,280
Speaker 1: it's really frightening because the whole system relies on countries

250
00:13:58,320 --> 00:14:00,720
Speaker 1: being honest when they've discovered some so that the rest

251
00:14:00,720 --> 00:14:03,280
Speaker 1: of the world has a chance of protecting itself. But

252
00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:06,679
Speaker 1: particularly I think the part that was the most devastating

253
00:14:06,720 --> 00:14:08,960
Speaker 1: to me was the idea that China had a pretty

254
00:14:09,000 --> 00:14:10,959
Speaker 1: good idea from the beginning that there was human to

255
00:14:11,040 --> 00:14:15,839
Speaker 1: human transmission taking place, and even the who because China

256
00:14:15,920 --> 00:14:18,520
Speaker 1: told them that it wasn't happening or there wasn't evidence,

257
00:14:18,760 --> 00:14:21,560
Speaker 1: and so it took us a much longer than it

258
00:14:21,720 --> 00:14:25,720
Speaker 1: then was necessary to understand that human to human transmission

259
00:14:25,800 --> 00:14:26,320
Speaker 1: was happening.

260
00:14:26,520 --> 00:14:29,360
Speaker 2: We figured out pretty quickly when someone came home from

261
00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:33,320
Speaker 2: abroad and then their husband who hadn't traveled. God, it's like, oh,

262
00:14:33,440 --> 00:14:36,440
Speaker 2: obviously it's human to human. Why the delay? It seems

263
00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:40,600
Speaker 2: like the whole US National Institute of Health is designed

264
00:14:41,040 --> 00:14:43,400
Speaker 2: for this information to bubble up to the top for

265
00:14:43,440 --> 00:14:47,520
Speaker 2: a little commandment, control and communication. That didn't seem to happen.

266
00:14:47,840 --> 00:14:50,840
Speaker 1: No, and the doctor and Wuhan, who was on the

267
00:14:50,840 --> 00:14:53,400
Speaker 1: front lines of this alerted her superiors, and I think

268
00:14:53,480 --> 00:14:57,200
Speaker 1: late December that she thought human to human transmission was happening.

269
00:14:57,240 --> 00:14:59,040
Speaker 1: And so you think about that and how the whole

270
00:14:59,040 --> 00:15:01,880
Speaker 1: course of the pandemic have been different if that knowledge

271
00:15:01,920 --> 00:15:04,320
Speaker 1: had been out there from the very beginning.

272
00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:09,800
Speaker 2: So let's talk about some of the broad policies that

273
00:15:10,120 --> 00:15:13,600
Speaker 2: could have been in place on a timely basis but

274
00:15:13,800 --> 00:15:20,560
Speaker 2: seemed to be mishandled. Testing, lockdowns, vaccines, personal protection equipment,

275
00:15:20,600 --> 00:15:25,960
Speaker 2: PPE masking, social distancing. What in that list wasn't mishandled.

276
00:15:26,000 --> 00:15:29,480
Speaker 2: It seems like across the board nothing was done right anywhere.

277
00:15:29,800 --> 00:15:33,440
Speaker 1: So I think testing is a top the list of

278
00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:36,640
Speaker 1: the things that were mishandled, and there was the CDC

279
00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:39,920
Speaker 1: took control of the test and could not design a

280
00:15:39,960 --> 00:15:40,720
Speaker 1: test that worked.

281
00:15:41,080 --> 00:15:43,800
Speaker 2: You write in the book that they tried to manufacture

282
00:15:43,800 --> 00:15:48,400
Speaker 2: this themselves. They have zero manufacturing expertise. What the hell

283
00:15:48,440 --> 00:15:49,000
Speaker 2: were they thinking?

284
00:15:49,440 --> 00:15:53,120
Speaker 1: I think the CDC has a culture that is arrogant

285
00:15:53,200 --> 00:15:56,200
Speaker 1: and perfectionist and believes that they should be in charge.

286
00:15:56,440 --> 00:15:58,800
Speaker 1: But even more broadly than that, even if the CDC

287
00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:01,600
Speaker 1: test had worked, that should never have been the sun

288
00:16:01,640 --> 00:16:04,440
Speaker 1: and moon and stars upon which America is testing strategy

289
00:16:04,600 --> 00:16:08,360
Speaker 1: hung because we needed tests to be broadly available everywhere.

290
00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:11,920
Speaker 1: And I think there's an intersection of interesting things there

291
00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:15,280
Speaker 1: that we turn to the private market in a situation

292
00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:17,160
Speaker 1: like this, and so part of one of the deeper

293
00:16:17,200 --> 00:16:19,800
Speaker 1: themes of the book to me is when the private

294
00:16:19,840 --> 00:16:22,360
Speaker 1: market works and when it doesn't. And we turned the

295
00:16:22,360 --> 00:16:24,520
Speaker 1: private market in a situation like this and say, well,

296
00:16:24,560 --> 00:16:27,200
Speaker 1: aren't companies going to manufacture test because they can sell

297
00:16:27,240 --> 00:16:30,160
Speaker 1: them without any awareness of a couple of factors, which

298
00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:32,600
Speaker 1: are the times in the past where companies have rushed

299
00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:35,760
Speaker 1: a manufacture test only to have demand not materialize, and

300
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:38,080
Speaker 1: then they have to explain to their shareholders, oh, we

301
00:16:38,160 --> 00:16:41,120
Speaker 1: invested all this money in this and it didn't actually happen.

302
00:16:41,520 --> 00:16:45,480
Speaker 1: And then in modern day capitalism, the ongoing need for

303
00:16:45,560 --> 00:16:48,880
Speaker 1: sustainable earnings such that if you do rush to develop

304
00:16:48,920 --> 00:16:51,040
Speaker 1: tests and you sell them, but then demand goes away

305
00:16:51,080 --> 00:16:53,320
Speaker 1: in two years, you don't get rewarded for that. And

306
00:16:53,400 --> 00:16:55,520
Speaker 1: so I think a lot about where I thought a

307
00:16:55,520 --> 00:16:57,440
Speaker 1: lot in the process of writing this book about where

308
00:16:57,440 --> 00:17:00,440
Speaker 1: capitalism works and where it doesn't work. I'm a little

309
00:17:00,480 --> 00:17:05,560
Speaker 1: more nuanced than maybe the book conveys about whether lockdowns

310
00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:08,720
Speaker 1: could have been done anymore swiftly or the extent to

311
00:17:08,760 --> 00:17:10,480
Speaker 1: which they should have been done. And I think the

312
00:17:10,520 --> 00:17:14,120
Speaker 1: book conveys that second point very very well. I'm not

313
00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:19,280
Speaker 1: sure if you had told Americans in February in January,

314
00:17:19,359 --> 00:17:21,720
Speaker 1: we need to stay at home, nobody would have listened

315
00:17:21,760 --> 00:17:25,520
Speaker 1: to you. Nobody would have believed you. Lockdowns can only

316
00:17:25,600 --> 00:17:27,879
Speaker 1: be effective if you locked down before the virus is

317
00:17:27,920 --> 00:17:31,359
Speaker 1: widely seated, right, That's the only way it works. But

318
00:17:31,440 --> 00:17:34,640
Speaker 1: yet locking down before people know that the virus is

319
00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:37,159
Speaker 1: how do you possibly pull that off, especially in a

320
00:17:37,160 --> 00:17:39,800
Speaker 1: country like the United States. And so while that may

321
00:17:39,880 --> 00:17:43,320
Speaker 1: seem like a failure, I'm not really sure it could

322
00:17:43,480 --> 00:17:46,040
Speaker 1: that could have been done any differently. I think the

323
00:17:46,080 --> 00:17:49,600
Speaker 1: bigger problem was the ongoing use of lockdowns, even without

324
00:17:49,680 --> 00:17:52,520
Speaker 1: a clearly defined endpoint and without a clearly defined what

325
00:17:52,560 --> 00:17:53,560
Speaker 1: are we doing this far start?

326
00:17:53,600 --> 00:17:55,400
Speaker 2: So I'm going to come back to lockdowns in a minute.

327
00:17:55,480 --> 00:17:59,480
Speaker 2: Let's stick with testing and masking, which I thought was

328
00:17:59,520 --> 00:18:03,719
Speaker 2: kind of fat. We hadn't even rolled out tests, and

329
00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:07,720
Speaker 2: you mentioned South Korea was doing some ungodly number of

330
00:18:07,760 --> 00:18:10,560
Speaker 2: tests a day, one hundred thousand tests a day. They

331
00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:13,160
Speaker 2: very quickly were able to figure out who to quarantine

332
00:18:13,160 --> 00:18:15,960
Speaker 2: and who not to and had a much better outcome

333
00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:21,320
Speaker 2: than we did. Various state institutions had the ability to

334
00:18:21,400 --> 00:18:24,960
Speaker 2: create a test and have it outsourced and manufactured, but

335
00:18:25,080 --> 00:18:28,159
Speaker 2: the CDC would not allow it. It seems like they

336
00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:32,680
Speaker 2: were just the dumbest turf battles going on while the

337
00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:35,800
Speaker 2: pandemic ramped up exponentially.

338
00:18:36,080 --> 00:18:37,919
Speaker 1: I think that's a very good way of putting it,

339
00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:40,320
Speaker 1: and I think there was also a failure to realize

340
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:43,480
Speaker 1: that things that we had put in place then made

341
00:18:43,480 --> 00:18:46,719
Speaker 1: it difficult to roll out testing. So once an emergency

342
00:18:46,840 --> 00:18:50,960
Speaker 1: was declared, then the FDA has to approve test. It

343
00:18:51,040 --> 00:18:53,000
Speaker 1: is put in place so that you don't have shoddy

344
00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:56,800
Speaker 1: test manufacturers running around selling tests that don't actually work.

345
00:18:57,119 --> 00:18:59,560
Speaker 1: But when you need to get tests out the door quickly,

346
00:18:59,800 --> 00:19:02,000
Speaker 1: the things that are put in place to protect people

347
00:19:02,080 --> 00:19:02,800
Speaker 1: can backfire.

348
00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:07,160
Speaker 2: So let's talk about PPE and MASK. Speaking of shoddy

349
00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:12,160
Speaker 2: the government could have used one of the defense accent

350
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:16,880
Speaker 2: right to ramp that up. Instead, the White House led

351
00:19:17,080 --> 00:19:24,160
Speaker 2: the states all compete with each other, absolute disaster profiteering, fraud.

352
00:19:24,840 --> 00:19:28,960
Speaker 2: It was just again I'm reading this and just getting

353
00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:32,479
Speaker 2: infuriated because all you needed was some leadership at the

354
00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:34,720
Speaker 2: top to say, Okay, we're going to make sure that

355
00:19:34,760 --> 00:19:38,280
Speaker 2: there's personal protection equipment for every doctor, every nurse, and

356
00:19:38,359 --> 00:19:41,760
Speaker 2: every patient to help slow the spread of this that

357
00:19:41,840 --> 00:19:43,040
Speaker 2: never happened was a free for.

358
00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:46,600
Speaker 1: All, Yes, And to be clear, I'm not sure. So

359
00:19:46,720 --> 00:19:48,320
Speaker 1: part of the theme of the book is that a

360
00:19:48,359 --> 00:19:50,359
Speaker 1: lot of the problems were put in place before the

361
00:19:50,400 --> 00:19:56,280
Speaker 1: pandemic even hit. Even if you had had that incredibly coordinated, sophisticated,

362
00:19:56,359 --> 00:20:00,000
Speaker 1: competent response, we had outsourced so much of the manufacturing

363
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:03,440
Speaker 1: sharing of these critical things to China and elsewhere that

364
00:20:03,720 --> 00:20:07,600
Speaker 1: we were left defenseless. And so I think the pandemic,

365
00:20:07,920 --> 00:20:11,719
Speaker 1: as it has in many aspects, from semiconductors to PPE,

366
00:20:11,800 --> 00:20:14,960
Speaker 1: it has to raise a question about what competence needs

367
00:20:15,000 --> 00:20:19,119
Speaker 1: to remain in America and how much globalization, what the

368
00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:22,120
Speaker 1: limits of globalization really should be, because it turns out

369
00:20:22,160 --> 00:20:25,560
Speaker 1: when a global supply chain is stressed, it breaks down

370
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:29,360
Speaker 1: really really quickly, as we all know now. That said, yes,

371
00:20:29,440 --> 00:20:34,479
Speaker 1: the stories about doctors and hospitals individually and states just

372
00:20:34,560 --> 00:20:37,119
Speaker 1: scrambling to try to get PPE, and the number of

373
00:20:37,160 --> 00:20:39,920
Speaker 1: frauds that so quickly sprung up, and these people trying

374
00:20:40,080 --> 00:20:42,919
Speaker 1: desperately to get their hands on ppe and finding that,

375
00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:44,879
Speaker 1: you know, paying this money and finding a box of

376
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:48,679
Speaker 1: dirty gloves would arrive and that was it. Just the

377
00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:51,440
Speaker 1: profiteering really was utterly insane.

378
00:20:51,080 --> 00:20:53,639
Speaker 2: Right, life and death at stake, And people like I

379
00:20:53,640 --> 00:20:56,880
Speaker 2: can make a book on this. Yes, interesting story within

380
00:20:56,920 --> 00:21:00,439
Speaker 2: the book about a small mask company that tried to

381
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:04,080
Speaker 2: set up in the United States and in the past

382
00:21:04,720 --> 00:21:08,800
Speaker 2: had every time there's a potential pandemic by American even

383
00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:11,639
Speaker 2: though it's a little more expensive, it doesn't go anywhere,

384
00:21:11,760 --> 00:21:15,120
Speaker 2: and then starts ramping up fifty one hundred, one hundred

385
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:18,880
Speaker 2: and fifty million masks. But if you bought from this company,

386
00:21:18,920 --> 00:21:21,280
Speaker 2: you had to sign a seven year contract. You figured out,

387
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:25,080
Speaker 2: you know the company I'm decrying too. And so now

388
00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:29,159
Speaker 2: we actually have capacity to make masks in the United States,

389
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:32,320
Speaker 2: which really we didn't have pre pandemic.

390
00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:34,800
Speaker 1: Right, And you just hope that there's a lesson taken

391
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:37,280
Speaker 1: from that. And again it's something that we just don't

392
00:21:37,280 --> 00:21:40,360
Speaker 1: do well because I think we have this blind belief

393
00:21:40,440 --> 00:21:42,800
Speaker 1: in the market and that the market forces are going

394
00:21:42,840 --> 00:21:45,440
Speaker 1: to take care of issues like this without the recognition

395
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 1: that there are a couple things that can go wrong

396
00:21:47,800 --> 00:21:50,920
Speaker 1: in modern day capitalism, that the focus on profits, on

397
00:21:51,040 --> 00:21:54,960
Speaker 1: pleasing shareholders, and on profits that can be sustainable, means

398
00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:57,719
Speaker 1: that the response in a pandemic isn't going to be

399
00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:00,439
Speaker 1: what you think. And then, because of this need to

400
00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:03,720
Speaker 1: minimize costs in order to boost profits, this ongoing pressure

401
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:07,360
Speaker 1: for outsourcing of all sorts of critical infrastructure, that then

402
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:10,280
Speaker 1: makes it really difficult when you actually need something when

403
00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:11,560
Speaker 1: the rest of the world needs it too.

404
00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 2: Last question on masks in want to just spend the

405
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:17,600
Speaker 2: whole two hours talking about this. Seems like there was

406
00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:22,720
Speaker 2: a lot of confusion on masking early on, when it

407
00:22:22,760 --> 00:22:25,080
Speaker 2: should have been the easiest thing to get right. You know,

408
00:22:25,119 --> 00:22:27,440
Speaker 2: you go in for surgery, everybody in the operating theater

409
00:22:27,480 --> 00:22:31,440
Speaker 2: wears a mask. It's pretty obvious it slows, if not stops,

410
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:35,199
Speaker 2: the spread of anything that's respiratory based. How did we

411
00:22:35,240 --> 00:22:36,080
Speaker 2: screw that up?

412
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,399
Speaker 1: Well, I think there was a lack of recognition early on,

413
00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 1: a lack of knowledge. I won't call it recognition because

414
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: I don't think it was there to be known about

415
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:47,280
Speaker 1: how the virus actually spread, So I think that's part

416
00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:50,560
Speaker 1: of it. I think Fauci has explained his initial comment

417
00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 1: about against masking as an attempt to preserve ppe for

418
00:22:55,440 --> 00:22:59,400
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses. But I do also think even as

419
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:05,000
Speaker 1: the pandemic war on, the communication about masking was not great.

420
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:08,400
Speaker 1: There was this for a long time, we all believed

421
00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:11,760
Speaker 1: that those terrible little paper and cloth masks that people

422
00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:15,320
Speaker 1: wore protected us, and they don't. Not really, a better

423
00:23:15,359 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 1: mask protects you more. And it wasn't until a long

424
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:22,560
Speaker 1: time into the pandemic that everybody was finally clear, Yeah,

425
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 1: if you really want to protect yourself, were can ninety

426
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:27,360
Speaker 1: five and if you really really need to protect yourself

427
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 1: wearing it ninety five? These little paper masks that we wear,

428
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: and we take them on and off, and we don't

429
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: do what people in hospitals do, doctors and nurses, where

430
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:37,400
Speaker 1: you take them off with clean hands in a clean

431
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:39,679
Speaker 1: room and put them on. That's why it brought this,

432
00:23:40,440 --> 00:23:43,240
Speaker 1: That's why they protect people in hospitals. They're not taking

433
00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:45,680
Speaker 1: them on and off and using dirty hands and removing

434
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:47,919
Speaker 1: them to take a bite of something. And so to

435
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 1: extrapolate from to extrapolate from whether or not masks work

436
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: in a hospital setting to whether or not they work

437
00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:56,040
Speaker 1: in a population at large, you can't it's two different things.

438
00:23:56,320 --> 00:23:59,640
Speaker 2: So let me ask you the obvious question, how did

439
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:03,680
Speaker 2: this get it's so hopelessly politicized so quickly.

440
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:09,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating, right, because there is no way that

441
00:24:09,800 --> 00:24:13,160
Speaker 1: in any kind of logical world, your beliefs about how

442
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: you respond to a pandemic should have nothing to do

443
00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:18,399
Speaker 1: with your political beliefs. In other words, it should be

444
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:21,880
Speaker 1: possible to be anti lockdowns. It could even be possible

445
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:24,560
Speaker 1: to be anti masking and to be a strident Democrat.

446
00:24:24,720 --> 00:24:28,399
Speaker 1: And yet we conflated everything, and it became that if

447
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:31,000
Speaker 1: you were a good Democrat, then you believed in masking,

448
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,760
Speaker 1: in lockdowns, and if you were a good Republican, then

449
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:37,120
Speaker 1: you did not believe in any of this. And it's

450
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:41,359
Speaker 1: an insane example of how we're searching for polarization and

451
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: we're searching for ways to turn against each other instead

452
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:46,400
Speaker 1: of ways to learn from each other and respect each other.

453
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 2: The crazy thing about vaccines, and I've had this conversation

454
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 2: with other people. The anti vass movement really was kind

455
00:24:56,480 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 2: of a you know, California granola and nuts sort of

456
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 2: left wing. Oh, I don't trust the government to give

457
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 2: me a vaccine. That this is a giant experiment on

458
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 2: the left to operation warp speed. The m RNA vaccines

459
00:25:16,119 --> 00:25:19,280
Speaker 2: became Bill Gates is putting a chip in me on

460
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:24,080
Speaker 2: the right, and there's nothing that anybody can do to

461
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:30,400
Speaker 2: get the furthest outliers to recognize just some basic science.

462
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 2: But what was shocking was how it went from the

463
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 2: extremes of both parties and sort of moved to like

464
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:41,680
Speaker 2: center right and Senate left. It was genuinely shocking.

465
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things we chronicle in the book

466
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:50,320
Speaker 1: that is that I found interesting is that the anti

467
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:53,880
Speaker 1: VAC sentiment did start under Democrats when they were when

468
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:57,120
Speaker 1: they were the Trump vaccines, and so you had Democrats

469
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,320
Speaker 1: like Cuomo saying, I don't know about these things being

470
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:03,080
Speaker 1: rushed by Trump, and you had a lot of skepticism

471
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: about the vaccines being generated by Democrats before the vaccines

472
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: were even produced, and then once they were produced, and

473
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 1: once the Biden administration started pushing them, it's as if

474
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:16,160
Speaker 1: as soon as Biden said that these vaccines are good,

475
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: the anti VAC sentiment shifted to the right, because look,

476
00:26:20,000 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: heaven forbid that Biden was saying and Democrats were saying

477
00:26:22,800 --> 00:26:25,199
Speaker 1: something was good, then it had to be bad, and

478
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,120
Speaker 1: it just it really is just profoundly depressing and upsetting.

479
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 2: You know, if you want to say, the first five

480
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:35,760
Speaker 2: hundred million vaccines, all right, this is a new vaccine,

481
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 2: let's see what comes out of it. I don't agree

482
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 2: with that, but I can follow the logic there. But

483
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 2: when we're at the eight, ten, twelve billion shots with

484
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 2: really very little side effects at that point that that

485
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:51,399
Speaker 2: argument seems to go away.

486
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think though the government has shot itself in

487
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 1: the foot once again. And one of the other themes

488
00:26:56,840 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 1: in our book is this loss of trust broadly speaking

489
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 1: that had been taking place before the pandemic happened, of course,

490
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:06,520
Speaker 1: but the pandemic really exacerbated it. And I think the

491
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:10,120
Speaker 1: government public health officials did not do themselves any favors

492
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:14,960
Speaker 1: by overselling the vaccines. The original vaccines miracle basically a

493
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: miracle of science.

494
00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:19,240
Speaker 2: Right in like a decade. This wasn't done overnight, This

495
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:20,720
Speaker 2: was a decade, was worth.

496
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: More than a decade in the works. But the clinical

497
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 1: trials that proved the efficacy of the original vaccines did

498
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,479
Speaker 1: not measure whether or not they affected transmission. And so

499
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:31,879
Speaker 1: when public health officials went out there and said, if

500
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:34,919
Speaker 1: you take this vaccine. You can't pass this on, you

501
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,479
Speaker 1: won't transmit this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. It

502
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 1: was wrong. And so when you overseell to people based

503
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: on something you don't know that you just hope is true,

504
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: and then it turns out that's not true, you cause

505
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: a lack of trust that then broadly undermines everything else

506
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: you're saying. So again another unforced error on the part

507
00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:56,400
Speaker 1: of the government. They could have sold the vaccines as

508
00:27:56,480 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: doing what they did miraculously. Well, they protect you against

509
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:03,680
Speaker 1: severe outcomes. They protect most of us against hospitalization and death.

510
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: Isn't that phenomenal, Instead of saying you won't get this

511
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 1: if you take this vaccine, Yeah, that was kind.

512
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 2: Of a big snaff foo. And to be honest, so

513
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 2: I'm fully vaxed. I'm fully boosted. If the government said

514
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:17,960
Speaker 2: to me, well, we don't know if this will stop

515
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 2: you from getting it, but it means that you're not

516
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 2: gonna die. Okay, way do I sign up exactly? You

517
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:24,400
Speaker 2: didn'tumb for that.

518
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,040
Speaker 1: You didn't you didn't have to oversell it. But there

519
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:29,360
Speaker 1: was this belief that we wanted to get to her immunity,

520
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,240
Speaker 1: so you had to encourage everybody to take the vaccine

521
00:28:32,320 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: and so overselling it and say you wouldn't saying people

522
00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:37,480
Speaker 1: wouldn't get it. It was wishful thinking that in the most

523
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:40,640
Speaker 1: generous of interpretations, it was wishful thinking. But I think

524
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 1: it did damage.

525
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 2: I think you're right, And in fact, one of the

526
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 2: groups that came up for criticism in the book is

527
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:52,160
Speaker 2: the Red Dawn Team highlighted in Michael Lewis's book The Premonition.

528
00:28:53,560 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 2: You guys seem to be a little critical on some

529
00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 2: of their emphasis on Hey, this means the result in

530
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 2: Italy means we could do lockdowns here.

531
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:07,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think critical is too strong a word. I

532
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 1: think the idea that the Influenza Playbook would work with

533
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: COVID is it was flawed and I think it did

534
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: a lot of damage.

535
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 2: Leane, Why is a coronavirus so different from an influenza infection.

536
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: The biggest reason, and this is not a scientific answer,

537
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 1: it's a practical answer. The biggest difference is that influenza

538
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:31,640
Speaker 1: schools are super spreading zones right with the coronavirus, they

539
00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: are not. In fact, it's been documented over and over

540
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: again that the skip spread in schools is lower than

541
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: that in the community, and so that playbook became I

542
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,600
Speaker 1: think part of the excuse for keeping schools closed in

543
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: the United States in a way that did not happen

544
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: in other countries.

545
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 2: Point out in the book, and I thought this was

546
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 2: a fascinating detail. In the pandemic of nineteen eighteen, thousands

547
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 2: and thousands of young people died in the COVID nineteen pandemic.

548
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:02,479
Speaker 2: Young people seem to do fairly okay with this.

549
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: They did. Young people with pre existing conditions did.

550
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 2: Terribly, but everybody with pre existing.

551
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: Everybody did, but very very few, a vanishingly small number

552
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,719
Speaker 1: of healthy young people got sick from COVID, And as

553
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: I said, the spread in schools was lower than in

554
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: the communities. That's why other places played in Europe, for example,

555
00:30:20,760 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: open their schools. And I think the fact that we

556
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 1: kept our schools closed has probably done more damage than

557
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 1: just about anything in the pandemic, because you've lost a

558
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: generation of young people who have lost their hopes for life.

559
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 2: And I think, will you think it's that severe you

560
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 2: have kids that are school aged, I think that's listen.

561
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 2: I know lots of kids that miss proms, they missed graduations,

562
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 2: they miss Barr and Bob mitzvahs and sweet sixteens and confirmations.

563
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 2: So it was a rough year or two, obviously, nothing

564
00:30:50,760 --> 00:30:54,719
Speaker 2: like World War two. But that those are formative years

565
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 2: tell us a little bit about But these.

566
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:58,680
Speaker 1: Are but these but these are the privileged kids you're

567
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: talking about, the ones with parents who could homeschool them,

568
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: or who had a parent at home so that they

569
00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 1: could at least have supervision computers in high school while

570
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:09,760
Speaker 1: they did zoom schooling. It's the least privileged kids in

571
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: our society, the very ones that were supposed to protect

572
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:14,960
Speaker 1: who got the most screwed by this. The ones whose

573
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: parents were essential workers and had to go to school

574
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: and had to leave the kids at home to try

575
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: to manage on zoom. The many inner city kids without

576
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:24,720
Speaker 1: access to high speed internet and without a computer to

577
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:27,720
Speaker 1: do zoom schools. I mean, the numbers are shocking in

578
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 1: school districts like New York and Chicago and LA. The

579
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: percentage of absenteeism, the kids who just dropped out the

580
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: test score showing how far behind kids are. You can

581
00:31:37,440 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: argue kids are going to catch up. They're resilient. Maybe, Really,

582
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: that's a very tough proposition to put on a twelve

583
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: year old, Hey make up two years make or or

584
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: or the kids who dropped out now somehow come back,

585
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 1: and the kids who lost their path in life. And

586
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: I think it's just devastating.

587
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 2: Really very sad. And I learned a lot going through

588
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 2: the book about the impact on that. The Red Dawn

589
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:07,280
Speaker 2: team talked about how close the desks are in school,

590
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 2: how close the seats are on a bus. They're like,

591
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 2: there's no social distancing in grammar schools. If this was

592
00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 2: a vector for transmission, you would think there'd be a

593
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 2: lot more kids that were infected. How did the numbers

594
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 2: shake out for the under twenty cohort versus the twenty

595
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 2: to fifty cohorts.

596
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to know what the numbers were

597
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:34,000
Speaker 1: on infections because so many kids who got COVID were asymptomatic.

598
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:36,120
Speaker 1: I think you can look at the desks which are

599
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: vanishingly small for people under twenty, and so that's the

600
00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 1: key measure that this was not influenza, which again back

601
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: to your point about unforced errors. It is very hard

602
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: to be prepared for a pandemic because every pandemic is different,

603
00:32:49,920 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: and so if you followed an influenza playbook, you would

604
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,479
Speaker 1: have done things that didn't make sense in COVID. So

605
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 1: it's just it's really hard. You have to maintain a

606
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:01,440
Speaker 1: degree of flexibility and a degree to see what's happening

607
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:05,240
Speaker 1: and react to what's actually happening. I happened to believe

608
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:08,800
Speaker 1: the Red Dawn groups emphasis on lockdowns that if only

609
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 1: we had locked down sooner. H there's some truth to that.

610
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: If we had locked down before the virus got here,

611
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: maybe we could have prevented it from ever coming. But honestly,

612
00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: but if there was no will and if the rest

613
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: of the world didn't lockdown, then at some point, what

614
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: are you going to do? I mean, once this virus

615
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:28,040
Speaker 1: was broadly seated, it was trans it was broadly It's

616
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: a highly infectious respiratory disease. And so what has always

617
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: irritated me about the lockdown mantra is what's the endgame?

618
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 1: Is the endgame minimizing the strain on hospitals? Okay, then

619
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: let's do that until hospitals aren't strained. Is the endgame?

620
00:33:43,360 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: Getting eradicating COVID not gonna happen. Not gonna happen. And

621
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 1: guess what, as soon as you lift the lockdown, COVID

622
00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: comes back, look at what happened in China, and so

623
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: and so that right, and so that's another example of,

624
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: to me, a failure of leadership and a failure of

625
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: government to articulate why exactly are we doing this and

626
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: what's the endgame? And if you had done that, I

627
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 1: don't think there would have been the same resistance to

628
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:10,359
Speaker 1: lockdowns that there was if it had been articulated what

629
00:34:10,400 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: the endgame was.

630
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 2: And to be fair to read Dawn, because I'm throwing

631
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 2: them on the bus a little bit, they predicted eighty

632
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:20,520
Speaker 2: one percent of the US population would eventually be effected

633
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 2: and as many as two million in the US would die.

634
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:25,959
Speaker 2: Those numbers turned out to be pretty dead on, right.

635
00:34:26,480 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 2: So we're talking about catching this early. The one person

636
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 2: in the Trump White House that was jumping up and

637
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:38,839
Speaker 2: down about this early on was Peter Navarro, who was

638
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 2: widely yelling this is a giant pandemic threat. But he

639
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 2: was also ignored. Yeah, why was that?

640
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: Well, So there's this great quote in the book that

641
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:53,600
Speaker 1: the battle in the Trump administration was between those who

642
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,120
Speaker 1: wanted to do everything and those who wanted to do nothing.

643
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, and Navarro is the best example of this.

644
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 1: Sometimes those who wanted to do everything had lost credibility

645
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:08,040
Speaker 1: for other reasons, and so Navarro had become known as

646
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: kind of its, kind of aloney, and so he wasn't

647
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:14,440
Speaker 1: taken seriously on the thing that he should have been

648
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: taken seriously on. It's a little bit. It's a version

649
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: of the boy who Cried Wolf. And so you had that.

650
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: You had that broadly speaking throughout the administration, where you

651
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:26,359
Speaker 1: had Bob Cadlac, for instance, coming up with this plan

652
00:35:26,480 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: to distribute masks to every American household, but he too

653
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:32,120
Speaker 1: had lost credibility within the administration, so his plan to

654
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:37,440
Speaker 1: distribute masks went nowhere. The Trump administration was very adamized,

655
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,880
Speaker 1: and so you had these loyalties that existed and that

656
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 1: dictated what could get done and who would be listened

657
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: to in a way that is far more extreme than

658
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:49,520
Speaker 1: a normal administration, and a lot of undermining of political

659
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 1: rivals and leaking in an attempt to establish one's superiority

660
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: over one's rivals. And because Trump was known as a

661
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 1: president who what was said and the press made it true.

662
00:35:59,400 --> 00:36:02,720
Speaker 1: If you could get a story that was about arrival

663
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:04,759
Speaker 1: that was leaked to the press, and the press went

664
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: with it. Then that became de facto truth, and so

665
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:11,240
Speaker 1: it was such a That's why you saw a volume

666
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: of leaks and the Trump administration that Man, isn't it

667
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 1: striking to you to look at the contrast between the

668
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:19,880
Speaker 1: Obama administration and now the Biden administration on the number

669
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:22,239
Speaker 1: of leaks, very very few, and the ones that come

670
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,799
Speaker 1: out of the Biden administration are clearly orchestrated.

671
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 2: So let me invite a little maga hate mail. And

672
00:36:28,160 --> 00:36:29,920
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm going on a limb when I

673
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 2: say the Trump White House appointed a lot of people

674
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 2: that just weren't perceived as serious players in the various institutions.

675
00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:44,439
Speaker 2: But you can't help but look at the Trump White

676
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:46,799
Speaker 2: House and say, hey, if they were a little more

677
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:50,840
Speaker 2: serious and if they had put together a better team,

678
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 2: this might have gone better.

679
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 1: So I'm going to protest that a little bit. I think,

680
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: for one thing, that a lot of very competent people

681
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:01,880
Speaker 1: did start off in the Trump administration. They just did.

682
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: They just didn't last, but they did start right. I

683
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:09,879
Speaker 1: think there were competent people in the Trump administration even

684
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: when the pandemic, like alluisays are I think they just

685
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:16,880
Speaker 1: they were fighting so many battles on so many fronts,

686
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:19,719
Speaker 1: and there was so much internescing warfare that it made

687
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,359
Speaker 1: it difficult for competence to rise to the top.

688
00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 2: And I think it's fair to hold the president and

689
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 2: accountable for how is White House operates and who gets

690
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:29,320
Speaker 2: appointed to key roles.

691
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: I do, but this is going to make you mad.

692
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,360
Speaker 1: But I think a point that's in the introduction that

693
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: I think is important is that I think it's magical

694
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: thinking to believe that the course of the pandemic would

695
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 1: have been radically different had we had a different president

696
00:37:41,680 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: in the White House. And all you need to do

697
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 1: to see that is to see that more people died

698
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: in the first year of the Biden administration than they

699
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: did under Trump. So I don't I don't think it

700
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: was it was It would have been that easy for

701
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 1: any president. And I think a lot of that is

702
00:37:57,000 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 1: are these pre existing conditions that we're talking about. Not

703
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,360
Speaker 1: just that the virus hit people with pre existing conditions

704
00:38:03,400 --> 00:38:06,360
Speaker 1: particularly hard, but it hit a country, the United States,

705
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: with pre existing weaknesses very hard in a way that

706
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:12,279
Speaker 1: would have been difficult for any president to snap his

707
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: or her fingers and fix those.

708
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you. Why the White House just

709
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 2: didn't take control of First it was Kushner, then it

710
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 2: was Pence, and nobody could get that under control. You

711
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:28,960
Speaker 2: could have gone to the guy who ran Operation Warpsbeed

712
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:31,560
Speaker 2: and said, hey, who should we put in charge of PPE?

713
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 2: You have beenwidth for that, or find us a guy

714
00:38:34,040 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 2: in the military to do this, and that would have

715
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 2: had a big difference. It just seemed, you know, so silly.

716
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:44,600
Speaker 2: And then the opportunism. That's the other thing in the

717
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 2: book that was so infuriating. Political opportunism does not care

718
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 2: about anything life, death, money. It will rise to the

719
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:55,800
Speaker 2: occasion every time.

720
00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:58,280
Speaker 1: So I'm not, to be clear, I'm not defending Trump.

721
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: I think his failure of leadership was massive. And even

722
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:06,760
Speaker 1: if you are a Trump supporter and you hate Fauci,

723
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 1: then you have to look at that and say, well,

724
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:11,759
Speaker 1: then why did Trump allow Fauci to attain the preeminence

725
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 1: he did? Because Trump didn't want to take responsibility. It's

726
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 1: terrible across the board. So I'm not But at the

727
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: very same time, it's possible to both believe that and

728
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:23,480
Speaker 1: to also believe what I do strongly, which is that

729
00:39:23,520 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: it's magical thinking to say, oh, if only we had

730
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 1: had a different president, everything would have been great, because.

731
00:39:28,520 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 2: That reduced those one point.

732
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: Perhaps could have could have made it better. I still

733
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:37,520
Speaker 1: think the United States outcomes would have been terrible, and

734
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: I think we need to look at these underlying conditions

735
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 1: in order to in order to have a chance of

736
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: making it better the next time around. And so I

737
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:48,279
Speaker 1: think it's not only magical thinking, it's dangerous thinking to

738
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:51,160
Speaker 1: just say, oh, it's just all about Trump, because that

739
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 1: then because then you miss you miss the real problems.

740
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:56,360
Speaker 2: Right to me, the most interesting part of the book

741
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 2: was the hands that we were dealt coming into and

742
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 2: when I not to make this about me, but when

743
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,239
Speaker 2: I was working on bailout Nation. As much as I

744
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:11,320
Speaker 2: wanted to blame George Bush, when you look at everything

745
00:40:11,360 --> 00:40:15,240
Speaker 2: that took place before Bush took office, he was one

746
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:19,800
Speaker 2: of many, many players that led to that disaster. And

747
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:22,759
Speaker 2: all the people who said this is Bush's fault, it's like,

748
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:26,480
Speaker 2: what are you going to ignore twenty years of deregulation

749
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 2: and radical low rates at the FED? And so I

750
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 2: got very much got the same sense here the parallels

751
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 2: to the financial crisis was, Hey, this wasn't anyone mistake.

752
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 2: This was decades in the making, although truth be told,

753
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:45,800
Speaker 2: it seems like there was just one bad decision after another.

754
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 2: I don't know if Obama would have done better or

755
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:50,640
Speaker 2: George Bush would have done better, but I can tell

756
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 2: you this much, they couldn't have done work.

757
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:54,840
Speaker 1: That is probably true.

758
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 2: Right, So let's talk a little bit about our broken

759
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,719
Speaker 2: ci and I mentioned earlier you throw everybody under the

760
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:08,240
Speaker 2: bus from Cuomo DeSantis de Blassio. You kind of focus

761
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 2: on Cuomo and DeSantis throughout the books as two governors

762
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 2: are a Northern Democrat a Southern Republican. What made you

763
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 2: choose these two governors to focus on.

764
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 1: Well, because their policies were so different in the pandemic,

765
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:26,720
Speaker 1: although they actually personality wise they might be more alike

766
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: than they are different. I would be both dropped the

767
00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 1: ball right. But DeSantis obviously was the most prominent person

768
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:38,520
Speaker 1: who came out against lockdowns and Cuomo was very pro

769
00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: locking down, and so we thought it would set an

770
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: interesting contrast. When we started the book, we didn't know

771
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: what the answer would be and whose answer would turn

772
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:48,359
Speaker 1: out to be right, And as it turns out, it's

773
00:41:48,360 --> 00:41:51,719
Speaker 1: pretty murky. Actually, who was right. But there's also there's

774
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: a progression during the course of the book too, because

775
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: I actually admired DeSantis for his stance early on in

776
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,480
Speaker 1: the pandemic. He I think he did follow this, and

777
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:02,320
Speaker 1: I think he did do the work himself, and I

778
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:05,800
Speaker 1: think it was not political. And then as he began

779
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:10,720
Speaker 1: to mount his presidential run, he became increasingly political and

780
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:14,319
Speaker 1: increasingly what I think, I like to believe he once

781
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,799
Speaker 1: would have not liked these things done solely for the

782
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: purpose of politics, rather than things done because they're right.

783
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: And he pushed the vaccines early on, and then he

784
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:27,359
Speaker 1: became the governor who wants to sue the vaccine manufacturers.

785
00:42:27,520 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: It's just it's a disgusting example of how the desire

786
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: to win at politics can take on a life of

787
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:36,880
Speaker 1: its own and overcome common sense.

788
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,719
Speaker 2: All right, So I have a ton of criticisms on Cuomo,

789
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 2: But before we get to my form of governor, let's

790
00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about DeSantis. Starting with spring Break

791
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, there was a move to close that down

792
00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 2: that became a super spreader event. You sent COVID back

793
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:58,360
Speaker 2: to fifty to other states. From there, he said, we

794
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:00,040
Speaker 2: don't want to shut it down because this is a

795
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:04,480
Speaker 2: big boom for our local business. How do you excuse

796
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:09,720
Speaker 2: putting one hundred thousand college students together twenty something college

797
00:43:09,719 --> 00:43:12,720
Speaker 2: students together. How is that not going to send COVID

798
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:13,479
Speaker 2: back home?

799
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure the extent to which that was

800
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:20,319
Speaker 1: a super spreader event. I also think that some of

801
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 1: what DeSantis insisted on early in the pandemic, which was

802
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 1: that the evidence shows that it's safer outside and that

803
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 1: it's safe to have the beaches open, he was right,

804
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 1: and the people criticizing him were safer.

805
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 2: Not safe, but safer, but safer.

806
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: And by the way, some of the terrible things that

807
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 1: happened in the pandemic came from keeping people cooped up

808
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: in their houses, elderly people who didn't get out for years,

809
00:43:42,600 --> 00:43:45,759
Speaker 1: whose dementia exacerbated. So you have to weigh, if you're

810
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:48,080
Speaker 1: a leader, you have to weigh some of these things

811
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:51,759
Speaker 1: against each other. Safer to be outside, yes, worth it

812
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:55,239
Speaker 1: to get people outdoors exercising, being able to see other

813
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:59,359
Speaker 1: human beings. Yeah. Maybe I'm a little less opposed to

814
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:01,879
Speaker 1: that aspect of DeSantis than you are.

815
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 2: All Right, so let's talk about some of the other

816
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:09,320
Speaker 2: things Ron did. Governor Ron did he stopped reporting COVID data.

817
00:44:09,760 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 2: Now I've heard the excuse. We didn't want to focus

818
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:15,879
Speaker 2: on this, we didn't want to panic people. But let's

819
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 2: be honest, their numbers were terrible and he just didn't

820
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 2: want to see it represent him. Come on, push back

821
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 2: on that.

822
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:27,799
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's true. I mean, some of the.

823
00:44:27,719 --> 00:44:31,399
Speaker 2: Stuff Florida did terrible on a per capita basis your own.

824
00:44:31,560 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 1: Justin Fox did an analysis of the desk coming out

825
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: of Florida and California, and when you adjust it for age,

826
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:39,880
Speaker 1: which you have to because COVID kills the elderly, the

827
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:40,480
Speaker 1: numbers aren't that.

828
00:44:40,760 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 2: So let me let me push back on this. And

829
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 2: that's an email I sent to Justin said differently, Hey,

830
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:49,120
Speaker 2: we have a lot of elderly people in our state,

831
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:51,839
Speaker 2: and we did a terrible job protecting them.

832
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's fair. So I think that the

833
00:44:55,600 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: risk of dying from COVID goes up so dramatically when

834
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:03,200
Speaker 1: you were over sixty five? What does what does what

835
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:06,400
Speaker 1: does taking care of your elderly mean? DeSantis moved aggressively

836
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: to try to protect people in nursing homes in a

837
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 1: way that, by the way, New York in a way that,

838
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 1: by by the way, by the way, New York did not.

839
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 1: I think it remains an open question about COVID and

840
00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: protecting the elderly what you can actually do, because look,

841
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 1: we all know people who lock down, who stayed home,

842
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: who didn't do anything, who didn't who still got it.

843
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:28,239
Speaker 1: So if you're elderly and you're gonna get it, and

844
00:45:28,280 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 1: then you're probably gonna die from it because you're elderly.

845
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: To then blame the governor of a state with a

846
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: lot of elderly for not being able to save I'm

847
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 1: not sure about that. I blame I blame Dessantis for

848
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: a lot and for how crazy he's become. I'm probably

849
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 1: more pro his original strategy than you.

850
00:45:44,680 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 2: Are, so let me blame her.

851
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 1: Let me take that back. I'm not probably more pro

852
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: his original strategy. I'm definitely more.

853
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,320
Speaker 2: So let me blame him for things that are unambiguous. Okay,

854
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,520
Speaker 2: he stops reporting the data, he fires his director of

855
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 2: Health and Human Services, He points a surgeon general for

856
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 2: the state who doesn't believe in vaccines and is a wacked.

857
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 1: That comes later, That comes later.

858
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 2: I'm looking at the continuum of him starting out with

859
00:46:11,719 --> 00:46:15,279
Speaker 2: spring break, which there is there's a decent amount of

860
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,759
Speaker 2: evidence that suggests lots of people either got COVID, there

861
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:21,840
Speaker 2: a lot of hookups. You're not always outside at spring break,

862
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:24,719
Speaker 2: and then went back to their state and managed to

863
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:30,320
Speaker 2: spread it there to the live stream of the Health

864
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:34,879
Speaker 2: and Human Services director having her door kick down by

865
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:36,240
Speaker 2: a swat.

866
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 1: Team that she turns out to be. And so if

867
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 1: you read not only a little wacky, the whole thing

868
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: turns out to be made up. And by the way

869
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:47,240
Speaker 1: that the press was all over that celebrating her glowing

870
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:51,280
Speaker 1: articles everywhere without ever and this is when you without

871
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: ever looking at some of the facts underneath them. Should

872
00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 1: we really be celebrating this person? And so there was

873
00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 1: such an effort to get DeSantis early on, what about

874
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,520
Speaker 1: his in general, and then that contributes to some of

875
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:04,640
Speaker 1: his to some of some of the crazy.

876
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:07,359
Speaker 2: But she was not the person to.

877
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: If you want to hold somebody up as being ill

878
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,360
Speaker 1: treated by DeSantis, Rebecca Jones, it's not the person.

879
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:18,239
Speaker 2: So let's talk about his surgeon general, who doesn't really

880
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 2: think of VC like the CDC was regularly correcting some

881
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:24,239
Speaker 2: of his mistakes.

882
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:27,359
Speaker 1: So right and let's let's I know, you don't want

883
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:29,239
Speaker 1: to put things on a continuum. I'm going to put

884
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,239
Speaker 1: things on a continue that came later, and I am

885
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: There's there's nothing about DeSantis' current stance on the vaccines

886
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:39,560
Speaker 1: that I think is defendable. I think it's morally reprehensible.

887
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:41,920
Speaker 2: So let's all right, so we're on the same page. Now,

888
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:44,880
Speaker 2: let's throw Cuomo into the bus a little bit. And

889
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 2: similarly started out thinking, oh, okay, he is the guy

890
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:51,839
Speaker 2: on the ball, and then goes off the rails. He

891
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 2: begins with these press conferences that kind of reminded me

892
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,719
Speaker 2: of Giuliani during nine to eleven, where there's this leadership

893
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:03,759
Speaker 2: var and somebody not the president steps up to fill

894
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 2: the void. Were those conferences required viewing?

895
00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:11,520
Speaker 1: They were absolutely required viewing. And I think that points

896
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 1: to two things. I think it points to the earlier

897
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:16,720
Speaker 1: part of our discussion where we talked about Trump's failure

898
00:48:16,719 --> 00:48:19,840
Speaker 1: of leadership. Had Trump been providing that leadership, there wouldn't

899
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: have been a void that Quoma needed to fail, or

900
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 1: that Cuomo could fail. But I think it also points

901
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:28,040
Speaker 1: to something else, which is the appearance of leadership versus

902
00:48:28,160 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 1: actual leadership.

903
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 2: So let's get into it, because he really so what

904
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 2: he started out looking like, Oh my god, this guy

905
00:48:36,280 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 2: is going to be president one day. Then let's talk

906
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:42,040
Speaker 2: a little bit about his feud with Mayor Deblasio in

907
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,000
Speaker 2: New York City, which was very much a hotspot in

908
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:48,399
Speaker 2: the beginning of the pandemic. What were the impacts of

909
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 2: this childish feud on the healthcare of New Yorkers.

910
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:55,239
Speaker 1: So that even after the New York Department of Health,

911
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:57,719
Speaker 1: which is in the city's department, which are really well

912
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: respected institutions, we're saying, we're seeing these upticks and all

913
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 1: these measures that are alarming. This feud between Cuomo and

914
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:08,760
Speaker 1: Deblasio kept either from doing anything for a way too long,

915
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: and so and then and then, of course, on top

916
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: of it, Cuomo's policy of sending sick people back to

917
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:17,400
Speaker 1: nursing home that's my next which he blamed on the

918
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:20,080
Speaker 1: federal government. But look, if this were a federal if

919
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:22,279
Speaker 1: this were a federal government requirement, then it would have

920
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: happened in every state.

921
00:49:23,520 --> 00:49:26,120
Speaker 2: So let's clarify exactly what you're talking about, because it's

922
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:30,399
Speaker 2: literally my next question. There are elderly people who get

923
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:34,520
Speaker 2: sent from nursing homes to hospitals where they are identified

924
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 2: as having COVID, and Cuomo's policy was to take them

925
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:40,799
Speaker 2: out of the hospital and send them back to the

926
00:49:40,880 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 2: nursing homes where I have no idea what the thinking was.

927
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 2: Maybe you could lock them in their rooms and not

928
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:51,439
Speaker 2: have the people who serve meals and go from room

929
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 2: to room, not spread them around. It seems totally reckless

930
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:55,800
Speaker 2: and irresponsible.

931
00:49:56,440 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 1: There is one possible reason for it, which is they

932
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: were really worried about hospital space. Right, So there's this thinking,

933
00:50:03,560 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: we'll free up hospital beds when I'm on an ice flow.

934
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 1: But then two things have to happen. One, you have

935
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 1: to be able to protect those people and protect the

936
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:13,959
Speaker 1: people around them when they get back to the nursing home.

937
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,560
Speaker 1: And secondly, you don't lie about it. And so those

938
00:50:16,600 --> 00:50:20,799
Speaker 1: were the two big problems. And that's that old adage, right,

939
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:22,800
Speaker 1: the cover up is worse than the crime. If Fomo

940
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 1: had just told the truth, right, I don't, I mean,

941
00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:27,960
Speaker 1: he still would be where he is. The other.

942
00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:34,440
Speaker 2: Accusations talk about rolling downhill. He just started out good,

943
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 2: went off the rails and just man was it was

944
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:41,320
Speaker 2: like a wily coyote hitting the bottom of the Ravine.

945
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 2: Let's talk about a few other people who may or

946
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 2: may not have distinguished themselves. Anthony Fauci, How well did

947
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 2: he perform?

948
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,279
Speaker 1: So my cauthorne I might have a little bit of

949
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: a split on this. I'm probably more sympathetic to Fauci

950
00:50:56,239 --> 00:51:02,080
Speaker 1: then Joe might be. I view any criticism Ofauci as misplaced,

951
00:51:02,320 --> 00:51:04,680
Speaker 1: because it was the job of the president not to

952
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:06,759
Speaker 1: have Fauci in that role if he didn't want him

953
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: in that role.

954
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 2: But he got great media.

955
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,600
Speaker 1: But he got great media. And as if you're putting

956
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: someone out there whose views you don't agree with, and

957
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: then and then sort of ducking and saying, oh, look

958
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: at what that guy's saying. I mean, it's just it's

959
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 1: it's terrible, be accountable, say then I'm going to be

960
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:26,920
Speaker 1: the person speaking to the American public. It makes me.

961
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 1: It makes me angry because putting someone in a role

962
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:32,200
Speaker 1: that maybe they shouldn't be in and then criticizing that

963
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:34,759
Speaker 1: person for being in that role seems to me to

964
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: be one of the most hypocritical things you can do.

965
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:38,879
Speaker 2: I mean, but Trump seems to do that with every

966
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 2: single person he appointed, and nobody ever says to him,

967
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:45,120
Speaker 2: why are you criticizing this person, Why don't you criticize

968
00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 2: the person who hired them? Oh wait, that's you. And

969
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 2: at least with Fauci, we got the Curb your Enthusiasm

970
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 2: memes we did, and which was to me the highlight

971
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 2: of the past.

972
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:57,279
Speaker 1: I think you sent me one of those early on,

973
00:51:57,360 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 1: and I think it might have been the highlight of

974
00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 1: the pandemic.

975
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 2: Just like because you just see him drop his head

976
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:06,360
Speaker 2: into his hand when when Trump was talking about AMV

977
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:10,319
Speaker 2: was bleach or light or something and the music just

978
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:14,600
Speaker 2: it was chef's kiss? What about Jared Kushner?

979
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: How did that back to Fauci?

980
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:16,960
Speaker 2: Me?

981
00:52:17,040 --> 00:52:19,400
Speaker 1: I think there there are a couple of things that

982
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:24,319
Speaker 1: I don't understand why why Fauci did them, Either to

983
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:27,759
Speaker 1: say the least, the mask thing, the shutting down of

984
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: any inquiry about the origins of the pandemic, which in

985
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: a way, I don't really care where this thing came from,

986
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,160
Speaker 1: but the fact that we weren't allowed to discuss where

987
00:52:36,160 --> 00:52:39,360
Speaker 1: it came from reflects well on nobody. The idea that

988
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: you couldn't say that it might have been from inside

989
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: a lab without being accused of being racist. And Fauci

990
00:52:44,239 --> 00:52:46,319
Speaker 1: was part of shutting down that line of questions, Well.

991
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 2: Whether it came from a lab or a Chinese wet market,

992
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:50,320
Speaker 2: I mean, he's still.

993
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:52,160
Speaker 1: China cares, but we should know and I.

994
00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 2: And we, so let me ask you that question. Since

995
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:00,439
Speaker 2: you references, where do we think the virus came from?

996
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:02,680
Speaker 1: I don't have a clue. But what I do know

997
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: is that because the lines of inquiry were shut down

998
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:07,680
Speaker 1: early on, we probably never will know for sure. And

999
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: I think that that's not a great outcome. And I

1000
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:13,000
Speaker 1: think shutting down lines of inquorey are shutting down people

1001
00:53:13,040 --> 00:53:16,759
Speaker 1: with different opinions. Is just there's a line between that

1002
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:19,440
Speaker 1: and quote misinformation, and I'm not really sure in a

1003
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: free society what we want to label misinformation. I detest

1004
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:25,560
Speaker 1: that word. I think the other thing she tried to

1005
00:53:25,560 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 1: shut down were the scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration.

1006
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:32,319
Speaker 1: And again, I happened to be a believer in most

1007
00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:34,000
Speaker 1: forms of free speech, and.

1008
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:39,680
Speaker 2: They walk that way back though the meta study, there

1009
00:53:39,680 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 2: were subsequent articles that said, well, this isn't exactly what

1010
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:46,799
Speaker 2: we're saying. The whole mask thing. I think, if you're

1011
00:53:46,800 --> 00:53:50,879
Speaker 2: going into an operating theater, don't you check that box? Yes,

1012
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 2: I want everybody wearing surgical masks in there.

1013
00:53:54,120 --> 00:53:56,719
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think the Great Bearrington Declaration said

1014
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,680
Speaker 1: much about mask It was about it was about. The

1015
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:03,240
Speaker 1: Great Barrington Declaration was about focused protection for the elderly.

1016
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: It was against lockdowns.

1017
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:06,440
Speaker 2: The other stuff.

1018
00:54:06,480 --> 00:54:08,759
Speaker 1: And I think, and I think in a free society

1019
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:11,759
Speaker 1: where polarization doesn't dictate what one is allowed to say

1020
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:13,759
Speaker 1: and one is not allowed to say, there should have

1021
00:54:13,760 --> 00:54:16,360
Speaker 1: been a debate about that. And the scientists behind the

1022
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:21,080
Speaker 1: Great Barrington Declaration were not French scientists, epidemiologists carverd epidemiologists

1023
00:54:21,080 --> 00:54:25,640
Speaker 1: at Stanford, epidemiologists at Oxford, highly respected people. Why is

1024
00:54:25,680 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 1: it so offensive to listen to them and to listen

1025
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 1: to what their plan is? It shouldn't be And so

1026
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: I don't love that Fauci was part of shutting that

1027
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:34,719
Speaker 1: down and trying to discredit that.

1028
00:54:34,840 --> 00:54:40,279
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about misinformation, because that

1029
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:46,640
Speaker 2: leads to a couple of questions. Hydroxy chloroquin ivermectin bleach

1030
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 2: heard immunity. It seems like there was some really crazy

1031
00:54:50,880 --> 00:54:56,560
Speaker 2: nonsense coming from to some degree from social media. Also

1032
00:54:56,680 --> 00:55:01,279
Speaker 2: spread by social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Not so much

1033
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 2: LinkedIn as far as I could tell, and far more

1034
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 2: on the right wing than the left wing, other than

1035
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:11,880
Speaker 2: the anti vax stuff which eventually morphed over. How do

1036
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:16,560
Speaker 2: we judge our ability to deal with misinformation and how

1037
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,760
Speaker 2: do we judge the performance of the US media?

1038
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:24,320
Speaker 1: I think it's really difficult because the line between misinformation

1039
00:55:24,640 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: and information that we don't want to hear is can

1040
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:30,719
Speaker 1: be a very fine line sometimes, and sometimes things that

1041
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: we label misinformation in a moment come back to perhaps

1042
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:37,960
Speaker 1: maybe be something that we should have listened to. I

1043
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:40,319
Speaker 1: guess my view on free speech is that if we

1044
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:42,680
Speaker 1: believe in free speech, we should believe in free speech.

1045
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: Hate speech is a different matter, So I'm going to

1046
00:55:44,600 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: put that aside, okay, because I think all you need

1047
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: to do is look at the run up to World

1048
00:55:48,719 --> 00:55:51,520
Speaker 1: War two to see that that old adage that sticks

1049
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 1: and stones can break my bones, but words will never

1050
00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: hurt me. It's words that create the sticks and stones. Right.

1051
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:58,320
Speaker 1: But that's besides this conversation about.

1052
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:01,920
Speaker 2: Yelling fire in a crowded theater. At what point is

1053
00:56:02,560 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 2: don't get vaccinated. It's a chip that will track you.

1054
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 2: How close is that to yelling fire in a theater?

1055
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:12,200
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's a long way away.

1056
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 1: And I think that when there is so much information

1057
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:17,719
Speaker 1: out there to the counter about that, you actually do

1058
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:21,160
Speaker 1: more damage by shutting people down and saying you can't

1059
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:23,719
Speaker 1: say that than you do by saying, go ahead and

1060
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:24,800
Speaker 1: say it. Sound crazy.

1061
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:27,479
Speaker 2: People people literally Barber Streis and effect people.

1062
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,640
Speaker 1: People, people can figure out their own their own information.

1063
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:33,719
Speaker 1: There's enough out there running counter to that, so I

1064
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: don't I think it's a really tricky issue. But I

1065
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:39,759
Speaker 1: think the pandemic, if anything, made me feel that we

1066
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: are very very quick to label things misinformation and we

1067
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:43,120
Speaker 1: just don't like.

1068
00:56:43,120 --> 00:56:44,759
Speaker 2: It if we just disagree with it, all right, so

1069
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 2: we did Fauci. Let's talk about Jared Kushner and Mike Pence,

1070
00:56:49,840 --> 00:56:52,760
Speaker 2: who each took turns heading a task force on PPE.

1071
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:57,439
Speaker 1: How those guys do I think Kushner, I don't think

1072
00:56:57,480 --> 00:56:59,720
Speaker 1: the task force that he set up to get PPE

1073
00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 1: did that much. However, it's worth noting that some of

1074
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 1: the people running warp Speed, who were utterly opposed to

1075
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: Trump and too Trump's administration, came away supportive of Kushner

1076
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 1: because they thought that it was Kushner's support that guaranteed

1077
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:21,480
Speaker 1: warp Speed's success, and it was Kushner who ultimately protected

1078
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:25,360
Speaker 1: Warp Speed and both Monsoff Slowie, who is about as

1079
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,040
Speaker 1: far from a Trumpian Republican as one could possibly be,

1080
00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:30,240
Speaker 1: actually said that he came away from this with a

1081
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:33,240
Speaker 1: lot of respect for Kushner. So I think that it's

1082
00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: possible to look at him as a mixed bag.

1083
00:57:35,480 --> 00:57:38,240
Speaker 2: So Chok went up for Jared Kushner. What about Mike

1084
00:57:38,280 --> 00:57:42,080
Speaker 2: Pence kind of that just went nowhere.

1085
00:57:42,160 --> 00:57:44,920
Speaker 1: I mean when Mike Pence, when Alex Azar was kicked

1086
00:57:44,920 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 1: off basically running the task force and Mike Pence was

1087
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:49,600
Speaker 1: put in charge. It's hard to think of anything that

1088
00:57:49,640 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 1: happened at the Coronavirus Task Force after that other than

1089
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 1: Mike Pence's op ed in the spring of twenty twenty

1090
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:57,840
Speaker 1: saying there won't be a second way. I think most

1091
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 1: people see him as the ultimate poly Titian, and that

1092
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:03,000
Speaker 1: he was more focused on his own chances for a

1093
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:07,760
Speaker 1: presidential run than he was on actually doing anything about

1094
00:58:07,760 --> 00:58:10,040
Speaker 1: the pandemic. That said, you have to have a little

1095
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: bit of admiration for Mike Pen's post.

1096
00:58:11,960 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 2: James tell us about Azar. I think a lot of

1097
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 2: people have no idea who he is or was during

1098
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:19,240
Speaker 2: this era.

1099
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:22,320
Speaker 1: So Asar was a Secretary of Health and Human Services

1100
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 1: and not a well liked figure within the Trump administration

1101
00:58:26,680 --> 00:58:29,680
Speaker 1: for reasons both good and bad. He developed a reputation

1102
00:58:29,800 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 1: for being hierarchical, being thin skinned, being a politician, but

1103
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: he was also he was an old school Republican in

1104
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:40,400
Speaker 1: an administration where that was a very bad thing to be.

1105
00:58:40,920 --> 00:58:43,040
Speaker 1: I think it is impossible to look at alex Azar

1106
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:45,960
Speaker 1: and not see a highly principled person who wanted to

1107
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:48,880
Speaker 1: do the right thing. And at warp Speed is we

1108
00:58:48,960 --> 00:58:52,400
Speaker 1: have Asar in part to thank for warp Speed, and

1109
00:58:52,440 --> 00:58:55,160
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for Azar getting behind warp Speed

1110
00:58:55,200 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 1: and pushing it again, warp Speed had several had several fathers,

1111
00:59:01,080 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 1: but Asar was definitely one of them. And so I

1112
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:06,919
Speaker 1: think if you look at people's performance and you give

1113
00:59:06,960 --> 00:59:09,840
Speaker 1: them some dings but some positives, I think ultimately I

1114
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:11,120
Speaker 1: came out positive on Asar.

1115
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:13,919
Speaker 2: So let's stick with warp Speed for a second. Of course,

1116
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,000
Speaker 2: the economy began to recover pretty quickly. He could have

1117
00:59:17,080 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 2: stepped up and said I did this, I saved America.

1118
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 2: Vote for me. I think he could have won if

1119
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 2: he had made better decisions about the pandemic.

1120
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:29,640
Speaker 1: Well, I think I'm not sure that's true, because the

1121
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:32,920
Speaker 1: vaccines weren't approved. The data about the vaccines didn't come

1122
00:59:32,920 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 1: out until after the election, because Trump had started to

1123
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: make some noises about having the vaccines ready before the election,

1124
00:59:40,760 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 1: and so the FDA pushed back and basically the leaders

1125
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:46,640
Speaker 1: of the pharmaceutical companies said, this is not going to

1126
00:59:46,640 --> 00:59:49,400
Speaker 1: be political, and all of that was really important, and

1127
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:51,920
Speaker 1: so to me, one of Trump's biggest failings was starting

1128
00:59:51,960 --> 00:59:54,959
Speaker 1: to make the vaccines political such that then you had

1129
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:57,640
Speaker 1: to you had to have pushback so that people would

1130
00:59:57,680 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 1: try to trust them, absolutely able to trust them. I

1131
01:00:00,880 --> 01:00:05,000
Speaker 1: absolutely agree that if Trump had said these vaccines are marvelous,

1132
01:00:05,040 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 1: their life saving, that could have changed some of some

1133
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:11,160
Speaker 1: of the course it would, but it would have been

1134
01:00:11,200 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 1: too late for his election. But that said, you have

1135
01:00:14,440 --> 01:00:16,680
Speaker 1: to ask the flip side of the question, given that

1136
01:00:16,720 --> 01:00:20,320
Speaker 1: you had Democrats including Cuoma and Kamala Harris coming out

1137
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:22,760
Speaker 1: and saying, I'm not taking these Trump vaccines until they've

1138
01:00:22,760 --> 01:00:23,960
Speaker 1: been tested for safety.

1139
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:24,920
Speaker 2: That's smart.

1140
01:00:25,200 --> 01:00:27,960
Speaker 1: If Trump had pushed them and called them the Trump vaccines,

1141
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 1: would you have had exactly the response from Democrats that

1142
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:34,520
Speaker 1: we had said got from Republicans. Given how ridiculously polarized

1143
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:37,120
Speaker 1: we are, would you then have had Republicans taking the

1144
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:40,080
Speaker 1: vaccines and celebrating them and Democrats saying I'm not taking

1145
01:00:40,120 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: a Trump vaccine.

1146
01:00:41,560 --> 01:00:42,960
Speaker 2: Counterfactual is it's amazing.

1147
01:00:42,960 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 1: It's actually tragic that we even have to ask this question,

1148
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:48,360
Speaker 1: because why should a vaccine be a Trump vaccine or

1149
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:51,160
Speaker 1: a Giden vaccine. It's it's insane, it's insane.

1150
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:54,360
Speaker 2: There was a big piece not too long ago, I

1151
01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 2: don't remember if it was the Wall Street Journal of

1152
01:00:56,680 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 2: the Washington Post that showed that if you looked at

1153
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 2: a break the country down by zip code, red zip

1154
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:07,840
Speaker 2: codes had much worse outcome than blue zip codes, And

1155
01:01:08,600 --> 01:01:12,240
Speaker 2: you kind of wonder, you can't help but wonder this

1156
01:01:12,320 --> 01:01:16,720
Speaker 2: has to be partisan based, whether you took the vaccine,

1157
01:01:16,760 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 2: got boosted socially distanced, unless you're going to say the

1158
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:23,280
Speaker 2: red districts are just so much worse on the pre

1159
01:01:23,360 --> 01:01:26,840
Speaker 2: existing condition side, or some combination above.

1160
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:29,320
Speaker 1: I think it's some combination of both. And again, I

1161
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:31,640
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's done the work, nor I think is

1162
01:01:31,640 --> 01:01:34,040
Speaker 1: it possible to actually do the work and break it down.

1163
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:37,600
Speaker 1: What percent of the problem came from people in Red

1164
01:01:37,640 --> 01:01:40,600
Speaker 1: states being less willing to get vaccinated, and what percentage

1165
01:01:40,600 --> 01:01:42,640
Speaker 1: of the problem came from the fact that pre existing

1166
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:46,160
Speaker 1: health conditions that led one to terrible COVID outcomes were

1167
01:01:46,200 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: worse in many of those states, which brings us back

1168
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 1: and access to healthcare.

1169
01:01:51,320 --> 01:01:55,040
Speaker 2: Which brings us back to DeSantis, who has refused to

1170
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:59,080
Speaker 2: embrace Medicaid and is leaving something like one hundred and

1171
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:03,840
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars a year in healthcare aid to his state.

1172
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:09,680
Speaker 2: Now work that out into those pre existing conditions a

1173
01:02:09,680 --> 01:02:12,000
Speaker 2: lot more medical care that buys you a decent amount

1174
01:02:12,040 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 2: of money every year. He has not embraced it. A

1175
01:02:15,160 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 2: handful of Red state governors have refused to embrace this,

1176
01:02:20,120 --> 01:02:24,520
Speaker 2: and I'm always shocked at how their population goes along

1177
01:02:24,560 --> 01:02:27,080
Speaker 2: with it. I don't want healthcare. What do I need

1178
01:02:27,080 --> 01:02:31,760
Speaker 2: that for? It's amazing, Yeah, it is so last institutions

1179
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:35,320
Speaker 2: I have to ask about, how did the CDC, the

1180
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:40,439
Speaker 2: National Institute of Health and Who perform ranked those three

1181
01:02:40,480 --> 01:02:45,320
Speaker 2: institutions who did most poorly? Who did least poorly. Notice

1182
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 2: I'm not saying any of them did especially well.

1183
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:50,800
Speaker 1: I think that's hard because they all did different things.

1184
01:02:50,880 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 1: I think the CDC is at the bottom. I think

1185
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:56,600
Speaker 1: it's hard and even the CDC, I think would say that.

1186
01:02:57,640 --> 01:03:00,480
Speaker 1: Rachelle Wilenski, when she was running the CDC, came out

1187
01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:04,480
Speaker 1: with this report basically that' said the CDC has failed

1188
01:03:04,480 --> 01:03:08,919
Speaker 1: and lost lost a lot of trust. The NIH not terrible, no,

1189
01:03:09,160 --> 01:03:12,320
Speaker 1: and it's the NIH that funded a lot of the

1190
01:03:12,400 --> 01:03:16,760
Speaker 1: development of mRNA led us to have the vaccines. You know, again,

1191
01:03:16,920 --> 01:03:20,360
Speaker 1: the existence of the vaccines is a long standing collaboration

1192
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:23,439
Speaker 1: between government and industry. And so one of my key

1193
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:27,360
Speaker 1: takeaways from the book is capitalism can't do everything. Markets

1194
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:30,880
Speaker 1: can't do everything. You need a functioning government and functioning markets,

1195
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:33,160
Speaker 1: and you need the two to be intertwined to have

1196
01:03:33,200 --> 01:03:34,320
Speaker 1: a functioning society.

1197
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:36,760
Speaker 2: You can't get shareholders to say, I'm going to put

1198
01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 2: money to this company and maybe in fifteen years we'll

1199
01:03:40,240 --> 01:03:41,560
Speaker 2: have a product we can and more.

1200
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:45,240
Speaker 1: Even more so, you can't get shareholders to back vaccine

1201
01:03:45,240 --> 01:03:48,880
Speaker 1: development because too many times governments are the buyers of vaccines.

1202
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:51,720
Speaker 1: The profits aren't big enough, and the need for the

1203
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:55,040
Speaker 1: vaccines comes and goes, and so shareholders don't want anything

1204
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:58,360
Speaker 1: to do with it because it's not sustainable earnings growth

1205
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:01,480
Speaker 1: and so you have to be aware of where capitalism

1206
01:04:01,520 --> 01:04:03,560
Speaker 1: works and where it doesn't work. And that's one of

1207
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:07,400
Speaker 1: the themes of the book The Who. I think initially

1208
01:04:07,520 --> 01:04:10,520
Speaker 1: you would give them bad marks for going along with

1209
01:04:10,640 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 1: China's view of the world and not being more independently minded. So,

1210
01:04:17,280 --> 01:04:19,880
Speaker 1: but it's hard to say. Over the course of the pandemic,

1211
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 1: I think the WHO has been able to acknowledge failings,

1212
01:04:24,320 --> 01:04:26,880
Speaker 1: so I'd give them. I'd give them an nih pretty

1213
01:04:26,880 --> 01:04:28,000
Speaker 1: decent marks.

1214
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:32,800
Speaker 2: I'm kind of fascinated and I was like raised an

1215
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:35,520
Speaker 2: eyebrow when I come across the chapter in the book

1216
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 2: on the Federal Reserve. Let's talk a little bit about

1217
01:04:39,880 --> 01:04:43,960
Speaker 2: what the FED did and didn't do. Starting with their

1218
01:04:43,960 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 2: initial thinking was, hey, interest rates don't cure pandemics. Tell

1219
01:04:49,120 --> 01:04:50,880
Speaker 2: us a little bit about what's going on at the FED.

1220
01:04:51,080 --> 01:04:53,200
Speaker 1: Well, I think you can't look at the pandemic without

1221
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:56,080
Speaker 1: looking at the Federal Reserve. And for all sorts of reasons.

1222
01:04:56,240 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 1: One is that if it hadn't been for the fed's

1223
01:04:59,040 --> 01:05:02,560
Speaker 1: actions in the spring of twenty twenty, the world literally

1224
01:05:02,640 --> 01:05:06,560
Speaker 1: might have shut down. Markets are not incidental to life there,

1225
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:09,960
Speaker 1: they're part of our life. That said, some of The

1226
01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:11,880
Speaker 1: problems that the FED had to fix were of the

1227
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:16,120
Speaker 1: FED zone making, such as what a couple of decades

1228
01:05:16,160 --> 01:05:19,960
Speaker 1: of very low interest rates had done to our markets,

1229
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:22,640
Speaker 1: such as the ongoing fragility of the system due to

1230
01:05:22,680 --> 01:05:27,200
Speaker 1: the shadow banking system, an ongoing kind of inability to

1231
01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:30,040
Speaker 1: deal with instability in the treasury market. One of the

1232
01:05:30,120 --> 01:05:32,960
Speaker 1: scariest things that happened in that spring of twenty twenty

1233
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:35,959
Speaker 1: was that the treasury market almost stopped functioning. And that's

1234
01:05:36,080 --> 01:05:38,920
Speaker 1: people were aware even before the pandemic hit that there

1235
01:05:38,920 --> 01:05:43,240
Speaker 1: were these structural weaknesses within the treasury market. And then

1236
01:05:43,400 --> 01:05:45,480
Speaker 1: I think you have to look at the FED because

1237
01:05:45,520 --> 01:05:48,240
Speaker 1: of where we are today with inflation, and that's such

1238
01:05:48,240 --> 01:05:51,439
Speaker 1: a critical part of our economic lives now and such

1239
01:05:51,480 --> 01:05:55,440
Speaker 1: a critical part of inequality in terms of who inflation

1240
01:05:55,560 --> 01:05:58,440
Speaker 1: affects the most, and that's the FED. And so you

1241
01:05:58,520 --> 01:06:01,160
Speaker 1: have to understand that is of looking at the pandemic.

1242
01:06:01,280 --> 01:06:03,400
Speaker 2: So let's explore that a little bit more. Following the

1243
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:07,160
Speaker 2: financial crisis, FED takes the rates down to zero, keeps

1244
01:06:07,240 --> 01:06:10,240
Speaker 2: him there, can't get inflation up to two percent a

1245
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 2: decade no inflation. We really haven't talked about the Cares

1246
01:06:15,640 --> 01:06:19,760
Speaker 2: Act and what a massive fiscal stimulus that was that

1247
01:06:20,000 --> 01:06:22,640
Speaker 2: we didn't see during the financial crisis. So let's put

1248
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:25,920
Speaker 2: some numbers on that. CARES Act one under President Trump

1249
01:06:26,360 --> 01:06:30,080
Speaker 2: two point two trillion dollars, right, ten percent of GDP.

1250
01:06:30,240 --> 01:06:35,320
Speaker 2: You describe it as the biggest fiscal stimulus in US history.

1251
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:40,400
Speaker 2: CARES Act two, almost another trillion dollars. Also under President Trump,

1252
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:43,600
Speaker 2: CARES Act three another eight or nine hundred billion dollars.

1253
01:06:43,720 --> 01:06:50,360
Speaker 2: Under President Biden four trillion dollars. This is a huge stimulus.

1254
01:06:50,400 --> 01:06:53,560
Speaker 1: It's insane, and it has left our has helped leave

1255
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:58,400
Speaker 1: our federal debt in a frightening place. Plus the impact

1256
01:06:58,480 --> 01:07:01,880
Speaker 1: on inflation, and there was a lot of thinking about

1257
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:07,120
Speaker 1: the impact of fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus right together.

1258
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:09,560
Speaker 1: And so you're right, we didn't have that in the

1259
01:07:09,560 --> 01:07:11,600
Speaker 1: financial crisis, and I think it was a mistake. We

1260
01:07:11,640 --> 01:07:14,320
Speaker 1: had a very limited amount of fiscal stimulus because the

1261
01:07:15,120 --> 01:07:17,400
Speaker 1: idea was, oh my god, that the deficit and what

1262
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:20,320
Speaker 1: are we doing? And so there was very quickly the

1263
01:07:20,320 --> 01:07:22,360
Speaker 1: Tea Party and the calls for austerity, and so we

1264
01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:23,960
Speaker 1: didn't do that much fiscal stimulus.

1265
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:26,280
Speaker 2: And so the FED had a mediocre recovery because and

1266
01:07:26,320 --> 01:07:27,080
Speaker 2: so the FED.

1267
01:07:26,880 --> 01:07:29,920
Speaker 1: For that decade between the financial crisis and the pandemic,

1268
01:07:29,960 --> 01:07:33,000
Speaker 1: that decade plus felt promote the title of Muhammad al

1269
01:07:33,040 --> 01:07:35,320
Speaker 1: Aarian's great book that they were the only game in town.

1270
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:37,200
Speaker 1: They were the only ones who could try to fix

1271
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:39,320
Speaker 1: the economy. But that, to me is a little bit

1272
01:07:39,320 --> 01:07:42,240
Speaker 1: analogous to Fauci. Just like maybe Fauci shouldn't have been

1273
01:07:42,240 --> 01:07:44,480
Speaker 1: in the position he was in, the FED shouldn't have

1274
01:07:44,520 --> 01:07:47,040
Speaker 1: been in the position it was in. That's Congress's job. Again,

1275
01:07:47,120 --> 01:07:49,760
Speaker 1: it's a failure of government. It's a failure of Congress

1276
01:07:49,800 --> 01:07:52,520
Speaker 1: to default to the FED is the people who are

1277
01:07:52,560 --> 01:07:55,120
Speaker 1: supposed to fix the economy. It's not just the Fed's job.

1278
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:58,040
Speaker 1: They've got one tool They've got the most limited toolbox

1279
01:07:58,080 --> 01:08:01,080
Speaker 1: of anybody in Washington to try to fix the economy.

1280
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:03,360
Speaker 1: And yet they were the only game in town. And

1281
01:08:03,480 --> 01:08:06,280
Speaker 1: because interest rates were so low for that decade and

1282
01:08:06,320 --> 01:08:08,959
Speaker 1: there was so much bond buying, it left the FED

1283
01:08:09,040 --> 01:08:11,600
Speaker 1: in a weaker position to counteract the effects of the

1284
01:08:11,640 --> 01:08:14,520
Speaker 1: pandemic than they would otherwise have been in. And I

1285
01:08:14,520 --> 01:08:18,200
Speaker 1: think it's important to understand that again, these things have antecedents.

1286
01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:19,400
Speaker 1: They don't come out of nowhere right.

1287
01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:21,920
Speaker 2: It's always more complicated. One of the things that I

1288
01:08:21,960 --> 01:08:24,559
Speaker 2: think a lot of folks don't realize is when you

1289
01:08:24,640 --> 01:08:29,080
Speaker 2: take rates to zero, everything priced in credit and dollars

1290
01:08:29,160 --> 01:08:33,479
Speaker 2: is going to benefit from that. And that means stocks, bonds,

1291
01:08:33,680 --> 01:08:38,280
Speaker 2: real estate's business and who owns that the wealthier people

1292
01:08:38,280 --> 01:08:42,880
Speaker 2: in America. So the most fascinating takeaway from this massive

1293
01:08:42,880 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 2: fiscal stimulus, aside from the inflation, is hey, it did

1294
01:08:47,040 --> 01:08:49,160
Speaker 2: a pretty good job for the middle and lower class.

1295
01:08:49,280 --> 01:08:53,200
Speaker 2: They did okay, they still have some savings left over

1296
01:08:53,280 --> 01:08:57,320
Speaker 2: from twenty twenty and twenty one. So if you're looking

1297
01:08:57,360 --> 01:09:02,759
Speaker 2: at fiscal or monetary stimulus, recognize who is the beneficiary.

1298
01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:05,880
Speaker 1: Of yes, exactly whereas monetary stimulus made the rich richer.

1299
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:09,000
Speaker 1: I mean, people said when the when the Fed began

1300
01:09:09,080 --> 01:09:13,200
Speaker 1: throwing everything it could at the wall, basically in the

1301
01:09:13,200 --> 01:09:15,519
Speaker 1: spring of twenty twenty, traders were like, this is the

1302
01:09:15,520 --> 01:09:18,559
Speaker 1: greatest trading opportunity the world has ever seen. And when

1303
01:09:18,600 --> 01:09:21,640
Speaker 1: you look at how staggeringly rich people with exposure to

1304
01:09:21,680 --> 01:09:25,240
Speaker 1: the markets got in in the year after the pandemic

1305
01:09:25,280 --> 01:09:28,920
Speaker 1: first hit, it's really I mean, it's sort of disgusting.

1306
01:09:29,479 --> 01:09:31,680
Speaker 2: From the lows in March twenty twenty. Till the end

1307
01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:34,200
Speaker 2: of the year, the S ANDB five hundred sixty eight percent.

1308
01:09:34,640 --> 01:09:37,479
Speaker 2: The following year up on ROMO was twenty nine thirty

1309
01:09:37,520 --> 01:09:40,800
Speaker 2: one percent. Every huge, reaching, explosive.

1310
01:09:40,360 --> 01:09:43,320
Speaker 1: Boom, everything was a screaming buy. And that benefits the

1311
01:09:43,680 --> 01:09:46,599
Speaker 1: segment of the American population that has exposure to as

1312
01:09:47,560 --> 01:09:49,680
Speaker 1: not the bottom. And then the bottom is left to

1313
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,080
Speaker 1: fend for itself when and not to fend for itself,

1314
01:09:52,200 --> 01:09:53,920
Speaker 1: but the bottom is left to pick up the pieces

1315
01:09:53,920 --> 01:09:56,840
Speaker 1: when inflation kicks in, because guess who inflation hurts more?

1316
01:09:56,960 --> 01:10:00,160
Speaker 2: The less well off always. So let's talk. You know,

1317
01:10:00,160 --> 01:10:02,680
Speaker 2: it's funny. I'm gonna tell you a quick, funny digression.

1318
01:10:03,080 --> 01:10:06,200
Speaker 2: I'm at an event over the summer camp Kotok and

1319
01:10:06,280 --> 01:10:12,280
Speaker 2: we're talking about rising interest rates. And someone asked the question, Hey,

1320
01:10:12,320 --> 01:10:15,720
Speaker 2: will the wealthy benefit from higher rates or not? And

1321
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:18,680
Speaker 2: three of us in the room, myself included, raised their

1322
01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:21,800
Speaker 2: hand and said, of course they will. You know what

1323
01:10:21,920 --> 01:10:25,519
Speaker 2: history has told us, the wealthy do just fine in

1324
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:27,080
Speaker 2: all sorts of economies.

1325
01:10:27,520 --> 01:10:31,120
Speaker 1: Well, I agree, And it seems that everything we've done,

1326
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:34,400
Speaker 1: from the financial crisis through to the pandemic response has

1327
01:10:34,600 --> 01:10:38,840
Speaker 1: helped the wealthy at the at the expense of the poor.

1328
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:42,320
Speaker 1: And that's why I very much like the subtitle of of.

1329
01:10:42,080 --> 01:10:43,520
Speaker 2: Our boots left Beyond.

1330
01:10:43,320 --> 01:10:45,799
Speaker 1: Of our book, Who's getting left Who's getting left behind?

1331
01:10:46,080 --> 01:10:49,519
Speaker 1: And that it's true that the fiscal stimulus has done

1332
01:10:49,960 --> 01:10:53,479
Speaker 1: miracles for people at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

1333
01:10:53,520 --> 01:10:55,519
Speaker 1: So I don't want to discount that it was really.

1334
01:10:55,760 --> 01:10:57,120
Speaker 2: Reduce poverty for children.

1335
01:10:57,320 --> 01:11:01,759
Speaker 1: It had enormously effective. Nonetheless, a lot of the gains

1336
01:11:01,800 --> 01:11:05,240
Speaker 1: and wages have been eaten up by inflation. So once again,

1337
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:07,920
Speaker 1: it's the people at the lower end of the socioeconomic

1338
01:11:07,920 --> 01:11:11,040
Speaker 1: spectrum who are left to who face the most pain

1339
01:11:11,280 --> 01:11:12,599
Speaker 1: from just about any policy.

1340
01:11:13,360 --> 01:11:15,479
Speaker 2: So one of the things we really haven't spoken about

1341
01:11:15,560 --> 01:11:18,559
Speaker 2: very much is the supply chain. I want to focus

1342
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:25,000
Speaker 2: on semiconductors because you specifically write about Taiwan semiconductor and

1343
01:11:25,400 --> 01:11:28,680
Speaker 2: the shortage and how it's impacted everything from cars to computers.

1344
01:11:30,439 --> 01:11:33,679
Speaker 2: What drove that shortage and how much are we still

1345
01:11:33,680 --> 01:11:35,080
Speaker 2: dealing with the after effects of that.

1346
01:11:35,520 --> 01:11:37,960
Speaker 1: So it was just it was it was the increased

1347
01:11:38,000 --> 01:11:42,759
Speaker 1: demand combined with the increased time to ship. One CEO

1348
01:11:42,840 --> 01:11:44,800
Speaker 1: of a company told me it just it was like

1349
01:11:44,880 --> 01:11:47,880
Speaker 1: lost in translation. You just couldn't figure out where your gear,

1350
01:11:48,000 --> 01:11:51,200
Speaker 1: where your stuff was getting shipped from China. And so

1351
01:11:51,280 --> 01:11:54,400
Speaker 1: again it's this idea that we could and it's obviously

1352
01:11:54,439 --> 01:11:57,960
Speaker 1: stressed by the geopolitical tensions over Taiwan, but this idea

1353
01:11:58,000 --> 01:12:01,200
Speaker 1: that we could just mindlessly outsource everything that was critical

1354
01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:04,519
Speaker 1: to a very far away country and not maintain any

1355
01:12:04,560 --> 01:12:06,720
Speaker 1: capacity to do it here in the United States, and

1356
01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:09,360
Speaker 1: that was all going to be just peachy, kin it

1357
01:12:09,520 --> 01:12:12,000
Speaker 1: just I think the pandemic showed us that it's not

1358
01:12:12,120 --> 01:12:14,720
Speaker 1: that simple, and so now we're trying to figure out

1359
01:12:14,720 --> 01:12:18,160
Speaker 1: how to deal with that, especially with the geopolitical tensions

1360
01:12:18,160 --> 01:12:21,800
Speaker 1: over Taiwan, when you realize the United States literally can't

1361
01:12:21,880 --> 01:12:26,040
Speaker 1: break down if Taiwan semiconductor goes away because we've outsourced

1362
01:12:26,080 --> 01:12:28,560
Speaker 1: all of the critical manufacturing of semiconductors.

1363
01:12:28,840 --> 01:12:32,559
Speaker 2: So there's this ongoing political debate as to whether it's

1364
01:12:32,600 --> 01:12:36,599
Speaker 2: a pipe dream that we can bring manufacturing or critical

1365
01:12:36,640 --> 01:12:41,040
Speaker 2: manufacturing back to the United States. Can we bring semiconductor

1366
01:12:41,200 --> 01:12:46,280
Speaker 2: or evy battery production or next generation technologies like that here?

1367
01:12:47,720 --> 01:12:49,559
Speaker 2: Is this is this a pipe dream or is this

1368
01:12:49,640 --> 01:12:53,559
Speaker 2: a viable Hey, we can't leave it five thousand miles away.

1369
01:12:53,600 --> 01:12:54,599
Speaker 2: It just doesn't work for us.

1370
01:12:54,640 --> 01:12:56,559
Speaker 1: So I think the train has left the station on

1371
01:12:56,600 --> 01:12:59,679
Speaker 1: semiconductor manufacturing. When you look even at the a billions

1372
01:12:59,680 --> 01:13:02,120
Speaker 1: in the Chips Act, but you compare it to Taiwan

1373
01:13:02,160 --> 01:13:07,040
Speaker 1: Semiconductor's annual capbex budget, it's just there's no catching up.

1374
01:13:07,320 --> 01:13:10,599
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean we couldn't have manufacturing of some critical

1375
01:13:10,680 --> 01:13:13,519
Speaker 1: chips here in the US as a just in case backup,

1376
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:15,880
Speaker 1: But I think the idea that we're ever going to

1377
01:13:15,920 --> 01:13:20,240
Speaker 1: become a manufacturing powerhouse of semiconductor chips. Ever, again, I

1378
01:13:20,240 --> 01:13:22,680
Speaker 1: think we let that go. And again i'd blame a

1379
01:13:22,720 --> 01:13:25,320
Speaker 1: monomaniacal focus on the bottom line. Hey, they can do

1380
01:13:25,320 --> 01:13:27,920
Speaker 1: it cheaper over there. Let's go do it cheaper over there,

1381
01:13:28,040 --> 01:13:32,000
Speaker 1: without any thoughts about the long term. I also think though,

1382
01:13:32,160 --> 01:13:34,960
Speaker 1: it raises another question that to me is interesting, which is,

1383
01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:37,400
Speaker 1: do you remember the whole fur in the global financial

1384
01:13:37,439 --> 01:13:41,400
Speaker 1: crisis banks too big to fail They've got tax payer support. Well,

1385
01:13:41,640 --> 01:13:44,439
Speaker 1: what about hospitals, They've got tax payer support. What about

1386
01:13:44,439 --> 01:13:48,000
Speaker 1: semiconductor manufacturing? Now with the Chips Act, they've got tax

1387
01:13:48,040 --> 01:13:51,920
Speaker 1: pair support. So this whole idea of capitalism in the

1388
01:13:52,000 --> 01:13:56,000
Speaker 1: market and it's pure. Well it isn't, and so that

1389
01:13:56,160 --> 01:13:59,160
Speaker 1: was one of my big takeaways from this is if

1390
01:13:59,240 --> 01:14:02,360
Speaker 1: all sorts of industries have to have taxpayer support when

1391
01:14:02,400 --> 01:14:05,400
Speaker 1: times turn tough, don't we need to rethink the contract

1392
01:14:05,520 --> 01:14:07,040
Speaker 1: between companies and society.

1393
01:14:07,720 --> 01:14:11,040
Speaker 2: You might have thought, and I admittedly this is all

1394
01:14:11,120 --> 01:14:15,280
Speaker 2: hindsight bias, that after nine to eleven we would have said, hey,

1395
01:14:16,080 --> 01:14:19,840
Speaker 2: we are now dealing with asymmetrical warfare, what do we

1396
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:23,360
Speaker 2: need to do to make sure that just a defense

1397
01:14:23,800 --> 01:14:27,200
Speaker 2: department has access to what they need? That never seemed

1398
01:14:27,200 --> 01:14:29,400
Speaker 2: to happen, did it. I mean, it was chatter about

1399
01:14:29,400 --> 01:14:32,200
Speaker 2: it and then it just kind of faded the following quarter.

1400
01:14:32,320 --> 01:14:34,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Department of Defense has done this report, the

1401
01:14:34,800 --> 01:14:39,120
Speaker 1: Industrial Capabilities Report, every year, and it's pointed out that

1402
01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:42,639
Speaker 1: do to shareholder pressure to generate earnings, that all these

1403
01:14:42,720 --> 01:14:48,000
Speaker 1: critical aspects of manufacturing have gone overseas. And so it's

1404
01:14:48,160 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 1: easy to not pay any attention to that if you're

1405
01:14:51,160 --> 01:14:54,280
Speaker 1: just focused on this quarter's earnings or this year's earnings.

1406
01:14:54,560 --> 01:14:56,960
Speaker 1: But if you're actually focused on what the United States

1407
01:14:57,000 --> 01:14:59,479
Speaker 1: needs to do to be strong, you need to have

1408
01:15:00,040 --> 01:15:01,479
Speaker 1: a different set of values at work.

1409
01:15:02,360 --> 01:15:05,240
Speaker 2: So Lennon was right. The capitalists will sell you the

1410
01:15:05,320 --> 01:15:07,679
Speaker 2: rope to hang you business.

1411
01:15:08,040 --> 01:15:09,880
Speaker 1: It might be true. I mean, I'm still going to

1412
01:15:09,960 --> 01:15:13,840
Speaker 1: defend capitalism is a version of Winston Churchill's quote about

1413
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:16,640
Speaker 1: democracy the worst possible system with the possible exception of

1414
01:15:16,960 --> 01:15:19,920
Speaker 1: everything else up there. But I do think we need

1415
01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:22,479
Speaker 1: to have a discussion about where capitalism is appropriate and

1416
01:15:22,479 --> 01:15:24,439
Speaker 1: where it's not, and what's fears of life it should

1417
01:15:24,479 --> 01:15:26,840
Speaker 1: be contained, and what its limitations are.

1418
01:15:27,240 --> 01:15:30,200
Speaker 2: So I have another four hours worth of questions for you,

1419
01:15:30,560 --> 01:15:33,639
Speaker 2: but I know you have a lunch date, So let's

1420
01:15:33,680 --> 01:15:36,400
Speaker 2: jump to our speed round and we'll blow through these

1421
01:15:36,400 --> 01:15:39,640
Speaker 2: five questions as quickly as possible, starting with what have

1422
01:15:39,720 --> 01:15:42,240
Speaker 2: you been streaming these days? What's been keeping you entertained?

1423
01:15:42,920 --> 01:15:44,880
Speaker 1: So this is going to make you unhappy. But I

1424
01:15:44,920 --> 01:15:47,760
Speaker 1: grew up without a TV set, and I did, and

1425
01:15:47,800 --> 01:15:51,360
Speaker 1: I see there's amazing. We might be the only two

1426
01:15:51,360 --> 01:15:52,240
Speaker 1: people in the world.

1427
01:15:52,080 --> 01:15:54,800
Speaker 2: Who can say that I wasn't allowed to watch Oh.

1428
01:15:54,800 --> 01:15:56,960
Speaker 1: We didn't even have one. My parents still don't have one,

1429
01:15:57,120 --> 01:15:59,280
Speaker 1: so I don't. I don't stream that much.

1430
01:15:59,360 --> 01:16:01,000
Speaker 2: I know it's audio. I have.

1431
01:16:01,160 --> 01:16:03,120
Speaker 1: I have some things that i've that I've listened to

1432
01:16:03,200 --> 01:16:06,040
Speaker 1: that I love, but I default to a book when

1433
01:16:06,040 --> 01:16:09,120
Speaker 1: I'm when I'm left alone audio. I have been loving

1434
01:16:09,520 --> 01:16:13,160
Speaker 1: Huberman's podcast on health and longevity. He has a great

1435
01:16:13,200 --> 01:16:15,800
Speaker 1: podcast that just came out on meditation that makes you

1436
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:17,599
Speaker 1: think really differently about meditation.

1437
01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:20,960
Speaker 2: Umen. Yeah, I'm going to check out. Yeah. Let's talk

1438
01:16:20,960 --> 01:16:24,040
Speaker 2: about your mentors who helped shape your career as a writer.

1439
01:16:24,600 --> 01:16:27,080
Speaker 1: So Joon No Sarah, who's my co author on this book,

1440
01:16:27,120 --> 01:16:28,920
Speaker 1: and my co author and all the devils are here

1441
01:16:28,960 --> 01:16:31,800
Speaker 1: and edited the smartest guys in the room. He was

1442
01:16:31,840 --> 01:16:34,360
Speaker 1: my editor at Fortune for a lot of years, and

1443
01:16:34,400 --> 01:16:36,800
Speaker 1: he taught me and still teaches me to this day,

1444
01:16:36,840 --> 01:16:38,360
Speaker 1: a lot about writing and storytelling.

1445
01:16:39,680 --> 01:16:41,760
Speaker 2: Since we mentioned books, let's talk about some of your

1446
01:16:41,760 --> 01:16:43,439
Speaker 2: favorites and what you're reading right now.

1447
01:16:43,840 --> 01:16:46,360
Speaker 1: So I do a podcast with a guy named Luigi's

1448
01:16:46,360 --> 01:16:48,760
Speaker 1: and gallis at the University of Chicago, and I think

1449
01:16:48,920 --> 01:16:50,720
Speaker 1: I have to read a ton for that, as you

1450
01:16:50,800 --> 01:16:53,040
Speaker 1: do for this. It's a lot of work, right, But

1451
01:16:53,160 --> 01:16:55,839
Speaker 1: I think the books that I read for the podcasts

1452
01:16:55,840 --> 01:16:58,200
Speaker 1: that have been most influential for me were two contradict

1453
01:16:58,240 --> 01:17:02,639
Speaker 1: reviews on meritocracy, one by professor at Harvard named Michael Sandel,

1454
01:17:02,760 --> 01:17:06,000
Speaker 1: and the other by a professor at Oxford named Adrian Woldridge,

1455
01:17:06,280 --> 01:17:08,760
Speaker 1: and one is kind of a defensive meritocracy and the

1456
01:17:08,800 --> 01:17:13,200
Speaker 1: other is skepticism about meritocracy. So Adrian Wildridge's book is

1457
01:17:13,240 --> 01:17:16,479
Speaker 1: The Aristocracy of Talent, How meritocracy made the modern world?

1458
01:17:16,800 --> 01:17:19,639
Speaker 1: And Michael Sandel's book is called The Tyranny of merit

1459
01:17:19,680 --> 01:17:22,520
Speaker 1: Can We Find the Common Good? And I'd say Sandel's

1460
01:17:22,560 --> 01:17:26,080
Speaker 1: perspective on meritocracy is quite skeptical, and Wildridge's book is

1461
01:17:26,080 --> 01:17:30,000
Speaker 1: more of a defensive meritocracy. And they're a really interesting,

1462
01:17:30,680 --> 01:17:34,639
Speaker 1: interesting juxtaposition. And then don't laugh. I am a huge

1463
01:17:34,760 --> 01:17:38,160
Speaker 1: consumer of fantasy novels, and so I am also reading

1464
01:17:38,160 --> 01:17:41,960
Speaker 1: The Wheel of Time, which has which has just become

1465
01:17:42,000 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: a Netflix series, and I swear I'm going to stream

1466
01:17:44,400 --> 01:17:45,759
Speaker 1: that as soon as I finished the books.

1467
01:17:45,920 --> 01:17:48,200
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know you were a fantasy fan. Give

1468
01:17:48,240 --> 01:17:51,120
Speaker 2: me some other authors you like? So, because I go

1469
01:17:51,200 --> 01:17:53,000
Speaker 2: back to like Peer's Anthony and.

1470
01:17:53,040 --> 01:17:58,280
Speaker 1: Early So do I back back to Tolkien? Of course? Yes,

1471
01:17:58,360 --> 01:18:01,600
Speaker 1: that's a gimme game, owns of course. George double R.

1472
01:18:01,680 --> 01:18:04,439
Speaker 2: Martin, I would like to read that. I started watching

1473
01:18:04,479 --> 01:18:06,240
Speaker 2: it and said, I got to read.

1474
01:18:06,080 --> 01:18:08,720
Speaker 1: This I know I read. I read them all, but the.

1475
01:18:08,800 --> 01:18:10,599
Speaker 2: Probably as great as everyone says.

1476
01:18:10,720 --> 01:18:13,040
Speaker 1: They're as great as everybody says. The problem is now

1477
01:18:13,120 --> 01:18:16,000
Speaker 1: I can't watch the show because it's so stressful to

1478
01:18:16,040 --> 01:18:17,960
Speaker 1: read those books that you can't relive some of the

1479
01:18:18,040 --> 01:18:19,400
Speaker 1: high moments of high stress.

1480
01:18:20,320 --> 01:18:21,960
Speaker 2: You know, he kills a lot of people.

1481
01:18:22,160 --> 01:18:24,720
Speaker 1: There's there's another So I have a fourteen year old

1482
01:18:24,760 --> 01:18:27,360
Speaker 1: daughter and a twelve year old daughter, so I consume

1483
01:18:27,479 --> 01:18:31,880
Speaker 1: an inordinate amount of fantasy novels and I can't keep

1484
01:18:32,040 --> 01:18:34,479
Speaker 1: all the names straight because that's what my daughter reads.

1485
01:18:34,520 --> 01:18:37,080
Speaker 1: But right now I'm in the process of reading some

1486
01:18:37,240 --> 01:18:39,400
Speaker 1: by a woman named Rissa Meyer, which are rewrites of

1487
01:18:39,439 --> 01:18:42,759
Speaker 1: fairy tales from a different perspective and they are super interesting.

1488
01:18:43,160 --> 01:18:45,479
Speaker 2: And the Last kind of Wicked, which is told from

1489
01:18:45,479 --> 01:18:46,560
Speaker 2: the witch's perspective.

1490
01:18:46,720 --> 01:18:49,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like Maleficent. But back to things that.

1491
01:18:49,720 --> 01:18:51,600
Speaker 2: I love Moens so do I.

1492
01:18:52,120 --> 01:18:53,840
Speaker 1: But back to things that I read as a child

1493
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:55,960
Speaker 1: that I think are really interesting to reread. Now I've

1494
01:18:56,000 --> 01:18:57,800
Speaker 1: been rereading a lot of Isaac Ossamov.

1495
01:18:58,120 --> 01:18:58,760
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.

1496
01:18:58,840 --> 01:19:00,960
Speaker 1: I think, in this in this era where we're talking

1497
01:19:00,960 --> 01:19:05,720
Speaker 1: about AI, to realize how incredibly prophetic Awesomov was with

1498
01:19:05,760 --> 01:19:08,800
Speaker 1: his three Laws of Robots and his and his and

1499
01:19:08,840 --> 01:19:11,600
Speaker 1: his thoughts about the world. He's a terrible writer, and

1500
01:19:11,640 --> 01:19:13,439
Speaker 1: you have to struggle through his prose, but if he

1501
01:19:13,520 --> 01:19:15,320
Speaker 1: read it, yes, he is terrible.

1502
01:19:15,600 --> 01:19:18,960
Speaker 2: He's a great storyteller, and some of his some of

1503
01:19:19,000 --> 01:19:23,519
Speaker 2: his prose is not the most polished. But his idea

1504
01:19:23,600 --> 01:19:24,879
Speaker 2: is everything.

1505
01:19:24,960 --> 01:19:28,599
Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly his prose is. His prose is clunky,

1506
01:19:28,760 --> 01:19:32,760
Speaker 1: and his characters are one dimensional, but his ideas and

1507
01:19:32,800 --> 01:19:34,960
Speaker 1: the fact that he could see all of where we

1508
01:19:35,000 --> 01:19:38,120
Speaker 1: are today from when he was writing, I just think

1509
01:19:38,160 --> 01:19:39,360
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating.

1510
01:19:39,520 --> 01:19:45,880
Speaker 2: So foundation trilogy. Robert C. J. Serrah Larry Nivin. The

1511
01:19:45,960 --> 01:19:49,680
Speaker 2: last question is Anthony I mean to say nothing of

1512
01:19:49,720 --> 01:19:51,840
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick, which is just next.

1513
01:19:51,640 --> 01:19:55,480
Speaker 1: Level, Yes, and and the and the greatest of all Dune.

1514
01:19:55,280 --> 01:19:59,759
Speaker 2: Right, you know, I've been plowing through the most recent

1515
01:20:00,080 --> 01:20:04,559
Speaker 2: and version. It's like every time there's a decade goes by,

1516
01:20:04,640 --> 01:20:11,400
Speaker 2: someone reattempts to redo that story and it's just too grand.

1517
01:20:11,479 --> 01:20:14,360
Speaker 2: Unless you're going to do Lawrence of Arabia, right, you

1518
01:20:14,479 --> 01:20:17,719
Speaker 2: just can't do Dune. And it seems every attempt has failed.

1519
01:20:17,960 --> 01:20:20,400
Speaker 2: What sort of advice would you give to a recent

1520
01:20:20,520 --> 01:20:25,520
Speaker 2: college grad interested in a career in either investing finance

1521
01:20:25,840 --> 01:20:27,400
Speaker 2: or journalism.

1522
01:20:26,880 --> 01:20:31,040
Speaker 1: And journalism a career in journalism, I might say, find

1523
01:20:31,040 --> 01:20:33,080
Speaker 1: something else where you can make money. And then right

1524
01:20:33,200 --> 01:20:36,200
Speaker 1: on the side, No, seriously, I would say to anybody

1525
01:20:36,200 --> 01:20:39,040
Speaker 1: interested in anything, just do something. You never know where

1526
01:20:39,080 --> 01:20:40,680
Speaker 1: your path in life is going to take you. But

1527
01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:42,840
Speaker 1: if you don't do anything, then you know where it's

1528
01:20:42,840 --> 01:20:44,680
Speaker 1: going to take you, which is nowhere. And so if

1529
01:20:44,680 --> 01:20:46,280
Speaker 1: you're not sure what you want to do, just go

1530
01:20:46,360 --> 01:20:48,519
Speaker 1: do things. Go do interesting things. Go try to be

1531
01:20:48,560 --> 01:20:51,960
Speaker 1: around smart people doing interesting things. I began my career

1532
01:20:52,000 --> 01:20:56,000
Speaker 1: working at Golden Sechs, and I do something very different

1533
01:20:56,000 --> 01:20:58,280
Speaker 1: from that now. But I wouldn't have the career I

1534
01:20:58,320 --> 01:21:00,920
Speaker 1: have now if I hadn't started working working at Goldman

1535
01:21:01,320 --> 01:21:04,400
Speaker 1: And so just do things, and what you do, we'll

1536
01:21:04,439 --> 01:21:06,679
Speaker 1: open up other doors that will take you someplace else.

1537
01:21:07,120 --> 01:21:09,599
Speaker 2: And our final question, what do you know about the

1538
01:21:09,600 --> 01:21:14,800
Speaker 2: world of investing finance writing today? You wish you knew

1539
01:21:14,920 --> 01:21:17,639
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five years ago when you were first getting started.

1540
01:21:18,040 --> 01:21:21,320
Speaker 1: I wish I had understood that it wasn't just about numbers,

1541
01:21:21,400 --> 01:21:24,600
Speaker 1: that it's about people. It's about history. You have to

1542
01:21:24,680 --> 01:21:28,639
Speaker 1: understand psychology, You have to understand the past. That makes

1543
01:21:28,680 --> 01:21:32,440
Speaker 1: it so much more interesting and infinitely and just interesting.

1544
01:21:32,760 --> 01:21:35,840
Speaker 1: And I wish I had understood what we talked about

1545
01:21:35,880 --> 01:21:38,439
Speaker 1: earlier on the podcast, which is that that most important

1546
01:21:38,520 --> 01:21:40,519
Speaker 1: rule is the thing you used in kindergarten, which is

1547
01:21:40,600 --> 01:21:44,320
Speaker 1: use your imagination because anything can happen. And don't ever

1548
01:21:44,400 --> 01:21:46,920
Speaker 1: look at the world and say no, no, no, that

1549
01:21:46,960 --> 01:21:48,960
Speaker 1: can't happen. And Ron can't be a fraud, it's the

1550
01:21:48,960 --> 01:21:51,880
Speaker 1: most respected company in America. Or no, no, no, the

1551
01:21:51,880 --> 01:21:54,280
Speaker 1: big banks on Wall Street can't go bankrupt. Look at

1552
01:21:54,280 --> 01:21:57,240
Speaker 1: their multi billion dollar balance sheets and their gleaming headquarters.

1553
01:21:57,240 --> 01:22:00,040
Speaker 1: This can't happen. Or a pandemic can't shut down in

1554
01:22:00,120 --> 01:22:02,479
Speaker 1: the United States for two or three years. God knows

1555
01:22:02,520 --> 01:22:06,439
Speaker 1: that can't happen. Everything can happen, So just remember, use

1556
01:22:06,439 --> 01:22:07,160
Speaker 1: your imagination.

1557
01:22:07,560 --> 01:22:11,960
Speaker 2: William Goldman's is penned my favorite expression of all time.

1558
01:22:12,439 --> 01:22:14,800
Speaker 2: Nobody knows anything right.

1559
01:22:15,320 --> 01:22:16,600
Speaker 1: That is pretty fantastic.

1560
01:22:16,800 --> 01:22:19,240
Speaker 2: Bethany, thank you for being so generous with your time.

1561
01:22:19,439 --> 01:22:22,519
Speaker 2: We have been speaking with Bethany MacLean, co author of

1562
01:22:23,080 --> 01:22:27,120
Speaker 2: The Big Foul. If you enjoy this conversation. Be sure

1563
01:22:27,120 --> 01:22:30,640
Speaker 2: and check out any of the previous five hundred plus

1564
01:22:30,640 --> 01:22:35,080
Speaker 2: discussions we've had over the past nine years. You can

1565
01:22:35,120 --> 01:22:40,760
Speaker 2: find those at YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, wherever you find your

1566
01:22:40,800 --> 01:22:44,599
Speaker 2: favorite podcasts. Sign up for my daily reading lists at

1567
01:22:44,640 --> 01:22:49,160
Speaker 2: ridolts dot com. Follow me on Twitter at Barry Ridholt's

1568
01:22:49,439 --> 01:22:52,160
Speaker 2: Be sure and check out all of the Bloomberg Family

1569
01:22:52,240 --> 01:22:56,600
Speaker 2: of podcasts at podcasts. I would be remiss if I

1570
01:22:56,640 --> 01:22:59,480
Speaker 2: did not thank the crack team that helps these conversations

1571
01:23:00,360 --> 01:23:04,360
Speaker 2: get done each week. Anna Luke is my producer. Sarah

1572
01:23:04,520 --> 01:23:08,600
Speaker 2: Livesey is my audio engineer at Teak of Albron is

1573
01:23:08,640 --> 01:23:13,160
Speaker 2: our project manager. Sean Russo is my researcher. I'm Barry Rutults.

1574
01:23:13,400 --> 01:23:17,120
Speaker 2: You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.