Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis, play talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Trevis. Welcome in Wins and Lost his podcast.
Speaker 1: I appreciate all of you hanging out with us. I
Speaker 1: believe we're coming up right on forty of these long
Speaker 1: form conversations that we have had, and the feedback on
Speaker 1: them has been phenomenal. If this is the first one
Speaker 1: that you're listening to, i'd encourage you to go check
Speaker 1: them out from the world of sports, media, politics, business
Speaker 1: and also some focus on COVID, which is what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do again Part two with oh Vic Roy. And
Speaker 1: before I bring him in, I gotta say it's rare
Speaker 1: I get praise for anything that I do for my
Speaker 1: wife in any part of my life at all. But
Speaker 1: after our first conversation, which we had back in August,
Speaker 1: she said, I wish everybody in the country could hear
Speaker 1: him and could hear that conversation because it cut through
Speaker 1: so much of the north Ways and got to the
Speaker 1: essence of COVID our response how to balance out going
Speaker 1: back to school. From the perspective of August, it now
Speaker 1: has been whatever. It is nearly six months since we
Speaker 1: last talked. We still are in the throes of much
Speaker 1: of the COVID related hysteria I would call it. And
Speaker 1: certainly we're now changing administrations because we're recording, uh the
Speaker 1: day after the Biden inauguration, and so Ovic again, you're
Speaker 1: coming at my wife's request for part two of this discussion.
Speaker 1: So there's high there's high potential here, but also high
Speaker 1: danger because I know for sure that she'll be listening,
Speaker 1: and she even sent me a couple of questions that
Speaker 1: she wanted me to ask. So first of all, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming with us again. Thanks for being so great
Speaker 1: in August. If you haven't heard that August conversation, I
Speaker 1: would encourage you, maybe if you're starting this one, to pause,
Speaker 1: go back into the podcast listen to that August conversation first,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the background. I'm not necessarily going
Speaker 1: to go back over again in because many of you
Speaker 1: have already heard it and I want to kind of
Speaker 1: get an update on your thoughts. So thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on again. People loved our conversation last time, and I
Speaker 1: hope we can help out a lot of people here
Speaker 1: and they will enjoy this one. And get informed just
Speaker 1: as well as they did back in August. Bakeley, what's
Speaker 1: your wife's name, Laura l A R A And just
Speaker 1: like you. Uh, she is from Oakland County, so she
Speaker 1: went to lass Or High School. She grew up in Bloomfield.
Speaker 1: So I went to the University of Michigan from there
Speaker 1: and then we met in law school. So so Laura,
Speaker 1: my wife is definitely listening right now. And uh, and
Speaker 1: you guys are both fellow Michiganders at least in your youth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a drive by laws Er High to Detroit Country
Speaker 1: Day every morning on my way because we talked about
Speaker 1: we talked about that last time where Chris Webber had
Speaker 1: gone to Detroit Country Day in Birmingham, Michigan, which is
Speaker 1: where my wife and I got married back back in
Speaker 1: the day back in two thousand four. Right, Yeah, well, uh,
Speaker 1: thank for me, Thank you Laura for for those kind words,
Speaker 1: and I hope I can live up to it this time.
Speaker 1: All right, quick background again, I would encourage you if
Speaker 1: you want a longer form background of how Ovic ended
Speaker 1: up doing what he does, go listen to our August
Speaker 1: twenty one conversation. But I just want to reset the
Speaker 1: table because some people won't do that. You grew up,
Speaker 1: like you just said, playing basketball with Chris Wheb at
Speaker 1: h AT in Birmingham, Michigan. Uh. You then went to
Speaker 1: m I T. And then you went to Yale for
Speaker 1: medical school. Do you want to give people like a
Speaker 1: two minute synopsis of what you do in your professional
Speaker 1: life and have done in your professional life since leaving
Speaker 1: and finishing your schooling. Yeah? So my my undergraduate major
Speaker 1: was effectively molecular biology. So the genetics DNA and genetics worked,
Speaker 1: and how how all that plays into how cells aren't work,
Speaker 1: how our organs work, our bodies work, how diseases work.
Speaker 1: And I went to med school, and then after med school,
Speaker 1: I didn't practice medicine. I ended up joining an investment
Speaker 1: firm called Being Capital to help them figure out the
Speaker 1: biotech industry. So I spent a dozen years on Wall
Speaker 1: Street in Boston and New York, so not not not
Speaker 1: always in the physical Wall Street, but working as an
Speaker 1: investor investing in biotech companies, including vaccine companies and companies
Speaker 1: that developed treatments for various diseases, cancer, things like that,
Speaker 1: And along the way I got really interested in healthcare policy.
Speaker 1: Mitt Romney, as many people will know as the founder
Speaker 1: of bank Capital, and I ended up working for his
Speaker 1: presidential campaign in twelve. He and his team asked me
Speaker 1: to help them design their health reform plan for the
Speaker 1: twelve presidential race, and that led me down the rabbit
Speaker 1: hole of Obamacare and health reform and public policy in general.
Speaker 1: And now I run a think tank based in Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas called the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity or
Speaker 1: free opt dot org online f r e O p
Speaker 1: P dot org, and we work on ways to expand
Speaker 1: economic opportunity to those at least have it using free enterprise,
Speaker 1: individual liberty, technological innovation, and plurals and in in other words, Uh,
Speaker 1: people like me believe that free enterprise the thing that's
Speaker 1: lifted people out of poverty all over the world, all
Speaker 1: over the country, and we need to rededicate ourselves of
Speaker 1: doing that for the people who are struggling to make
Speaker 1: it in this incredibly challenging time that we live in now. Amen,
Speaker 1: you're capitalist exactly, which is like it's like some people
Speaker 1: are afraid to say they're actually capitalists nowadays. Uh. And so, uh,
Speaker 1: the data and what I love about it. So I
Speaker 1: talked about this back in August. But I became aware
Speaker 1: of you because there was so much noise, uh in
Speaker 1: this COVID coverage in the media. And I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't need people to tell me what
Speaker 1: I should think. I would like to be able to
Speaker 1: see the numbers myself and make rational decisions. And so
Speaker 1: I first became aware of you because you were looking
Speaker 1: at the stratification from an age range perspective of how
Speaker 1: COVID was impacting different populations, right, because one of the
Speaker 1: first flaws, I think, uh, the original ends as it were,
Speaker 1: potentially of our response to COVID has been to treat
Speaker 1: this as if it is an equal opportunity disease that
Speaker 1: impacts everybody equally, much like because you hear this analogy
Speaker 1: all the time the nineteen eighteen flew right, which had
Speaker 1: a much more consistent impact across all age ranges, and
Speaker 1: so the decision to shut down schools, for example, was
Speaker 1: predicated on the idea, Oh, the places that did that
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighteen had better success. But the problem is
Speaker 1: that schools and school aged children, unlike in nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: are not primary vectors for the spread of this disease.
Speaker 1: So the positive impact in terms of lessening the spread
Speaker 1: is not in any way. We're basically fighting the war
Speaker 1: with the technology of the last war, when this new
Speaker 1: war is entirely different, right, And that's what often happens
Speaker 1: in wars. You try to take the lessons that you
Speaker 1: learned from the last war. The problem is the situation
Speaker 1: has changed and this isn't the same thing anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that that war with a hundred and three
Speaker 1: years ago, and it's a completely different virus. I mean,
Speaker 1: every virus is different. Influenza virus is the way they
Speaker 1: behave are different than the way coronaviruses behave in your body,
Speaker 1: the way they attack you, the kinds of people they attack.
Speaker 1: We actually have known from from previous coronaviruses that coronaviruses
Speaker 1: tend to attack older people, tend to be problematic at
Speaker 1: nursing homes. So people who really looked at the science
Speaker 1: quote unquote should have known that we really needed to
Speaker 1: focus on protecting the elderly. But but that's not what
Speaker 1: we did, and that was tragic. Okay, So I asked
Speaker 1: you last time, what letter grade would you give our
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be partisan our political here I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, as a policy perspective, what letter grade would
Speaker 1: you give our response to COVID as a country. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: that's a tough one. I mean, you know, I would
Speaker 1: probably say, in fact, you know what here's all do
Speaker 1: is we actually actually looked at all the advanced economic
Speaker 1: countries in the world at free ap and be compared like,
Speaker 1: how's everyone doing, both in terms of just desper capita,
Speaker 1: in terms of like the actual policy responses, economic restrictions,
Speaker 1: school closures. And you know, as time has gone on,
Speaker 1: the grade that we would give the US as declined
Speaker 1: because as time has gone on, we've been the country
Speaker 1: that has actually the most lockdowns or some of the
Speaker 1: most severe lockdowns. Not the most severe in the world
Speaker 1: right now that goes to Australia New Zealand, but but
Speaker 1: over the over the eleven month period, if you add
Speaker 1: it all up, particularly because of California, New York, the
Speaker 1: Blue or states where they've been much more aggressive on lockdowns,
Speaker 1: we've had some of the most severe economic restrictions, and
Speaker 1: yet California is seeing massive spike in cases the lockdowns
Speaker 1: aren't doing anything right. So you put all that together,
Speaker 1: the school closures, the lockdowns, and yet the spike in
Speaker 1: cases and you have to say that that the US
Speaker 1: is somewhere between a D and F, you know, overall
Speaker 1: at this point. And it didn't have to be that way,
Speaker 1: because we were going to have death due to COVID.
Speaker 1: We were going to have people who are vulnerable who
Speaker 1: were hit just like in every other country, every other
Speaker 1: large country that's developed has had that problem. But where
Speaker 1: we really have UM, what the beds, so to speak,
Speaker 1: is that we did things that we're provably not working,
Speaker 1: like keeping schools closed, like keeping the economy shut down
Speaker 1: in certain states, instead of focusing on the real problem,
Speaker 1: which was nursing homes and the elderly living in these
Speaker 1: kind of dorm room like facilities where we need to
Speaker 1: do more to protective. Finally we started to get the
Speaker 1: message around that, but by the time we did, UH,
Speaker 1: the virus had already spreads throughout those communities. All Right,
Speaker 1: if the country gets somewhere between A D and F,
Speaker 1: what does the American media get in the way that
Speaker 1: they have covered uh COVID. In your mind, as a
Speaker 1: guy who looks at the data, what grade would you
Speaker 1: give the overall American media? Oh? I mean, f is
Speaker 1: a generous grade, right, like you, you'd have to give
Speaker 1: them worse than enough, because I mean the way that
Speaker 1: media behaved was was almost a sabotage, uh, the way
Speaker 1: we we responded to COVID. In fact, there's there's probably
Speaker 1: no institution, if you can call the media an institution,
Speaker 1: there's no institution that is more responsible for how bad
Speaker 1: the US COVID response has been than the media. Just
Speaker 1: to give some examples, So as you talked about Clay,
Speaker 1: we know from the data that the overwhelming risk in
Speaker 1: terms of severe illness, hospitalization death from from COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: is in the elderly. And yet if you actually pull
Speaker 1: average Americans and ask them, like, what's your what's my
Speaker 1: perception of my risk from COVID, it's actually young people
Speaker 1: who are the most scared of dieing of COVID because
Speaker 1: the media has been telling them day in day out
Speaker 1: for a year, for for months now that that they're
Speaker 1: the ones who should be scared witless because they're the
Speaker 1: ones not going to school, they're the ones on zoom
Speaker 1: all the time with their teachers or whatever. So that's
Speaker 1: just wanting example of the incredible malpractice that has gone
Speaker 1: and you marry that with this part as an environment
Speaker 1: where there's there's a there was has been such a
Speaker 1: desire to blame Trump for everything that has gone wrong
Speaker 1: that people haven't been willing to see or examine where
Speaker 1: where things really have gone wrong. So the all the
Speaker 1: things that the Governor Cuomo continues to do to mess
Speaker 1: up the COVID response in New York for example, or
Speaker 1: the restrictions in California that aren't working for example, or
Speaker 1: the fact that you know schools if you you know,
Speaker 1: have you seen Clay any articles about COVID breakouts and
Speaker 1: schools for the last four months, and you know that
Speaker 1: if there was one school in Kansas that had had
Speaker 1: like people in the hospital because of COVID and because
Speaker 1: they reopened the school, it would be on the front
Speaker 1: page of the New York Times. So there's basically been
Speaker 1: no incident of serious COVID problems from reopening schools. But
Speaker 1: as anyone written any think pieces about wow, we've we've
Speaker 1: kind of got the school thing wrong. No, it's been
Speaker 1: this kind of people who moved on to the next
Speaker 1: drive by thing to complain about. So yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the media, the media has been terrible and you can
Speaker 1: sort of shake your fist at the television or Twitter
Speaker 1: or the New York Times or whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: But I try to think about it more in terms of, Okay,
Speaker 1: the media has been terrible, what is the solution, right,
Speaker 1: So if we ever have this kind of problem again,
Speaker 1: how do we think about having a a better flow
Speaker 1: of information to everyday people? And that's a harder thing
Speaker 1: to think about. I mean, I I can't say that, Clay,
Speaker 1: that I have the answer today because if you think
Speaker 1: about the public health establishment, which which comes in alongside
Speaker 1: the media for a lot of a lot of my criticism,
Speaker 1: you know, you have the so called leading experts at
Speaker 1: the leading universities saying the same things at the media,
Speaker 1: saying that everyone needs to be terrified, hide in their
Speaker 1: basements and uh and not go out. And that's the
Speaker 1: only way to solve this problem. And that's ah, that's
Speaker 1: not a sustainable policy. As we're seeing, like why is
Speaker 1: it the COVID is COVID case rising today. It's because
Speaker 1: people cannot sit in their basements for a year. They
Speaker 1: just can't. And and the public health profession understood that
Speaker 1: before COVID, the consensus, the conventional wisdom. The excess expert
Speaker 1: opinion then pre COVID was well, you can't lock down
Speaker 1: the economy. That never works because people eventually stop listening
Speaker 1: to you and just go about their business. So you
Speaker 1: have to have a better strategy than that. That was
Speaker 1: the conventional wisdom among experts a year ago, and it
Speaker 1: isn't today. And that's a curious thing so much that
Speaker 1: I want to unpack from that, and it is. It
Speaker 1: is incredibly frustrating, I know to a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are listening out there to see the data right
Speaker 1: like you do, and to have your background and not
Speaker 1: be able to convey it to everyone what the data says.
Speaker 1: And I always say, my wife says, I don't need
Speaker 1: therapy because I get to say exactly what I think
Speaker 1: every day, right for better or worse, uh, through my
Speaker 1: radio show, through my television show. Like I'm fortunate in
Speaker 1: many ways to be a member of the media, but
Speaker 1: there are people out there who will come after me
Speaker 1: on a regular basis because what I am sharing is
Speaker 1: not the quote unquote conventional wisdom, right, or they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not a doctor, how in the world are you
Speaker 1: able to have an opinion on the whether school should
Speaker 1: be open or not. And my answer is, if you
Speaker 1: are a reasonably intelligent person, being able to analyze data
Speaker 1: is one of the most integral assets of any human anywhere.
Speaker 1: Right risk analysis is arguably the most fundamental trait that
Speaker 1: has allowed humans to exist and propagate as a species.
Speaker 1: Right Like, that's innately what we all have to do.
Speaker 1: But it seems to me that in this social media age, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you said what I've been saying and
Speaker 1: what you've been saying four months, Hey, elderly people, people
Speaker 1: with suppressed immune systems, people with major health related concerns
Speaker 1: are who COVID is attacking. We need to protect those people,
Speaker 1: but we need to maintain the rest of our economy
Speaker 1: and let our society function. The immediate response was, Oh,
Speaker 1: you don't care about Grandma's You want everybody to die.
Speaker 1: It seems too in many ways have been a fundamentally
Speaker 1: broken marketplace of ideas because the right ideas haven't won
Speaker 1: and carried the day, either in media or public policy.
Speaker 1: It seems to me, you know, Clay, there's a there's
Speaker 1: an analogy or a comparison. We can make the sports
Speaker 1: here because you think about the whole moneyball sports analytics thing. Right,
Speaker 1: all these people who came in who are sort of
Speaker 1: nerdy ivy leaguers or whatever, just people who are math nerds,
Speaker 1: never had played the sport, and they were always clashing
Speaker 1: with the scouts, who are veterans of the game, you know,
Speaker 1: using their intuition, their feel for the athletes to have
Speaker 1: that view of UH. And then they always looked down
Speaker 1: on the nerds. They said, oh, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: you don't get it because you've never played the game.
Speaker 1: You you know, you know, you've never seen anything. But
Speaker 1: the nerds ultimately have have one that that that debate there, right,
Speaker 1: and and and and the differences in sports. The right
Speaker 1: answer wins right, the right answer wins championships, and the
Speaker 1: right answer puts the best team on the field or
Speaker 1: on the court. And so you can be vindicated if
Speaker 1: you if you apply those unconventional UH methods to sports.
Speaker 1: The difference in public policy is the tenure professors at
Speaker 1: Harvard and Stanford, who more at Harvard than Stanford, we
Speaker 1: should say, but but the tenure professors who say we
Speaker 1: should we should keep schools closed and UH and and
Speaker 1: terrify all the teenagers and the children. They're still Harvard professors,
Speaker 1: they're still in position, so there's already some of them
Speaker 1: are joining the Biden administrations. So in that sense, that's
Speaker 1: the one thing about public policy is it's not a meritocracy.
Speaker 1: Wrong ideas, wrong policies can continue to be conveyed and
Speaker 1: continue to be in force even if they've been proven wrong.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating and that's well said, and it's true, and
Speaker 1: that's why I've always argued that sports represents the ultimate
Speaker 1: foundation of the meritocratic ideal, because everybody's goal is to win,
Speaker 1: and whoever makes it more likely that you are going
Speaker 1: to win gets employed, right whether I mean, you can
Speaker 1: have Antonio Brown, who's got all sorts of different issues
Speaker 1: off the field, but if the Tampa Bay Buccaneers decide
Speaker 1: that he makes it more likely they're gonna win a
Speaker 1: football game, and if they think Tom Brady can work
Speaker 1: with him, they're gonna find a way to bring him in. Right.
Speaker 1: A talent ultimately trumps everything. Almost there is a limit
Speaker 1: where your problems can exceed your talents, but that's relatively rare,
Speaker 1: and there's a way too immediately vindicated and frankly in
Speaker 1: the world that you're coming from which is the capitalistic environment,
Speaker 1: a market based economy over time rewards in theory, the
Speaker 1: best business so long as they're certain, you know, as
Speaker 1: long as there's not a monopoly involved, as long as
Speaker 1: there's not some sort of untoward practice taking place. But
Speaker 1: that's why capitalism ultimately works so well. Right as you do,
Speaker 1: much like in sports, get a verdict on whether or
Speaker 1: not your business made sense totally, I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's uh. You know, there are economists who
Speaker 1: say it's like, look, you know, if you if you're
Speaker 1: a business, you don't have your incentive is to be
Speaker 1: as inclusive as possible, cause you want every customer, you
Speaker 1: want the employees working for you. And now, obviously it
Speaker 1: hasn't always worked that way historically, but that's not because
Speaker 1: the previous system was a free market system. It wasn't
Speaker 1: because there was the prejudice, there was the segregation, there
Speaker 1: was a gym crow, there was the stuff going on
Speaker 1: that really prevented people from taking advantage of the talent
Speaker 1: that was all around them. And uh, and companies obviously
Speaker 1: work hard to try to change that. How frustrating is
Speaker 1: it to you as someone who has been sharing the
Speaker 1: data from the from the moment this all started. Why
Speaker 1: school should be open, the stratification of age, range of
Speaker 1: death and how that can govern our decisions for that
Speaker 1: not to have been inculcated fully into public policy, and
Speaker 1: to see us here as we are now into a
Speaker 1: new administration, not able to for instance, get kids back
Speaker 1: in school. Because what drives me crazy Ovic and we're
Speaker 1: talking to O vic Roy. I encourage you to go
Speaker 1: follow him at ovic a v I K at a
Speaker 1: v I K on Twitter. Be sure to catch live
Speaker 1: editions of Outkicked. The coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at
Speaker 1: six am Eastern three am Pacific is. People who claim
Speaker 1: that they care about equity the most are propounding now
Speaker 1: the most inequitable outcome of our lives for the most part,
Speaker 1: in requiring kids in public schools, very often in cities
Speaker 1: who don't have WiFi at home, who may not have
Speaker 1: parents at home, and who don't have access to outside
Speaker 1: of school education, to be outside of school for a year.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes me want to pull my hair
Speaker 1: out as a kid who went to public school K
Speaker 1: through twelve and now is fortunate enough to live in
Speaker 1: a district where my kids are in school, and I
Speaker 1: got a kid in private school as well. But if
Speaker 1: you have advantages, which I do, you can take advantage
Speaker 1: of those opportunities and give your kids those advantages. But
Speaker 1: most kids don't have that in this country. It's infuriating
Speaker 1: to me, you know, totally. I mean the most. I
Speaker 1: tend not to get frustrated play and just because, like,
Speaker 1: if you do what I do for a living, which
Speaker 1: is trying to persuade people of your ideas and things
Speaker 1: like that, if you're gonna get frustrated when people don't
Speaker 1: listen to you, this isn't a job for you, right
Speaker 1: Like you have to be you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to accept that not everyone's gonna agree with you, and
Speaker 1: that it's hard work. If you've got a contrarian or
Speaker 1: dissenting opinion about the way the world should be, or
Speaker 1: the way policy should be, or the way the law
Speaker 1: should be, it's your It's up to you to persuade
Speaker 1: everyone else that you're right, and that's gonna mean talking
Speaker 1: a lot of people who disagree with you. So that's
Speaker 1: if you don't have that sort of temperament, then you
Speaker 1: know you can't really do this kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: in that sense, I'm I'm a most really fine, but
Speaker 1: I will say that the one, the one moment or
Speaker 1: or period of time where I was most my blood
Speaker 1: pressure was really arising, admittedly was a selfish one where
Speaker 1: there was a point in time in the in the
Speaker 1: spring or summer, I can't remember exactly what it was
Speaker 1: now when the Austin the Travis County, which is the
Speaker 1: county that contains Austin, Texas, where I live, there was
Speaker 1: this unelected Travis County Interim Health Authority that basically said
Speaker 1: all the private schools that have to stay closed along
Speaker 1: with the public schools. And that was like, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, because I, like you, I can afford to
Speaker 1: send my kids to private school, which again is you know,
Speaker 1: I feel terrible for the people who don't have that luxury.
Speaker 1: But for me, that was like, wow, this is like
Speaker 1: the government is going out of a tway to make
Speaker 1: my life miserable on top of everybody else. That was
Speaker 1: just sort of at a purely selfish level, something that
Speaker 1: made me made me, uh, you know, made my blood
Speaker 1: pressure raise, because go up. But but you're right at
Speaker 1: that that the incredible unfairness of it that that you
Speaker 1: and I can still send our kids to school, but
Speaker 1: so many people cannot. It's just incredible. You know, I
Speaker 1: testified before Congress, I want to say, seven or eight
Speaker 1: times last last summer, last you know that sort of spring, summer,
Speaker 1: fall time last year, and almost every single one of
Speaker 1: the hearings was about racial inequities that have been exacerbated
Speaker 1: worse than by COVID um. And the thing that was
Speaker 1: so surreal or crazy about those hearings is, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of talking about, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really terrible that, um, you know, African Americans are
Speaker 1: getting COVID and and dying of COVID at disproportion of rates,
Speaker 1: which is true. But you know, it's also true that
Speaker 1: the economic inequality uh that that has come from government
Speaker 1: policy has disproportionately harmed minorities who are lower income, who
Speaker 1: can't afford to go to private schools right or some
Speaker 1: of their kids to private schools. And that has been,
Speaker 1: I have to say, like an astoundingly hypocritical thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you have all these people saying, oh, it's really terrible
Speaker 1: that that the virus uh, you know has disportuately harmed
Speaker 1: lower income Americans who are dispportunately non white. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: the government policies that have taken their jobs away from them,
Speaker 1: taking their livelihoods away from them, taking their schools away
Speaker 1: from them, has been incredibly harmful and it's going to
Speaker 1: widen economic inequality of this country. And and you're you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right that, you know, certainly at our organization, at
Speaker 1: Free optote or we've we've worked hard to try to
Speaker 1: make those points. And I think, you know, we've had
Speaker 1: some success with that. I think there are lots of
Speaker 1: um people of both parties, of both you know, ideologies
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to say, progressive, conservative, independent, who
Speaker 1: who realized that schools need to be reopened. The differences
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, the teachers unions are just such
Speaker 1: a dominant force politically. No one wants to cross the
Speaker 1: teachers unions and that has been the decisive factor. Can
Speaker 1: you say, follow the science and in any way justify
Speaker 1: schools being closed at this point in the United States
Speaker 1: of America. No. And I think one of the things,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna we're gonna do a kind of
Speaker 1: an action after action report of the pandemic hope in
Speaker 1: the hope that the pandemic is actually is over in
Speaker 1: the next several months, as people get vaccinated. But I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that's really gonna we're going
Speaker 1: to really focus on in our writing is the absolute
Speaker 1: disgrace of of the or or the gap or or
Speaker 1: discrepancy between the people who use the word science most
Speaker 1: often in their in their speeches or their tweets and
Speaker 1: the actual science, which shows something completely different. And and
Speaker 1: again what's been so troubling is that the people who
Speaker 1: should have the most steak in scientific authority, the Anthony
Speaker 1: Fauci's you know, these people at the universities that I've
Speaker 1: been mentioning, they're the ones who have done the most
Speaker 1: to undermine trust in quote unquote scientific authority. You know,
Speaker 1: Fauci's running around saying, oh, it's so surprising that there
Speaker 1: have have been COVID breakouts in schools. Um no one
Speaker 1: ever expected that. We all expected that that there would
Speaker 1: be massive outbreaks in schools after we were open. So
Speaker 1: that's really quite strange. And I mean, what I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: what bubble is this guy in? But clearly he is
Speaker 1: in one right, and and that is a huge, huge problem,
Speaker 1: And there needs to be a real self assessment in
Speaker 1: the scientific community about about the politicization of basic information
Speaker 1: around who's being impacted by the virus, what kinds of
Speaker 1: UH interventions are working, what kinds of interventions are not working.
Speaker 1: And my hope is that now that Biden is president,
Speaker 1: we can start to have more of an honest conversation
Speaker 1: about that. I feel like, you know, because so many
Speaker 1: people in the academic world are anti Trump. No one
Speaker 1: wanted to say that Trump was doing anything right while
Speaker 1: Trump was in office. But maybe now that he's gone,
Speaker 1: maybe it becomes safer, you know, for that Harvard professor
Speaker 1: to say, like, actually, the Trump administration, they did this thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't agree with that thing they did,
Speaker 1: but they did this thing right, or they did that
Speaker 1: thing right. Um, maybe the CDC was wrong in this
Speaker 1: particular case or whatever. Maybe that conversation gets a little
Speaker 1: more deep, deep politicized. Now that that binds an office,
Speaker 1: we can only hope, but but we're going to certainly
Speaker 1: do our part to to contribute to that conversation. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to read that, and I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that I help you distribute it to the best
Speaker 1: way that we can. And in my limited world, certainly
Speaker 1: we have a big audience in the world of sports,
Speaker 1: and I will say. You said, you know, the the
Speaker 1: overall public policy response has been very bad in the
Speaker 1: world of all Republicans, Democrats, independence, whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1: The media, I think in general does deserve a grade
Speaker 1: worse than F, which is what you said. I'm actually
Speaker 1: somewhat encouraged that sports got much of this right, um,
Speaker 1: and it was a battle to get it right. But
Speaker 1: when we talked back on August twenty one, we didn't
Speaker 1: know whether college football was going to happen. We now
Speaker 1: have crowned champion. We did not know whether the NBA
Speaker 1: was gonna be able to finish their season. They did
Speaker 1: in the bubble. Now they're out of the bubble in
Speaker 1: the next season. Major League Baseball finished their season with
Speaker 1: fans present in Texas. The NFL has played their entire
Speaker 1: schedule so far. We're talking in the week of the
Speaker 1: a f C in the NFC Championship games. All of
Speaker 1: those sports, not to mention countless high schools, as well
Speaker 1: as other sports that are not anywhere near as popular
Speaker 1: on a collegiate level or a professional level. Ovic there
Speaker 1: isn't a single death or even serious illness that has
Speaker 1: been connected to coaching or athletics and the coaches are
Speaker 1: obviously older than the players, but that's what the data
Speaker 1: told us was likely to happen. And people are like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: this actually ended up being possible. Thankfully they took the
Speaker 1: chance and tried to figure out a way to make
Speaker 1: it happen. What letter grade would you give sports leagues
Speaker 1: for their willingness and ability to play once they came
Speaker 1: back certain nascars involved tennis, all these other different sports. Uh.
Speaker 1: And are you at least as appreciative as I am
Speaker 1: that we found a way to get that done and
Speaker 1: that the data showed lo and behold that it was
Speaker 1: safe and it was possible to do. Uh. Definitely appreciative,
Speaker 1: and not just that they did it for for the
Speaker 1: sake of the athletes who obviously worked so hard for
Speaker 1: those opportunities, but for the rest of us, who, you know,
Speaker 1: just as human beings. We needed something that was not political,
Speaker 1: if at least mostly not political. Uh. And and that
Speaker 1: that we could that we could point to and cheer
Speaker 1: about in our lives and in this very challenging year
Speaker 1: we've just had so grateful. I'm grateful to the sports
Speaker 1: leagues that that worked hard to make it happen. We
Speaker 1: and you know, and you've covered it on your show.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like the sports league said business
Speaker 1: as usual. There's a lot of stuff and a lot
Speaker 1: of work, a lot of testing, a lot of restrictions
Speaker 1: on attendance by the fans that went into keeping sports
Speaker 1: going in a cautious, uh and prudent way. And and
Speaker 1: hopefully they've learned from that to realize, okay, maybe we
Speaker 1: can we can h loosen it up a little bit
Speaker 1: now that we've learned that we can do this safely
Speaker 1: and operate safely. But you know what really comes back
Speaker 1: to in my mind, uh play is what you said
Speaker 1: the beginning, capitalism, right, it's the financial incentive for sports
Speaker 1: leagues to stay open was a big driver of why
Speaker 1: they did stay open. And now at the time, you know,
Speaker 1: last summer, last early fall, August, September, that was you know,
Speaker 1: the sports pundit said, this is so terrible. You know,
Speaker 1: these these leagues, particularly the you know in terms of
Speaker 1: college sports, where you know, there's the conflict between amateurism
Speaker 1: and the money. These leagues are putting money ahead of humanity.
Speaker 1: They're they're they're they're so greedy and so terrible. And
Speaker 1: I look at it in exactly the opposite way. It
Speaker 1: was the the financial or economic incentive which motivated them
Speaker 1: to get it right, to figure out, hey, there's got
Speaker 1: to be a way to do this safely. We're gonna
Speaker 1: lose a lot of money if we don't figure out
Speaker 1: how to do it safely, so let's figure it out.
Speaker 1: And exactly the same dynamic play is true with schools.
Speaker 1: So why is it that private schools around the country
Speaker 1: are open and public schools are not. First of all,
Speaker 1: you don't have teachers unions in private schools. But a
Speaker 1: big part of it is if you're that private school.
Speaker 1: If you're running a private school and you say no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to zoom, no one, everyone's gonna disenroll,
Speaker 1: no one's going to show up at that school, and
Speaker 1: your school is going to go broke because you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get any tuition dollars in the door, Whereas in
Speaker 1: the public schools, the money is flowing regardless of what
Speaker 1: you do, So why keep the school open when you're
Speaker 1: gonna get paid either way. So the economic or financial
Speaker 1: incentives were absolutely a critical driver of why public schools
Speaker 1: have been closed, but why sports leagues and private schools
Speaker 1: were open. It's so well said, I mean, is now
Speaker 1: not surprisingly the sports media mostly there are exceptions, you're
Speaker 1: listening to one of them, but the sports media mostly
Speaker 1: followed the lead of the now national media in making
Speaker 1: the arguments there's no way that it's safe to play right.
Speaker 1: CBS Sports, for example, I talked about this a lot
Speaker 1: on my radio program. They had an expert, and you
Speaker 1: know how this works, the experts that say the things
Speaker 1: that don't make headlines. Oh yeah, there's definitely a way
Speaker 1: to play sports that doesn't make the headline. The expert
Speaker 1: who comes out and literally at CBS Sports guaranteed a
Speaker 1: football player would die and predicted there would be at
Speaker 1: least three to seven as if he were Nick, you
Speaker 1: know Joe Namath back in the day. He guaranteed a
Speaker 1: death and said he predicted that there would be three
Speaker 1: to seven. That's a headline at CBS Sports. They finished
Speaker 1: the season in college football, and that's what he was
Speaker 1: specifically making his prediction about. Everybody is fine, there are
Speaker 1: no issues, and the story just disappears right, there's no
Speaker 1: consequence for an expert, and I'm putting that in quotation
Speaker 1: marks being a hundred percent wrong, particularly when those people
Speaker 1: have tenure at university. It's like it's it's impossible for
Speaker 1: them to ever have a consequence. And that probably goes
Speaker 1: back to your point. In a market based economy, if
Speaker 1: you're wrong, you lose your job. In a university setting,
Speaker 1: if you're wrong, you just write a new article explaining
Speaker 1: why you were wrong, and uh, and and and or
Speaker 1: completely ignoring it, there's no and there's no consequence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. In fact, you're reminded me of I can't
Speaker 1: remember which a media organization was, may have been ESPN,
Speaker 1: and may have been Yahoo or CBS. Uh. Lots of
Speaker 1: people there was. There was a Big twelve expert that
Speaker 1: the Big twelve A d. S recruited who said, actually,
Speaker 1: you can operate the league safely and here's how you
Speaker 1: do it. And there was a round of articles criticizing
Speaker 1: and that expert saying, oh, the Big twelve just you know,
Speaker 1: wet doctor shopping and found some idiot off the street
Speaker 1: who who was going to validate what they wanted to
Speaker 1: do and not listen to the science. Right, And that
Speaker 1: guy turned out to be right, and everyone else turned
Speaker 1: out to be wrong, at least the ones that say
Speaker 1: the Big ten was listening to it is I mean
Speaker 1: and and and all of this, you know, and and
Speaker 1: again to kind of relitigate some of this. You remember
Speaker 1: the myocarditis story that flared up. Oh my god, if
Speaker 1: you get a if you get COVID, you're gonna get myocarditis.
Speaker 1: Your heart's gonna be ruined forever. There's no way we
Speaker 1: can play sports. Nobody had myocarditis issues either, but if
Speaker 1: they did, that often happens with viral infections in general.
Speaker 1: It wasn't specific to COVID. And the media what I
Speaker 1: called fear porn governed the day, and and candidly behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, I was having conversations with commissioners as early
Speaker 1: as April, and I said, look, you're used to people
Speaker 1: being in favor of your sport. Everybody in the sports
Speaker 1: media is going to be opposed to you guys playing
Speaker 1: college football this year. They're not going to carry the
Speaker 1: water for the NFL. They're not gonna say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a brilliant idea. They're all gonna buy into the
Speaker 1: fear and curl up in the fetal position and argue
Speaker 1: that there's no way that should be happening. Well, as
Speaker 1: you know, Clay, I mean it's in a long standing
Speaker 1: dynamic in sports meet is that you know, sports writers,
Speaker 1: sports commentators, they they particularly the ones who work at say,
Speaker 1: major newspapers are major news organizations, right, they feel that
Speaker 1: sort of inferiority complex of we're not the real journalists
Speaker 1: like the people who work on you know, who go
Speaker 1: to Capitol Hill or cover the White House. So they
Speaker 1: feel that that sense of, well, I have to do
Speaker 1: what the the other journalists tell me to do, because
Speaker 1: if I don't, then I'm going to be seen as
Speaker 1: that fluffy sports reporter and not the hard journalists that
Speaker 1: I really am. And so that sort of that sociological
Speaker 1: element of the sports writing or sports media community plays
Speaker 1: a big role in in their deference to to what,
Speaker 1: to what other people are saying that they feel they
Speaker 1: have to defer to. And so it's some of its fears.
Speaker 1: Some of it's that deference. Some of it is just
Speaker 1: genuinely like, you know, being terrified or whatever. It is
Speaker 1: all that to say that, you know, what people like
Speaker 1: you and me and and the people who listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast and other people out there who who who
Speaker 1: have had the same point of view need to do
Speaker 1: is to make sure that uh, as we go through this,
Speaker 1: we're able to assess and and have that after action
Speaker 1: report where we can say, okay, guys, let's learn from this.
Speaker 1: Let's learn about what the so called experts told you
Speaker 1: that was right, and what they told you that was wrong,
Speaker 1: and certain things that were unknown. So to take the
Speaker 1: example of myo karditis, I mean you and I were
Speaker 1: more skeptical that was a serious issue. But you can
Speaker 1: understand risk averse for college president's risk averse a D
Speaker 1: saying you know what, we've we've got to be concerned
Speaker 1: about this because I don't want it. I don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with the litigation if you want to be cynical,
Speaker 1: or I don't want to do with that on my conscience.
Speaker 1: If somebody really gets sick, the kind of the you know,
Speaker 1: the Reggie Lewis type thing, so you know, do the
Speaker 1: m R I s do the testing every you know, UH,
Speaker 1: Power five University certainly has the ability to arrange for
Speaker 1: those tests if you if as someone's COVID positive, you
Speaker 1: can you can look to see if there's information and
Speaker 1: there aren't muscle and and and monitor in which they
Speaker 1: did right. Most of the most of the big conferences
Speaker 1: did that, and that's what allowed them to get that
Speaker 1: that relief that this wasn't a big deal. So I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with if they're going to be
Speaker 1: really risk averse, invest the extra money, since they make
Speaker 1: so much money off college sports, at least the revenue sports,
Speaker 1: you know, to invest in those tasks to see what's
Speaker 1: going on, make sure that nothing's going wrong. But to
Speaker 1: shut down the season altogether, that's stupid. You know, keep
Speaker 1: an eye on it and if it looks like things
Speaker 1: are going to go wrong, that's one thing. And remember
Speaker 1: there were a lot of sports writers who said about
Speaker 1: the college football season, say, oh, this is so pointless.
Speaker 1: The whole season is gonna get shut down after two
Speaker 1: weeks anyway, you know, why is anybody even bothering? And
Speaker 1: as you said, you know the season basically, yes, there
Speaker 1: were games that were canceled and things like that, but
Speaker 1: but the season was played and and I think most
Speaker 1: people are pretty pretty happy about that. And to go
Speaker 1: to your point on the market based capitalistic economy being
Speaker 1: the most efficient, which by the way, all of world
Speaker 1: history proved, that's a whole another story. But for anybody
Speaker 1: who wants to study the history of of economies UH
Speaker 1: and UH and market based decision making in general. It's
Speaker 1: probably not a surprise if you adopt that line of thinking,
Speaker 1: that the NFL, which had the absolute most money at
Speaker 1: stake and is the biggest business in all of pro sports,
Speaker 1: had the most successful season because not only did they
Speaker 1: play every single game as scheduled, all thirty two NFL
Speaker 1: teams played all sixteen games, but they did it on
Speaker 1: their schedule. They didn't even have so far UH that
Speaker 1: the a f C and NFC championship games are Sunday,
Speaker 1: We're talking in the middle of the week leading into that,
Speaker 1: and then the Super Bowl. They've got two weeks to
Speaker 1: be able to schedule that, but right now it's scheduled
Speaker 1: as it typically is for two weeks after the Sunday
Speaker 1: a f C n NFC championship games, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them had fans present, but every television part of
Speaker 1: their game, which is where the biggest part of their
Speaker 1: revenue comes from. Guess what they did the best job
Speaker 1: big business does, the best job in pro sports with
Speaker 1: putting their product out there for people to watch, and
Speaker 1: it's arguably the most difficult because of all the physical
Speaker 1: contact that goes into football compared to let's say baseball
Speaker 1: or tennis or something like that. Yeah, that's that's a
Speaker 1: great point. You know, as you were talking, I was,
Speaker 1: I was recalling the the European soccer summer soccer season
Speaker 1: from last year. Right, not some of the league's didn't play,
Speaker 1: but the ones that did had no problems. Right, everything
Speaker 1: worked out just fine. Yeah, there were some positive tests here,
Speaker 1: there are things like that, but but but the games
Speaker 1: that were played were played and worked out just fine. Yes,
Speaker 1: there weren't fans in the audience, and they would pump
Speaker 1: in the crowd noise on the broadcast, but but otherwise
Speaker 1: it worked and that was our first indication that actually
Speaker 1: this could be done. Or two that to give us
Speaker 1: the confidence, right, the real world example, so this could
Speaker 1: be done. So so kudos to the NFL. I mean,
Speaker 1: definitely very impressive that that they've managed to have everything
Speaker 1: run on time. And um uh you know, and you
Speaker 1: know part part of it too is you know, one
Speaker 1: thing we we probably should you know take an account
Speaker 1: here is pro athletes, particularly football players, there's so much
Speaker 1: discipline involved, you know in being a pro athlete, you know,
Speaker 1: in the NFL, it's just you know, you can get
Speaker 1: cut so ruthlessly and have your career cut short if
Speaker 1: you make one mistake. Um, and if you make it
Speaker 1: to the pros, you're likely to have that discipline and
Speaker 1: that maturity. And not everyone does. And we've seen some,
Speaker 1: you know, notorious cases that not being the case. But
Speaker 1: but most of the athletes have really stuck to it, right,
Speaker 1: Whereas at the college level it's a little harder. Right,
Speaker 1: these are kids, Um, you know, there's a there's a campus,
Speaker 1: there's parties, there's people who admire them and want to,
Speaker 1: you know, want a party with them. There's a lot
Speaker 1: more temptation when when you're a college student to do
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. And so you know, it's it's impressive
Speaker 1: on both counts, right. It's impressive of the college season
Speaker 1: managed to do as well as it did, even with
Speaker 1: a lot of interruptions. And I'll be see you look
Speaker 1: to the pros and say, hey, uh, you know, hats off.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Ovic Roy. Free op dot org is
Speaker 1: his website. Follow him on Twitter at ovic a v
Speaker 1: I K at a v I k is his Twitter handle. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is the Winds and the Losses podcast. I
Speaker 1: am Clay Travis, Fox Sports Radio has the best sports
Speaker 1: talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
Speaker 1: at Fox Sports Radio dot Com and within the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio apps. Search f s R to listen live.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges that I see that is the
Speaker 1: largest in the world of sports and other places. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think about this. So much of
Speaker 1: our media is anecdote driven, and the anecdote is used
Speaker 1: to justify the overall story. So, and I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example. If, as you mentioned, I remember, and this
Speaker 1: is unfortunate, and I feel for his family, there was
Speaker 1: a kid who died at Appalachian State University in Boone,
Speaker 1: North Carolina of COVID or with COVID. It's not like
Speaker 1: I've reviewed his medical files to know exactly, but his
Speaker 1: death then becomes a front page New York Times article
Speaker 1: talking about the challenges of going back to college. The
Speaker 1: two million or four million, or whatever the heck number
Speaker 1: it is of college kids that go back and don't
Speaker 1: have any issues at all. It's all about framing. In
Speaker 1: other words, if I wanted to write a story about
Speaker 1: how dangerous it is for kids to drive back to
Speaker 1: college at the end of summer, inevitably every year there
Speaker 1: are kids who die driving back to college campuses. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean as a general rule that it is incredibly
Speaker 1: dangerous for those kids to be driving back to college campuses. Inevitably,
Speaker 1: every year there are college kids that get the flu
Speaker 1: and die the seasonal flu. That doesn't mean that all
Speaker 1: kids on college campus are in danger of the seasonal flu.
Speaker 1: Outlier occur and as a data guy, outliers can be
Speaker 1: fascinating for you, I'm sure to review, but they are
Speaker 1: just that outliers. How much of our challenge in media
Speaker 1: today is using anecdotal outlier stories to justify a preferred narrative,
Speaker 1: such as sports can't happen because this college kid died,
Speaker 1: even if it's in no way representative of the larger
Speaker 1: data set. That is such a challenge, it seems to me,
Speaker 1: because the story of one death is more overpowering than
Speaker 1: sometimes the story of a million people being fine. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm what I'm thinking about as you go
Speaker 1: through that, and all all Well said is you know
Speaker 1: my my My takeaway from from on that score is
Speaker 1: every high school in America should require that its students
Speaker 1: take a statistics class. Yes, because statistics are the thing
Speaker 1: they drive so much of life nowadays, especially because we
Speaker 1: have all this data being thrown at us because of
Speaker 1: the world we live in, and we just don't know
Speaker 1: how to process it, and we process it wrong. And
Speaker 1: that that affects the way sports, you know, sports get
Speaker 1: to analyze. That, that affects the way lawsuits happened, particularly
Speaker 1: the class action type lawsuits. It affects government policy, obviously,
Speaker 1: affects medicine, affects so many different things in our world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if people had that set, that understanding of statistics
Speaker 1: and how to separate anecdotes from the overall uh context
Speaker 1: of those of those anecdotes, you know, that would be
Speaker 1: an important service that would do a lot to just
Speaker 1: calm everyone down. I hope you know. Maybe that's ah,
Speaker 1: that's uh pollyannas or naive of made to feel that way,
Speaker 1: But I really do believe that if we could have
Speaker 1: a country where people were more journalists, in particular, more numerous,
Speaker 1: more affluent in statistics, it would be so much better.
Speaker 1: I mean that the story that really crystallizes to me
Speaker 1: everything that went wrong with the media coverage last year
Speaker 1: was was the huge story. And I talked about it
Speaker 1: the last time when I was on with You in
Speaker 1: the in the New York Times, where it was claimed
Speaker 1: that there was a South Korean study that was purported
Speaker 1: to show that kids were infectious and it was dangerous
Speaker 1: to reopen schools. And this was plastered all over the
Speaker 1: New York Time. It was circulated to every school district
Speaker 1: in the country, and there was reporting afterwards that said
Speaker 1: that that basically there were a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: school principles superintendents who wanted to open schools. They read
Speaker 1: that article in The New York Times and said no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do it, obviously egged on by
Speaker 1: the teachers unions. And it turned out that the that
Speaker 1: the article totally misrepresented the data, and that once the
Speaker 1: full data set came out, it was pretty clear that
Speaker 1: in fact, kids were not infectious in South Korea, just
Speaker 1: like kids were not infectious anywhere else, that schools had
Speaker 1: been open and everything had been fine. But did the
Speaker 1: New York Times retract their story. No, did the New
Speaker 1: York Times run another story saying, hey, we got South
Speaker 1: Korea were not really I mean, they did write another
Speaker 1: article about South Korea, but it was a very mealy
Speaker 1: mouth and no reader who didn't already know what's going
Speaker 1: on would be able to know from that article at
Speaker 1: the New York Times it made a terrible mistake. But
Speaker 1: that's one journalist at one influential newspaper who's misunderstanding of
Speaker 1: scientific data lead to something that impacted the lives of
Speaker 1: tens of millions of kids all over the country. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's something that just should not happen. And I
Speaker 1: hope we can we can have a world in which
Speaker 1: statistics are more a part of the conversation, where when
Speaker 1: you encounter a fact or a uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: journalistic assertion, we could do more to have statistics back
Speaker 1: it up. Now, that alone won't solve the problem, because
Speaker 1: you know, the old line from Benjamin Disraeli, the old
Speaker 1: nineteenth century Prime Minister of of of Great Britain, was
Speaker 1: there's lives, damn lives and statistics. We all know from
Speaker 1: sports that that you can come up with lots of
Speaker 1: different statistics to justify, uh, you know, anything that you
Speaker 1: and anything that you want to believe or anything that
Speaker 1: that are your prior So you have to go one
Speaker 1: level below that and really understand which statistics accurately measure
Speaker 1: things in which statistics don't. But just having that basic
Speaker 1: understanding of you know, one anecdote is not, you know,
Speaker 1: reflective of everything else. If one person dies in a
Speaker 1: car accident, it doesn't mean you should hide in your garage.
Speaker 1: If one person dies of COVID, it doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: world's gonna end um. You know. That would obviously be
Speaker 1: a welcome development. One way that I try to combat
Speaker 1: that is in addition to talking to people like you
Speaker 1: and hopefully sharing your worldview with my audience, is throughout
Speaker 1: this entire COVID mess on my radio show, I've been
Speaker 1: very transparent with the choices that I'm making in my
Speaker 1: own life because people can say, oh, you're saying that,
Speaker 1: But I think for most people out there who are
Speaker 1: parents like you and me, our children are our most
Speaker 1: prized possessions. My children, my oldest is in private school.
Speaker 1: My two youngest go to school every day. I have
Speaker 1: traveled with them on airplanes. I have taken them to
Speaker 1: go watch NFL games. We have allowed them to play
Speaker 1: in addition to going to school, all of their different
Speaker 1: sports leagues in our neighborhood where the sports leagues are
Speaker 1: going on, and I hope to be sharing that is anecdotal, right,
Speaker 1: but it's me trying to live up to the data
Speaker 1: under which I am telling them that the things that
Speaker 1: I believe should happen, sports should be played, for example.
Speaker 1: I'm living my life by that data too. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you to do one thing and then doing the opposite,
Speaker 1: which frankly has been I think probably the most destructive
Speaker 1: thing that public policy officials have have done. Whether it's
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom eating at the French Laundry restaurant, or so
Speaker 1: many different politicians out there who tend to be more
Speaker 1: affluent than the average person they represent, having their own
Speaker 1: kids in private school going to class, while they are
Speaker 1: allowing all of the public school kids who don't have
Speaker 1: the same ability of resources as their own kids to
Speaker 1: not be in school, right, so that hypocrisy. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to live my life in the way that I would
Speaker 1: say the data reflects I should. And that goes to
Speaker 1: what I think is is a really big story here.
Speaker 1: And I know this is basically what you do for
Speaker 1: a living. You're talking about analyzing probability and statistics, which
Speaker 1: I think Americans as a group do poorly, but also
Speaker 1: success or failure to me in many parts of life
Speaker 1: seems to be predicated on your ability to analyze risk
Speaker 1: in this country, whether it's what you invest in, whether
Speaker 1: it's what you do on a day to day basis,
Speaker 1: your risk barometer. I would bet if there was a
Speaker 1: way to study it, the people who are the best
Speaker 1: at risk barometer basis are probably the most successful in
Speaker 1: the country. Would you buy into that idea as well?
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's such a great point, you know,
Speaker 1: I it's not just what your ability to analyze risk,
Speaker 1: but it's your attitude toward risk. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things that led to the to
Speaker 1: the rise of Donald Trump in a sense is this
Speaker 1: divide between blue collar America and you know, college college,
Speaker 1: e book smart America. And we're seeing that in the
Speaker 1: electoral results. Like if you look at the electoral election returns, Uh,
Speaker 1: if you and you look at who's voting for whom,
Speaker 1: what really is the driver more than race, more than income,
Speaker 1: more than any other factor. Is Uh, do you have
Speaker 1: a college degree or not? Uh? And if you do,
Speaker 1: you tend to vote one way, and if you don't,
Speaker 1: you tend to vote another way. That that's the most
Speaker 1: powerful thing out there. And and you know, people who
Speaker 1: are on the elite side, so Oh, that just means
Speaker 1: that we the educated, smart people, you know what's best
Speaker 1: for you all, and you're all you all, the rest
Speaker 1: of you are dumb and ignorant. I look at it
Speaker 1: a different way, which is now, I'm looking out my
Speaker 1: window right now in downtown Austin, and there's a you know,
Speaker 1: a twenty story building under construction right right across the
Speaker 1: street here, and there are people climbing up on the scaffolds,
Speaker 1: you know, cleaning the windows and laying down the insulation.
Speaker 1: And those people understand risk, right, because if if they
Speaker 1: don't strap themselves in and they don't act carefully, they're
Speaker 1: gonna fall off of that platform and and and die
Speaker 1: literally die. Right. They understand the risk of of of
Speaker 1: their jobs and the challenge for a lot of sports writers,
Speaker 1: a lot of academics, people who basically live lives with
Speaker 1: no risk. And frankly, I'm in that crowd, right, Like
Speaker 1: I have a white collar job, I have a good income.
Speaker 1: You know, we've we've talked about how my life is
Speaker 1: pretty cushy compared to the people who can't send their
Speaker 1: kids to school, et cetera. Like people who have that
Speaker 1: sociological background or socioeconomic background they tend to be more
Speaker 1: risk averse, right, because they're not used to dealing with
Speaker 1: the world in which like if they're on if they're
Speaker 1: careless about something, things can go badly wrong. Whereas blue
Speaker 1: collar America, you're people are used to things going wrong.
Speaker 1: People are used to having to be careful, they're used
Speaker 1: to physical danger. And athletes to write you you you're
Speaker 1: not You're careless about the way you train, You're careless
Speaker 1: about the way you stretch, You're careless about the way
Speaker 1: you run the football. You're gonna get injured, right, And
Speaker 1: athletes are very aware of that um And so people
Speaker 1: who deal with physical risk every day are much more
Speaker 1: likely to look at something like COVID and say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I can handle that, whereas it's the people
Speaker 1: who sit on in front of a computer all day
Speaker 1: who are terrified. It's also what I always say, is
Speaker 1: like going to public school and going and I went
Speaker 1: to some public schools that weren't very good, But there
Speaker 1: is a benefit to knowing that you might get your
Speaker 1: ass kicked at school, you know, like having that fear
Speaker 1: where you know that you're not a hundred percent safe
Speaker 1: and you have to carry yourself in a way that
Speaker 1: analyzes risk. Maybe I shouldn't say that to that guy
Speaker 1: right now, right because he might beat my ass, right,
Speaker 1: And I feel like we have and and look at
Speaker 1: every generation is getting safer progressively in the United States, right, So, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this and that's been going back in time, the data
Speaker 1: would reflect from the moment people got on ships and
Speaker 1: came to our shores. Life life links are growing like
Speaker 1: we are living in the least dangerous time in the
Speaker 1: world that anyone could ever live in. Right, Um, all
Speaker 1: the data reflects that, But it seems to me that
Speaker 1: our fear meters are so much more attuned to danger
Speaker 1: than they ever have been before. And people who are
Speaker 1: in COVID is a metaphor for this. People who are
Speaker 1: not at risk, as you said when we started this conversation,
Speaker 1: young people, they feel terrified, right. They think they're gonna
Speaker 1: get and this isn't just COVID. They think they're gonna
Speaker 1: get kidnapped, they think they're gonna get murdered. They think
Speaker 1: something bad is going to happen to them, when statistically
Speaker 1: most people have never been safer. If you're living in
Speaker 1: America right now than any time in human civilization than
Speaker 1: this exact moment. Yeah, you know that that's another great point, Clay,
Speaker 1: that that there's a negativity and you know we've been
Speaker 1: complaining a lot on on this interview, but you know,
Speaker 1: like there's a negativity to uh, to journalism today that
Speaker 1: something good happening typically isn't news, right, Like if something
Speaker 1: bad happens, if a train derails, that's news. If a
Speaker 1: train goes and stays on its tracks, which is almost
Speaker 1: always what happens with every train, it's not news. Right.
Speaker 1: A plane crashing is news. A billion plane flights going
Speaker 1: off and taken in landing is not news. So news
Speaker 1: in and of itself is better easily able to spread now.
Speaker 1: But there is I think a natural negativity bias because
Speaker 1: good news happens far more frequently and therefore isn't news.
Speaker 1: The negative tends to dictate and scare. Again, it goes
Speaker 1: to your point on probability and statistics and analysis and
Speaker 1: being able to contextualize what I was saying risk. You know,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely right, And and the one thing I'm I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about as you say that is how does technology
Speaker 1: digital media change all that are our conventional wisdom, which
Speaker 1: is obviously has some truth to it is uh, social media, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: able news Uh, exacerbate or worse than those problems because
Speaker 1: one of the things that people want to get motivated
Speaker 1: and get angry about and share with their friends and
Speaker 1: the stuff that they're mad about about the world. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's certainly true. But it's also true that on
Speaker 1: UM on digital platforms, you see people share inspiring stories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of times. If you look at the stories
Speaker 1: that are getting the most traffic, it's like, uh, and
Speaker 1: I think you shared it. Actually, the story about Tom
Speaker 1: Brady throwing the touchdown to Drew Brees a son beautiful
Speaker 1: last weekend, right, like that got enormous traffic. So people
Speaker 1: hunger for for good news too. And I guess the
Speaker 1: thing is, can we think about again? I'm always trying
Speaker 1: to think about what's the solution here? How do we
Speaker 1: move beyond this and try to make things better? And
Speaker 1: I feel like we've we've gotta think more, and media
Speaker 1: organizations that that have an economic incentive to do so,
Speaker 1: just think more about how do I share those inspiring stories,
Speaker 1: the good news that the kindness, the sportsmanship, the things
Speaker 1: that that we could show to our kids and say,
Speaker 1: know what, be more like that? Guy, be more like
Speaker 1: Tom Brady and du Brees after a hard fought game,
Speaker 1: don't be like the sore loser or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: I think there's an opportunity in there. It's interesting to
Speaker 1: me because if you think about let's take a step
Speaker 1: back and just think about it from a capitalistic perspective,
Speaker 1: there is big incentive to get financial stories right, such
Speaker 1: that people will pay huge amounts of money to you know,
Speaker 1: get a Wall Street journal or a Bloomberg article or
Speaker 1: wherever it is to them first right. And getting that
Speaker 1: news right from a financial perspective is incredibly important. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that there, and so the quality I
Speaker 1: would say. You may disagree. I'm not an expert in
Speaker 1: finance journalism, but it seems to me the quality of
Speaker 1: finance journalism is higher than the quality of many other
Speaker 1: types of journalism because what pays in many other types
Speaker 1: of journalism is not nuance or analysis or intelligence. Necessarily,
Speaker 1: it's emotion. And the emotion can be good, Oh look
Speaker 1: how great Tom Brady is and Drew Brees after that
Speaker 1: game they're throwing a pass. But the emotion can also
Speaker 1: be hyper negative, which is why I say, look, Trump
Speaker 1: is a symptom of the industry and universe in which
Speaker 1: we live, not the cause of it. He is an
Speaker 1: inarticulate voice in many ways for a conversation that needs
Speaker 1: to happen. What always friend Trump is a whole different story.
Speaker 1: But always frustrated me about Donald Trump was I just
Speaker 1: wish somebody had been making some of the same arguments
Speaker 1: that he was making with a factual foundation as opposed
Speaker 1: to a gut foundation, which I think was very often
Speaker 1: the way he was responding. Yeah, I mean that that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's what I certainly hope for the same thing. I
Speaker 1: hope that we can we can draw the lessons of
Speaker 1: the criticisms of America that that Trump that that what
Speaker 1: Trump was right about without the other aspects of Trump's
Speaker 1: approach the life, that that we wouldn't want to teach
Speaker 1: our kids or we wouldn't want to in terms of
Speaker 1: the way we treat each other. Okay, all thatsolutely go ahead. No, Well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna catch I had a big question here.
Speaker 1: I was gonna try to hit you with. But all
Speaker 1: this conversation we just had, um is, people are gonna
Speaker 1: love it and fantastic, But you said you're working on
Speaker 1: basically a retrospective to look back at the way the
Speaker 1: society responded, to look back at the decision to shut
Speaker 1: down schools? When is that going to come out? And
Speaker 1: it's a cliche because it is true, especially if you
Speaker 1: like history. Hindsight is right. We find out the errors
Speaker 1: that we made and hopefully learn from them going forward
Speaker 1: into the future. Who knows when the next pandemic might happen.
Speaker 1: If you had been able to look at the data
Speaker 1: set that you have right now, you're reviewing all everything
Speaker 1: that has happened with COVID. What would have gotten us
Speaker 1: in a in public policy? What would have gotten the
Speaker 1: media and a in coverage? What would have been the
Speaker 1: best response that we could have had. Let's pretend that
Speaker 1: you and I are able to implement American policy, or
Speaker 1: maybe not me at all. You back in March, when
Speaker 1: this virus is just arriving on our shores. Probably it
Speaker 1: was here in December or whatever else, but March, when
Speaker 1: we really start responding to it. What was the right response?
Speaker 1: What should we have done to have the most effective
Speaker 1: possible American response to COVID? We Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I love that you're like you're now my editor and
Speaker 1: you gave me a deadline, or you give us a
Speaker 1: deadline when your your articles out, So I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do it. I'm gonna say, Okay, we'll get this
Speaker 1: out by the end of February, so I can't wait. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll get it out of the end of February. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll say a couple of things that you
Speaker 1: know obviously this is this is we can have a
Speaker 1: we have a whole hour and a half conversation about
Speaker 1: that question. But I'll say maybe we will when your
Speaker 1: whole paper comes out, because I'd love for you to
Speaker 1: come back after I have a chance to read it
Speaker 1: and digest it, for you to be able to talk
Speaker 1: about it with us, because I think my audience would
Speaker 1: love it. But uh, okay, dive in broad picture question
Speaker 1: that I just asked. Yeah, and look, there's a lot
Speaker 1: to say about this topic. And you know, in fact,
Speaker 1: I just interviewed uh the now former HHS Secretary Alex
Speaker 1: asar on a lot of this stuff last week. You
Speaker 1: can find it on YouTube if you google my name
Speaker 1: and his um. More to say about that, But I'll
Speaker 1: say a couple of things to to to what the
Speaker 1: appetite of you and your listeners. First is if you
Speaker 1: actually look at which countries have performed well this time
Speaker 1: around with COVID, it was mostly the countries of the
Speaker 1: Pacific Rim East Asia. And why is that. It's because
Speaker 1: the countries of the Pacific Rim have encountered the coronavirus before.
Speaker 1: They had encountered Stars Kobe one in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: and it was because of their experience with that first
Speaker 1: Stars code coronavirus, or at least the one that we
Speaker 1: call the first Stars coronavirus that led them to when
Speaker 1: this one came around, they took it seriously from from
Speaker 1: day one. They did the social distancing and the other
Speaker 1: kinds of things to be careful, but they didn't shut
Speaker 1: down their societies. They didn't have to because their citizenry
Speaker 1: knew how to behave their governments knew what steps to
Speaker 1: take to get the testing going and everything else. So
Speaker 1: my hope, my optimism is that the experience of this
Speaker 1: pandemic will lead us to be smarter in general about
Speaker 1: both the way everyday people respond to the crisis and
Speaker 1: have the government response. Maybe that's too optimistic, but I
Speaker 1: think there's reason to be hopeful of that. If we
Speaker 1: look at the example of Asia. The second thing I'll
Speaker 1: mention is the vaccine. So one of the things that's
Speaker 1: come out of this past twelve months or ten months
Speaker 1: that's been remarkable is the development of these of these
Speaker 1: coronavirus vaccines. As I think I talked about with you
Speaker 1: and your last show that we did together, the previous
Speaker 1: world record for developing a vaccine for a novel virus
Speaker 1: was five years for the ebolavirus five years. We shattered
Speaker 1: that record. Two different biotech come and these one American
Speaker 1: Maderna on another German bio Intact basically developed these mRNA
Speaker 1: based vaccines. M RNA is a is a type of
Speaker 1: genetic code material like DNA. They developed these mRNA vaccines
Speaker 1: and turn them around incredibly quickly, and we got them
Speaker 1: on the market in an incredible record time. And what's
Speaker 1: really really encouraging about that is that these mRNA vaccines
Speaker 1: are actually really easy to manufacture. They're really easy to develop.
Speaker 1: It's almost like software. You type into genetic code, you
Speaker 1: PLoP out the vaccine and it's ready. The Maderna they
Speaker 1: had their vaccine, their first batch that they developed for
Speaker 1: testing that was ready to go in January February of
Speaker 1: last year, almost a year ago. So think about this.
Speaker 1: If we have another coronavirus or another virus that is
Speaker 1: amenable to that kind of technology, you could develop a
Speaker 1: vaccine much sooner. Once the genetic sequence of that virus
Speaker 1: is published, you can develop the vaccine right away. And
Speaker 1: for those high risk individuals, frontline workers, nursing home residents,
Speaker 1: the people who are particularly vulnerable, you can get them
Speaker 1: vaccinated within a month of the pandemic or two months
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, instead of waiting for almost a year
Speaker 1: to get that vaccine out. And if you can do that,
Speaker 1: you can stem a lot of the damage that comes
Speaker 1: from the serious illness from from a novel pandemic. Hopefully
Speaker 1: this is a situation we don't have to encounter for
Speaker 1: a while. But to me, that technological advance is one
Speaker 1: of the things that a lot of people aren't talking
Speaker 1: about that we can bring to the next crisis that
Speaker 1: we have if we are so unlucky as to have one.
Speaker 1: A couple more questions. Though I know how busy you are,
Speaker 1: you hear a lot about the death rate from COVID,
Speaker 1: and I always say, like nobody, I always say on
Speaker 1: my radio show nobody hates death more than me, right like,
Speaker 1: so I am, I want to make it clear here
Speaker 1: that I am adamantly opposed to death. I wish we
Speaker 1: could live almost forever. I wish nobody's grandma ever died.
Speaker 1: All those things the folk us again going back to
Speaker 1: the statistical analysis, the age of death from COVID, and
Speaker 1: you might need to say with COVID, but however you
Speaker 1: want to phrase that is either around the same age
Speaker 1: as the average age of death in the country as
Speaker 1: a as a whole, or maybe a little bit older, right, uh.
Speaker 1: And you can speak to that data better than I can.
Speaker 1: So am I correct roughly in the in the average
Speaker 1: age of death from somebody who is being classified as
Speaker 1: a COVID death is not much different than the average
Speaker 1: age of death overall in the United States. That's uh,
Speaker 1: that's generally true. You know. Obviously it's older people who
Speaker 1: are typically dying of COVID. It's older people who died generally, yes,
Speaker 1: um uh. And in fact, as you know, we we've
Speaker 1: published some analyzes that show that the real UH bulge
Speaker 1: are differential in in who's dying of COVID in United
Speaker 1: States relative to pre existing normal quote unquote death rates
Speaker 1: by age, Brackett, is that sort of upp upper middle
Speaker 1: age bracket rather than the elderly, because the elderly, as
Speaker 1: you say, are dying anyway. And this is this is
Speaker 1: something I think there's gonna be and I think this
Speaker 1: may be the thing you're getting at. We may find
Speaker 1: as we sift through the data that the death rates
Speaker 1: of the elderly versus the death rates of the elderly
Speaker 1: in a normal year we're not that different. And or
Speaker 1: that the the the age of death is only you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of months before the life expectancy for
Speaker 1: say an eighty five year old. Maybe that eighty five
Speaker 1: year old would have lasted until lady six, maybe it
Speaker 1: would have last till Lady seven. And COVID, you know,
Speaker 1: pushed that a little earlier, but not by a dramatic amount.
Speaker 1: We don't know. I think those are some debates that
Speaker 1: are going on in the statistical community right now. But
Speaker 1: we'll start to learn about that. And another thing that
Speaker 1: we're going to have to study, Clay, is how many
Speaker 1: people died not because of COVID, but because they were
Speaker 1: locked in their rooms or they the average age of
Speaker 1: those people is going to be much younger, which is
Speaker 1: where I was gonna go years lost of life. We
Speaker 1: talk a lot about death, but really, I think everybody
Speaker 1: out there when you take a step back and think
Speaker 1: about it from an analytical perspective, uh, and also the
Speaker 1: in factor in a little bit of emotion. The reason
Speaker 1: why when a five year old dies we feel so
Speaker 1: much worse than when an eighty five year old dies
Speaker 1: is because the five year old had so many lives,
Speaker 1: so much of their life left, so many years to
Speaker 1: live compared to the eighty five year old. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I've said it to the extent that
Speaker 1: there is a gift at all. Can you imagine if
Speaker 1: we had COVID except it had taken all young people
Speaker 1: instead of primarily been old people. That's a totally different dynamic,
Speaker 1: which goes to your point about the vaccine. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got young kids. I mean I would have been
Speaker 1: curled up in the basement right like I would have
Speaker 1: been terrified for them. And so when we talk about
Speaker 1: the number of deaths that we have. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I don't here discussed very much is from an
Speaker 1: analyticaltistical perspective, in theory, if the people who are dying,
Speaker 1: are dying not necessarily with tons of years left on
Speaker 1: their life, right, they have comorbidity ease, they are otherwise unhealthy.
Speaker 1: People are talking about how this is an unprecedented death,
Speaker 1: and I understand that. But in two, and in tree
Speaker 1: and four, and maybe even in one, if the vaccine
Speaker 1: gets distributed, well, isn't it likely that we would see
Speaker 1: a substantial decline in deaths? In other words, focusing on
Speaker 1: how many people are dying this year, to me, is
Speaker 1: missing that a lot less people would theoretically die in
Speaker 1: the next couple of years ahead, and not just rationalizing
Speaker 1: and recognizing we're not stopping death right, like the average
Speaker 1: age of death is going to still be what it is.
Speaker 1: I hope we can continue to raise it. But every day,
Speaker 1: I think in this country, around eight thousand people die,
Speaker 1: and the overall understanding of that seems to be very
Speaker 1: limited in the media and the analysis and discussion of
Speaker 1: this issue. Yeah, you know, it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that's going to be hard to tease that from
Speaker 1: just last year's dat because, as you said, who died
Speaker 1: with COVID, who died of COVID, we literally are not
Speaker 1: recording that information because the hospitals don't have an incentive too,
Speaker 1: So so that's gonna be a hard thing to to
Speaker 1: look at next year, I mean this year in and understand.
Speaker 1: But you know, what you're what you're bringing up is
Speaker 1: that after several years, let's say we look at the
Speaker 1: period from five and say, okay, over that five year period,
Speaker 1: how many people in a particular age bracket died versus
Speaker 1: what we'd see in a non pandemic period. That's going
Speaker 1: to give you the answer that you're talking about in
Speaker 1: terms of it was there. It may not even be
Speaker 1: noticeable over ten years. It's probably not going to be
Speaker 1: noticeable at all if you average it out over ten years. Right.
Speaker 1: In other words, we're all so much of social media,
Speaker 1: and much of media today is about reacting instantaneously to
Speaker 1: what's occurring at this exact point. But when you sort
Speaker 1: of expand your horizon, a lot of public policy decisions,
Speaker 1: it seems to me, are are based on trying to
Speaker 1: do something in this week or this month that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily make sense. And look, I mean, you can say,
Speaker 1: even you know, broadening the perspective, you hear a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, once their businesses go public, oh, We've
Speaker 1: got to make sure that we make our quarterly numbers.
Speaker 1: But are you making the right decision in that quarter
Speaker 1: for the next ten years or you just trying to
Speaker 1: clear that hurdle right now. There's a difference between managing
Speaker 1: for the future and managing for right now. I guess
Speaker 1: it is one of the things that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get to. Well. Well, the thing that you're you're stimulating
Speaker 1: in my mind in terms of what to to mention
Speaker 1: as you say that, is something we haven't talked about yet,
Speaker 1: and that is the profound fiscal and economic changes that
Speaker 1: have tap have taken place over the last twelve months.
Speaker 1: We've increased the federal debt from twenty trillion dollars to
Speaker 1: twenty eight trillion dollars and bidens trying to add another
Speaker 1: two trillion of that. The Federal Reserve increased the supply
Speaker 1: of US dollars, the effective supply of US dollars in
Speaker 1: the economy, by which, in theory, all else being equal,
Speaker 1: means that the dollars in your wallet are worth four
Speaker 1: fifths of what they were worth before, because literally the
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve just printed more dollars and flooded them into
Speaker 1: the economy, which went to the banks, which went to
Speaker 1: the wealthy, which went to the people who owned stocks
Speaker 1: and uh and could benefit from all that extra cash
Speaker 1: flowing around, didn't go to ordinary people. And and those
Speaker 1: problems are gonna come back to haunt us. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I really worry about, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: optimistic about our ability to handle a future pandemic for
Speaker 1: the reasons I mentioned. I'm a lot more concerned about
Speaker 1: what increasing the debt by eight trillion dollars and increasing
Speaker 1: the money supply by is going to do to push
Speaker 1: us into a long term fiscal crisis that we're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to deal with. And people, you know,
Speaker 1: America has been such a stable and generally prosperous country
Speaker 1: for so long, people have forgotten what it's like to
Speaker 1: be in an environment where we really have a fundamentally
Speaker 1: unstable economy, and by fundamentally unstable, I'm talking vim our Germany,
Speaker 1: great depression, that kind of instability. And we are well
Speaker 1: on our way. We are well on our way to
Speaker 1: having basically the monetary policy of vim our Germany, and
Speaker 1: look out if that ever comes to pass. And and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of scenarios I could, I could
Speaker 1: bore you with or terrify you with that that could
Speaker 1: take place over the next ten twenty years in that
Speaker 1: regard and not to me, that's the biggest mess that
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to clean up from the last twelve months.
Speaker 1: How do we get our our fiscal and economic picture
Speaker 1: back in line because if we don't, the rising generations
Speaker 1: are never gonna know what it's like to have to
Speaker 1: have had that that success, in that prosperity that that
Speaker 1: people that are my age and your age take for granted.
Speaker 1: Be sure to catch live editions of Out Kicked the
Speaker 1: coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at six am Eastern three
Speaker 1: am Pacific. We're talking to Ovic Roy. He works at
Speaker 1: free opt dot org. He is at a v I
Speaker 1: k thank him for talking with us. I keep saying
Speaker 1: I have two more questions, but I do. I think
Speaker 1: have only two more questions now. One of those questions,
Speaker 1: uh that is out there is one that my wife
Speaker 1: asked me to ask you specifically, what is this vaccine
Speaker 1: going to do? Presuming that everybody starts to get the vaccine,
Speaker 1: when do you think things can get back to quote
Speaker 1: unquote normalcy and walk us through because she was like, hey,
Speaker 1: they're saying that you're still gonna have to wear a
Speaker 1: mask after you're vaccinated because you might still then be
Speaker 1: asymptomatic and able to spread it even after vaccination, which
Speaker 1: her concern is if that's true, then how do we
Speaker 1: get back to normalcy? Uh? And can you break down
Speaker 1: the vaccination process and what it looks like in means
Speaker 1: to the average person out there? That was her big question, um,
Speaker 1: because she doesn't think there's an in depth discussion enough
Speaker 1: about what the vaccination actually means in terms of our lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: great question, Laura. So first of all, we should we
Speaker 1: should mentioned there's multiple vaccines. They're not identical. The MODERNA
Speaker 1: vaccine and the bio Intech vaccine and the new Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson vaccine. They're all a little different, um, and
Speaker 1: they all seem to work, which is the good news.
Speaker 1: They're all a little different and so, uh So there'll
Speaker 1: be a lot of different vaccines that are that are
Speaker 1: out out there that you can get access to, just
Speaker 1: like there are a lot of different COVID tests that
Speaker 1: you can get access to, but they work and that's reassuring.
Speaker 1: So for the people out there, who are who are
Speaker 1: have been skeptical of whether the vaccines work or not,
Speaker 1: or whether it's some you know, government plot. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty competent that the vaccines have been studied well as
Speaker 1: they do work and that they are affective. So, uh,
Speaker 1: will you be in line to get it? Will you
Speaker 1: be in line to get a vaccine? Like? Is that
Speaker 1: something that you care about or your kids as opposed
Speaker 1: to your parents who may want to get a vaccine? Like,
Speaker 1: what would your personal decision be? Yeah, I've I've signed
Speaker 1: up on the Austin website. Now I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 1: forty eight years old, and I'm you know, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't have any serious serious illnesses, so I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be the front of the line
Speaker 1: eye idem. I wouldn't want to cut in line. I
Speaker 1: want the greatest risk to get it first. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: when it comes out, I'll definitely get When I'm able
Speaker 1: to get it, I'll definitely get it. And the good
Speaker 1: news is, you know, again, for all the catterwauling in
Speaker 1: the press and and from from people with a partisan
Speaker 1: point of view, the fact is, uh, we've we've started
Speaker 1: to to overcome some of the stupidity, particularly at the
Speaker 1: state level, in terms of blocking people from getting the vaccine.
Speaker 1: The rules that that really uh Florida Dennis excuse me,
Speaker 1: Roder Santas and Florida Uh innovator, where you just give
Speaker 1: it to everyone over sixty five. You know, let's just
Speaker 1: do that. Show him your driver's license, boom boom, straightforward,
Speaker 1: get all the over sixty five people the vaccines, then
Speaker 1: go work down from there. That's the right way to go.
Speaker 1: And that was really bungled by by a number of people,
Speaker 1: as the Santis done the best job almost of any
Speaker 1: governor in the country, despite the fact that he's been
Speaker 1: criticized rapidly by many people in the media. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean this vaccine thing is only reinforced what you
Speaker 1: and I talked about with the nursing homes uh in
Speaker 1: back in August. I mean, it was the Santis who
Speaker 1: did the right thing, which is, let's just open it
Speaker 1: up to everybody over sixty five. We're not gonna grill
Speaker 1: you on exactly what you're medical history. We're gonna look
Speaker 1: at your driver's license boom, and if there's extra vaccine
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, boom. You know, stick
Speaker 1: it in the arm of the pizza guy right Whereas
Speaker 1: Andrew Cuomo New York is literally saying to clinics, if
Speaker 1: you give the vaccine to someone who isn't in the
Speaker 1: right subgroup that I've dictated, I will find you a
Speaker 1: million dollars. And what does that do that He's a
Speaker 1: lot of vaccine is getting wasted because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day they run out of people who were
Speaker 1: at the clinic to give the vaccine to and they
Speaker 1: literally have to throw out the remaining doses. It's just
Speaker 1: profoundly idiotic. And it just goes to show, oh again,
Speaker 1: it's like consistent with what happened before. You have one,
Speaker 1: uh one governor in particular, who stands out as a
Speaker 1: data driven guy who's always doing the right thing and
Speaker 1: based on the science, and they have another guy who's
Speaker 1: just operating from ego and instinct and and messing up NonStop. So,
Speaker 1: by the way, also the one that gets criticized is
Speaker 1: the one who's actually looking at the data. That's what's
Speaker 1: so frustrating to me from that perspective. There are a
Speaker 1: ton of people listening to us right now that are like, wait,
Speaker 1: Florida Governor Rhonda Santis has done one of the best
Speaker 1: jobs in the country. I saw on CNN that there
Speaker 1: were people at the beach in Florida and that everybody
Speaker 1: was gonna die in Florida, right, and that they're opening
Speaker 1: bars and that their restaurants are open, and that schools
Speaker 1: are open. It's it's that's what's so frustrating to me,
Speaker 1: is the media is actually selling us something that's fundamentally
Speaker 1: not true. And I saw, by the way, on Florida
Speaker 1: data yesterday, sixty eight percent of all people that have
Speaker 1: gotten the vaccine in Florida, more than anybody in the country,
Speaker 1: are sixty five or over. And so they're specifically focusing
Speaker 1: on the people who are dying of COVID. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: have been very smart about it, again compared to other
Speaker 1: places where say, well, you have to be sixty five
Speaker 1: and live in a nursing him and have a pre
Speaker 1: existing condition, and then maybe we'll get the vaccine to you.
Speaker 1: But if you're not, then you have to wait until
Speaker 1: we're through with all those people first. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just totally dumb, just logistically and uh. And credit to
Speaker 1: the Santists for seeing through that, and and the CDC,
Speaker 1: the so called you know, gold standard at the CC.
Speaker 1: All the bureaucrats of the CDC, they contributed to this
Speaker 1: problem by creating a very unwieldy the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that bureaucrats would do, not based on real world how
Speaker 1: things work, how things get distributed. So, uh, kudos to
Speaker 1: the santists. And then the Trump administration in its waning days,
Speaker 1: UH saw that and said, hey, this is stupid. That
Speaker 1: is what the CDC put out doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Let's uh, let's overrule them. Of course, there were a
Speaker 1: lots of people to go, oh, you're overruling the CDC,
Speaker 1: but no, they did the right thing there. And you
Speaker 1: know you have Biden now saying well, and I want
Speaker 1: to answer a lar's question about this, do you have
Speaker 1: Biden out? They're saying, you know, well, are are big plan.
Speaker 1: The thing we're gonna do that's different from Trump is
Speaker 1: we're going to make sure that we deliver a hundred
Speaker 1: million doses of COVID over the next hundred days. Well,
Speaker 1: do you know what the run rate is of vaccines
Speaker 1: in the last couple of days of the Trump administration
Speaker 1: was to one point five million a day, meaning that
Speaker 1: if Biden does nothing, just lets the Trump administration plan
Speaker 1: play out, they'll have delivered a hundred fifty million doses
Speaker 1: over the next hundred days at least. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like Biden put out this big
Speaker 1: press release the other day saying, Oh, here's all the
Speaker 1: things I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make people produce pp
Speaker 1: I'm gonna deliver a hundred million dolls of cod It's like,
Speaker 1: this is all common sense stuff that's already being done.
Speaker 1: And the good news is again there there's obviously been
Speaker 1: a lot of snappy there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: have gotten messed up in the early going here, but
Speaker 1: the good news is we're learning from that in real time.
Speaker 1: I do think we're gonna get easily through a hundred
Speaker 1: million doses in the first hundred days. We should have
Speaker 1: all the at risk populations of people who actually want
Speaker 1: to take the vaccinumously. There are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are scared of it or don't want to take
Speaker 1: it for pill sophical reasons. But the people who want
Speaker 1: to take the vaccine who are over sixty five should
Speaker 1: all get it by March uh if you know, if
Speaker 1: they want to, then we start going to the general populations.
Speaker 1: And my hope is that let's call it, let's call
Speaker 1: it July. Uh. We you know, the the vast majority
Speaker 1: of people who want to get vaccinated should be well
Speaker 1: on their way to getting vaccine at least the first
Speaker 1: shot and hopefully the second. And that means that from
Speaker 1: a standpoint of the way viral transmission works, the virus
Speaker 1: is not going to be a problem. Right if you've
Speaker 1: got that much immunity in society, the virus is not
Speaker 1: going to really be able to get the traction to
Speaker 1: continue to spread even if not everybody has gotten the vaccine.
Speaker 1: Think about the measles vaccine. Not everybody gets the measle vaccine.
Speaker 1: Not everybody gets the flu shot every winter, and yet
Speaker 1: enough people do that that that we don't have influenza pandemic.
Speaker 1: So similarly, here, if enough people get the vaccine, we
Speaker 1: should be able to return to normal life. So I
Speaker 1: don't agree with the people are saying no, we have
Speaker 1: to behave as if we're still in law down for
Speaker 1: for most of this year. I think for the first
Speaker 1: quarter is still going to be tough sledding. But but
Speaker 1: once we get to to the April May June time frame,
Speaker 1: I do think things should start to subside. Hopefully the
Speaker 1: stacks on the cases and the hospitalization starts to subside
Speaker 1: to and that'll be the thing that hopefully turns around
Speaker 1: that allows us to build more momentum for for reopening schools,
Speaker 1: reopening the economy, etcetera. Fox Sports Radio has the best
Speaker 1: sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
Speaker 1: shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. This is Wins and Loss as you're
Speaker 1: hearing from O vicroy legit last question for you, and
Speaker 1: I think we could talk all day, by the way,
Speaker 1: I could just I could just keep unpacking so much
Speaker 1: of what you're saying and continue this conversation, and I
Speaker 1: hope people have enjoyed it. I said, legit last question.
Speaker 1: But I do want to ask you this. How is
Speaker 1: free ap dot org funded. If people are listening to
Speaker 1: this right now and they love what you're saying and
Speaker 1: they're like, man, I want to go check out more
Speaker 1: of the work they're doing their capitalists or do you
Speaker 1: guys raise money? Are you privately funded? What is the
Speaker 1: method by which you are able to do the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well, thank you for asking that, Clay.
Speaker 1: Because we are a nonprofit of five oh one C
Speaker 1: three tax exept, nonprofit, nonpartisan, and we basically survive our donations.
Speaker 1: So we get donations from people like you, people who
Speaker 1: are listening to this uh podcast or radio show, and
Speaker 1: where we we get donations from also charitable foundations that
Speaker 1: we apply to grants from and and so we basically
Speaker 1: you hit up as many people as we'll We'll take
Speaker 1: the calls, take the meetings, and give them our our
Speaker 1: pitch about what we're doing and say, hey, look, if
Speaker 1: you're if you're looking for a set of ideas that
Speaker 1: can bring Republicans and Democrats together to make the country better,
Speaker 1: to expand freedom and expand prosperity, particularly for the little
Speaker 1: guy who's struggling in this day and age, take a
Speaker 1: lookal what we're doing and and help support our scholars
Speaker 1: and and you know, to take the example of our
Speaker 1: our COVID work. Right. So it wasn't just me. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're having me on your show, and I appreciate that,
Speaker 1: appreciate the chance to share what we work on. But
Speaker 1: it was a whole team of people who put together
Speaker 1: our work, like on on reopening schools. Yes, we had
Speaker 1: our healthcare people talking about the COVID piece of it,
Speaker 1: the virus piece of it, right, but we also had
Speaker 1: our education experts, people like Dan lips for who's our
Speaker 1: expert on case through twelve education, Preston Cooper, who's our
Speaker 1: expert on on college and vocational school and how to
Speaker 1: reopen those schools. And so we had a plan that
Speaker 1: went from how to reopen preschools to grade schools, the
Speaker 1: high schools, the colleges to trade schools. We went through
Speaker 1: it all, and that's because we're able to leverage our
Speaker 1: whole team of scholars, not just in in biotech and healthcare,
Speaker 1: but also in education and economics and housing and other
Speaker 1: areas to do this kind of work. So and we
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to do that if it weren't for
Speaker 1: for the donations of of the people like the people
Speaker 1: who are listening to this podcast. So if you're interested
Speaker 1: in supporting our work, whether it's a ten dollar check
Speaker 1: or if if you're Clay, if you have Clay Travis
Speaker 1: money a bigger chest than that, you can click on
Speaker 1: the donate tab on our website and I legitimately am
Speaker 1: going to donate today. I'm meant to ask this the
Speaker 1: last time, so free op dot org. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm just so impressed with the work that you're doing,
Speaker 1: and I think we need more work like this, and
Speaker 1: so I'm going to head uh straight there. So, if
Speaker 1: you are also enjoying this conversation and you want to
Speaker 1: to support free op dot org, is where you go? Okay,
Speaker 1: last question for you, so, and the reason why I
Speaker 1: would use Vietnam as an example is Vietnam is almost
Speaker 1: universally decided to have been the biggest failure of American
Speaker 1: public policy for most of the last fifty years. Right,
Speaker 1: let's go all the way back to to Vietnam. The
Speaker 1: smartest people got it all wrong on Vietnam. In the
Speaker 1: years that have ensued since Vietnam finished, that has become
Speaker 1: the consensus opinion. We got it wrong. We didn't foment
Speaker 1: the right public policy, we wasted a lot of lives,
Speaker 1: we didn't do what would have been best for the country.
Speaker 1: I would imagine almost everybody out there listening right now,
Speaker 1: there's very few people who are like in the camp
Speaker 1: of Vietnam was expertly executed by the United States government.
Speaker 1: Will we reach the point I know you said, you've
Speaker 1: got your report coming out at the end of February
Speaker 1: where masses of American population recognized that lockdowns, that shut downs,
Speaker 1: that schools being closed was a failure of policy. Or
Speaker 1: are so many people committed to what their opinion was
Speaker 1: in real time through social media and everything else, that
Speaker 1: people will be unwilling to recognize what the data tells
Speaker 1: them because it conflicts with the emotions they felt in
Speaker 1: that moment. And I at asked that question because I
Speaker 1: think it's significant and important that we learn from the
Speaker 1: mistakes that we make in public policy in our country.
Speaker 1: Will we end up because I think you would agree
Speaker 1: with me right now that the data is almost uniform
Speaker 1: that lockdowns don't make sense, and you can use Fortunately,
Speaker 1: because of federalism, we've got all these fifty different states
Speaker 1: that may have implemented a little bit different policy. And
Speaker 1: I think it's clear that California hasn't had some radically
Speaker 1: better result than Texas, or that certainly New York hasn't
Speaker 1: been better than Florida. In fact, it's far worse. I
Speaker 1: use those four states because they're the most populous. In
Speaker 1: other words, the virus was gonna virus, right, like we
Speaker 1: weren't going to be able to escape it based on
Speaker 1: a public policy decision exclusively, Will we reach that consensus?
Speaker 1: When does that consensus come? If we are ever going
Speaker 1: to reach it, I think it's going to take a
Speaker 1: long time, Clay, because you know, the people who were
Speaker 1: involved as debate, people like you and me and the
Speaker 1: people who we disagreed with, pretty invested in their point
Speaker 1: of view at this point, right, Nobody wants to admit
Speaker 1: they're wrong. Nobody is going to be inclined to admit
Speaker 1: the wrong, even if they secretly believe they're Some people
Speaker 1: just don't believe they're wrong because they're not gonna look
Speaker 1: at the data that doesn't confirm their own preconceptions, right.
Speaker 1: So I think it's gonna take some time for that
Speaker 1: to happen. But that's where organizations like free Up hopefully
Speaker 1: can play a role, along with obviously guys like you,
Speaker 1: in terms of doing the research, doing the analyzes that
Speaker 1: we can then circulate uh in the media, circulate with
Speaker 1: with our our peers and colleagues that show UH that
Speaker 1: that's the case. Right. So it's up to the people
Speaker 1: like us who have the views that we have or
Speaker 1: the hypotheses or whatever you want to call it, to
Speaker 1: actually do the research, do the work to show that actually,
Speaker 1: if you look at California and you look at Texas,
Speaker 1: and you look at the economic restrictions that they put
Speaker 1: in or didn't put in, here was how that affected
Speaker 1: the rate of COVID infections and their hospitalizations in debt.
Speaker 1: And it's it's pretty clear that that that nothing really
Speaker 1: happened there and and or that that that that that
Speaker 1: the Texas or Florida model was vindicated. I think that's
Speaker 1: that's going to be some of the work that that
Speaker 1: that people at Free Up and L we're going to
Speaker 1: have to do to make that point clear. So it's
Speaker 1: up to researchers who want to who want to test
Speaker 1: that hypothesis or or or or or prove it to
Speaker 1: do that work. And and that's where organizations like us
Speaker 1: really make a difference. Through the whole reason we started
Speaker 1: Free Up. Free Up is only five years old, four
Speaker 1: and a half years old, and the whole reason we
Speaker 1: started is because even though this country is so big,
Speaker 1: three foundered thirty million people, there was literally nobody doing
Speaker 1: this kind of work. If we didn't do it, which
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, Like I look around them, like, how is
Speaker 1: it possible that we're the only ones writing these you know,
Speaker 1: long arctics. I say that in sports every day. How
Speaker 1: is it possible that OutKick is the only place doing
Speaker 1: what we do. It's it's scary, honestly. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: it just, uh, you know, puts a little more pressure
Speaker 1: on us maybe to work harder and get that stuff
Speaker 1: out there. And and we certainly take that responsibility seriously
Speaker 1: and are are going to continue to do that. So
Speaker 1: so keep an eye on on our Twitter account, on
Speaker 1: our website and uh and hold us accountle if we
Speaker 1: don't get it done, and asked us to when when
Speaker 1: that work is going to come out, because it's important
Speaker 1: to get it done. It's not only important to get
Speaker 1: it done, it's also important for the very scientific method itself,
Speaker 1: because the idea that experts know everything to me is
Speaker 1: one of the lasting legacies of COVID that is going
Speaker 1: to be the most destructive, because the scientific method is
Speaker 1: predicated on coming up with hypotheses, testing them, and always
Speaker 1: expecting that you may be wrong, whereas it seems to
Speaker 1: me that social media is predicated almost entirely on never
Speaker 1: admitting you were wrong about anything. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean you mentioned Vietnam. We we we talked about it
Speaker 1: on the last interview as well. You know, we obviously
Speaker 1: talked about COVID. Think about the housing crisis in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. Right, all the experts said, housing prices only
Speaker 1: go up, they never go down, because that's what historical
Speaker 1: charts show. But of course, you know, every trend is
Speaker 1: made to be broken. And you have a housing bubble,
Speaker 1: you have a financial bubble, you have uh institutions behaving recklessly,
Speaker 1: people behaving recklessly, over leveraging their their their equity in
Speaker 1: their homes, and boom, you have a crash. Right, And
Speaker 1: that's what happened. And there were the people that that
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis wrote about in The Big Short, which was
Speaker 1: a great book and a great you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: and obviously the author of Moneyball as well, and The Blindside,
Speaker 1: incredible writer. Like what, what's the running theme of all
Speaker 1: those all those books, all those movies. It's that the
Speaker 1: experts didn't get it right, and there was some random
Speaker 1: creative nerd out there who was right where the experts
Speaker 1: were wrong. And so that's a you know, there's a balance, right.
Speaker 1: We don't want to say science doesn't matter that you know,
Speaker 1: you should just ignore everything that a scientist says because
Speaker 1: the scientists are always wrong. That's not true. But it's
Speaker 1: also true that experts, particularly experts who have a political
Speaker 1: point of view, often uh uh, you know, aren't willing
Speaker 1: to see countervailing or contradictory evidence that that conflicts with
Speaker 1: their world viewing. So the balances somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: The balances have a healthy skepticism of of what you
Speaker 1: hear from the so called experts. Don't automatically assume they're
Speaker 1: wrong either, but have that healthy skip to skepticism. Do
Speaker 1: your own work, do your own checking, ask intelligent questions.
Speaker 1: That's what we should have done in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight with the natural crisis. That's what we should have
Speaker 1: done with the Vietnam war or the Iraq war. That's
Speaker 1: what we should do with COVID and everything else that
Speaker 1: comes along along the way. And if we do that,
Speaker 1: we'll have a much more healthy society uh and hopefully
Speaker 1: better response to the challenges that come before us in
Speaker 1: the future. I'm donating to him free op dot org.
Speaker 1: Got encourage you to do it as well. I'd also
Speaker 1: encourage you to go follow uh oh vic Roy at
Speaker 1: a v I K. You can thank him for coming
Speaker 1: on and talking to our OutKick audience here, and when
Speaker 1: you publish, hopefully in late February, since you've now established
Speaker 1: a date. When you published that and I have a
Speaker 1: chance to read it, we will get you on again.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you answering my wife's questions uh and uh,
Speaker 1: and again give her credit because she loved this interview
Speaker 1: and she said, you've got to get him on again,
Speaker 1: and you've got to talk to him again and get
Speaker 1: an update. So I appreciate everything that you're doing at
Speaker 1: your organization, and I appreciate time you gave us today.
Speaker 1: Hey Sam do you thanks for being a voice for
Speaker 1: for for the real the real truths out there on
Speaker 1: these issues really really important. Your your audience. You've you've
Speaker 1: grown such a big audience and you have, uh you know,
Speaker 1: the trust of so many people, and you've used it,
Speaker 1: uh for for social good to to get people the
Speaker 1: information they need. So people like me are grateful to
Speaker 1: you for that. Oh vic Roy, go follow him at
Speaker 1: A V I K. I am Clay Travis. This is
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses. I think. This is the first time
Speaker 1: we've ever had a guest on twice, so you know
Speaker 1: how highly I think of him. Go donate free op
Speaker 1: dot org. Appreciate all of you. Go check out the
Speaker 1: rest of our Wins and Losses conversations, including Ovic and
Speaker 1: Eyes first conversation, which is up from August one. Thank you,
Speaker 1: my man, Thanks to all you, and I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoy it, share with your friends. This has been
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses