Tag: covid

So I came across some stats.

You know how much I love.

Comedy and stats.

I was thinking I should, I have all these
great ideas for projects, but I don’t have

the time to do the research
to make the projects successful.

You do a comedy show based
almost exclusively on statistics.

So you take statistics
and then you make jokes

about statistics and you statistics
jokes to make more comedy.

Statistically that would be humorous.

I don’t know.

I don’t, I don’t, again, I
will see, I’ll see a statistic.

I’ll think of some funny things.

And then I’m like, oh, you could
extrapolate that into an entire show.

You could if you had a research team.

I’ve had lots of ideas
like that where the

problem, the success
would have relied on having

a team in place that
could actually do the thing.

That’s not what we’re talking about today.

Well, we are talking
about some statistics and

it comes down to red
versus blue in America,

which is dominant in
the news because it is

fascinating how they
will sacrifice their own

self interests, hurting themselves
to prove a political point.

And I think that might be it’s more
true on the red side than the blue side.

I of course have a significant bias.

I’m not going to pretend I don’t.

I am a very liberal
person from a very liberal

country living in another
very socialist oriented country.

So I’m Canadian.

I’m a liberal Canadian, which is
essentially a communist socialist bastard.

I live in Japan, which is a very
social socially oriented country.

A lot of the programs.

You pay high taxes, all that other stuff.

And I’ve reaped the benefits.

That’s probably what
has kept me so so same.

Also I’m relatively poor.

I mean, I’m not.

I don’t know.

What am I?

I’m not poor.

I don’t even think I’m middle class.

I may be lower middle class.

Anyways, I am a target voting
demographic in most countries.

Sub Japan, which doesn’t
want foreigners to vote.

If you watch Ninja News, Japan, the other
day, I was actually talking about how there

was a town and they
said, we’re not going

to give foreign residents voting rights,
but we’re going to call them citizens.

96% of the people in the
town were like, fuck that.

We don’t want to call people
who aren’t Japanese citizens.

That’s just ridiculous.

So, I mean, there’s a lot of things
that need to be improved in all countries.

I don’t want to even claim the things that
I believe are the places I like or perfect,

but we are talking about America,
which is deeply, deeply flawed.

And the politics is
making it worse because

the politics have now
become message is more

important than the
reality of people’s lives.

And what am I talking about?

It has a lot to do with being
anti-vax and anti-vaxination.

I don’t believe you should
be forced to take a vaccine.

I don’t think you should be forced to
take anything that you don’t agree with.

But, there’s always going to be a but.

If you refuse to take
the vaccine for anything

and you catch that
thing, the state should

not then be burdened by your illness,
which is where the problems arise.

So, vaccines in oculations, all these
things, they are done for the greater good.

And that seems to be, again, the
individualistic nature of politics in America.

I think I’ve talked
about this before, but

you have the theory in
America is individual rights.

The problem with individual
rights is they cannot

exist in a world with
more than one person.

So, if I have my individual rights,
I have the most important thing.

And then you’ve
been taught that your

individual rights are
the most important thing.

If we fall into the same realm
of existence, we cannot agree.

Because how can my
rights be the most important

thing and your rights be
the most important thing?

Therefore, one of us must
be wrong if we disagree.

There can’t be any middle ground
and there can’t be any compromise.

I think this might be the major flaw
in American politics in modern times.

That said, should you be forced to
take a medicine that you don’t agree with?

No.

But then, I don’t think you
should receive help if you get sick.

This is something I think it was Sweden
tried to do this during the pandemic.

You don’t have to get
the vaccine, but if you

don’t get the vaccine and you catch
COVID, you don’t get to go to a hospital.

So essentially you die.

And I was like, I kind
of agree with that

philosophically, but
the reality of letting

people die, I don’t
think I agree with that.

So this is the problem.

This is what I’m saying.

There’s a philosophical level you think on.

And then there’s the reality of
humans suffering in front of you.

So where do you draw the line?

Philosophically, I think
if you don’t take the

vaccine and you catch the
disease, you should just suffer.

Honestly I believe that philosophically.

If you said this person
who did not take the

vaccine is sick, should
we give the medicine,

my inherent instinct
would be, yes, let’s give

the medicine, let’s give them all the medical
care we can and try to save their life.

So that’s that’s
sort of the first set of

issues I run into that
there’s a philosophical

realm that I believe
in, but then there’s also

reality, which requires me
to care for other people.

So that’s when you
get into, well, since we’re

going to have to take
care of the medically

in real life, we should
force them to take the

vaccine and you can see that to me
is where the divide becomes difficult.

The anti-vax movements has been
going on in America for quite a while now.

And I think to me, this
is one of those forms

of rebellion where
like again, Americans

seem to want to be
rebellious, but that rebellion,

the foundation of
that rebellion, rebellion

I think inherently means
you have to do something.

And so like something
like anti-vax, what

you’re actually doing is
nothing and then saying

that me doing this nothing
is a no, sorry, my dog

is just coughing right
next to the microphone.

I’m assuming it’s picking it up.

I’m going to wait till that’s finished.

Okay, he’s laid down again.

I died that threw me off.

So the anti-vax movement is a group
of individuals who want to be rebellious.

They want to be noble.

They want to have a cause, but
they don’t want to actually do anything.

So this is like the laziest form of social
resistance is where I’m going to not do the

thing and then tell everyone I’m
being super noble by not doing the thing.

Art I great.

You should all not do the thing with me.

We should actually all do nothing
and then everything will get better.

Now I fundamentally
disagree with that, but

again, we’re talking about
the philosophical realm.

I do enjoy statistics
because they pull the

philosophical into
the reality, which is

kind of what I actually
wanted to talk about.

Republicans did very much
push the anti-vaccination

message ironically
because it was under

Donald Trump’s introduction and fast
forwarding of the vaccine being produced.

So Donald Trump could
take credit for pushing

through the vaccine, getting it done,
getting it made, getting it out there.

But then his party was turning around
and saying, don’t take the vaccine.

So that’s, again, you can see
philosophically, problematically.

You’re saying like, let’s
be anti-establishment

wherein the problem is at the
moment we are the establishment.

How do we do that?

Well, we want everyone
to not take this

medicine that we put extra effort into
getting it done, getting that medicine made.

So I didn’t enjoy
that again, it’s sort of

like an irony in the
American political system.

So Republicans pushed sort
of an anti-vaxx regime ideology.

And the interesting thing
for me, and immediately

was like this puts the people who vote
Republican at greater risk of catching the

disease and therefore
at greater risk of dying

from sort of the
complications of the disease.

So if your political voters are not
being vaccinated and the disease is real.

So I’m going to go ahead
and assume the disease is real.

I’ve had a couple of people come at
me and say that COVID’s not a thing.

It’s just a flu and some other stuff.

I’ve had that argument multiple times.

Sorry, I just, I can’t, I can’t deal
with both of those at the same time.

If COVID is just the
flu and it’s a more

communicable flu
that it kills you, the fact

that it’s not called the flu and
it’s called COVID, does not matter.

I mean, nomenclature
in this case is not

the important issue
we should be looking at.

It’s whether or not it’s killing
people and it was killing people.

The number of people
at risk increased if you

were politically
Republican leaning because

you’re more likely to
not get the vaccine.

That I think is a
statement if COVID is real.

Now this actually goes
into another secondary

set of issues that in America, healthcare
costs because healthcare is not socialized.

If you catch COVID, you’re more likely
to catch COVID if you’re Republican.

If you catch COVID,
you then have to pay

into the privatized healthcare system,
which is very much broken in America.

I mean, the most common
stories you read on

the Internet are about
people going completely

bankrupt all the time because
their insurance won’t pay out.

Their healthcare isn’t there.

They won’t take them
to the hospital unless

they’re in their provider, which I
don’t even know what that really means.

My assumption is you
have a company you deal

with insurance wise
and only certain hospitals

will take you if you have
that insurance and whatnot.

I’ve never lived in a
country that did that.

If I get sick, I go to the closest
hospital and that’s pretty much it.

I mean, in Canada, that’s
the way it worked in Japan.

That’s the way it worked or they take you
to have some pretty horrible stories about

hospitals being closed because of the
hours in stuff in Japan and separate issue.

If you’d like to hear
more about that, you can

drop me a message
and I’ll look into a whole

bunch of stories and put them together
and do a special scenic view on that.

But Yale, which is a university
in America, did a study.

And it was focused
primarily on Ohio and Florida.

And they were focusing primarily on
counties with lower vaccination rates.

And these counties
were primarily Republican.

So Ohio and Florida,
Republican states, and

they were saying,
“Let’s find the Republican

counties within those
states and we’ll study

vaccination, COVID,
transmission, and deaths.”

So they ended up with 538,159
people that were kind of studying.

The first year of the
pandemic, if you were a

Republican or Democrat,
you had a similar death rate.

So in the first year of the
pandemic, we did not have a vaccine.

Everyone was in sort of
the same risk category.

They were saying wear
masks, don’t wear masks.

I mean, this actually
in a weird way proves

that if you were a
Democrat and you’re following

all the rules and you’re wearing
masks and stuff, it didn’t really work.

If we’re being honest, I still would wear a
mask because the number of flu cases did

drop, so you say like, “Well,
it doesn’t work for COVID.”

Well, if it works for every other
disease, it might still be worth doing.

But that’s a separate issue.

That’s not what they’re talking about.

But maybe the Republicans
were wearing masks

because the companies
told them to maybe not.

Maybe no one was wearing a mask properly
because we didn’t know about masks.

We certainly didn’t know about good
masks and how masks should fit in stuff.

There was a very big conversation in Japan
about like, you get the medical masks.

Should the sort of, what do you call it?

It’s not a string, the elastic that
connects the mask to wraps around your ears.

Should that, the
connection point beyond

the outsider, the inside
of the mask because

you want to create a
seal around your mouth?

That was a whole
conversation that went on

during the first year of
the pandemic because

people didn’t know the
right system or the right way.

Way, there were double
masks and all this other stuff.

But the first year of the
pandemic, the death rate

was relatively similar
regardless of political lines.

One month after the
vaccine became available, this

is a quote, excess
mortality was significantly

higher for Republican
voters, like up to 43%.

So what they’re saying
in that first month,

most likely Democrats
were getting the vaccine,

Republicans were not
getting the vaccine and

the death rate either decreased into
Democrats or increased in Republicans.

They didn’t actually look
at what was killing people.

So maybe for that month after the vaccine
was introduced, Republicans were jumping in

front of trains at an exorbitant
rate, something like that.

We don’t know specifically.

But we can say there’s
some causation, some

correlation between
people getting vaccinated

and people not dying during
that initial first few months.

Another study, June
2021 to March 2022, found

234,000 deaths could have been
prevented if people had been vaccinated.

So they’re saying these
vaccines, the people

who got them, they
were not dying people who

didn’t get them in the
same situation, 234,000

people died when they
didn’t necessarily have to die.

People from pro Donald Trump counties
were three times more likely to die.

Again, not specifically saying from COVID.

So you want to say
COVID’s not real, that’s true.

But there was a trend
that after the vaccine was

introduced, Republicans,
pro Trump Republicans

specifically were
dying at a higher rate

than non pro Trump
Republicans and Democrats.

So if you can come up with another
explanation for that, I would love to hear it.

It would be very interesting
to hear someone’s

other point of view
on what was killing

all these pro Trump
Republicans during this period.

In some places in Florida,
some small counties,

the death numbers
are so high they actually

outweighed the number of
votes you would need to do in.

So you have 48% Democrats in this county.

You have 52% Republicans,
5% of the Republicans

in that county died
because of something during

this period when
vaccines were available,

which meant the next
election that comes up,

that county would then
flip from red to blue.

And that to me is the core issue.

And it’s not even a
core issue of again, the

philosophical realm of
should we morally make

people do things they don’t
agree with and things like that.

It is more a case of if I’m a
politician, I want people to vote for me.

And if I want people to vote for
me, those people have to stay alive.

So it’s actually in
my best interest is a

positive politician to
provide my voters, let’s

say we’re going to be really awful
about it and only do this for my voters.

If you vote for me, you
get better health care.

If you vote for me, you get the vaccine.

If you vote for me,
you get all these things

that will keep you alive so that you
can keep voting for me in the future.

That to me is the
philosophical divide between

the reality of what is
happening with the way

this group is thinking and the
reality of how it’s going to play out.

If you’re thinking, do
you never get a vaccine,

never do these things
to take care of yourself,

never increase the
quality of health care.

Because Trump’s one
of his first platforms

was going to come out
with a new health care

system that was going to replace a
bomb of care and it was going to be better.

And that never manifested.

That never happened.

You said you’re going to be
able to choose your doctor.

You’re going to be a better deal.

I don’t, again, there were no specifics.

He’s going to be able to
be more likely speaking.

He says he has that plan in place.

He says that plan is possible.

So if that is the truth,
Donald Trump could

still in this moment reveal that plan to
everyone else and they could vote it in.

He could say, here’s my plan.

It’s the greatest plan that was ever made.

Let’s put it out there in the public.

They’ll still get credit for it.

Maybe he’s Biden’s
president and then it

will actually make
Biden look really stupid.

Why didn’t you come
up with this brilliant plan?

He’s working on his
platform for the next election.

Here’s the health care plan.

I’m going to put it into place,
but let me give you all the plan.

The biggest problem
with him is he never gave

any details of any plan
he ever came up with.

So it always came down to
this dude is just making shit up.

Hi, man.

Yeah.

I want to conclude in
a not wholly negative

way, but the whole
anti-vax movement in this

case and these numbers
don’t lie, it has nothing

to do again with the
philosophical differences.

Like I actually believe if you
don’t want to get the vaccine,

you shouldn’t have to get the
vaccine, but let’s make real clear.

The vaccine came
out and people just who

took it, they were dying less
than the people who weren’t.

And the anti-vax
stance of the rebellious

nature of I just want
to be counter culture.

And none of those
people were dying that that

philosophy was proving itself
to be faulty from the beginning.

I don’t, this is a huge downer to end on.

What a shitty story.

I was interested in the numbers.

I’ve said this many, many times.

I got to work on my conclusions
before I start because I don’t script.

I write notes so that I get my facts right.

I don’t script.

I think I got to start scripting and
ending or at least have an ending point.

Jesus Christ, what a downer.

I don’t know how I end.

How do I end?

This is it.

I talk about stats and people dying.

This is the problem.

So in the engineer’s
Japan, I have adopted a

philosophy of I don’t
talk about people dying.

Now I get pretty gross stories in there.

I actually do that less than I used to.

But because you
can’t end in any sort of

positive way and I don’t want
the endings of, this is like an elbow.

You make an elbow.

You don’t want the
last song to be a downer.

You want the last song
to be a great up note

so that you are willing
to play the album

against you put all your
sad songs in the middle.

I don’t know if that actually happens,
but it was a philosophy I’d heard about.

I need to adopt something
similar for the podcast.

I don’t want to end on a downer.

I don’t want people to
walk away going, man,

I listen to Chuck with
you just this morning

and God damn, do I feel
bad for the rest of the day?

I guess this whole story was about
moves all downers all the way down.

That’s the problem.

But I do talk about just shit all the time.

Like I can just ramble.

Like I am right now.

All I need to do is have Dave
in my lap, scratch his dumb face.

I’m just keep talking.

And there’s the positive note.

For those of your
political leanings, you can

get a stupid little poodle, stick him
in your lap and scratch his dumb face.

Can we get Dave in there?

This is the problem.

I had the mic up here and it was a really
good position, but it seemed to echo.

And so I had the mic down here.

Because it’s a front facing mic.

Because it was below
my mouth, depending on

where my head was, it was
picking up different levels.

So now I’ve put the mic down and angled
it so that it’s aiming sort of at my face.

I’m hoping this is the first time I’ve
done it, so I’m hoping that sounds better.

I’m going to stuff around my room.

I seem to have managed
to create a small echo,

which I think most
people wouldn’t notice,

but when you edit your own
podcast, you hear all this stuff.

What I really want to do
though is get down to Dave Cam.

Check that out.

That’s actually pretty good angle.

Because I worry about my
hairline because it’s so bad.

I do think the mic
and the nerd stuff in

the corner is more
interesting than my face.

People are always like, “Oh, you
got to do a video for the podcast.

You got to do it on YouTube.

I never wanted to do that because I never
really wanted to put my face on camera.”

But if I could get just
Dave Cam, if I did it from this

angle, actually that I think
that looks pretty good.

You get my mouth moving.

So there is motion in the image.

You get the dog.

I think the tech setup, the
mic and the pop filter and stuff.

I like the way that looks, but that’s
maybe just because I’m into this stuff.

This might be my… If Dave’s on
my lap, this might be my setup.

I might do that.

I can just… My
beard’s now big enough.

I can actually run my fingers through it.

Who’s so sexual?

I was going to do a
bit on the alien reveal,

but all I have to say
is that I don’t think

anyone gives a shit because
it’s not going to impact our lives.

Because the fact that aliens are really
real statistically is not a surprise.

The problem is everyone’s
life is so shitty right now.

How does aliens being
real help make us better?

So this is what I was doing before.

When you would comment,
I would actually just…

All I was saying is if aliens are
real and they crash into earth.

Man, they are shit-oilers
despite their ETL travel.

So this was my
thinking for when I do an

international Japan and when I do CMEB
is I put the voice on in the background.

Because I can then
just… It’s in a browser.

I can just turn it off.

But then you comment,
I can actually respond

to you like we’re
having a conversation.

I know there’s still like
the four-second delay.

I’ve turned the delay down as low
as possible, but it’ll make it more.

Because what I was
doing before is you would

write a comment and I would read it
and there would be a pause in the podcast.

The pause was long enough, I
could then drop that voice chat.

Like I could actually just
do it through an online thing.

And I did the last
couple episodes and I

actually really liked it
because it meant you

would say something
I could respond to it,

but it sounded more
natural because I didn’t

have to read it out
because often I’ll read

it and not realize I
haven’t set it out loud.

But I mean, aliens being real
is not a big surprise to me.

Everyone’s coming to
Earth is more of a surprise,

but they didn’t actually
say aliens came to Earth.

They were very specific in their language.

It was, “Does it contain alien biologics?”

I’m going to look into this a
little more, maybe do it next

week because I didn’t have
anything planned for next week.

But alien biologics, I mean,
it said, “Non-human biologics.

I have a non-human
biologic in my lap right now.”

So it doesn’t actually
mean it was an alien,

you know, green-headed little
dude who came down to talk to us.

I can encourage statistically
unlikely that no aliens exist.

I think factually speaking,
they’ve already found on

Europa the moon that goes
around, I think it’s Jupiter.

Under the ice, there’s Amoeba.

So I mean, I know that’s not
exciting alien life, but it is alien life.

I did a whole episode on that,
one of the old world podcasts.

And it wasn’t that
aliens don’t exist, it was

why aliens wouldn’t
bother coming to Earth.

Because you wouldn’t
come to a place, you

wouldn’t come to Earth,
you would send a probe.

And so that’s it, these alien
spacecraft that they’ve caught.

I don’t think there’s alien aliens in it.

I think it’s probably just
like a satellite or a probe.

And one of those crashing
actually makes perfect

sense because it got too
close to the atmosphere.

There’s a lot of shit
going on and it crashed.

That makes sense to me.

So the guys said they covered crash ships
and sometimes in a crash you find pilots.

Yeah, they recovered crash ships.

Again, ships is unspecific as
to what they’re talking about.

And again, they said biologics, they
wouldn’t actually say pilot or anything.

And the only question
that was interesting

is have, has the US
government, and not well

doing their FTL and
smacking right into the Earth?

Well, that you’ve made
an interesting assumption

that they’re using an
FTL that we understand

it because we’re bound by
our ideas and science fiction.

Their understanding of physics
may be different, first of all.

But a very interesting
concept that most

people don’t think about
that I hadn’t thought

about until I have a friend and
I talked to who studied physics.

He has a masters in physics.

And he was saying the
vastness of the universe

is so great that
there is the possibility

that if you get further, far enough away
from Earth, the rules of physics change.

And that I was like that
blew my mind because

basically he’s saying
if you get far enough

away, maybe gravity doesn’t
work the way we think it works.

If you get far enough
away and there’s enough

black holes, time just doesn’t
work the way we understand it.

So our complete
understanding of physics

and reality and time
and everything is based

on our area of space,
but space being essentially

infinite means that
within space there

is the possibility that
everything is different.

And so these guys
having existed in a different

place with different
rules of physics means

that their version of travel
may be completely different.

Whereas they just, you
know, it’s heart powered,

so they’re like care
bears and then they

use the care bear countdown
and then they’re in Earth.

Like that’s it.

So there’s no FTL, there’s no machine
involved, it has to do with passion.

And the more passionate you are,
the more distance you can cover.

The problem is when
they get here, maybe the

care bear countdown
doesn’t work on the way back.

So because again, the
rules of physics here

and the rules of physics
there don’t match up.

And that is something
like as I just assumed

as a kid, as a high
school student university

student, the physics
was a thing, it was a

rule and it just everything
would follow those rules.

I hadn’t taken into
account that just the

simple fact of distance,
great enough distance

meant the rules could
possibly change over space.

And that was something
I really, really enjoyed.

The math behind war drives is feasible.

They could be fourth
dimensional, which would

also fix the problem, but we’d really
struggle to perceive them coherently.

Yes, I cannot argue with that.

I mean, I know I like the, because I follow
all the science fiction shows and so they

all have their own theories on
how faster the light travel works.

Star Trek, basically
they encompass the ship

in a bubble and then
they fold space around it.

And then they did the
discovery show and they

had a whole different
system where they did

like these wormholes
that they essentially

created on the fly and they
just move through those.

Power wars, you basically bounce off suns.

So that’s why they
have to do, they actually

do a lot of like we
can’t fly until we do

calculations because
basically we’re going to

slingshot around different
gravities throughout

space and then as the
slingshots go, it’ll get

faster and faster and
faster, which is pretty cool.

And that’s why the Kessel
run for the Millennium Falcon.

So it’s whatever it
was, 12 parsecs and

parsecs is not the
classic nerd thing is those

made of measurement of
time, it’s a measurement

of space, but the Kessel run
is a race around a black hole.

And so the person
who gets closest to the

black hole is going to
use actually the least

amount of distance, but then
also be able to win the race faster.

So the Millennium Falcon got closest to the
black hole in 12 parsecs and survived and

pulled out because
the problem is if you get

too close to the black
hole, you get pulled

in and destroys your
ship, you don’t win the race.

So you have to find that line where your
ship could survive the distance to and from

the black hole and still win
the race, which I really enjoy.

So that was one of
those things, it was a

nerd thing where it
was like does not speed,

just tell me, or distance, and then I
was like yeah, but why is it distance?

And it turns out because
it’s a race around a black hole.

So the closer you get,
the less you have to,

you know, distance you have to travel,
but also the risk you’re up it comes.

And Han Solo being
Han Solo in the Millennium

Falcon, dude’s taking
some bitches risks.

Bad and slow, that’d feel.

Oh God, idea.

I don’t know how anything
would feel in space.

Space has been a big fantasy for me.

I mean, close to a black hole.

But they did, look at
these face, I’m sorry.

We’re going to stop
talking about space and

just look at these,
these little tongues out.

He’s getting his head scratched.

Ah, this is the best thing in the world.

Fuck aliens and space and
Republicans and Democrats.

It’s all just Dave with his tongue
out getting his head scratched.

Ah, I do this shit and I’m like, ah, I can’t
put this into the audio podcast because

for me, podcasting is still a
audio format, not a video format.

So this goes into the YouTube video.

It doesn’t go into the podcast, which is
too bad because all those people miss out.

And my audience is still primarily audio.

Podcast not video.

I think I get like maybe
20 views is a good video

on YouTube for me, which
is almost feels pointless.

But then I had the, the triple R video.

It had 15,000.

So that was like, for the scope of
what I do, that’s like a huge blow up.

It’s really cool.

Oh, Dave, how, how is
it that you do nothing?

They should be on the line recording.

I think, I think a lot of people are.

I need to, if I really want to do that, I
would love to set up a better schedule.

But because I have so
much shit to do, it’s very hard.

It’s nice during the holidays because
I can now just sit here and hang out.

But then my kids are at home.

So I do have to take care of my kids.

But taking care of my
kids because they’re older

now literally just means
making sure they get food.

And I like making them good food.

Oh, just get that all.

Then the nose massage.

Oh, this is like asthma if I would shut up.

Get the microphone down into Dave’s
face and just listen to the scratches.