A California Scientist on Vertical Quarantine, Groupthink, and Why He Fears Speaking Out

Vance Crowe [00:00:03] As the crow flies on the Bands Crow podcast. Dan Oja, welcome to the podcast.

Dan Ovadya [00:00:12] Hey Bance, thanks.

Vance Crowe [00:00:14] So you are a friend of my friend Kate Crosby, and she said, Hey, you have got to talk to my friend Dan, my mentor, a guy I used to work with and just have a chat with him. And we got about 15 minutes into our conversation and I was like, hold up man. We should be recording this. This is worthwhile. So I, I just saw, I don't know exactly what we're gonna talk about other than what's going on with Coronavirus, but the first thought that I have that I wanted to share with you is the other day I got, I went on Twitter and I wrote, people on the coasts are held hostage, basically by the thought police. And I think one day we will think of California as where the puritans come from and people, some people really liked it. I got a whole bunch of likes, maybe 50 or 60, and then I had some people show up that were really, really angry that I said it. What do you think? Was that like the most offensive thing I could say about the coasts?

Dan Ovadya [00:01:10] Yeah, absolutely. You're not allowed to say that at all. In fact, I'm gonna be reporting you immediately. No, that is a sentiment right now. It's, it's truly unbelievable. And you know, I grew up when it was like Nancy Reagan and just say no, and you know, Ozzy Osborne was gonna make you, you know, e live bat heads and stuff. So now it's completely switched and it was like this religious purs, right? And now it's, it's gone the other way. And you have this whole group of people that really wanna micromanage and judge every single statement. And people are afraid to say stuff right now. And I'm afraid right now, I'm terrified.

Vance Crowe [00:01:51] It's the weirdest thing because I was talking on the phone with another friend from California and they were literally whispering into the phone their perspective. And I was like, are there people around? And they're like, no, but I got neighbors and it's just not worth it. I just don't want them to. And like they were basically saying like, my neighbors won't talk to me anymore. I, you know, maybe they'll put a burning cross up there. And I was, I just, I've, I've, I lived in California and I know there is a left way of thinking there, but it just seemed like people right now are really on edge.

Dan Ovadya [00:02:23] Absolutely. And the thing is, there's so many people that fall in between that are not all or nothing, that don't fall into the all or nothing camp. Right. That's where we all want to be. Right. Those people are completely silent and they have just shut it down. So, no, I agree with that. People are, you know, again, I worked for Monsanto for a long, long time and it is the same thing in my neighborhood. Total group think, total group think. And you have to be careful with what you say. It's not worth it.

Vance Crowe [00:02:55] So what is going on? Today's date is April 30th, 2020. What is going on with Coronavirus and where in California are you right now?

Dan Ovadya [00:03:05] Yeah, so I'm in Davis, California University town. It's about, it's near Sacramento and about an hour away from San Francisco, so north part of the state. And yeah, today woke up and we had in our county Yolo County, which is where Davis is, they announced that we were gonna be locked down for an entire month and another month until May 31st.

Vance Crowe [00:03:33] Whoa. Were you expecting that? Yeah,

Dan Ovadya [00:03:37] Well no, I mean, here are the numbers. So 16 deaths so far in the entire county, 11 of those came from one nursing home and very, very low infection rate. And even with, you know, modeling it out and serological studies in actual infection rate is fairly low. And so people were really hoping to get back to things. And so that kind of was launched in Yellow County surrounding counties are not as strict. But then now Newsom, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, kind of in a retribution type way, you know, said he is gonna lock down all beaches and all state parks. 'cause a lot of people were turning out in Southern California. And so, yeah, I think a lot of news hit and a lot of stuff was flying and people did not expect this. And then people are kind of like scratching their head, I thought we were going to be science-based. And it's really, it doesn't make that much sense right now, this level of horizontal lockdown when we could be doing a more vertical strategy, which is let's protect the susceptible, let's protect the caregivers of the susceptible and then let life start to resume.

Vance Crowe [00:04:54] Maybe we should talk for just a second about your background, who you are, you know, what, what you do for kind of a living and why, you know, why you have this kind of unusual scientific take on on the world.

Dan Ovadya [00:05:06] Yeah. Well I'll say this, I'm definitely not a classically trained scientist. I hated school and I did not get a PhD. I did go to uc, Davis and I studied plant biology. And so for the last 30 years, I, I have been in ag biotech field. And so you could say today I'm an expert in controlled environment agriculture, research development and plant crop optimization. And that's all I've done for 30 years. So I'm a science fellow and I'm a strategy lead for a team called Global Crop Innovations, currently acquired, recently merged with Bayer Crop Science. So that's my, that's my life and background.

Vance Crowe [00:05:47] So for people that don't know, and I can translate if you, he said that I'm a, I'm a science fellow and at Monsanto, which was arguably the most innovative biotech breeding seed company for many, many years, had a program where scientists that made an actual contribution to science while they were a part of Monsanto and showed in in particular rigor and forward movement in the scientific realm, you would get inducted into the society and it was taken, it is taken very seriously. And to do that without having a formal PhD education is somewhat rare.

Dan Ovadya [00:06:26] Yeah, I think someone told me that only 20 people have gotten in since like 1940 into the fellows have had a PhD. So I was either a really good salesperson or actually did something. I'll say this, okay, so here's my bias, right? We all have bias. So here's my bias, I'm, I am a skeptic, basically that's, I challenge almost everything. So just like I challenged the way soybean had been grown for 40 years, I actually challenged that and I developed a method that increased soybean yield in greenhouses for re research purposes and breeding purposes increased yield by 1000%. And this changed a 50 year paradigm. And I came out of Iowa State and of course I had never seen a soy plant being from California actually hadn't. But I knew it was a short day plant, actually very similar to cannabis. And so there were techniques within cannabis that actually I applied to soybean and that led to the seal increase. So again, my bias is super, super, I would say yeah, a skeptic and generally not afraid to do really, you know, kind of dumb things for things that that other people who know better would not try.

Vance Crowe [00:07:46] So when you were looking at the viruses, it was coming at us, what was your interpretation at the time of what the proper response would be?

Dan Ovadya [00:07:57] It, you know, in the early days it was intense. Okay, so I'm just like, I'm watching, you know, trying to get as much objective data as possible. At the same time I'm watching the media just get all over this thing. And I have to say my trust in the media has declined dramatically. I think since, I don't know, over the last, I would say at least 10 years, trust in mainstream media or any media, either side has gone way, way down. And so I wasn't, I was intentionally not going to media, but I was searching, searching, searching for experts and searching for a range of opinions. So I intentionally do this as well. Go to an expert, look at one side and then look at the other side because data's data, but there's always multiple ways to look at it. Early on, yeah, this was looking pretty severe. However, I did not believe any of the data outta China initially Absolutely didn't believe any of it. And now we know it really wasn't believable. I could sense a huge amount of fear there. And so I was actually watching in terms of society and culture, I was watching for mass hysteria response and that, and that came up incredibly fast in terms of the data had to be patient. And like I said, now I think these serological studies have come out or you know, it was still a super serious situation, but that catastrophic situation as an audit occurred. And I think the data shows what,

Vance Crowe [00:09:29] So about a month ago I was tweeting about Nasim Taleb, who is a guy that I always kind of wince around because I've read his stuff and is very, very good. But his perspective on agriculture is one that I don't agree with. And so I kind of always wonder, does he see something I don't see or is he blind in some other way? So, but I read his stuff because I think it's very, very interesting and he had this statement that said it pays to panic early, right? If you're gonna panic, you wanna be the first person to panic, not the last person in this scenario a month out. Do you think his, his statement should have been applied in that scenario? Like the way that I did pays to panic early, run to the grocery store, get everything batten down the hatches,

Dan Ovadya [00:10:14] Fauci said the same thing. And I can see if you're an epidemiologist, it does make sense. 'cause if you think, if you think you're at a particular point today, you're actually three weeks behind the disease. So understand that it's actually similar to pest control, you know, on plants and greenhouses. If you see a sign of a pest, the last thing you would ever do is spot treat that single plant. If you see a pest, you can guarantee it's everywhere and you can guarantee it's gonna get worse. So I completely understand that perspective, what we're losing track of a more strategic response and the fact that, okay, precautionary principle, which is where all society has been going now for like the last 20 years, right? Precautionary principle, the thing is this dude precautionary principle comes with an insane cost and actually in terms of risk management and then the cost with precautionary principles. So I also worry about this, you know, and I comfortable, well whatever I, you know, I rock climb and I do stuff that is considered risky. So I am actually a little more comfortable with risk than some people. But what seems like now is that that concept and the precautionary principle, just in case no one's, no one's asking the question, how much is that gonna cost us?

Vance Crowe [00:11:33] Yeah, it seems like we're applying a logic that we don't apply to other things in the same way. Like and I cars are a great example. Like if you actually understood the risk that you were taking in a car, most people probably would say, now if we just dropped that new technology into society, no, look at how many people it kills. No, look at all the death. Death and destruction and terribleness that comes with it. I don't think we should add and it's not worth it. But if we didn't have cars, we couldn't have anywhere near the society that we have. You have to be willing to take risks.

Dan Ovadya [00:12:06] Yeah. And we assimilate risks, right, when we know them. And so this was unknown and there was a lot of uncertainty. So I can kind of understand that initially that we had to be on this response. And I do think there was at least credible intelligence coming out of China saying something really scary and unexpected is occurring in this city. And I believe that type of information, it was not, you know, detailed information, but I think there was a ripple of fear that went through several countries when intelligence reported on what was occurring. And so that kind of triggered this, this whole response, right? And it was a fear-based response. And so my whole theory was this, in the very beginning, going back, I was thinking, okay, whoa, no evidence, no data really, and massive amounts of fear. Like generally it's not a good combination. But back to your analogy of risk, dude, I remember nine 11 when nine 11 happened and you had, you know, a bunch of people saying, well, you know, even at the time they thought maybe 20,000 died in the towers. And people were like, well, you know, that many people die in car accidents. I remember tons of people saying that, and of course more, right, right. Leaning people were like, holy shit, that's unacceptable. Sorry. You know, his

Vance Crowe [00:13:30] Podcast, you can say whatever you want.

Dan Ovadya [00:13:31] Oh, cool, right on. So it's just weird how that works. You know, like nine 11 people are like, you know what, 20,000, you know, and most of my left leaning friends were like, no big deal. People die in car wrecks. And now you have like the right saying it like, oh, well 60,000 died, you know, that's same as the flu or that's same as pneumonia, or that's same as like car wreck or, you know, so it's, it's just like there's no, right, those are ideological statements, they're not really based on strategy.

Vance Crowe [00:14:00] Oh, that's super interesting. So how would you base this on strategy?

Dan Ovadya [00:14:06] Well, clearly now we have data showing that there's a very steep age gradient, incredibly steep age gradient, right? So in the pandemic in 1918, the average age of a victim who died was 28 years old. Average age of victim in Italy, 80 years old. So the data's clearly showing a very steep age curve, right? If you're very old and very sick, this new, this coronavirus is incredibly dangerous. And I have friends and family on the east coast who are at risk right now. So, but then as you go down, like for you and I healthy people at our age, there's very low risk. So strategically, you know, wouldn't you think you protect those that are clearly susceptible and their caregivers? And it's funny, whenever I floated that, yeah, people freak out and then they say, that's too hard. I'm like, okay, so that's too hard and it's easier to lock down everywhere, like the entire country and destroy the economy. And it just like, people are not thinking forward through this whole thing. So anyways, many people have started arguing for what's called the more vertical strategy, which is protect the susceptible instead of just horizontally locking everyone down. I mean, dude, this is medieval technology, right? Quarantine, I mean, this is, goes back to the middle ages. That's our strategy.

Vance Crowe [00:15:38] I, I mean, it, it strikes me that the conversation has become entirely binary. It is open it like Elon Musk being like, you know, shouting, Hey, this is, this is unconstitutional, this is way outta bounds. Open it up versus absolutely lock it down. We don't know enough to, to open it up. Nobody's saying like, all right, well we could open it up some and not others. I mean they talk about the phased approach, but they don't talk about the vertically, like the vertical approach. This is a very different way of thinking about it.

Dan Ovadya [00:16:09] So that's just one aspect of strategy would be age and susceptibility, right? So just protect the ones we know that are highly susceptible. And then what about demographics and population density? So you have New York City and New Jersey, I mean a horrible situation and it was allowed to spread for a long, long time and then it created this effect, but it did not repeat in places like Texas, Florida, and California. So yeah, as a scientist, you ask why is that? And I think we, you know, from looking at the virus and how it spreads and who it infects, it's pretty clear to understand that high density city populations are gonna, are gonna be way more susceptible. And you would treat those differently. Like, would you treat New York City the same as Wyoming?

Vance Crowe [00:16:57] No. Huh? Absolutely not. It's

Dan Ovadya [00:16:58] Common sense, dude. Yeah, I mean, just common sense, and this is the weird thing. It's like fauci iss out there and I know he's, they're all doing their best job, blah, blah, blah. But I mean, Trump is sitting there. He, he is not prepared from an, I would say from a technical and intellectual level, he's not prepared for these kind of scientific questions at all.

Vance Crowe [00:17:22] I don't think most of America is, I don't think I like when people talk about that, the, the level of complexity as you start centralizing how to solve that problem goes up, I wanna say exponentially, right? The more you centralize the decisions that are gonna get made through this one person or through this one office, which is the direction we went towards centralizing these lockdowns, the, the less number of people you are going to have that are capable of handling that problem. And it's, it's, it's mind blowing to me. The people that were calling for massive government intervention and handing it over to Donald Trump actually was the left. They were like, we gotta lock everything down. They were handing power over to the very person that they were deeply afraid of.

Dan Ovadya [00:18:10] No, there was that moment, right of, of national unity and now it's, now I think it's, you know, we're in the second quarter, which means it's all getting super political and you know, that is, that's unfortunate 'cause that me, it's all about decision making. It's all about decision making and how do we make the right decision that's gonna balance, you know, people's lives and the economy and we're just not there strategically

Vance Crowe [00:18:35] At this point. Do you think that you could do the type of approach you're talking about, like, Hey, we're gonna let people out and do the vertical. Do you think people would go along with it?

Dan Ovadya [00:18:43] Well, this is the interesting thing. So there, there were, se there are several scientists who initially argued for that approach, but they were simply excluded from the conversation and not listened to. And you had Neil Ferguson, for example, out of London, his model was the one that was accepted. And Bill Gates' models were the ones in their narrative and their assumptions that go into the model were the ones accepted. And then the ones who were basically having a slightly alternative view or maybe a, a big alternative view, were completely shut out of the conversation. So in my mind, there actually are there, there is a group of people out there and there are credible people who are looking at the data, who are arguing exactly for that vertical approach. And I actually, I'll predict something to you right now, that's where I think we will end up eventually. We're gonna end up in that kind of a situation. It's just gonna be after we have lost an incredible amount of jobs and businesses and rights. And I mean, I tell you what this is, this is where things, you know, get really, I think dicey for a lot of Americans to see this much power consolidated in single individual people deciding when you can leave your home without any strategic approach, it's not gonna last long.

Vance Crowe [00:20:03] Well, I mean I, the other day I was flipping through YouTube and I had my first time in a long time I saw the West Wing, the show with Aaron Sorkin writing this great dialogue where people that are, you know, they come into a problem and then their president fixes it and they always win. And for a long time I had been thinking zombie movies are the things that led us to have so much fear about this disease. But now I'm actually starting to think, no, I think the precursor, the cultural ship that so many of these ideas rode in on was the West Wing. It was this imagination that there are a whole bunch of really good, really smart people just waiting in the wings of government to step in when the crisis is there and solve the problem only it doesn't work that way. And that people fought and died and, you know, to, in order to get rid of centralized power. And now we have it back suddenly.

Dan Ovadya [00:20:57] And, and, and think about it, okay, so this was an opportunity in my mind for both a scientific community and our government leadership to get some of it right, reasonably right and rebuild some trust. I mean, this is like a key moment. Let's get some trust and I'm afraid what's gonna happen, and I, you know, I'm trying to resist this myself, is that now even less trust in the media. Clearly some of our scientists are not as objective as they claim and they are falling into certain camps and even they may have an objective message, but it's getting twisted and spun by politicians. Unfortunately, and this is probably the biggest thing for me in our country, you know, whatever, I love this place, it's chaotic and I like it that way. But if we come outta this with like vicious disdain and distrust and division, that's gonna be, that's gonna be super hard to live with, like is just gonna, it's gonna be toxic for a long time.

Vance Crowe [00:22:05] So the question that I keep asking people that live in the cities, you, when the camera's off because they, they don't, they don't want to answer this question in public is what do you think of the electoral college? And the reason they don't want to answer it is 'cause a lot of my listeners and I tell them this ahead of time, are farmers and this is the first time they've ever had this thought and then had people in front of them that might disagree with them and they don't wanna talk about how they, they think it's inevitable that we're going to do an end run around the electoral college and, and make it so the people in the countryside can't control who the president is.

Dan Ovadya [00:22:46] Yeah, I think, I think it is a good conversation to have just from a purely transparent, open, innovative society to have that conversation what makes sense. But you know, it's, it's hard when you go back to 2016, what was it, 304 to like 213 or something, right? So historically a landslide, electoral landslide for Trump over over Clinton. And that's still mind blowing. And it, and whenever I even mention that to a lot of my friends, they just, they reject it completely and they go back to the popular vote and I'm like, dude, you know, every time you do that you're just going to help this thing reoccur again, if you don't come to grips with why you lost the election, you know, it's gonna keep reoccurring. So that's kind of one thing in terms of that argument, in terms of what you're saying, I think we do have to watch out for that. The middle part of this com country is key and it produces all the food on World War ii. They sent a lot of folks over there to Europe to save the world and fight the Pacific Theater. So I, I think we do have to take that into consideration, otherwise we're gonna have, like in California, we have a one party state, and when you have a one party state, I'll tell you what, it's, it's not good.

Dan Ovadya [00:24:20] California, we had two choices for governor there, both Democrat. So it's, I think, I think that maintaining some balance of competition between our two parties, as long as we maintain a two party system actually think we need to think about how do we, how do we encourage competition? I don't want power consolidation in one side or the other. That's my whole thing. I don't want that to happen.

Vance Crowe [00:24:44] I, I agree. Like, I mean I, I talked with Kevin McKernan a couple of days ago about the regulatory capture that happens when you have large corporations. They're able to say, Hey, we agree things are so dangerous out there that the only way you should be able to get this through is if you submit to this pile of regulation that's gonna cost you millions of dollars and cost you attorney's fees and time and accountants. And it's, and people don't realize if you're not in corporate America, that that's how the game is continued to be won when innovation is not at the leading edge,

Dan Ovadya [00:25:20] You know, and everyone uses innovation. What is innovation? What does it really mean? To me? It means, yeah, challenging, challenging the current thinking and going into uncomfortable places and I'm totally fine with it, other people are not. So how are you gonna push the boundaries if there's this giant echo chamber forming? If there's huge groupthink, I'm seeing it stronger than ever. And I'm sorry, right now on the democratic side, it is, groupthink is bigger than I've ever seen it in my lifetime. And it's sup it's, I'll say this major turnoff to see that kind of group think like the establishment just cracking down absolutely on Bernie Sanders. I mean I can't, I can't deal with that guy at all. But to see how the establishment just locked him out and the group think that's occurring there is trippy. And then you think about what happened with Trump again, just like a freak outta nowhere. And he absolutely then took down the entire Republican establishment, you know, and the media and then won Hillary that you want to talk disruptive technology. He, I don't know if he was planning this, but that is what I call super disruptive technology out of nowhere. Absolutely destroyed every bit of establishment out there. It's part of America. I think it's important to maintain these power structures that are forming. I think they worry everyone, I think,

Vance Crowe [00:26:51] Yeah, I mean I think that, and and once they become so big people that even started on the same side when they were building them up, all of a sudden says, Hey, this is ossified, this is the old way of doing things. We gotta have things burned down in here. But I, it, it's very interesting to me because I put this podcast out and you know, you think of the world as the people in the middle or the people in the south. They're, they're so limited, they're not cosmopolitan. They have all these limited understandings of how the world works. But if I put something out that's controversial, it is the left that comes, shows up to yell at me. And maybe that's because too many of my things are already agree with what they're saying. But I had a socialist scientist on and people reached out to me to be like, Hey, that was really interesting how he thought of that and why he thinks of socialism. If I have somebody that's saying a conservative position, people told me I had the blood of the dead on my hands when I interviewed a conservative journalist.

Dan Ovadya [00:27:50] Yeah. And then the smear, yeah, the smear technique is, has been growing and it's, it's absolutely everywhere now and it's a really weak debate strategy in general. But, so I feel homeless, I'll say this and I, I don't, you may feel the same way, but I know a lot of folks who feel completely homeless. I mean, they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna, they don't like either party right now. And again 'cause they're socially liberal, but maybe they like fiscal, you know, some conservative fiscal principles regarding taxes and foreign policy. I mean I, I personally like our current foreign policy. I like the fact that we took out soleimani. I think that was insanely smart. And I think that's just a new way of thinking. So I feel homeless. Like I have, I have nowhere really to, to go right now. And I know a lot of people like that. And honestly, I mean that's why Trump got elected 'cause it was simply a protest vote 'cause they were tired. I mean, Jeb Bush or, or Hillary Clinton. I mean that's just ridiculous that we're in that situation.

Vance Crowe [00:28:52] So one of the things that I think will probably get shaken up in all this is the university system. And I, you know, if you're not teaching students in person, there's no way they're going to pay you as much as they would, you know, online. And I think there are gonna be a lot of parents that are like, I don't know if, if they've been so convinced that the disease is so terrible, are they going to allow their children to go to live in those dormitories? And then on top of that, there's gonna be people that lost their jobs that ordinarily would've been a no brainer. They'd send their kids to college. What do you think happens to academia in the next two, three years?

Dan Ovadya [00:29:30] Yeah, it's a great question. I I, you know, we have two kids and we're thinking about it ourselves. And, and there's no question it's a racket. It's part of the rat race and the, and the cost is astronomical now. So I think it's great that people are questioning this also give

Vance Crowe [00:29:47] A lot, why do you think it's a racket? That's a, that's a bold word.

Dan Ovadya [00:29:50] Well there's no question that, I mean these institutions, you go, I mean just uc Davis where I went and I graduated in what, 94, I mean half my classes were in temporary trailers. And now you go there and there's like, you know, bubbling fountains and like marble walkways and like, you know, it's just like, you know, professors getting paid 85% for the rest of their life and you know, just everything has increased and the cost has just gone up. So I think that's not really an interest of educating kids, it's really in universities building their reputation and you know, creating ivory towers essentially. So

Vance Crowe [00:30:28] There are skills that you can only get at university or in some kind of formal institution. Like I've traveled around the country and done a bunch with animal science programs. There are things that you want students to learn in a classroom and then you want them to have the physical experience of being able to reach into a cow or see the feed or, or work on the dairy. But there are a whole bunch of things that can be instantly turned over to online education. And then you have to say, well if we could find a way to replace some of the social maturation or that bridge between living with your parents and then living out on your own, I think universities could actually really stumble here.

Dan Ovadya [00:31:10] I it's a total valid point. So think about it, you know, would you spend $250,000 to send your kid to a school where the first two years you're sitting in a room with 600 people and you never even talk to the professor anyways. You may as well be, you know, somewhere in a closet online listening to that. I do a lot of career talks in career outreach, uc, Davis and elsewhere. One thing I tell them is that if you want a career, let's say in Ag Tech, I've never personally hired a single person based on their grade point average or their curriculum, what classes they took, you know, university, yeah, it's nice to see a, a particular kind of university and program, but I've never hired a person based on their GPA or their actual curriculum or how much physics or organic chemistry they had. I hire people based on what internships they had, what kind of practical experience they had, exactly as you said. And I'll continue to do that and that's probably old school, but I'm gonna maintain that. I think

Vance Crowe [00:32:10] The, and maybe a big part of the chaos that I think is coming is because of the policies that HR has had in there has, has instituted into the large corporation. So as the corporation gets larger, you have more and more people you're trying to manage. So you've gotta put in more rules that are cookie cutter as opposed to letting people be free. And I had to deal with the fact that if I wanted to pay the person, I was one time empowered to hire somebody. But if I wanted to pay them what I thought the job was worth for how much I was going to work that person, they had to have a master's degree. And I was like, look, they don't need a master's degree. Yeah. That is a waste of time for what I need them to do. What I need them to do is work insanely hard because I have a lot for them to do and if they do it, I'm happy to pay them for it. But like you can't do that. You have, they have to have a master's degree in order to be able to get the pay band and that's because they don't trust you as an individual enough to decide how much they should get paid.

Dan Ovadya [00:33:07] So you're missing all those intangibles and just take professional sports, you know, you know Joe Montana, people who are high, you know, drafted, you know, just based on a conversation or an interview or one, you know, they didn't meet the criteria but then they were tremendously successful. I mean that's what this country's about right? Is breaking the mold and going out. And you're right. So guess what, you know, in, in Bayer right now, I would not meet the minimum requirements of an entry level scientist because I don't have a PhD.

Vance Crowe [00:33:40] Even though I'm currently, I'm

Dan Ovadya [00:33:42] Dead, even though I'm a science fellow and 25, 30 years of experience and have delivered some would say, you know, over a billion dollars worth of genetic gain through some of my inventions, I would not meet the minimum requirements in my application, would not make it through the human resource software to even get an interview. That's the direction Yeah. Things are going. And so yeah, going back to university, I'm not sure where it's gonna go.

Vance Crowe [00:34:11] You know, and like for communications people, right? There are some skills that if you learned them at university, you had an art teacher for example, that really helped you d discover that you were good at graphic design or for you to be able to learn how to do certain aspects of working in a professional environment like that. There's value there, but these schools are not designed as like preparatory schools teaching you how to dress up for, for class. They're not teaching you how to interact with adults in some better way. And for the most part, people go on to get all of, they go on to get all that education, they take on a whole bunch of debt. And if they get stuck behind a boss that sucks. They don't have a choice. They have to stay there 'cause they got debts. And what parent is gonna encourage their, what intelligent parent is going to tell their kid, try and play this game. I think you're gonna win if you play it.

Dan Ovadya [00:35:04] So doesn't this create a huge opportunity? I mean this is, should create a huge opportunity for either an industry or a startup or something that gets rid of all that and just goes out to a new model of retaining, of, of capturing talent and retaining talent. And again, it's kind of, I guess in, in all my years of managing teams and hiring people, human motivation for me has been the most successful model. And that is who is the person that is gonna be motivated and want to be there in the job and who's gonna have that work ethic? And they're definitely not gonna be perfect and none of us are perfect. Absolutely fine. The question is, do you have those core, you know, fundamental skills that are not taught in college that really are life taught or experienced taught. You have those to be able to do the job. And I just think it's a huge opportunity. People, we have to get away from this. But you know, they're saying, oh, it's all artificial intelligence now and probably these HR programs are all gonna be artificial intelligence selecting people for jobs without, you know, without much input.

Vance Crowe [00:36:20] Yeah, I mean the benefit though is the corporations that take that on first become the slow ones that as long as you don't have regulations that keep other people out from building things, then, then, then they get out competed. And I think, I hope, and maybe this is a good question, instead of just saying what I hope, do you think the amount of regulations going on in the United States right now will come down based on the fact that now cattle ranchers and pork producers are, are setting up butchers and trying to get stuff, you know, delivered to the consumer outside of the regular system because the irregular system looks like it's got some shakiness to it?

Dan Ovadya [00:36:57] Ooh, it's a good question and I, I think already we've seen the current administration has taken, taken out a lot of regulation and I, I don't know if it's it, it may be too early to see the effect of that. I mean, we clearly saw a huge bump in investment, right? When, when you reduce barrier to entry in terms of the food supply and food chain. Yeah, I'm actually not as familiar with some of those regulations I probably should be looked at right now and see like what makes sense, why are we doing this? Is it all around, you know, in some cases maybe the restrictions are around dealing with oversupply and maybe we're in a completely different situation now.

Vance Crowe [00:37:37] One question that I try and ask everybody that comes on here is, what does the world look like in two weeks?

Dan Ovadya [00:37:43] Two weeks here? It's gonna look pretty similar. We're gonna be,

Vance Crowe [00:37:47] You think that lockdown order, you, you think that's gonna stick?

Dan Ovadya [00:37:51] Well, I'll tell you what. So there's, there's actually gonna be a big protest tomorrow and I kind of saw this thing pop up and I don't even know what this group is. It could be a fringe group, it could be a legit group, but there's gonna be big protest throughout California tomorrow on May 1st. And I think that could get kind of dicey. They're putting riot police on the beaches in LA and there are people also saying that we're gonna go out and challenge them and this would be pretty weird. And so it's gonna be interesting to see does Gavin Newsom hold out and and does he dig in or does he listen? I mean, I read a little report saying even people in his cabinet are questioning his four stage plan and how long it's taking based on the data and what we know now about the disease. So I'll tell you what, man, in two weeks this could get pretty weird around here. If there is mass protests and there is some suggestion we are heading that direction in California. And you gotta understand there's a, there's a big group of people in California who are hardcore capitalists, business hardworking, that don't like the regulation, they don't like the lockdown and they definitely don't trust highly, highly partisan politicians. And I don't know, man, things could get super weird here in about two weeks. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:39:14] People don't realize that. There's a big section of California that are deeply rural. They've been there for four generations. They like wanna live separate from their, from everybody else. They've got neighbors that are miles and miles apart. Like there are parts of California north and, and, and eastern that people don't really think of as regular California.

Dan Ovadya [00:39:37] And it's, and it's kind of okay, right? There's kind of a truce, right? In most times. Well right now you're seeing the power structure in basically Sacramento where the gov capital and then San Francisco High Tech and la those are the power structures and they're basically dictating the rest of the state. But I do think, again, there's a lot of innovative entrepreneurial people who, you know, on all sides of the political spectrum who are seriously questioning this right now. I just feel it, I hear it. Almost everyone I talk to is surprising. A number of people he would ne who, who you would expect to be very compliant and very conformist questioning this situation right now, especially after this new order has come out.

Vance Crowe [00:40:21] Would you go to a protest?

Dan Ovadya [00:40:25] You know, I, I would consider going to a protest. I would. Yep, yep. This is a, I I'll tell you what I think right now, I don't understand the justification for this. And I think the implications for our culture and for our freedom is serious enough to go out and do something. 'cause check it out, Vance. If we react this way to every crisis in the future, we're not gonna be doing well. And behind the scenes, I gotta think China's kind of laughing at this and there's no question they're poking this and they're amplifying it and they're loving to see this level of, of poor decision making, decision-making based on bias and partisan feelings and mass hysteria. We're kind of falling into a, a, not a good place.

Vance Crowe [00:41:12] Yeah, I, I've been worried about this and I've been thinking, you know, I was very concerned about the meat industry. It looks to me like that's going to hold together. It eventually people, it, it appears to me that that's on the right tracks. I don't know, it just depends on how people react to testing and finding out that it's higher than you think. And, but I would say there are other parts of culture that are gonna break down and people aren't gonna see coming. Like my expectation is that white collar workers in the next two quarters are going to be laid off in huge ways. People that had always had big expense accounts to travel, people that had been doing sales, that now all of a sudden that person to person contact is proven that you don't actually need it and you can just do that sale o online. I think there's a whole bunch coming. And then I wonder if we won't rewrite the narrative on why we got locked into our houses and, and how this all came about. Because I think there are a lot of people right now that feel very secure in their jobs and they're really supportive of the lockdown. But I, I could be wrong about that. So man, Dan, this has been fantastic. I have really enjoyed this. Are you a social media guy? Are you online if people wanted to find you or read about you or interact with you?

Dan Ovadya [00:42:25] I got a LinkedIn profile and Instagram, but I just post, I just post skiing photos. I don't really get into, actually I don't get into politics at all online for the clear reason that you'll just get ripped to shreds if you, if you go out outside the herd. So,

Vance Crowe [00:42:40] Well, let's, let's plan to get together in about 30 days and talk about how life is, what it looks like after the lockdown. And of course if big things change, I hope you'll gimme a call.

Dan Ovadya [00:42:50] I will, man. Thanks. All right, thank you. Really appreciate it. This great take.