Meme War Expert; Blogger & Publisher Dan Broadbent Host of: A Science Enthusiast on Coronavirus

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

Guest [00:00:07] Hey,

Vance Crowe [00:00:08] So Dan, you are a pretty radical change from the last person I had on, I had an Ag economist from Purdue, even though you're from Indianapolis. And before that I had Lord Ridley of the House of Lords over in England, and the Chief technology officer for the largest, most powerful biotech company on the face of the earth, Rob Fraley. Now I'm having you on, and that is because I think that you actually, out of all those people that I've mentioned, know how to attract the attention of people when they're trying to figure out how to think about things. And you speak to them in a language that they know and they understand, and you have a, you have an incredible ability to do this, and it is evidenced by your enormous Facebook following, I, I think like 1 million people. And I was saying on Twitter before we got on here that you don't give a fuck about the rules. And like you, you were banned at one point for putting up RIP Harambe memes. And a lot of your stuff has to do with like cats and rockets and rainbows and all kinds of stuff. So I wanted to bring you on because in this moment right now that we're going through Coronavirus Pandemic, and I think it's what, April 9th?

Guest [00:01:28] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:01:28] This is a pivotal time in our, in our history. And I'm very interested in what it is that you think is going on right now, how serious it should be taken and how should we think about moving on in a post coronavirus world. So thank you so much for coming on, man. This is a super exciting idea I had this morning. Yeah,

Guest [00:01:47] Yeah. I I was also excited to hear that you were thinking about me while you're in the shower this morning. So that's, that's

Vance Crowe [00:01:55] I did, I called it a shower thought I said, dude, I got a shower thought, but that's 'cause I wanted to get your attention because you are a guy that is up on the pulse of things. So what do you think is going on with coronavirus right now? What, what's going on with you and your family?

Guest [00:02:09] I don't, I don't know about up on the pulse of everything, but I don't know. It's for, for me personally, it's, I mean, I, I work from my home already and, and have for over two years. So it wasn't, wasn't that much of a change for, for me other than, you know, my, my kids are home now and, and of course, you know, my wife is home, but it's not really that much of a change. I haven't gone to the grocery in over two weeks. So like, you know, beyond that, it's not, not much of a change that from, you know, keeping myself away from, from other people. I tend to do a good job of that as it is

Vance Crowe [00:02:56] Naturally

Guest [00:02:57] Already.

Vance Crowe [00:02:57] So in the past, did you, so how are you getting groceries? Are you ordering them online or whatcha are doing? We,

Guest [00:03:02] We normally, I mean, normally we're pretty well stocked, so we, we have a lot of, had a lot of stuff in the freezer already to begin with. And my, my wife gets so annoyed with me because I normally would go to Kroger like every two or three days for something and then she'd say, we have a ton of food in the freezer, you need to, we need to eat that. So, I mean, we, we just have a lot of food in general. It's just, right now we don't have food that, you know, I necessarily wanna eat. So,

Vance Crowe [00:03:35] So, and what do you have, like when you say we're pretty stocked in the freezer, is it, you know, you have whole chickens or you have

Guest [00:03:42] Just, I mean, just LA frozen vegetables and I have, I got into dry aging meat back in January, so I have some dry aged steaks in the freezer right now. Also, I have a, I have a, a New York strip sub primal right now in the fridge that I think I, I'd have to check. I think it's almost, it's been in there for about 40 days now, so it'll, it'll be ready here in about a week or so.

Vance Crowe [00:04:15] So as far as eating around the, around the broadband house, you guys, the coronavirus right now, it's, it's pretty good times.

Guest [00:04:23] It's, it's pretty, it's pretty okay that, I mean by it, it's as far as I can tell from what people have said and pictures they've seen, the grocery store I go to here has been pretty cleaned out just like everywhere else that, you know, people talk about there's, you know, absolutely no toilet paper, paper towels at, and of course this is like I said, two weeks ago, so I assume it's probably better now, but I don't wanna go out in public, I don't wanna be around anybody. So,

Vance Crowe [00:04:58] And Right, and right now, how, how secure are you that in two weeks there'll be food at the grocery store? It's just a, they're a little bit outright now. Oh, I'm

Guest [00:05:07] Not, I'm not worried at all about the food supply chain or, or anything like that. 'cause I know, you know, ju again, just from what I've seen and, and on the, as far as like news reports and what the few things that I've heard, you know, executives of, of all these companies say, you know, that they're, they're still delivering and, and all that. I'm not worried at all that there's gonna be any kind of food shortage or anything.

Vance Crowe [00:05:36] So that's, that's super interesting to me, dude, because I, you know, me, so Dan and I, in full disclosure, we've known each other for years now, five years, something like that.

Guest [00:05:46] Ah, like, I know, four, four years because I, I just, I, I looked up, we first met you were episode 12 on, on my podcast, and that was about four years ago, according to

Vance Crowe [00:06:00] My

Guest [00:06:00] Website when

Vance Crowe [00:06:01] I was director of millennial engagement for Monsanto.

Guest [00:06:04] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:06:04] So I've had a chance over those years since we met, I spent my time relentlessly traveling around meeting with farmers and people in agriculture. And so I have this like, unusual look into the food system, and right now we're doing fine on food, right. But I also am hyper aware that if you start messing around with any one of the levers, things start getting shut off and you can't just turn 'em back on. So when I hear you say you're really confident about it, I'm, I have to challenge myself to say one, maybe Dan knows something I don't, and he's much more confident because he can see the bigger picture, or I gotta tell my buddy Dan that I think he's wrong and that he should think about this differently. How should I think about this

Guest [00:06:49] Man? I think, I mean, this is like, huh, see, I, I hate speculating like this because like, like I told you, I'm not an expert in anything. I'm just interested in everything. So it

Vance Crowe [00:07:03] What do you do? Tell, tell the, tell the people that watch my stuff. How is it that you derive an income? What do you

Guest [00:07:09] Do for a living? I, I don't know what I do if I can be, no, basically it's, it's, I just do a lot. I've made a blog and it got pretty popular and now it's kind of evolved into this small, like internet publishing company that I've partnered with. And like, like I was telling you before we started recording, you know, we're planning on launching a new social media website. The, of course Coronavirus has kind of thrown a wrench into, into, into all that stuff, just for a thousand reasons, right? So

Vance Crowe [00:07:44] In in effect you have you to your business is you create content that people wanna read and in exchange for reading that they see ads or Yeah,

Guest [00:07:55] Just like you could be

Vance Crowe [00:07:56] Sponsored by somebody.

Guest [00:07:57] Yeah, just like any, any, like Washington Post, New York Times, they all have ads on, you know, Facebook has ads, you know, it's, it's, so, it's just ad revenue from, from people going to the articles that we post. I also have, I have some merch, but I haven't really promoted that much, much at all.

Vance Crowe [00:08:17] And what is the content that you really focus on?

Guest [00:08:20] Well, up until November of 2016, it was a lot of science and atheism stuff. It's shifted quite a bit towards politics, like I said, since November of 2016. Nothing special about that date, of course, just, just happened, happened to get more political at that point. But

Vance Crowe [00:08:41] Was it because everybody was talking about Trump, just like everybody right now is talking about Coronavirus? I

Guest [00:08:46] Don't, I don't know. Like I said, it's just a, just a just a weird coincidence that, that after the first Tuesday in November of that year, it just turned into a little bit more political in nature. But, but yeah. But yeah, I mean that's, that's, that's what I do. So I spent a lot of time watching and reading news and reading a lot of thoughts about people. And like, like I said, I don't, I, I'm not an expert at anything, but I, I feel like I'm pretty well informed on most things, or at least,

Vance Crowe [00:09:21] At least, oh dude, there's no question. Like at different times in the last four years, I have called you up and been like, I don't understand what's happening here. Right? Like I went through that Jordan Peterson madness with the people that, that were like, he is that, that man over there, the, the professor from the University of Toronto is, you know, a Nazi and anybody that talks to him is also a Nazi, plus anybody that listens to them is also a Nazi. And it was like, what the hell? Like, people that I was friends with and I was able to call you and we talked about it and you were like, this is how mobs work.

Guest [00:09:57] Well,

Vance Crowe [00:09:57] This is, and

Guest [00:09:58] Well, and, and Oh, go ahead. And, and I think I also worked in there, I probably wouldn't have talked to Jordan Peterson, but that's just me. And, but, but also I, I am still talking to you and, and I don't think you're, you know, any, any, any worse for wear or anything like that. But yeah, that's, there's, that was, that was very interesting to me. And that's, I, I don't know, I, I try to, what I, what I try to do, anytime something like that happens, I try to get inside other people's heads and figure out what they're thinking. And this is what gets I, like, of course, like a big thing for me is I promote atheism a lot. And so, and, and that's one of the, one of the things that I just fundamentally cannot understand how an otherwise rational, intelligent, smart person can, can, can, you know, just have this logical disconnect and, and this, and then that one area and, and trying to figure that out is just fascinating for me. And so, and, and you can apply that to, you know, anything, you know, like that instance, well kind of with, with Jordan Peterson or like, what these people are thinking, why they're thinking that and, and, and like that. And so that's, I, I don't know. And, and so I mean, a lot of what I do is kind of interpret other people's ideas and thoughts, figure out like where I think gaps are in their logic or, or you know, what, what might be missing and kind of piecemeal together everybody, you know, what I think is kind of the best idea or, or, or, you know, what's happening from there.

Vance Crowe [00:11:30] So, you know, I, I think that one of the things that I like about what you about watching how you describe science is I, one, there are things that I don't agree with, but the thing that I like is you have figured out the same cadence as a comedian. A comedian takes two ideas that you don't think are paired together, and then they show you how that is. Like those two things that you thought were unrelated are related. And then everybody laughs. And in laughing they say, I get how you see those two things were related. Your comedy is that same way. That's what you are doing. Yeah. And I find it to be fascinating how you are able to tap into comedic and imagery and things like that to get your side to see something, which I think is very interesting.

Guest [00:12:16] Yeah. It's, it's, I mean, obviously, you know, I, I'm friends with some comedians. I, I, I like to laugh, you know, who doesn't like to laugh? And I, I think something, something I picked up on probably, you know, in middle school was, you know, you'd, you'd hear some, you'd hear a funny joke, you know, something from a professional comedian, and it's, you know, I, I don't know, it was in middle school was about when I kind of realized that there's, you know, these comedians, yeah, they're funny, but also like there's some sort, like they're inserting their own ideology in, you know, in their, and, and you see that now, especially with, and this might be controversial like Dave Chappelle's special on

Vance Crowe [00:13:00] Netflix.

Guest [00:13:00] Oh, yeah. And not, I mean, again, not for everybody, and I don't necessarily agree with everything that, that he said, but he's,

Vance Crowe [00:13:09] Oh, I thought that thing was hilarious. Like, I, I was sitting there laughing my ass off and it's because he was able to make things that you're like, Ooh, you're not supposed to be talking about that. Right. People get in trouble saying something like that. Right,

Guest [00:13:23] Right. I just, I just wanted, wanted, wanted to be clear. I'm not necessarily endorsing everything that, that he may or may not have said there. But, but yeah, I, and so you, you see that, and it's kind of like the, the very first real, like blog post I ever did was about David Wolf or David Avocado Wolf. And how I thought he, you know, kind of hoodwinks people into, into following him and, and spreading his propagandas. He,

Vance Crowe [00:13:56] And for people who don't know, he is a guy that puts together the weirdest memes and videos. He's not different from like Carol Baskin, but for, for natural products.

Guest [00:14:06] Yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:14:07] And people follow him and

Guest [00:14:10] He's

Vance Crowe [00:14:10] And love him.

Guest [00:14:11] Yeah. He, he, I guess he made, I, I don't, I don't really know. I, it's been so long since I've paid any attention to, to him. 'cause again, we have bigger fish to fry at this point, I think. But, but yeah, he, he would make, you know, like feel good, like happy memes, like motivational, like whatever, or, or more, more often than not, take somebody else's stuff, slap his name on it, and then, and then repost it so he gets thousands, thousands of shares from, you know, whatever. Like happy, feel good, like new age spirituality, something, you know, whatever it is like that. And then, you know, pull a one-two punch and hit you up with some, you know, hey, this is why vaccines are, you know, doing X, Y, Z or causing, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:15:00] Maybe he says the vaccines

Guest [00:15:02] Cause coronavirus, who knows, wouldn't put it past 'em. But so, so you get, you get the one, you know, I started following this person because they had this really, you know, fun like motivational whatever thing. And now I'm getting misinformation and

Vance Crowe [00:15:18] It's almost subliminal messages or maybe subliminal

Guest [00:15:21] Messages kind of, it's, it's, yeah, it's, and, and so that's, I saw that, and really that's what I modeled myself after as far as like my, like how to grow my social media following was to, to do, you know, you have funny science posts, meme, stuff like that. But then try to work in some serious stuff. And it's, of course, like I said, it's moved much more, I guess, serious or legitimate or I don't know. And, you know, as of late, but I mean, that's, that's really what, yeah. So,

Vance Crowe [00:15:55] So if you're in this scenario, right, and you have this audience that comes back to you because they know we're gonna get to hear something we kind of are already interested in, the subject matter itself is self-selecting, and then you've got people that they're going to hear what you're saying. Do you have people that disagree with you in these, in these scenarios, or disagree with your perspective and they, and they have a point?

Guest [00:16:18] Do, do I, well, the, the short answer and the answer that I, I want to think is correct is no, because I'm always right. Right. No, I mean, yeah, there's, there's, I I am try to be extremely, like I, I I have pretty bad anxiety, especially about writing. So I, I get really hot and really cold about, you know, sharing opinions. But it is, I don't, I don't know, it's just wh when I write something, if I, if I think it's controversial or if I think it's, you know, gonna gonna, because you kind of know when you, when you put something out there, if something's gonna blow up on you or not generally.

Vance Crowe [00:17:04] And what does blow up mean?

Guest [00:17:06] Well, I can, the, this is thinking of probably one of the more explosive times. The, if you recall the, the, what's the school, Covington High School, this is January, 2019, the company in high school, kid, you know, making fun of the Native American elder at the outside the Lincoln, or I think it was Lincoln Memorial. Do you remember all that?

Vance Crowe [00:17:32] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This will definitely, my audience of a lot of agriculture would definitely, definitely knows that.

Guest [00:17:38] Okay, well they, they, I they, this this might turn a lot of them off to me.

Vance Crowe [00:17:44] No, that's why we're talking man. It's to hear a different perspective

Guest [00:17:47] Or, well, so well, no, I, I, I don't know. Who knows, they're all over the place. But, but yeah, so I said, I think that happened. I saw, you know, of course my feed was flooded with everybody. 'cause I have a lot of liberal friends, or almost exclusively people who, who would be on the left. And of course they're all saying, you know, how awful, how awful. I, you know, but I of course wanna see like, well, what actually happened? And you're looking at it and you just see a kid like standing there like, I don't know what to do. And he is got a camera in his face because of course everybody has a camera in their pocket now. And so, and then, but the narrative is, you know, he was, he was making fun of him. And so I came out, I posted, I, you know, it was probably like a 2000 word article saying, Hey, this isn't right. And I think the headline was something like, what the media got wrong about the Macca hat kid or something. And it was one of my most,

Vance Crowe [00:18:47] Whoa. Yeah, dude, you spiking the ball.

Guest [00:18:50] Yeah. And, and of course, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:18:55] My

Guest [00:18:55] Following is mostly people on the left because I, I think I'm very left leaning with most of my ideas, but people didn't like that of course, because they, they don't wanna be, people don't wanna be told that they're wrong about something. 'cause people don't want to think that they've been, been tricked or misled or anything. And so I came out and said that, of course I got tons of pushback about it, but, you know, not everything they said was, you know, either not addressing the actual issue or they were repeating things that other people have said. It was such a, that in in particular just was such a great microcosm of, of everything that's happening with social, like the social media and, and just how, I mean, look at me, anybody can make a website and anybody can get clicks to their website. You know, so, so it's, it's just that itself, you know, that's fascinating me. But the thing that you, yeah, you

Vance Crowe [00:19:54] Pulled, the thing that you've really wrapped your arms around is how to be up on the pulse of what's going on in the world and how to articulate your point of view so that people at least see value in listening to it. And I, like, I've got a, I've got a question for you about vaccines and coronavirus, because I tried to start a conversation about what kind of testing would need to be done before we would view this vaccine as ready for primetime or even mandatory. I don't know the answer to that. I don't know if it should be mandatory. I don't know if this is an easy thing to do or a really complicated thing to do, but I also know that there are people that are afraid of vaccines and people that are in the midst of a global pandemic, which they are also afraid we should be talking about. How do you get people ready to make a change like a national vaccine? Yeah.

Guest [00:20:49] I

Vance Crowe [00:20:50] In a way that they say, this is, this is a good idea. This is what I need. This is the right thing to go.

Guest [00:20:55] I think what's so, so of course I've seen and posted and shared a lot of memes about how, you know, we're not hearing anything from anti-vaxxers right now. Or, or Hey, I have vaxxers, this is the world without a vaccine. Imagine, you know, without polio and MMR and, and all that. It kind of reminds me almost of something Dr. Kevin Zer said before that, you know, we, we have a lot of people who are anti GMO right now. And, and you know what, it's gonna reach a point where people, you know, just, just based on climate change and just a myriad of factors that people are, are going to have to have A GMO. And i, I probably poorly paraphrasing him here from something he said a few years ago, but the, the real change with, you know, the public opinion on GMO is gonna happen when people can't go to the grocery store and buy an orange because, you know, citrus screening or they can't go to the store and buy a banana because of the problems they're, they're having with, I forget what it is, but that's gonna be a changing point where people are gonna say, well, I want an orange, I want orange juice. But I, I guess I have to,

Vance Crowe [00:22:14] Well it's mo it's moments of deprivation where the Overton window opens up. You know, the things when, right now, when everything's good, you can have whatever opinion you want because your opinion doesn't actually impact whether or not you have oranges. 'cause they keep showing up. But if you have something like a global pandemic and what was normal is now all of a sudden not normal. Now they're way, way more opportunities for new ideas to come into society. And the people sitting on the side of fear think that the answer will be for everyone that vaccines are the right decision. And that probably is the right decision when we get there. But if you just assume you're going to be able to force it on them after they've been unemployed for a month or three months, or locked in their houses, like, yeah,

Guest [00:23:00] I don't,

Vance Crowe [00:23:00] Things are, we need to be talking about it now.

Guest [00:23:02] Yeah, yeah. And, and yeah. And that, that's what I was getting. I think most people who, who are either, you know, whatever on the fence about vaccines means, you know, people who are on the fence about vaccines or whatever, I think they're, they're going, they're looking at the numbers right now and saying, oh, well this is, this is, this is not great. And I guess I can do that. You know, I guess I, I guess this is one that I can do and, and my, my hope at least is that more, more often than not, you're, we're gonna have those anti-vaxxers or people who, who otherwise oppose vaccines say, yeah, I'll, I'll I'll do this one at at least. Even if it's, even if that's the only one they ever get. I mean, that's, that's better than nothing. But I think they're going to, I think it's gonna take even, even, I don't know, like, I don't know how that works. I don't know what's gonna happen. It's, it's, I

Vance Crowe [00:24:01] Mean's, Dan, I'll tell you that the reason that I'm talking with you about this is because I brought this thing up of like, what do you think the public needs to know to feel safe? And people were like, how dare you even ask this question? And I'm like, Hey, people are gonna make a decision whether it's time to send their kid back to school or not. Well know they're gonna make decisions.

Guest [00:24:18] I know, I know, I know. Me, my, my 10-year-old is, was signed up to play soccer this spring and they kept pushing it back, kept pushing it back, obviously. And now they said, well, we're gonna start the season in mid-May. And I was like, bullshit. You're, you're not, you're, you know, we're not moving on in a month from this is gonna be like we, we, I I, I know the opinion that we will, it, it is probably a 50 50 shot if we're gonna have, if schools are gonna be open, you know, my, my kids do year round. So they, they're gonna go back in July or supposed to go back at the end of July. But, you know, I think we'd be doing, I think it's about 50 50 if schools are gonna open and, you know, come August like they normally would just because we, we won't have a vaccine until, you know, at the earliest, you know, early 2021, you know. But I think from what I've been reading, and again, I, I need to qualify everything I'm saying here by saying, I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. I'm not an immunologist, I am, I am, I am. Nothing like that. But from everything that

Vance Crowe [00:25:24] No, you're a guy reacting to what you're reading. Right, right. Like, this is what we're all trying to figure out is what would it take for us to know that society is safe to go back into, to send your children into,

Guest [00:25:34] I think, I think what the big thing is gonna be the antibody testing and being able, well, number one, we need to know we, we still have poor access just to the coronavirus tests in general. So that, that's number one. That's the a problem. We don't know where it is. And, and you keep seeing, like, you look at the, the chart and you can see that there's fewer now getting diagnosed and, and even deaths are starting, starting to go down at least. But when you look at that, see everything, everything with about data, the data that's being thrown out there is just so, like, there's so many caveats and the caveats have caveats. So we see most of the deaths and, and infections have been in New York. Now we're starting to see like Louisiana, Michigan supposedly is having, is supposed to have as most fatalities today from it. So I it's, it's gonna happen in different places. It's gonna be all over. And I, I, I still don't think that we've really seen what's going to happen. I don't, I don't, I think it's a little too optimistic to think that, hey, this is, you know, we're reaching the peak, you know, maybe this week or like I saw like on CNN today, they said Easter Sunday should be the peak for nationwide daily deaths will be the peak on Easter Sunday. I don't, I think that's, that's very optimistic. 'cause what's gonna happen is like, like you're saying, we're going to see, see infections come down, they're already starting to come down.

Guest [00:27:11] We're gonna see infections go down. So they're going to go back, you know, start the long return to back to normalcy and then we're gonna have a second wave, and then we're gonna have a third wave and a fourth wave. And, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:27:26] And so here, here's a good question, Dan, if you, if I do say so myself, this is what I'm really interested in. If your children's school was set to go back in May and you had not seen the symbols that you thought that you wanted to, the signals in the market that you thought would help make it so everybody knew that it was safe, would you start using your blog platform to, to try and gather your community support around that? Like how would you use the thing that you know how to do best grab attention? How would you stop them from going back to school if you thought it was too early?

Guest [00:28:02] I mean, it, that's, that's, that's such a loaded question. I mean, I, I can only, again, I can only speak to myself, my family situation and, and everything. I, nobody in my family has any sort of, you know, health issues. We don't no, no immune disorders or anything like that, at least that we know of. And, and so everybody in, in my family and even on on my access side, you know, they're, they're all healthy and, and no, no complications like that. So we are not worried about, I mean, and, and of course, you know, it's basically ignoring kids for, for the overwhelming majority of kids is, you know, nothing to them, at least for young kids. And, and you know, we would be fine if, if we got it, more than likely it would be a rough couple of weeks. I know. But we, we would make it out on the other end. But it's, I don't wanna go through that. And also more importantly, I don't want to to know that, you know, I, because if I get it, I'm probably gonna give it to, I'm not gonna know for two weeks that I got it. So I, you know, I very easily, you know, could give it to, to somebody else. And that, that is what terrifies me more than anything is not that I would get it, but that I would get it, not know it, give it to somebody else.

Guest [00:29:33] And then that person, you know, could have an immune deficiency and could have, you know, a rougher go at it or, or you know, and even, even if you do go to the hospital and you know, you get, you know, go on vent, that's not something where, you know, they pull you off the vent, you know, well, number one, 20%, only 20% of people are getting taken off events and are alive. So, but number two, the, you know, those people when they come off a vent, that's not, that, that's does a lot of damage to your lungs. I know, you know, you're not gonna, you're gonna talk funny for a, a long time. So there's so many things that go along with that. So none of that, like I, again, I'm, it's a lot of words to say. I'm terrified.

Vance Crowe [00:30:16] It's a very high risk.

Guest [00:30:17] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:30:18] Yeah. I mean it's very clear the, with the level of fidelity with which you can describe what you think will happen, that's, that shows what you've paid attention to and said, Hey, this is, this is a scary thing. And people should be aware of going back too earlier, exposing yourself too early. And,

Guest [00:30:33] And, and so indi I feel like my state of Indiana has done the governor here. He is republican and I do not like anything about him, but he, as far as this, this crisis has gone, I feel like he's done a very good job of staying on top of it, staying ahead of it. He closed schools, you know, I think earlier than most state other states did canceled the rest of the, the school year earlier. So I have, I have a lot of confidence in my state's handling of this and, and how the, my local states policies have, have been to towards it. It's the, the na Yeah, I don't, we, we could talk, we, we, we can talk about the national response. That's the federal response. That's another, another podcast I think. But yeah, I, I, that's all, all that do all that do

Vance Crowe [00:31:32] You, so maybe, maybe a good question to ask you about national instead of going into any kind of granular detail when you saw the, the War Powers Act or whatever, the Defense act being invoked so that now you can have the president tell different companies what to produce. What did you think of that?

Guest [00:31:53] Too little, too late. And he, he didn't, I mean, I don't even know that it's actually like he's, he said it's been used, but there hasn't really been any, anything done with that, at least, at least as far as what I've seen. He, there's not been any, any like, yes, like GM and, and, and Ford said they're gonna make ventilators, but those ventilators won't like the, they won't be able to ramp up production until like mid-May or something. And we're supposed to have the peak in a week. So it's kind of like, well why that we don't really, we, you know, really it's, it's the protective equipment that, that we need right now. And, and just, just every, everything ev

Vance Crowe [00:32:44] I, so I worry about it from a different angle. My, my concern about it was if you start telling GM to start producing ventilators, then they're not producing say, the chassis on ambulances and nobody is, and you don't realize that you have this other challenge that's gonna need to be met because of how much the ambulances are running. I, that's just a wild example. Yeah. Is there a challenge with getting involved in centrally moving the, the pieces around?

Guest [00:33:15] I mean, I, I, I, I, again, I'm not a political expert or anything like that. I mean, obviously there's, you know, there there's gonna be difficulties. I, I think the, the idea of having GM do that, well, number one, GM just wants the positive pr, you know, coming, coming off of that obviously. But also, you know, it puts, gets people, you know, you can't do factory work from home, so it gets people back working with, you know, which is, which is good if as long as they're healthy and you know, they're following all the guidelines like that. But I don't know. It's, it's the, the, I dunno, it's just interesting and, and I don't know what the answer is here, and I'm not gonna pretend to know the answer. I, I, I, I just feel like the, the protective equipment is such a, such an easier problem to solve than building a ventilator. You're building ventilators like that and such a more pressing issue to protect our medical workers, beca who, who are getting sick and dying, you know, some because they don't have the, the right equipment or they're being told to do, you know, to reuse equipment and like, you know, like you can just see like all these, all these health professionals on social media saying, if, you know, if I did this on my own like a year ago, I would've been fired like on the spot. But now I'm being told to do, you know, just to wear the same, same mask all day.

Guest [00:34:48] And I don't know, it's, it's, I don't know. It's, it's, it's a such a, there, it's such a shitty situation that could have been, you know, can't, couldn't have been prevented because of course, you know, nobody, nobody created the virus. Nobody, you know, wanted it to spread. And, and nobody wants anyone to die from it, obviously. But when, when we, you know, the, the intelligence agencies were briefed the White House about, about this issue or the frisk or the possibility of this particular virus, I believe at the end of November. So they've known now for, you know, how many months and they didn't do anything until

Vance Crowe [00:35:35] March,

Guest [00:35:36] Really. And even then, what have they done other than steel equipment that states have ordered?

Vance Crowe [00:35:45] I mean, I think this is going to be such a fascinating history book to write because you're gonna have all these different countries that reacted in different ways to the exact same event that impacted that, that hit at, you know, starting in December, did you react back then? Or January or February? And we're gonna see which one reacts the best and, and with the whole picture, right, when you think about the economy included with the, the disease, it's gonna be really interesting because there's so many different ways that countries have done this and which ones have bounced back first, and would our citizens have allowed those reactions to have happened? I, I am very, very interested in how history plays out. Do you think that, do you think that enough people, well, no, I don't wanna, I don't want it to be a leading question. I think that the people that are sitting at home that can derive an income are much, much less concerned about being shut out of the economy than the people that were restaurant and, and bar workers or hotel workers who don't have a paycheck coming in. And if they're not working, then they're completely reliant on the government. At what point did those people start pushing back on the fact that they've been put on in home quarantine?

Guest [00:37:07] Man, I don't, I don't know. I I know, I mean, I, I I know that I, and I, I say it all the time, like how privileged I am to be able to do what I do and essentially, you know, I've been uninterrupted, or at least my, you know, my basic operation has been un I,

Vance Crowe [00:37:23] I know people making more money than they've ever made before because they're so busy. Certain, certain work where they're, they're so busy, the phone's ringing off the hook and they're running 18 hours a day.

Guest [00:37:32] Yeah. And, and, and I can't even begin to imagine being, you know, you know, where, you know, a restaurant worker who's, who's been, you know, I know, I know restaurants are still open delivery, whatever, but, you know, you don't need servers, you don't need, you know. But I think, I think it's also, I don't know, it's, it's, it's going to be interesting because I, you know, I read a little bit of, you know, what people say about the economy and, you know, stuff like that. And it's, it's just such a, like, even even people who normally have all the answers don't have any idea, you know, what's gonna happen or how, how to fix this. And so it's, it's just, so, it's interesting, and this is, this is completely divorcing myself from any like, emotion or like trying to, you know, try to look at, looking at it from a hundred thousand feet. It's such an interesting time to see all these different ideas coming out and, and literally history being made because, you know, we talk about the 1918 Spanish, Spanish flu infection and everybody knows that now we're gonna talk about the 2020 coronavirus, you know, a hundred, a hundred years from now, they're gonna talk about, talk about this time. So it's just, it's interesting to, to to see that all this, all this stuff happening and to see all these, all these smart people who, who you think normally would have the answers, or at least be close to the answer. And like, none of nobody knows anything.

Guest [00:39:03] They all have ideas. And you know, of course they, they're all hesitant to share their ideas 'cause they don't, you know, they, they know how the internet works and they don't wanna be shown to be wrong.

Vance Crowe [00:39:12] Who are people that you would trust if they said, this is what I think is coming out of the economy right now, or this is what I think in July is gonna be happening. Don't, who, who would you trust in that senator scenario? I don't,

Guest [00:39:23] I don't know that I would trust anyone that's not, I know that's not a, wow,

Vance Crowe [00:39:28] That's

Guest [00:39:29] Not a good answer because nobody, because wow, Nobody knows. And, and it's, I mean, it's, it's such a unique problem that, 'cause you have people comparing it to the Great Depression, you know, you know where the Great Depression, peak unemployment was 24.9%. And I think last week we got to four or four and a half or something. And I thought, I think there's new numbers that came out today, but I haven't, I haven't seen them. But you know, it's, it's, it's just such a, there's so many, like every, like you talked about earlier, you know, you pull one lever now you've changed the settings on 50 different other levers. So there's, there's no right answer. And this is, I mean, the case with most everything in including including democratic presidential candidates, you know, nothing. You, you know, you sometimes life is just a choice of you have a shitty option and a shittier option, and so you wanna go with the less, the least shitty option available, which is probably gonna hurt people in some way. But you have to, I don't know, I don't know what the answer is because you, you know, especially, especially sending people back, sending people back to work. Yes. You know, the government cannot, cannot pay for, you know, everybody's salary for, you know, the rest of the year. But, but also you send people back to work, you're al almost literally sending people to die.

Guest [00:41:01] You know? So there's with, you know, without any, without a vaccine, without any, without, you know, just not even antibody testing, just testing to know where the virus is, where, you know, and, and, or even, even this is another moving part. You're not, when you do a test, you're not seeing where the virus is now you're seeing where the virus was two weeks ago because it takes two weeks for, you know, thereabouts for symptoms to show up. So you're not even, you're not even seeing in real time. And so all it takes is one person can spread it easily, go back to work, spread it, you know, depending on where they were, you can spread it to four people, five people. You can spread it to 50 people. And, and then now you're gonna have to,

Vance Crowe [00:41:42] Dan, have you been out in a car? Like have you driven around at all? I did the other day and I was like, whoa, this is not what I was expecting.

Guest [00:41:49] What,

Vance Crowe [00:41:49] What did have, have you been out in a car?

Guest [00:41:51] I, so we went to, there's a, there's a, a hiking park maybe five minutes from my house. And we went there on Monday and there, and I know my wife, she likes to just go out and drive on country roads. And so she did that on Sunday and she said it felt like typical Sunday traffic. And she went through, she drove through a, a state park about an hour from here just because it's, it's a gorgeous state park and said that there's people like, it, it, it's as mountainous as Indiana can get there, you know, there's some, some big hills and overlooks and stuff. And she said there's, you know, 20 people easily gathered up at these overlooks, like in a crowd, like not separated.

Vance Crowe [00:42:41] And so do you think those people are, are harming the opportunities of, of others to get out eventually? Absolutely. Or to have this curve?

Guest [00:42:49] Absolutely. Anybody, anybody who is not staying at home right now and who obviously essential workers, you know, they're doing their thing because they're essential. But anybody like me who is not an essential worker, who is not, you know, doesn't have to go to a hospital to, to work or, or whatever, who is, who is still acting business as normal, having people, you know, come over, hang out their house, going out in groups and meeting up with friends. Those people are delaying our return to normalcy. There's no question about that. Because yes, I would love, like I have, I've not gone anywhere besides the, the, the park to go on a hike with my wife with whom I live and nobody else was with us. You know, I've not gone anywhere in two and a half weeks, you know, at all. That's grocery or, or anything. So, you know, and

Vance Crowe [00:43:52] So what are the conditions under which people should be allowed out of that? Because as I, I mean my wife and I do not make contact with other people. We've organized for groceries to be delivered we socially distance, but the, there, there comes a point where people wanna leave their houses and they wanna get out. What line do we draw now to say this is what the conditions would have to be? Well,

Guest [00:44:18] It's in order

Vance Crowe [00:44:18] That it's not illegal to meet.

Guest [00:44:20] It's, it's, it, it real, like I said, it come, it comes down to, to knowing who, who is, who has immunity. Because what's gonna happen is if, you know, we're gonna see cases go down and you know, Trump wants to see stadium NFL stadiums full of, full of fans and like he said, like three or four or five days ago, whatever. And so what's what all, all, all it takes is one per, you have one person in a stadium of 50,000 people, they, that one person easily is gonna infect a hundred people, you know, easily just touching common surfaces, just sneezing on, you know, you know, anything like that. So

Vance Crowe [00:45:01] My impression was that yeah, I mean I I definitely, I'm, I'm a hundred percent with you. So is it that it's that you have to have the antibodies test? I,

Guest [00:45:10] That

Vance Crowe [00:45:11] That's, I mean I'm a hundred percent with you in regards to it is an infectious disease and that it is something that glad has the glad potential to overwhelm.

Guest [00:45:18] I'm glad that's an infectious disease. That's, I that was a controversial,

Vance Crowe [00:45:20] I mean, I mean like, I mean that it's, that it's r right? So, so you know, one person being able to, to get four people infected is more infectious than the flu. Yeah. So I get that. The only thing that I wonder is if you don't give people a line to look forward to, so if it's the antibodies test, then you can start telling people, hey, when we get the antibodies test, if you test it positive, you can go out. Now are people allowed to then go and have a coronavirus party so that that way they can get sick, get through it, and then start working. Because that would be what would be keeping them from being a part of the economy.

Guest [00:45:55] See that's, I I, I had that thought myself was I should just go out and just like start licking windows and stuff and just get this thing and get it over with just because it's such an existential, you know, fear of, you know, it's coming and you know, the, everybody says you have, you know, you know, more than 50% of of us will get it. And, and so it's like, well, I'll just get it, get it over with. And hey, if, you know, if it's before the, you know, the surge at least, and if things get real bad for me, I'll at least have access to the hospital. Literally was my thought for like, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:46:32] If you're the first one in the hospital, then you, you get like all the nurses and doctors that have been waiting for you. That was,

Guest [00:46:37] That was my thought. The

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] Downside is you don't, you don't have the, the, the testing to figure out what works to help people get better. Whether hydro chloroquine is or it isn't. You wanna know that answer before you get sick.

Guest [00:46:49] Well, yeah, and, and, and of course like I, I just wanted to, to say I had that thought for about half a second until I said, no Dan, that's really stupid. Don't do that

Vance Crowe [00:46:58] Unless, unless you're rolling the dice and you're saying this is a hundred sided dice and only one of them equals death. Now the other ones have some bad stuff, but if I get to work earlier, I'm gonna get the best jobs I'm gonna get the most hours I'm gonna get to work in the freest situation we've ever had where they're like, anybody that can show up gets to do work. The, it's an enticing thing. And people shouldn't o overlook the economic interest in people saying, I want to go get sick as fast as possible 'cause I wanna be on the other side of this Corona baptism.

Guest [00:47:29] Yeah. See it like, like I said, it's, it's a situation where you have shitty options and then shittier options. So you just ha you have to, you know, it's, it's, it's not, it's, it's why we elect people. You, you know, it's why we have CDC and NIH to to, to make those decisions. And then, and then, you know, people like me to sit back and say, well they did that all wrong and what a bunch of idiots. But yeah, I mean I, I really think it's, it, it, I don't know because like, like I said, it's, it's gonna be a situation where we send people back to work or even if we, you know, just do like a, you know, three day a week thing or whatever it is, you send people back, somebody is going to have it. Like, you look at what ha what's happening on the, with the Navy and, and all the cases they have on, on these ships where, you know, one person gets it. And, and how even the comfort in New York City had one of the, one of the staff on the, on the ship came down with it supposedly did not have any patient contact. Supposedly, you know, nobody, nobody else on on the ship is showing symptoms or, or none. The other sailors that is are showing symptoms. And, but it's like, well now you like, it's, it's, it's, it's everywhere and it's, it, it's, here's it says Jurassic Park Life finds a way thing where it's, it's, I

Vance Crowe [00:48:59] I used to work on a cruise ship and I was in a situation where we had a disease going through there. It wasn't Norwalk and they didn't quarantine our ship, but it was like something pretty bad and that was terrifying. 'cause ships are petri dishes, so are nursing homes. That's a really scary situation. So are prisons and jails and these people being upset about having to release those prisoners? Like you gotta remember that a lot of those people in prison, they have the comorbidities. They are, they are older, they are way overweight, they

Guest [00:49:33] Were sentenced,

Vance Crowe [00:49:34] Right? They're not, they

Guest [00:49:34] Were sentenced to, you know, a year or two or three for a nonviolent crime. They weren't sentenced to death. So it doesn't make sense to keep them in a place where that, you know, they might, they they might die. They have a non-zero chance of, of dying from this. And if you can do something to, even if, even if it's, if it's even know, you say, well this is, you know, you're, you're out, you know, you're on house arrest now. And you know, it's not counting towards your, your actual, you know, I don't know how they, how they did that.

Vance Crowe [00:50:06] But I, I also have to say this, I think if you're gonna let prisoners out and you're in a situation where the police are saying, we are gonna roll back what we're enforcing as far as laws, then you're at, you're telling the citizenry in order to not let these people die because they're under our care, you have to take your own care into your, into your space. Like you have to be much more mindful because we're not going to have police officers. Like it's already happened in the city of St. Louis, where you have 30% more burglaries than they've had before. None of them have been violent. But bur you have a situation where you have less,

Guest [00:50:41] Why aren't, why aren't people home?

Vance Crowe [00:50:44] Right. Good point.

Guest [00:50:46] That's, that was, that's, I, I understand that burglars can break in the middle of the night. So that, that was supposed to be a joke. But yeah, I, yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's, there's no, there's no, nobody know anybody who says that they know what is going to happen or anything like that. Is, is either a psychic, which, you know, they don't exist or they're lying and it, it's just such a, I dunno, they, like I said, there's, there's no right answer to, to anything here.

Vance Crowe [00:51:15] Well, that is why I have been trying to find as many different people from as many different points of view. I have two questions left for you, Dan, 'cause I could talk all afternoon. But the first one is, where do you think the world is in two weeks? What's different about the world Today is April 9th. April 9th, 2022 weeks from today. What do you think the world looks like?

Guest [00:51:38] I mean, I think, I don't know about the the world, but I know for us, I think, I think it's, I don't see how it's not more of the same. Like, I, like I, I told you earlier my, you know, kids soccer league was planning on starting back up in, you know, middle of May. And I told my, I told my ex he's not doing soccer at all like this, this summer, or probably not even this fall because it, you know, it just doesn't make any sense to, to do that. And now if, you know, hopefully something changes and some, you know, somebody with, with as many resources and, and countries and, and just absolutely brilliant scientists, you know, putting their, their full weight into addressing this issue. I, I have to imagine that sometime in the next few weeks there's gonna be something. It's not, I don't think it's gonna be a chloroquine or azithro myerson or whatever dumb bullshit Trump is pushing, but it's somebody, somebody somewhere is just almost like law of averages. Somebody somewhere is gonna find something and it's either, you know, they, they have to because what's, what's the alternative?

Vance Crowe [00:53:05] Well that is seems like a very hopeful position because you have a big belief in science and somebody making a discovery or in another way, it's kinda like, what are you doing to prepare for if things don't go the way you hope they will? So you have this time right now, the final question is how are you spending your time right now preparing for a post coronavirus

Guest [00:53:29] World? Yeah, well I spent, I think I, I mean I, well I don't think, I know I spent a lot of my time leading up to, I guess when kind of everybody felt like, kind of realized, oh shit, this is a problem. And, and everything I I, I put a lot of energy into saying, Hey, this is coming, this is coming, this is coming, this is coming. Get ready, get ready, get ready. This is gonna be bad. You know, we're in, I remember, like I said, you know, we're gonna hit, you know, a thousand deaths a day, you know, at, at this point we're gonna see, you know this, we're gonna see, you know, tens of thousands of deaths from this. And everybody alm almost, it, it, well I should, I should say from from the beginning, it, it was interesting to see the decline of people like yelling at me saying, I'm fear fearmongering and whatever, as like, you know, what I was saying kind of played out. And, and so I think where I, and I'm getting off track now, but I, you know, I think we're at a point where everybody kind of realizes how serious it is and, you know, I mean that was that, my, my thing was, I, I just wanted to do what I could to kind of mentally prepare other people to, to, to kind of endure, you know, what, what's happening here. Not, not just endure what's happening, but also to just stay the fuck at home. Because that's really the biggest thing to that, that they can do is, is to do nothing and go nowhere be around.

Guest [00:55:02] No one. So I, I didn't really like with think, like reading all that and thinking about it, I, I didn't really think about myself much at all. Like, what I would do to maintain my sanity when, you know, I can't, you know, see my friends and, and family and my kids had a two week spring break. They were supposed to go to my parents' house. Obviously I'm not sending them, or we didn't send them to my parents' house because I don't want my parents to die from this in case they had it. So, but I think the biggest thing people can do right now is what I've been relying on. Find a hobby. The weather is getting nice. I've been doing yard work, I really get into woodworking. It's not a great time since I can't exactly go to Home Depot, you know, I buy, you know, whatever I, whatever I need. But I mean, the weather today, it's, it's amazing, you know, go outside, you know, by yourself or with your spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend or, or whatever. You know, somebody that you live with, you, you know, you can do that but not in groups. I mean, there's, there's a lot of stuff that you can do to kind of have like a pseudo normalcy while still being vigilant and, and, you know, treating everybody that is around you or anybody that you, you see is if as if they're, they're carrying it and they, you know, they don't know because of course nobody wants to, to, to spread it. But, so

Vance Crowe [00:56:30] Dan, are you planting a garden or anything? Are you gonna, you gonna grow any crops? Are you gonna

Guest [00:56:34] Try and Yeah, I got, I got tomatoes. I, I waited too late to start 'em, but I started tomatoes I think a little over a week ago.

Vance Crowe [00:56:45] Oh, there's still plenty of time. A week ago is fine.

Guest [00:56:47] You'll be good. Well, I, I, I would've liked for them to be, to be actually growing by now and, and, and almost, almost ready to go under the ground, I think in, in a week. And

Vance Crowe [00:56:57] How much produce are you hoping to procure there?

Guest [00:57:00] Oh, I, I have, I have no idea. I think I'll, I, I have fairly small yard, so I, and the garden isn't that big either, so I think I'll only be able to get maybe 10 tomato plants in the ground and I'll have, I'm gonna have some basil. 'cause my, my favorite, favorite like side dish is tomato grape tomatoes cut up with mozzarella pearls and fresh basil that's been chopped and balsamic vinegar, it is like the best thing because it's cheese and tomato

Vance Crowe [00:57:40] And

Guest [00:57:40] Well

Vance Crowe [00:57:40] Man, it, I, I will be looking for a photo of you sending that and hopefully with a bunch of friends this summer when the tomatoes are all grown and everybody's out of their houses. So, yeah.

Guest [00:57:50] We'll

Vance Crowe [00:57:51] See. I'm gonna,

Guest [00:57:52] I'm, I'm

Vance Crowe [00:57:53] Gonna wrap it up for now. Thank you so much, man. You, you have a very different perspective on the world than I do and it was awesome to hear about how things are going, and sorry that things are, that things are rough right now, but we'll see you on the other side. Yeah,

Guest [00:58:08] Absolutely. Thank you.